PoliceWoman

Best Character

I don't have screen shots of these guys, but here are some characters who I thought were memorable and/or well-developed.


Ashley Porter, Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War (130809) - really fun golden age character with fun mannerisms and a lot of implied history.

Dr. Albright, The Most Important Thing (266877) - liked his mannerisms and his tragic back story; I confess I actually had more sympathy for him than the NPC protagonist (who was a decent character with a worthy end, but Albright just impressed me more).

Dr. Erica Lashion, Escalation (6143) - loved her grudge match with the player, her growth over the arc, and the way the arc presents her very unique superpower.

Latin Lava, Why Do Bad Girls Like Bad Boys? (63910) - this guy was such an utter cad, but was really fun to interact with; loved how all the NPCs either swooned over or trash talked him.

The Red Blur, Speeding Through Time (51728) - visually impressive portrayal of crazy superspeed powers (causes game balance issues, but shows just how abusive speedsters should be) and a heroic end to his story.

Perhaps a change in terminology from "best new author" to something like "discovering unknown authors" would help give the idea some clarity.

I know it's hard for people to "break out" as authors and get people to try their arcs, and I thought it would be nice if we had some way of giving recognition to architects who might not be well-known (yet) but are still generating quality work.

Heya! Thanks for trying The Destroyer of Worlds.

This is partly my fault as I suggested "Best New Author" as a category, so I had better chime in.

My original idea was to provide some recognition to people who are just getting into writing Mission Architect and haven't had a lot of public exposure. You see stuff like "best new author" or "best new actress" in award ceremonies for other media all the time, and I was thinking we should have something similar.

I guess it is hard to say who is "new" and who is not, though.

I would suggest that "new" authors should not include anyone who:
* has a Developer Choice or Hall of Fame arc
* was nominated or won in the official Architect Awards
* was in the top 5 in any category in the Players Choice Awards
* is an established MA Stories & Lore forum personality (mainly, arc reviewers)
* has received 3 or more formal arc reviews (over all their arcs) prior to some cut-off date

I'm not sure number of plays is a good metric because a story arc could conceivably be "new" and yet catch fire/go viral/whatever and get 100 plays in 1 week due to word of mouth. (Hey, it happens.)

Anyway, just some ideas.

I ended up writing a different story arc for Dr Aeon's Challenge at the very last minute. As a result, very few people have seen it so far, so any feedback on it would be welcome (and count towards QPQ for this 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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Notes:
1. I set aside my previous attempt at the challenge, Mistaken Identity, because players didn't seem to believe it really presented a case of "doing evil for the greater good". Consequently, I tried to make this story arc present a much clearer case of "doing evil for the greater good".
2. I generally don't like the idea that a hero could reasonably "do evil for the greater good", as this is logically equivalent to "the ends justify the means", which is an unheroic precept. But I feel like the action depicted in the final mission of this arc is justifiable. I can't easily explain why. I guess I am not as absolute in my belief of right-and-wrong as I thought.
3. The first three missions are relatively straightforward, but the final mission is rather unconventional in structure. I'm not quite sure whether it will "work" for most players. It's admittedly not very good exp. My main focus for that mission was trying to present a special effect.
4. This whole story arc fits in 33.21% of the allowed story arc space. So there.

Breaking the Barrier (And Putting It Back Together) review
Arc ID: 347029
Keywords: Challenging, Complex Mechanics, Save the World
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: custom powers

The premise appears to involve aliens possibly accidentally destroying the universe by misusing portal technology. Well, that sounds bad. With the "Challenging" keyword and both Malta and Rularuu on the enemy list, yet no EBs or AVs, I'm not quite sure what to play. I decide on a 50 MA/SR scrapper, heavily IO'd and with soft capped defense (though, Rularuu can often get through that). I'm on +0 x0 difficulty, no AVs. The contact is a custom character in black and red called "Iron Samurai".

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted with pleasing use of color. The content is a little confusing though; the contact acts like he knows me and suggests that I'm eager to fight something called "Nagans" (who apparently appeared in the prequel to this arc). The footnote helpfully points out the other arc's number, but considering this as a self-contained arc, I'm still rather confused as to who Iron Samurai is, and what Nagans are.

The first paragraph about the Nagans doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the briefing, which is about some random event that we hear about on the police radio. I'm afraid this feels like a rather weak "hook" for the adventure ... "Something's happening, let's go!"

The wording of the text "Suddenly both of your police scanners go off at once" made me think it was saying I had two police scanners. Perhaps reword to "Suddenly both your police scanner and Iron Samurai's go off at the same time" or something along those lines.

Send-off message seems a little short, but reinforces the idea that Iron Samurai supposedly worked with me before. Perhaps this is OK, though; the story has probably given me enough cues that I can assume we've worked together even though I didn't play the prequel.

Inside the mission: the popup message notes that the office is full of Rularuu, and implies they aren't supposed to be here.

I pretty quickly find Iron Samurai, who triggers "Find What Opened the Rift", "3 Captives to Free" and "Seal the Rift" as objectives, along with giving me the "Special Containment Protocols Engaged" clue. Regarding this clue, I'm not sure Rularuu are technically within Longbow jurisdiction; Longbow's focus is primarily Arachnos. It's the regular military that is occupying Firebase Zulu. (Admittedly nitpicky.)

In Iron Samurai's description, "liason" should be "liaison". It seems highly coincidental that an ally expert in Portal technology would happen to be present for this adventure, but comic books are like this, I guess.


Olivia and Iron Samurai battle Rularuu

After rescuing Julie (a hostage who gave me the "Lizard People" clue) I found "The Rift" which was a renamed Storm Elemental with a custom description; defeating it satisfied the "Seal the Rift" objective. I really like how Storm Elementals are re-usable as all sorts of bizarre looking things, wish we had more special effects-ish mobs like that.

Found & rescued Ron (another hostage with "They Came Out of Nowhere!" as a clue; seems to be a description of the Rift), and then Debra who is being held captive by some custom mobs belonging to the Nagan Hegemony, who I assume are lizard people (though they don't look all that lizardlike). She gives me "They Just Beamed In" as a clue. "They seemed a bit surprised themselves to suddenly be here, as if the teleportation was not planned" is rather awkwardly phrased.

I promptly ran into Field Tech Suziku, who was some kind of robots mastermind and said:

[NPC] Field Tech Suziku: This portal and teleportation stuff is still pretty new to us so who knew what would happen? I didn't know the machine would suddenly teleport us and rip a hole in spacetime. We're still in one piece, right? Stop looking at me like that!

Her first line (beginning with "This portal") is rather long and run-on. Field Scout Shikaku attacks me shortly thereafter (from quite some distance away - presumably she has +perception from her ninjitsu). She placates me; I think she's db/ninjitsu. She placates me so I can't hit her, then Iron Samurai kills her, causing her to say:

[NPC] Field Scout Shikaku: How embarrasing...

"embarrasing" should be "embarrassing".

I like the look of the Nagan Duelist, it's very sharp. She aggros me from across the room; the Nagans in general seem to have higher than normal perception.

Finally found An Unusual Device; clicking it completed the mission. It gives me "A Modified Portal Device" which suggests that it was "stolen during the Nagan raid on Portal Corp." Since I'm not aware of any Nagan raids on Portal Corp, this may need some supporting explanation. Or at least a "(as seen in arc #1234!)"

Debriefing: seems OK; could maybe use some more background explanation for those of us who aren't familiar with the Nagans. (Even if you have to phrase it as "As you know, the Nagans are..." exposition.)

Mission 2
Briefing: Another dimensional rift just happened to open up right after we closed the first. This seems awfully coincidental (plot issue?) but the contact expositions that the "dimensional fabric" has been "destabilized". He further suggests that we need to know "just what they were doing" and so I need to check it out.

The third (last) paragraph doesn't quite make sense to me ... it says Portal Corp sensed a "teleport" and "logged it at two locations at once" and then something about "We know just where they originated from". Can you maybe clarify what is being said here? Reading this, my best guess is that somehow we detected someone teleporting from one part of Paragon City to another, and the contact wants me to go to where they teleported from. But how is this connected to the dimensional rift, which presumably is from another dimension? And no doubt thousands of heroes get teleported around Paragon City every day (via recall friend, hospital teleporters, the teleport travel power, veteran teleports, Pocket D teleporters, Mission Teleporters etc.) .... how is Portal Corp able to single out this particular teleport as being important?

Send off message has the contact imply that this suspicious teleport involves the Nagans. But the dialog in mission 1 suggested it's all a screw-up by one, particular Nagan, Suziku. Why do I think there are more Nagans involved than that?

Mission title is now "Investigate the Nagan Lair". But the briefing is a lot more vague about the location I'm investigating (i.e. the origination point of a single teleport). May want to either make the briefing more specific ("It's a known Nagan hideout" or "Suziku gave up the location of the Nagan lair") or the mission title more vague ("Investigate Origin of Teleport").

Mission entry popup: hints at an underground tunnel from the building, nice way to foreshadow usage of the office-to-cave map.

The mission is full of these Nagan types, who have crazy perception (Nagan Assassin aggros me from much farther away than normal; maybe has ninjitsu perception powers).

I quickly run into some Nagans with some dialog; one yells an intruder alert and an ambush shows up to attack me. I run into more little guard station/ambush pairs as the mission progresses. I like this usage of optional objectives to make the mission seem more dynamic.


Nagans: color coded for your convenience

The Nagans seem to have a pretty wide variety of powers: rad, cold, energy, claws, dual blades, archery, trick arrow, robots, etc. They seem to do just about everything, and I'm not quite sure what their theme is meant to be, if any. Their costumes are nicely coordinated though, fitting their role as (I think) a Science or Technology type of enemy group. I like that they have a basic uniform with some color-coding for convenience.

In the caves under the office I find Head Engineer Takala, who has a good monologue about what happened with Suziku. She acts like she's run into me before, several times (perhaps in the prequel). In her background story, "simulatenously" should be "simultaneously".

Examining the objects in the room with Takala gives me the "Point of Origin" clue (I quite like the idea that the teleport severed a bunch of cables) and "We did what?" where Takala explains that they didn't mean to breach the Shadow Shard dimension, and they want to help fix it.

Debriefing: the contact seems suspicious at how cooperative Takala is. Hmmm.

Mission 3
Briefing: So we're now cooperating with the Nagans and Suziku is sharing notes with Portal Corps. My mission is to "find out what progress she has made." What could go wrong?

Send-off message: the contact expositions about some "modified dimensional stabilizers that Suziku came up with." Hmm, it sounds like he already knows what progress Suziku has made, then? Since he knows about this invention?

The mission title is "Talk to Suziku", but among my objectives is "Defeat Malta Commander". That's kind of a giveaway considering Malta haven't been mentioned yet; though the mission popup does mention "the sound of gunfire", I don't encounter any Malta until I get a little ways into the mission. (Nitpicky.)

I run into a friendly Longbow boss who has the line:

[NPC] Longbow Warden: You think you can just come into OUR base and take what you want?

...but there's no Malta anywhere around him, so it's not clear who he is meant to be talking to.

I eventually find the Malta commander, who has the fun line:

[NPC] Fenric Nega 5-7: Now listen here... miss. You will tell us everything that we want to know, or else we might decide to start the dissection without killing you first.

...though technically if she's still alive it would be a "vivisection". (nitpicky) Fenric does manage to spawn right next to Suziku, though; I wonder if this was just lucky placement or if he always spawns near her. (I suppose there could be some trickery involving a custom Malta Operatives just for guarding Suziku, but that seems like it could be error prone.)


Stupid Malta! Only *I* can beat up Suziku and interrogate her about her research!

Beating Fenric completes "Defeat Malta commander", so he IS a separate spawn. I like how Suziku's lines reveal her to be a relatively pop culture-aware Nagan, by saying:

[NPC] Operation Engineer: When were we ever in films?
[NPC] Field Tech Suziku: You're the Men in Black! I saw you in the movies!

....though the Malta saying his line first messes up the timing a little.

Looking at Suziku's biography, "her training a Roboticist" should be "her training as a Roboticist". A lot of Nagan and Malta dialog suddenly appears while I'm fighting Fenric and rescuing Suziku, making it sound like quite a lot of stuff has spawned behind me. And I now have to "Escort Suziku to Safety". I'm a little surprised that Suziku can't teleport out using some kind of gadget; since she was working on that sort of thing before.

Found a computer terminal which gave me the "Research Data" clue; I'm a little surprised this clue doesn't say anything about the actual content of the research data, just that Malta was trying to steal it. Consider adding a brief description of what the research is about. Perhaps it is meant to be what Suziku talks about in the "I Can Fix It!" clue, that I believe she gave me when I freed her.

According to the briefing, Suziku is supposed to be collaborating with some "eggheads" (presumably Portal Corp scientists) but none were evident in the mission. Consider adding some as optional hostages, for the sake of background color.

On my way out, I mostly find Longbow and Nagans (both of which were friendly) and basically no Malta, making my escape a lot easier than I expected. I heard a lot of Malta dialog, though, so maybe they were on the losing side of their battles, and had been killed off by the time I got to their spawn point. (This seems plausible; Longbow and custom AE characters are both tough for their level.)

Mission exit popup, "You made it out safely with Suziku!" is true, but also a statement of the obvious...it should maybe have more unique content.

Debriefing seems awfully short. The contact has been pretty talkative up to this point, so it actually strikes me as uncharacteristic of him to not comment on the sudden involvement of Malta.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact tells me "the plan" to fix things, involving setting up some technobabble gadgets on "both sides" of the rift. I think I would've liked a little more of this info to have been shared by Suziku in her "I Can Fix It!" clue, foreshadowing this mission, rather than having Iron Samurai exposition it all; it seems more natural for Suziku to know this. Also, "excusions" should be "excursions".

