PoliceWoman

[Caveat: I can't say I've played all these arcs, so I don't have full info - I figure voting is better than not voting, though.]

Enemy groups

#2 Matchstick Women
#3 Freedom Militia

Characters

#1 Erica Lashion
#2 Becky, the Tarantula Mistress
#3 The Firecracker Kid

The Better Part of Valor review
Arc ID: 349298
Keywords: Complex Mechanics, Canon Related, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 30-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme lieutenants, custom power selections.

[5.0] Starting value

The arc description mentions something about inspiring ordinary people with excellence, but seems very vague on particulars. Consider adding some detail to the arc description to give some info about the arc and possibly make it catch the attention of players who might be browsing the AE search tool.

[-0.1] Arc description needs to be more interesting

I played a 29 fire/regen scrapper (at the low end of the stated level range) on +0 x0 difficulty, no AVs. The contact is Lt. Suzanne Bernhard, a standard Skyway police contact.

Mission 1
Briefing: good use of color to highlight key phrases and a nicely written briefing. The contact is investigating a series of robberies and thinks Arachnos has been trying to block her investigation, though she doesn't know why (she thinks these robberies are beneath Arachnos). She wants me to check out a place where Arachnos may be operating out of. In the briefing text, "operatives have been attempting to cover the trail of this investigation" sounds a little awkward to me; perhaps rephrase to something like "operatives have been obstructing my investigation"?

Mission objectives: my first objective is "Break through the ambush", which is a little puzzling; it wasn't mentioned in the briefing, so how do I know there's an ambush and that I should break through it? With the mission being called "Investigate the Warehouse" I think I'd expect the objectives to be something like "Find clues" or "Question Arachnos operatives".

[-0.1] Objective needs more motivation

I quickly find Fortunata Mistress Ambusher, though, who has some dialog about threatening Sgt Bernhard. She calls an ambush while I'm fighting her, then mentions something about a foreign cop. This triggers a new objective to "Capture the Dirty Cop". Since Fortunata Mistress Ambusher's dialog is significant, you might also consider adding a clue to that effect that she drops on defeat.

There's a good amount of useful dialog in this mission, from patrols and other objectives, dropping hints about the plot, which seemed like a nice touch.

[+0.1] Good dialog

I find and fight Lt. Travis Cantor, who proves to be the "Dirty Cop".



He looks a lot more like a Vanguard operative than a PPD officer, though. He gives me the "Regrets" clue and triggers the "Get research facility location from computer." For some reason this objective is in a gigantic font, not sure why. The computer spawned near me though, and clicking it gave me the "Research Facility Location" clue and completed the mission. It sounds like the crime spree Sgt Bernhard is investigating is being committed by some sort of escaped Arachnos experimental subjects?

Debriefing: a nice debriefing with some good info. Some of the text (for Sgt Bernhard's briefings and debriefings) sounds a little formal or stilted; if this isn't intentional, I might suggest doing little things like changing "I have worked with Travis" to "I've worked with Travis" to sound more natural.

[-0.01] Awkward phrasing

Mission 2
Briefing: so Crey owns the research facility and supposedly promises full cooperation. We'll see about that. "but its always possible" should be "but it's always possible".

[-0.01] Typo: its -> it's

Mission accept message: "Accept" is a little dull, consider changing this to something the player might say, like "I'm on my way" or "I'll check it out".

[-0.01] Default accept message is dull

Many lines of dialog appear as soon as I enter the mission, from various Arachnos, Crey and Devouring Earth, even though I haven't seen any of them yet. (This might be an AE bug, I've seen dialog oddities in MA missions lately, so not marking off any points.)

[NPC] Arachnoid: Click. Click. Ssssss.
[NPC] Tarantula: You disloyal freaks. You could have had it good had you obeyed.
[NPC] Riot Guard: Oh my, Devouring Earth specimens, try to collect what you can.
[NPC] Bedrock: Free. We are free from the demon spiders.
[NPC] Bedrock: For the Hamidon.
[NPC] Blood Widow: Look, we are here trying to help get rid of these things.
[NPC] Riot Guard: So you are responsible for this break-in.
[NPC] Blood Widow: Where the hell is that rapid response team, we sent the intel back to base hours ago.
[NPC] Riot Guard: Lay down your arms and surrender, Kyrie Eleison is here to aid us.

Some of these should probably have exclamation points instead of periods (e.g. "For the Hamidon!" and "Where the hell is that rapid response team!")

[-0.01] Punctuation problems

Found a body bag glowy labeled "Ewww" that gave me the "Disturbing Corpse" clue. I rescue some (friendly) Crey from various DE and Arachnoid mobs; they seem pretty grateful.

Found a portable lab glowy labeled "Research Notes" (seems like this should be a desk or a computer instead of lab equipment? nitpicky) which gave me the "Venom II" clue which refers to people at "Arachnos headquarters" meddling with the research.

Found a refrigerator glowy labeled "Chemicals and Fluids" which gives me the "Fluids" clue, which includes a test tube with Venom II (along with other interesting sounding compounds). This completed the mission, which additionally awarded the "Serums" clue. I think this clue needs to be a little clearer as to where you're getting the information from (the research notes, I assume?). In this clue:

[+0.1] Nice references to in-game continuity

[-0.01] Typo: reasearch -> research

Debriefing: the contact mentions an Arachnos scout group, but I never saw them (I did see dialog from them, but they may have been annihilated by battles or hostile patrols). She mentions something she found out about Karansky; are the notes I found supposed to be his? I suspect so, but you may want to make that more clear, in either the clues or the debriefing.

Mission 3
Briefing: a pretty good info dump on Karansky's back story, but the contact never actually asks me to do anything before the mission accept mission.

[-0.1] Briefing doesn't explain mission well enough

Send-off message: Kind of an interesting structure to this briefing; she never really asks you to do anything, then there's a "3 Weeks Later" in the send-off message and you get a call from her, and then you have a mission to rescue her. Although I see how this works, I'm not quite sure this structure works for me.

[-0.01] Typo: its the Lt. -> it's the Lt.

I get the "Perfectly Plastic" clue as the mission starts. I was momentarily confused at the dialog presented here, thinking it was happening right now (which wouldn't make sense), though on closer examination the clue refers to "an earlier conversation". Maybe make that clearer. Also, companies generally won't have a "President of Marketing"; should perhaps be "Vice President of Marketing".

[-0.01] Rephrase slightly

Mission entry popup: she sends me "left hall, east" for directions. I try following these directions and they actually work for finding Lt. Bernhard.

[+0.1] Neat game mechanics

Lt. Bernhard joins me as an ally and asks me to find her sister, who works here.

Going upstairs I find "Webmaster Hamon", a Crab spider, who I rescue from Arachnoids and "Rolling Rats" (custom rat-people). Webmaster Hamon says:

[NPC] Webmaster Hamon: Why come back to Paragon and why kidnap that woman? I will stop you monsters!

....which struck me as a strange thing for an Arachnos agent to say. I considered marking off points for this, but after seeing him in action for a bit, he does seem to be characterized as trying to help. Perhaps Hamon needs a special description rather than the default Crab spider description. Rescuing Hamon seems to satisfy finding Bernhard's sister (since Hamon claims to have some info on this). I now have an objective called "Access Computer on this Floor" in gigantic lime green type (why is it written so large?) and "Choose to Help Hamon or turn him over to the Longbow?" I have an orange circle for a nav point objective on my nav tool now, which I imagine is "lead Hamon to the door" (and turn him in).

Found a computer labeled "Hamon's Intelligence" (perhaps should be labeled just "Computer") which gives me the clue "Coppers are coppers". But the contents of this clue seem to be all things Hamon could've just told me.

[-0.1] Doesn't make sense: why does a computer in a civilian plastics manufacturer have Arachnos intel on it?

A Longbow patrol swings by and attacks Hamon; I let him fight Hamon for a bit without intervening. This gets him down to 50% life before he kills them. I like that Hamon protests that he is "cooperating" as the Longbow fight him.

Walking out of the mission, another Longbow patrol shows up and starts attacking me. This would make sense if I'm helping Hamon escape the Longbow, but I actually want to turn Hamon over to Longbow; should the Longbow really attack me in this case?

Anyway, I manage to get Hamon killed by Longbow, then the mission fails.

"Fail" Debriefing: actually helps explain why Longbow attacked us; the contact "smooths things over". Thinking about it, they did say

[NPC] Longbow Eagle: Don't let anyone out of the building!

...which also supports the idea that they might attack me. So, I'll drop my earlier concern that they were attacking me.

Mission 4
Briefing: Maybe I missed something, but why am I going to Mercy Island? I think I should be either targeting Dr. Karansky or trying to rescue Connie Bernhard, or maybe both. Reviewing my clue journal, none of the clues I've received so far suggests that either one is in Mercy Island; in fact, the info in "Coppers are coppers" says "Karansky made a move back to Paragon".

[-0.1] Don't understand why I'm doing this: make it clearer why the trail leads to the Rogue Isles

[-0.01] Typo: setup -> set up

[-0.01] Typo: stirke -> strike

I like the bit of background the contact mentions in the last paragraph, about her and Connie.

[+0.1] Good dialog: background info about Suzanne and Connie.

After accepting the message I carefully read the send-off message, then suddenly realize I'm on a 10 minute timer. Ack! Looking back at the mission briefing, it does mention I may only have minutes to act.

Mission title is "Stop the Biochemical Weapon (or not)" but no biochemical weapon has been mentioned so far, so not sure why I would know to do this.

[-0.1] Don't understand why I'm doing this: what biochemical weapon?

I like the mission entry popup.

I find some "Fortunata nerve gas" which I disable. Do fortunata really stockpile nerve gas? They seem more into psychic abilities than something as mundane as chem warfare. (Nitpicky)

In the time I had, I was only able to find 2 of the nerve gas cannisters; I decided the most heroic thing to do would be to save the captured fortunata. She says:


[NPC] Captured Fortunata: Kyrie Eleison is here. I expect she will eliminate your bothersome presence.

I actually would've expected her to be a little more surprised that I'm helping her; heroes normally should be her enemy. Rescuing her gives me "A Fortunata's Vision" as a clue, with some enigmatic prophecy about me defeating Karansky, but at a cost. Then time runs out and the mission fails.

Fail debriefing: the contact says they "are not overly saddened by the fact that you were unable to save the Fortunatas." But, actually, I did save the only fortunata on the map.

[-0.1] Continuity problem: contact says fortunatas died, but I actually saved one.

She then mentions a "homing beacon" that she hopes will lead to her sister. But I don't have any homing beacon in my clue journal. I'm not sure now if one was mentioned in the briefing; if so, I may have missed it when I realized I was on a short timer.

[-0.1] Continuity problem: where did the homing beacon come from? Maybe add a clue for it.

Mission 5
Briefing: the homing beacon leads to Grandville. Decent explanation for why I need to do this and not Longbow.

[-0.01] Typo: repsonse -> response

Sendoff message: Some references to "hidden cave networks"; hmm, I'm not too familiar with the Grandville beach map, so I guess I'll check for caves. The contact refers to her sister as "Constance" here for the first time; she always called her "Connie" before. Possibly Connie is short for Constance, but I don't think it would be natural to use her full name here.

[-0.01] Consistency: Constance -> Connie

Mission objectives: stopping Karansky makes sense; why don't I have an objective to save Connie, though? She is mentioned in the briefing as someone to save here.

Inside the mission: Found a Slinging Stinger (custom insect-person) who popped build up, which scared me, but managed to beat it up.

Found also a Fortunate One, a spines custom mob; not sure why he's called Fortunate One. His bio doesn't say; from a distance I thought he might be Fortunata One.

I comb the beaches looking for cave entrances and clicking on the doors of bunkers, but don't find anything. Asking some other people, I don't think there are caves here, so the briefing is actually deceptive.

[-0.1] Briefing made me waste time searching for something that wasn't there.

Finally found Dr. Karansky (?) who appears to be an Arachnoid. He's actually in the "Arachnoids" enemy group, but the other Arachnoids are in "Karansky's FURY"; I think maybe he should be, too.

[-0.01] Wrong faction: Dr. Karansky (?) should be in "Karansky's FURY".

He has a huge monologue as I get near him:

[NPC] Dr. Karansky (?): Come and revel in my power. Join me and together we can lead the world into an era where confilct exists, but doesn't lead to violence. A world where individualism and disharmony bring joy and excitement, instead of resentment, jealousy, and ridicule. - - You can be my right hand... The right hand of a god. - - We shall purge the world of the weak and evil. Their bodies and foolish immorality shall be the top dressing in which the true ideals can propagate.

[-0.01] Typo: confilct -> conflict



Defeating Dr. Karansky (?) triggers new objectives: 3 Crystals to destroy, and Should You Fight Karansky Again? (in orange type for some reason).

[-0.1] Don't understand why I'm doing this: Why destroy crystals? What makes me think I need to fight Karansky again? (Maybe need a clue for defeating Dr. Karansky (?) or some motivating dialog.)

Found Constance Bernhard (Dr. Karansky ?) ... is this meant to imply Karansky is now possessing her? Some of the earlier "research" clues make some more sense now. Karansky is turning himself into some sort of hive mind? The objectives seem to imply that I can decide not to fight her, but I decide to attack her. She says:

[NPC] Constance Bernhard (Dr. Karansky ?): Come fight me hero. - - We are indomitable. Dr. Karansky, I, have given myself a new vision. A unity that does remove the individual. - - We learn from you and our purpose and indentity are formed by your ineffectiveness. - - I wish Suzanne could know that this is what we dreamed of as foolish children, come to fruition.

[-0.01] Awkward phrasing: "Dr. Karansky, I, have given myself" sounds awkward. I'd suggest you write this line entirely from Karansky's POV, e.g., "I have given this woman a new vision"; but you have some other lines where it seems Connie's consciousness is struggling with Karansky's control, so maybe sticking with that idea is closer to your vision. Also Karansky is rather inconsistent with his pronouns, sometimes saying "I" and sometimes "we" to refer to himself.

