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Quote:Thanks much for the review!Tonight's arc: Papers and Paychecks (298290). Verdict - *****. Review in MA Forums thread.
I'll look at the 4 Nemesis Automata bosses you mentioned. I need to keep at least one a boss in order to have enough diversity in the custom group to award full exp; but maybe I can make all the others into lieutenant rank with a larger escort, as you suggested.
Will check Ken's description as well.
Thanks again! -
I also got an automated response acknowledging receipt of my submission. (Really a customized "out of office" message.)
WN, is there any chance that your spam blocker may be catching the automated response? You might check your spam / junk mail folder just in case. -
10/18/2010
Thursday
Teal Serpent (37 villain archery/traps corruptor) did an ITF in 57m 54s, getting to level 38.
I started a new loyalist dark/kin corruptor with the name "Math Model", basically a geeky pun. I am torn between dark/kin or ice/kin for the kin superteam; both seem like they could be good. Math Model joined a 4 player Praetorian team that got her to level 5. I got to see Belladonna Ventrano (the Praetorian Ghost Widow) in one of these missions; she was very much alive and seemed a pretty cool character.
Water Lily (31 villain rad/storm corruptor) joined a 5 player team doing rogue tip missions; we did 5 missions, then I switched to Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) for another 5 rogue missions. This got Kashira to level 33. Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) also did 2 rogue missions.
Water Lily ended up doing the rogue morality mission to change alignment to Rogue, then crossed over to blue side for a Sister Psyche TF. This finished in 1h 49m and got Water Lily to 32.
Friday
A friend asked me to help with signature heroes in Recluse's Victory, so I brought Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) to RV. We had a full team with some hangers-on. There was a little PvP early on but it seemed like the more serious PvPers (I saw at least 2) were actually leaving us alone, which was unusually nice. After some pillbox manipulation, we got all the heroes except Synapse; it felt like we spent hours trying to spawn Synapse, only to get all the other heroes instead. Eventually, though, when we were close to giving up, we finally spawned and killed him, completing the RV signature hero badges and accolade.
Millie Volt picked up an Apocalypse (DMG/END) IO for 281M on the market; this was her 5th Apocalypse, so gave her +10% global recharge (total now +72.5% rchg while hasten is down).
Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did an ITF in 22m 40s and got a Hecatomb (chance of negative) recipe drop. I went on to do 3 hero tip missions with the tip drops I got.
Finally I brought Mega back on to help an 8-player team kill Deathsurge in Cap au Diable.
Saturday
Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a speed Sharkhead SF in 32m 39s.
Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) helped on a Master of the Recluse SF with a team mix of:
stone/stone tanker
fire/kin controller
emp/psy defender
dark/dark corruptor
2 fire/rad corruptors (including me)
dark/inv scrapper
spine/will scrapper
We actually succeeded at the Master of the RSF with this team mix, completing it in 58m 51s. I actually had the MoRSF badge on Indigo Ifrit (and had forgotten); I had played her because the team leader asked for debuff, though. I did get a Microfilament SHO drop, though, which seemed to be going for around 450M at the market, so that was pretty good.
After that another team asked me to play a debuffer for their Master of the Barracuda SF attempt. (In hindsight it would've been so much smarter to make my main badging character a debuffer...oh well.) I played Indigo Ifrit for this as well. Our team mix was:
fire/mace tanker
crab
dark/dark scrapper
DB/will stalker
fire/dark corruptor
spine/will scrapper
fire/rad corruptor (me)
emp/psy defender
We actually weren't playing very carefully, with the tanker setting a pretty aggressive pace and the team frequently getting strung out into separate fights. A corruptor died in the very first mission against some random Longbow, which blew the "Master of" attempt, but we continued anyway. In the second mission we lost track of Mueller (our stealth aura, I'm guessing) and didn't actually take him to the console, so after Reichsman got loose and we were sent to jail, we still had an objective to lead Mueller to the computer. Fortunately, defeating the AV completed the mission anyway. In the final mission we fought Reichsman straight up, with ambushes pouring in; we seemed to have enough support that this actually worked fine. Our stalker did manage to kill all the 5th Column at least once using his temp power, and Reichsman never phased that I saw (possibly the defender temp power was suppressing it). Finished in 1h 36m.
Somehow I immediately got invited to another Barracuda SF right after this (though not a Master Of). I initially wanted to play Police Woman for the badge, but when our team filled up to 8 and we had nothing approximating a tanker or brute at all, I switched to Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) instead, because I figured we needed someone to tank Reichsman. This team mix was much weaker than the previous team; we got to the final mission just fine, but had 2 team wipes against Reichsman (everyone died but me), mostly due to the huge number of ambushes that showed up. I tried moving our team to the hallway just outside Reichsman's room, but we were getting hit from both sides and the squishies kept dying; eventually I ran all the way to a dead end room (the one where you find Ghost Widow) and team TP'd everyone's bodies there. Then I physically blocked the door with my body (Mega is max height so is pretty good for this) and told everyone to stay behind me while we cleared the remaining ambushes. This seemed to work better, and after pounding a very large number of 5th Column, the ambushes slowed to a trickle and we were able to take on Reichsman solo. Finished the SF in 2h 5m.
After that I joined a Lady Grey TF with Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller). This was a pickup team with a pretty weak team mix; I took the last spot on the team, and noticed that before I joined they had no controllers/dominators and just one fort for holds, so I think they would've hit a brick wall fighting the green mitos if I hadn't joined. I was also the only source of healing, other than the frequently AFK storm defender (though in fairness, he also accused me of being AFK at one point; as it happens, I was writing notes). When we actually got to Hamidon, both the stormy and the fortunata were calling for people to assist target through them for mitos, which had comedic results. We eventually got our act together and beat Hamidon, though, and the final mission went without a hitch. We completed the LGTF in 58m 46s.
Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) joined an 8-player team that killed Scrapyard, then I solo'd her hero morality mission, converting her to full hero alignment. Moved her to Fort Trident to start converting reward merits into hero merits.
Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions and a hero morality mission, earning a hero merit. I'm thinking of having her Go Rogue, though, to try and get the Mu Mastery patron powers; although I really like Fireball from her current Fire Mastery, I think the elec patron powers might be a better match thematically, and according to Mids they should also do more damage. I have to use up her huge pile of hero merits before I cross over, though.
I got invited to the new LFA channel. I was kind of dubious about this because I've seen a lot of attempts to start a new Liberty channel in the past, but I eventually agreed to join the channel. I turned down becoming a mod for this channel, however, partly because I'm not sure whether it will last, and partly because being a mod for LB is already more than enough responsibility.
Sunday
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a flashback of the Couch Potato badge mission; this took me 13m 17s, but I actually had missed one of the objectives and ended up having to backtrack over the map a couple times, so I'm sure it can be done a lot faster than that. It was worth 2 merits, though, which seemed very good.
I also did a flashback of Dean MacArthur's story arc for the Bane of Ajax badge and 5 merits, and I did it with "No Inspirations" which got me the Unoriginal badge. The elapsed time was 10h 30m, but actually I started it before lunch, then was gone all day, and finished it after dinner, so that time isn't really valid.
Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) joined a STF; went fine til the last mission where we had a rather messy fight agaisnt Lord Recluse. The tank lost aggro on LR once and he came and beat on us, then the flyer aggroed on us and killed some people, then the tank died at one point and LR rampaged around some more. But we managed to recover from this and finished the STF in 50m 1s. I got a Nucleolus.
Teal Serpent (38 villain archery/traps corruptor) helped kill Scrapyard for the badge.
Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Kahn TF in 24m 17s, then solo'd 2 hero tip missions and the hero morality mission for a bonus 50 merits.
A lot of drama erupted on LB after I silenced a former mod for rude behavior. This former mod logged in some alt account that still had op status, gave his main account operator status, and kicked all the current LB mods from the channel. I tried to keep relatively calm about this, as I was worried I'd do actions I would regret if I lost my cool. But the truth is, I felt pretty bitter and angry about the situation. I had put a lot of effort into trying to do a good job as LB moderator, and I know I've lost old friends and made new enemies in the process. Having a former mod abuse his power because he felt he shouldn't have to follow the rules really made me mad.
I had pretty much gotten reconciled to the idea that I didn't need LB and was better off without it, when one of the other mods asked me to rejoin LB and gave me back moderator status. Apparently the guy who was causing trouble left the channel after his tantrum, and we ended up picking up the pieces after that.
I ended up joining an ITF with Teal Serpent, figuring I could get my mind off of the channel drama with a TF full of mindless killing. We finished the clear-most ITF in 42m 0s and got Teal Serpent to level 39. -
Looking at the title, I totally thought this thread was going to suggest Mission Architect IOs with special bonuses that are only active in MA!
I like the ideas suggested. Dunno how hard they might be to add to the interface though. -
Framed for the murder of a Crey corporate executive, Captain Amanda Stevens of the Paragon Police initially turned herself in, expecting to get cleared during her day in court. But with the district attorney up for re-election and eager to prosecute a high profile case, and hotshot Crey lawyers acting as "friends of the court" to submit falsified "evidence", it soon became clear to everyone that the police woman had no chance at all if the case came to trial. And after the trial...she had put a lot of bad guys behind bars in her time. She wouldn't have much of a future in the Zig. Her attorney urged her to plea bargain, but Stevens flatly refused to plead guilty to crimes she didn't commit.
But she still had a lot of friends on the force. One friend left her cell door open one night, and a few more looked the other way as she fled the Talos Island jail.
Amanda eventually found her her way to the Rogue Isles, where she would be safe from extradition. But someday, she vowed, she would return to Paragon City...and get her revenge. -
10/14/2010
Tuesday
Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) bought an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) IO for 332M inf. I'm gradually purpling out some of her powers for extra +rchg. It's a good way to use up excess inf.
Solo'd with Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) a bit. I've been pondering whether to reroll her as a dual blades scrapper, since scrappers seem so much better on teams than stalkers, but I have a lot of scrappers already, so I haven't done this yet. The stealth is pretty nice for soloing. Maybe I just need a respec or something. I did cash in 50 reward merits for 1 villain merit, which I used for 5 random recipe rolls. I got:
Aegis (END/RCHG/RES)
Pacing of the Turtle (proc)
Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC)
Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG)
Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END/RCHG)
This seemed pretty unexciting; the Mako's Bite and LotG are the best of the bunch, but are mid-tier in value at best.
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a speed ITF which finished in 27m 7s. I got an Absolute Amazement (RCHG/ACC) recipe drop, which was nice.
Wednesday
Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions. I originally planned to have her go vigilante (since, after all, she hacks people with swords) but I'm starting to think I'd be better off making most of my toons pure hero or pure villain, for the hero/villain merits.
Kashira solo'd an AE story arc called One Normal Girl, which basically had me following the life story of a new fire-based heroine; the story arc depicted her origin, fall from grace and redemption. It was decently written, but needed a little more material in places, and ultimately it really felt like I was just observing another person's adventures, rather than being a part of the story. I gave it 4 stars.
After that I joined a 7 player team that did 5 Rogue tip missions (I had actually planned on having Kashira stay villain, but this was what the team was doing, so I just went with it). After filling up on fame, I switched to Water Lily (30 villain rad/storm corruptor) to do 3 more rogue tip missions and 1 villain tip mission (my mistake - I accidentally selected the "villain" choice when we were supposed to be doing rogue missions...it was an accident! I'm not really evil!).
Finished the night playing Teal Serpent (35 villain archery/traps corruptor) on a clear most ITF. We weren't really speeding, but I died a lot for some reason. We had a tanker but he was complaining he had some sort of unusual aggro issues, and so the rest of the team soaked a lot of the Cimeroran damage. I got a "you aggro more than me!" from our kinetic, which probably isn't a good thing. The Cimerorans really, really hated poison traps, I guess. Everyone died a lot, though, and we even had a team wipe in the valley of lag in mission 3. We kept moving forward, though, and it was still pretty good exp. Romulus in the final mission ran around a little, but still died pretty quick (we had quite a lot of debuff). Finished in 1h 5m and got to level 37. -
Personally, I don't like publishing an arc unless it has a logical beginning and end. If the arc just suddenly ends in the middle of the story with no closure, that really bugs me.
It's not uncommon for me to heavily revise a story arc that is already published, though, adding more content or changing existing enemies, whatever. But I like it to at least be a relatively coherent story (even if sparse on details initially) before I publish it.
That said, it IS your arc slot, so really it is up to you what you want to do with it. If you think you can get some value out of people testing an incomplete arc, more power to you. -
Before anyone yells at me (again) for these selections, there are definitely "better", higher quality arcs than some of the ones that I'm about to list.
These are just arcs that I, personally, like. (Urgh, found that I initially listed 8 arcs, had to be ruthless to cut down to 5.)
Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette TF (#58363)
Becky's Revenge (#60197)
Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War (#130809)
The Coldest of Wars (#299972)
Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell (#340316) -
I replay my own arcs, of course, for testing and because I (naturally) like them.
I will sometimes replay an arc that someone has asked me to replay because they have changed it a lot since my first play-through, and they would like to know what I think of the latest version.
There's a small set of arcs that I replay because I really enjoy them. This set is moderately biased towards lighthearted, fun arcs (though, not exclusively so), mostly because that's my personal preference.
I would guess that when I start an AE arc that is not my own, approximately 90% of the time it is a new arc, and 10% of the time it is a re-play of an old arc (numbers not exact, just a guess). This is affected somewhat by the fact that I am trying to find and identify high quality story arcs to add to my "Contact list for MA".
Worth mentioning, I started a "Favorites List" thread some months ago asking people to post their favorite story arcs, where I stipulated that it could not be counted as a favorite arc unless you had played it at least 3 times. The great majority of posters who responded said they never play anyone else's arc 3 times, no matter how good they thought it was. I thought that was a very interesting factoid.
(Ironically, I'm sure the farms get re-played a lot compared to the story oriented arcs.)
Personally, I'd love to try to make my story arcs involving enough that people will want to play them over and over again. But it looks like it isn't easy to do that. -
10/12/2010
Thursday
After some final tweaks, I submitted Papers and Paychecks (arc id 298290) to Dr. Aeon's 3rd Architect Challenge. Hoping for the best.
Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a quick ITF in 22m 4s, followed by a quick Dr. Kahn TF in 24m 16s.
Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/arrow defender) joined an 8-player AV team that beat up Infernal and Chimera. After the team broke up, I solo'd 2 hero tip missions and the hero morality mission, confirming her Hero alignment and getting 50 reward merits.
Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined an ITF; we were light on support and died a lot. I used the regen self-Revive probably 10 times in mission 1 alone; the ambush at the end of mission 1 was particularly nasty to us. We had a lot of deaths but also killed a lot of Romans, clearing pretty much everything. Had a team wipe in the last mission on Romulus's second life, but after recovering from that, we beat him up and finished the TF in 1h 29m.
Finished the night playing Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) on a 3-player team that did one hero tip mission.
Friday
Made a new costume for Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender); my original intention was to make some kind of femme fatale look, but this somehow ended up looking like a cheerleader outfit. Oh well. I still kinda like it. She is still missing one Praetorian AV (I suspect Siege), so I got a mission from Maria Jenkins and ended up soloing Infernal as an EB. This took 2 tries; a big damage spike from his axe got me the first try, while the second try I popped a bunch of lucks and managed to whittle him down over time. I was still pretty pleased to be able to beat him as a solo empath defender.
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a 5-player team for a Brickstown mayhem. We also got to fight Infernal, this time as a Hero. Got the Brickhouse and Vandal badges. This would've completed the Invader accolade, except I already had it from the hero/villain transition.
Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) joined a pickup RSF, about half of whom had never done the RSF before. This was kinda messy. The technician was in tower 2 and we freed him and he disappeared; we all thought we were supposed to lead him to the computer and he had gotten bugged somehow, so we petitioned for a GM. Fortunately, a friend told me that you no longer have to lead the tech to the computer, and we simply clicked the computer to complete the mission. I'm sure I must've done a half dozen RSFs since they changed the tech to work this way, but this is the first time it really sank in. During the Vindicators mission we beat up the first group of Vindicators, then nearly had a team wipe while trying to clear the way to the glowy. Everyone died but me, and I ended up running to the door to Ms. Liberty's room and soloing all the Longbow there, then team TPing everyone's bodies to me to get awakened.
In the final mission the team wanted to pull with a snipe. I told them I thought this wouldn't work (the AVs always all come, I said), but we tried it anyway. It actually kinda worked; we pulled Numina solo to the city hall steps, then when she was nearly dead Synapse showed up and we killed him, then the next hero showed up, and we ended up getting them one at a time and killing them. This worked until we got both Statesman and Manticore at the same time, and we couldn't handle the both of them and had a team wipe. On the rematch, we beat Statesman and Manticore, completing the RSF in 2h 0m 29s. I got a Peroxisome. I asked the puller how he was doing it; he was a dark/dark and was using Shadow Meld, Shadow Fall, and the Moonbeam snipe. This is the first time I've heard of Shadow Meld being used in any kind of useful way.
After that I did a Numina TF in 1h 19m but I forgot to write down anything about it beyond that.
Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) did 5 hero tip missions with a 3 player team.
Saturday
Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) joined a 5 player AV team that defeated Tyrant and Neuron.
Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did an ITF in 31m 13s.
Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did an 8-player Manticore TF in 49m 32s.
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined the Hamidon raid, on the Green Assault Team. The raid handled the 75% and 50% blooms pretty smoothly, then powered through the final bloom. We were succesful. I took the 53 merits, though in hindsight I'm not absolutely sure that's a better choice than a random HO. The HO seems better for STFs and RSFs, but 53 merits seems a lot more than the STF/RSF reward.
I hit the influence cap again and emailed myself another 500M inf dividend. This took 12 days, over twice as long as normal; I attribute this to a general fall in the prices of rare salvage, which is what I mostly trade in. Mid-September most rare salvage prices were averaging around 3M inf, but late September and early October, some kind of bubble burst and the average price fell to around 1.5M. I had a decent inventory of salvage purchased at the old price, so I lost some net worth there; but after a quick fire sale and some repricing, I got back into the market at the lower price point.
Teal Serpent (34 villain arrow/traps corruptor) joined a team that fought off a zombie apocalypse in Port Oakes. Then I solo'd 2 villain tip missions, before joining a 3-player team that did 2 rogue tip missions and a rogue morality mission. This left Teal's alignment bars kinda schizophrenic looking, but did get her to level 35. I took trip mine for her level 35 power.
TokyoRose (28 villain sonic/sonic corruptor) joined a 5-player team that ran a few paper missions in Grandville.
Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a Moonfire TF. It was getting kinda late and I was spacing out and pretty inattentive. A teammate called me on it (oops!), after which I tried to wake up and stay focused; finished in 1h 19m, then called it a night.
Sunday
Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) solo'd Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids!, an AE story arc where you are investigating the disappearance of a purple dinosaur that hosts a kids TV show. I felt like the characters needed a bit more motivation and there were a lot of cameo appearances by player characters that I don't know and didn't seem to add to the story, so this didn't quite work for me. I gave a lot of feedback to the author, though, since this was an arc intended for Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge.
Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Master of STF attempt with a team of:
shield/dark tanker
kat/will scrapper
ill/cold controller
ice/kin controller
ill/rad controller
MA/SR scrapper
AR/nrg blaster
elec/SR scrapper (me)
This went pretty well until the last mission, where we tried to pull the patron AVs and got all 4 of them. The tanker was trying to tank all of them, but Ghost Widow got positioned in a way that the team was getting caught in her AoEs; we all moved around some to try and avoid this, but Ghost Widow eventually got someone, causing us to fail the Master Of attempt. After that we got kind of careless and the tanker got disconnected and we had a few more GW-related deaths. We did finish the STF in 1h 28m, though, and I got a Nucleolus.
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 55m 11s.
Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined another Master of STF with a team of:
inv tanker
rad/psy defender
cold/rad defender
emp/pistols defender (me)
ill/kin controller
ill/rad controller
dark/cold corruptor
elec/elec blaster
This was originally intended to be a regular STF, but this team lineup was so support-heavy that I talked them into making it a Master of STF. This was a different team than the MoSTF team I was on earlier in the day, but that other team was also making another try at the MoSTF; I teased them saying that if my team completed MoSTF and theirs didn't, I would never let them live it down.
Our team did fine all the way to the last mission. Against the patron AVs, the rad/psy defender pulled them one by one. Against Lord Recluse, the tanker pulled LR near the blue tower and straight up tanked him there, with me healing him. This all went really well and we completed the MoSTF in 1h 12m. I got a Nucleolus. (The other team did complete the MoSTF successfully too.)
After that, I played Mystery Girl on a LGTF. We mostly cleared missions 1 and 2, then tried to fail mission 3 but it took awhile to get Infernia killed, she really put up a fight. During mission 4 one of our 2 dominators got disconnected, making it hard to hold the green mitos and painful to kill them, but we eventually got them. Cleared the way through mission 5, to finish the LGTF in 1h 29m.
I finished the night soloing Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) through Your Blue Collar Nemesis, an AE story arc about a mad scientist from Praetoria that comes to Paragon City. This was the author's first attempt and it really showed, there were quite a lot of problems. I tried to give some constructive feedback and decided not to rate the arc; he had no ratings on the arc at all and I thought it would be too demoralizing for his first rating to be a low one.
Monday
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) solo'd the villain morality mission, confirming her villain alignment and gaining 50 reward merits.
Teal Serpent (35 villain arrow/traps corruptor) joined an Ice Mistral SF. Our team was pretty squishy overall, but we had 3 traps toons which was pretty fun; we laid a ton of traps around the AV in the final mission, and the ambushes spawned on them or ran into them with pleasing results. Finished in 1h 34m.
I rolled up a new ice/kin corruptor in Praetoria, in preparation for the kinetic superteam. I made her a re-imagined Mercy Beaucoup (a Canadian themed hero that was originally an emp/ice defender); we're supposed to get to level 4, so I joined a large team running missions in Praetoria. Levels go fast at low level, though, so the new Mercy got to level 7 before I swapped out.
After that I played Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) on a speed ITF; we were REALLY speedy, due to high DPS and debuffs, finishing in 19m 52s. Our team was 2 Arachnos soldiers, 1 kin, 1 rad, 2 brutes, 2 scrappers. I didn't get the exact powersets beyond that, though.
Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did an STF in 38m 13s and got a Nucleolus. I also bought a Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG/ACC) for 292M and Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG) for 295M inf; not cheap, but not a bad deal. I got them both as IOs, for some reason purple set IOs are sometimes cheaper than the purple set recipes.
Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) joined a pickup ITF. I was originally recruited by a friend, but right before the TF started she gave the star to a player I have a pretty low opinion of, which was surprising to me. I decided to just go with it, though we did have the following conversation during the TF:
[Tell] (Friend): I will apologize ahead of time if this is terrible. heh
[Tell] (Friend): (Friend's Spouse) and I got roped into this.
[Tell] -->(Friend): hehe, thankswhy did you give the star to (Horrible Player), out of curiosity?
[Tell] -->(Friend): Oh I see
[Tell] (Friend): He was leading from the beginning. He asked me to find people.
[Tell] (Friend): I have more friends apparently :P
[Tell] -->(Friend): It worked, I wouldn't have joined a team led by him
[Tell] (Friend): I wouldn't normally either. Which is why I am apologizing.
[Tell] -->(Friend): haha, ok
[Tell] (Friend): Hopefully we will both be surprised and it will be decent :P
This struck me as being totally hilarious. The new leader asked us to "speed" the ITF, so I went along with this and rushed all the objectives, turning a blind eye to the fact that most of the squishies (including the new leader) couldn't handle a speed ITF and were dying a lot. I was kind of nervous that the new leader might kick me from the TF at some point out of spite (since I had kicked him from a previous TF for being a slacker) but it never happened. In this way we managed to get through the ITF in 38m 1s, which actually wasn't too bad.
Finished the night playing Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) on a 3-player team hunting Fake Nemesis in Firebase Zulu. I normally hunt Fakes in Peregrine Island, but according to my teammates, they spawn plentifully around Point Tango, Point X-Ray and Point Sierra in FBZ. They didn't seem to be more frequent in FBZ than in PI to me, but we did eventually get the Unveiler badge, after which I ran around to the explore badges and plaques to get the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade. -
Quote:I suspect you would be better off coming up with your own names; I just think Mork isn't a good choice for name, because players will instantly think of the guy from the sitcom, which is not what you want..Mork/Gork were mainly placeholder names that I really didn't have anything better to change them into. Any suggestions on what I can use for names?
Quote:Vergel's the characters name. It's shortened from Vergeltung--the German word for Nemesis, which is where I got the name for the character originally (the character wasn't originally made for the MA, and it's where I got the name for the arc from)
Quote:Basically, my choices are to make them all required, resulting in a really odd looking objective screen,
Quote:make each one required to be finished before the last (meaning you'd have to run back and forth to save all the civilians)
Quote:As for the trap, yeah, they're all supposed to turn on you. It's supposed to be really nasty,
Quote:The Sons of Cid itself as a group... well, they're pretty much supposed to be almost a fanatical cult in blind allegiance to Cid with intellect but no will of their own. To be honest, I've described Cid before as a Sci-Fi version of a Lich, he takes bodies, conscripts them into robotic 'zombies,' uses electrical abilities so advanced it may as well be magic (he took Shocking Grasp to the next level!... and a few levels more), and has 'died' once before. I'm just not sure how to make that transfer over to the group, though.
Quote:Personally, I view this arc as the middle story in a Trilogy, the first one detailing the origins of the villain, this one detailing him undergoing a general 'rise to power' (even if he's ultimately driven back to Praetoria--he'll still have a number of powerful troops recruited from Primal Earth) and finally culminating in a complete showdown of arc finishing up the villain's storyline. This is the only one I can do at the moment, though, due to the lack of Praetorian assets in AE.
Quote:Billy's tie-in to the story is pretty much like the aforementioned Dean contact for the i17 villain clone lab arc, an information broker, though a Rogue one and not a villain. A little tenuous, yes, but someone who actually can know the things he needs to know to help the PC out.
Anyway, best of luck! -
Mission 1:
Civillians -> Civilians (in entry popup)
Mork needs a better description. Also, the name Mork is pretty heavily associated with an old TV show, you might want to use a different name unless you're ok with reminding people of that.
Defeating Mork and his group finished the mission. There didn't seem to be any clues or anything to do besides fight Mork; this makes the mission feel too much like an ordinary police radio mission. Mork's dialog was also very generic, stuff that any villain could say. I'd suggest adding more objectives, maybe some clues, and giving the boss some more personality in his dialog.
Mission 2:
"It just so happens that there are rumors abound that..." is awkward sounding. I'd suggest rephrasing to either "Rumors abound that..." or "There are rumors that..." (in briefing).
Rather than having the contact tell the player where to go next, it would be a little cooler if the player finds a clue in the first mission (from the boss, or some other objective) that leads them to the next mission.
It seems a bit too much coincidence that not only does the contact know about the Arachnos computer with the location of the secret base, but the Sons of Cid also know and are attacking at exactly the same time, AND the Praetorian guy, Krash, also knows about this computer and is attacking at exactly the same time.
Also "Vergel" in the Michael Krashe clue should probably be "Virgil".
Gork says "Tch. You win this time, Hero." But actually he has been killed by Arachnos, I never aggro'd him.
Debriefing seems too short (only 1 sentence).
Mission 3:
The contact gives me more info that he got from Krash. I think it would be better if Krash told the player this directly (through a clue or something) rather than Krash telling Billy, then Billy telling the player.
"Save the Civillains!" objective should be "Save the Civilians".
I rescued Businesswoman and she started following me. It did not seem to satisfy the "Save the Civillains" objective. Leading her to the door didn't help either. Not really sure what I am supposed to do with her? I ended up ditching her. I think it would be simpler if you just had the hostage leave when rescued.
Saved Businessman and Officer also, same deal, didn't seem to help the objectives.
Found and killed Mork again. He still needs a better description and his dialog is still rather generic.
Saved Female Civillian (should be spelled Civilian). Again, not sure what to do with her.
Beat up Gork, who also needs a better description and dialog.
Saved Feisty Civillian (should be Civilian). Left her behind too.
Rescued Civillian (should be Civilian). He says:
[NPC] Civillian: Your in for it now! Get 'em, Kashira!
"Your" should be "You're".
Rescuing this Civillian triggers "Take down Dr. Cid". But why isn't he an objective to begin with? Is there something that makes Dr Cid appear after all the civilians are rescued? The story needs to explain this better.
I find Cid? ... "have come to Paragon City" should be "has come to Paragon City" (in his description).
I defeat Cid? and he talks about "Master Cid", which makes his description of "Dr. Vergel Cid" not really make sense. Should there be some clue that explains why I think this guy is an impostor? Also maybe there should be a clue involving him, suggesting that Krash might be in trouble since Krash was supposed to go after Cid.
It sounds like ALL the hostages betrayed while I was fighting Master Cid. Fortunately, I had ditched them all. If anyone actually led them around like they asked, though, it would be a pretty ugly trap.
"Son's" should be "Sons" in the debriefing. There's also an extra space after "drat" and before the period. This new development that the Sons of Cid can intercept medical teleporting kinda came out of the blue; needs some foreshadowing, I'd suggest adding some clues hinting at this earlier on.
Mission 4:
The contact says he won't send any more people in because the Cids keep conscripting them...but he's sending me in, so this doesn't quite make sense.
OK, this mission has plenty of clues about Operation Turncoat and The Conscription Process, which are nice; I think you may want to spread these out among your missions, though, rather than have such a huge info dump in the last mission only.
Now that we've discovered that most of the Sons of Cid are serving them against their will, isn't it kind of mean and unheroic to blow them all up with explosives anyway?
Vergel Cid looks awfully normal for an android. Maybe he should have more robot parts in his costume. The number and size of the ambushes he generated seemed a bit much.
If Dr Cid hates the Resistance so much, wouldn't it make more sense for him to stay in Praetoria? After all, there's less opportunity for killing Resistance in Primal Earth.
The final debriefing feels rather underwhelming ... I'd suggest rewriting it to make the ending seem more cool.
Decent souvenir. Though it ends abruptly with "burned down around h" ... I think you are missing part of a word there.
Regarding the Sons of Cid villain group itself, they seemed pretty bland to me, nothing really making them stand out compared to other villain groups. I think they could use some further development. Though the addition of the conscripted Arachnos and Longbow was neat. Based on the story I almost wonder if mostly re-using other mobs would make some sense, rather than having mostly custom mobs.
The plot thread about hijacking mediporter technology was never really followed up on; shouldn't we find this device and break it or otherwise prevent Cid from doing this again?
What was Billy's tie-in to this story, anyway? How does he know so much about Praetorians?
Anyway, after some thought, I decided not to rate this story - I think it would be nicer if your first rating were a good one. I hope this feedback helps, though! -
Finished the arc
sorry for spamming your in-box with offline tells, I think I actually filled it.
[SPOILER]
I like how Bright Angel/Blight Angel was depicted, why she was doing what she did made perfect sense considering how underappreciated she was.
I didn't quite get why Blappy did what she did; she was already very successful, why hook up with the Injustice Legion? (I assume the "mind control" thing was just her feeble excuse.) I think she needs a little more motivation. (I know her description says "She hates everyone" but I think she could use a little more than that.)
I was also quite surprised Blappy wasn't a clown, I guess she was supposed to be a purple dinosaur.I had assumed it was a Krusty the Clown/Sideshow Bob thing. So that kinda messes up my earlier title suggestion.
I think the "Have a Blappy Day" catch phrase was a little underused, only appearing once that I saw (plus the title, of course) ... maybe have a re-run come on the TV at some point where (taped) Blappy gets to say this line?
I am not quite sure how the Nemesis plot in mission 1 fit in, it seems like it was going in a different direction than the whole Injustice Legion plotline in missions 2 through 4. Can they be tied together better somehow?
The Injustice Legion seemed a little too obviously SG inserts; could use a little more development and/or tighter theme, right now they seem more like cameo appearances.
I would've liked to see more of Blappy's shady talent agent, too. That guy really seemed like he should be more involved with these dirty dealings. Maybe he could be either encouraging Bright Angel to get greedy, or he could be one of the people Bright Angel thinks is holding her back.
[/SPOILER]
More title suggestions:
Television Rots the Brain
The Case of the Missing Purple Dinosaur
It's Blappy Time!
Anyway, hope that all helps, and best of luck! -
Solo'd partway through so far, and left you some feedback.
Here's my title suggestion, if you go the "non-comedy" route: Tears of a Clown.
Pop culture reference + angsty, all in one. -
Hey, just wanted to thank you for your review of Papers and Paychecks. I heavily used your comments for improvements. Feel free to look at it again if you have time - no worries if not.
-
* Added another custom Nemesis Automaton in mission 4, because despite them being all robots so I could probably get away with them being identical, I thought a second custom boss might be nice.
* Added a "HUMAN RESOURCES: People are our greatest asset" motivational poster in mission 5, because that slogan just makes me laugh.
* Cut the number of clues down to 32, because that appears to be a hard limit on the number that will appear in the clue journal. (Who knew?)
* Marked "Final" and submitted to the Dr. Aeon Architect Challenge! Hoping for the best! -
I ended up submitting Papers and Paychecks (arc 298290), a level 33-44 rogue alignment arc. The description is:
JOB OPENING: Entry-level position available in Fortune 500 company. Seeking motivated individuals willing to think outside the box. Excellent salary, opportunities for promotion. Applicants contact Crey Industries HR. -
10/7/2010
Thursday
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a 7-player team for an Independence Port mayhem mission, clearing most of it.
Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined an 8-player Sister Psyche TF which finished in 1h 31m. Elec armor was really nice on Sister Psyche TF, due to high energy resist and END drain resist, especially against the Super Stunners. Afterwards, I solo'd 3 hero tip missions.
Friday
Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) solo'd a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission.
Spy Girl (37 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a pickup clear-all ITF of mostly lowbies. I was actually a bit embarrassed to bring a stalker (I'm not sure stalkers are all that helpful on ITF) and almost played a blaster instead, but the team leader said a stalker would be fine. I tried to make myself useful by targeting surgeons and taking them out first. This team was not especially optimal and we suffered a team wipe at the end of the first mission to the Nictus ambushes, but after that we did fine for the rest of the TF, though in the final mission we found that Romulus ran away from us a lot, I suspect because we had no tanker or brute. I tried to get our MM to use Provoke on Romulus; either he didn't do this or it wasn't enough to keep him from running. Nevertheless we won, finishing in 1h 47m; we had gone out of our way to kill just about everything. This got Spy Girl to level 39.
Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a Statesman TF. We didn't have a tanker; instead, the team leader was going to tank on a peacebringer. As a brute, I was his backup in case that didn't work out. The leader asked me to take the glowy in mission 3 because he couldn't activate it while in White Dwarf form, so I did; I'm not really used to having that, though, so I messed up when using it on mission 4. I activated the temp power, then attacked Dr. Aeon, and apparently it doesn't work if you do that; you have to hit Dr. Aeon first, then use the temp power. After the temp power recharged I hit it again and we beat Dr. Aeon.
In the final mission, the peacebringer did fine tanking the patron AVs and the flyer, but his idea to tank Lord Recluse didn't end up working out; he tried flying above Lord Recluse and taunting him with range attacks. His range attacks weren't enough to keep aggro, though, and Lord Recluse began attacking the rest of us at the towers; I ended up jumping in and taunting Lord Recluse away. With Hover, Taunt and capped energy resist and END drain resist, Lord Recluse couldn't really hurt me (as long as I stayed out of his range, anyway). Finished the STF in 1h 11m and got a Ribosome SHO.
After that, I solo'd the Hero morality mission, which changed Millie Volt's alignment to Hero.
I also joined a speed Hess TF. The team leader was actually 3-boxing to get extra merits, something I'm not really thrilled about, but she basically did the whole TF for us, between stealthing/TPing/knowing where to go next, so I can't really complain. Finished in 28m 15s.
Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a quick ITF in 22m 54s.
I made a "business suit" costume (similar to the Crey agent outfit) for Spy Girl (39 rogue MA/ninj stalker) and spent some time playtesting and tweaking my Papers and Paychecks AE story arc.
Saturday
Police Woman picked up the Smuggler day job badge (from hanging out by Rogue Isles ferries) and the Profiteer accolade, making 902 badges total.
Spent some time playing Helen Highwater (26 hero storm/psy defender on Triumph) on a team of AE enthusiasts; we played an arc called A Wake for Dead 6, which is basically a series of flashbacks establishing the background story of a ghostly hero. This had some interesting story mechanics (phrasing all the objectives and dialog like a story that the contact is telling you) but was pretty confusing at times, too. I gave it 3 stars.
Some people were complaining on LB that they can never find any defenders to play with, so they die a lot; I ended up logging on Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) and exemping to their 5 player level 39 team, and we did 4 hero tip missions. From observing this team, I actually think they needed a tanker more than they did a defender; our pistols blaster routinely would jump into mobs and use Hail of Bullets as his opening attack, so it wasn't that surprising that he died a lot. I spent my time trying to show the team how cool stormies are.
Teal Serpent (33 villain archery/traps corruptor) did a 4-player Cap SF. We had a team wipe against Attack Leader Zurabsal due to getting massive CoT aggro while fighting him, but otherwise did fine. Cleared most of the last mission, defeating Infernal and all the demons down the various tunnels to the altars, then beating Bat'Zul to finish in 41m 58s. After the SF, there was a zombie attack in Cap, and we fought them for awhile; using traps against them was fun, since they would spawn right onto them.
Later, Teal Serpent also did a 7-player Sharkhead SF. During the first mission we got split up and someone team TP'd, which left Barracuda by herself, and she died to Longbow aggro, causing us to fail the mission. The SF lets you try it again, though, and we succeeded on the second try. We had one person disconnect and another person quit along the way, but still finished in 47m 6s and Teal got to level 34.
After that, Teal Serpent also did a 1st villain respec. The team wasn't really well-equipped for stealthing/speeding missions, and so we had a team wipe while trying to do that on the first door mission against the Hero attack leaders. One player had to quit for RL and kinda bugged our SF, causing the first mission to seemingly repeat. Some team members wanted to go ahead and redo the mission, but I managed to talk them into exiting the mission and all talking to the respec contact, and one of them was able to do so, advancing us to the final mission, which got a little messy but we got it done. Finished in 22m 38s.
Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a 6 player Katie TF. We started off well, but Mary #9 decided to run away from us. We gave pursuit and killed her, but this left the team rather strung out over a long distance, and so Mary #10 spawned when we were not really organized, and wiped us out. After recovering from that, we finished the KTF in 48m 43s without any further problems.
Primadonna also did a Statesman TF, which went fine til the last mission. Our shield tanker was tanking all 4 patron AVs and I was trying to stack ID on him while still doing other buffs and attacks, and he got held by Ghost Widow even through 6 stacked IDs on him, which felt pretty unfair; the mag on that hold is ridiculous. Nevertheless we beat them, the tanker fly-taunted Lord Recluse and we killed Red/Green/Yellow towers before killing Recluse, finishing in 50m 18s. I got a Nucleolus SHO.
Sunday
Primadonna joined an 8-player Dam Heroes (Positron 2) TF on +1 difficulty. We had a team wipe against Rollister in the last mission due to aggroing multiple CoT spawns, but otherwise did fine, finishing in 1h 25m.
Arrow Girl (40 vigilante archery/nrg blaster) did a clear-most ITF on +2 difficulty. This team was quite strong and we handled the +2 difficulty with no problem at all. At one point the empath used Secondary Mutation and turned into a monkey, just in time for one of our dominators to die. This didn't seriously slow us down, I just thought it was funny. Finished in 1h 11m and got Arrow Girl to level 42.
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 24s, followed by soloing 2 villain tip missions. I originally thought I would turn Mega into a rogue, now I'm thinking she will confirm being a villain instead; mostly due to the lure of tasty villain merits. Plus, I've already moved 2 brutes from villain to hero side.
Speaking of, Fire Maiden (49 hero SS/fire brute) did a Statesman TF on which she hit level 50. Of note, mission 2 in Recluse's Victory finished weirdly; the designated person to finish the mission had already entered the building leading towards the exit, before Viridian died. As a result, he didn't get credit for the "Go Home" objective and we seemed stuck on the mission until he re-entered it and retraced his steps some, which finished the mission. We made up some time in mission 4, however, where the Real Security Chief was in the first mob we fought. Finished in 47m 41s and got an Endoplasm SHO.
Monday
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) solo'd 3 villain tip missions.
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a pickup ITF on +1 difficulty. I had drunk a couple White Russians so was pretty tipsy and warned the team I might not be playing well, but actually, I don't think I died at all, despite playing very aggressively (e.g. I attacked Romulus when it looked like no one else would). Maybe I play better while drunk. Finished in 51m 13s.
Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a 4-player flashback of the Maria Jenkins arc. We did the whole arc, beating Chimera, Nightstar, Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix and Marauder, and I got 21 reward merits for the flashback, which took 1h 11m altogether. Also got badges for the new Seers and Praetorian Clockwork. Mystery Girl is still missing 1 Praetorian AV, which I believe is Siege; he didn't appear in the new Maria arc at all. Apparently he appears in some other mission now.
Tuesday
Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did a 4-player Citadel; we had 2 padders who quit immediately after the TF started. This left us with an all-villain team of 2 MMs, 1 brute (me) and a fortunata. We had no serious issues, finishing in 1h 12m.
Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a 7-player ITF. This team just didn't work that well; the AT mix looked OK on paper, but our squishies died constantly to the Cimerorans. The 3 melee were pretty durable but we basically had no support since everyone else was dead all the time. We had 2 team wipes against the final Romulus encounter, because the debuffers kept dying. We ended up methodically clearing all the Cimeroran ambushes before attacking Romulus, and I pulled away the healy Nictus for a bit to make things easier. Finally finished this in 1h 2m.
Wednesday
Mega solo'd another 5 villain tip missions. Had some technical issues with some of them; in the Summoned Dagger of Caernoz mission, the triggered Caernoz spawn ended up spawning behind me; since I was past him, I ended up clearing the entire rest of the mission while looking for him, before finally finding him at the front door. Then on the mission where you fight dozens of Miss Thystle clones, I killed the Thystle from Earth 5, from Earth 99 and the original Miss Thystle, but none of them seemed to count for the objective. This left the mission in a broken state and I ended up auto-completing it.
Finished the night doing some IO slotting for Mega. I replaced the 2 sets of 6 Mocking Beratement in Taunt and Provoke with 2 sets of 6 Perfect Zinger; this basically trades 5% recharge for 1.25% lethal defense, 5% damage and 20% regen. I also replaced the set of 4 Eradication and 2 Scirocco's Dervish in Foot Stomp with a set of 6 Obliteration, which trades 2.25% HP, 10% regen, 3.13% energy DEF for 3% damage, 5% recharge and 1.875% lethal defense.
This gets Mega's lethal defense up to 40.52% on her own; not quite soft capped, but a little closer, and with layered resistance/regen/HPs from willpower, this feels pretty good. -
I've seen people complaining that we didn't get any of the Going Rogue toys to play with in MA. It seems a pretty reasonable addition to me, especially considering the word was that I19 was a "small" issue.
Of course, more is always better. -
I think this is a personal decision that has to be up to you, but here's my 2 inf anyway.
If you are keeping the overall story and plot substantially the same, I would just edit the arc in place. (If you were throwing away the old story and replacing it with a completely different story, that would justify unpublishing & publishing a new arc. But I don't think you're doing that.)
Personally I've done substantial rewrites to Teen Phalanx Forever!, Flower Knight Task Force, Axis and Allies and Papers and Paychecks months after their original publication, mostly to make them better as a result of player feedback. All 4 of those were at 4 stars average, 100+ ratings, when I did the major revision.
I agree that there may be some early low ratings which wouldn't be justified any longer due to edits, but I don't think that's really that big a deal. I'd rather keep the arc id number the same, so if someone ran across a mention of the story arc in some very old forum review, or some other old message, they would still be able to find the arc.