Considering there were multiple rifts that were opening all over Paragon City (according to previous mission briefings), it seems inconsistent that you can place emitters on "both sides", since it's not just a single dimensional rift? (Possible logic flaw; or maybe I just don't understand what is being proposed here.)

Also, considering each rift to Paragon City has a bunch of Rularuu pour out of it, it stands to reason that the "other side" of the rift would have a lot of Rularuu sitting on it; sending an unarmed Suziku to "set up a team" seems like a possibly bad idea. Although, perhaps that is the crux of why I'm being sent to go help her.

Map selection: this totally should be a Shadow Shard map and not a cave, but I suppose Shadow Shard maps aren't available in AE. Thanks for not using the foggy Rularuu cave at least, though I guess it would sorta fit.

My only objective initially is to "Speak with the Longbow Leader"; but shouldn't I speak with Suziku, who I was told was here? I still think Longbow are out of their jurisdiction in the Shadow Shard. Also, "Speak with" seems an awfully passive ation considering the mission entry popup refers to "screams and gunfire", which a proper hero should probably do something about.

I pretty quickly find and rescue Warden Jansen, who satisfies "Speak with the Longbow Leader" and gives me the "We were overrun!" clue. Maybe Jansen should say something like "We were overrun!" in her dialog upon being rescued, to match this clue. I think it's a little odd that the name of the clue is dialog but the body of the clue is not (very nitpicky). Why would the Rularuu kill all the technicians except Suziku? (Perhaps dramatic reasons since Suziku is the only one with a name...)

Rescuing Jansen triggers an objective to "Find Suziku", though I kinda think this should've been one of my initial goals (since the contact told me that Suziku was here) rather than triggered off of rescuing Jansen. Either that or maybe the briefing could be reworded a little to make it more natural to rescue Jansen first.

Nearby I find Suziku guarded by some Squall Elementals. I rescue her and she joins as an ally, spawning some robots. She also gives me "The Startup Sequence" as a clue, and triggers a new objective of "4 Emitters to Activate". In this clue, "how to perform the startup checked on the emitters" doesn't scan. Maybe this should be "startup sequence" or "startup checklist" or something along those lines. I'd also suggest "make out some trace of a smile" should be "make out a trace of a smile".

Tons of Longbow allies are being guarded by Rularuu and join up with my little army as I free them. I kinda like rescuing them, though the number of allies following me is getting quite large.

By design or happy accident I find all 4 emitters in the far west room of the map. The thought crossed my mind that it might be a "4 keys to click simultaneously" objective like in the Shadow Shard TFs, but fortunately those are impossible to author in Mission Architect. I also thought maybe Suziku should activate the Emitters (since she makes a point of saying she intends to do so, and is only teaching me how in case she doesn't make it), but of course there's not a good way to do that.

Actually activating the 4 emitters has rather underwhelming results; I think it's supposed to be closing the dimensional rift, but there's no special effect whatsoever, no Rularuu rushing in trying to stop me. Just a regular glowy click, and after I click all 4, the mission ends. It does give me a "Stabilizer Array Online!" clue, at least.

Considering this mission is purportedly at a "weak spot" in the Shadow Shard dimension, and the rifts to Paragon City caused weird Rularuu stuff to show up in Paragon City, for the sake of symmetry I think maybe random mundane objects (and maybe even ordinary civilians) from Paragon City should appear in this mission -- "sucked through" the rift and into the Shadow Shard.

Mission exit popup: again states the obvious; "The array has been secured and activated" tells the player nothing new.

Debriefing: much too short. The contact has been monitoring the dimensional rift situation (along with Portal Corp), shouldn't he have some feedback on the results of our last mission?

Mission 5
Briefing: a little scene where they're activating stabilizers. Why are they called stabilizers here and emitters elsewhere? Seems inconsistent; may want to standardize which term you use, for clarity.

Also, why did they wait until now to activate the devices? Surely traveling to the Shadow Shard and activating emitters there was a lot harder than setting up and activating them here in Paragon City, and the rifts in Paragon City are a much more immediate danger; I would've expected them to set up emitters in Paragon City first, or at least at the same time as the ones in the Shadow Shard.

Something Goes Wrong, of course, and a final dimensional rift opens -- supposedly the result of "someone running a stabilizer of their own". Now why would another stabilizer end up interfering with the ones set up by Portal Corp? The briefing for this mission specifically states that multiple stabilizers were set up by Portal Corp; even saying "there's a lot of them". Why would one more set up at a remote location cause this kind of interference? This kind of interference from stabilizers was never suggested as a possibility before. We even set up 4 emitters in the same room in mission 4 without any negative impact. (This explanation feels a little contrived in order to further the plot.)

As I enter the mission, Suziku and Iron Samurai both immediately have two lines each, even though I'm still standing at the door and haven't seen them yet; I suspect they are both Ally objectives that either have no guards or immediately got freed by friendlies somehow.

Pretty quickly I find Suziku and Iron Samurai; I think Suziku was already free and as soon as I got near her she said:

[NPC] Field Tech Suziku: Maybe I can be a hero too!


Tired of being repeatedly kidnapped, Suziku goes postal. Maybe they will allow robotics scrappers in a future powerset proliferation.

...which was really cute, and then she launched a full frontal attack on the nearby Rularuu, which nearly got her killed (she's lucky I have Aid Other on my scrapper). This ended up freeing Iron Samurai nearly by accident; maybe his earlier two lines were the result of something friendly aggroing on his guards but not killing them.

As we move through the base looking for the portal device, I find a stray gun drone ... I guess there were Malta present at some point, but they were all killed except for this gun drone? Aha, before long I do find Fenric Nega Praetor 9-0, who is an Atlas robot. Actually, code names like "Fenric Nega Praetor 9-0" are only used by human Malta operatives; the robots are never given names like that in the PvE content. (Kind of nitpicky.)


Uhh...guys? Aren't you on my side now?

On the second floor I run across a Nagan vs Rularuu battle where both sides seem hostile to me. This seems wrong? The Nagans are my allies now, aren't they? Suziku doesn't seem to mind shooting them. I don't think it's a betrayal, maybe this battle isn't quite correctly set up. A little deeper in, I do find some friendly Nagans. None of them say anything though; maybe they should. What are the Nagans doing here, anyway? Even if they're here to help, how did they know to come? (Maybe Suziku told them? Not sure.)

Found another Nagan Powerfist that ran up and started hitting Suziku. That can't be right! I'm not sure what is going on, but I think this behavior must be unintentional. Storm Elementals begin appearing, and become common on the third floor; then a couple more friendly Nagans.

Deep in the mission (in the room ARCH-A normally is in) we find a Malfunctioning Portal Device. Destroying it ends the mission and gives me the "Success!" clue.

I don't think it was ever explained what the Malta were up to here?

Debriefing: I like the debriefing, it gives a good summary of what happens after, both what happens with the rifts and what happens to Suziku and the Nagans. I like the idea that the Nagans begin cooperating with humans, and Suziku continues working with the scientists. "ethusiastic" should be "enthusiastic" in paragraph 3. A good ending.

Souvenir: "A Formal Letter of Apology" has some interesting writing in it, furthering the subplot of Nagans working with humans; but I think "Letter of Apology" strikes the wrong tone for what you want the player to "take away" with them. I'd suggest something like "Early Draft of Nagan/Earth Treaty" (perhaps written on a napkin by you and Suziku or something, before the diplomats made a more formal copy), as a reminder of how these events improved Nagan/Human relations.

Overall
I liked the idea that the events of the arc end up improving overall relations between the Nagan and Human races. I liked Suziku's characterization and growth into...a newbie hero, maybe? The quality of writing was overall good, and the dialog was pretty good.

Things I had problems with: most of the plot happens seemingly by chance, with little sense of cause and effect. Mission 1 you just happen to be there when the alert goes off. Mission 2 another rift just happens to open up and Portal Corp just happens to trace one particular teleport to someplace that happens to be a Nagan base. Mission 3 you go and talk with Suziku and it just happens that the Malta attack at the same time. (Mission 4 has good motivation due to Suziku's research.) Mission 5 the Malta are coincidentally running their faulty device at the exact same time as Portal Corps tries to shut down the rifts. I think some amount of chance and coincidence is probably acceptable, but this was too much, in my opinion; I felt like the plot had me mostly reacting to random events. I think it could be greatly improved by increasing the amount of cause-and-effect between the various missions.

The science (or pseudo-science) for the dimensional rifts and how they open and how they close did not seem internally consistent. It didn't make sense to me that I could set up 4 emitters in close proximity with no problems in mission 4, but then a single emitter in mission 5 generates enough interference to mess up all the other devices. As a result, it felt like the techno-babble was being shaped to fit the needs of the plot, rather than the plot remaining true to how the technology should work. I'd recommend deciding exactly how you want the dimensional rifts work, then trying to make everything consistent with that idea.

I never really "got" why the Malta were involved in the story. In mission 3 they try to kidnap and/or interrogate Suziku while they steal her research, then in mission 5 they are setting up a portal of their own for some reason. But I never saw any clue as to why they were doing this; I don't believe portal technology or inter-dimensional aliens are normally an area of interest for the Malta Group, and the arc doesn't provide any clues (that I noticed, anyway) as to what their motivations are here. I know the Malta are a secretive organization, but I do think the player should get some hint of why the Malta are doing these things.

The final mission didn't have enough impact, IMHO; I fought a lot of Rularuu and Storm Elementals, and an occasional Malta or Nagan, but they didn't say or do a lot (though it looked like there were a lot of battles that ended before I got to them), and destroying the device to finish the mission and the story arc did not seem a very dramatic ending. The Nagans that kept attacking were a bit distracting, since I think they were supposed to be friendly. I actually think mission 4 was stronger than mission 5; it left me with more of a sense of accomplishment at the end. You might consider reworking the story so that mission 4 is the "finale", or else adding more elements to mission 5 to make it a more dramatic finish.

Also, whatever happened to Shikaku? Shikaku and Suziku both appeared in mission 1, and Suziku went on to have recurring appearances and character development, while Shikaku doesn't seem to ever get mentioned again. Quite possibly you don't want to provide another ally, so maybe Shikaku's story should be wrapped up in a debriefing somewhere, or she could be cut from the story entirely.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I gave this arc 3 stars. I hope you think that's fair!


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My queue is currently:

@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454

Thanks for giving The Destroyer of Worlds a try! My first attempt at Dr Aeon's Challenge (Mistaken Identity) didn't seem to impress players as "doing evil for the greater good" so I wrote this arc hoping to present a much clearer example of "doing evil for the greater good". I'm glad this came across effectively for you.

I'm also happy that you liked the special effects in the last mission. It's a somewhat unconventional mission and I wasn't sure how well it would play for people. I felt like I needed some kind of impressive visual effect; a common complaint I have about missions where your objective is "click this glowy to save the universe!" is that it doesn't really feel like you're doing something world-shattering when you click a glowy. So I wanted to try and do something about that.

Not sure I can do much about the boss spawns you mentioned - other than Nazi bimbo, all the other mobs are completely standard and level-appropriate. So the boss spawns you found were most likely just unlucky spawn placement by the game for a 2 person team.

Regarding historical detail, though the involvement of "mystery men", the 5th Column and Shivans are, of course, fanciful, I did try to research the time period and events to get some of the details right. The "real" story of how this all happened is pretty neat in its own right.

Thanks again!

12/14/2009

Last Tuesday night I was only on a short while; I played Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) and joined a badging team that was killing Fake Nemeses in Peregrine Island, and we all got the Unveiler badge, which also got Thunder Girl the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+10% max HP, which was +133HP for her).


On Wednesday night I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), helping a defender friend with some missions in Croatoa, then switched to Quick Katie (29 plant/kin controller) to help a team with one run through a level 50 Council Empire map. They wanted to repeat the Council Empire map a few times, but once was enough for me (I would feel guilty about being PL'd) so I swapped out.

It was the last day of Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge, and I had ultimately decided that my first attempt, Mistaken Identity, wasn't going to satisfy the challenge; the story was improving a lot, but no one who played it seemed to believe it counted as "doing evil for the greater good", which is the premise of the contest. So at the very last minute I wrote a new story arc, The Destroyer of Worlds, which is about the Manhattan Project and dropping an atom bomb on Japan. I figure killing a hundred thousand civilians in order to end WW2 is a lot more clearly "doing evil for the greater good" than my original idea (which was the rather murky "if you're insane, things that you think are good may actually be evil"), but since I wrote this at the very last minute, it's probably not as polished a story as it could be. Oh well.

Police Woman also picked up the Shop Keeper and Entrepreneur day job badges on Wednesday.


On Thursday night, I played Quick Katie on a 3-player Sisterhood team that ran through the first few missions of the Midnight Club story arc, getting Quick Katie to level 31.

A bit later I joined a speed Statesman TF; the team leader asked for a shield scrapper, so I played Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper). This run went remarkably well and we finished in 38min 2sec, beating the previous server record by 4 minutes. In the final mission we killed all the towers except the blue one, then went after Lord Recluse. I don't remember which HO I got; Nucleolus maybe? While running through Ouroboros I got a compliment on Blond Justice's costume, which was nice.


Friday night, Blond Justice did another speed Statesman TF; this time we resolved to use Warburg nukes and shivans to try to beat the last run. We had a team of 2 tankers, 3 scrappers, 2 controllers (rad and kin) and 1 defender (cold). In the final mission, we rushed all 4 patron AVs at once, and I and another player were asked to drop all 3 nukes and a shivan on them; this resulted in the patron AVs getting splattered in a hurry.