[-0.01] Typo: indentity -> identity



Constance hits pretty hard, but is doable. Defeating Constance triggers "Find the real Dr. Karansky". I soon find Dr. Karansky, who spawned as a +0 EB for me. Fighting him, he repeatedly tries to confuse me; fortunately, I have some break frees (otherwise I'd probably be in trouble).

Found some Crystallized Karansky Serums that satisfy the "Crystals to destroy" objective. Their description says that "pulverizing it into diaphanous dust" will "spread [it] through the air", which makes me think that "destroying" them with my fire melee would be a bad idea. Also I don't think any of the other Karansky's FURY mobs were infected/injected using Karansky crystals?

[-0.1] Awkward mechanic: destroying crystals doesn't quite make sense in this context. Maybe clicking a glowy (gas cannisters, bombs, lab equipment, something like that) would make more sense?

Destroying the 3 crystals triggers an objective of "Another Crystal!" in a bigger font and different color. I'm a little puzzled.

[-0.1] Don't understand why I'm doing this: how do I know another crystal is out there? (I didn't get any clue saying there was.) And why not just make it "4 crystals to destroy" in the first place?

The new crystal is "Crystallized Karansky Serums" which says it's in some kind of field that I cannot penetrate. Hmm, wonder why this is different? Defeating the guards of the crystal completes the mission though; I guess it was a defendable object?

Debriefing: covers the basic points (what happens to Connie and Karansky) but seems a little underwhelming for the end of the whole arc. I imagine the contact is unhappy that Connie is so badly hurt and so is written as being cold and distant here.

[-0.1] Ending feels unsatisfying.

Souvenir: a decent souvenir with a couple inconsistencies from the actual arc.

[-0.01] Inconsistency: souvenir calls the arc "Mad Science and Hard Choices", arc title is actually "The Better Part of Valor".

[-0.01] Continuity error: souvenir says I destroyed "devices" but actually I destroyed "crystals".

Overall
I liked how the story built up from a minor investigation into a major threat; this felt pretty believable. Karansky's mad plan was pretty cool too. I had trouble understanding why I was doing some of the objectives sometimes; I think this could be cleared up with some more explanation in either the briefings or clues. I'm glad we saved Connie but am sorry she was left in such bad shape; perhaps this was the design intent (I think it was written this way to try and satisfy Aeon's Challenge), but it felt like a rather pyrrhic victory.

Total: [3.93]. I rated the arc 4 stars.

--

My queue is currently:

TigerKnight - Real Afterlife #354483
FredrikSvanberg - The Tangled Weave #338575 (played already, need to write up notes)
Venture - The Christmas We Get #356477
Tenzen - The Hidden Agenda #356334
FredrikSvanberg - A Taste For Evil #349034
Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 01 #47143
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Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 02 #11728
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Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 03 #174352

I'm experimenting with a new review format.

Motivation:
- I am really saddened that a review from me appears to have driven an author and contributor to these forums to quit using Mission Architect. This is not what I want to be about at all.
- I would really prefer my reviews to be used as constructive criticism to try and improve people's story arcs.
- I'm getting more and more requests to "re-review" story arcs, with the author hoping for a better rating. I don't want to discourage this; I believe story arcs have the capacity to improve over time, as a result of player feedback and author edits.
- Of the last 3 "re-reviews" though, I gave two story arcs exactly the same rating and one story arc a lower rating. This makes me think that my reviews are not clear enough at communicating what I think needs to be changed.
- Also, as I get drawn more into the "MA Arc" community, I find I am more and more often reviewing story arcs of people I've actually encountered in-game and interacted with. Seeing a player's disappointment at getting a low rating is painful to me. However, I cannot justify giving every story arc 5 stars. But perhaps I can re-shape my reviews to explain how people can get a 5 star rating from me.


Therefore, I'm changing review format as follows:
- At the start of each review, every arc will start with a score of "5.0" in my mind.
- I will deduct varying amounts of points for various infractions; generally "-0.5" or "-1.0" for something I view as a serious problem, "-0.1" for a minor problem, and "-0.01" for typos and nitpicks.
- I will award bonus points for anything I see that I think is especially cool; generally "+0.1" for each "cool" item.
- "Sense of immersion" is especially important to me; this is not easy to do, but if your story arc can achieve this, I will give it "+1.0" bonus points.
- At the end of my review, I will total up all the points and round nearest to calculate my star rating, with a maximum rating of 5 stars and minimum rating of 2 stars. I reserve 1 star ratings for arcs that are actually farms or include an obvious farm or non-story-related mission.

Under this system, you can totally get a 5 star rating from me without doing anything that I award "bonus points" for, so they should truly be "bonus points" -- basically, countering bad stuff.

On all future re-reviews, I will limit myself to only looking at problems I previously identified (unless the fix to one of the problems I identified actually generates a new problem). With each problem clearly identified with a point value associated with it, I hope it will be much clearer what you need to do in order to get a better rating from me. With that in mind, please ask for a re-review only if you believe you've addressed enough problems to make me increase the rating by at least 1 star.

My hope is that this more transparent system will let everyone have the potential of getting a 5 star rating from me on re-review.


I know some reviewers already use a point system something like this (only the details of the calculation are not public). I've previously resisted doing this because I tend to calculate the final star rating more by "gut feeling" and didn't want people to challenge each and every calculation and/or try to "game" the system. But the things I listed above under "motivations" now outweigh those considerations in my mind. So, feel free to try and "game" this system.

I'm not quite sure whether this new system will result in my average arc rating going up or down, but going to try it for a bit.

12/29/2009

Last Tuesday I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a quick ITF (24min 8sec) and a quick LGTF (26min 35sec). Got a Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop.


Wednesday, Star Amethyst did another quick ITF (25min 39sec), then I switched to Quick Katie (33 plant/kin controller) to do a Lord of Winter event. We only had one team, but had lots of buff/debuff (4 controllers, 2 defenders, 2 scrappers) and so we managed to finish with 1.5min to spare. This got Quick Katie to level 34.

Quick Katie got a costume compliment from a random passerby, then I spent some time crafting and slotting IO sets, mostly getting Air Bursts for AoE powers and Devastation for single target powers, to increase her max HP in hopes of making her more survivable (I find I have a hard time staying alive as a kin on a fast-moving team). Also spent some time helping a newbie who was having trouble figuring out if he successfully purchased and activated the Natural booster pack or not; I eventually got him to check whether he had Ninja Run to determine this for certain.


On Thursday I played Mega (50 ss/will brute) on a LGTF; for some reason our stone tanker deliberately suicided in the first mission by standing right where psychic Clockwork King was about to spawn, for the sake of making his character appear in the cut scene. This seemed pretty silly, but we got through the rest of the LGTF without incident, finishing in 31min 56sec.

After the LGTF, I switched to Quick Katie to fight the Rikti invasion in Atlas Park, then went on to solo my way through the arc to unlock the Midnight club. Quick Katie also did a quick Manticore TF (48min 40sec).

I spent some time soloing Arrow Girl (39 archery/dev blaster) through an AE story arc called Task Force Mutternacht, where you help Agent Indigo with a government cover-up. This story had an interesting plot and great characters and dialog, and I gave it 5 stars.

I found that my pool of tickets piling up at AE was getting close to the cap, so I had Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) claim 7400 of them and spend them on two Gold recipe rolls. I got a Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) worth 1M (boo) and a Numina's Convalescence (+rec/+regen) worth 56M (yay!).

I spent some time tweaking the permissions on my private villain group; I had a couple people offer to join my VG with one of their (untagged) lowbie alts for the sake of earning prestige for someone. "PW Rogues Gallery" was originally only my own alts, so I had previously set up permissions so that every rank could do everything, but this seemed risky if I started including other people, so I adjusted the security settings so that I could safely give other people a "Guest" ranking in the villain group, without allowing them to have the ability to kick me out of my own VG, or access to my stockpiles of enhancements and salvage. I don't think anyone I'd choose to invite to my VG actually would steal stuff from my base, but no one ever expects that sort of thing, so a good security policy seemed wise.


On Friday I played Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor who hasn't been out much lately) on a "kill most stuff" ITF which we still finished in 47min 3sec. We did have a bad team wipe in the last mission, ironically after defeating Romulus 4 times, when the team split up all over the place to kill the remaining Romans.

After the ITF I blew some merits on recipes; Primadonna spent 200 merits on a level 33 Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg), then Indigo Ifrit spent 240 merits on a level 10 Blessing of the Zephyr (KB protection). Crafting and slotting some IOs for Indigo Ifrit got her range defense up to 15.49%; not great, but better than before.

I decided I wanted Quick Katie to run "her own" TF to level up some, so I recruited and led a Katie TF (2 controllers, 1 defender, 2 tankers, 2 scrappers, 1 peacebringer) that finished in 30min 5sec and got Quick Katie to level 35, where I took Transference. I went on from there to lead a 4-player team through the first few missions of the "Welcome to Vanguard" arc in Rikti War Zone.

Late at night I signed up for a Synapse TF with Arrow Girl; we had 7 players but were waiting for our 8th player for a really long time. Supposedly he was level 14 and "really close" to level 15, but after we waited around for about 30 minutes he finally asked us to help do a radio mission to get him to 15 so he could join. The team leader wanted to do this, but I felt this was a very rude thing to ask, especially after already making us wait for so long, so I quit the team.

Instead, I switched back to Quick Katie and joined a Numina TF (3 scrappers, 3 controllers, 1 blaster) which finished in 56min 16sec and got her the Task Force Commander accolade.


On Saturday I played Mary Christmas (21 ice/rad controller on Triumph) for seasonal reasons; I created her 2 Christmases ago and she only comes out around this time of year. I joined a 5 player team doing AE story arcs. First we played through The Freakshow Artz Klub, a very funny story about Freakshow trying to impress art critics with their artistic talents; I gave it 5 stars. Then Fear and Loathing in Striga, an interesting story about Arachnos trying to manipulate events in Striga Isle to gain control; I gave it 4 stars. Then the team wanted to play Papers and Paychecks, one of my story arcs where you hire on as an employee at Crey Industries. I actually had been thinking about unpublishing this story arc as not being fun enough, but the team really seemed to like it; this encouraged me to keep it around awhile longer.

Later on Saturday I played Kyrie Eleison (28 fire/regen scrapper), soloing my way through two Striga story arcs, then joining a 7-player Sisterhood team that got her to level 29.


On Sunday I played Shield Maiden (14 mace/shield brute) on a Lord of Winter event in Cap au Diable, then solo'd my way through The Long Road Back, an AE story arc where you're a villain that gets recruited by the CIA. This arc had some gameplay issues that made it rather tedious, along with a lot of plot threads that never really got resolved; I ended up giving it 2 stars. This did get Shield Maiden to level 15, though.

I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on a quick LGTF (25min 33sec) and Mega on a quick ITF (23min 18sec).

I was testing some tweaks to my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc while on Blackout Girl (30 elec/elec brute) when a friend asked to team up, so I dragged him through Celebrity Kidnapping, then my Talos Vice story arc, then we did his Crey's Cloning Conundrum story arc (where Crey goes nuts cloning a particular hero).


I started Monday playing Star Amethyst on a quick Statesman TF. Our team was:

2 controllers (kin, rad)
1 defender (dark)
2 tankers (both inv)
3 scrappers

We had a little trouble in the last mission when the yellow tower respawned (probably due to repairmen) but still finished in 45min 26sec. This was Star Amethyst's first run through the STF so I got a bunch of badges, along with a Nucleolus SHO.

Star Amethyst went on to do a 1-team Lord of Winter event; one team member thought we wouldn't make it with only one team, but we had a lot of buff/debuff and actually finished with 2.5mins to spare.

Star Amethyst did a quick ITF after that (22min 39sec), then I switched to Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) for another STF with:

2 controllers (rad, kin)
1 defender (rad)
2 tankers (stone, will)
3 scrappers

For some reason we had a lot of stray deaths in the final mission, but still managed to finish in 48min 21sec. I got a Cytoskeleton SHO.

After that I switched to Quick Katie and did another ITF. I was only level 35 which was probably too low; despite my best efforts I died a lot. My control powers seemed useless or counterproductive against the Romans, reminding me that I don't like playing controllers on the ITF (something I'd decided awhile back but had forgotten). One of my teammates who plays kinetics a lot gave me some tips for avoiding aggro; in the final encounter, flying over Romulus and staying out of melee range (despite seeming un-kin-ly) seemed to help a lot. This ITF finished in 37min 13sec and got Quick Katie to level 36.

At the market afterwards I noticed that there were no Demonic Blood samples for sale at Wentworths at all, and the last sale was 1M. This seemed a crazy price for a common salvage, but I had 3 in my inventory and decided to toss them onto the broker with a huge asking price to see if I could benefit. I immediately sold 1 of them for 1M infl. There've been stories of market manipulation of very common salvage on the Market forum; perhaps this was an instance of it. We'll see if the other two sell or not.

I also got invited to fill out a web-based questionnaire for the PERC server-wide "Ms Rogue Isles" costume contest, for April Fool, who won the Liberty server costume contest. I had way too much fun writing answers for this. Here's what I wrote:

For my part, I was questioning WN's earlier assertion that "the President already made the decision since it was ultimately his to make and not yours." The idea that a soldier who is "just following orders" bears no responsibility for the acts he performs has been largely discredited since WW2, though it does seem to come up again and again. Based on her later reply, I do think WN agrees that some orders are OK to obey and some are not. This is, IMHO, a key point; the soldier executing his orders does bear responsibility for his actions.


Regarding the ethics of dropping the bomb, this has been a huge subject for debate ever since it happened. There's a pretty good article on the debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Wikipedia which I encourage anyone interested in this subject to read. It presents arguments both for and against the act as being ethical.

Here's a few excerpts from that article:

FOR

The Long Road Back review
Arc ID: 340454
Keywords: Custom Characters, Canon Related, Drama
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 10-20
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise seems to be a government agency offering a way for villains to redeem themselves. I played a 14 mace/shield brute on +0 x0 difficulty, no bosses, no AVs. The contact is a custom character, a rather 70s-looking fellow in a sports jacket.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption to the briefing should probably be bold or larger font to stand out from the rest of the briefing.

