PoliceWoman

A question for the original poster: I noticed you flagged one arc you tested with

Changes:

Mission 2:
* Added AV warning to briefing.
* Increased Jinkenzo's enemy group difficulty to "hard".

Mission 3:
* Replaced custom Lady Sayaki escort with a repainted Sister Solaris captive. (Lowers disk usage by 6% and eliminates the necessity to escort Sayaki back to front of mission over caltrops.)
* Mission now starts spawned with Spider Clan (formerly started empty and popped Chimera Ninja on the way out).
* Ambush formerly spawning on defeating a Gorgon now spawns on freeing Lady Sayaki.
* Added "Pearl Mantis" (renamed Silver Mantis) as a required boss.
* Added AV warning to briefing.
* Added Silent Blade as an optional boss.

Overall:
* Added "recommended for teams or strong soloers" warning to arc description.
* Changed from "Work in Progress" to "Looking for Feedback".
* Submitted to Smurphy's contest thread.

Submitted for your consideration:

A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force
Arc ID: 260284
Keywords: Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Drama
Level range: 45-54.
Description: Samurai and ninja battle for honor in a faraway realm. But someone has introduced firearms to the land, tilting the balance towards the evil Lord Kumo and the Spider Clan. Will you journey there to restore the balance?

Notes: This is an existing story arc that I reworked to try and conform to your submission requirements. It is something of a remix of the ITF, STF and feudal Japan. I hope you will find that the characters demonstrate "warrior spirit". Feedback welcome!

3/16/2010

Friday

Played Shield Maiden (33 mace/shield brute) through Save the Villain, an AE story arc where you save an NPC mastermind from his own robots. The arc had plot problems (I could never quite figure out why I was supposed to be helping this guy) and game balance problems; I ended up giving it 2 stars. After that I started a pickup team (got up to 7 players) in Nerva doing Crimson Revenant's story arc. We had a near-wipe against Longbow after a mob with a debuff anchored to it ran away, but recovered and beat up Mynx (as an AV), Back Alley Brawler (as an EB), and a Talos mayhem where we fought Aurora Borealis (as an EB). This got Shield Maiden to level 34.

Quick Katie (46 plant/kin controller) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 42m 53s. I got an Absolute Amazement (chance of tohit debuff) recipe drop; not sure what good this IO is, but it's still a purple drop. Went on to do an STF with 1 stormy, 1 cold, 1 empath, 1 rad, 1 kin, 1 blaster, 1 scrapper, 1 elec tanker. Finished in 1h 20m, got a Golgi SHO and level 48.

Finished the night playing Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) exemped down to a level 26ish Sisterhood team running missions in Talos for a bit.


Saturday

Shield Maiden (34 mace/shield brute) started a 4-player pickup team running missions in St Martial; did another Talos mayhem and got to level 35.

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) joined a clear-most all-shield ITF (6 scrappers, 2 tankers). This was a very fast moving team with meleers often leapfrogging spawns so as to not have "their" mobs KS'd by teammates. I thought the lack of debuff would hurt us against the AVs, but we beat up Romulus & friends with no problems. Finished in 39m 56s and got an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) and also a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% def) as recipe drops, which was insanely lucky.

Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) did a speed ITF in 27m 45s.

Kyrie Eleison (42 fire/regen scrapper) joined an 8-player team doing Praetorian AVs. We had two tankers, one of which switched alts to be more useful and the other of which went linkdead, and so somehow I ended up tanking Infernal on my regen scrapper. I managed to survive this through inspiration use, MoG, IH, and naked aggression. After that mission I switched to my tanker, Strong Woman (49 inv/SS tanker), and we beat up Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege, Bobcat, Neuron, Black Swan, Battle Maiden, Malaise (whose psy AOEs beat up half the team), Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, and another Infernal. This got Strong Woman up to level 50.


Sunday

The market for Thunderstrike IOs was hot after double exp weekend, but seems to be getting soft now, so I'm starting to cycle those out of my market portfolio. I still have a ton of these stockpiled in my SG base, but I figure they'll be useful someday so it's not too bad.

I played Mina von Heksung (8 pistols/dark corruptor on Triumph) on a 7-player MA story arc team, doing Headhunters - an OPA Adventure, a lengthy battle against the Skulls. I felt this arc started out strong but started to run out of steam near the end (the last two missions didn't seem quite complete). I gave it 4 stars. This got Mina to level 13.

Played Darla Doppler (41 kin/sonic defender) on a 7-player clear-most ITF. After seeing Darla in action for a bit (SBing, FSing, blasting, nuking, transferencing for more END, etc), a teammate complimented me on "a really effective build", which was nice. Finished the ITF in 50m 6s.

San Min (26 MA/will scrapper) solo'd her way through Tobias Hansen's and Lars Hansen's arcs in Striga, getting to level 28 and unlocking the Hess TF.

Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) joined an 8-player pickup team, mostly squishy with a couple of force fielders (though only one was actually casting buffs). This got Mystery Girl to level 35, the War Wall Defender badge (from a mission) and a compliment on her costume and background story.

Shield Maiden (35 mace/shield brute) did a clear-most ITF that finished in 46m 54s and got her to level 36.

The lead mod for LB posted the results from the LB channel poll. I was a bit surprised at how many people favored stronger moderation of the channel; you wouldn't guess it from some of the anti-moderation protestors you see on the forums and the LB channel itself. I've previously committed to upholding whatever the channel poll results were; I'm a believer in democracy, and it seems to me that the poll is the best gauge that we've got for what the true "will of the people" is. So it looks like I am obliged to be a little stricter on moderating the channel. It remains to be seen if I can survive the fallout from doing so; but it seems to me that the poll results are pretty clear on what people want.


Monday

Linda Lightspeed (25 rad/nrg blaster) joined a 5 player 1st hero respec. We actually had 6 players initially, but the sixth player was a fairly clueless level 1 player who we had to explain couldn't actually do the respec. I got a costume compliment from a teammate. While in the Terra Volta reactor, I managed to accidentally blow up a proximity bomb that got our empath killed (oops!); the mobs that were aggroed on her immediately came to kill me, though, so karma was satisfied. Finished in 48m 26s and got Linda to level 26.

I've been discontent with Spy Girl as a "hero"; her original background story was that she was infiltrating Arachnos, which made a ton of sense as a villain, but didn't work at all for a hero, and I hadn't been able to come up with a blue-side background story. I still like traps/pistols, though, so I didn't want to delete her. I ended up buying a rename token, changing my traps/pistols Spy Girl into "Adventuress", a vaguely Lara Croft-like pistol-packing heroine, while remaking Spy Girl as a lowbie MA/ninj stalker. The new Adventuress (29 traps/pistols defender) solo'd the cape mission to get to level 30.

I had a tantrum in the Robo's Lounge channel over people continually dissing the pro-moderation LBers. I ended up saying something like "calling people names because they don't agree with you is really narrow minded". So far nothing really bad has happened to me over that, but I am guessing this will end up becoming a source of friction. Ironically, I had made a joke there last week that "If there's anything I can't stand, it's intolerant people!" which...appears to be true.

Played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through The Galactic Protectorate - 06, part 6 of a lengthy saga about helping an alternate universe version of the Freedom Phalanx battle aliens who have occupied the earth. The enemies all had dark powers leading to massive ACC debuffs, and the story kinda scripts the player into failing, which I found to be something of a downer; I ended up giving it 3 stars.

Shield Maiden (36 mace/shield brute) joined a Master of ITF attempt, though our team was very support-light and I think the leader only set the "Master of" conditions in case we got lucky. We had a kin controller die in the very first mission, which quickly ended that illusion. Ended up continuing and clearing most of the ITF, finishing in 50m 51s and getting Shield Maiden to level 37.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) did a 7-player speed ITF that finished in 25m 38s.