Our initial plan against Lord Recluse was to drop the green tower (only) then immediately rush Recluse, with the rest of the team using Warburg nukes and shivans; but when we did this, we couldn't hit him at all. I found I only had 10% chance to hit, even with Focused Accuracy running. So we switched to the yellow tower, dropped it, then went back to Recluse. Now I could hit him 95% of the time, but every hit was for 0 damage (somehow he had 100% lethal resist, maybe other resists too). We dropped the red tower too, but Recluse was still immune to damage; then suddenly he stopped being immune to damage and he fell dead under our attacks. My best theory for what happened here is that Lord Recluse must pop some kind of Unstoppable-like power during the cut scene where he monologues about his evil plan, and consequently cannot be damaged until that power runs out; and we never noticed this before because we never tried to seriously kill him until long after it ran out. In any case, we finished in 34min 13sec, breaking the last night's record; though in hindsight a lot of the nukes and shivans in the final encounter were probably wasted due to Lord Recluse's immunity to damage. This STF finished less than 24 hours after the last one I played; I didn't want to take the merits, so I left the reward window up and logged out, planning to pick an HO later.

After that I played Mega on a speed LGTF (24min 16sec) and a speed ITF (22min 38sec). The speed ITF was different than normal because in the final encounter, the team leader wanted us to kill the Nictus AVs first, not Romulus. This was kind of weird but seemed to work; I'm guessing the idea is that even though the Nictus AVs are tougher, we can kill all the Nictus AVs in parallel, rather than have to kill Romulus 4 times in sequence.

There were PERC reps advertising a costume contest on LB channel, so I brought on April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and headed to Pocket D. The actual event was a bit underwhelming; a couple people had us line up and I think they probably took screenshots, but they didn't actually say anything other than "We'll let you know in a week". I kept myself entertained by threatening to kill the other contestants in order to improve my chances, and saying that another contestant had "a very pretty spleen, would you like to see it?" Made it more fun for me, anyway.

After that I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on a speed RSF that finished in 31min 22sec and got me a Ribosome HO. I've been enjoying playing Lady Arachne lately (after a long hiatus) and ended up using her free respec to try and work some set IOs into her build (she previously was running purely on SOs). This is the build I worked out for her:

Lady Arachne: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping

Villain Profile:
------------
Level 1: Single Shot Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(3), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 1: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(9), ResDam-I(11)
Level 2: Burst Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 4: Combat Training: Defensive LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(5), LkGmblr-Def(5)
Level 6: Swift Run-I(A)
Level 8: Heavy Burst AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(17), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(17), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(19), RechRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(21), LkGmblr-Def(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 12: Venom Grenade AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(23), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(27), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(27), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 14: Aid Other IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(37), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(40), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Mrcl-Heal(42)
Level 16: Tactical Training: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Aid Self IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(34), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal(37)
Level 20: Hurdle Jump-I(A)
Level 22: Mental Training Run-I(A)
Level 24: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(25), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(25), P'Shift-End%(48)
Level 26: Cloaking Device LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 28: Surveillance AnWeak-Acc/Rchg(A), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg(31), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(31), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg(31), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(42)
Level 30: Tactical Training: Leadership GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(33), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(33), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(33), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(34), GSFC-Build%(34)
Level 32: Combat Jumping LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 35: Wide Area Web Grenade TotHntr-Acc/Rchg(A), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx(43), TotHntr-Acc/Immob/Rchg(43)
Level 38: Call Reinforcements ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(39), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(39), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(40), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(40)
Level 41: Frag Grenade AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(46), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(48), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(50), RechRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 44: Bayonet T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(45), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(45), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), T'Death-Dam%(46)
Level 47: Build Up RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 49: Wolf Spider Armor ResDam-I(A)
------------

Of note: This is a "wolf spider" concept build, NOT a typical bane spider build. Lady Arachne has all gun powers and no mace powers (except Build Up...I couldn't resist taking Build Up). Nevertheless, I feel like it is very effective. I ditched Pummel for Single Shot (a power that used to suck but got buffed at some point) and Resuscitate for Wolf Spider Armor (not sure this was a good trade... the Wolf armor gives +3% smash/lethal resist and a little more status protection, but being able to rez is nice). I actually don't have most of the above set IOs yet, but it's something I'm working towards. The use of 4xAir Burst and 2xRchg IOs in her AoE attacks is a little experimental; it's more common for me to slot 5xPositron's Blast and 1xRchg IO, but the Air Bursts give a little +HP and +Smash/Lethal RES (stacking with her armors) and putting 2 Rchg IOs lets me hit the recharge soft cap for each individual attack (while 5xPositrion 1xRchg is only about +64% rchg but each set gives +6.25% global rchg). Anyway, not quite sure whether it's a good idea or not, but I am finding Air Burst to be a lot easier and cheaper to assemble full sets of.


On Saturday I played Quick Katie on a Manticore TF with a team of:

3 scrappers
2 tankers (1 was AFK for pretty much the whole TF)
1 blaster
1 kin controller (me)
1 rad defender

We didn't have any problems and finished it in 58min 5sec; part of this team went on to do a Synapse TF, with a team of:

3 scrappers
2 tankers
2 blasters
1 kin controller (me)

This was a little scary as I was the only support character on an 8 person team, and kinetics isn't really all that defendery. Nevertheless we did fine; I'd like to think that SB to counteract the clockworks' energy drain was helpful. We even beat Babbage with no outside help (I spammed Transfusion for -regen and we had pretty good DPS), and finished in 1hr 40mins.

A friend on the team asked me to trade her 500M infl on blue side, in return for 500M infamy on red side. I have way more money on blue side anyway, so this worked out well for both of us. I used the infamy to try and kick-start my market manipulation on red side, which I had gotten a bit lazy about. I've been finding it a lot easier to skim influence off of Wentworth's than infamy from the Black Market; there just seems to be both more volume and more price fluctuations (at least in the items I usually deal with) on blue side.

The Synapse TF got Quick Katie to level 33. I took the plant pet at level 32...I can never figure out what to do with controller pets, since despite the AT name, you can't control them, but everyone else seems to like controller pets, so I figure I should take it. I also cashed in all of Quick Katie's 340 merits on 17 random recipe draws, receiving:

1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for rchg slow) Wentw=350K
2 Positron's Blast (chance for nrg dmg) Wentw=5M
2 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=3.9M
2 Numina's Convalescence (END/HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Dark Watcher's Despair (RCHG/END) Wentw=20K
2 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=3.5M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=250K
2 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=8.5M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=10M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Sting of the Manticore (DMG/INTRDX/RCHG) Wentw=1.3M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1M

Total=57.72M for 340 merits, or 169.7K infl per merit. This is a pretty low yield (I didn't get any of the big ticket recipes); by comparison, spending 200 merits for a LotG (DEF/+7.5 rchg) selling for 50M has a yield of 250K infl per merit. I still think it's a good gamble over large numbers of merits, though.

Playing Mega (50 SS/will brute) I stomped around the Cimerora walls for a bit; this is sorta farm-y but for some reason feels more fun, at least for short periods of time. After about 15 minutes I lucked into an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/END) purple recipe.

A friend wanted to team up for Rikti War Zone missions, so I played Strong Woman (41 inv/SS tanker) to duo with her defender for the initial "Welcome to Vanguard" story arc. This got Strong Woman to level 42.

Finished Saturday night playing Lady Arachne on a quick Lady Grey TF (24min 38sec) and Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corruptor) on a quick RSF (38min 4sec, got a Peroxisome).


On Sunday I played Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/regen scrapper) on a 4 player Sisterhood team exemped down to level 15 working on warshade storyline missions; after that team broke up, Kyrie went on to join a pickup team fighting level 33s.

A friend wanted to put together a Katie Hannon TF for Quick Katie (now a 33 plant/kin controller); I was excited to play Quick Katie on "her" TF, which I'm ashamed to admit I haven't unlocked yet (I've been sorta slowly soloing through Kelly Nemmers' and Buck Salinger's story arcs). We had a team of 8, but one person realized he was too low (only level 29) and had to bail, so we ended up going with a team of 7:

2 blasters
2 scrappers
2 tankers
1 kin controller (me)

The guy who had to drop was a rad controller and I was kinda worried that without him we wouldn't be able to beat the Mary AVs, but actually we did pretty well. I tried to focus on keeping SB on everyone, ID on the blasters (to prevent knockback by stormy powers) and transfusion on the AVs, and this seemed to work. I myself got knocked back a lot; I kinda picture Quick Katie doing a lot of Katie TFs for thematic reasons, so I'm going to need to get KB protection IOs at some point. Anyway, we finished in 26min 4sec.

Later that afternoon I played Arrow Girl (38 archery/dev blaster) on the Sisterhood Sunday event, which was a Numina TF. 10 people showed up and we split into two teams of 5; on my team were:

1 kin controller
3 scrappers
1 blaster (me)

I got a compliment on Arrow Girl's costume at the start, which was nice. Later on, Arrow Girl hit level 39 and a lot of her level 35 SOs went red, so I went to RWZ to buy level 40 SOs; while there, a random passerby asked me "Do you find archery fun?" Thinking about it, I replied: "Yes; it's maybe not the BEST blast set, but I like the animations and Rain of Arrows really rocks. Lethal resists are sometimes a problem, but yes, I think it's fun." They seemed happy with that response; I think they were considering making an archery character. Anyway, Numina TF was pretty straightforward for us and we finished in 1hr 45mins.

Late at night I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a Recluse SF; the team leader and about half the team were veteran RSFers, while the other half were pickup people with little RSF experience. Our team was:

2 brutes
4 corruptors (2 rad, 1 thermal, 1 kin)
1 stalker
1 fortunata

We had a lot of stray deaths in missions 2 and 3 but mostly dusted ourselves off and kept going. I managed to carelessly get killed by Future BAB in mission 3 by getting too close to him and being hit by a killer Foot Stomp. In the final mission the team leader was a bit dismayed to find that I was the only character who had Vengeance (the typical strategy is to stack multiple vengeances on the team before starting the fight), and consequently asked the squishies to huddle some distance away from the Freedom Phalanx during the fight, and lay down ranged damage from further away. This mostly worked to keep people alive (though we still had some stray deaths; fortunately, this helped feed my Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation engine) but prevented the Shivans we had spawned from getting involved in the fight, at least until rather late. The team leader dropped a couple Warburg nukes on the Freedom Phalanx to make sure they went down, and as a result we ended up beating the Freedom Phalanx on the first try, finishing the RSF in 45mins 6sec. I got an Endoplasm SHO as reward.

I finished the night burning a free respec to tinker with Indigo Ifrit's build; this is what I came up with:

Indigo Ifrit respec: Level 50 Magic Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Villain Profile:
------------
Level 1: Fire Blast Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(3), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7)
Level 1: Radiant Aura Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal(11), Dct'dW-Rchg(11)
Level 2: Radiation Infection HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(13), HO:Enzym(13)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(15), Zephyr-ResKB(15), RechRdx-I(34), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(34), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(45)
Level 6: Fire Ball Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(17), Posi-Dmg/Rng(19), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 8: Swift Flight-I(A)
Level 10: Hover Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(21), Zephyr-ResKB(23), Flight-I(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(37)
Level 12: Teleport Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25), Zephyr-ResKB(25), TSM'n-Stlth(36)
Level 14: Health Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(27), Mrcl-Heal(48)
Level 16: Enervating Field EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Blaze Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(29), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(31)
Level 20: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(33), P'Shift-End%(33), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(50), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 22: Lingering Radiation Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(33), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 24: Recall Friend Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(36), Zephyr-ResKB(36)
Level 26: Fire Breath Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 28: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(40), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 30: Tactics GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(42), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Build%(43)
Level 32: Vengeance LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 35: Aim RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 38: Mutation RechRdx-I(A)
Level 41: Shark Skin S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(46)
Level 44: Fallout Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(46), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(46), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48)
Level 47: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Hibernate RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------

I have some of the above IOs (mostly the Decimations and Positron's Blast) but still need a lot of the Luck of the Gambler and Blessing of the Zephyr IOs (something to work towards with merits, I figure). Key differences from her previous build: I dropped Blazing Bolt for Assault (I just don't use Snipe attacks enough to justify having one) and dropped Black Scorpion's patron pool for Captain Mako's patron pool (villain teams often have a lot of +DEF already, so I feel like resists from Shark Skin will contribute more to survivability, plus providing a place to put Steadfast Protection RES/+3% def; plus it's blue! also Hibernate seems really good in PvP and may save me occasionally on SFs).

I ended up writing a completely different story arc than the one I originally wanted to submit, at the last minute. According to the AE interface, my publish date for the arc is 12/09/2009 11:59pm. Sadly, this was so last minute that I didn't get a chance to ask anyone for feedback. I ended up submitting the arc anyway, which probably wasn't the brightest thing I've ever done, but hey, it's a cool contest.

Here's the arc details if anyone's interested:

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.

12/8/2009

Last Wednesday I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed LGTF that took 26min 30sec. Then I played Idealist (48 fire/thermal controller) through an AE arc called The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society, where you help a retired hero battle a 5th Column plot; this was a fun story with good characterization, but had some plot problems. I gave it 4 stars. I had recolored Idealist's fire imps to be red, white and blue (strictly speaking, they start out white, then I applied a red fire shield and a blue plasma shield), so a patriotic adventure fighting Nazis was especially fun for her; she got to level 49 while doing this.




On Thursday night, I was fiddling with my new story arc, Mistaken Identity, when someone from MA Arc Finder channel asked to join me; so we duo'd much of it. In the last mission, two more friends joined the team. The story really is more geared towards a soloer, so I'm not sure if any of it made any sense to my teammates; after we wrapped up that arc, I started us on A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force, another of my arcs which I thought would be much more team-friendly. People seemed to have fun beating up samurai and ninja, although a scrapper teammate particularly groaned at the large number of caltrops the ninja liked to throw at us (we didn't have a kin to negate this). The empath on our team goaded me to raise difficulty, and I first raised it to +2 x8, then after more prodding they got me to raise it to +3 x8. This was just fine for the first four missions, but made the last mission (which has several AVs) quite hard, and I had to recruit some friends from the Sisterhood channel to help debuff the regen of the two +3 willpower AVs. Once we had some debuffs going, we managed to finish the arc just fine, though, even at the ludicrous difficulty.