The contact introduces himself as working for OSI, which immediately makes me think of the agency that funded the Six Million Dollar Man, but he clarifies that he really means the CIA. There's an extra period after "in other words", and an extra ">" after "Vahzilok". Need a period after "go in and take them". It strikes me as a bit odd to go after this "Louise Symons in Mercy Island" when, in fact, Facemaker and her cronies in Cap au Diable are also known to work for Dr. Vahzilok.

The contact starts off being pretty antagonistic, making me wonder if I should really work for him, but it's part of the premise, I guess, that he has something that I (presumably) want. It looks like you assume the player wants what OSI has to offer; maybe this is OK based on the premise, but if a player isn't interested, they don't have a hook that gets them into this arc. (Maybe this is ok, but it limits your audience some.)

The default mission accept message of just "Accept" is a little dull, consider making it a line of dialog that the player would speak.

Send-off message: the contact elaborates that Symons is some kind of smart zombie. Needs a period after "unsuspecting world". Seems a little weird for the contact (who has been fairly quid pro quo up to this point) to say "Have some fun while you're at it".

Mission objectives: defeating Symons and finding the research were both mentioned in the briefing, but "Find the promising strain" is not, so I'm not quite sure why I have that as an objective.

Inside the mission: Good map choice for this mission. I quickly run into Dr Symons, a custom character who spawned as a lieutenant for me. She does mention something about a promising strain (perhaps that objective should be triggered from defeating her, though in that case her clue should mention it). In her dialog:

[NPC] Dr. Symons: Well, that answers that. Is there a reason for this are are you just passing through?

"this are are" should be "this, or are"

[NPC] Dr. Symons: Defintely HEALTHIER than most who dwell on this island...

"Defintely" should be "Definitely".


First meeting with Symons

[NPC] Dr. Symons: I think you'll find I'm impossible to kill. Not something I care to test out of the lab though.

Ironically she said the above line just as I KO'd her with a Clobber? Seemed weird. She gave me the "M1.2 Symons Eliminated" clue, which is just a fragment of a sentence. In both this clue and all of Symons' dialog, there is an unusually large number of ellipses - not sure if this is intentional. If not intentional, you may want to use them a little less.

Soon after I found a "Promising Strain" glowy, which gave me the "M1.5 Promising Strain" clue. Possibly this glowy should be named after the container ("Cannisters" or similar), and then you find out that it's the Promising Strain only after collecting it.

I found a file cabinet labeled "Vahzilok's Research" that gave me the "M1.3 Vahzilok's Research" clue. Possibly the glowy should be named after the container ("File Cabinet") and you find out it's Vahzilok's Research only after collecting it. In the text of the clue, "Symons personal research" should be "Symons' personal research" (note punctuation). This glowy triggered the "Find Dr. Symons' computer" objective; maybe there was a small ambush, too.

Fortunately this map is not very large so it's easy to find. The computer gave me the "M1.4 Dr. Symons' Computer" clue; this clue mentions the "promising strain" directly. Possibly the "promising strain" objective should be triggered from THIS clue? I notice now that "M1.5" references Symons' notes, which I didn't have at the time I got that clue. So I think maybe this was intended to be triggered from the computer, but got broken somehow. In my run, the computer glowy completed the mission, giving me "M1.6 Turning this stuff in to OSI".

I like that the mission exit popup message reinforces the things you "decided" in "M1.6".

Debriefing: seems OK, if a little generic; the contact doesn't mention anything specific about the research notes or the promising strain. Maybe he should.

Mission 2
Briefing caption: "The Long Road Back , Chapter II" has an extra space after "Back"

Briefing: "cataloged.," should be "catalogued," (spelling and punctuation). "get ahead of it if they get out of hand" sounds awkward; consider rephrasing. Maybe "be ahead of the game if they get unruly"?

The briefing is written like dialog, but the contact tends to ramble, so it's a little long; consider editing the text to be a little more compact. The contact wants me to extract some Outcast who "wants out", against the wishes of Frostfire, under a short time limit. This seems like a weird thing for the CIA to be interested in, or to use a Rogue Isles operative for; the contact does try to justify it, but it still seems weird to me.

Send-off message: I have a hard time believing a random Outcast kid could have "nice intel" for the CIA.

Mission begin clue: Considering there is only a 15 minute time limit, good luck getting anyone to read this lengthy clue during the actual mission. I did, though. "Mcanus" should be "McManus". The clue does recognize how weird it is for the CIA to care about a random Outcast kid, so it wasn't just me. So it's actually some sort of foreshadowing. We'll see where this leads.

Inside the mission I clear my way through some Outcasts and free Patrick McManus from his captors, changing my objectives to "Get Patrick out of there., Defeat Heatwave"; should remove the period after "there".

On my way out of the mission I run into Heatwave, who is in his own "Heatwave" faction instead of the Outcasts (maybe he should be in a "Mercenary" faction or something similar); his background suggests he's a hitman, albeit a not very good one. How does Frostfire, a minor gang leader, hire hitmen?

On the other hand, the way Heatwave talks, it's clear he's not a very professional assassin. In fact he's almost embarrassingly wimpy. His dialog also has a crazy number of ellipses ("..."), I'd suggest trimming those down some. I beat up Heatwave and lead Patrick to the door, completing the mission.

Debriefing: some interesting chatter from the contact here, but nothing whatsoever about the mission I just completed. Shouldn't he say something about what becomes of McManus, maybe something about Heatwave showing up?

(Quite a bit later I notice the "M2.3 McManus Out" clue which explains what happened to him.)

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact kinda rambles at length about Brazil and oil and geopolitics, then finally gets to the point--the Rogue Isles is bidding against "us" (the CIA? the State Department? the United States?) and the contact wants me to do something about it. This doesn't obviously have anything to do with the previous missions, but it does make more sense as something the CIA would be involved in. Only--it seems risky for them to send an operative from the Rogue Isles to act against the interests of the Rogue Isles?

Send-off message: So I'm to assassinate the Brazilian ambassador to the Rogue Isles and "leave no survivors". "Much to dangerous" should be "Much too dangerous". "down here all the time. from what I understand.." should be "down there all the time, from what I understand."

The mission is "Terminate Sandoval" but Sandoval wasn't mentioned in the briefing; probably the briefing should mention this name, or else the mission should be "Terminate Brazilian Ambassador".

Mission objectives: Aren't the objectives to find/defeat the Ambassador, Arroyo, and Heatwave all redundant with "Eliminate everyone in the building"? Also, Arroyo hasn't been mentioned before, so not sure why I have him as a specific objective. Is there a point in "Erase the records"? Oh, ok, the records are mentioned in the "begin mission" clue, which seems to have more briefing-type info in it. Perhaps "Erase security records" would be clearer.

Also, is it really necessary to Defeat All the Arachnos here to achieve the stated objectives of the mission (namely, persuade Brazil that it isn't safe to deal with Arachnos)?

Early on I overhear the dialog:

[NPC] Huntsman Arroyo: Word from the top. boys.. we have to make this look good.

This is punctuated oddly. Should be something like "Word from the top, boys. We have to make this look good."

I found a glowy named "Erase the records"; it probably should be named something like "Security Computer". This glowy gives me the "M3.2 Threats in the Isles" clue, which mentions that I'm copying some files on OSI. Perhaps this clue should be named "M3.2 Dossier on OSI" to be more specific.

Found and fought Huntsman Arroyo. His info says he's in charge of Ambassador Sandoval's "work detail", but I think he should perhaps be in charge of the "security detail". While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Huntsman Arroyo: Crap. Okay, men, get over here. Don't worry about the ambassador.

but I never saw an ambush. I think this line should either trigger an ambush, or be reworded so as not to imply an ambush is coming.

I run into Heatwave; what IS he doing here, anyway? His description this time suggests he is bodyguarding the ambassador; so, just a coincidence. I beat him up pretty easily. I think he's intended to be comic relief; if so, IMHO, his lines need to be more funny. Right now he's presented as being pretty pathetic.

A little past Heatwave I find Ambassador Luisa Sandoval, who isn't killable because she's a hostage. She's in a faction called "Ambassador Luisa Sandoval" (i.e., named after herself); I'd suggest putting her in a faction called "Brazil" or maybe "Brazillian Foreign Ministry". Since Sandoval is a female character, "kill him" should be "kill her" in clue "M3.1 Ambassador Sandoval's assassination".


Hi there! I'm here to assassinate you.

When I "rescue" Sandoval, she has some dialog saying:

[NPC] Ambassador Luisa Sandoval: You've obviously been sent to kill me. Perhaps I can offer an incentive for you to fail to do so.

It looks like I'm scripted to accept this bribe, because my objectives are now "Find what she is talking about" and "Take Sandoval to the door". I think that Sandoval should definitely also give a clue upon rescuing her, further explaining this deal (and providing motivation for these new objectives).

I look around a bit and clear some more Arachnos but it isn't clear what Sandoval was trying to bribe me with, so I decide to lead her back to the door and hope I see it on the way back.

I don't see it on my way back, but once I get Sandoval to the door she gives me the clue "M3.5 Sandoval's Fate" where she says "I have demonstrated my potential utility to you" (but she really hasn't...maybe she would've if I had found the other clue first). Also in this clue, "dissapear" should be "disappear".

Backtracking, I find a glowy I had missed before, some kind of Arachnos device with turbines labeled "The Dirt". Clicking on this tells me I'm cracking a safe; maybe the glowy should be called "Safe" or "Vault". From this I get clue "M3.4 Rogue Islands Operatives Dossiers" (should be "Rogue Isles") which implicates the contact in some sort of dirty work, but it's not clear exactly what (is he a double agent? It's a bit vague).

This glowy also completed the mission and awarded the "M3.6 The Arachnos Files" clue, which explains that I have a lot more info on the contact now; it does give more detail on what Richard Savage has been up to. Typical CIA stuff it seems. The last line seems wrong; "Maybe Sandoval WOULD be more useful to you dead than alive." Don't you mean "more useful to you alive than dead"??

Also worth noting that the clues in this mission appear in my journal in the order: M3.1, M3.2, M3.5, M3.4, M3.6. Coincidentally this is the order I did them in, but I think the clues are normally arranged in the order they appear in the Mission Architect UI. You may want to sort them to be in order. Also, there was no M3.3 clue (at least not one that I found).

Debriefing: the contact doesn't say much about the actual mission except "Ugly job, I know, but it was necessary". So what really happened to Sandoval? Did I kill her or let her go? (If it's meant to be up to my imagination, maybe you need to say that somewhere.)

Mission 4
Briefing: We return to the plot thread from mission 1 with Symons hijacking the shipment of her "promising strain" and the contact wanting me to do something about it. I hope all these different threads get tied together at some point.

Why does he want me the "cannister retrieved" when he's already said that "the cannister sprang a leak"? An empty cannister doesn't seem much use.

I like that I'm portrayed as being worried about getting sick from the weird chemicals. The contact pays some lip service to that and gets me some sort of antidote that is probably just sugar water. (Probably wouldn't work as well for a character who is a robot or something, but oh well.)

Inside the mission I find a lot of "Dying" mobs who are normal people affected by the Promising Strain and turned evil. I believe they're recolors of existing mobs, and they actually look pretty good. They seem to be worth a lot less exp than normal though (I was getting 16 exp for Dying minions in this mission, but 51 for Arachnos minions in the previous mission; though Arachnos have a slight exp bonus). Is it possible this custom group is missing the lieutenant and/or boss tier mobs?

I find Dr. Symons; this time she's a hostage and she runs off right after I defeat her guards. This felt a little wrong; aren't I supposed to be arresting her for creating this mess? She did give me the "M4.1 Symons found" clue, which basically said to go look for more clues.


You again? And again.... and again...

I now have a triggered objective of "Find the 'Promising Strain'"; I'm not sure why this needs to be a triggered objective, since the contact already told me to do this during the briefing. Fortunately it's relatively nearby; clicking it gives me "M4.2 Strain Found?" which suggests I should take them to Symons. Since I'm depicted as taking the cannisters, I think the glowy should be removed after being collected (currently the cannisters graphic stays after clicking).

I have trouble finding Symons (she spawned under a catwalk in a place I thought I had previously checked) and ended up clearing the rest of the map before backtracking and searching the earlier parts of the mission again. When I find her, she says:

[NPC] Dr. Symons again: Hm. Defintely a variant of the original strai.n.

"strai.n" should be "strain". Rescuing Dr. Symons again gives me "M4.3 What is this?" as a clue, which suggests that she's being framed. She wants me to find out what "her plan" is supposed to be. I now have an objective of "Find the 'delievery system'". "delievery" should be "delivery".

I pretty quickly find "The 'Delivery System'" which is a pile of dynamite. It seems kind of unwise to hit a barrel of dynamite with a big hammer.


This doesn't seem like a good idea.

But no other action presents itself, so I go ahead and try it. Destroying it gives me the "M4.4 Explosives?" clue. In this clue "crack open open those" should be "crack open those". More overuse of ellipses (...) in this clue.

I have to search for Symons and free her again, giving me the "M4.5 The victim" clue and yet another triggered objective, to "Find a body". "spinal chord" should be "spinal cord" in the clue. I don't understand the significance of "people who have been psychically assaulted for prolonged periods"; this chemical doesn't do that, as far as I know? Why do I have to find this particular victim? All of the "Dying" mobs are victims of this chemical, aren't they?

I search the whole mission again (frustrating!) before I find "The Victim", a glowy body bag. This gives me "M4.6 The dead man's symptoms" as a clue, which basically repeats what Symons said in "M4.5" about symptoms and psychic attack, though I still don't understand why we suspect psychic attack at this point.

Yet again I have to "Find Symons". Yet again I have to search the whole mission (still frustrating!) before finding her again. She tells me:

[NPC] Dr. Louise Symons: Did you seriously think I it was me? Do I seem irrational enough to slaughter indiscriminately?