Spy Girl (new MA/ninj stalker) solo'd Kalinda's arc, Tangled Weave (an AE story about lowbie VEATs), Two Tickets to Westerly (my lowbie arc that recently got dev choice'd) and an Atlas mayhem, which got her to level 6.

My feedback log since Wednesday:

The Galactic Protectorate - 06
Arc ID: 355068
Keywords: Challenging, Custom Characters, Save the World
Morality: Neutral
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, custom power selections.

The premise is to help an alternate dimension version of the Freedom Phalanx battle aliens who have occupied the earth (part 6). I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense. The contact is Mynx.

Warning to readers: this review has some pretty big spoilers for the story of this arc.

[5.0] points to start with.

Mission 1
Briefing: Mynx thanks me for saving her in the last installment, then goes into the current crisis. The human resistance is under attack and she wants me to go save one of their outposts.

[-0.01] Typo: "wating" -> "waiting" (in Mission Accept message).

[-0.1] Inconsistent: send off message says "We've set up some traps for these guys, so when they try and hit one of the outposts" but this seems inconsistent with the idea that the aliens launched a surprise attack that is already in progress. This makes it sound like the human resistance is still fortifying in preparation for the attack; I would find it more believable if you were sent to extract the spy from a pitched battle already in progress.

Inside the mission the map is full of GP - Division 7. With their dark powers, masks and obsession with bone-related names, I can't help but think of them as Skulls IN SPAAAAACE! A lot of dialog scrolls up as I enter the mission, triggered battles and such. A few lines in particular seem a little off-base:

[NPC] Horizon Humerus: Let's see how your abilities fare against ours, Olivia Q!
[NPC] Resistance Brawler: Olivia Q, is that really you?
[NPC] Fargate Femur: Oh, so this is the infamous Olivia Q? Let's see how good you really are!

[-0.01] Doesn't make sense: all 3 of the lines above get said even before any of the mobs actually see me (they appeared while I was still at the door). Probably enemy and friendly NPCs crossed paths and uttered their attack dialogs. (I only marked off -0.01 because this is partially a problem with how battles and such are handled by the game, but you may want to rephrase this dialog some to compensate.)

[-0.01] Typo: "Vortex Vertabrae" should be "Vortex Vertebrae" (or maybe Vertebrate? No, probably you mean Vertebrae)

[-0.01] Formatting: Horizon Humerus's description needs a paragraph break or two (12 lines of solid text on my screen). Likewise for Vortex Vertabrae (14 lines of text) and Starlight Sternum (13 lines of text) and the Raid Leader itself (14 lines of text). This wall-of-text effect tends to make my eyes glaze and discourages me from reading the description; formatting it a little would help a lot.


Could use some paragraph breaks.

[-0.01] Raid Leader's name seems awfully generic compared to the named officers in the rest of the arc and even the generic foot soldiers.

Found and rescued Agent Crimson, who is apparently the "Resistance's Best Spy".

[-0.01] Costuming: Agent Crimson should really be dressed in red. (This is really a signature thing for him.)

[-0.5] Game balance: every single thing I fight seems to throw dark blast or dark melee. With my capped defenses, I dodge most of this, but for many players this will mean their accuracy is debuffed to nothing and they won't be able to hit anything, which will be a frustrating experience for them. (For example, you may have noticed how much players hate CoT ghosts.) I realize dark powers are the "theme" of this group, but I'd recommend mixing the powersets up a bit to avoid stacking too many dark debuffs on players. (For example, the standard Skulls and CoT are dark-themed but are more varied than just dark on everything.)

Agent Crimson gives me "Agent Crimson's Final Words" as a clue, then asks me to get some info from a computer. Crimson was in the deepest room, and I had to backtrack a little over halfway across a fairly large map before I found the computer.

[-0.1] Excessive backtracking to find triggered objective. Would be nicer if either the computer could spawn nearer to Crimson, or if you found Crimson earlier in the mission, then had to go deeper into the mission to get the computer.

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: Crimson says he will "buy time" for me, and goes to a scripted death, but this seems unnecessary? Logically, the two of us together would have a better chance of recovering Crimson's files and getting them to the resistance. If the plot really requires Crimson to die here, consider having him die of wounds suffered under torture or something, instead. If he's healthy enough to fight bad guys, it doesn't make sense for him to go get himself killed rather than help me.

The computer gave me "Crimson's Files" as a clue and completed the mission.

[4.14] after mission 1.

Mission 2
Briefing: Crimson's Files combined with some interrogation of low level soldiers leads us to the next GP base, basically.

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: why doesn't Mynx just tell me who my backup is, instead of referring to her as "the officer Manticore's sending" repeatedly?

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: why are my orders to "take out the highest-ranked officer in that base" and not "take out General Lucius"? Supposedly our intel says that it's his base, after all. (Of course, based on the plot structure Lucius won't be there, but the story so far should make the characters think that he is.)

Found and rescued Agent Indigo. She gives me "Agent Indigo's Wrath" as a clue.

[+0.1] I like the pact that Indigo made with Crimson, described in her clue. Neat character moment.

[-0.01] Costuming: Agent Indigo should really be dressed in purple. (This is really a signature thing for her.)

This mission being a large outdoor map, I end up ditching Agent Indigo (who would just fight everything) in order to search for the objectives.

Found Hidden Terminal 8, which gave me "The Dark Heart (8/8)" as a clue.

[-0.1] Hidden Terminals are inexplicably coffins. Despite Division 7's death obsession, I don't really buy having coffins as computer terminals.

Found Hidden Terminal 6, which gave me "The Dark Heart (6/8)" as a clue.

[+0.1] The story of the Dark Heart and the fall of Arachnos is interesting.

...but....

[-0.1] Don't understand: why would Galactic Protectorate computers have all this info about Arachnos, an organization that the story has established was destroyed before the arrival of the Galactic Protectorate?

Found Col. Tamora (spawned as a boss for me) and beat her up, completing the mission.

[-0.01] Formatting: Col. Tamora's info needs some paragraph breaks (14 lines of text).

Debriefing: kind of a non-debriefing as it basically just depicts that Mynx's base is under attack, but it fits with the story of the GP working to take down the human resistance.

[3.92] at end of mission 2.

Mission 3
Briefing: through the static Mynx asks me to come save them. The briefing is a little hard to read with all the "*static*" markers but it makes sense why those are there, and adds some atmosphere. The briefing warns I will only have 15 minutes to save them.

I quickly locate Gen. Lucius (spawned as a dark armor EB) and have a dramatic battle on the catwalks of the factory map.


Battle against Lucius on the catwalks

[-0.01] Formatting: Gen. Lucius's bio needs some paragraph breaks (14 lines of text).

I manage to defeat him, but then he rezzes and stuns me (presumably the dark armor tier 9 rez)! Argh. I manage to survive this and beat him up again, only now I have an objective of "50 Bombs to Disarm"! Ack!! With 6 minutes left!!

Saw some resistance soldiers roaming around that looked decent, and some heroes held hostage, but I had no time to do anything but click bombs. They kinda looked cool but there just wasn't enough time to investigate them.


Time is running out!

I found most of the bombs on the lower level of the map, but time ran out with 10 bombs left. I feel like my character is very strong for the task presented (defeating an AV/EB twice, then running around clicking glowies while dodging attacks) but it just did not seem to be possible in the time permitted.

[+0.1] Dramatic final mission. I thought the race against the clock was pretty cool.