Friday night, a blaster was asking for a tanker to help her with a mission in Striga, so I logged on Strong Woman (40 inv/SS tanker) to help clear out a laboratory full of vampires. Got a compliment on her costume while doing so.

After that, I joined a team running speed TFs; the leader asked me to bring a VEAT, and instead of bringing my usual fortunata, I decided to dust off Lady Arachne (48 wolf spider) who had been sitting idle for a couple months. We did a RSF in 38mins 10sec (we got slowed down a bit in mission 1 trying to get the tech past a Longbow ambush; I got a Nucleolus SHO at the end), then a LGTF in 23min 14sec, then an ITF in 25min 18sec (had some trouble getting mission 3 to end, until we finally found a stray cyclops). Three quick TFs in a row got Lady Arachne to level 50. I found it ironic that the game displays "EPIC ARCHETYPE UNLOCKED!" when a VEAT hits level 50. Also, using Surveillance, I found that Lady Arachne, with Venom Grenade and Surveillance, puts out more resist debuff than a rad corruptor using Enervating Field. This, along with her VEAT leadership toggles, makes me want to play Lady Arachne on teams more. I'll need to work on some IO sets for her, though; currently she's running on SOs and generic IOs.

Mostly the same team did a Statesman TF, which I was asked to bring a scrapper on, so I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper). Our team was:

3 controllers (fire/kin, 2 ill/rad)
1 defender (cold/ice)
2 scrappers
2 tankers (1 stone/ice, not sure on other one)

The team leader had me try to shortcut the cut scene in mission 2 by exiting mission 1 early and entering mission 2 as soon as it appeared, but he had me go to a particular portal which wasn't the one that the mission actually was at, so I had to scramble to find the real entrance, losing us some time. Somehow we bollixed up finishing mission 2; I think maybe we all exited via Ouroboros and no one completed the "Find the way home" objective. In the final mission we tackled the patron AVs with a frontal assault, fighting all 4 at once while some players dropped Warburg nukes. Then one tanker kept the Arachnos flyer taunted, one kept LR busy, while the rest of us took down towers. We took down 3 towers (skipping the blue one) then Lord Recluse himself, finishing in 46min 44sec. I got a Centriole SHO.

While Blond Justice was out, I burned 3700 tickets that I had picked up on Flower Knight TF for a recipe roll, and was rewarded with a yummy level 50 Numina's Convalescence (+regen/+rec).


Saturday night, I played Kyrie Eleison (22 fire/regen scrapper) on a 4-player Sisterhood fire-themed team that got her to level 23.

A bit later I did a few speed TFs; Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) finished an LGTF in 23min 54sec, Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) did an ITF in 23min 23sec (got a Respec recipe drop that I threw on the broker for a ludicrously high price) and a RSF in 35min 32sec (only had 7 real players with one 2-boxed toon as a "filler"; had a messy final fight where squishies got 1-shotted a lot; got a Nucleolus as reward).

I also used a free respec for Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender), trying to increase her positional defenses. This is the build I came up with:


Star Amethyst: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Dark Miasma
Secondary Power Set: Ice Blast
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Psychic Mastery

Hero Profile:
------------
Level 1: Tar Patch RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(3), RechRdx-I(3)
Level 1: Ice Bolt Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 2: Ice Blast Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(11), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13)
Level 4: Twilight Grasp Nictus-Acc/Heal(A), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(27), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal(34)
Level 6: Swift Flight-I(A)
Level 8: Shadow Fall LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(19), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(19), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(39)
Level 10: Darkest Night DarkWD-ToHitDeb(A), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/Rchg(15), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(15), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(40)
Level 12: Recall Friend Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(43), Zephyr-ResKB(48)
Level 14: Teleport Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46), Zephyr-ResKB(46)
Level 16: Hover Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(17), Zephyr-ResKB(17), Flight-I(27), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 18: Health Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 20: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-End%(21)
Level 22: Ice Storm Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(23), Posi-Dmg/Rng(25), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 24: Howling Twilight RechRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(46), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
Level 28: Bitter Ice Blast Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(29), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 30: Aim RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 32: Dark Servant Cloud-ToHitDeb(A), Cloud-Acc/ToHitDeb(34), Cloud-Acc/Rchg(34), Cloud-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Cloud-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Cloud-%Dam(39)
Level 35: Freeze Ray Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(36), Lock-Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(37), Lock-%Hold(37)
Level 38: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 41: Dominate Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(42), Lock-Rchg/Hold(42), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(42), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(43), Lock-%Hold(43)
Level 44: Mind Over Body TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45)
Level 47: Blizzard Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(50), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Vengeance LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------

I don't really have the Ragnaroks or the LotGs listed above, and only partially have the Zephyrs, but I do have a lot of the other stuff, which was enough to get Star Amethyst's standing-around defenses (with Hover, Maneuvers and Shadow Fall on) to:

47% range defense
42% lethal resist
24% AoE defense
16% melee defense

This seemed terrific for a squishy, especially when I can throw down -ToHitDebuff and -Recharge powers at mobs as well, so I'm fairly hopeful for this build.


On Sunday I was on a villain messing around with the Black Market and I saw Deific Weapons priced at 1M infamy; this seemed like a good price (I'm more used to blue-side prices, where I do most of my market manipulation), so I started buying them at 1M apiece. I instantly picked up 10 for 1M, which I thought was pretty lucky, so I put another bid for 10 more. This cycle repeated itself until I somehow ended up with 100 Deific Weapons and my salvage containers, storage vault and personal inventory completely full. I'm kinda nervous that 1M wasn't as good a price as I thought, if I was able to get this many. I sure hope the price goes up now!

I played Star Amethyst (with her new respec build) on a speed ITF (27min 65sec) and a speed LGTF (25min 16sec); I normally find it pretty dangerous to play a squishy on a speed TF, but the high defenses felt like they really helped.

After that I played Kyrie Eleison on a Sister Psyche TF with a team of

2 defenders
2 scrappers
2 controllers

This TF had a character pretending to be Britney Spears, and another one dressed like Michael Jackson; I kinda regretted that my Paris Hilton character was on red-side. Also of note, the leader of the TF was level 23, but the TF spawned at level 25. Strangely when the leader leveled up, the whole team still stayed level 23! We were level 23 for the whole TF, effectively at the old Invincible difficulty. Fortunately, the team was strong enough to handle this, and we still finished in 1hr 59mins, a pretty good time. The high difficulty level was worth mad exp and got Kyrie to level 26.

Finished the night messing around with a couple newbie villain alts, a mace/shield brute and an elec/thermal corruptor. The jury's still out on whether I'll keep them long term.


Monday night I played Kyrie Eleison on a Citadel TF with a team of

2 blasters (AR/nrg, fire/fire)
2 tankers (fire/ss, fire/?)
2 scrappers
1 defender (emp/?)
1 controller (ice/rad)

The leader was pretty good about urging us to stay together, but she also wanted us to wait for everyone to enter a mission before anyone aggroed anything. This wouldn't normally be bad, except that we had a few people prone to AFKing or not being able to find the mission, so we were waiting around a lot, making the TF feel rather slow and dull. Our defender almost never buffed and actually announced she was AFKing and following with healing aura on auto. One of the fire tankers disconnected halfway through the TF and reconnected during the very last mission; not sure if this was lucky timing on his part, or something more calculated. Nevertheless we finished in 1hr 56mins, getting Kyrie to level 27.

Switching to Blond Justice I played through The Patriot Palace Massacre, an interesting murder mystery with a good plot and characterization, but the enemies were too hard and not very fun, and triggered objectives kept me criss-crossing a large outdoor map looking for each newly spawned objective, which was frustrating. I ended up giving it 3 stars. Several friends from Sisterhood channel joined me midway through the arc, and after we finished that arc, I ended up taking a 6 player team into Flower Knight TF as well (only this time on low difficulty). Again we found the db/willpower AVs in the final mission to regen too fast for us to drop them, and some players switched to debuffers in order to help take them down. This ended up motivating me to change their powersets to db/invuln instead of db/will; this raises their smash/lethal resist but cuts their regen (I didn't give them dull pain or unstoppable). Hoping that's a net improvement. Blond Justice spent another 3700 tickets on a recipe roll, this time getting a Numina's (HEAL/RCHG).

Someone was calling for help with Deathsurge on LB channel, and I brought on Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) to help; a full team had formed and we took down Deathsurge with no problems. Then we hopped over to Sharkhead and beat up Scrapyard for good measure. Someone had disconnected during the Deathsurge fight and missed the badge, so the team went back again to Cap au Diable (though several of us switched to get the badge for another alt; I switched to Spy Girl, 33 MA/ninj stalker) and fought a respawn of Deathsurge, before calling it a night.

After thinking about it, I've decided against submitting Mistaken Identity for Dr. Aeon's Challenge. The main reasons for this are:

1. No one actually seems to believe that the events of the story arc constitute "doing evil for the greater good". My original idea was that "an act which appears good in one frame of reference could be utterly evil in another frame of reference", but perhaps this was not effectively communicated and/or does not meet the typical player's definition of "the greater good". Some people felt that a person who was not knowingly doing an (objectively) evil act, could not be considered to be "doing evil" -- which is an interesting viewpoint; I would argue that there is such a thing as "evil" in the absolute framework, but it's admittedly debatable. In any case, since this particular point is the crux of the Challenge, failing to effectively meet it seems like it would immediately disqualify the story from consideration.

2. I'm uneasy at the number of people who felt the arc was derivative of Blight. Nothing against Blight, but I'd rather not give people the impression that the story is just a knock-off of another story arc.

3. Although I like the arc a lot more than when I first published it (player feedback has been immensely helpful for making it better), I'm still not convinced that the arc is actually fun.

So, for these reasons I think I won't submit it to the contest. I'm pondering writing an entirely different story to submit, but not sure whether there's enough time.

Regarding the future of Mistaken Identity, I don't think I'm quite ready to pull it down (I still have arc slots left...well, arc slot..). I'm liking the effect of some of the changes I've made so far (especially the amount of symbolism and foreshadowing I was able to inject), and I think there's more that I could improve. (I still have plenty of arc space to work with...I'm only up to like 54% usage.) So I may occasionally still work on it.

Thanks to everyone who tried it out and provided feedback ... both positive and negative, it was an immense help, and gave me a lot of good ideas that improved the story. Thanks a ton!

The Patriot Palace Massacre review
Arc ID: 342403
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 50-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, custom power selections

The premise is investigating the deaths of a local supergroup. Though flagged "Solo Friendly", the fact that it is min level 50 and has AVs made me play a 50 bs/shield scrapper (heavily IO'd with soft capped defense) on +2 x8 difficulty, bosses OK, no AVs. The contact is a police chief.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption at the top of the briefing should perhaps be in larger font, bold face or another color to help it stand out. Nicely written briefing that does an excellent job of describing the situation and explaining why the player has been brought in (rather than the police handling it themselves). A local SG has been completely killed off under mysterious circumstances and the Chief would like me to help investigate the situation.

Mission objectives: "Speak with Leiutenant Hodge." should be spelled "Lieutenant" and remove the period at the end of it (looks weird with a comma after it). Hodge was mentioned by the contact, but Rita Lennox was not, so it's not clear why "Speak to Rita Lennox" should be an objective.

I pretty quickly find Lieutenant Hodge who is being guarded by level 21 Clockwork; but I'm a level 50 hero and the arc is min level 50, so these are very very grey. I free Hodge from the very very grey clockwork and get a clue called "Leiutenant Hodge's Report". "Leiutenant" should be "Lieutenant" here. This clue does mention Rita Lennox as being the SG's attorney; perhaps "Speak to Rita Lennox" should be an objective triggered off of talking to Lieutenant Hodge.

Found a bunch of body bags labeled "Murder Victim" that were flagged "You Can't Complete This Objective Yet" which felt a little awkward as dead bodies seem like something I should immediately be interested in looking at.

I found Rita Lennox, the lawyer; her background story is really fun. When she sees me, she says:

[NPC] Rita Lennox: Do I represent you?

...which seems a little odd to say when I'm rescuing her, but I guess it works. I almost think she should ask me if I'd like legal representation after that line; or threaten to sue if I fail to save her. Heheh, she actually does offer her services in the "Rita's Statement" clue, in which "insensative" should be "insensitive". Should "media-friendly scandals" just be "media scandals"?

For some reason, talking to Rita triggers to "Search the Bodies for Evidence" objective. I'm not sure why these objectives are connected; Rita doesn't ask me to do it, and it's not clear why it's necessary to save Rita first.

Clicking a body a message appears in my spambox of

"This victim's condition is consistant with the police report."

"consistant" should be "consistent". Not much else happens when I click the body. Maybe worth giving a clue with some description, even for the non-plot-related bodies? These are supposed to be the bodies of fellow superheroes, so might have more impact to the player character than a typical dead body? As presented, the large numbers of body bags feel terribly impersonal.

One of the bodies does give me the "Twelve Corpses" clue and triggers "Return to Lt. Hodge". Why do I need to return to Lt Hodge at this point? Maybe the clue should suggest that I talk to him.

Lt Hodge respawns near me surrounded by more grey clockwork. He merely notes what I've found and changes the subject, giving me the "Encoded Storage Chamber" clue suggesting I should unlock a vault. With the linear sequence of objectives you have set up here, you may want to sort the clues so that "Encoded Storage Chamber" is after "Twelve Corpses" in the clue journal.