"think I it was me" should probably be "think it was me". Considering the usual behavior of Vahzilok, yes, I do think she would slaughter people. Though oddly this time "Dr. Louise Symons" has become a boss ally and she's in a villain group called "Dr. Symons" instead of "Vahzilok". Shouldn't she still be Vahzilok? She gives me the "M4.7 The Carrier" clue, explaining she needs to show me something.

I now have an objective to "Find the transport coffin"? But a coffin was never mentioned in the M4.7 clue, so not sure why this is now my objective. Either M4.7 should mention it, or this objective should be something like "Find what Symons is talking about" or maybe "Learn the Truth".

Another search of the whole mission. Finally I backtrack to the very first room and find the coffin there. Clicking the coffin, the progress bar is completely blank (should have some text there like "Opening coffin"). This gives me the "M4.8 Who else is here?" clue; this is actually a pretty neat clue. Though I have to question Symons saying "the one thing I cannot abide is my work being used to kill." But she says she's collaborating with Dr. Vahzilok, who butchers people wholesale! Seems inconsistent. Clicking the coffin also triggers yet another objective, "Find and stop the Carrier".

Yet another search of the mission map has me finally finding "Carrier", an elite boss in a faction called "Carrier". I kinda think he should be named "The Carrier" (or perhaps "Cortex" considering his background info) and belong to either "Dying" or "Vahzilok". Carrier's dialog also overuses ellipses, but it sorta makes sense for his speech pattern. I'm a little surprised at the reveal of who the Carrier is; I thought it would be someone from earlier in the arc (McManus, maybe, or an improved Heatwave).

Defeating him finishes the mission, and I get both "M4.9 The Carrier Defeated" (too many ellipses) and "M4.10 Greasing the Wheels" at the same time. I was thinking maybe these clues should be merged together (since the way it's set up, I think you'll always get them at the same time), but they're about different things, so maybe that isn't necessary. M4.10 seems to suggest this is all a publicity stunt in order to make me look good for taking down this threat.

While the sequenced objectives in this mission were interesting for the first few links, I felt like 9 objectives daisy-chained together was way too many; although it was thankfully a small map and sometimes I'd get lucky on having the next objective spawn nearby, even so I had to search the entire map over and over again; I didn't time it, but it felt like the mission took an hour, mostly hunting glowies. This got pretty frustrating near the end of the sequence. I'd really recommend cutting a couple of the less essential links to make the whole sequence a little shorter, and trying to place the objectives so that the player is more likely to encounter them in order and less likely to have to backtrack a lot.

Debriefing: seems decent. The contact notes that Symons escaped, but doesn't seem too concerned. He has a line reinforcing the idea that this is all a publicity stunt.

Mission 5
Briefing: Somewhat longwinded, but ultimately the contact wants me to blindly agree to doing something evil "for the good of the country", without actually telling me what it is he wants me to do. I don't think there's enough reason to actually agree to do whatever he's telling me to do, though; he's already strongly established as someone who can't be trusted. He suggests I could back out at this point, and it is tempting, but it would require quitting the story arc. So I agree just to see what will happen.

The mission accept message of "Accept" is a little plain, I suggest you reword it to be more like dialog, something like "Count me in."

Send-off message: the contact explains what he wants done; the "sanitization" of someplace called Heatherford Home.

Inside the mission: defeat all in an orphanage? Hmm, OK. I was warned it wouldn't be nice.

Mission objectives: I understand "3 Bombs to set" and "No survivors" but what's "Assist McClain"? No one named McClain was mentioned in the contact's briefing.

In Staff Member's bio, it says "Staff members at the Heatherford Home Orphanage have been trained to combat military and metahuman opposition." What kind of orphanage gives its staff combat training? "they appear to be expecting and were preparing for this attack" is awkwardly phrased.

I pretty quickly find Beth McClain, who is in a group called "Beth McClain"; should be in something like "CIA" or "OSI" or even "Sanitation Team". For some reason the HH Staff members are cheering her; that doesn't make sense, she's there to kill them. McClain takes off after I rescue her from the orphanage staff.

I found and fought some "Orphan" custom characters. They were in a "Heatherford Home" faction (but the staff was in "HH Staff"; is there a reason they're in different groups?) and had the default Minion description. They were also not worth any exp, but this may be deliberate. The Orphans usually tried to run away, which was a nice touch. I ruthlessly smashed them.


How can you kill women and children? You just lead them a little less.

Found the various bombs, which were glowies labeled "Bombs to set"; each one is just one bomb, though, so they should probably be labeled just "Bomb". I have some trouble finding the last bomb but eventually arm it, which completes the mission.

Debriefing: the contact congratulates me and welcomes me to the Agency, promising to "expunge" my past from my official records. This seemed a little anticlimactic?

Souvenir: a nice summary of the arc. "legitmacy" should be "legitimacy".

Overall
It's an interesting story of a villain attempting to become rehabilitated into being a "good guy", and taking an unusual path. Perhaps inspired in part by "Going Rogue". I like how "the long road back" was not as easy as one might expect. I liked how the earlier missions seemed fairly heroic, but then the agency gradually gets you involved in some fairly shady things, until the final kick-the-dog mission at the end. I liked that a lot of minor characters were introduced and used briefly, that added some nice color. Also, a good job on using a lot of clues to try to explain the action.

Things I had problems with: the gameplay was quite frustrating, with two Defeat All missions and one mission with a sequence of 9 triggered objectives that ended up effectively requiring me to defeat all the mobs anyway, plus making me search the mission map over and over again. The fact that many mobs were low or zero exp/infl was rather unhappy; this wouldn't normally be a big deal for me, but with (effectively) 3 Defeat Alls and an arc geared for level 10-20 (when people will want to be gaining exp), having so many mobs be low/zero exp seems like more of a drag.

The missions did not seem very strongly connected with each other; there wasn't really a plotline linking them together (except perhaps "do errands to prove yourself to the CIA") and I didn't get a sense of cause-and-effect from doing each one. This was somewhat mitigated by the recurring appearances of Dr. Symons and Heatwave, though I still think it is very odd that Symons would be against killing people when she's happy to work with Dr. Vahzilok and to make various zombies. I would've liked more connections between the various missions; I kept thinking McManus would make another appearance (as the big bad guy in mission 4, or maybe his origin was being erased in mission 5) or that the info about OSI (that I got from Sandoval in mission 3) would become important somehow, but these things never happened. As a result, it felt like there were a lot of dangling plot threads that were never resolved.

I'm really rather puzzled at some of the missions OSI sent me on; what interest could the CIA possibly have in the low level Outcasts gang? Why destroy a random orphanage in Nebraska? I understand that the arc is deliberately leaving the CIA's motivation somewhat obscured here, but some hints as to why they are doing these actions would help make them seem less random. The mission to break up the Brazil/Rogue Isles treaty seemed the mission that was most like a CIA op. Possibly the others could be reasonable CIA ops if there were some motivation. As currently presented, some missions felt like I'm just doing them because the contact told me to, and there's no feeling that my actions are actually contributing to some goal (whether national security or the contact's personal agenda).

The things I would most suggest addressing are: improving gameplay (try to change Defeat Alls into a quicker objective if reasonably feasible; shorten the sequence of triggered objectives; improve exp of custom groups) and adding some hints as to why the CIA is sending you to do some of these things and/or changing missions to be more thematic for the CIA (e.g., more operations in exotic foreign locations).

Anyway, with all that in mind, I felt I could only give this 2 stars. Sorry about that!

--

My queue is currently:

StratoNexus - The Better Part of Valor #349298
TigerKnight - Real Afterlife #354483
FredrikSvanberg - The Tangled Weave #338575
Venture - The Christmas We Get #356477
Tenzen - The Hidden Agenda #356334
FredrikSvanberg - A Taste For Evil #349034
Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 01 #47143
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Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 02 #11728

Thanks for the review! It helped motivate me to make a few tweaks.

1. Gave Willy Wheeler a description. (It drives me crazy that using a standard contact doesn't inherit their standard description.)

2. Gave each mission briefing a caption in slightly larger type.

3. Changed the mission 1 debriefing and mission 2 briefing to refer to "Paris's family" instead of the "reality TV show executives" as being the people paying the ransom. (I think you're right, this IS the more logical target for ransom demands.)

4. Added some individual description to each Paparazzi character.

I kinda like the pacing overall, so not sure I will do much about your comments on that; except maybe for mission 2, perhaps that could use more of interest. Admittedly most of the action is in missions 1 and 3. I considered putting an ambush on the ransom money in mission 2 (of either paparazzi or police), but wasn't sure if it would be worthwhile since you can just exit? What do you think?

Thanks again.

More changes:

* Changed souvenir text to drop the leading "The" from the arc name, to match the earlier change in the arc name.
* I decided the Bhagavad Gita quotes were a little too ostentatious in the mission entry popup dialogs. I moved the quotations to be captions on the mission briefings, which matches the more commonly accepted practice for Significant Quotations used in story arcs.
* Wrote a new mission entry popup for each mission, describing environmental conditions instead (also matching the more commonly accepted practice).
* Some rephrasing of mission 1 briefing to let it still fit on a single page, even with the addition of two lines of caption.
* Rewrote Dr. Teller's dialog in mission 2 to be more "normal" (removing the strong accent). After pondering it some, I think Jail.Bird is right, the outrageous accent makes his dialog too cartoony.

Task Force Mutternacht review
Arc ID: 349522
Keywords: Challenging, Non-Canon, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 30-40 (mostly)
Warnings: AVs, custom power selections

The premise is to help Indigo gather some sort of evidence. I played a 39 archery/dev blaster on +0 x0 difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: very nice introduction text. The contact wants my help against the Malta.

Send-off message: "Ordinance" should be "Ordnance" (not the same thing at all). I like the descriptive text that brackets the contact's dialog, nicely evocative.

Inside the mission: I almost immediately find Mr. Inquiry, a hero being held captive by the Malta. He doesn't seem to be on my objective list but he looks interesting, so I rescue him. Freeing him actually does satisfy one of the objectives. He has some cool Ditko-esque objectivist dialog.

[NPC] Mr. Inquiry: Unthinking automatons, blindly trusting in your orders. Trust only in truth, as I do.

"automatons" should probably be "automata" here. He also says something about "making an exception for Kyle" ... not sure who that is. Possibly foreshadowing. I like his line for when he gets injured too. He's surprisingly helpful against the Malta, especially when one of them hits me with one of those 60 second stun grenades. I'm a bit worried for his life expectancy, though; this type of character usually gets betrayed by less idealistic characters in this kind of story. I like the double meaning with the "Inquiry and Discovery" mission caption, also.

A little deeper in I discover Officer Kyle, who is in the process of selling heroes out to the Malta. One of the Malta says:

[NPC] Tactical Operative: I shoulda had my head examined for listening to you, lunatic. You've lead Arrow Girl to our base!

"lead" should be "led" here.

I have an objective to take the Longbow Informant into custody, so I think I'm supposed to walk him out, but he instantly betrays and Inquiry and I have to take him down. He has some really fun crazy-conspiracy-dialog as he goes down.


Okay, let's all back away from the crazy person...and fill him full of arrows

[NPC] Officer Kyle: See? You can't help but cave into your base need for destruction.

"into" should be "in to" here.

Gathering the 6 Crates is rather dull compared to encountering Mr. Inquiry and Officer Kyle. None of them have any clues attached; clicking the 6th completes the mission though. Consider reducing the number of crates? Not sure it adds much to the gameplay to have 6 glowies instead of 3 or 4.

Mission exit popup: "Longbow agents take him from you into custody" sounds awkward; I suggest simplifying to "Longbow agents take him into custody".

Running from a snowball-wielding player made me miss the debriefing - the little bit that I saw before the window closed looked nice though.

Mission 2
Briefing: "unconscienible" should be "unconscionable". The contact basically warns that she'll be asking me to do some really dirty work. I like that the dialog portrays me as a little uneasy with this.

Send-off message: She reveals she wants me to raid a police evidence storehouse, and that I can bribe someone to get in. Sounds interesting.

At the start of the mission I get the "Plausible Deniability" clue, which is really pretty neat: a cover identity and a false costume. Not exactly heroic but perfect for the sort of thing Indigo does. I like the symbolism of the "Dystheist" codename. So basically I'm now a villain -- err, undercover, posing as a villain. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Not quite sure how this would work for a team doing this (since this is a "Task Force").

Inside the mission: a bunch of dialog from the Warehouse Manager immediately fires off, even though I'm nowhere near him. Presumably some rogue enemies attacked his group or something. His dialog is pretty funny though.

"Rescuing" the Warehouse Manager gives me the "What Your Money Buys" clue, presumably the result of bribing him. I like the message that appears in my spam message box,

Passing a thick wad of bills into the warehouse manager's greasy hands does the job just fine

I make friends with a Freakshow boss that I rescue from a cop, and he offers to help me out. Having him fight cops makes sense, but it's kind of weird that he also fights the other Freaks that are here, though. A bit later I notice the "Rumbleneck. I mean, Rum613n3ck" clue which helps explain why he's willing to fight Freaks; still struck me as a little odd though.

There's a massive number of false glowies to check, though this kinda makes sense based on this being an evidence warehouse.

After clearing out most of the map I finally find the real glowy, giving me the "Item WP-108606" clue. A bit disappointing that I can't get it open; what if I had superstrength or gravity control powers to crush it or something? Or, in my case, a can opener arrow, or something similar.

This triggers the "Defeat the Vil-- uh -- HERO and escape!" objective, which has a great name but I'm not sure why I need to do it - the clue from the safe didn't mention this hero, and this being technically a covert op (pay no attention to the Freak Tank following me around smashing things...), wouldn't it be better if I just snuck away?


Are YOU talking to ME? (twang!)

I find Blast Furnace and beat him up, but it doesn't satisfy "Defeat the Vil-- uh -- HERO". Searching around, I find a stray Longbow Flamethrower; killing her completes the mission. You might consider making Blast Furnace "only boss required".

Debriefing: nicely written, but doesn't refer to Item WP-108606 at all. Would've been nice to know what that was all about; or if that isn't possible, at least there should be some text saying that I left the item at a dead drop or something. Part of the debriefing is actually more like a briefing for the next mission.