[-0.5] Mission seems nearly impossible. Defeat an AV, then he rezzes and you have to defeat him again, THEN click 50 bombs that probably have mobs still guarding them, all in a 15 minute time limit? Have you actually been able to do this in your testing? It IS a cool ending but I think you may want to make the time limit longer and/or the number of bombs to click shorter.

Debriefing: the contact is gone, presumably killed as a result of the mission failing.

Looking at the "Fade to Black" mission title, and the writing in the souvenir, it seems the mission was deliberately set up to ensure failure, and consequently the destruction of the human resistance. This seems to end the arc (and the series) on a pretty big downer.

[-0.1] Ending is unsatisfying - player is scripted to fail.

[3.41] at end of mission 3.

Overall
I liked how this installment deviated from the standard formula for GP arcs. The final mission was particularly dramatic, but I found it disappointing that there was no way to succeed (in fact, the story seems to force you to fail). Consequently the player ends up failing the human resistance and getting them all killed, which is a huge downer of an ending. Admittedly I'm a fan of happier endings, but IMHO this would be a rather poor reward for any loyal GP fans out there who might've followed this epic through all 6 story arcs.

I liked the character moments between Crimson and Indigo. I felt the Division 7 custom enemy group stacked too much accuracy debuff.

Rounding 3.41 off, I gave this arc 3 stars. I hope you think that's fair!

----

My queue is now:

@Delightful Dolly - Sisterhood #123426 (H40-54)
@Peregrine Falcon - The Hidden Hand #374410 (H30-54)
@GlaziusF - Malta Impossible #378274 (H46-50)
@MrCaptainMan - Storming Citadel #379488 (H5-10)
@Beyond Reach - Look Closer #382760 (H5-30)
@WillT - War Against the Undying One, Part 1/3: Challenge of the Dwarves #91044 (H27-50)
@Dalghryn - Casualties of War #241496 (H40-54)
@LaserJesus - Made To Wave the Flag #384776 (H45-54)
@Aracade - 30 Minute Hero #386310 (H10-20)

Suppression review
Arc ID: 374481
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Save the World, Magic
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 5-10
Warnings: none

The premise is to investigate why heroes all over Paragon City are losing their powers. I played a 4 MA/willpower scrapper on default difficulty; I figure level 4 is close enough to level 5 (two slots of TOs won't make much difference). The contact is a custom model, a young girl in a blue dress.

(I actually played this way back on 2/23 and PM'd my notes to the author to try to get feedback in before the Aeon Challenge deadline. Just getting around to posting it now.)

[5.0] points to start with.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact asks me to rescue a superintelligent heroine named Cerebella, who apparently lost her superintelligent powers and then vanished. Briefing seems nicely formatted.

The map is full of Tuatha, who seem pretty scary for a level 5. There's also a bunch of "Minikins" who seem to be friendly but short statured refugees from the land of Oz.

[-0.01] Typo: "Minigirl Drlling" should be maybe "Minigirl Darling"?

[-0.01] Typo: "Miniman Vender" should be "Miniman Vendor"

I find Cerebella being guarded by "The Brood", a custom group containing a mix of miscellaneous monsters.

Cerebella, of course, says "if I only had a brain"...

[+0.1] Cute Oz references.

I find a Minigirl being held captive by more Brood; freeing her completes the mission. One of her guards says:

[NPC] Prototype Oscillator: She is ours. Find your own tastee treat.

[-0.01] Typo: "tastee" -> "tasty" (in dialog of Minigirl's guard)

I notice I have "Cerebella's note" as a clue; not sure if I got it from Cerebella herself or the mission completing. Seems to be a quote from the Scarecrow's song in Wizard of Oz.

[-0.01] Punctuation: need a period after "hatchin'" in Cerebella's note.

Ran into a few other interesting scenes with Minikins and monsters that made the map seem like it had more than just the objectives. What they were doing exactly was a little puzzling, but it was still kind of interesting.

[-0.1] Confusing: Some of the Minikins seemed to be flagged as enemies, but couldn't be attacked (due to being guarded by friendlies, I think).

[4.97] at end of mission 1.

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact asks me to go rescue Valentina, who apparently had the power of Heart, then lost it. (I think I see where this story is going. )

Inside the mission there are more Brood with more dialog hinting at a Wicked One and how cold it is. Then I found some Winter Horde which matched the "cold" dialog.

After freeing Valentina she gives me "Valentina's note" as a clue, repeating the Tin Man's song from Wizard of Oz.

[-0.01] Punctuation: need a period after "sparrows" in Valentina's note.

Searching around some more, I found "A desk" glowy, which gave me "Note from the desk" clue, and completed the mission.

[-0.01] Typo: "supressing" -> "suppressing", also "supressor" -> "suppressor" (in "Note from the desk")

Still don't really understand what is going on, but at least the "Note" represents some progress towards finding out.

[4.95] at end of mission 2.

Mission 3
Briefing: So now we need to rescue Captain Courageous, a hero who appears to be the cowardly lion analogue.

Inside the mission, the ship is full of Spectral Pirates.

Found a few glowy Chests with Treasure that didn't seem to do anything, but a bit later I found a Treasure Chest which did give me a "Pamphlet" clue and satisfied an objective.

[-0.1] Don't understand: The pamphlet mentions a "Master Marvel" magician, but why are we supposed to think this is significant? (The contact talks about it more in the debriefing and thinks it may be important, but it still seems a bit of a stretch to me.)

In the very back of the map I find Captain Courageous being held captive by some Brood. Freeing him gives me the "Captain's Note" clue and completes the mission.

I think "mowess" is supposed to be "mouse" in "Captain's Note", but this looks possibly intentional, so I didn't mark any points off.

[-0.1] Don't understand: how are the Spectral Pirates connected to the story? It seems like the Brood are the actual agents of the Wicked One, so the Spectral Pirates are just sort of random. Why are they here and why do they cooperate with the Brood?

[4.75] at end of mission 3.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact sends me off to see the wizard. I'm still quite confused as to what is going on in the story (aside from re-enacting the Wizard of Oz) but perhaps he will explain some things.

Found a Desk glowy, but clicking it didn't really do anything except generate a short message in my global chat box.

Got defeated a couple times by CoT, mostly because I was being too aggressive, but also leveled to 5 while fighting them.

Found an Ancient Pitcher glowy that didn't do anything (except it did dump a silly joke in the global message box).

In the back of the mission I found Master Marvel, a custom hostage in "The Wizards" enemy group.

Considering the source material, I was thinking it might be funny if Master Marvel started out as a gigantic Banished Pantheon totem, but once you defeat the Totem he should say "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" and spawn an ordinary looking human hostage who is the real Master Marvel. (Just a random idea, you don't have to do that if it doesn't work for your story.)

Freeing Master Marvel completed the mission. I'm a bit surprised it didn't give me a clue to free him.

[-0.01] Involvement: would be nicer if Master Marvel gave you a clue on defeating him that explains the story, rather than having him "talk to Dorothy" who then tells you the story.

[-0.1] Debriefing needs more writing: the debriefing seems too short (a line and a half). Also, the contact says Master Marvel has "provided all the answers", but doesn't actually say what any of them are.

[4.64] at end of mission 4.

Mission 5
Briefing: apparently the "Wicked One" has been poisoning our heroes and causing them to doubt their abilities. So the contact wants me to defeat the Wicked One; supposedly this will restore our heroes' powers somehow.

[-0.01] Typo: "supressed" -> "suppressed" (in briefing)

Initially I didn't understand how defeating the Wicked One restores powers, but the send-off message goes into more detail on this, which helps.