The vault turns out to be a small cylinder that I initially thought was a wastebasket. (I would've expected it to be a wall safe, actually.) This gives me the "Inside the Vault" clue and spawns a very large number of "Patriotoid" robots, which are actually at my level (large groups of 52s). Weirdly, the Patriotoids begin fighting each other as a patrol roams in and starts fighting a static spawn that appeared near me. The Patriotoids are described as automatic defenses of the Patriot base, but I find their presence rather puzzling because:

1. Why did they spawn after I entered my code into the Vault? If the Vault actually opens to my ID, it shouldn't call security. If it does call security, it shouldn't open.
2. Why are they fighting each other? (maybe set up as Rogue faction?)
3. Twelve or 13 people are killed in the Patriot base, then police and lawyers show up and start putting the Patriot SG members into body bags, then Clockwork start attacking .... none of these actions cause the security robots to appear, but I come in and open the vault and NOW security robots show up?


Someone forgot to program the security robots to not treat other security robots as intruders


I also get a "Rescue Rita Lennox" objective, but I've received no information that she's in danger, so it's not clear why I need to do this. I start looking for Rita, but before I actually find her, the Patriotoid robots that are fighting other Patriotoid robots manage to free her. This triggers an "Override the Security Protocol" objective. I find a computer that completes this objective and the mission, also giving the "Security System Log" clue that hints that one particular member of the SG actually conveniently avoided being present for the massacre.

I have to wonder why there is a "blue and white robot" in a body bag in the Twelve Corpses clue? If there's some kind of coverup to conceal Starstripe's survival, that would imply someone on the police evidence team would have to be in on it....and a blue and white robot would certainly not fool the coroner.

Debriefing: I like the debriefing, has a great in-character summary of the evidence gathered so far.

Mission 2
Briefing: The missing Starstripe turns up and attacks some Longbow, making him look pretty guilty. The contact asks me to stop him.

Inside the mission: The base is full of Patriotoid robots and the Patriotoids are actually too hard for my scrapper at +2 x8 difficulty, defeating me in short order. +2 x8 is admittedly pretty high difficulty, but I actually can do just fine against most PvE content at this difficulty setting, so this was a bit of a surprise. Reviewing my combat log it seems like they got me with a combination of sonic blast (-res debuff), stacked chilblain/electric fences (slow/immob), shiver (slow), ice blasts (slow) and build up (a lot of them use this) (after watching for a bit I think just the Patriotoid Stunner uses this, but this mob seems quite common; maybe it is the only lieutenant rank mob in the group). The cumulative effect of all these debuffs plus build up makes this enemy group quite dangerous; may be a bit too hard for most players. I think you should consider dropping build up from their powersets and reducing the amount of stacking debuff they have. Why do these robots have such varied powersets anyway? I think they would seem more natural if they had a more common theme.

I decide to turn down my difficulty settings and retry the mission. Changed to +0 x1, bosses OK, no AVs. Much easier now.

Found a pile of bones labeled Domino Dicer, but the spam box message is:

"The body was slashed to pieces, much like the Patrioteers. It's hard to identify without reference."

....seems to imply I can't identify it, but it IS clearly labeled Domino Dicer (inconsistent). This body seems likely to be an important plot element, should maybe have a Clue attached to it. It triggers a "Search Longbow Criminal Database" objective. I find a nearby computer that completes this objective and gives me "Positive Identification" as a clue, identifying the body as Domino Dicer.

In the last room of the base I find Starstripe. He's in a SG called "the Patrioteers", should maybe be "The Patrioteers" (note caps). His origin describes "experimental gene therapy to gain supernatural abilities", but supernatural usually implies magic, so may not be the word you want to use. (Very nitpicky.)


I hate when heroes go bad. Oh well, case closed.


Starstripe has some dialog about a mysterious female person who "got to them" and "She killed them!" and so on, hinting that there's more to the story. Defeating Starstripe completed the mission, and I got the "Starstripe Arrested!" clue from him (should maybe be after "Positive Identification" in the clue journal); perhaps Starstripe's story should be mentioned as part of this clue?

Considering this is a Longbow base, why aren't there any Longbow here? Perhaps have a few Longbow as optional hostages, being nonlethally contained by the robots or something?

Debriefing: Aha, Domino Dicer is a female assassin (gender wasn't clear from the pile of bones or the positive ID; maybe the positive ID should specify) which might explain Starstripe's curious dialog. The contact presents a reasonably believable explanation for Starstripe's actions; though I get the vibe that it's not "the real story".

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact wants me to find out why Starstripe went off the deep end, which seems kinda reasonable; he wants me to do this by talking to Rita, his lawyer, though. For some reason Starstripe won't talk to Rita, though, so I don't see what motivation I have for talking to her. How could she know anything if she hasn't been in contact with Starstripe? Also, wouldn't anything Starstripe have told her be protected due to lawyer/client privilege? (Though it does start building a circumstantial case that Rita is up to no good...)

Inside the law firm, there's still more Patriotoids...what are they doing here?? I thought they worked for the Patriots, who are all dead or in prison now.

I find and rescue Chet Parson, who says:

[NPC] Chet Parson: You're a witness! I'm going to make a furtune off this!

"furtune" should be "fortune". Consider adding "Esq." as an ostentatious title ("Chet Parson, Esq.") to be more lawyerly.

Found a corkboard that satisfies "Find Rita", with "Note from Rita" as a clue, hinting she had a conference 3 days ago. Though if this note is from 3 days ago, we actually have seen Rita more recently than that; so I'm not sure this actually finds Rita.

Found a file cabinet labeled "Files"; when I click on it, I get a progress bar with no message on it (suggest you add one). It does seem to satisfy the "Find Starstripe's motive" objective, and gives me "The Starstripe murder file". Is this supposed to be a file about Starstripe's crimes? If so, how is it that the law firm has a file about this when, according to the chief, Starstripe has refused to talk to them? It also says that Domino Dicer killed Starstripe's parents, but I think we knew that (it's in his bio even).

This also triggers a new objective to "Find Source of Invasion", but it is unclear why this is triggered by finding the files; the robot invasion was here as soon as I entered, after all, and the files don't refer to it.

I found Ross being held captive by more robots. One of them says:

[NPC] Patriotoid Silencer: Remain Stationary. You are not the targetted interloper.


If it's a Silencer, why is it yelling at me?

"targetted" should be "targeted". Ross trying to claim I gave him whiplash, with appropriate animation even, was a funny touch. (Wish I had gotten a screenshot of that now.)

Found a "Starstripe Hologram" which was issuing orders to the robots and satisfied the "Source of Invasion" objective. Interesting that the Starstripe Hologram was looking for Rita. But the real Starstripe could've seen Rita even while in jail, since she works for the law firm his SG is retaining. Hmmm.

At "Rita's Desk" I get the final clue, "Rita's Novel" about Starstripe's parents; neat idea. At the same time I get the mission completion clue, "Starstripe's Next Target". In this clue, "blame's" should be "blames", and it suggests that Starstripe set all these robots in motion to go after Rita even before he was arrested.

Mission 4
Briefing: Since we think Starstripe is going after Rita, the contact wants me to go to her apartment and protect her. I like that the contact says they'll be working on finding out how the robots are being controlled. It occurs to me that Starstripe is in custody and could be questioned about this.

Map selection: I thought the plan was that I'd go to Rita's apartment, but this mission is set in Steel Canyon on an outdoor map; seems inconsistent.

The outdoor map is filled with more Patriotoid robots. It seems like there are an awful lot of these Patriotoid robots; considering they are originally the security drones for the Patriot base, how is it that there are enough to fill up Steel Canyon? And what happened to the people who normally live in Steel Canyon?

At this point 2 teammates joined me (a dark defender and a rad blaster); with a team following me around I needed to pick up the pace a bit, so my notes are a little more sketchy. I was still on +0 x1 but a bigger team meant bigger spawns; the Patriotoids were very mean against the squishies on my team, and the blaster died at least 3 times.

The outdoor map was just too big to make it practical to clear all the mobs, so we skipped around searching for Rita, eventually finding her behind one of the buildings along the northern edge. After freeing her she ran off with some dialog about needing some notes (I think) and I have "Rescue Rita again" as an objective.

We searched the whole map again and couldn't find Rita (this was frustrating) but we did find "Leiutenant Hodge" (should be "Lieutenant Hodge"). Freeing Hodge satisfied the "Rescue Rita again" objective; Hodge had dialog and a clue explaining why he was here (warning against "Rita") but my defender teammate still said "This man isn't Rita!" Also, in "Hodge's Bad News" clue, "coronor" should be "coroner".

This triggered two more objectives: to defeat the Domino Dicer and to shut down the Patriotoids. This caused us to search the whole map again. We were able to find a device to destroy that satisfied the "shut down the Patriotoids" (though, of course it didn't really shut down the Patriotoids). We couldn't find anything named Domino or Dicer, though; this was frustrating. Finally after extensive searching we found "Rita?" who satisfied the Domino Dicer objective. In Rita's description, "leiutenant" should be "lieutenant".


Okay, Domino Dicer, you're going down! Wait, ugh, what's this horrible green stuff? Another trick, I suppose? Oh, sorry about that, defender teammate...the debuff is, uhh, really a very attractive shade of green.

While this mission had an interesting structure, there was way too much backtracking. Multiple triggered objectives on an outdoor map tend to force backtracking, and it was particularly frustrating that two objectives didn't match the name of what actually satisfied the objective (we had set up macros to try and target the objective as named in the nav tool).


Mission 5
Briefing: so Starstripe is exonerated. The police chief says he's giving Starstripe a pardon, but a police chief really doesn't have this authority; I think you'd need the governor or the president to issue a pardon, or perhaps a judge can simply order Starstripe released (since maybe he hasn't been convicted yet).

Another scrapper joined my team during this mission.

This mission is mostly full of Arachnos, which is a nice change from the Patriotoids. They talk a lot about a "Chosen One" (presumably Domino Dicer), in the following lines of dialog:

[NPC] Crab Spider Slicer: Fan out. The new Chosen One wants Starstripe bad!
[NPC] Fire Tarantula: Who cares? Its not like Chosen Ones are *actually* important.
[NPC] Fortunata: Hold on to this one. The 'Chosen One' we came for wants him for some reason.

Actually, "Chosen One" should be "Destined One" throughout (to match the terminology used in CoV).

There are some extra optional spawns of Freaks and Family which I thought were fun. I wonder what happened to all the prison guards, though? Perhaps some should be present as optional hostages.

One of my team members wasn't familiar with tbe Breakout map and was quite confused by the grates that connect the interior and exterior parts of the map. You might consider adding mention of these grates to the mission briefing or mission objectives.

We rescued Starstripe (he spawned inside a cell) and triggered Domino Dicer as an objective (she spawned in the exterior area). Domino Dicer was an AV in this mission, which seemed like a big upgrade from the last mission; possibly it's because we added that fourth person, though. I found the AV first and was momentarily puzzled that my teammates couldn't see her, until we realized she was a ninjitsu AV. That seems quite dangerous; I could easily picture a low perception player stumbling across her and getting 1-shotted (or nearly so) by the AV attacking from hide. However, based on Domino Dicer's background and modus operandi so far, making her a db/ninj enemy actually makes a lot of sense. Just be aware this is dangerous.

Our team was moving too fast for Starstripe to keep up; he got left behind in the jail area, which made some of Domino Dicer's taunts (which address Starstripe) not quite make sense. Example:

[NPC] Domino Dicer: Why so determined, Starstripe? Its not like I could kill everyone you love AGAIN.

Nice line; but maybe consider rewording the lines so they'll make sense even if Starstripe isn't present.

Domino Dicer seemed to Placate me a lot, but we eventually dropped her. There's a pretty cool ending to the story with some Starstripe/Domino Dicer drama in the final clue and debriefing.

Debriefing: "Anyone but the $name and Starstripe" should perhaps be "Anyone but $name and Starstripe".

No souvenir? Write one if you can.

Overall
I liked the storyline quite a bit, with Starstripe initially being falsely accused and eventually exonerated, and the way Domino Dicer escaped and began impersonating Rita. I liked the characterization of Rita and all the lawyers, and the police chief. Some pretty good clues and well written briefings. I liked the extra criminal spawns placed in the jailbreak mission. I liked how the story ended, with Starstripe taking the moral high ground.

Things I didn't like: the Patriotoid robots. We were fighting Patriotoids for most of the arc (they were the primary enemy for 4 missions; would've liked this mixed up some), and they aren't really strongly connected with the real villain of the story, so they were actually somewhat distracting. The powers they have add up to a lot of stacking debuffs, making them (IMHO) too powerful, especially against teams. The way the Patriotoids were used seemed inconsistent to me; in mission 1, they are triggered by opening the vault (but why weren't they triggered when Domino Dicer stole her swords? and how did Domino Dicer open the vault, the Chief said only a hero ID could open it and Rita is just a lawyer). In missions 2 and 3, the Patriotoids are working for Starstripe. In mission 4, the Patriotoids are working for Domino Dicer. Neither Starstripe nor Domino Dicer seem to have a Technology background that would justify them being able to reprogram the security robots into a robot army. I kind of had the impression that the Patriotoids were present in most missions just for the sake of giving the player something to fight. I think I'd recommend toning down the Patriotoid power sets a bit and perhaps more definitely decide whether they're working for Starstripe or Domino Dicer, and give the other person a different set of minions that is helping them.

The triggered objectives were neat but I thought they caused much too much backtracking and searching; this wasn't too bad in the indoor missions, but was especially frustrating in mission 4. I'd recommend reworking the way your triggered objectives are structured to make it easier for the player to find everything without having to constantly backtrack and/or search large maps. It was also a bit weird to be fighting grey Clockwork in mission 1. I am guessing they were present in order to make the triggered objectives occur in order, as you rescue hostages from the Clockwork, but the presence of Clockwork (unrelated to the actual plot) seemed rather distracting.