Mission 3
Briefing: Wow, Indigo explains what was in the package. I didn't drop it off at all - apparently I'm taking it to the Rogue Isles! I actually really like the setup of this mission, and the swap of the evidence for another item of interest. It reminds me of a Le Carre novel. I wish I had played Spy Girl for this arc. But, Spy Girl actually is a villain (well ... "hero undercover as a villain") and consequently wouldn't have the same level of angst over...whatever awful thing I'm supposed to eventually do.

Send-off message: "Dysthetist" should be "Dystheist".

I find Phipps almost immediately. One of his guards says:

[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: We appreciare that you've come along so peacefully, Mr Phipps. Maybe this is just a clerical error.

"appreciare" should be "appreciate", "Mr Phipps" should be "Mr. Phipps". I really like Phipps's lines here, the alliteration is just too much. Having him whip out an assault rifle and go to town is quite fun too.

A random patrol says:

[NPC] Longbow Minigun: I dunno, that hero wouldn't tell us. Said we couldn't be trusted

...should have a period at the end.

Found and rescued Giga Watts, a villain ally, and we cleared to the end room where I opened the safe and got the microfilm, giving me "The Film Canister" clue. Blast Furnace spawns right on top of our heads, though, so we immediately have to fight him off (again, had to defeat a stray longbow after defeating the main hero to complete the objective). Westin Phipps's dialog in "The Film Canister" is really good, though it might not make sense if Phipps gets killed by something before I get to this objective.

Beating Blast Furnace gives me the "After the Battle" objective, which helps motivate the "Find the Strike Team's Leader" objective. "Furnance" should be "Furnace" in this clue.

Ah, yes. Of course the Strike Team leader is Mr. Inquiry. I love his dialog.


I wish I could deliver dialog like this.

I feel guilty for having to beat him up (I actually prefer his philosophy to Indigo's). He spawned as a mere lieutenant for me (though I'm on low difficulty) so was pretty easy.

In a perfect triple cross moment, after Inquiry goes down, Phipps turns against us too. He's a bit tougher (being a boss) but Giga Watts is still on my side and we beat him up. Inquiry was totally right when he called Phipps "a repugnant worm".


Don't tell me how to play my character.

After Phipps goes down I eye Giga Watts in case he gets any funny ideas. He wisely decides not to betray me.

Mission popup does a good job of explaining why I didn't actually arrest Phipps. I still got to beat him up, though, which is somewhat satisfying.

Debriefing: nicely written. I like how Indigo says Inquiry "fails to recognize the nuanced distinctions between good and evil"...heheh. I am a little surprised that my character is portrayed as burning the film without question. "Indigo wouldn't ask if it wasn't important" I guess is my justification.

Ahh, reviewing my clue journal I find "Weston's Film - First Glance" in my clue journal. "Weston" should be "Westin" or "Phipps" here. It gives me some tantalizingly vague clues as to what is actually on the film. Kinda wish the script let me get a better look, but the way it's portrayed kinda makes sense, I guess.

Mission 4
Briefing: Mr. Inquiry is getting too close to learning the truth and so now the contact wants me to frame him as a double agent. This seems pretty dirty. I like that the mission accept message and the mission title both recognize this.

Send-off message gives some justification for why Indigo thinks I should do this, but I'm still kind of on "no, this wouldn't be right". Oh well, into the mission!

I got the "Rendezvous Point - Brickstown" clue for starting the mission; the name for this clue doesn't seem very descriptive, consider renaming it. The text in this clue is nicely detailed, but I wonder if some of it shouldn't actually be part of the mission briefing? (For example the fact that you need to talk to Vitale.)

A patrol says:

[NPC] Longbow Rifleman: Another day, another council base to trash. I wish that hero would tell us why we're doing this.
[NPC] Longbow Minigun: You know he told Ms. Liberty that she's 'the product of a corrupt legacy?' To her face. He's crazy.

This dialog is great. "council" should be "Council" though (note capitalization).

While fighting some Longbow, a group of friendly Council comes to my aid .. that strikes me as odd? Perhaps they're flagged as friendly because I'm posing as a villain.

After exhaustive searching of the Council base, I find both mainframes and all 6 security servers, which triggers a Longbow ambush that I fight off. I still can't find Jackson though.

Finally I find Archon Vitale near the front of the mission. Not sure how I could've missed him there; could he have been a triggered objective? I've had "Verify Jackson's Location" as an objective since the mission began, though, so maybe I just didn't see him. Rescuing Vitale gives me the "Vitale's Editorial" clue and the "Grab Jackson for Indigo" objective.

Near the back of the mission I find Jackson. I assume Jackson's dialog is meant to be accented or something. However, one of his guards says:

[NPC] Longbow Eagle: Hah! Mr. Inquiry said you'd try to intervere, Dystheist. But we're ready for you.

"intervere" should be "intervene".

I now have to lead Jackson out of the base. I like the "Nothing Goes This Easy" objective that has been triggered. Some hero I have to fight past, I'm sure.

I'm able to lead Jackson all the way to the door without encountering the "Nothing Goes This Easy" objective. Backtracking a little, though, I find Mr. Inquiry again. Great dialog from him. He finally deduces who I really am. He calls me a villain; based on what I've had to do, this is probably fair. Nicely handled encounter. With my cover blown, though, it seems like this ruins everything ... unless the frame job sticks, I guess.

I just had a terrible thought: the logical thing for Indigo to do at this point is to deny she's working with me. That's how the game is played. We'll see what happens though.

At the end of the mission I get "Jackson's Testimony". In the text here it says "you bring up the film" which momentarily threw me for a loop since I had destroyed it; but perhaps the wording just confused me, and this should be "you ask Jackson about the film".

Debriefing: Indigo does indeed know how the game is played. Very nice description here. All the loose ends are neatly tied up ... except possibly for me.

Mission 5
Briefing: All is explained. Wow, the reveal of who is really on this film is pretty explosive. Vitale's disdain for the "hillbilly group" that Jackson was recruited from makes total sense now. I'm a little uneasy at having MJ portrayed this way (I use her as a hero in another story arc), but it had to be someone big name for sake of the story, so this works.

Send-off message: I don't think MJ can actually fly (nitpicky). I wanted to say that 1951 was way too recent for this type of hate crime, but after doing some research, this sort of thing actually did still happen back then (how shameful...). Both Indigo and Inquiry have good motivation for their actions here.

Map selection: I don't get how we got from Founder's Falls to Atlas Park. This doesn't make sense until I read the "mission begins" clue, "Indigo's Plea".

Mission begins clue: "crumbled by the window" should be "crumpled by the window". "Its no mystery" should be "It's no mystery". This is a pretty good argument for why we need to stop Inquiry and cover up the truth. I'm not sure I actually buy into it (my personal politics are closer to Inquiry's), but it's a good argument. Involving Sister Psyche in this transmission seems a needless complication, though; wouldn't it be better (and more believable) to just televise the film clip rather than have her psychic-beam it out? If the idea is that people won't trust heroes, they wouldn't necessarily trust something Sister Psyche beamed out telepathically. Plus, Sister Psyche would've probably been friends with the person in the film, so might not be willing to do this.

I destroyed some generators, then fought and defeated Mr. Inquiry, though strangely this does not satisfy the "Stop Mr. Inquiry" objective. I have to clear two (seemingly unrelated) Longbow minions before this objective is completed.

In his dialog:

[NPC] Mr. Inquiry: You fraud! You dare follow me here?! This is a place of justice and truth! You presence defiles it!

"You presence" should be "Your presence".

Inquiry's very last line before he goes down is:

[NPC] Mr. Inquiry: Hahaha...I see now. Virtue is a joke. Truth is a quagmire. hehe.. Truth is evil. Good is negotiable.

Defeating all of Inquiry's group finally gives me "The Inquiry - Silenced" as a clue. This clue needs a period at the end of it. I think I would've preferred he go down uncompromising in his beliefs, as that seems truer to his character; but it seems that breaking Mr Inquiry's spirit is among the evil acts I'm perpetrating here.

I now have "Defeat Ms. Liberty" among my objectives, but I am not sure why; I have the film, Inquiry has been stopped, why do I need to fight Ms. Liberty? Needs some motivation.

I find and fight Ms Liberty with some trepidation; she spawns as a +0 EB for me. I've tested using her in story arcs before, and she's pretty nasty. I lay a few trip mines then try to kite her, but she pretty easily defeats me on my first try.

Second try, I decide to break out the allies I spotted, the villains Burning Daemon and Silent Blade. They're in a faction called "Last Chance Allies" (not sure if that was intentional; probably is, I decide). They are only +0 lieutenants, but I need all the help I can get.


I've got you this time! (shortly before Ms Lib wipes the floor with us both)

I fight Ms Lib and over a long fight (I think she dull pain'd twice and unstoppable'd (not sure? some high tier defensive power) 3 times) she kills both my allies, I pop an Amy who ABs and heals me, but it isn't enough. I get Ms Lib down to about 5% but she kills me.

Third try, I grab a bunch of Lucks from the inspiration vendor and zerg Ms Liberty before she can regen to full. She's regen'd to about 20% by the time I get back in the mission, and dull pains again, because she can. I kite her for another ~5 minutes eating lucks 2 or 3 at a time; it looks questionable whether I can outpace her self-regen but I eventually catch her while her dull pain/unstoppable are down, and manage to drop her to 0, which completes the mission.

I'm kind of surprised that Ms Liberty was here instead of Sister Psyche (who was explicitly mentioned several times). What was that all about?

Debriefing: very nice explanation. I like the shout out to Crimson and why Indigo couldn't ask him to help.

Souvenir: very cool writing in the souvenir.

Overall
I thought this was a really good story with a very interesting plot. The story did a good job of setting up a "spy thriller" ambience. Great characterization of Indigo, Mr Inquiry (an obvious Question expy, but still quite liked him), Westin Phipps and even the Warehouse Manager. There were numerous nice little clues and bits of foreshadowing. I also liked the use of various minor heroes, villains and other characters.

Things I had problems with: the final fight with Ms Liberty at the end seemed unnecessary and lacked motivation (why can't I just leave after defeating Mr Inquiry and taking the microfilm?) and much, much too hard compared to everything else in the story arc. On the other hand, Mr Inquiry seemed a bit too easy (he was always a lieutenant for me, but I was admittedly at the minimum difficulty). There was an excessive amount of backtracking required for mission 4 (though some of this was probably self-inflicted as I think I missed Vitale early on, at the very front of the mission).

I think mission 4 could use a little more explanation for why the player needs to do this evil deed. Mission 5 has a good explanation; I'm not sure I fully buy it, but it's a much better argument.

After posing as a villain, defaming Mr Inquiry, crushing his spirit and beating up Ms Liberty, I kinda feel like I should just turn in my hero ID card now and apply for the Going Rogue beta - but that is probably appropriate for a Dr Aeon Challenge arc.

I'm still a bit uneasy at the reveal of the secret on the microfilm, but it needed to be something at least that shocking for the sake of the story.

My major problems I think are the lack of motivation and the difficulty of the Ms Liberty fight, and maybe needing some more coaxing in the mission 4 briefing for why it's necessary to frame another hero.

Despite these misgivings, I thought it was quite a good story and I gave it 5 stars.


--

My queue is currently:

Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454
StratoNexus - The Better Part of Valor #349298
TigerKnight - Real Afterlife #354483
FredrikSvanberg - The Tangled Weave #338575
Venture - The Christmas We Get #356477
Tenzen - The Hidden Agenda #356334
FredrikSvanberg - A Taste For Evil #349034
Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 01 #47143

Changes

Changed story title to "Destroyer of Worlds" (was "The Destroyer of Worlds") .... been waffling over this, think I've decided that the title sounds better without "The" at the start.

Clan Destiny review
Arc ID: 349053
Keywords: Custom Characters
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 30-54
Warnings: EBs

The premise is to stop some sort of catastrophe that has been prophesied by someone mysterious. The description is actually pretty vague on details; you might consider adding some more info about the story arc and its setting. Right now, I don't think the description has enough detail to actually hook a player into wanting to try it (aside from the "Dr. Aeon's Challenge", which does seem to draw people).

I played a 43 katana/willpower scrapper using SO enhancements on +0 x0 difficulty. The contact is a bearded custom character in an old-fashioned looking suit.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact basically says almost nothing about his organization and what he wants you to do, but asks me for help anyway.

Mission accept message: while the default "Accept" is OK, replacing this text with a line of dialog that you think the player would say in response generally makes it seem more interesting.

Send-off message: once I accept his mission, he's a little more forthcoming about his organization, something called "Clan Destiny", who use precognition to predict the future...then try to change it. This is somewhat paradoxical, but going to let that go for the sake of the story. "forseen" should be "foreseen" here.

Initially he wants me to get some Rikti parts, including some that have been grafted onto a Freakshow boss. "McGrimm" is an odd name for a Freakshow boss, incidentally; they normally use l33t speak to name bosses.

Mission objectives: "3 crate of Rikti components to find." should be "crates" instead of "crate" and lose the period at the end (because a comma immediately follows it, separating it from the next objective).

Found a crate and clicked it, but it doesn't give me a clue or anything; my spam box does say "You've got the component!" and the number of crates to find decremented by one. But to make this objective a little more interesting, consider adding a clue, containing some flavor text for the collection.

McGrimm's dialog is rather worrisome:

[NPC] McGrimm: This new Rikti heart has put me in the mood to PARTY! I could take on the world!

So now I'm going to repossess his heart based on the contact's say-so? Seems a bit of a stretch.

I end up attacking McGrimm to continue the mission. For reasons that I'm still unclear on, a Devouring Earth ambush shows up when he is wounded. Defeating McGrimm completes the objective but doesn't give me any clues (did I really take his *heart* here?). Clicking the 3 crates completes the mission, but still no clues.


Time for some heart surgery.

(Much later I realize McGrimm was a custom character...he was quite well done, blended nicely with the other Freaks.)