[-0.1] Need description: "The Brood" mobs could use custom descriptions reflecting their status as minions of the Wicked One. The default description may work for some, but not others; for example, Wolf Spider and Spiderling have descriptions specifically referring to Lord Recluse and Arachnos, Viper Fang's description talks about the Rogue Isles and Children of Enos, etc.

Found the Wicked One and fought her. She spawned as a lieutenant for me.


Your kung fu is no good, WITCH!"

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: why would a wicked witch be a martial artist?

Found "Captain Courageous' Courage" as a glowy which gave the "Captain Courageous' Courage" clue. Then found "Cerebella's Brain" as a glowy which gave the "Cerabella's Brain" clue.

[-0.01] Typo: "Cerabella" -> "Cerebella" (in clue title, and also in the clue text)

Found "Valentina's Heart" as a glowy that gave the "Valentina's Heart" clue. Then I found a cauldron labeled "The Wicked One's Brew"; destroying it completed the mission.



Decent souvenir. I was asked specifically "whether or not you think I should make the souvenir seem more like it was most likely as dream".... I'd be inclined to suggest making it a little ambiguous whether it was a dream or whether it was real, so that maybe the player could think either one.

[4.42] at end of mission 5.

Overall
I liked the Wizard of Oz theme of the arc, and the various analogs of the Oz characters. I liked recovering the various heroes' talismans and returning them to the heroes to re-power them. I liked that they never actually lost their powers, and that it was more about doubt/believing in themselves.

I thought the plot structure was a little weak early on; although the first three missions were kind of neat in depicting the various depowered heroes and some background scenery, it didn't seem like those missions actually advanced the plot very much. We don't really learn what is going on until we talk with the wizard at the end of mission 4, and the clue that leads us to the wizard seems like we almost found it by accident.

[-0.1] Plot: earlier missions don't seem like they advance the plot of the story.

I think I'd like to see the earlier missions contribute more directly to solving the mystery, with more clues found by the player earlier on as to what's going on and what can be done.

Total 4.32; I rated it 4 stars. Hope you think that's fair.

----

My queue is now:

Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 06 #304290 (N40-54)
@Delightful Dolly - Sisterhood #123426 (H40-54)
@Peregrine Falcon - The Hidden Hand #374410 (H30-54)
@GlaziusF - Malta Impossible #378274 (H46-50)
@MrCaptainMan - Storming Citadel #379488 (H5-10)
@Beyond Reach - Three #382760 (H5-30)
@WillT - War Against the Undying One, Part 1/3: Challenge of the Dwarves #91044 (H27-50)
@Dalghryn - Casualties of War #241496 (H40-54)
@LaserJesus - Made To Wave the Flag #384776 (H45-54)

I'm making a few changes to see if I can get A Warrior's Journey to meet the requirements of Smurphy's AE challenge, as this arc is the closest of mine to the ideal of an "ITF-like" story arc.

I'm admittedly doing this with some trepidation as it requires me to amp up the difficulty of an arc I've already labeled "Challenging". We'll see how it works out, I guess.


Change log:
* Changed from "Final" to "Work in Progress".
* Changed from "Challenging, Magic, Drama" to "Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Drama".
* Fujineko changed from Escort to Ally in mission 1 (eliminating the requirement to lead her out).
* Lord Aion changed from custom EB to custom AV in mission 2 (increasing difficulty).
* General Mako changed from custom Kensai AV to the actual Captain Mako AV in mission 5 (making him distinct from Black Scorpion and also making him more difficult to kill, due to his Elude).

[Team] Katatonia: another defeat all? wow
[Team] Bootstrap: grr.
[Team] Mina von Heksung: It's KIL SKULS, the musical
[Team] November Man: lol
[Team] November Man: someone should really make that arc.
[Team] Mina von Heksung: Okay, I'll post it to Cheshire Cat's public domain ideas thread

The author asked me to review any of his arcs, so I chose his least played one, which was:

Save the Villain
Arc ID: 364597
Morality: Neutral
Level range: 1-54
Warnings: EBs

The premise is to help some sort of evil mastermind against his robotic minions, that have turned against him. I'm rather skeptical of a 1-54 level range, it seems very hard to balance an arc so that it works both at level 1 and level 50. I played a 33 mace/shield brute, slotted with SOs, on +1 x1 difficulty (no AVs). The contact is a custom character in a red suit.

[5.0] points to start.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact is the henchman for a Lord Kill Them All who has built a robot army for nefarious reasons, but the robots are apparently rebelling against him. The contact wants me to save his boss.

[-0.01] Formatting: caption for the briefing should be in larger font or bold for emphasis.

Send off message: the contact seems surprised that I agree (but the story basically requires me to).

[-0.01] Formatting: there's an extraneous space between "First" and the comma after it (in send-off message).

[-0.1] Weak motivation: why should the player help with this? Lord K is apparently bent on invading Paragon City with robots, so why would a hero help? (There is some explanation that Lord K isn't all that bad so doesn't deserve to be killed by his own robots, but truthfully many heroes might think that was karmic justice.) I'm playing a brute, and there seems even less motivation for a villain to want to help.

Entering the mission, the mission is full of custom robots in a group called Robot Rebellion.

[-0.1] Duplicating an existing group: why not use Rogue Robots for the robot rebellion? Rogue Robots have exactly the same premise, i.e., robots who have turned against their masters.

[-0.5] Game balance: there is no way a level 1 player would be able to handle these custom mobs, but the arc is labeled level 1-54.

[-0.01] Typo: "occassionally obediant" -> "occasionally obedient" (Kill-Bot description)

[-0.01] Inconsistent punctuation: "Kill Bots" in Kill-Blasters' description, but the other mob is called "Kill-Bot" (note hyphen)

[-0.01] Wording: should "Kill-Blasters" actually be "Kill-Blaster"? Since it's a singular robot.

[-0.01] Typo: "desgin" -> "design" (Kill-Batant description)

[-0.01] Objectives: "Rescue Consume the Living!" should omit the trailing exclamation point, it looks wrong with a comma right after it.

I found and rescued Consume the Living and he started following me as a Boss ally. He has some lines like:

[NPC] Consume the Living: Owieee
[NPC] Consume the Living: Consume?
[NPC] Consume the Living: Uff

[-0.01] Punctuation: Owieeee, Uff should have a period at the end (or other punctuation).

Fighting some of the robots, the Kill-Batants seem quite nasty with their end drain, build up and melee attacks. Something was buffing sonic shields onto them also, maybe the Kill-Blasters. Not sure this is too tough, but something to keep an eye on.

Found and rescued Murderous Rage. Both Consume and Murderous seem pretty inarticulate, only able to say their own names and occasional grunting noises. Perhaps this is typical for evil mastermind pets though.

I found and rescued Lord Kill Them All. He continued the theme of NPCs that are only able to say their own name, although he did vary the emphasis of different words in his name....not sure what that signifies, but I noticed it.

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: I'll buy that the henchmen are not very smart, but Lord Kill Them All is supposed to be an evil mastermind, shouldn't he be smart enough to say things other than his own name?

[-0.1] Missing text: Lord Kill Them All needs a better description. Currently it's just a sentence fragment saying "The main man himself, Lord Kill Them All", which I already knew just by looking at his name, so is not very descriptive.

I think it's a little peculiar that Lord K is a boss and his henchmen, Murderous and Consume are both bosses too. Maybe the lackeys should be lower rank than Lord K? Lieutenants maybe?



Found and defeated the Kill-Boss, which completed the mission.

Debriefing: the contact seems grateful for my saving his boss and consequently his job.

[4.02] at end of mission 1.

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact suddenly says that the robots didn't malfunction, they were sabotaged! And someone named the Dynast is behind it. And only the Longbow know where she is.