I have to wonder, did Starstripe realize that Domino Dicer was impersonating Rita early on? I kind of think he did, since he was targeting Rita in mission 3. If this is the case, why did he not try to tell the police (or me, for that matter)? Also, if I understand the plot correctly, Rita is killed by Domino Dicer 3 days before the events of the story arc; how is it that the body found in mission 2 is relatively fresh, and is "positively identified" as Domino Dicer? Some possible plot problems.

Anyway, I did like the writing and the story overall; I felt the gameplay had some problems though. I ended up giving the story 3 stars, hope you think that is fair!

---

My queue is currently:

@Lazarus - Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)" (Arc# 347029)
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454

Changes made:

Ambience/Symbolism
* Added 2 more glowies to mission 2 with suggestive clues.
* Now you have to search the medical library to find the password to hack into Larson's computer. In the library you find an antique book where the description of the "trepanation" medical procedure is lovingly underlined. (Motivated by Cheshire_Cat's suggestion to make the player think that this doctor isn't someone you would want as your doctor.)
* You also have to search the nurse's desk to find the silver key that unlocks the file cabinet. (Admittedly not as horrifying, but, hey, it's a Lovecraft reference.)
* Reworded the mission entry/exit popups to describe the player as having a terrible headache that grows worse as the arc progresses, making it hard to think and hard to see clearly. (Hopefully supports the idea that what you are presented as seeing and thinking isn't necessarily rational.) (Also links to the other patient complaining to the nurse of his terrible headache.)
* Reworded a debriefing to have the doctor express concern about a swelling in the patient's brain. (To match the "headache" plot thread and hopefully making the player worry that this arc is leading up to the player character getting trepanated.)
* Adjusted the dialog and descriptions of minor characters to increase the parallelism between the various missions.
* Added reference in the souvenir to the "medical transcripts" being used to help incriminate the player. (Inspired by twelfth's questioning who was writing these transcripts and what their motivation was.)

Hoping this all helps increase the "sense of dread" a little. Still not sure if it's enough. I don't think I can do a total rewrite in the time remaining, so I'm doing smaller changes, to do what I can.

On the bright side, after working at the arc details and making the ultimate resolution a little less crystal clear in my mind, I don't hate this story nearly as much.

Boss descriptions
Multiple people suggested I should write bios for various bosses; I ended up writing custom descriptions for:
* Minotaur
* M1K@3L
* The Boss?
* Lt. Larson
* Back Alley Brawler
* Synapse

Game mechanics
* Hoping the extra glowies linked to other glowies in mission 2 will make that mission's gameplay more interesting. (May require some backtracking but it's a small map with no opposition.)
* Added an ambush after you rescue the Nurse in mission 3. (Fredrik wanted more combat; Back_Fire felt having the Nurse as an ally was disappointing when nothing was left to fight)
* Added a note in mission 5's debriefing to read the souvenir. (A little immersion-breaking, but Back_Fire felt that most people would miss the extra story in the souvenir otherwise.)

Copyright violations
* Changed references to the CSI TV show, "The Who" and Roomba, to all be more generic, to avoid breaking the copyright violation rule.

Does this really satisfy the conditions of the Challenge?
* I've had multiple people question whether this story satisfies the condition of "doing evil for the greater good". They have some pretty good arguments, too.
* The original challenge is a hard problem for me to resolve because I personally don't believe evil actions can be justified by good results.
* My original idea was that the player would do something that she thought was good (from her PoV) but, in the absolute sense, the action was evil.
* In another sense, I guess I am saying "To do evil actions in the name of the greater good, you'd have to be crazy."
* Does this really satisfy the challenge? I'm not so sure now. It's been interesting to think about, though.

I'm trying to increase my pace to get to some of the "Dr Aeon's Challenge" arcs before the deadline, but at the current rate I'm not sure I'll make it to them.... I thought about skipping directly to them, but I was afraid that would be unfair to the people who got skipped over.

So... I'll try to do more, but I'm not definitely sure if I'll get to them in time.

Because you asked for it -

Mistaken Identity
arc ID 349473

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society
Arc ID: 344596
Keywords: Ideal for Teams, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-54
Warnings: EBs, enemies with custom powers

The premise is to help the last surviving member of a Golden Age supergroup investigate some kind of 5th Column related problem. Although it says "Ideal for Teams" I tried to solo it with a 48 fire/thermal controller, on default (+0 x0) difficulty; she of the red white and blue fire imps, and the most Golden Age looking costume of my crew.

I kind of wonder if the arc title should be "The Secret of the Golden Age Paragon Society"; the current word order seems a little weird to me.

The contact is a custom character in a red, white and blue costume. Love the irony in naming him "The Firecracker Kid" and giving him a really old looking face; it makes sense in the context, of course.

Mission 1
Briefing: Wow, he sounds crotchety! This does match his appearance, so works well. The coloring of "Red White Boom" looks weird to my eyes (I'd rather it all be one color) but I can see how it fits; just the tri-color makes it initially seem like three unrelated words instead of a single name.

I think it is a little weird that the contact says "it falls upon me to pass on to your generation a secret" ... then he doesn't ACTUALLY tell me the secret. Instead he just says some punks are trying to steal something. I wonder if it would flow more naturally to have him only ask the player to get the lockbox and not mention the secret at all until later, when he's really ready to reveal it.

The contact says "an old friend on the force" told him that a break-in is currently in progress. So the police knows about this break-in, and the Paragon Society (in the form of Firecracker Kid) knows about this break-in. Why aren't either of them responding to this break-in directly? Having Firecracker Kid request I come visit him, THEN send me to go deal with the break-in, seems implausible. Maybe Firecracker Kid could just send me to get the lockbox, and not mention either the secret or the break-in. Then while I'm on the premises, I discover the bad guys breaking in, and decide to stop them on my own.

Inside the mission, I have the objective to "Defeat Anderson", but I have no idea who Anderson is, so I am not sure why I need to do this. Perhaps "Stop Burglars" would be a more natural objective.

As I move into the mission, the "Defeat Anderson" objective mysteriously vanishes, though I don't think I've encountered Anderson yet. I did find a statue that some 5th Column were trying to destroy, but I stopped them; this might've cleared the "Defeat Anderson" objective, but I can't understand why.

The 5th Column by the statue said:

[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: Destroy this propoganda!
[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: For the fatherland!

"propoganda" should be "propaganda". "fatherland" should be "Fatherland" (note capitalization).

A little deeper into the mission I *do* encounter Commander Anderson, even though the "Defeat Anderson" objective is gone; something weird going on there. He is very talkative, with a full 7 lines of dialog; not quite sure he needs THAT much, most of the lines are just posturing anyway. He does say:

[NPC] Commander Anderson: You are nothing to the 5th column!

"column" should be "Column" here (note capitalization). Also, Commander is a naval rank and would be atypical for the 5th Column (as far as I know). Might be more appropriate to give him the rank of Colonel, Oberst, Commandant or Captain. (Super nitpicky.)

I find the safe, which is named "DO NOT OPEN UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH", but according to the briefing, it should be the lockbox inside the safe that has this label. Having the safe itself be named that makes me feel like I shouldn't open it, even though Firecracker Kid said to open the safe (but NOT the lockbox). Maybe name this glowy "Safe" instead.

I get two clues at the same time when I click "DO NOT OPEN UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH". In "Smartphone and Burnt Item" it says I found "a small pile of ashes" that "must have been some type of film". I don't think burned microfilm (if that's what this is intended to be) would leave ashes, it would be more like melted plastic or something. "can not determine" should be "cannot determine", and there needs to be a period after "some type of film".

Mission exit popup, "That is unless you want" should be "That is, unless you want" (note punctuation).

Debriefing: much too short. Is "bligity" intentionally spelled that way? Wasn't sure if it was meant to be a nonsense word or not. I really would've expected the contact to have some commentary on what just happened; especially the fact that the "DO NOT OPEN" lockbox was found already opened.

Mission 2
Briefing: The "Part 2: Putting the genie back" sub-caption should perhaps be in bold, italics, or another color; something to make it stand out.

Here the contact says stuff that normally would be in the debriefing for mission 1. It seems a bit unfair that he blames me for tardiness when he could've stopped this burglary himself, rather than calling me, having me come to him, then having me go to his base to stop it. I mean, he IS a hero himself; or was once, at any rate. It fits with his crotchety persona, though.

I think "grandee" should be "grande" also.

The contact wants me to "get back" the microfilm, but I have physical evidence that it's already been destroyed (though...probably posted to the internet already via Anderson's cell phone). Why does he think the info on the microfilm will smear the name of the Paragon Society? (Note: "The Paragon Society" should probably be "the Paragon Society".)

Send-off message: "traced information" should perhaps be "traced the information". I'm a bit surprised that they could trace it to "a device that belongs to the base leader"; how would they know who owns what inside a 5th Column base?

Just how did Sherman (another hero) find out about this so quickly, that he's already on the way before Firecracker Kid and I have any clue where to go? It seems suspicious that Firecracker Kid doesn't want his own godson involved in this investigation; no doubt this implication is intentional, though.

Mission entry popup is a little on the terse side. Maybe OK though.

Inside the mission my only initial objective is "Meet Sherman"; I'm a little puzzled that I don't also have an objective to actually get back the stolen info.

This mission seems awfully quiet; I run into some 5th Column but they don't say anything. Maybe add a patrol with some dialog?

The map was kind of a circular map with a room in the middle and I circled all the way around the outer circle before I found Sherman in the center room (and he does have some dialog). Finding Sherman then triggered the Defeat Hecker objective, causing me to backtrack about halfway around the outer circle in order to find him in a place I had already explored.


A patriotic team-up!

I like Hecker's ranting about bringing back the 5th Column; I also like the guys (an ambush?) who say:

[NPC] Raserei Ubermenschen Force: Attack maneuver dreiunddreizig!

....though maybe that should be capitalized. Hecker's another Commander (nitpicky). We end up defeating him, which completes the mission. It's a little unclear how this secured the info until I notice the "Memory Stick" clue; considering how important this information purportedly is, it seems a little sloppy of me to simply assume this Memory Stick is the one containing the right info; shouldn't I get some confirmation before I go back and get yelled at by the Kid again? Also, who is to say that someone hasn't made a million copies of this data, or posted it to alt.nazi.plots on the Internet?

Is there some reason I need to take the "Memory Stick" back to the Firecracker Kid to decode, instead of just knowing what's on the memory stick now? It would involve the player a little more to learn this info herself, instead of having the contact tell you what's on it. The clue does say we should take it back to Firecracker Kid to "have techs check it out", but considering how sensitive the Kid was about the Paragon Society secret, would he REALLY allow a third party to decipher this?

In "Sherman's Story", "discrete" should be "discreet". I have mixed feelings about having the clues be all different colors; it's a little distracting. But probably OK.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. I'm thinking maybe you are skimping on debriefings because teams can't see them, but I do think it is worth putting text here.

Mission 3
Briefing: Some of this info probably belongs in the debriefing of mission 2. It seems this memory stick coincidentally also includes the 5th Column secret plan to reactive some experiment; I guess this sort of coincidence happens all the time in comics. I'd find it a little more believable that both these pieces of info were on a laptop or a PDA or something, but it's a minor point.

The contact is pretty vague as to what this "experiment" actually is, though.

Send off message: Hmm, the contact blames me for Sherman continuing on this case? Considering the clues for mission 2 emphasize that I didn't say anything, this seems unfair. It's particularly curious that he would prefer that I, a total stranger, investigate this case, over having his own godchild and the leader of the "New" Paragon Society check it out. This seems pretty unreasonable, but perhaps it is foreshadowing for the Kid eventually turning on me.

Also, why does he call me "Nancy"? Is that some kind of archaic expression?

Mission objectives: while "Seek Clues" and "Defeat Base Commander" seem pretty reasonable, I'm not sure why I need to "Destroy Cloning Tube" or "Destroy Control Console" since these were never mentioned before. I'd suggest you either have the Kid mention them specifically in the briefing, or perhaps say something like "You should bust up any scientific equipment you see" and then accumulate these into a more generic sonding "2 pieces of equipment to destroy".

I find a Cloning Tube almost immediately; destroying it gives me the "DNA Sample" clue. It says I find the DNA of whomever was to be cloned inside; but the Cloning Tube's guard actually says:

[NPC] Darkwolf: Hurry! The sooner these are repaired the sooner we can begin production.

...implying the Cloning Tube is nonfunctional. So why would they put the DNA sample in the Cloning Tube if the machine isn't operational? (Logic problem.)

Found and defeated General Vogt, who spawned as an EB for me; I actually thought he was just a normal 5th Column guy (since he has a typical 5th uniform) until he started beating me up. In his dialog he says:

[NPC] General Vogt: You are even more outclassed then the "hero" Sherman was.

"then" should be "than" here. I guess he is implying that Sherman was already here and got defeated.

Found an ordinary wooden crate that gave me the "Costume" clue ... huh, I wonder if this glowy should be a coffin or a body bag instead?

Finally I found the control console, which gives me the "Hard Drive" clue and completes the mission. I'm not sure blasting this console to pieces, then taking the hard drive, makes the most sense for trying to trace the communications coming from the console; perhaps hacking the computer and tracing the network would be a little more logical?

Shouldn't I have questioned Vogt or some of the other 5th Column regarding what happened to Sherman? Vogt clearly knew, since he mentioned Sherman.

Debriefing: again much too short. What happened with the hard drive I found, and the link to the next 5th Column base?

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact finally reveals the secret of the Paragon Society. I rather like Sherman's secret origin; after all the nihilistic "Aeon's Challenge" arcs we've been churning out, it's nice to see some heroes choose to do what's right, even though it creates a greater long-term danger; I really think this is more heroic.