Mission exit popup: Devouring Earth stole a component? But I completed all the objectives? When did this happen?

Debriefing: seems very short.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact is also puzzled over why DE are involved in the story. I like that he admits that, as a psychic, he's not used to being surprised like this. He wants me to track the "components" (such a generic sounding MacGuffin ... needs a snazzier name, IMHO) but isn't sure how (psychic ability not helping here I guess). He suggests a scientist that has some kind of pseudoscience way to track "the power source you removed from McGrimm"; but is this really helpful? If I removed it from McGrimm, I should still have it, right? Or is the implication that the DE stole it right after I removed it from McGrimm (if this is what the story is getting at, it needs to be made clearer).

But then after all this explanation he has something else that he wants help with (but he won't say what it is...why would I volunteer to help without knowing what he wants?).

After I agree to help, at that point he mentions the scientist has been kidnapped by Rikti. Well of course I'll help with that! I thought he was going to ask me to bring him more people's hearts or something. Maybe he should explain Summerhill was captured by Rikti in the first part of the briefing, it makes it much easier for the player to agree to help.

Inside the mission, I quickly locate Dr. Summerhill and rescue her from the Rikti. I like her description. As I rescue her, she tells me:


[NPC] Dr. Delia Summerhill: Before we leave, we need to get the Rikti Generator Codes! Look for a computer terminal...

This is fine, but I'd suggest also putting this info in a clue that is received for rescuing her, in case some team members weren't close enough to see her dialog.

Finding the computer and stealing the codes gives me the "Rikti Generator Codes" clue. Curiously, this clue has me wondering why Dr. Summerhill wanted them; actually, I think it's pretty reasonable to want to steal intel from the Rikti. So I'm not sure why I would question this.

As I get Summerhill out, she mentions something about an alliance, which the mission exit popup reinforces as being suspicious sounding to my character.

Debriefing: an interesting reveal as to what Clan Destiny's real goals are. "forsee" should be "foresee". I think it totally makes sense that there would be an organization interested in doing what the contact proposes here, but based on this info, it does not seem like a hero would continue helping them. In fact, more than likely I should turn them in as traitors.

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact admits that what they are doing is treason, and that he lied to me earlier and that he actually betrayed what I was doing to the DE who he acted surprised about in mission 1. Why should I continue working for him after finding all this out? Ahh, OK, he explains I should help him because if I don't, the DE will detonate a city busting bomb that will destroy Paragon City. So, it's blackmail. Also, "forseen" should be "foreseen".

Send-off message: the contact explains that I am to steal a crystal that they're going to use as a power source for the War Walls, which will be heavily protected by Longbow because it's vital that this crystal not fall in the wrong hands.

Going to go along with the story and see where it goes, though.

Interesting breakdown of the situation in the "Your Conscience" clue. It seems like the story expects me to either follow through with stealing this crystal, to prevent the DE from setting off the bomb, or else let the Longbow destroy the crystal. But actually, wouldn't it be more reasonable for me to arrest the contact right away, and interrogate him for the bomb's location? After all, he is right here and has admitted he knows where the bomb is.

Mission objectives: among my objectives is "Find the Destiny Illusionist", but I'm not sure why I need to do this (she was not mentioned in the briefing). When I do rescue her, she says:


[NPC] Destiny Illusionist: I've been sent to help you!
[NPC] Destiny Illusionist: Don't worry, I will keep your true appearance masked so they'll never know it was you.

....which is a nice touch that might make some players feel better about doing this criminal act. I guess Destiny Illusionist must do this sort of thing a lot!

When I get close to the crystal, the guards say:

[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: Security has been breached! Destroy the crystal!
[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: We have our orders - we can't let that crystal fall into the wrong hands!
[NPC] Alien Crystal: There they are - stop them!
[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: Who are these clowns?

The Alien Crystal has dialog? That seems weird.

I decide to let them destroy the crystal and see what happens. I figure it's the most heroic choice of the options I'm being given. The mission fails as a result.

Debriefing: The contact tells me the crystal was a fake and other agents stole the "real" crystal. Well, I guess I'm glad I didn't get blackmailed into stealing a fake crystal. But if this is the story, why did they need me to undertake mission 3 at all? OK, he says it was a "distraction", but wouldn't Destiny Illusionist have been able to do this distraction on her own? (After all, she created was able to cover me with an illusion - why even have me there? She could just do the illusion sans me.) Blackmailing me into helping seems a needless complication. (Perhaps this makes more sense on the "Success" branch of the story.)

Mission 4
Briefing: So now the contact wants to send me to stop the Devouring Earth bomb.

Mission title: the title is "Destroy the Rikti Bomb!" but according to the story so far, this bomb was constructed by the Devouring Earth (albeit with some Rikti components)? Seems inconsistent.

It's cool that the contact is trying to set up this timed mission to give him a chance to get away. Though after he gives me the address of the Rikti bomb, couldn't I arrest him up right then and there (since I'm right there with him) before going to disarm the bomb?


You do realize this bomb will probably blow YOU up, too, right?

I run into the office, find my way to the caves and destroy the bomb. This completes the mission and gives me the "Crude Map" clue. I'm not quite sure how I got this from the bomb (it doesn't have pockets?) but it seems to be a lead to another location of interest.

Debriefing: "forsaw" should be "foresaw". Pretty neat debriefing though. The "recording" of the contact tells me they plan to send false evidence to the police blaming everything on me.

Mission 5
Briefing: So I'm following the crude map to where I think Clan Destiny is hiding out. It seems rather far-fetched that Clan Destiny would mark their secret hideout on the map they gave to the Devouring Earth, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Mission title: this 3-part mission title "Destroy the device, find the evidence, defeat the Clan leader!" seems more like a laundry list of objectives. I'd suggest simplifying it into a single phrase, like "Stop Clan Destiny", then let the objectives list what needs to be done.

Mission objectives: "Find the evidence!" and "Defeat Amun!" should probably not have a trailing "!" as there is a comma right after them, making the punctuation look weird. Also, how do we know that we need to Defeat Amun? Presumably he's the Clan Destiny leader, but his name has only appeared as "A-M-U-N" on the map and no one has told me it's the leader. Should maybe be "Defeat Clan Leader?"

The mission is full of custom characters, members of Clan Destiny. They aren't bad looking custom characters. The Initiates use web grenade a lot, which is kind of annoying; I bet it would be really annoying on a large team.

I found a wall safe named "evidence2"; this should perhaps be called "Safe". Clicking it doesn't seem to do anything; though my spam box has a message saying that there's nothing in there.

Found and fought Amun, who spawned as a grav control custom boss; he summons a Singularity and starts using grav control powers on me, but I manage to beat him up.


I've got your destiny right here, buddy.

Probably a rough fight for a squishy, but fine for the end of an arc IMHO. His background info reveals he's not the boss, but instead, he's a lackey of Solomon (who has escaped already, it seems). I had actually thought Amun might be Solomon himself (since their names sound alike). It looks like Amun should really have more story info about him, being apparently an immortal Egyptian warrior serving Clan Destiny.

Finally found a wall safe named "evidence" (should also be called "Safe" or maybe "Safe ") that counted as "Find the evidence!" Would be nice to award a clue explaining what was actually found.

OK, found the device and it's a "Rikti Disabler Device", the thing Clan Destiny wanted to use to blackmail the Rikti. I don't understand why my objective is to "Destroy the Clan's device". This seems like something I'd want to keep to help in the Rikti war. Examining the device, it does say "You'd never get it out of here before Clan Destiny would" .... but this doesn't quite make sense; I've been beating up Clan Destiny goons so far, including Amun (presumably the best they had to offer). Why couldn't I simply stay here and guard the device until reinforcements arrive?

The mission structure requires me to destroy it in order to complete the mission, though, so I go ahead and do so.

Debriefing: pretty well-written. Although I'm not thrilled about Solomon being scripted to get away, the frustration in his recorded message is nicely portrayed, as is his evil monologue.

Souvenir: not bad, but not super-exciting either. I might suggest including a recap of the story, and maybe picking a more meaningful souvenir - perhaps the crude map, or Solomon's threatening recording.

Overall
The writing style in the briefings and debriefings was pretty good. The premise of Clan Destiny and their opinion of how to handle the Rikti is neat, and the custom characters looks pretty good (we didn't see much of them until the end, but I think that actually works pretty well).

I found several things hard to believe, though. First was extracting McGrimm's heart in the first mission; this seems like a very dark thing for a hero to do, but was handled very casually, which rang false to me. (Maybe make the Rikti component attached to some less vital a part of McGrimm's body; or else add some more writing that directly addresses the fact that the hero is basically killing this guy to get the item.) (Possibly it was your intention that McGrimm can survive without this Rikti component; after all, he was fine before he attached it to his heart. If this is the case, that needs to be made more clear.)

I didn't quite get how the Devouring Earth managed to steal a component during that mission, either, when according to the mission objectives, I recovered them all. (I think that could be made believable, it just needs to be made clearer how it happens.)

After Solomon's real colors are revealed, I don't see why the player couldn't just arrest him then and there. Yes, he claims there is a bomb that will go off if we don't do what he says; why couldn't I beat him up until he gives up where the bomb is located? Or if I don't want to risk it then, why not arrest him after he reveals the bomb location at the start of mission 4? Needs further explanation, I think. I don't think what is currently presented is enough to force the player to take the actions that the story depicts.

I don't think it made sense to destroy the Rikti Disabler Device at the end, either; that seems like something a hero would really want to capture and turn over to Vanguard. I didn't buy the explanation that I can't let it fall in Clan Destiny's hands; I mean, they started with it, plus I'm clearly shutting down their operation in mission 5, so they shouldn't be able to stop me from keeping the device.

I was miffed that Solomon is scripted to escape at the very end, but this is mitigated somewhat by the good final debriefing and the fact that we basically ruin Clan Destiny's plans in the final mission.

Also I don't quite get why the Rikti kidnapped Summerhill in mission 2, if they have an "alliance". Wouldn't Clan Destiny ordering me to break Summerhill out of the Rikti base in mission 2 (presumably over the bodies of many Rikti) mess up their alliance plans?

I would've generally liked a few more clues attached to the various actions that occur during the missions; especially the plot-relevant actions, which I thought could use some more info attached to them.

I like the writing style and the basic idea of Clan Destiny, but my major problem is that I don't think a hero would believably go along with several of the things that occur here. With all that in mind, I gave the story 3 stars. I hope you think that's fair.

--

My queue is currently:

twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454
StratoNexus - The Better Part of Valor #349298
TigerKnight - Real Afterlife #354483
FredrikSvanberg - The Tangled Weave #338575
Venture - The Christmas We Get #356477
Tenzen - The Hidden Agenda #356334
FredrikSvanberg - A Taste For Evil #349034
Mirror_Man - Galactic Protectorate 01 #47143

I recently updated my list of pet peeves, so I thought I'd repost them here:

10. Custom enemies that re-implement CoH enemies that already exist. (Do we really need ANOTHER zombie/mercenary/robot faction?)
9. Player isn't the "star" of the story and/or Badly handled Author insertion. (The player should be an important part of the plot; don't let your NPCs dominate everything and leave the player as just an observer. Also, Author insertion that "makes sense" for the story is OK.)
8. Lack of dialog/clues/description from NPCs.
7. Just not much to do during a mission (Complexity = radio mission)
6. Time wasters (Defeat All on large or annoying maps; lengthy sequences of triggered objectives on large or annoying maps; objectives set up in a way that requires excessive backtracking)
5. Continuity errors (your clue tells me X, but your debriefing tells me Not X)
4. Mission Impossible (custom mobs and/or AVs are just too darn hard)
3. Game over: You lose (even though I do everything right, the arc is scripted to make me lose)
2. Not knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing (what's my motivation for this mission again?)
1. Missions aren't connected into an overall story (an arc needs an overarching plot!)

Housecleaning!

I've unpublished Mistaken Identity; it has some fundamental flaws that I can't see any way to address, and I'd like to reclaim the arc slot so I can write something else. Thanks much for the feedback, all!

I'm seriously considering unpublishing Papers and Paychecks also; while I kinda like it, it doesn't really knock my socks off at this point. It's okay, but I wonder if I can do better; and although I like the basic premise, I don't re-play this arc much, unlike some of my other arcs which I enjoy playing over and over. So not sure I have a good reason to keep it around.


I also heavily revised the original post of this thread, as it was really obsolete (I wrote it in April, after all). I updated the ground rules (wow, I can't believe I originally thought I could do 2 reviews per day), the list of my likes/dislikes, and the list of my "active" story arcs. The motivation for this was, it seemed like more than one new poster was focused on playing/reviewing one of the two arcs I had in my original post (i.e., the first two I published), but I think my newer story arcs probably could benefit more from feedback.

Also I wanted to add a few lines of explanation regarding expectations from story arc reviews, which I'll re-iterate here for emphasis:

12/22/2009

Last Tuesday the Winter Event got started for real, and the organized villains ran a bunch of Lord of Winter events in a row. I ran the event with Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr), Mega (50 SS/will brute), Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider; using Surveillance I found that LoW has 70% resist to all, but is affected in a really weird way by resist debuffs, which seem more effective on him than against normal mobs), Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corr), Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). Made an attempt with Mayday (50 fortunata) but by this time it was getting late and a lot of villains had left, so we ended up failing the event, running out of time with Lord of Winter at 25% health.

So I switched to hero side, which was still pretty populated at that hour, and ran Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice def), Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrap) and Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrap) through the LoW event. I'm really not quite sure what I'll do with all the candy canes, but I did want to get the badges for most of my commonly played characters.

Late Tuesday night I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together), an AE story arc where you deal with these mysterious portals from the Shadow Shard popping up at random in Paragon City, and work with an interesting race of lizardfolk. This was neat, had good writing and cool characters, but I felt the plot was pretty scattered; I ended up giving it 3 stars.


Over Wed/Thu/Fri, I ran a lot of speedy TFs; Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) did a 1st villain respec (11min 14sec) and a Sharkhead SF (26min 15sec) which got her to level 30.

Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corr) did a 6-player ITF with 2 corrs (kin and cold), 1 blaster, 2 brutes, 1 tank; we corruptors died a lot (I'm learning how to use hibernation to escape death, but it's still pretty rough to be a squishy on a speed ITF) but we still got through it in 29min 30sec.

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) did a speed LGTF in 26min 45sec.

Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 25min 3sec.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice def) did a speed LGTF in 33min 56sec.


On Saturday, Blackout Girl (30 elec/elec brute) did another Sharkhead SF in 31min 51sec. I'm still not totally sold on electric armor, which seems awfully squishy; I have to eat a lot more lucks than any of the other brutes on these speed SFs. (Though, in fairness, most are exemped from 50 with lots of IO sets.) The previous incarnation of this character was elec/invuln and I'm wondering if invuln was actually better. The SR, shield and willpower defense sets are kinda spoiling me, I guess.

Strong Woman (42 invuln/SS tanker) joined a non-speed ITF where we decided we would "clear most" (i.e. anything that got in the way). This was still reasonably fast-paced, finishing in 47min 44sec and getting Strong Woman to level 43.

Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) joined a RSF (33min 6sec, got a Nucleolus), then the same team switched to blue side and I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a STF (44min 27sec, got a Centriole). The final fight of this STF was a little scary because the tanker dropped against Lord Recluse, who rushed us at the red tower. Playing a scrapper I figured it was my duty to attack him, so I tanked him for all of 4 seconds before getting flattened (soft capped DEF only takes you so far...). The tank got back in there and we were able to recover and finish the fight though.

Finally on Saturday, I finished soloing Quick Katie (33 plant/kin controller) through Buck Salinger's arc, which gave me 12 merits and unlocked her eponymous TF. Burned 20 merits on a recipe roll, getting an Aegis (+mez resist).



On Sunday, I played Kashira (31 db/ninj stalker), joining a 3 player team doing a Steel Canyon mayhem. I thought I needed the badge, but I actually had it already (had just failed to update my notes accordingly), but it was still fun tearing up Steel Canyon. When we exited the mayhem, a Lord of Winter event was about to begin, and people seemed to want to do it. Looking around the big blue present right before entering, I could see we didn't have enough people/enough debuffs to win, but I didn't really want to be seen as a quitter so we went on in and quixotically attacked Lord of Winter for 15 minutes. I think we did actually spawn all 3 Winter Guardians but LoW was at nearly 50% life when time ran out (after people started dying, LoW's regen started to outpace our DPS).

Later on Sunday night, I joined a 3-player lowbie villain team, playing Shield Maiden (a newbie 5 mace/shield brute, and I'm really glad to get this name -- someone else had it until pretty recently, I think). We did an Atlas mayhem, the Loa Bone badge mission twice (I got to make a heroic stand as the other two team members died), and the Plague Carrier mission, which got Shield Maiden to level 12 and DOs before we called it a night. I am actually liking mace a lot more than I expected to; the animations and the damage it deals have a certain satisfying "crunch" to them.


Monday night, I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on an ITF (26min 48sec) and a LGTF (28min 13sec).

Then I played Shield Maiden a bit more, duoing with the AR/cold corruptor I played with on Sunday night. He complained of being squishy; I tried to encourage him to actually use his cold powers...or to be more accurate, cold power, as he only had Infrigidate so far. Things seemed to go better after he started regularly using Infrigidate (up to that point he was just shooting stuff), so I think that must've helped. We finished Seer Marino's story arc and did a couple missions in Cap au Diable, where we picked up a lowbie VEAT that I knew. We had a couple wipeouts against lowbie Arachnos, and I kinda nagged the other two about not having ice shields/not having Tactical Training: Maneuvers, which was probably not very nice of me, but really, stacking those powers would've made us immensely more survivable. People hate taking team support powers, I guess. Nevertheless we made steady progress and got Shield Maiden to level 14 before the team broke up.

I wrote Shield Maiden a quicky background story, placing her origin as being from the War World as one of Battle Maiden's lackeys. Probably will want to write a better story for her later though.

I finished the night playing through The Consequences of War on Arrow Girl (39 archery/dev blaster). This is a war epic style AE story arc depicting brutal fighting during the Rikti invasion. It's really quite a cool arc with an impressive finale (though I had a tough time soloing some of the Rikti EBs; managed to beat them with a combination of trip mines, Lucks, and determination) but it has kind of a slow start and leaves some plotlines dangling (for a sequel), so I ended up rating it 4 stars.


In other news, April Fool totally won the "Ms Rogue Isles" PERC costume contest, which I'm pretty psyched about. Apparently there is a server-wide finals event in January that I'll need to go to, after filling out some sort of questionaire. I'm eagerly looking forward to answering "in-character" questions for April Fool, who is basically a psychotic clown with "daddy" issues. Should be fun!

The Consequences of War re-review
Arc ID: 227331
Keywords: Challenging, Canon Related, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme EBs, extreme bosses, extreme lieutenants

The premise is re-living the story of a SG that fought against the Rikti invasion. I've played through this once before but I was asked to look at it again.

Last time the warnings scared me into playing a 50 scrapper with soft capped defense; to be different this time, I tried playing a 39 archery/dev blaster with minor IO slotting (mostly for +range DEF; at about 20% range defense standing around, no other significant bonuses). I figure this is substantially the same as a level 40, so will be a good test of the low end of the level scale.

I notice this arc is no longer labeled "Pt1", not sure if this is significant. The contact is a fiery energy being.

Mission 1
Briefing: I like how the captions for the briefing are in different font/color than the rest of the briefing, but the dark purple used for "Opening Gambit" has very poor contrast with the dark color of the dialog box. Consider using a brighter color.

The contact doesn't really introduce himself, but does say he speaks for the "SOLUS Collective". I know what this is from playing this before, but someone trying this for the first time might not; may be worth explaining. It is mentioned in his "about" info though, so that might be enough. The contact wants me to find two of his team members that he sent on a mission in the sewers.

I get "The Rikti War" clue upon accepting the mission, which contains some nice background information about the situation so far.

Mission objectives: as soon as I enter I have "2 Heroes to Find, 5 Bombs to Destroy, Defeat Tro'Naht" as objectives. The contact did talk about the 2 heroes he sent, but didn't say anything about bombs or Tro'Naht, so I am not sure why I would know that I need to do those things. Perhaps the contact should mention the bombs, and/or "Defeat Tro'Naht" should be "Defeat Rikti leader".

I pretty quickly locate the first bomb, which gives me the "Bomb Placement" clue, suggesting the target of the bombs. I overhear some Rikti spouting unintelligible dialog using weird symbols.

I stealth around the mission a bit using cloaking device, though this isn't perfect stealth (I don't have superspeed or a stealth IO to stack with it) and the Rikti drones actually see through it, so I do have to fight some.

After exploring some, I realize the sewer map is a big loop, and after traversing the loop, I end up back at the sewer entrance. This requires me to backtrack in order to get deeper in the map. (Minor annoyance; not a big deal.)

Found and rescued Captain Superior. He says to the Rikti:

[NPC] Captain Superior: Surrender or I guarantee you will not survive the battle.

....but the Rikti are established as not speaking our language at this point, so I'm not sure whether it makes sense for him to talk to them. Captain Superior says he will "stage here"; I guess he is a non-moving ally or hostage. He also gives me Captain Sueprior's Debriefing as a clue. Note that this clue says Captain Superior will "go and brief Lazon", but his actual behavior (formerly to run away) has been change to staying in place. I suspect his behavior was changed and his clue was left the same; may need to change the clue to match.

In one of the deeper parts of the map, I find Rikti Chief Tro'Naht. He actually has some dialog in English (albeit using the Rikti syntax we normally see nowadays) and calls an ambush on me; I narrowly manage to defeat Tro'Naht and the ambush with some heavy inspiration use. He gives me "Tro'Naht's Translator" as a clue. Some heroes may have issues with "Tro'Naht's death" written into the clue, due to a code vs killing (even Rikti); may want to make this "Tro'Naht's defeat" and let the player decide for themselves what "defeat" means exactly.

The first sentence of Billy Bad Boy's info basically describes his costume, which is a little redundant because you can see him when you read his info. Rescuing him completes the mission for me.

I ran back to Captain Superior (inside the mission) after rescuing Billy, curious to see if he would say anything; he didn't, though. Maybe Captain Superior should have some dialog when you leave him and/or when you return to him; something like "All clear here" would be fine, since he's sort-of guarding his spawn point against Rikti. Though it's kind of odd that Captain Superior would want to split up? He's supposed to be very smart, so he needs some reason for this. He does say he thinks Billy and I will be enough to clear the mission, but not sure this is reasonable considering Billy and Captain Superior weren't able to.

Mission exit popup: "the bombs and the jamming problem have pretty much delayed any thoughts of celebration" ... but I destroyed the bombs? Shouldn't they, at least, no longer be a concern?

Debriefing: "Our motion detectors read all clear" -- wouldn't this only be true if we defeated all the Rikti? Perhaps rephrase this slightly. The contact also apologizes for Captain Superior being excessively "prim and proper" and "sounding like a language professor", but I didn't get that impression from the three lines Captain Superior uttered in my presence; none sounded especially courteous or pedantic. For example, he says (when encountering me):

[NPC] Captain Superior: Ah... Arrow Girl, I've read about you. It is good that Lazon is recruiting the best to help us out.

If he were truly hyper-proper about language usage, I don't think he would not say "Ah" (meaningless noise) or "I've" (contraction). Perhaps either adjust his dialog or adjust the debriefing, so that they match.

Also, why does the contact not comment on the translator that was found? This seems like it would be valuable intel!

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact wants me to follow up on a lead he has on the communications jamming problem, and meet up with a couple more SOLUS heroes. Then I'm supposed to use some kind of device to break into the Rikti computer systems.

Send-off message: "We may not understand their spoken language" ... this line seems inconsistent with the fact that we found a translator last mission.

Inside the mission, there's a pretty crazy number of false glowies that I have to wade through. Maybe consider having a few less.

I find Empathy in the caves beneath the office and free her. There's a lot of patrols roaming around and we fight through some. In Empathy's description, "to be hers and Eric's son" is awkwardly phrased; perhaps "to be her son" or "to be her family" would be better. She gives me the "Empathy's Debriefing" clue which explains "I'll be okay until he makes his way back", which makes it sound like she's staying behind, but actually, she starts following me, which is inconsistent with the clue. Empathy's AI is pretty good, she Fort's and CM's me and throws me an occasional heal.


Arrow Girl: So, Empathy...don't you think it's kind of lame to be named after one of your power sets?
Empathy: I don't think someone named Arrow Girl has any room to talk!

Shortly after I find the right Rikti computer and get the "Encrypted File" clue. It seems like this should complete the mission, which is "Hack the Rikti Computer System", but I still have "Find the Other Hero" as an objective, so the mission continues even though the computer system has been hacked. The "Encrypted File" clue has a lot of text in it, but doesn't say anything about what is actually in the file; instead it talks about how hard it was to actually get the file. I think I'd like to have a little more info on what was actually found.

Searching around a bit more I eventually find Energy Blastion in the Rikti area attached to the caves. He is described as having "Playgirl good looks"...hmm, is this what you really want to say? I don't think being a Playgirl model has the same connotations as being a Playboy model. Saving Energy Blastion completes the mission.

This mission felt a bit on the generic side; meeting the two heroes seemed to be the highlight. Could maybe use some more content. Fighting Rikti and clicking false glowies wasn't enough, IMHO.

Debriefing: a little on the short side. The contact mentions the file needs to be translated. So it was encrypted AND in another language? I wonder how I even knew this was the right file? It could be a cookbook, for all I know.

Mission 3
Briefing: briefly mentions the file I found in mission 2, but then switches to talk about the translator found in mission 1 again. He wants me to go reinforce some Vanguard protecting Rebecca Brinell, then give her the translator. I'm glad that plot thread is picked up again, but the shuffling between the two plots is a little confusing. Wouldn't it have made more sense to run the translator to Brinell right after getting it?

Map choice: this lab seems awfully dirty, but maybe that is intentional.

Quite a lot of dialog fires off as I enter the mission, presumably from Rikti/Vanguard battles. The line:

[NPC] Vanguard Trooper: Several shellheads just got past us! Get back to Brinell! We've got this!

...is repeated 3 times; probably the intention was for these guys to say this line when I get near them, but it's actually going off long before I get into visual range.

Found a glowy labeled "Jammer Info Data File"....should perhaps be "Computer" or "Terminal". On the interaction bar, "Dowloading" should be "Downloading". Clicking it gives me the "Jammer Data File" with some good info in it.

I stealthed past some Rikti, but then some saw through my stealth and gave chase, so I ate a couple of Lucks and ran up to Rebecca Brinell, then dropped a Rain of Arrows on my own position, catching the Rikti chasing me as well as the ones guarding Rebecca, which ended the mission. For what it's worth, the model you are using for Rebecca Brinell doesn't really match her "real" appearance (see: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Rebecca_Brinell ). (Nitpicky.) She gives me "Rebecca Brinell's Concerns" as a clue and the mission complete clue of "The Rikti Attack". In "Concerns", she mentions "battlesuit parts", would it make more sense for her to just call it "the Rikti translator"? I like the text in "The Rikti Attack", it gives a good sense that stuff is happening and needs immediate attention.

Debriefing: did Lazon actually say "Captain Superior and the other five SOLUS elite were away on other missions"? I don't remember that happening and don't see it in my clue journal. Also, I think "five" may be the wrong number after one hero got cut from the story.

Mission 4
Briefing: does a good job of conveying the chaos of the Rikti attack on the SOLUS base. The contact wants me to go evacuate the basement, where the "rookies" were sent.

Inside the mission, I'm greeted by a huge laundry list of objectives. "7 Rookies to Find" and "Find Any Injured Rookies" seem redundant; shouldn't this just be "8 Rookies to Find"? "Defeat Sub-Commander Dro'Vidt" is an objective of mine, but Dro'Vidt wasn't mentioned in the contact's briefing (in fact, Hro'Dath is mentioned instead).

Thinking about it, how would we know any of the names of Rikti officers, anyway? The arc has made a point of the fact that we don't understand the Rikti language yet. (Admittedly nitpicky.) Perhaps this objective should just be "Defeat Rikti leader".

Possibly you could aggregate "Find Commissioner G" and "Rescue the Maintenance Supervisor" into the "X Rookies to Find" objective too, making it "X Personnel to Find" or something. (Not strictly necessary, but would make the nav tool a little less busy. Keeping Commissioner G separate might be good, though, to remind the player that G is a named SOLUS member.)

I find some elevators and they take me upwards; considering this is depicting the "basement", this is a little counterintuitive. Not sure there is a map that starts at the top floor and has elevators going down, though.


Arrow Girl: NOOO! Not the younglings!

Found a body bag which counted as finding a Rookie and gave me "The Ultimate Sacrifice" as a clue. I like that some names are provided in this clue, to make it seem a bit more personal.

Found Prince Nigel IV and rescued him (satisfied the "Injured Rookie" objective...I guess this means all the other rookies must be body bags). In his description, "The fear in his eyes tells you fighting on is a ball you should carry" is a bit awkwardly phrased, I had to read it a couple times before I understood what this was trying to say; consider rephrasing it. Is he a recolored Cimeroran? His costume looks pretty good.

"Escort Prince Nigel IV to safety." should omit the trailing period (the nav tool currently puts a comma right after it). I walk him to the door and he gives me "Prince Nigel's Facade" as a clue.

I find more body bags; I notice each one is named "SOLUS Rookies' Bodies" ... they should perhaps be named "Body of a SOLUS Rookie" (singular) or even just "Body".

Found and rescued Commissioner G. His description says his real name is "Wayne Grayson", an obvious Batman reference; this would work in a Batman homage, but here, it's somewhat distracting from the grim Rikti War that this arc is trying to depict. I like "Commissioner G's Vow", the clue he gives. Perhaps it should appear in the Clue journal sequentially after "The Ultimate Sacrifice", though (since they both talk about the rookies being killed, but G's clue seems logically later). Also, this clue includes the text "Slamming a grenade round into place" for emphasis, but when loading a rifle-mounted grenade launcher, inserting the round isn't actually conducive to "slamming"; the dramatic noise made while loading the weapon would come when you snap the chamber shut. (Ludicrously nitpicky.) Also, Commissioner G is shown using a sniper rifle, but with 2 references to his use of grenades, maybe you should give him the military rifle (which has a grenade launcher).

Opening a door, G and I immediately run into Dro'Vidt, who promptly drops Commissioner G (who was only a lieutenant). I manage to survive and defeat Dro'Vidt by chugging Lucks like mad while laying down arrow fire.

The dialog from Dro'Vidt was a little odd, it went like this:

[NPC] Commissioner G: The old bod's not taking hits as well as it used to, Arrow Girl. Not sure how much longer I can hold out.
[NPC] Rikti Sub-Commander Dro'Vidt: Diversions: Good. Base: Destroying.
[NPC] Commissioner G: Damn! That one hurt bad. I have to stop the bleeding, Arrow Girl. Don't think I can keep up.
[NPC] Rikti Sub-Commander Dro'Vidt: Rikti: More. Come: Now.
[NPC] Rikti Sub-Commander Dro'Vidt: Diversions: Good. Base: Destroying.

Was Dro'Vidt's line about diversions intentionally repeated? Initially I thought it must be wrong to repeat a line of dialog, but after reading "Dro'Vidt's Taunt" (the clue from defeating him), I'm not as sure, as the Rikti does say it's a diversion. Also, I thought "Rikti: More" might herald an ambush, but I never saw one.

With this information from Dro'Vidt, it seems like it would be more logical to abandon the (already dead) rookies that I haven't found yet, and go help the survivors; but the mission structure doesn't allow for this. I still have 4 Rookies to find and a Maintenance Supervisor to rescue. Consider making some of the non-Dro'Vidt objectives optional (but still appear in the nav tool)? Then the mission could complete when you defeat Dro'Vidt.

I do find the Maintenance Supervisor and rescue him from the Rikti; I'm of two minds on whether he's a distraction or whether I really like him, as he has some nice lines and I like the idea of "civilians" pitching in here. Leaning towards liking him. I'm amused that he calls "Arrow Girl" a "straight arrow"; just coincidence, I know, but on-target for sure.

I search for the remaining Rookies; backtracking, I eventually find Translucent Girl, who I had missed on the first floor (her prone position and pure white costume made me not even see her as I ran past). Freeing her completed the mission.

I'm a little puzzled as to why Nigel and Translucent Girl are treated differently as objectives, with Nigel needing to be escorted out, and Translucent Girl being able to leave on her own. (The maintenance supervisor, too, for that matter.)

Debriefing: seems reasonable.

Mission 5
Briefing: describes Lazon as "Though it looks as if he may lose containment any second"; the fact that Lazon's energy is contained isn't mentioned before here, but is pretty important to the plot, so I think it should be foreshadowed in an earlier mission. Lazon's "about" text only says he learned to "maintain a human form", doesn't mention a containment field.

The writing here is pretty good though. I'm quite concerned about facing Hro'Dath (as an AV or EB) with my little blaster. This "I'm probably doomed" feeling is probably in keeping with the story, though.

Mission entry popup: "If it weren't really a war zone, you'd think it was a war zone" seems an awkward thing to say. Suggest you rephrase; perhaps something simple like "It's literally a war zone in here."

Map selection: seems to be the burning office building used by Hellions. This doesn't quite match the tech lab used in mission 4, which was supposed to be the lower floors of the same building. The pentagrams with candles are particularly out-of-place for a hero base. Consider using the burning tech lab map instead?

Objectives: "2 Defeat Hro'Dath's Field Captains" should probably be something like "2 Rikti Captains to Defeat".

Found a boss named "Field Captains" - should probably be "Field Captain" (singular). I notice I don't get credit for defeating the Field Captain until I defeat his entire spawn; for playability reasons, you may want to make them "only boss required", considering Rikti could teleport away, drones could fly up to the ceiling, etc.

Found a glowy named "SOLUS Collective Members' Bodies" - should probably be "SOLUS Collective Member's Body" (singular) or just "Body".

Found and rescued Commissioner G; "2 Heroes to find" is now "Find Lazon". If you rescue Lazon first, will it say "Find Commissioner G" or still say "Find Lazon"? (I've usually seen the latter, though possibly it might've been fixed at some point.)

Found and rescued Lazon, who meets his destiny as he overloads and explodes. I like the "Lazon's Ultimate Sacrifice" clue.


Arrow Girl: Darn it, Lazon, you should know better than to keep "Self Destruct" on your main hotkey bank!

I kind of wonder if you could give him a different "captured" animation, one of the energy field or rituals with special effects, to further dramatize his energy overload.

Spotted Hro'Dath in the final room. I spend some time setting up an elaborate network of trip mines in hopes of defeating him.


Arrow Girl: So this is the plan. We blow him the **** up.
Commissioner G: I approve of this plan.

This doesn't work as well as I hoped; he walks right over 8 trip mines (does drop him to about 50% life). Commissioner G leaps in the way to defend me, but gets torn apart. I backpedal wildly, slamming lucks; an ambush appears, too, just what I need!


Arrow Girl: OMG he walked right over the trip mines! Switch to Plan B!!
Commissioner G: Plan B?! What the **** is Plan B?!
Arrow Girl: Improvise!!

Hro'Dath drops me to like 1% life at one point but I eat some greens and more lucks and manage to eventually take him down. I end up having to defeat his whole spawn to get credit for defeating him (consider making him "boss only") but doing so completes the mission.

Nice "mission end" clue with Lazon handing over the SG to Captain Superior (maybe use his actual name "Captain Superior" in place of one of the "Cap" references, in case the player hasn't figured that out yet) and a "to be continued in part 2" footnote.

Overall
I still like how this arc portrays the brutality of the Rikti War, especially the last two missions, which are quite compelling with the panic and confusion and the close quarters fighting.

I still think the first three missions are somewhat generic Rikti missions by comparison. I'd suggest editing to get to the "good part" sooner. I know you need at least one mission to introduce the story arc's set up, and to establish a "diversion" that lures away SOLUS's heavy hitters; I'm not sure you need three missions to do this. Alternatively, if you could make the first three missions as exciting as the last two, that would work, too.

I would've liked more closure at the end of part 1. The Rikti translator plot thread really goes nowhere and gets left hanging (though I know it is settled in "part 2"). I still find it disappointing that Hro'Dath gets away at the end, in order to save him for "part 2". I would've liked to "win" this fight. For, you know, Translucent Girl.

I still like Lazon's final scenes, and I like that you added some names to the body bags that litter missions 4 and 5, giving them more emotional impact.

Anyway, I'm still on 4 stars for this arc overall. The improvements I'd most suggest would be to edit the earlier missions to either get the player to the SOLUS base faster, or else to increase their intensity to match that of the final missions; and to make the arc a little more self-contained instead of leaving stuff to be tidied up by the sequel.

--

My queue is currently:

Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454
StratoNexus - The Better Part of Valor #349298 (requested in PM)
TigerKnight - Real Afterlife #354483 (requested in PM)
FredrikSvanberg - The Tangled Weave #338575
FredrikSvanberg - A Taste For Evil #349034


Mirror Man - I'm afraid I am still reviewing on a QPQ basis, to avoid getting too flooded with requests. Happy to add your arcs in order as you play through mine. Hope you think that's fair.

Now that I've gotten some feedback on The Destroyer of Worlds, I thought I would start a feedback/arc update thread.

The Destroyer of Worlds
Arc ID: 352820
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-25 (mostly)

In the closing days of WW2, the War Department asks mystery men to recover secret weapons stolen by the 5th Column from a captured U-boat, to be delivered to a top secret research facility.

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I ultimately decided my original idea for Dr Aeon's Challenge was too flawed to submit. Very late in the contest cycle I thought of a new idea to address this challenge, and so I wrote this arc in the last 2 days of the contest. I ended up publishing this arc at literally the last minute; 12/09/2009 11:59pm according to the AE interface. As a result, I submitted it with no player feedback to speak of, which certainly makes it less than polished. So, feedback would be appreciated.

Some designer notes:
- I wrote this over the course of 12/7 to 12/9, so it was a real rush job.
- This arc takes only 33% of the allowed arc space, but I feel it still has a pretty good amount of content.
- The 15-25 limit is somewhat artificial, to match the level range of Shivans in mission 2; the enemies in missions 1 and 3 actually spawn from level 1 to 50, but I wanted to make the level ranges somewhat coherent. The last mission is 50-50, which is a huge jump, but it isn't, strictly speaking, a fighty mission, so hopefully is forgivable.
- I started naming this arc "Destroyer of Worlds" and stuck a "The" at the beginning at the last minute. Still not sure whether "The Destroyer of Worlds" sounds better than "Destroyer of Worlds".

Influences:
- Dr. Aeon's Challenge, obviously. I really have issues with the whole "do evil for the greater good" idea anyway, because I have a hard time justifying that for a hero. I mean, "the ends don't justify the means" is something that was pounded into my brain from an early age, so how can you reasonably "do evil" in the name of good? However, I believe the action taken by the player in the final mission is evil (because innocents die), and yet justifiable. This caused me to realize that I'm not nearly as objectivist as I thought. Between this and my first try at the Challenge, I found the concept behind this contest to be extremely thought-provoking.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer and his famous quotation from the Bhagavad Gita. I searched and searched for a translation that matched his quote and couldn't find one. I think he made it up! And yet it's the most famous line from that text, at least in the English speaking world. His words gave me the arc name, obviously, and I tried to use significant quotations for mission entry popups in general. Which might be a little too ostentatious, but I really liked the Sense of Importance that quoting scripture conveys.
- Fat Man and Little Boy, the movie about the Manhattan Project. I originally had mission 2 depicting the same accident depicted in the movie, where Dr. Slotin ("Merriman" in the movie adaptation) accidentally nearly starts a chain reaction; in real life and in the movie, the scientist dies of radiation exposure, but in the story arc, I had Shivans appear. However, I felt it would be too disrespectful to Dr. Slotin (considering he died of this accident) and reading the CoH lore on Shivans, they really come from meteor fragments and not generic radiation exposure. So I reworked it to use the Roswell meteor instead; Roswell is in the same state as Los Alamos, and this fit the story better. I did get a player who left feedback to the effect of "the Roswell incident was in 1947, so this doesn't work with your timeline" -- good catch. I have to plead artistic license, for the sake of making mission 2 more cool; I just have to include Shivans in a story called "The Destroyer of Worlds", after all! (The movie took the same artistic license, as the incident they depict is after the war too; I know that doesn't excuse me doing it too, but just saying it anyway.)
- The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society (by @Wrong Number). I don't steal any of her plot points, but playing her arc had gotten me into a Golden Age, Nazi-busting state of mind.
- The story of German submarine U-234, which I thought was just freakin' cool, and I felt that it gave me a perfect lead-in to get the player character involved with the story.
- I met Edward Teller once in 1982 and he was really cool. Someone left me feedback saying "The way you wrote Dr. Teller's accent is way over the top!" ... heheh, it's really not .... Dr Strangelove was based in part on him, after all.
- Someone who I won't name (to avoid getting this post modsmacked) was relentlessly campaigning against my Axis and Allies arc earlier this year, for depicting the Nazis winning WW2. One of his suggestions was to write another story arc that let players play on the Allied side instead. So, this arc's for you, crazy internet stalker!

Reviews so far:
- Bubbawheat's review: "This seems like a pretty unique take on the challenge's premise, using historical facts....If that's not the definition of evil for the greater good, I don't know what is.....the final mission is very well done that had me literally saying 'Now *that* was cool.'"
- Venture's review: "Did Not Do The Research, underdeveloped, assumes too much about the player....the arc isn't nearly evil enough for Aeon's challenge, or...really evil at all....game play is good enough, but the arc does have a lot of problems that detract from it. "

Thanks much to StratoNexus and Circuit_Boy for the feedback and analysis!