[-0.5] Plot: all this new stuff seems to come from nowhere, which weakens the plot. This would make more sense if we found some clues during mission 1 that made us think the robots were sabotaged. And what makes us think Dynast is behind this? Or that Longbow knows where she is? There needs to be a reason why we think this. The briefing seems pretty short, perhaps some more text could be added that helps explain what is going on.

[-0.01] Mission accept message is just the default "Accept"; should change this to something relating to this particular mission, perhaps something the player would say.

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: the contact tries to explain that if the player is a hero, beating up the Longbow to find Dynast's location is for the greater good. But if the player is a hero, why wouldn't she be able to just ask Longbow for Dynast's location instead of beating them up? I think there needs to be more motivation for the player to do this, as it would normally be very weird for a hero to fight Longbow.

[-0.01] Typo: "Distrupt" -> "Disrupt" (in mission title)

Inside the mission, some of the Longbow have dialog along the lines of:

[NPC] Longbow Flamethrower: C'mon, ask me... animal, vegetable, or mineral?
[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: I don't play with you, you cheat. 'Minions of Igneous' do NOT count as 'mineral'.

[-0.1] Confusing: I don't get what this dialog has to do with the mission? Perhaps it's meant purely as a joke; if so, I'm afraid I didn't think it was funny enough. Would be better if they had dialog pertaining to the mission.

Clicking a glowy labeled Mainframe C triggers an ambush, as does clicking a glowy labeled Mainframe A. I found Mainframe B, which was a destroyable object.

[-0.01] The fact that Mainframe B is destroyable and Mainframes A and C are clickable glowies kind of gives away which one is the "real" one. Maybe they should all be the same.

[-0.1] Don't understand: how is destroying the computer supposed to find Dynast's location? Hacking it would make more sense.

Destroying the computer, I get "The System is Down!" as a clue, which says that I've crashed the Longbow system and need to get back to the teleporter.

Backtracking a bit, I find the teleporter and click it, which completes the mission.

[-0.1] Don't understand: why couldn't I just exit out the front door (which is just past the teleporter) instead of getting teleported out?

Debriefing: the contact explains that my destroying the computer allowed us (the contact?) to find Dynast's location. So I guess the contact hacked into the computer after I destroyed it. I still think it would make more sense for the player to hack into the computer directly, and it would be better for player involvement.

[-0.1] The debriefing seems rather short and is rather dismissive of the player ("treat yourself to a cookie"?). Would be better if it were a bit longer; perhaps it should also explain the info that was found (i.e., Dynast's location).

[2.99] at end of mission 2.

Mission 3
Briefing: So the Dynast is holed up in an Arachnos lab and I'm supposed to go get her. Supposedly reinforcements will be available for me if needed.

Inside the mission: I ran into "Mr. Mephistopheles", a named custom lieutenant. I beat him up and he had some dandy-ish lines. He was okay, but encountering him seemed a little random.



[-0.1] Needs foreshadowing: Mr. Mephistopheles was important to give a name, but seems a little random; he was never mentioned or implied to even be here before I ran into him. He could stand to be mentioned earlier, or to be more closely tied to the story.

Inside the map, there are custom characters with a few standard models that are in "The Dynasty" enemy group.

[-0.1] Missing description: Dynast Gunner, Dynasty Grunt.

[-0.01] Typo: emply -> employ (in Dynast Phalanx's description; this description also seemed a little short to me, could use more material)

[-0.1] Don't understand: Crab Spider Slicer and Crab Spider Longfang were in "the Dynasty" but were obviously Arachnos models with the normal Arachnos names and description. Are they meant to be recruits from Arachnos? Or they just coincidentally look like Crab spiders that belong to the Dynasty? You may want to adjust their names and descriptions to explain this better.

Found Hacked Computer B and Hacked Computer A which spawned Murderous Rage, Consume the Living and some Kill-Bots as friendlies. Consume spawned nearby (reading a newspaper...weird emote choice for invading an enemy base) and I picked him up as an ally.

Found Razorback, a named custom lieutenant. As a named custom enemy, I think he also needs some foreshadowing. (Already marked some points off for Mr. Mephistopheles needing this, so will lump this in with that.)

[-0.01] Punctuation: "in his masters name" -> "in his master's name" (in Razorback's description)

Found Murderous Rage and he joined me as an ally.

Ran into The Dynast and was typing some notes and my two boss allies stomped the Dynast flat before I could attack. The Dynast only spawned as a lieutenant for me, while Murderous and Consume were both bosses, so this seemed very lopsided. However, they are allies that only spawn if you request them (by clicking the computers), so I didn't mark off any points for this.

Dynast did have a little dialog saying:

[NPC] The Dynast: Let me guess, my little brother sent you? I'm surprised you mae it this far.

[-0.01] Typo: "mae" -> "made" (Dynast's dialog)

Defeating the Dynast ended the mission and the story arc. I confess this seemed a little anticlimactic.

[-0.1] End of story seemed anticlimactic.

[-0.01] Typo: meglomaniac -> megalomaniac (in mission exit popup)

Debriefing: also seems very short, it should really give more detail that helps provide a logical end to the story.

[-0.1] Debriefing needs more writing.

[-0.01] Phrasing: "You've done, taking care of Kill Them All's sister" doesn't quite make sense ... maybe you mean "You did it! Taking care of..." or "You've done it! Taking care of..."

[-0.1] The "Minion in Training" souvenir would probably work fine for a lowbie villain, but since the arc is labeled 1-54 and can be played by both heroes and villains, it has some problems (e.g. a level 50 hero would never be a "Minion in Training")

[2.34] at end of mission 3.

Overall
The game mechanics of the arc seemed basically okay, though the level range is much too broad, IMHO. For game balance reasons, I think you should narrow down the level range and more definitely decide whether this arc should be Heroic or Villainous. I'd suggest something like 25-54 villainous; I think you want to rule out lowbies since custom mobs are too hard for them, and fighting Longbow and rescuing an evil mastermind seem more villainous than heroic to me. As it is there are serious game balance problems if a level 1 plays the arc, and I think it's too much of a stretch for a hero to do some of the things presented here.

Plot-wise, I think the story needs more motivation for why Dynast is sabotaging Kill Them All's stuff. It's never really explained why we think she's the culprit (in mission 2) or why she did it (in mission 3) and I think having a reason for why this all happens would make the story a lot stronger. I think the end of the story could also benefit from some additional writing to make it more of a dramatic finish.

Anyway, rounding 2.34 off, I could only give this arc 2 stars in its present form. Sorry about that!

----

My queue is now:

@Gypsy Rose - Suppression #374481 (H5-10) (played, need to write up notes)
Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 06 #304290 (N40-54)
@Delightful Dolly - Sisterhood #123426 (H40-54)
@Peregrine Falcon - The Hidden Hand #374410 (H30-54)
@GlaziusF - Malta Impossible #378274 (H46-50)
@MrCaptainMan - Storming Citadel #379488 (H5-10)
@Beyond Reach - Three #382760 (H5-30)
@WillT - War Against the Undying One, Part 1/3: Challenge of the Dwarves #91044 (H27-50)
@Dalghryn - Casualties of War #241496 (H40-54)
@LaserJesus - Made To Wave the Flag #384776 (H45-54)

3/12/2010

Played Darla Doppler (39 kin/sonic defender) on a clear-most ITF. We had two kins and I found I was keeping SB on everyone and the other kin really wasn't buffing much, which is a pet peeve of mine, so I admittedly hassled her for SB more than I normally would (I feel a lot more justified in asking for SB when I'm SBing them). Nevertheless finished in 49m 30s with no serious problems; this got Darla to level 41 and I started on the Force mastery pool, taking Power Build Up. Power Build Up is a power I've never quite understood how to use well (I end up basically using it as another build up) but everyone seems to say it's really good.

Played Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF, finishing in 34m 50s.

I had to do more channel moderation on LB and ended up silencing a couple people who were behaving badly. This resulted in my first serious blowback from being a moderator as someone I silenced retaliated by kicking me from a chat channel that he is a moderator on. While intellectually I know this was a pretty childish action that I ought to let slide, it really bothered me and left me rather grumpy and anti-social for the rest of the night. I ended up turning down several team invites, instead trying to use Mids to make a respec build for Blond Justice that works in an AoE like Fireball or Exploding Shuriken into her build; but her build is so tight that I'd have to ditch both Super Jump and One With The Shield in order to fit that in, so I'm not sure I'll go for it. Mids did seem to have some weird problem on start up and I couldn't get the automatic updater to work; after two tries I ended up just declining to update since I didn't really need the latest version for a broadsword/shield scrapper.

Switching to red side, I played Shield Maiden (33 mace/shield brute) for a bit. I had 40 reward merits saved up and bought 2 random recipe rolls and got my luckiest draw ever:

1 Miracle (+recovery) BlackMkt=100M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+recovery/+regen) BlackMkt=150M

On 40 merits, that's a ludicrous 6.25M infamy per merit (average is about 250K per merit). Felt like I might be on a lucky streak so I spent 7400 AE tickets on Gold recipe rolls, getting

1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run)
1 Expedient Reinforcement (+pet resists)

I forgot to check how much they were worth, but they seemed not too bad. I started Save the Villain, an AE arc where you're rescuing some villain mastermind from his own robots. So far it looks like something of a novice effort; the gameplay is OK but the plot doesn't quiet work. I've been taking notes to try and suggest improvements.

My story arc Two Tickets to Westerly, newly tagged as Dev Choice and catapulted onto the front page of the AE interface, has been getting a lot of attention and people playing it and leaving favorable comments. I think it shot up from 36 plays (before being Dev Choice'd) to around 80 the last time I checked. This has been really nice.

3/11/2010

Tuesday

I continued struggling with making my AE mission Attack of the 50 Foot Villain spawn mobs correctly; I'm convinced it's a Mission Architect bug that is preventing objectives from spawning sometimes. I changed the map around a couple more times to try and work around this, but without much luck. Despite its bugginess, I like the Nerva fountain island map the best. This is because climbing up out of the water and stomping around a tiny little island really gives the "You are Godzilla!" feeling that I'm going for.

Millie Volt (46 elec/elec brute) joined a clear all ITF, finished in 48m 47s and got Millie to level 47.

Shield Maiden (32 mace/shield brute) joined a 6 player pickup team doing the Mako patron arc. We beat up Calystix as an AV after a hard fight where the team nearly wiped, but we awakened mid-fight and jumped back in. Also defeated Captain Mako as an AV and got Shield Maiden to level 33.

Quick Katie (45 plant/kin controller) joined an 8-player Whirligig team doing Praetorian AVs. We beat Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix, Marauder, Tyrant and Antimatter (though Antimatter was as a grey mob on an old mission one player had been saving just for this purpose). We then farmed Fake Nemesis in PI long enough to get everyone the Unveiler badge. A teammate gave me a complement on Katie's costume, and this all got Quick Katie to level 46.

Spent some time late at night tinkering with my Two Tickets to Westerly story arc. I had originally submitted this for Dr Aeon's Second Architect Challenge, which required the level range be 5-10, but I've gotten multiple players who complained that this level range was too low. So with the contest being over, I tried increasing the level range. Started out making it 5-14, but I found that at level 14, the Circle of Thorns mission started spawning those horrible ACC debuffing ghosts. So I lowered the level range back down to 5-12, which seemed low enough that the ghosts would no longer spawn. A level cap of 12 didn't really seem a lot higher than the level cap of 10, but once I had done it, I figured I may as well leave it that way. I also changed the enemy group in the second mission from standard CoT to a custom "Corrupted LARPer" group that had mostly lowbie CoT but a few lowbie Warrior swordsmen in it.


Wednesday

At work, I was thinking to myself, Corrupted LARPers are too silly, I should change them back to being normal CoT as soon as I get home. But during the day, Two Tickets to Westerly was made a Developer Choice arc. I was totally surprised! It was a good surprise, though!

When I got online that evening, I had a ton of players congratulate me, and tickets were falling on me like rain all throughout the night as people tried out my arc. Being made a Dev Choice arc pushed Two Tickets to Westerly to the front page of the MA interface (at least for now) and gave it huge publicity. I think over 20 people played and rated my arc while I was on, most giving it 4 or 5 stars, which was really nice. There were a few people who gave it a low rating with no comment; either they hated it or they were "ratings griefers" (which MA authors tend to grumble about and I used to think were mythical, but maybe they exist), but I didn't let this bother me too much, as most people left pretty positive feedback.

The Dev Choice award also gives me space for another story arc, which is really nice (I've been having to unpublish old arcs when I want to make new ones). Curiously, my AE interface now says I have "(7/8)" arc slots filled, where yesterday it said "(8/8)"; the Dev Choice arc is in another category now called "honored arcs". So technically it doesn't increase the number of arcs I can have by one, it simply doesn't count the Dev Choice arc towards my total. That may work out to be exactly the same thing, but I thought that was noteworthy.

Anyway, I played Linda Lightspeed (24 rad/nrg blaster) on a Whirligig team that did Moonfire TF in 53m 19s, getting Linda the Vampire and Werewolf badges and level 25. Then played Spy Girl (29 traps/pistols defender) on a Whirligig team doing Citadel TF in 1hr 9m. I'm liking traps/pistols, but kinda miss the martial arts version of Spy Girl; she had a better background story and I just plain like the MA animations. I might have to start another martial arts stalker sometime.

After that I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed ITF that finished in 32m 31s, and Kyrie Eleison (41 fire/regen scrapper) on a 7-player clear-most ITF finishing in 47m 58s and getting Kyrie to level 42.

Police Woman (my main character) got the Midnighter day job badge (for being logged out in the Midnight Club) and the Alchemist accolade. Did some market PvP at Wentworths (picked up ~200M infl or thereabouts, going to need to spend some soon) and moved to a new day job location at Icon.

Finished the night debugging a problem reported in my Papers and Paychecks story arc, where a custom enemy group I made was only spawning bosses. This mission used to be working, but I suspect a new bug was introduced in some recent patch. I think it has something to do with having some standard enemies and some custom enemies in the same enemy group. Fixed it by replacing my custom Nemesis Automaton group with just the standard Nemesis Automaton group; I had originally made the custom version to edit out all the Warhulk mobs (which I didn't want) but figure I'd rather have Warhulks spawn than for the mission to be bugged.

Thanks very much to everyone! I'm very psyched.

Thanks in particular to everyone who playtested and gave feedback: Wrong Number, Tangler, Phantom Patriot, airhead, ArrowRose, StratoNexus, Sister Twelve, Peregrine Falcon, konshu, GlaziusF, the crew from AEntertainment Tonight, and anyone else who gave this arc a try. Your constructive criticism made this arc much, much better than when I first published it.

Thanks to Dr. Aeon for holding fun contests and events that encourage participation in AE, and for putting up with my villain threatening to extract his spleen.

And...yay for another arc slot to write a new story in!

Thanks again all!

[MA Arc Finder]Z: OK, this is *NOT* my arc, but you all MUST GO PLAY IT! Teen Phalanx Forever! 67335. It's so full of awesomesauce...
[MA Arc Finder]Z: I just finished it. seriously, it's awesome
[MA Arc Finder]P: yeah it's really cool arc
[MA Arc Finder]T: Could a level 12 stalker solo it?
[MA Arc Finder]Z: hmmm... not sure... there's some serious ambushes in mission 3...
[MA Arc Finder]P: lots of EBs
[MA Arc Finder]P: but help too
[MA Arc Finder]Z: but you get to paw through Manticora's dirty undies...
[MA Arc Finder]Z: alas, the souvenir is a communicator. You don't get to keep the undies.
[MA Arc Finder]P: thats sick dude

Changes made as a result of feedback:

* Raised the level range to 5-12 (was 5-10), due to the contest being over and multiple feedbacks complaining that the level was too low. This is admittedly a pretty small level bump; I originally wanted to raise the cap to 14 (the Skulls maximum), but in testing I found that 12 is the highest I could raise the level cap before CoT would start spawning ghosts, who I think are a little too nasty for lowbies to fight (due to their debuffs).

* Renamed "Marrowsnap" to be "Totenkopf". This is in response to two player comments that Marrowsnap is too important in the Skulls organization to be used the way he is in my story. Changed all Marrowsnap references to Totenkopf.

* Created a "Corrupted LARPers" custom faction for mission 2; it contains no custom mobs, merely a subset of humanoid CoT models with one Warrior swordsman added for fun. (I briefly tried adding a Luddite Friar as a "cleric" but decided this wasn't really supported by the story.) Addresses two concerns: avoids spawning Hordelings in mission 2, and solves the problem of mission 2's dialog being out of character for the proper Circle of Thorns (both comments made by a reviewer). One possible concern I have with these guys, however, is that they might be a little too silly. If I get enough feedback to that effect, I may change them back to regular CoT.

3/9/2010

Millie Volt (44 elec/elec brute) joined a clear-most ITF, finishing in 53m 50s and getting to level 45. While doing this ITF, there was more drama on LB; it was kind of meta-drama about a previous mod-smacking, and I had to wield my tyrannical moderator powers to stop the bickering. I know I wrote in my last entry that I wasn't going to write about moderating bad behavior any more, but I've found it's become too much a part of my game experience to simply omit, so I dunno if I can stick to that. The ITF team leader joked that he should tell the people on LB to shut up so that I could pay more attention to beating up Romulus (who we were fighting in the last encounter of the ITF at the time). At least I think he was joking; modding chat channels does hurt my DPS.

I did get a couple private tells in support of my authoritarian actions so far, which was nice. I also made it a point to express support for one of my fellow moderators, who has been getting ganged up on. I'm all-too-conspicuously aware that next month the mob will probably be calling for my head for modsmacking purple dinosaur porn or something equally silly.

After the ITF, Millie joined a red-side team doing Ghost Widow's patron arc, getting to level 46. I switched to Shield Maiden (31 mace/shield brute) for a bit after that. We beat up Citadel and Lord Recluse, and got Shield Maiden to level 32.

My Thunderstrike and Kinetic Combat IOs, which were moving rather slowly over the weekend, suddenly started selling like hotcakes. I had to check Wentworth's several times over the course of the evening to replenish my broker inventory, and I ended up making 500M infl on Monday, the largest single day gain I've had since getting involved in market manipulation. My theory is that no one had time to buy IOs while double exp weekend was actually going, but now that it's over, people are slotting up their new level 50 toons, so demand shot way up.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined a Whirligig team on a clear-most ITF. As sole meleer I was sort-of the tank, though a mastermind with a tanky build insisted on taunting AVs onto him. Which was fine, as he seemed able to survive it (we had a ton of debuff which probably helped too). Made me wonder if I should work taunt into Thunder Girl's build; though my scrapper builds are awfully tight, so it would be hard. Finished in 52m 43s.

Before calling it a night, a couple friends who had just finished the Midnighter arc invited Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) for the last mission, which gave her Midnight Squad access.

No new 50s for me; I mostly was playing lowbies for the instant gratification of dinging every 10 minutes.

These were my gains over the weekend:

Quick Katie (plant/kin controller) 43 -> 45
Shield Maiden (mace/shield brute) 22 -> 31
Linda Lightspeed (rad/nrg blaster) 21 -> 24
Spy Girl (traps/pistols defender) 13 -> 29
San Min (MA/wp scrapper) 13 -> 26
Mystery Girl (emp/pistols defender) 6 -> 34


Total: 71 levels gained over 6 characters

3/8/2010

The "Going Rogue" preorder finally opened up on Tuesday, causing me to squeee! (someone on one of my chat channels said "I think PW just had an in-game orgasm"). I immediately bought one, which unlocked the Dual Pistols powerset. I rolled 4 dual pistols toons: an emp/pistols defender, a traps/pistols defender, a pistols/kin corruptor and a pistols/dark corruptor. The defenders got a lot more play, mostly because it was easier to find teams on blue side. By the end of the double exp weekend, Mystery Girl (empathy/pistols) got to level 34, Spy Girl (traps/pistols) got to level 29, but Viva la Revolution (pistols/kin) and Mina von Heksung (pistols/dark) only got to 4. Of these four, I think I like traps/pistols the best; the traps debuffs and FF Generator are really nice. I do like empathy/pistols too (really like Fortitude and AB), but found I suffered from what a teammate called "empathy guilt", i.e., when the team overaggros a ton of mobs and I couldn't keep players from dying. I would guess the corruptors should get good at higher levels, but didn't play them enough to be sure.

Over the double exp weekend, I was surprised at the number of people I normally team with who wanted to just plain farm and PL. I find farming and PLing to be too boring and guilt inducing, so I turned down about 4 invitations to join farms. It felt like I was getting plenty of exp doing normal teaming though.

I kinda got out of the rare salvage flipping market in order to invest in high level Thunderstrike recipes, crafting them and re-selling them as Thunderstrike IOs. My reasoning was that, hey, tons of dual pistols toons who need range damage IOs - should generate a lot of demand, right? So far this has generated a moderate amount of revenue for me, but it's not as much as I hoped; selling IOs just doesn't give me the same kind of volume as selling stacks of salvage. On the bright side, as a side effect, I now have a ton of Kinetic Combat and Thunderstrike recipes and IOs for my personal use.

There was a moderate amount of drama on LB channel over the weekend. I've decided to stop explicitly mentioning in this journal the people I end up moderating on LB, because I don't want people purposely trying to get me to silence them just so I'll mention it here. Due to the continuing drama, I decided it would be a good idea to post the rules (for myself) that I use when moderating. I'm somewhat sensitive that the other moderators may not (in fact, certainly don't) use the same rules so it can result in people playing mommy-daddy with us all, but I don't have a good solution for that.

Misplaced my detailed notes for Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday, Linda Lightspeed (21 rad/nrg blaster) did an 8-player pickup Sister Psyche TF. Our support was two not-very-good empaths, one of which logged and didn't come back, the other quit midway through the TF to join a RWZ raid. They were actually not very effective, so having our support players disappear hurt a lot less than you might expect. Finished in 1hr 32m and got Linda to level 24.

San Min (13 MA/wp scrapper) formed an 8 player pickup team that ran through the Midnight Squad arc. This team was incredibly blaster heavy due to dual pistols becoming FOTM; everyone on the team kept saying "San Min needs to get a gun too!" as I was the only one without. We had 2 wipes on the Lady Jane mission due to the CoT just being really tough for us at that level, along with Lady Jane helping to pull more mobs. This caused us to fail the mission, but we still finished the arc and unlocked the Midnight Club. A couple teammates had hit 20 so we did their 2nd costume mission before the team broke up, having gotten San Min to level 19. I solo'd a bit to get to 20, and helped a Sisterhood team beat Babbage.

Mystery Girl (newbie emp/pistols defender; rerolled from a semi-retired FF/nrg defender) solo'd to level 6, then joined a Sisterhood team in Croatoa doing Buck Salinger's arc; we had a couple wipeouts against Tuatha but generally did fine. After that team broke up, Mystery Girl joined another team running Talos radio missions and did the IP safeguard. This got her to level 26. This was pretty crazy exp, but I was doing quite a lot of healing and buffing to earn my keep, so I didn't suffer too much PL guilt.

After that I played Shield Maiden (22 mace/shield brute), hoping to get some exp on red side. I ended up forming a pickup team that grew to 8 players and ran a ton of missions in Sharkhead isle. Unlike blue side, there were very few pistols characters on red side (partly because only corruptors get it, partly because it's probably harder for pistols alts to level up quickly on red side). This team went really well and Shield Maiden got to level 29. We also managed to take down Ghost of Scrapyard with one team, and "Hammer Down" seemed a perfect badge for Shield Maiden, who wields a big hammer. Later that night, Shield Maiden joined a team of 4 corruptors looking for a brute to hide behind, and we did some missions in St Martial that got her to level 30.

Spy Girl (newbie traps/pistols defender; rerolled from a semi-retired MA/ninj stalker) joined lowbie teams that got her to 13, got the Fortune Teller mission badge and the Atlas and KR safeguards, then joined a Liberty Force SG team in Rikti War Zone for the last part of Dark Watcher's story arc, getting her to level 21. With the crazy exp Spy Girl had leveled so fast that I felt like I had messed up her build (I took too many attacks too soon, just to see the pistols animations) and so I burned a veteran respec to straighten it out. I decided to take Grant Invis and regular Invis from the Concealment power pool, mostly as in-character choices for Spy Girl, who I figure should be able to stealth teams around. I took Swift but postponed Stamina; as a traps/pistols she just doesn't seem to burn enough END to need it. One difference I noticed was that you can no longer Grant Invis the Force Field Generator; I know I used to be able to do that with my AR/traps corruptor. As a result, stealthing through missions with Invis, my toon can sneak by fine, but the mobs start shooting at the FF Generator as it floats by (doh!). I usually ran away quickly so I'm not sure whether this actually drew aggro to me as a result. No idea why that changed; perhaps a silent traps nerf.


On Saturday, Mystery Girl joined a pickup team that a friend was running; we did a Founders Falls mayhem, which had some weirdness in it (a couple of us managed to fall through the map and into empty space beneath the terrain). After that, we started on Madeleine Casey's story arc, fighting large numbers of Carnies. Our team only had one level 40 (the rest of us were super-SK'd up from the 20s and 30s, and one person was level 4) and so our actual power level was way too weak to handle Carnies. In the first mission we had 3 team wipes against Carnies, mostly due to careless overaggro; we could handle a single Carnie spawn pretty well, but two groups always wiped us. I stuck it out til the end of the mission, but the next mission was also an outdoor Carnies mission; I couldn't handle another mission like that, so I dropped from the team. Still, I did get to level 28 and the Illusionist badge as a result.

I played Mina von Heksung (newbie pistols/dark corruptor on Triumph) on a 7-player MA Arc Finder channel team. I found that running a level 2 red side toon from Mercy Island to Rikti War Zone (where this team usually plays AE in order to be co-op hero/villain) is actually quite hard, but I made it with only one death. We played an arc called South Side Story about Skulls and Hellions; this was full of very cool looking custom Skulls characters that were much too tough for us. After two team wipes (that I was present for ... I think there were more before I got there) we gave up on the arc. Next we tried an arc called Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate, where you travel to an African kingdom to help lift an evil curse. This arc had good looking costuming and had a pretty neat story. I gave it 5 stars.

Spy Girl (traps/pistols) solo'd through the Midnight Squad arc, heavily relying on her Invis powers; then joined a 6-player pickup team that had a wipeout against Council when the team split up. Went on to join a Synapse TF (4 blasters, 2 controllers, 1 tanker, 1 defender), beat Babbage with some outside help and finished the TF in 2hr 12min.

Quick Katie (43 plant/kin controller) joined an Imperious TF; this was rather slow to form as people who joined kept bailing on the team and needing to be replaced. Finally got going and cleared most; it was a bit of a bumpy ride with lots of death and vengeance, but finished in 1hr 12mins and got Quick Katie to level 45.

Mystery Girl (emp/pistols) did a pickup Synapse TF (3 blasters, 1 stone tanker, 1 scrapper, 3 emp defenders). I was rather uneasy at having 3 empaths on the team; we all had fairly different builds though. I was buff-heavy with some heals and a mix of pistols attacks; the second emp was a pure healer who never attacked, seldom buffed, and mostly healed; the third emp was an offender build with only healing aura and resurrect (but never healed that I saw) and the rest pistols powers. Also of note, our tanker did not run any of her defensive toggles, instead using pure HPs to tank. You would think this would be a terrible strategy, but it actually seemed to work since we had a lot of healing support. Sadly our tanker felt sick and ended up quitting near the end of the TF. We managed to finish in 2hr 18min (we skipped Babbage), getting Mystery Girl to 30. I also got a compliment on her costume and concept; a teammate commented on the "classic thing" she had going.


On Sunday I played Alice Slaughter (37 db/wp brute on Triumph) on a MA Arc Finder team; we played It's a Mad Tea Party which was an Alice-in-Wonderland themed mission with nothing to do in it but take pretty screenshots (not really a story at all) and To Serve Cookie where you help an incoherent Mesopotamian monster battle food inspectors. I gave both of these arcs 3 stars, which was probably overly generous.

Shield Maiden (30 mace/shield brute) joined a pickup villain team in Grandville that got her to 31.

Mystery Girl (30 emp/pistols defender) joined a pickup hero team in Peregrine Island that got her to 34. I burned 60 merits on recipe rolls when she hit 33, but got Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG), Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INT/RNG) and Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG), all of which seemed pretty junky to me so I haven't bothered checking their value yet. Briefly swapped to Darla Doppler (38 kin/sonic defender) when our team kin left and a new emp joined; got Darla to 39 and the Multidimensional badge.

I joined the Sisterhood TF Marathon, playing San Min on the Synapse TF (1hr 57m, finished as level 25), then Spy Girl on the Sister Psyche TF (1hr 53m, finished as level 29) and finally San Min again on Citadel TF (1hr 2m, finished as level 26). This was great fun, but the organization time before each round was unfortunately very long (30m to 45m just waiting for people to trickle in, then organizing them into balanced teams). This actually forced one of the players on my Synapse TF team to have to quit early due to running out of time. Nevertheless it was a pretty impressive community achievement, with 4 (nearly) full teams starting each of the TFs for the whole day.

I finished the night playing Shield Maiden (31 mace/shield brute) for the last crumbs of double exp. I solo'd the IP and Talos mayhem missions, then did Why We Fight, a comedic story arc depicting Arachnos propaganda material. This started out a little slow and I thought the framing story didn't connect the missions together strongly enough, but it had some really funny material in the middle and later parts of the arc. I gave it 4 stars.

Hmm, ruling out all the people who have won a Dev Choice, Player Choice or HoF really excludes a lot of possible arcs .... within those rules though:


Becky's Revenge
Arc ID 60197
@New Age Ronin

2 missions long

This arc is just extremely funny and if you play it, you'll become BFFs with Becky and get to teach that stuck up Fusionette a lesson!