"and as I feared those Nutsi bastards" should be "and as I feared, those Nutsi bastards". I think it's also worth mentioning that they probably learned the secret from the info they stole earlier.

Send-off message: whoa, the contact actually admits that Sherman getting involved in this was his fault! I think this is a very grown-up thing to do; if this keeps up, someday, he may grow up to be a Firecracker MAN. However, if Firecracker Kid really DID tell Sherman this secret before mission 3, as he expositions here, it's really rotten of him to blame me for not getting Sherman off the case in mission 3's briefing. You might want the contact to not blame the player in mission 3's briefing, unless it's your intent that the Kid be this crotchety and mean (which is possible, actually, based on his characterization so far).

I think I would've liked to see some foreshadowing of this reveal in mission 3, also; since the Nutsis clearly know Sherman's secret (since they were trying to clone him), they could drop some hints in their dialog. Perhaps they could mention that this time, the clones would be trained to be good little fascists, or something. Also, Vogt talking down Sherman's abilities in his dialog seems a little inconsistent with the idea that they view him as prime cloning material. And if Vogt could beat Sherman, why don't they clone Vogt?

Map selection: should this be a 5th Column style base instead of a tech lab?

I almost immediately find "Panzer", an ally who apparently was formerly Sherman. Should Panzer be blond? (Admittedly an Aryan stereotype.) He says stuff like:

[NPC] Panzer: MUST...FOCUS....4th of July....Statue of Liberty....Iron Star...
[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: No interuptions!

Huh, what's an Iron Star? Nothing turns up on wikipedia. I don't get the reference. Also, being the son of Red White and Boom, a patriotic hero, he should totally think of his dad (and perhaps his teammates) when trying to focus on American things. Also, "interuptions" should be "interruptions".

Panzer gives me the clue "Sherman's Story". (This is the second clue named this, though they are distinguished by the mission number.) For consistency, this should be "Panzer's Story" or perhaps the ally should still be named Sherman. I lean a little towards having him still be Sherman, because he is still loyal to America and helping the hero. When in combat he says "Verraeter!" which I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Wikipedia search reveals only that it's an album title for a metal band. Finally, I kinda think the eagle on his chest should be black, not red. (Nitpicky.)

Panzer's clue and dialog both want me to take him to the "mind device", which sounds like I should lead him to an object, but there's really no mechanism for that currently, is there?

Found the picture, which has a nice description, though it's odd that the 5th Column would keep something like that around. The darts sorta explain it though.

At some point I got "Defeat Base Leader" in my mission objectives, probably when I rescued Sherman. Exploring the base, Sherman and I find Blitzkrieg in the deepest part. Blitzkrieg only spawned as a lieutenant for me, which meant he died almost instantly, but he did say "Verraeter!" which caused Sherman to betray me. So now it makes more sense to keep him named Panzer and in the 5th Column.


Turns out it was a bad idea to buff Panzer to be immune to my damage type.

I eventually overcome Panzer despite his high fire resist.

While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Panzer: Ha! You are about as tough as a weinerschnitzel!

Love this line, but it should be "wiener schnitzel".

After defeating Panzer I now have a new objective of "Aquire Device to Restore Sherman". "Aquire" should be "Acquire" here. Since I fought Blitzkrieg in the deepest part of the base, I'm forced to backtrack looking for the device.

One floor down I find a safe labeled "Mind Control Device" (should maybe just be "Safe" and then you find the device inside) which completes the mission. Having this spawn behind me is a little weird because Sherman and I totally walked right by this objective (but were unable to complete it) and in principle we should've been able to recover the device right then and there, to free Sherman from mind control. Not sure there is a good way to work around this; you can hope to make the device spawn behind the boss, but it's hard to make sure of it.

Debriefing: finally a debriefing with some text in it, and the contact is forced to admit that I'm actually helping a lot, which is a good feeling. Strangely, he mentions that "Blitzkrieg wasn't making an idle boast. The 5th Column has a lab somewhere" .... I think this should be "has another lab somewhere". Also, looking back at Blitzkrieg's dialog, he never mentions another lab, just that the 5th Column won't be stopped by Blitzkrieg's defeat. I would suggest adding a clue somewhere (on Blitzkrieg's defeat or the end of mission, or somewhere) to help point the player to the next lab.

Besides which, it seems a little unheroic for the player to wait for the authorities to locate the next lab; really, I should be out there looking for it, or else have found some clue in this mission that leads to it.

Mission 5
Briefing: It's a little surprising that several months pass between mission 4 and this one; what happened to the backup 5th Column lab? Well, apparently Sherman has finally located it (I guess he was looking for it, but I was not) and wants my help. (We arrested Blitzkrieg and many other 5th Column soldiers; none of them would give up the location?) This is nice of him, but his description says he's the leader of a whole SG (the new Paragon Society); this makes it a little strange that, after months apart, he would ask me and not one of his SGmates. Also, considering he attacked me on our last outing, I'm a little wary about another team-up.

In this briefing, "Blitzkieg" should be "Blitzkrieg".

Send-off message: glad that Firecracker Kid mentions that he'd like to help, but is too weak; I had been wondering why he (as a hero) wasn't helping more directly.

Mission objectives: I have "Defeat Uber Alles" as an objective, but this name hasn't been mentioned before now (though it IS a cool name for a villain).

Early on I ran into a "Werwolf" (I think a custom minion) singing the Nutsi national anthem (I think?).

Then I find Sherman battling some more custom 5th Column. It seems the custom characters are all described as clones; since "months" have passed, maybe this cloning facility has made more progress than the last.

Sherman says the line:

[NPC] Sherman: I don't care what you say Fritz.! My heritage is as American as Mom's apple pie!

...which has an extra period after "Fritz".

We find and destroy the Mind Probe, but it's not really clear what the 5th Column was doing with it. We also destroy some Cloning Tubes. None of them give any clues though. I assume these don't have DNA loaded into them already? Or where did these clones come from? Should we maybe have an objective to steal back the DNA samples they are using? What are they really doing here, I wonder?

Tragically, after defeating a 5th Column minion on a catwalk, Sherman gets stuck in geometry up there and I have to leave him behind.

After fighting the custom 5th Column for awhile, I notice that Werwolf is not worth any exp. May want to look at that, most players will want to get exp for every kill.

Also, it seems like this mission is entirely custom 5th Column mobs; you may want to mix in a few standard 5th Column mobs into this faction, for more variety and to make them look like part of the 5th Column. Or alternatively you could rename this villain group "Fascist Clones" or something, to distinguish them from the 5th Column.

Regarding the specific custom mobs, the "Werwolf" seems a little generic. He seems like just another soldier, why make a custom character specifically for him instead of using one of the existing 5th Column troopers? Also, "Werwolf" may be easy to confuse with the war wolf and werewolf mobs, but I don't think he's intended to be like them.

The Hunter mobs look cool; I think they may be an homage to the Nazi archaeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark? However, what is their purpose here? Their description mentions hunting artifacts, but that isn't referenced anywhere else in the plot; are they

I like the look of the Goot Mater (sp? forgot to write down their exact name) mobs, I think they fit in well with the theme. Their description mentions they are expected to give birth to 4 Aryan babies to perpetuate the master race; but this seems a little inconsistent with the plot so far, which seems to involve cloning the master race using the Clone Tubes, not breeding them the normal way.

Speaking of, since this is a cloning facility, I think it would be fun to have some younger (not fully grown) clones here; a nursery full of clone babies being tended by the Nazi mothers, or a classroom of "Boys from Brazil" type Hitler youth being indoctrinated by teachers or something.

Also, considering there's so many 5th Column clones running around, isn't the goal of destroying Cloning Tubes a little too late?

Deep in the base I do find Uber Alles, who spawned as a boss to me. He seemed a little easy for the final boss, but this may be the fault of my difficulty settings. (General Vogt was actually tougher, having spawned as an EB while Uber Alles is only a Boss.) Love his costume though, it's very evocative.


Have a taste of the red white and blue, Nutsi!

He doesn't look like a clone of anyone else though (certainly not Sherman). So I guess he is the only non-clone 5th Column here? Not sure. Also, it would've been nice to have some foreshadowing of Uber Alles, since he IS the Big Bad guy of the arc; as it is, the final mission is the first time you hear of his existence. Would be nice if one of the earlier bosses said something like, "You may defeat me, but Uber Alles will get you!" for the sake of building the Big Bad guy up as a threat.

Defeating Uber Alles gives me the "Aftermath" clue. This clue summarizes the end of the mission; I kinda think the text here really belongs in the mission exit popup and/or the mission debriefing. The mission exit popup doesn't currently have a lot of info in it; maybe it could go there.

It would be nice to have a few more clues in mission 5, though. I never really got a feel for what the 5th Column was doing in this base, other than plotting to take over the world via unspecified means. I think the mission could be improved by giving the 5th Column some crazy plan to take over the world, that you and Sherman manage to foil just in time (right now I think we find out where their base is, then just head there to beat them up).

Not a bad debriefing.

Souvenir seems a little on the short side; would be nice to have a recap of the arc. Also the first paragraph is written like a description while the second paragraph is written like dialog; this is a little jarring, may want to make them consistent or put them in a different type face to make it clear that they're different. Also, is a recommendation letter to the New Paragon Society from Firecracker Kid actually helpful? After all, I've just saved Sherman's butt, and Sherman is the SG leader, after all -- I wouldn't think I would need any more recommendation than that.

Overall
I liked the reveal of the secret of the Paragon Society and Sherman/Panzer's back story. I liked how Firecracker Kid was characterized; both the irony of being an octogenarian "Kid" and how crotchety he started out, and then how he warmed up to the player as the arc progressed. His disdain for Faceyspace and other modern artifacts was very fun, too.

Some of the plotting felt a bit awkward to me; Firecracker Kid gets a tip from the police that his base is being robbed, but instead of the police dealing with it, the Kid dealing with it, or the New Paragon Society dealing with it, he summons a random hero to go check it out? Kid also drops a lot of hints about this deep dark secret long before actually revealing it; if it were really a secret, wouldn't he not mention it until he had to? Also he mentioned early on that he needed to pass this secret on to the next generation; considering the nature of the secret (Sherman's secret origin), wouldn't it be better for everyone if it were forgotten?

The 5th Column plot to clone Sherman to make super soldiers made some sense, but they seem to lose direction after you rescue Sherman in mission 4. In mission 5 it seems like they've dropped the idea of cloning Sherman and instead are churning out clones of Werwolves, Hunters and Goot Maters, but it's not clear why; all of these custom mobs, while neat, are not really super soldiers (none are even close to as dangerous as Panzer was) and so I don't know what they are accomplishing.

Currently I feel like mission 4 is the strongest of the arc, with Blitzkrieg's evil plan, the mind control device, and saving Sherman. I might suggest either making mission 4 the finale (cutting mission 5 and moving some of the cool stuff in there into a previous mission) or else adding more material to mission 5: at the very least, a new mad plan to replace the "Clone Sherman" plan, maybe some supporting clues/dialog to explain why they are churning out Hunters and Goot Maters instead of super soldiers, and some flavor stuff. I think generally adding more details to the missions would help each mission be more fun; there's a certain sameness to fighting 5th Column and defeating their boss in each mission (though Sherman's plotline does help mix things up some).

Here's a random crazy idea (you can use it or completely disregard it): in the final mission, you could put a refrigerator glowy containing Hitler's Brain-in-a-Jar. There would be a recolored Baby-New-Year hostage as "Baby Hitler" or "Hitler Youth" being read Mein Kampf as a bedtime story by a Goot Mater. Then when you win the mission, maybe Sherman could adopt the Aryan baby and raise him; I think that would have a certain symmetric elegance.

Anyway, it's always a fun time beating up Nazis. I gave this arc 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Lazarus - Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)" (Arc# 347029)
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454

Paparazzi from Celebrity Kidnapping (arc id 1388)



Smile!


Get the scoop!

12/2/2009

I had a long weekend for Thanksgiving that I made longer by taking a couple days off. I played a lot of CoH as a result, so this is a little long.

I started Wednesday afternoon finishing playing Idealist (48 fire/thermal controller) through Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today!, a fun retro sci fi arc where you battle the evil Baron Doomsday on the moon and near Mars orbit and stuff. It was pretty long but had a great sense of atmosphere; I gave this arc 5 stars.

On Thursday it was Thanksgiving, and I played A Wentworth's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a fun story about a Nemesis plot to take over the traditional Thanksgiving Day Parade. I thought it started really strong but lost a little steam at the end; it was a fun diversion though and I gave it 4 stars.

People were making noises about how they wanted people to fight in Recluse's Victory, so I brought Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) there and beat a bane, then switched to April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and lost repeatedly to a rad/psy defender, but beat a scrapper, a cold defender and a tanker, then lost 4 times to a sonic blaster, then got the blaster once and a tanker near him.

I played Quick Katie (my relatively new 20 plant/kin controller) on a Positron TF with a team of:

1 defender (TA/AR)
1 blaster (elec/mental)
3 controllers (plant/kin, ill/cold, ill/rad)
3 scrappers (spine/elc, claw/fire, elec/elec)

I had taken Speed Boost as Quick Katie's level 20 power, and with the new exemping rules I got to use it on this TF, which people seemed grateful for. The blaster seemed AFK for most of the TF, and an aggro magnet the times he was at keyboard; late in the TF I called him on the fact that he was AFK all the time, and he claimed narcolepsy (he falls asleep suddenly and without warning). I wish I was kidding. Our scrappers seemed to die a lot; it didn't seem like we were providing enough support. The defender did a good job of stealthing and recall friending people through the missions that could be, though. Despite all these hijinks we still finished the TF in 2hrs exactly, a very good time for an 8-player Positron TF.