Also, right now, I have a couple story arcs with a 4 star average, 200+ ratings, while I also have one story arc with a 5 star average and 7 ratings. While having a 5 star rating is definitely nice, personally, I feel the arcs with 200+ ratings have stood the test of time better than the arc with only 7 ratings, even though the latter technically has the higher star rating. (The default sorting order is flawed, IMHO. But that's another subject.)
When casting around the MA search tool looking for an arc to play, I'm more likely to try a 4-star arc with 100+ plays, than I am a 5-star arc with less than 10 plays; the one with 100+ plays is much more likely to be a polished story, while a 5-star rating with only 5 plays might just mean some buddies helped the author out. Neither arc is likely to be in the front 10 pages of the default search, so they're equally buried ... unless someone searches for "4 star arcs" (which a few people do), in which case a 4 star arc with 100+ ratings may jump out.
Anyway, I know other authors who feel the other way, and have unpublished and republished the same arc under a different arc ID several times to start with a "clean slate". So it's really a personal decision. But I hope that input helps you some. -
Added: The Extadine Lab (#2595) H40-54
While investigating a new designer drug, you fall down a rabbit hole. Surreal. Single mission.
Source: Dev Choice Suggestion Thread -
More changes:
* Added Tommy the mail clerk as a hostage in mission 5.
* Adjusted mission briefing and added some glowies to mission 5 to foreshadow Jenny's reveal.
* Added 2 "Marketing Poster" glowies to mission 2, one for "New Crey Cola" (a shout out to the Crey Cola mission offered by Gordon Stacy) and the other for "Crey-Z Glue" (more foreshadowing).
* Added 2 "Motivational Poster" glowies to mission 2 and another 2 "Motivational Poster" glowies to mission 4 (mostly for the LOLs).
* Added a "Laser Printer" defendable object to mission 4 (not a required objective, added mostly for fun).
* Switched arc parameters from "Work in Progress" to "Looking for Feedback". -
More changes:
* Now introducing Crey-Z Glue, the miracle adhesive made from 100% post-consumer waste products! Remember, Tuesday is Crey-Z Glue Day!
* Crey-Z Glue is now the product that causes the "company restructuring" depicted in mission 5. (To address action item 3.)
* Dialog for all managers in mission 5 modified to reference Crey-Z Glue.
* Clues modified or added in missions 1, 2, 3, 4 to foreshadow Crey-Z Glue. (To address action items 5 and 13.)
If anyone is interested in playtesting, I could use player input on whether the way the Crey-Z Glue plot gets introduced and resolved makes sense or not.
Planned for near future:
* Need to give Tommy the mail clerk an appearance in missions 4 and 5.
* Need to modify mission 5's debriefing and arc souvenir to reference Crey-Z glue.
* Need to rework mission 4 to be more interesting.
- I'm thinking I may leave the office workers initially hostile, rather than initially friendly then turning hostile; it feels better for the pacing of the mission.
- Pondering adding some optional hostages for the sake of color and extra dialog though.
- I'm thinking I may rewrite Jenny so she's more aware of what's going wrong in mission 4, rather than the vague "people are so weird here!" statement she has now. -
9/30/2010
Tuesday
Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) solo'd 5 hero tip missions. I'm gradually purpling her out, with lowball bids at Wentworth's on various recipes and IOs; curiously, sometimes the purple IOs are actually cheaper than the equivalent recipes. I picked up an Apocalypse (chance for negative) IO for 280M and an Armageddon (DMG/RCHG/ACC) IO for 300M; this probably sounds like a lot, but is actually at the low end of the current price range.
Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did an ITF; we sorta cleared parts and sorta sped through parts, which was a little messy as the team wasn't really set up for speed. Nevertheless finished in 39m 50s and got 4.1M inf along the way. I hit the inf cap again when I visited the market (which means I made 500M in the last 8 days), and emailed myself another 500M inf.
Fire Maiden (49 hero SS/fire brute) joined an STF. We did fine until the last mission. Against the 4 patron AVs, we jumped in to fight them all at once, and the team leader initially called to kill Scorpion, then changed our target to Scirocco, leading to some confusion; then our stone tanker died and immediately blamed the kin for not ID'ing. Some drama ensued as the stoner and kin started yelling at each other, and the kin ended up quitting the TF mid-fight. The stone tanker died again, then also quit the TF, and all this together resulted in a team wipe.
After recovering from this, the 6 of us remaining decided to press on. As a fire brute without taunt, I didn't feel I had a realistic chance of tanking Lord Recluse, but the invuln brute was willing to tank for us. We pulled the patron AVs one by one, killing them off, beat the flyer, then attempted Lord Recluse. The inv brute tried flying and taunting Lord Recluse while we attacked the red tower; we had 2 more team wipes, then the inv brute found a sweet spot to hover at, where Lord Recluse spent most of his time climbing the terrain rather than attacking. The flyer also respawned and aggro'd onto the team during this time, but we tried to just ignore it (though a few people were killed and had to run back). This seemed to work and we beat up the red, yellow and green towers, before taking down Lord Recluse himself. Finished in 1h 20m; not a very good time, but with a short-handed team, I thought we were doing well to complete the STF at all. I got a Centriole (bleh).
Wednesday
Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an ice/cold/storm themed ITF. We had 1 ice tanker and 7 defender/controllers of various flavors of storm or cold; this left us a little light on damage, but we were soft capped on defense and had a ton of debuff. With only one meleer on the team, I felt pretty free to unleash stormy chaos on most everything we encountered, and our DPS was low enough that I could actually land my debuffs and hit things with Rain of Arrows before everything died, which was fun. Finished in 51m 17s.
After that I played Teal Serpent (32 villain archery/traps corruptor), exemping to a friend's lowbie villain team doing some level 4 missions in Mercy and some level 17 missions in Cap. I ended up SGinviting some of the lowbies so they could use the teleporters in my villain base. We did a Skyway mayhem that got Teal to 33, then an Atlas mayhem where we managed to get wiped out by Longbow ambushes, but broke out of jail and robbed the bank anyway. -
A few more changes:
* Reviewed all the mission briefings and color coded significant phrases in yellow.
Mission 3
* Added Tommy the mail clerk as an optional objective. He also drops a clue foreshadowing the possibility of plagiarizing Summerfield's research.
* Rephrased Jenny's dialog a little, to better match the story.
* Gave Dr. Summerfield some more dialog.
* Added a mission end clue, a "Letter of Complaint" from Dr. Summerfield to Human Resources about how the player basically manhandled him and stole his research, along with a response from upper management that essentially says this just shows the player is clearly management material.