This got Quick Katie to level 22 and I ended up joining a Sister Psyche TF shortly after, with a team of

2 controllers (both plant/kin)
1 blaster (rad/nrg)
2 scrappers
1 tanker (dark/mace)

This team had no problem with the TF, finishing in 1hr 44mins and getting Quick Kate to level 24. A teammate did compliment me on Quick Katie's background story, which was nice.

A bit later I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a speed Sharkhead SF (7 players, 25mins 34sec) and a speed 1st villain respec (4 players, 10min 4sec). I spent 40 merits on random recipe rolls, getting a 33 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) and a 33 Devastation (chance to hold), which was pretty decent.

I ended up rerolling Kyrie Eleison (was a 40 broadsword/invuln scrapper) to be a fire/regen scrapper. I did this for a number of reasons: I already have a 50 broadsword/shield scrapper, so a second broadsword scrapper seemed too similar; I've grown disenchanted with Invulnerability of late (it's great on tanks, but the lower numbers for scrappers/brutes make it feel weak to me); and finally the new ability to recolor powers let me recolor fire melee/regen to pure white and actinic blue, giving the new Kyrie a very angelic look. I solo'd for a bit, joined a pickup team in the Hollows that wiped 3 times against Outcasts due to overaggro and general ineptness, sidekicked to a friends team in Croatoa that got Kyrie to level 14, and unlocked and did the Fortune Teller mission to get to level 15. So far I'm liking the new build, though I'm normally pretty bad at playing regen scrappers; everything will be going just fine, then, suddenly, SQUISH. I'll need to practice. I have to say that wielding Greater Fire Sword while using Ninja Run looks awesome, though.

As Police Woman I helped a pickup team take down an AV-level Ghost Widow as part of one of the Cimerora arcs. Then I played Star Amethyst (47 dark/ice defender) on a pickup ITF with:

1 mastermind (merc/FF?)
3 scrappers
2 controllers (earth/cold, plant/kin)
2 defenders (dark/ice, rad/sonic)

This wasn't a speed run, we mostly killed everything in sight. The team leader set it as a MoITF for some reason, and we were doing OK on that until mission 3, when one of the other squishies perished in the lag. Nevertheless finished the ITF in 1hr 26mins and got Star Amethyst to level 48.

Went on to do a few speed runs; played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a speed LGTF (24min 30sec), Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a speed ITF (29min 16sec) on which I found a level 50 Performance Shifter (chance for +endurance) recipe.

I ended up spending 200 of Yuki-Onna's merits on a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 global rchg) which I slotted in her Ice Shield, making a set of 3 LotG for +1.13% max HP.



On Saturday I played Quick Katie, joining a pickup team running missions in Striga. We had a near-wipeout against the Family, but myself and a scrapper managed a heroic stand that outfought the multiple spawns we had somehow aggroed. I somehow inherited the star after the team leader left, and so I kept the team running in Striga, eventually getting Quick Katie to level 26, where I took Carrion Creepers; I'm still not quite sure what the Carrion Creepers do, but they sure look cool!

Playing the new Kyrie Eleison I solo'd the Midnighter arc, then joined a small raid force that zerged the Kraken in Perez Park for 2 merits and a badge; we had started out almost entirely DPS, which wasn't working well against a giant monster, but thankfully some friendly debuffers zoomed in during the fight and helped us take the Kraken down.

Also on Saturday I solo'd Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) through the rest of Maria Jenkins' Praetorian arc, which got me the Dimensional Warder, Statesman's Pal and Portal Jockey badges, along with 36 merits for finishing the whole arc.

Thunder Girl went on to join a speed ITF, where a teammate complimented her on DPS; I'm pretty pleased with her alpha strike of Build Up/Lightning Rod/Fireball/Thunder Strike, which does quite a lot of AoE damage. This speed ITF had some trouble with the final fight, where all the support characters managed to get killed by Romulus, twice; the meleers kept fighting even without support but it seemed like a losing proposition. The squishies came back from the hospital into an ambush by the door; I ended up trying to team TP everyone near Romulus to hopefully rally us. I think this helped. We ended up beating the TF in 28min 46sec.

I had spent some time thinking about Dr Aeon's Architect Challenge, and had an idea for it stuck in my head. Late on Saturday night I took a stab at writing a story arc for it. Finally finished Mistaken Identity (arc id 349473) at about 5am and staggered off to bed. It's meant to be a horror story where you go to the hospital after being defeated...and the doctors won't let you leave. And weird stuff starts happening.

I started off not really liking this story (even though I wrote it) because I felt it was too dark and depressing; I'm not quite sure whether I'll submit it to the contest or not. The theme of Dr. Aeon's contest is "a hero must do something evil for the greater good", and my belief system has a tough time with this concept; how can doing evil actually be the right choice? A statement like "We had to destroy the village to save it" seems crazy to me. Plus, horror isn't my normal thing, and I'm not very good at it yet. Plus, finishing it at 5am, I'm sure I wasn't thinking very clearly when I wrote the last few lines of the story. Some of the player feedback I've gotten so far on this arc has helped me a lot, though. I'm still kind of tinkering with the story arc as I get ideas and suggestions.


On Sunday I played Quick Katie some more in Striga Isle, doing Tobias and Lars Hansen's story arcs to unlock the Hess TF, then doing the Moonfire TF with a friends team of 3 blasters, 2 controllers (a thermal plus me as a plant/kin), 3 scrappers. We had no problems and finished in 1hr 20min. Quick Katie got both the Slayer and Silver Bullet badges on this TF; still need to get the other requirements for Atlas Medallion though.

I played Lt. Mary Sue (20 emp/AR defender on Triumph) on a team of MA fans; we did an arc called Paragon City Beauty Contest which was a single mission on a gigantic office map where the National Organization for Woman was setting bombs and holding hostage the various bikini-clad beauty contestants. There were a few funny lines in this, but there wasn't a lot more to it than that; and having 101 (!) glowies to click was certainly a pain. I gave it 2 stars.

Switched back to Liberty to play Psychic Woman (30 rad/psy defender) on a Hess TF organized by Sisterhood. The team was:

3 scrappers
2 controllers (thermal, kinetic)
2 blasters
1 defender (rad/psy)

We cleared most missions rather than stealthing them; didn't run into any trouble and finished in 1hr 3mins, getting Psychic Woman to level 31.

Also on Sunday I discovered that there is a hard cap on the amount of influence you can have on one character. I was on Police Woman doing my market stuff at Wentworth's, and I did a "get influence" on a slot with 20M influence in it, and the broker slot became empty, but my influence total didn't go up at all. That's when I noticed my influence total of 2,000,000,000 was shaded light blue, like numbers that are at a hard cap. After asking around, I found that, yeah, there IS a 2 billion limit; although there were some tricks to work around it (bidding on imaginary items). So basically I lost 20M influence for no reason. This was annoying, though other people I know said they had lost much more before they realized it, so I suppose it's not that bad, relatively.

Instead of using tricks to save up even more money, I decided this was a good opportunity to start buying up purple recipes for my alts. I resolved to focus on Thunder Girl (my elec/SR scrapper) first, because I like her and play her a lot lately. Over the course of the last few days I bought:

Apocalypse (chance for negative damage) for 120M
Apocalypse (DMG/END) for 151M
Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) for 156M
Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) for 150M
Ragnarok (DMG/END) for 120M
Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG) for 111M
Ragnarok (chance for knockdown) for 20M
Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG/ACC) for 111M

Spending all this infl got me down around 1 billion influence again, so I won't have to worry about the cap for a bit. I already had an Apocalypse (DMG) stored in my base, so a set of 5 Apocalypse in Thunder Girl's Fire Blast gives her +3% max hp, +4% global dmg and +10% global recharge. A set of 4 Ragnarok in her Fireball gives her +2.52% fire/cold res and +15% acc.

I tried testing this out, playing Thunder Girl through Matchstick Women, an AE arc about female fire cultists, on x6 difficulty. This was pretty fun, though it seemed burn patches still hit me even through capped defense; had to keep moving to dodge those. I had played this arc before, but this time through there was an extra mission in the middle that gave away too much of the plot and didn't fit well with the rest of the story. I gave the arc 4 stars.

Also on Sunday, Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 34min 35sec, and Thunder Girl did one in 32min 53sec. Then Mega did a speed LGTF in 31min 31sec.

Kyrie Eleison did a Synapse TF with

3 controllers (sonic, kin, rad)
1 tanker
3 scrappers

which went very smoothly, defeating Babbage (with outside help) and completing the LGTF in 1hr 5min, getting Kyrie to level 19.


I started off Monday messing around killing Romans on the wall in Cimerora, which luckily netted Thunder Girl another Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) recipe.

Then I played Quick Katie on a Citadel TF with

4 controllers (fire/kin, plant/kin, ill/cold, ill/FF)
1 scrapper (fire/fire)
1 tanker (ston/nrg)
2 blasters (one was AR/MM)

Aside from getting one mob stuck in a cave wall (we eventually got him out by all leaving Line of Sight, which made him mad enough to pop out) we had no problems, finishing in 1hr 17mins.

After that I did a Faathim TF; the team leader asked for a defender, so I played Star Amethyst (48 dark/ice defender) on a team of:

3 scrappers
1 blaster
1 tanker
1 peacebringer
2 defenders (kinetic, dark)

The team leader hadn't done a Faathim TF before and was trying to get me to lead it; I gave some advice but didn't want to take the star as I was only 48 and didn't want to lower the team level. She ended up giving the star to a competent scrapper and things went pretty well after that. I found another Performance Shifter (chance for +END) recipe, and I also noticed that in the Shadow Shard, occasionally people are too far away to Recall Friend; this motivated me to slot some range in it. I also found that recall friend doesn't work inside any of the big Rularuu death stars; some sort of TP protection field in there. I could TP to just outside, though. This TF finished in 2hrs 42mins and got Star Amethyst to level 50.

Finished Monday night duoing Kyrie Eleison (fire/regen scrapper) with a friend playing an archery blaster. We ran through Stephanie Peebles' story arc in Striga, which got Kyrie to level 22 and the Wedding Band temp power.


On Tuesday the patch brought the Winter Event to town (temporarily, anyway) and I got the Festive badge. With Kyrie being angelic-themed, I had her solo the Baby New Year mission 6 times, for the "Miraculous" badge and 25 candy canes that I used to unlock the "Nice" halo aura. I had forgotten that you can't use the halos until you unlock the regular auras at level 30, though. Oh well.

I logged on Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) to fiddle with her costuming (tweaked the colors of her powers to be a light blue, a color scheme I was really liking on Psychic Woman; added a sparkly aura) when people started calling for help with the new Winter event. I ended up getting to form a second team for a Lord of Winter raid, and learned a lot about how they work.

This is how the Lord of Winter event works. Opening presents while on a big team eventually spawns a Winter Lord; then if you kill the Winter Lord, it spawns a Big present and a timer that starts ticking down (I think this time delay is meant to let you recruit a raid force). Once the timer expires, you can click the big present to enter a "Lord of Winter's Realm" zone, a snowy farm area with poor visibility. Multiple teams can enter the same instance; I'd recommend bringing at least 2 teams. Another timer is active inside this mission; if that timer runs out, it kicks everyone out of the zone and ends the event. So you have to kill Lord of Winter before that happens. He's really tough (bring several debuffers or you WILL fail) and has a nasty foot stomp (don't stand too close to him if squishy). Whenever his life total decreases by around 25%, the Lord of Winter becomes immune to damage; but also summons a Winter Guardian AV that spawns out in the zone somewhere, but starts running towards the Lord. (To save time, players should go out and look for it, rather than wait for it to run to you.) If you kill the Winter Guardian, then Lord of Winter becomes vulnerable to damage again. He summons 3 Guardians total (becoming immune to damage each time), then you can kill him. Also, while fighting him, lots of Winter pets start showing up; Northern Lights start attacking with energy beams doing -def, and it's quite possible to get cascading defense failure from them.

If you kill the Lord of Winter before time runs out, you get the Lady (Lord) of Winter badge, 8 reward merits and 20 candy canes, which is a pretty nice reward.

Anyway, Spacegirl won the event on her try, then Yuki-Onna on a red-side LoW event that also won (and I decided "Lady of Winter" was a great badge title for her). A little later I tried playing Quick Katie on a LoW event which failed due to not enough debuffing. Then I played Police Woman on a failed LoW event which I knew would fail even before we zoned into Winter's Realm, because we only had 1 team and not enough debuffs.

I saw a lot of people were asking on chat channels to either join a LoW event or were reporting Winter Lord spawns but didn't have the power to beat the LoW event. I was tired of joining LoW events that didn't succeed, so I decided to form my own. Advertising on various chat channels (and insisting that at least some people bring debuffs) I rounded up around 3 groups of players in Atlas Park and we blew through the LoW event with no problem whatsoever, with 9 minutes left on the clock when we beat the Lord of Winter. Someone said "PW leading FTW!" which was a good feeling.

A little later I played April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) on another red-side LoW event that won.

Finished the night playing Fire Emerald (41 fire/fire blaster) on an Imperious TF. I had been told it was a "fun" TF and not a speed one, and they needed DPS, so I brought Fire Emerald, who is both a blaster for DPS and easily my squishiest character. Unfortunately, the team members had a different idea than the team leader and they insisted on speeding through the TF. This worked out pretty poorly for me, as I had no stealth and no meaningful defense, so I died a lot while the team was speeding through missions 1 and 2. This was kind of unfun but I tried to stick with it and not slow the team down. I did better in missions 3 and 4 which were mostly outdoors, giving me a better chance to stay alive against angry Romans. Finished the ITF in 29mins and despite multiple deaths, got Fire Emerald to level 42.

Changes due to player feedback:

* Updated mission 1 exit popup to reflect that the player could potentially rationalize that the doctor wouldn't know anything about Cimerora. It is now: