PoliceWoman

I wrote a much better souvenir. It's completely different than the old one, and it explains the story from the player's POV (it's going in the player's souvenir log, so I felt like it HAD to be from the player POV), though I tried to add some text at the beginning and end which hopefully will leave some doubt as to whether it is the "true" version of what happened.

I tried to add more hints as to the identity of the person the whole story arc is alluding to, but I didn't want to just put "YOU'RE THIS GUY! GET IT?!" so it might still be too subtle. If someone reads the new souvenir sometime who hadn't previously been spoiled on this story point, let me know what you think.

I also added a little epilogue material for "What happened after you escaped the hospital" that I hope is a positive addition.

The souvenir text is now 2996 characters, and I had to cut a lot of text to squeeze it down to that. I hesitate to post the actual text here, though, as it is pretty spoilerific.

This bloats my arc size to 48.33%, but it feels worth it.

Great feedback so far! Thanks a ton for all the comments.

I kinda like that different players read different meaning into "what really happened" in the story. Which is weird because I personally usually get annoyed by stories where I don't really understand what happened. (Maybe this a growth opportunity for me. )


Here's my "To Do" list so far, based on feedback:

* Try to reduce the number of scripted lines given to the player in briefings. (Tangler's suggestion; to reduce player hijacking.)

* Revisit Ship of Theseus paradox or cut it entirely. (Tangler's suggestion to revisit; twelfth's to cut.)

* Write a better souvenir that explains what's going on. (Cheshire_Cat's suggestion; Tangler concurs; both urge spelling out the bits of obscure CoH lore that are being referenced.)

* Make the story arc less derivative of Blight. (At least 3 people mentioned Blight in connection with Mistaken Identity so far. I guess this means I need to play Blight.)

* Consider making the player not immediately reject the world view initially presented by the contact? (Cheshire Cat's suggestion; may help distinguish story from Blight.)

* Horror story doesn't seem horrific enough. (Cheshire Cat's observation.) Increase sense of dread? Thought about this some ... I am not sure this will work, ultimately. The player character isn't in a horror story, not exactly; certain other characters in the story arguably are, though. It's not meant to be obvious who the "monster" is in this story, really. If that makes any sense. Maybe I should just unflag the "horror" keyword; is it really a "drama" or "mystery" maybe?

* Adjust Mission 1 exit popup to reflect that it's not unusual for CoH characters to not have heard of Cimerora. (twelfth's suggestion.)

* Give Mission 3's boss a customized bio to better explain where he fits into the story. (twelfth's suggestion.)

* Rename Barbie in Mission 4 to have a less distracting name. (Seemed to confuse Cheshire Cat.)

* Lay more groundwork for why BAB is in Mission 5. (Seemed to confuse twelfth.)

* Tie minotaur in Mission 1 into the story? (twelfth was convinced it had symbolism ... I should add some!)

* Add more mobs to Mission 2. (Cheshire Cat's suggestion; mission was too empty.) I originally had security guards staffing this mission, but thought that I wanted it to be a sneaky learning-stuff mission, and fighting guards would distract from this. Perhaps some creepy night staff at the hospital is in order, though...

* Add more combat. (FredrikSvanberg's suggestion.)

Matchstick Women re-review
Arc ID: 3369
Keywords: custom characters, drama, mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-54
Warnings: EBs, enemies with custom powers.

The premise is to investigate a female arson cult. In the arc description there are some keywords added by the author: "fire, clues, bios". "fire" makes sense as a keyword, but "clues" and "bios" are words that are too generic to be good search keywords, IMHO. A cursory search of arcs matching "clues" produces 10 pages of arcs with very little in common; searching on "bios" only turns up two pages of arcs, mostly matching on words containing the substring "bios".

Having reviewed this arc once before on a lower level character, I decided to play a heavily IO'd 50 elec/SR scrapper with soft capped positional defense and +67% recharge, on +0 x6 difficulty (with bosses), just to see what would happen.

The contact is again "A Mysterious Flame", but the graphic has been changed to a humanoid figure wreathed in a fiery aura. I like this change (had to suspend some disbelief for the old graphic of a Rikti computer).

Mission 1
Briefing: I think it's the same text, but this time my mind is in the gutter or something when I read "a woman, still licked by flame at the edges of her body"... maybe rephrase slightly to reduce the (presumably unintended) sexual connotations. Or maybe it's just me.

Mission entry popup: "You also hear a woman's voice in the distance, she sounds troubled." The building is on fire, though; would I really be able to hear anyone unless they were screaming?

The mission has no enemies in it, which I think was a change from my last run (though I remember asking "Why am I attacking the firefighters?" so perhaps this was to address that comment).

I quickly locate the bomb and disarm it by punching it, a lot. This seems to have spawned some enemies guarding sprinkler valves. I start fighting them; this time I'm high enough level to spawn Fire Dancers. They do look really good. On x6 they are a pretty good challenge; enough hit me to keep me worried, I take auto-hit damage from burn patches, and I end up needing to make a macro to target the healers.


Thunder Girl vs the Fire Dancers

My scrapper has Blaze Mastery as an epic power pool and uses fire blast and fireball in her attack chain, and I notice how "The Perfect Match" is very nearly immune to fire damage. This does make sense logically, but may pose game balance problems for any fire blast or fire melee character who tries this arc; and I think fire-themed characters are more likely to try and play this arc due to the premise. On the other hand, a fiery aura character probably would be largely immune to the damage these mobs are doing. This all makes logical sense from a thematic standpoint, so I don't know that it needs to be changed, but perhaps should be something to think about. Perhaps the fiery aura mobs could have powers selected to be resistant to, but not resist-capped to, fire damage.

Love the animation of the water mains when they get destroyed; the waterspout is very satisfying.

Ran into "A Peculiar Woman" who initially looked friendly, but when I get in range she accuses me of starting the fire and attacks. She is in a group called "Residents", but would an Arachnos base really have residents? Consider changing this to "Civilians" to match the "Search for civilians" objective. Her background story says she's "curious" which seems an odd way to describe her. I don't remember seeing her in my first run through; I think she's here as foreshadowing for later events. If her appearance is important to the plot, consider adding a clue for defeating her?

I still really like this mission; fighting the fire by breaking open the water hydrants feels just right. I think the changes to this mission since my last run were improvements.

Debriefing: "And what is the connection to this simple flame, flickering on this pedestal?" This text made sense with the Rikti computer, but doesn't make as much sense with the new graphic for the contact.

Mission 2
Briefing: Hmm, this looks new. "She is surrounded" .. by what? Last sentence should be broken into two sentences, I think, between "ominous dark red" and "maybe". I might suggest rephrasing slightly to "the flames burn an ominous red, as if warning of danger. You are drawn towards the flame; drawn to look closer." Or something like that. Up to you.

Send-off message seems to imply the arson cultists are friendly this time? Hmm.

Inside the mission: it seems quiet, too quiet. A Burnt Match greets me and tells me Emily is "around back". Am I being inducted into the cult somehow? Burnt Match is in "Matchstick Women Bosses" which none of the other Matchstick Women (even the bosses) are in.

Right next to the Burnt Match is a locker that I click that gives me "A Burnt Match's Journal" and completes the mission. That seemed too quick of a mission; I didn't click any of the other glowies yet or see Emily or anything. Consider making more of the glowies required?

In "A Burnt Match's Journal", should "She was an outcast" perhaps be "She was an Outcast"? Or if you don't mean for her to be a former Outcast gang member, may want to rephrase it a little. This journal (which I think may be the end-of-mission clue) is a pretty big info dump all at once; consider splitting it into a several clues that are gradually found as you investigate the Matchstick Women home.

I decided to stick around in the mission to see what else was in here. Clicked the "Medical Workstation" which gave me "Medical Burn Station" as a clue. "used to treat primarily burns from what it looks like" is rather awkward sounding. What makes the player think it is used to treat primarily burns? Suggest you reword to something like "There's more X, Y and Z here than you'd normally expect to see in a first aid kit; items that are typically used to treat burn victims."

"with as much supplies crammed into it, it looks like it is used a lot" also seems awkward to me, and not necessarily logical; if it's full of supplies, wouldn't that imply they aren't using that much? I'd think a box of 100 gauzy bandages (but only 12 are left) would more strongly imply such a thing.

An orange waypoint spawned on the mission exit at some point; I'm not really sure why. It didn't seem like Burnt Match would follow me there.

Going deeper into the mission, there's a LOT of stuff in here that I wouldn't have seen if I just exited after finding the glowy. Found Instructor Fiona who looked like she was lecturing, but didn't have any lines that I saw.


Matchstick Women trainees planning a bake sale

Found Matchbook Collector. She seems weirdly interested in "showing me out"; perhaps the orange waypoint is hers. In her description, "Is shy trying" should be "Is she trying". I'm not quite sure what her story is.

Found a "Greenfire Instructor" who did have some lines about how to heal using fire. She's surrounded by Matchstick Women doing ritualistic animations. A lot of the Matchstick Women that spawn with Greenfire Instructor don't have the right powers to actually do Thermal heals though; for example "Fire Dancer" even says in her bio that "The Fire Dancers don't have fire powers of their own", but she's here. (Somewhat nitpicky.)

Way in the back I find Emily Metzer. I like the costume you gave her, the scarred face idea is conveyed well. In her description, "her scarred face forever reminder her of the past" should be "her scarred face forever a reminder of her past." She says:

[NPC] Emily Metzer: I hope you enjoyed your little visit here. As you see, nothing out of the ordinary is going on here.

This seems like a pretty weird thing to say. I don't think it quite works for me, Emily playing the gracious hostess here. I had pictured the Matchstick Women, especially the higher ranking ones, as being somewhat more fanatical. And "nothing out of the ordinary" certainly seems untrue.

What exactly was my role in this mission anyway? I think I was supposed to be a new recruit? I was a bit confused on that.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. Also, where do I get the idea they are planning something? I didn't find any clues to that effect and the journal doesn't speak to it. "you get the feeling that this time they won't be quite so friendly" ... maybe should be "next time". And why do I get this feeling? Truthfully, I'm not quire sure why they were friendly in this mission.

Mission 3
Send-off message: I think "You blink your eyes and suddenly it's right in front of you, it's time to save these women" is awkwardly phrased. Maybe rephase to something like, "You blink your eyes and suddenly you're there! The women are in trouble. You need to save them!"

Frightened Girl's description says "You don't know what these women would want with her." I think this is a description from before mission 2 was introduced; with the player seeing the Matchstick Women recruiting and training people in mission 2, though, this doesn't make as much sense.

Scared Girl gives me the "What she told you" clue; should perhaps be "Scared Girl's story" or something similar; "she" is a little too ambiguous. Also this clue says "Before running off, this scared girl told you" .... but actually, Scared girl is following me now, as an ally. Sadly, as a minion using fire blast, against x6 mob spawns, she is actually not much help and gets almost instantly killed. I wonder if she should either be a lieutenant (to be less squishy) or just run away when rescued. Or maybe give her fire armor as a secondary? That would make her survive the fire AoEs a lot better.

Found Burnt Match and she says:

[NPC] Burnt Match: I have some important information for you. I can't just give it to you or they will know. Fight me!

This is a decent line but I think it would work better if Burnt Match has a line before that, recognizing the player (either as a hero or as the person she tried to recruit in mission 2). Something like:

[NPC] Burnt Match: Thunder Girl! You're a hero, aren't you?
[NPC] Burnt Match: I have some important information for you. I can't just give it to you or they will know. Fight me!

Found and rescued A Peculiar Woman. Nitpick: should she just be "Peculiar Woman" to match "Scared girl"? Or perhaps Scared girl should be "A Scared Girl" to be consistent with "A Peculiar Woman". Peculiar Woman might be a good hero codename, thinking about it.

Fought Matchbook Collector; should she be "The Matchbook Collector"? Her bio seems unclear on whether there is just one Matchbook Collector (as in first paragraph) or several (as in second paragraph).

Quiet Girl has a very grown-up looking costume for a "girl"; the shape of her glasses, the dark colors and length of her coat and skirt all seem very adult.


Quiet Girl waits

"The Matchbook" clue emphasizes the phrase "Perfect Match", but the significance of this term seems diminished by the fact that there are dozens of Perfect Match bosses on the map already. Was Perfect Match supposed to be a specific named boss near the end, and not generically appearing throughout the arc? In that case, it perhaps should be flagged Do Not Spawn.

Debriefing: I think it is the same as on my previous run, and while I liked it before, the detailed inside look at the cult in mission 2 kinda spoils some of the questions that are asked in this debriefing.

Mission 4
Briefing: nice imagery. "leading them to a bright blaze you think no one could come back from" seems awkward to me; perhaps "leading them towards a raging inferno that blazes so hot that no one could survive"? (Very nitpicky.)

Send-off message: "in front of you is the Matchstick Compound, only it's on fire, and there's writing all over the walls." Seems a bit dry; I'd suggest rewording it to be more evocative. The phrase "Matchstick Compound" seems awkward too, but that may just be me. Last sentence, the comma should be a semicolon, or break the sentence into two sentences. (Very nitpicky.)

Mission title in the nav tool "Reveal the mystery of the flame." has an extraneous period at the end, and perhaps should use Significant Capitalization, e.g., "Reveal the Mystery of the Flame".

Inside the mission, I click on "a writing desk" to get "Emily's Journal." (extraneous period in clue title). I like this clue but mission 2 now makes it rather redundant. After all, in mission 2, we ALSO found a journal, and also found out a lot about Emily's back story there (especially if I looked at her bio while in that mission).


The cultists prepare for the end

I think I'd like a little more dialog from the Matchstick cultists in this mission; I did see Lit Matchstick had a line, but could use a little more. This blazing armageddon is clearly significant for them; should they be joyous and exalting? Afraid? Relieved? And what started the fires here in the Matchstick base? They were already practicing fire powers before, what's different now? I would guess that Emily has commanded her followers to torch their own base, so they can all die in a blaze of glory. If this is the case, I'd like to see some clues supporting this idea (more firebombs perhaps?).

Emily's defeat dialog is now:

[NPC] Emily Metzer: You have quenched my flame, at last perhaps I can rest. The others may go, I must stay behind.

I think this is a new addition, and is intended to indicate why Emily stays behind as the burning base collapses, but this particular line doesn't quite work for me; it feels stilted, and a big mouthful to utter while dying/being defeated. Suggest you reword to be shorter and more panicky ("No! *gasp* The fire... the fire will cleanse me!"); or perhaps it's your intent that she accepts death with utter calmness ("Peace at last... *gack*").

Souvenir: doesn't appear to have been updated to reflect the addition of mission 2.

Overall
I liked the improvements made to mission 1, which I feel is the strongest mission of the arc. Getting rid of the Council worked better, and I thought the introduction of Peculiar Woman was handled better in this run.

The insertion of mission 2, to fill in some of the background for the Matchstick Women cult, didn't quite work for me. I think I preferred having the Matchstick Women be a mysterious cult that you slowly piece together a picture of, based on the testimony of defeated/captured/turncoat members. I felt that going inside their base and watching them training new recruits removed much of the mystery. Also, the later missions didn't seem fully updated to integrate with the new mission (clues made redundant, characters that would've seen the player before but don't recognize this, missed references to events in mission 2).

I was more picky about some of the text this time; you can either take or leave my suggestions on rewording, though. I do think I'd like a few more details in the last mission; some authored spawns of Matchstick Women with dialog about the upcoming fiery armageddon, clues indicating that the cult has torched their own base (or whatever really happened to set the base on fire), maybe some cultists reacting to the betrayal of Burnt Match.

Anyway, I still like the story overall, but mission 2 didn't quite fit into the story for me; I'd suggest working on that a bit. I gave the arc 4 stars on this play-through.


---

My queue is currently:

Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522

Thanks for the very detailed review!

After some misguided tinkering with repainting a Warrior Maiden Follower boss to look like a minotaur (THAT sure didn't look good), I came up with a slightly more elegant solution: I made the hostage into an ally, instead. She buffs force fields (increases the player's survivability) and does psychic damage (which the Minotaur has no resistance to at all, even when it goes into god mode), so is actually a big help. This let me keep the Minotaur as the level boss for this mission.

I playtested with my 50 AR/dev blaster with the self-imposed rule that I could use no inspirations to win the fight. Seemed to work fine.

Mistaken Identity
Arc ID: 349473
Keywords: Non-Canon Story, Horror
Morality: Heroic (allegedly)
Level range: 40-54

5 missions, but all are on small maps (except one tiny map).

Description: A trip to the hospital proves more eventful than expected.

AE warnings: Elite bosses, Enemies with custom power selections
Author warnings: Mind games. Hijacks your character. Forces you into deeds that may be construed as "evil", depending upon interpretation.

----------------------------------

So this is my attempt at Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge. I originally didn't want to write a story for Dr. Aeon's challenge at all, because I don't believe the ends justify the means, and "Write an arc where a hero must do evil for the 'greater good'" implies that for me.

Unfortunately, this story idea got stuck in my head, as a way to avoid "the ends justify the means" and still satisfy the "must do evil" condition. It's been stuck in my head for nearly a week now. I've been up all night writing this arc in an attempt to exorcise it.

I kind of hate this story, even though I wrote it. It isn't the type of story I normally like at all. It's also my first attempt at a horror story.

I'm still not sure if I want to actually submit this arc to the contest. It's published now, though, and I'll leave it up until at least the deadline. If I get generally positive feedback, I may end up submitting it. If I get generally negative feedback, I'll probably unpublish it, maybe even delete it.

Some trivia:

* This arc commits nearly every mortal sin for a story arc that I could think of: time travel, hijacking the player character, Xanatos Gambit plot, etc. With any luck, the critics will declare this the Worst Story Arc Ever and either generate me some free publicity, and/or make me feel justified in deleting it.

* Elements of this arc came from me reading a pop philosophy book and getting weirded out by the Ship of Theseus paradox.

* This arc has 5 missions, custom characters, clues, briefings, debriefings .... and only uses 45.4% of the allowed disk space. It IS possible to write a complete story in the space we're currently allowed.

Feedback would be welcome.

The Wentworth's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Arc ID: 347683
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Comedy
Morality: Heroic:
Level range: 30-54
Warnings: Enemies with custom powers

The premise is to save the Wentworth's Thanksgiving Parade ("a beloved Paragon City tradition") from an unspecified threat. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on +0 x0 difficulty with no bosses or AVs. The contact is a Wentworth's employee who is identified as the parade coordinator.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption for the briefing should be in bold, a larger font or a different color to stand out a little from the rest of the briefing.

The briefing is well-written and does a great job of explaining a pretty funny (and unusual) emergency situation. Consider changing "grand marshal" to "Grand Marshal" (note capitalization; for consistency with the way it's capitalized in the mission accept message; two instances in the briefing, one in send-off message) and perhaps breaking paragraph 2 into two paragraphs (the first being Dori's introduction and description of the parade, the second being her explanation of the Statesman situation).

Send-off message is well-written and fun sounding; I like that it ends with a traditional "What could possibly go wrong?" line that invariably foreshadows disaster.

There's a lot of mission objectives, all of which sound quite fun, though it does put an awful lot of text in the nav tool.

I quickly locate the Security Chief, a fellow PPD officer, and rescue him from....Nemesis! He gives me "The Security Chief's Story" as a clue, which does a nice job of explaining that Nemesis has stolen the Thanksgiving Day Parade. So it's a Nemesis plot! Who would've guessed?

Map selection: I think it's a little weird that the parade would be assembling indoors; a giant Back Alley Brawler balloon wouldn't even be able to get out the door, would it?

Love the "Monica Richter High School Marching Band Member" hostages and their bad relations with Nemesis; very funny concept and I like the idea that Paragon City high schools would be named after Golden Age heroes.


Are you with the band?

Found and rescued the Float Character; liked the dialog between it and its guards. He gives me "The Fir Bolg explains" as a clue, hinting at more nefarious Nemesis plotting.

In the dialog for Joe the Balloon Guy and his captors, they say:

[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: Lord Nemesis will destroy this pathetic city!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: heheheh! Sorry . . . I told you not to inhale that helium.
[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: Stop laughing!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: Police Woman! Whew! I thought I'd have to listen to their squeaky voices all day!

...consider adding some descriptive modifiers to the guard's dialog, something like:

[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: *tiny voice* Lord Nemesis will destroy this pathetic city!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: heheheh! Sorry . . . I told you not to inhale that helium.
[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: *tiny voice* Stop laughing!

...to reinforce the helium joke. (Granted, a Werfer Jaeger probably doesn't have real vocal chords...) Joe also gives me the "Terror Inflated!" clue; I wonder if this should be "Inflated Threat!" or "A Ballooning Crisis!"

I thought the Freakshow rapper as Musical Number was quite funny too. Freeing him and the last band member completes the mission.

Debriefing: the contact is very apologetic about sending me into a fight with Nemesis, which is nice. She seems very concerned for the danger posed by Nemesis stealing the Thanksgiving Parade (should this maybe be in the next briefing?). This seems very selfless compared to her earlier briefing; based on her earlier characterization, I actually thought she would be panicking about losing her job.

Mission 2
Briefing: Great briefing, I like the explanation of the situation. It seems Nemesis has completely infiltrated the parade and filled the giant balloons with poison gas. This is a campy but fun evil plan.

The first thing I encounter when entering the mission are .. Pilgrim themed Nemesis Automata. LOL!


This town isn't big enough for the both of us, pilgrim.

I like the pumpkin-headed Nemesis Automata too. The phrase "monstrous, legume-like machines" in its description is very evocative.

Some of the patrols say:

[NPC] Jaeger: You really think they'll believe we're a marching band? What about the Jaeger?
[NPC] Jaeger: Just march around and pretend to play an instrument.

....which is a nice line, but made a little nonsensical since it's a Jaeger saying it.

I bust up some canisters of gas and get both "Deadly Gas Dispersed" and "Helium dispersed" as clues; you might rename the latter to "Helium Dispersed" (note capitalization) for consistency.

I found the Nemesis Grand Marshal and beat him up. I like his description and its "fever dream of commanding a horde of killer Pilgrims". While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Nemesis Grand Marshal: Police Woman! You are not fit to be grand marshal!

"grand marshal" should be "Grand Marshal" here. "The Grand Marshal talks" clue kind of lampshades Nemesis plots in general; this is a little amusing but not *very* funny (IMHO).

Exploring the Steel Canyon map a little, the custom characters look great, but I think this mission needs a little more to help convey the idea of a parade. Perhaps forcing a bunch of the Nemesis mobs into the "marching" animation, or creating some kind of giant floating balloons ... perhaps Hamidon Mitos or DE Quartz giant monsters that are actually hostages, then "float away" after you rescue them. (Not sure if GMs can be used as hostages, thinking about it...never tried it.)

Perhaps you could make an actual "Marching Band" of Nemesis troops? A Drum Majorette as a boss spawn, with a sizeable escort of generic Nemesis soldiers (no Jaegers), perhaps repainted in the Monica Richter HS colors, all forced into a marching animation?

Found the "Command Automaton" who was ... a turkey Nemesis Automaton.

[NPC] Command Automaton: Gobble! Bzzt! Gobble!
[NPC] Command Automaton: For Lord- gobble gobble!- Nemesis!
[NPC] Command Automaton: Steam-powered turkey is naturally -- gobble! -- low in fat! And meat, too . . .
[NPC] Command Automaton: Gobble! Gob . . . <clunk!>

I liked his lines. LOL.

Took some searching to find the last spectator hidden behind one of the buildings in the northwest corner of the map, but freeing him completed the mission. All the spectators in this mission had essentially identical dialog; this made them a little less fun than the hostages in the first mission, where there was a lot of individuality (sure, the band members were all the same, but that sorta made sense). Making a few more individual spectators (perhaps archetypes like The Mayor, The Impressionable Kid, the Old Lady, etc) would be nice.

The "Another set-up?" clue at the end continues the Grand Marshal's plotline suggesting that this was all part of Nemesis's plot to test my skill; the clue realizes this seems rather ridiculous though. I think this is meant to be funny but fell a bit flat for me. "marshal" should be "Grand Marshal" here.

Debriefing: it's a little disappointing that after all this effort the Thanksgiving Day Parade is still ruined. I think I would've liked it a bit more if we actually DID save the Parade and it got to proceed with the player as Grand Marshal (even if this only occurred in exposition). "catalog of some our upcoming holiday products" should be "catalog of our upcoming holiday products"; also, I would think that a mail order catalog for Christmas would actually be generally released long before Thanksgiving, so this wouldn't be much of a preview.

I like that she revisits her "I got to keep my job!" plot thread and the holiday ad campaign involving placing boxes all over town is a great final joke.

The final souvenir is the Holiday Catalog and is decently written. I'm not that excited about the catalog as a souvenir; I might suggest something parade themed (like a Grand Marshal's Baton), or something Thanksgiving-themed, instead.

Overall
Saving the Thanksgiving Day parade was a terrific concept; ridiculous and campy, but lots of fun. I liked the interesting hostages in the first mission and their fun dialog and clues. The custom Nemesis Automata in the second mission looked very good.

The second mission overall felt a bit weaker than the first mission, which I thought was very strong. The Pilgrim Automata made a positive initial impression on me, but I don't think the custom characters were quite enough to carry the mission. There were a lot of objectives in both missions, but the poison canisters and hostages were not as "fun" in the second mission (IMHO), and I thought the second mission needed a little something more to make it "feel" more like a parade.

Although I initially liked the idea of the Nemesis plot to take over the Thanksgiving Parade to spread poison gas around, I thought trying to spin it as "Oh we meant for you to stop us, just to see your skill" fell a bit flat for me. I'd suggest leaving it at "We were trying to poison gas everyone in Steel Canyon, and would've gotten away with it if it weren't for you!"

This being a "fun" story, I think it would be much nicer if it had a "happy" ending, i.e., you rescue the parade and it goes on with great success with you as the Grand Marshal.

Had a lot of fun though. I gave it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review

11/26/2009

Last Friday night I played Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) on a quick ITF (31min 34sec) and a LGTF (31min 0sec). It seemed like the squishy characters died a lot on the ITF; while on these TFs, Thunder Girl got a compliment on her costume and background story. I also bought a couple Luck of the Gambler (DEF) recipes for 7M each, slotting them in Thunder Girl's SR toggles; one of these now has a set of 3 LotG in it, for +1.13% max HP (worked out to 15hp) and the other is up to a set of 4 LotG, which is +9% global accuracy.

After that I started Thunder Girl on an Ouroboros flashback of Maria Jenkins' arc, to work on the Portal Jockey accolade. Solo'd through several of these missions at +0 x6 difficulty, defeating Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege, Bobcat, Neuron and Battle Maiden (all as EBs).


On Saturday, Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a (non-speed) Imperious TF where we cleared most mobs that were in our way; still finished in 52min 34sec with no problems; then a speed Lady Grey TF in 24min 44sec, and I switched to Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) for a speed Imperious TF that took 26min 25sec.


On Sunday I played Samurai-ko (42 katana/will scrapper) through a pickup Positron TF with a team of:

2 tankers (elec/dark, inv/SS)
3 scrappers (kat/SR, kat/wp, spine/dark)
2 defender (cold/ice, dark/dark)
1 controller (ill/rad)

The dark defender had to quit partway through, but the rest of us finished in 2hr 53mins without any serious problems. This got Samurai-ko to level 43 and the Task Force Commander accolade. After finishing that TF I spent some time tinkering with a new costume using some of the Martial Arts booster pack set; ended up with a pretty neat looking anime-ish looking outfit:


Samurai-ko

Went on to play Psychic Woman (29 rad/psy defender) on a Citadel TF as part of the Sisterhood Sunday event. Our team was:

1 blaster (archery/mental)
2 controllers (grav/kin, ice/storm)
3 scrappers
2 defenders (rad/psy, FF/psy)

We had no problems and finished in 1hr 38mins, getting Psychic Woman to level 30.

After that I played a rerolled Tehuantl (6 claw/SR brute) on a lowbie villain team running in Mercy and Port Oakes that got her to level 10.

Later I played Mega on another quick ITF (25min 14sec) and Star Amethyst (46 dark/ice defender) on a "kill most" ITF (41min 5sec); this was a pretty fun team and we still finished in 41min 5sec, getting Star Amethyst to level 47. I took "World of Confusion"; it's supposed to be a PBAOE confuse, but I'm not sure whether it is really DOING anything (never see anything actually confused by it). It's a pretty pink energy sphere, though, and matches the rest of Star Amethyst's recolored powers, so...I still kinda like it.


On Monday I mostly played Quick Katie, a newbie plant/kin controller that I started. I've been meaning to get a blue-side kinetic up to decent level; I always have problems staying alive as a kinetic, though, because it demands you move into melee range a lot. I was hoping plant control would help with that. Anyway, I solo'd up to level 6, then a friend was complaining nothing was going on, so I invited him to join me and I ended up starting a team that ran through Hollows missions, defeating both Frostfire and Atta, and getting Quick Katie to level 14.

After that team broke up, I had a break, then came back to play Quick Katie on a pickup team that zerged a King's Row bank mission (messy but we won it). I was complaining that I was the only support character on a team with one tanker and 4 blasters, and a friend ended up joining us with a rad defender which made the team really work better. We did have one team wipe against a +1 Arachnos mission when the team started a fight when only half of us had entered the mission (which earned our hapless blaster a "Your pulling sucks!" from another team member; admittedly, he DID pull a whole roomful of Arachnos onto us); otherwise we did fine, getting Quick Katie to level 16 before the team broke up.

A friend was asking for help with the Envoy of Shadows EB, so I joined his high 30s elec/shield scrapper with Quick Katie and attempted to duo the Envoy. This went poorly for us; we wiped out twice, I couldn't keep the scrapper up even spamming Transfusion, and if I ever caught aggro I was instantly pasted. This is probably more because I was level 16 than anything else, though. I volunteered to switch to Psychic Woman (30 rad/psy defender) and with rad debuffs Envoy keeled over ludicrously easily.

After that I switched back to Quick Katie and ended up forming a pickup team doing missions in Faultline. This team eventually grew to 7 players and we did all of Jim Temblor's missions, then all of Penelope Yin's missions, ultimately rescuing her dad and getting the Rescuer badge. This got Quick Katie to level 20; I ended up taking Speed Boost instead of Stamina, because I'm convinced SB helps more (unless solo, of course). I also got a compliment from a teammate on both the Quick Katie name and her costume (loosely based on Katie Hannon's real costume):


Quick Katie

Looking at these two screenshots, I hadn't realized it before, but apparently I like using long black boots in costumes at the moment.

Another teammate mentioned that anyone who had started playing fairly recently might not even know what "Quick Katie" meant. This was true; soon the phrase Quick Katie will go the way of Hydra Trial and Winter Lords, known only to veteran players. Nevertheless I find it funny, and especially apt for a kinetic that I hope to run on TFs someday.

I went on to play Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) on a Sharkhead SF; I honestly wasn't a whole lot of help on this, as Blackout Girl is not very stealthy and not very tough. At one point I think I forgot to turn off my elec damage aura while trying to "sneak" through a mission, which ended poorly for me. Nevertheless our team of 6 brutes and 1 fort finished the SF in 24mins 3sec. We then went on to do a 1st villain respec in 8min 37sec, then I switched to Blond Justice for a speed ITF that took 22min 39sec.

I switched again to Mega (50 SS/will brute) to start a speed Lady Grey TF; another friend tried to lure me away to a Numina TF, saying that speed TFs are too boring to read about in my journal. It's true, there's just not much to say about them; another player did send me a tell saying he still liked to read my journal, speed TFs and all, which was nice. I do like Numina TF but I had already committed to the LGTF so I thought it best to stick with it. We finished that in 23min 47sec.


Tuesday night I played Star Amethyst (47 dark/ice defender) on a pickup Justin Augustine TF with a team of:

4 scrappers
2 defenders (dark/ice, emp/sonic)
1 controller (fire/emp)
1 tanker (will/db)

One of our scrappers had just returned to the game after an absence of 2 years and had no idea how to get to the Shadow Shard, then once there had no idea how to get around there. She ended up getting frustrated and quitting the TF. Sadly, a Shadow Shard TF was probably a poor choice for her re-introduction to the game. I could fly and recall friend but the Chantry was so massive that quite often my recall friend didn't have the range to pick up players that were far enough away. This particular TF seemed particularly dreary even for a Shard TF; nothing to do with the team, it was mostly because the TF had many, many "Defeat 50 Rularuu" hunt missions which mostly involved traveling in the shard and killing non-exp-giving mobs. Nevertheless we slogged through the TF in 1hr 49mins for 42 merits.


Over the period of several days I solo'd Idealist (46 fire/thermal controller) through an AE story arc called Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today! This was a pretty fun retro-sci-fi themed story arc where you join an organization of space cadets fighting retro-sci-fi type threats. The story had great atmosphere but was rather long; I ended up playing its 5 missions over 4 separate play sessions, finally finishing Wednesday afternoon. I thought it was quite fun though and I gave it 5 stars.

Also on Wednesday I did some speed TFs; first, a Sharkhead SF on Kashira (30 db/ninj stalker) which finished in 28min 30sec getting Kashira to level 31. Then Mega on a speed ITF finishing in 27min 35sec; this ITF we died a LOT for some reason. I was quite shocked to die a couple times, normally Cimeroran attacks on an ITF just bounce off of Mega. The team leader thought it was a lack of +DEF buffs from Grant Cover, Maneuvers and such. After that we did a speed LGTF finishing in 27min 50sec.

A friend said he was starting a Sister Psyche TF in a few minutes, so I logged on Quick Katie (now at level 20) hoping to join, and solo'd a bit in AE while waiting; this idea never did quite coalesce into an actual TF, though, so I ended up solo'ing my way all the way through my own Teen Phalanx Forever! arc for the sake of testing, exp and tickets.

Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today!
Arc ID: 337333
Keywords: Challenging, Non-Canon, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 30-34
Warnings: AVs, extreme AVs, high level villains brought down to low levels.

The concept seems to be a retro sci-fi adventure. I made a few early attempts on this arc earlier but hadn't finished it before; but this gave me enough info to make me decide to play a 48 fire/thermal controller (some IO set slotting but not a lot), mostly because her patriotic costume and red white & blue fire imps are the best match for the Tomorrownaut uniforms. The contact is Captain Skylark Shadowfancy, a heroic looking custom character.

Mission 1
Briefing: very fun looking briefing which helps establish the setting. It goes a bit crazy on the color coding of text, but it makes sense for the "COLOUR 3D-O-VISION" bit. Consider a different color for the splash title "Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts" than bright red, though; this color usually indicates danger. Perhaps "legion of Doomsday Droids" should be "Legion of Doomsday Droids" (Significant Capitalization). This is all rather nitpicky though.

After accepting the mission, there's quite a large part of the briefing in the "Send Off" message, but at the same time a 60 minute mission timer is started, which will make a lot of players skip over the info and get started on the mission. Not sure how best to address this, though; the info here is very nice and I don't suggest removing it.

In the send-off message, it says "Twelve hours ago, Baron Otto Von Doomsday broadcast .... he said he would begin in one hour!" I think the intent is that the deadline is one hour from the mission briefing, but this is a little awkwardly phrased; it makes me think his deadline was actually 11 hours ago.

Love the mission title of "Shut Down Baron Doomsday's Droid Factory on the Moon!" Has a great retro sci-fi vibe to it.

Inside the mission, the Doom Droids are terrific. The actual mobs are named "Worker Doom Droid" and "Soldier Droom Droid", but in Worker Doom Droid's and Soldier Doom Droid's descriptions it refers to "Doomdroids" (no space) and in the mission objectives and the Generator's description, they are referred to as "Doomsday Droid". Seems inconsistent; I suggest you pick one of "Doom Droid" "Doomdroid" or "Doomsday Droid" and standardize all references to use that terminology. (Admittedly nitpicky.)

I like the stilted dialog from the Doom Droids, like:

[NPC] Worker Doom Droid: FOOL-ISH HU-MAN. YOU WILL NE-VER STOP BA-RON DOOMS-DAY. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.

...which again sounds very retro sci-fi.

I rescue a giant eyeball (a repurposed Rularuu) which is making queer sounds. Not quite sure what its story is yet, but it does kinda fit in with the sci-fi ambience.

I destroyed a generator which gave me the "Wrecked Generator Inspection" clue. Love the references to UNIVAC and vacuum tubes. The generator's graphic (currently a mainframe computer) maybe should use the turbine-looking generator used in the Hess TF and "Get the News Out!" missions; though, thinking about it, not sure if that object is available in MA.

Found and fought Baron Doomsday, who spawned as a lieutenant for me (seemed a little easy; but then I'm on the default +0 x0 no boss no AV difficulty). Didn't get credit for defeating him until I defeated a robot that spawned with him; you may want to change him to "Only boss required". Also he says:

[NPC] Baron Doomsday: Curse you Tomorrownauts... You won't be laughing when you've tasted the effects of my FEAR RAY!

....but forgot to use the (R) registered trademark symbol while referring to the FEAR RAY. (You might think I'm kidding, but the (R) symbol is used in all 3 other FEAR RAY references in this mission.)

Beating him gives the "Baron Doomsday Defeated!" clue; I think "noble effort" should perhaps be "noble efforts".

Searching the rest of the base, I find Kelly Grace, a Tomorrownaut lieutenant. She has a good description. She does say:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Whew, that was a close one! Let's go get Baron Doomsday before it's too late!

...but I found her after defeating Baron Doomsday, so this dialog doesn't quite fit. Kelly wasn't really on the path to Baron Doomsday; the map layout is kind of a grid pattern with multiple connectivity, which would make it a matter of chance whether the player encounters the Baron first or Kelly first. In my current run, both Kelly and Johnny "Wildcat" Wormwood spawned in obscure corners of the map, so I found them later. You may want to either make the map (or objective sequence) a little more linear, or adjust her dialog to make sense even if she is found after Doomsday is defeated. (I think it would be a little more dramatic if defeating Baron Doomsday was the final objective of the mission, but there's a lot going on here so I'm not sure how feasible that is.)

After some more searching I eventually found the Doomsday Droid Coordination Computer, which completed the mission. The "Doomsday Droid Computer Printout" is really fun.

Debriefing: nicely written and in-character. I think the multiple colors overdoes it a bit, but it's not a big deal. You might consider using Significant Capitalization for "doomsday device" and "legion of Doomsday Droids".

Mission 2
Briefing: first paragraph is one super-long sentence connected by dashes; should probably be broken into a couple sentences. (Nitpicky.) The "memory tape" reference should perhaps be magnetic tape or paper tape?

I do like the objective to "Secure the UNIVAC", it sounds so retro.

I pretty quickly find Captain Skylark Shadowfancy, an unguarded ally, near the front of the mission.

The base is suspiciously empty for the most part, though we did find a couple doom droids floating around that we made short work of. Deeper in, the Captain and I find some battles between Tomorrownaut Cadets and Doom Droids. I end up healing up the surviving Cadets; it just seems like the right thing to do.

A couple weird eyeballs are watching us as we go past them; they don't seem to be hostile or guarded by hostiles and they claim they won't interfere. We'll see.

At the very back of the mission I discover Baron Doomsday, who apparently has escaped. Defeating him gives me a new objective to find a terminal; and a wall of dialog scrolls by that suggests a bunch of Void Seekers and Galaxy mobs have suddenly been spawned. This doesn't sound too bad for my controller, but I think a kheldian would suffer a heart attack at this point.

Considering a Nictus invasion spawned at the same time, I'm not sure there is enough sense of urgency to the "Find a high-clearance diagnostic terminal" objective; I mean, wouldn't any normal hero prioritize fighting the bad guys first? I do have a "Baron Doomsday Defeated... Again!" clue which suggests that I should check the various computer terminals, but the motivation feels a little weak to me. As presented, it kinda feels like "Oh, the Baron said something about the UNIVAC .. we should probably check that out" which does not seem urgent enough compared to a Nictus invasion. Consider either making the next objective to deal with the Nictus somehow, or else adding some writing that gives more urgency to checking the terminals.

Backtracking, I start clicking the various computer terminals. The terminals actually all seem to be printers. Consider calling them "teletypes" for extra retro terminology.

Ran by an Observer again, who said:

[NPC] Observer: Your persistance is admirable, but I cannot assist you. Trust that my intentions are noble.

"persistance" should be "persistence".

OK, I eventually find the UNIVAC Interface which gives me the "UNIVAC Status Printout" which reveals that the UNIVAC device summoned all the Nictus invaders, and triggers the "Defeat the Alien Overlord" objective. This seems cool; but the ordering seems a little off because I've already run into some of these alien invaders before I found this clue. The "INCURSION ALERT: FRONT ENTRANCE" in the objectives is a nice touch.

The eyeballs have started following me around, which is a little unsettling.

Went back to the front door looking for the Alien Overlord; took a little searching but I eventually found it on a catwalk.


Captain Skylark Shadowfancy (and some helpers) against the Evil Overlord!

The Captain and I beat him up handily, though, completing the mission. In Alien Overlord's description, "chanelling" should be "channeling" and "compusing" should be "composing". Maybe "all Nictus" should be "all Nicti", too, but less sure of that; not certain what the proper plural of Nictus is.

I think I got the Nictus Fragment clue from the Alien Overlord; perhaps this should be re-ordered to be after the "UNIVAC Status Printout" clue.

Debriefing: Pretty nicely written. I kinda like how Skylark keeps saying "Ha HA!" as a catch phrase, and that he follows-up on the Fear Ray (R) that we never did find any trace of.

Mission 3
Briefing: "Before he was captured" should perhaps be "Before he was recaptured". This briefing reminds us that Baron Doomsday hinted that he created the UNIVAC; I do remember seeing him say this in dialog, but since it appears to be relevant to the plot, consider adding this also to the "Baron Doomsday Defeated... Again!" clue, or thereabouts, so that a player who missed seeing the dialog in-game can still see it in the clue journal.

Send-off message: "full compliment of staff" should be "full complement of staff". "set sail, Tomorrownauts!" is rather out-of-place sounding and doesn't sound sci-fi enough. Suggest you reword to "blast off, Tomorrownauts" or something similar.

Love the footnote referring to other imaginary adventures. I think "The Tomorrowsphere as first mentioned" should be "The Tomorrowsphere was first mentioned".

Mission entry popup: again, "staff compliment" should be "staff complement".

The computer building is full of spiders! Ack! I like Giant-er Spider's description, though.

I found a UNIVAC Bio-Neural Interface that I clicked. On the progress bar is "Fluugtaag", which I'm afraid I don't understand. Got the "Bio-Neural Interface Readout" clue; while I do think "Level up! You gained: +1 STR" etc is funny, it really does not fit with the retro sci-fi atmosphere this arc has been portraying so far. The clue does go on to mention that Baron Doomsday did, in fact, construct the UNIVAC. "open a wormhole to Earth" does not quite make sense though; I mean, we're on Earth. Or at least in Earth orbit. Perhaps it should be "open a wormhole to the horrible black void" or something similar.

I now have an objective of "Defort Brown Dawnsday ounce agape" which seems to be garbled. I'm guessing this should be "Defeat Baron Doomsday once again" but maybe is intentionally messed up due to interfacing with the bio-neural interface.

Ran into another weird eyeball; this one is in "The Watchers" faction, while the previous missions I think they were in "Bizarre Creatures". Not sure if this difference is deliberate or not.

Overheard someone say:

[NPC] Galaxy: Mr. These chitonous creatures have no essence.

The "Mr" at the start doesn't quite make sense (unless he is talking to someone named "Mr. These"). "chitonous" should be "chitinous".

I also overheard some Tomorrownauts; is it Tomorrownauts that staff the UNIVAC facility? The previous text made me think it was independently run (since it is not in the Tomorrownaut base).

Ran into a REALLY Big Spider who had a little dialog and gave me the "Giant Spider Carapace" clue; but really all the spiders are considered Giant Spiders, so you may want to give it a more specific name.

Found a dead technician. In "UNIVAC Technician Body", "dessicated" should be "desiccated" and "permenant" should be "permanent". Managed to find and rescue a live technician after that.

In the last room I found Baron Doomsday who is in the process of monologing about his evil plan; I beat him up and get the "Baron Doomsday Defeated Again! ...Again" clue. The clue kinda lampshades how easy it is for him to escape (presumably because of his knowledge of the UNIVAC). This clue perhaps should be sorted to be the last for this mission.

Debriefing: nicely written with some exposition as to the significance of the info we learned.


Mission 4
Briefing: at first the contact wants me to destroy the UNIVAC, but then he changes his tune suddenly and says we should go to Deimos to confront some sort of cult. This change of direction between paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 seems rather jarring; consider dropping the text about destroying the UNIVAC, since we clearly aren't doing that (at least in this mission) and consequently it's rather distracting.

Also, "invders" should be "invaders" in paragraph 1.

Send-off message expositions about the Flesh Temple of Plith'naair and why the contact believes it's important. You might consider rephrasing "lead spider" to "spider leader", the first two times I read this expression I was thinking, "What? The spider was made of lead??" (Minor nitpick, maybe just the way I read it.)

I like the reference to another Captain Skylark Shadowfancy adventure here; I wonder if it might be more effective for the player to "remember" this other adventure (due to reading it in the space bookstore or whatever), perhaps in the "Giant Spider Carapace" clue, rather than have the Captain exposition about it here? Having the player "remember" past adventures might help support the idea that Captain Skylark's adventures have lots of fans. (Just an idea.)

Also, I actually picture Captain Skylark Shadowfancy's adventures not being books; instead, they would be serialized in pulp sci-fi magazines or short movie clips like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon serials. (Totally tangential comment..)

Mission entry popup: "stentch" should be "stench". Also, this dialog box talks about the "Flesh Palace" but the briefing spoke of the "Flesh Temple" (inconsistent). Also, this dialog box claims the very walls are made of human skin, but the map is an Oranbega cave that is pretty clearly made of stone blocks. Perhaps Johnny's Hell would be fleshy-er?

The mission objectives of "Find another Tomorrownaut" and "Defeat Mr. Boggs" don't really make sense based on the briefing; I did find reference to them in the "still busy" message but I don't think you can assume everyone will read that. Perhaps move mention of the Tomorrownaut ally to the briefing, and change the second objective to something more generic like "Defeat Cult leader" or "Interrogate cultists"?

The temple seems full of Nictus. Are these the cultists? If so, shouldn't the Captain have instantly recognized the Nictus when they invaded his base (since he fought the cultists in "Blood and the Body")? (Possible continuity error.)

Fighting the Nictus, I had a Galaxy suddenly turn into a Werewolf. This makes sense for the Council Galaxies, but I am not sure whether it makes sense for the Nictus in this story.

Found and rescued Aerodynamic, who says:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Well darn it. Captured again? This is just embarassing.

"embarassing" should be "embarrassing". She also gave me "An Unexpected Ally" as a clue. But considering "Find another Tomorrownaut" was in my objective list, and the Captain mentions her in the Still Busy dialog, I am not sure she is really "Unexpected" in this context. "She said this to you when you rescued her:" sounds a little awkward to me. I'd suggest renaming the clue "Aero's Story" (or similar) and having the dialog in orange be the body of the clue (and cut all the white text).

Nearby I found Mr. Boggs and some "Meat" who were enacting a rather disturbing scene.


Is that...meat? OMG IT MOVED!!


Great job on the animation and the recoloring (I think it was recolored? the lighting is very red here) and description of the Meat. In Mr. Boggs' description, "Univac" should perhaps be "UNIVAC" (note caps) to be consistent with previous usage. He gave me the "Mr. Boggs "Suit"" clue, which should maybe be "Mr. Boggs' "Suit"". It mentions the writing on the "Spider Queen", but I haven't run into a Spider Queen. I assume this really refers to the Giant-er Spider, aka Spider Leader or Lead Spider. May want to call it a Spider Leader here, too, or call it a Spider Queen everywhere earlier.

Defeating Boggs triggered a new objective of "Destroy the Meat Golem".

This map has a stone bridge over a chasm with gaps you have to jump or fly over; this bridge is nearly impossible for my ally Aero to cross intelligently. It probably didn't help that some crystal emanators spawned on the bridge, too. I end up having to leave her behind, stuck in this pit. She makes me feel totally guilty for ditching her by saying:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Er... right... I'll just... be alone here... in this... flesh... room. Ew....

If we stick with this map, any chance you could make her a Longbow Eagle with a fly pack instead? Retro sci-fi Tomorrownauts should totally have jetpacks anyway. Strangely, my fire imps have no problems crossing this bridge.

In the back of the map I find The Great Angel of Constant Torment, who spawned as an EB for me. Good choice of model for the meat golem. My fire imps tore it down with some help from me. While fighting me he says something about my allies betraying me (and way back in the pit, Aero has some dialog about betraying me) and cries out in terror of "the Watchers". He also gives me "Another Nictus Fragment" as a clue, which also suggests I should find the Watchers; this makes the new triggered objective, "Get some answers from the Watchers", make total sense. But I also have the triggered objective of "Defeat Baron Doomsday" ... but I have had no clues or dialog or anything leading me to believe Baron Doomsday is even here, so I am not sure why this should be an objective. The mission needs some foreshadowing of the Baron's presence here, to make this objective make sense.

Backtracking a bit, I find "Big Boss Watcher" who expositions about damage control and killing me. He says:

[NPC] Big Boss Watcher: Still you fight! If I wasn't trying to kill you, I'd be impressed.

"wasn't" should be "weren't" here. He also says:

[NPC] Big Boss Watcher: My EYE! You hit me right in the EYE! What kind of hero ARE you?

...which I found totally hilarious coming from a giant eyeball. The Big Boss Watcher also spawned with a Rularuu Wisp as a sidekick; I'm not sure whether this was intentional (so far we've ONLY seen giant eyeballs from this faction).

Defeating him gives me "The Whole Story" as a clue where much is revealed about what the Nictus are up to. "anomoly" should be "anomaly" here. "galaxy, its life force" should perhaps be "galaxy. Its life force" (break into two sentences). Consider using Significant Capitalization for both "ultimate force of death" and "ultimate force of life" (e.g. Ultimate Force of Death).

The mission is complete now but I haven't found Baron Doomsday (who appears to be optional here). I'm curious as to what he'll say, so I go looking for him; I run into a regular Watcher guarded by Nictus, who I rescue and he says some dialog about the story so far, and starts following me.

I don't find Baron Doomsday until I backtrack very nearly to the entrance. He has some fun dialog. One of the things he says is:

[NPC] Baron Doomsday: BAH! I am sick of being played off as a joke. I will not let you defeat me AGAIN. I will PERSEVERE. I will CONQUOR. I am BARON DOOMSDAY, DOOMSDAY LORD OF THE MOON.

...in this line, "CONQUOR" should be "CONQUER".

Debriefing: Pretty good debriefing. "Tommoronaut holding cells" should be "Tomorrownaut holding cells".

This was actually quite a good mission. It had a lot of triggered objectives that actually seemed to work well together. Some backtracking was required but the map was linear enough that it wasn't too bad to search.

Mission 5
Briefing: Aha, the Fear Ray (R) finally becomes relevant! Nice. In paragraph 5, "speficically" should be "specifically". So now we need to specifically go after Baron Doomsday instead of accidentally beating him up whiel doing other mission objectives. I have mixed feelings about this; the Baron IS the arch-nemesis of the Tomorrownauts, so makes sense as the final boss, but he's also been something of a pushover to date, who easily escapes each time we catch him; so not sure how this time will be any different.

I love this dialog from a roaming patrol:

[NPC] Void Seeker: You know, being enslaved to Baron Doomsday's will really isn't so bad.
[NPC] Galaxy: Yeah, I mean I was never really going anywhere before but now I've got a purpose, you know?

I pretty quickly find the Captain and free him.


Skylark, I love you! But we have only 14 hours to Save the Earth!

Unfortunately he gets stuck in the geometry of a cave wall. I guess that's a risk of making the ally a flyer. I manage to get him unstuck after running back and forth a bit.

Found the Fear Ray (R) and destroyed it, fighting off an ambush of Nictus. I'm struck by how cool the quantum guns look when they're firing them at us; really just right for the ambience. (Kheldians probably would perish horribly, but, who cares about those squid beings anyway...)


Dodging quantum bolts


Nearby we find Baron Doomsday - this time no mere lieutenant, but an actual Elite Boss! And promoted to "Lord and Master of the Known Galaxy", very nice. In his description, possibly "thousand Nictus" should be "thousand Nicti" (but still not sure what the plural of Nictus is).

My fire control, fire imps and Captain Skylark manage to tear Baron Doomsday down. I like that he utters the traditional lines:


[NPC] Baron Doomsday: I am BARON DOOMSDAY, Lord of the Nictus and of the Great Black Void. I am UNSTOPPABLE!
[NPC] Baron Doomsday: This.... Cannot.... BE!


This finishes the mission and the arc. In my clue journal I have "Doomsday for Doomsday" and "Fear Ray(R) Fragment" among my clues; I'd suggest "Doomsday for Doomsday" should be moved to be the very last clue, as it is written with an air of finality. (I still wonder why Doomsday can't just use UNIVAC to escape, AGAIN, though.)

Debriefing: nicely written parting words.

Souvenir: the Fear Ray(R) Fragment is pretty cool, but wouldn't it be unwise to keep a "Nictus fragment" (as this is described) considering what happened to poor Aerodynamic? And there are a lot of Nictus, so it would be easy for Doomsday to get another Nictus fragment. Perhaps the Fear Ray(R) Fragment should be some kind of more techy gizmo that can't be easily reproduced.

Overall
This arc did a great job setting up a retro sci-fi sense of ambience; the language used in dialog and clues, the names of objectives, the enemies chosen to appear in missions, etc., all helped give this arc a great look & feel. Each of the missions was pretty filled with interesting details; the sequences of triggered objectives worked pretty well, required a little backtracking but not a lot. The dialog was well done and I liked seeing some of the recurring characters. I hope Aerodynamic got better in the end. (I half expected Captain Skylark to betray me like Aerodynamic did, due to Nictus mind control.) There were some great bits of humor in some of the clues and dialog that added to the fun.

Things I didn't like: a couple times I felt there wasn't enough motivation (in the form of briefing/dialog/clues) for some of the objectives in the nav tool. Some terminology specific to the arc is used inconsistently (Doomdroids/Doomsday Droids/Doom Droids? Flesh Palace/Flesh Temple?).

The arc felt on the longish side; I twice made an earlier start on this arc that I had to abandon due to time constraints. This time I finished the arc, split over 4 play sessions. This is not necessarily a bad thing; actually, each mission is very densely packed with stuff to do, which I really like. But it does mean it takes awhile; something to be aware of. Splitting the arc over a few sessions reminded me even more of the old serialized sci-fi shorts, actually.

I really enjoyed the "world setting" of this story arc and I felt the problems I found weren't that major. I gave this story arc 5 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Djinniman - arc to be named later (will do the Thanksgiving Parade arc unless he suggests another)
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403

Great choice, this arc is terrific. Congrats @FemFury!

I decided to try and revamp parts of the arc to present alternate history in more of a documentary style. Reworked mission 1 accordingly, still need to rework the later missions.

Specific changes to mission 1:
* Changed the timeline to make this mission occur in 1938, immediately before the Sudeten crisis (previously it was set in 1939, before the invasion of Poland). Based on my historical research, the German military very nearly overthrew Hitler on its own at this time, because they were afraid he was going to drag them into a war they couldn't win; but after the Munich Agreement that ceded the Sudeten to Germany, Hitler became much too popular to overthrow. So, immediately before the Munich Agreement seemed the ideal point for a time traveler to overthrow Hitler and take his place.
* Added a new "begin mission" clue, "History of World War 2".
* Added a new clue dropped upon defeating der Fuehrer, "August 1938".
* Added a new "end mission" clue, "September 1938".
* Changed the ally from being Schadenfreude to a generic German army officer named "Conspirator", belonging to the "Schwarze Kapelle" enemy group. (This was what the Gestapo called the conspiracy against Hitler within the German military.) I thought having "in-period" Germans trying to help the player overthrow Hitler would make it more believable when the player suddenly gets promoted to being the new Fuhrer. Gave him some background info to match. I considered naming this ally after a real German officer, but I thought it would be disrespectful (they all died pretty horrible deaths for trying to do the decent thing and resist Hitler).
* Originally the mission was set in "The Wolf's Lair", the bunker in East Prussia; but I found this wasn't actually built until 1940. The mission now is set in the "Fuhrerbunker", an underground bunker in Berlin built in 1936. Yeah, just like the 5th and Council, those wacky Nazis loved their underground bases.
* Added "Himmler", an optional vampyr boss, because most conspiracies to assassinate Hitler seemed to want to take out Himmler (the head of the SS and the Gestapo) too, just to be sure. I made him a vampyr because the photographs I found of him make him look exactly like a vampyr to me. I thought about adding a clue saying that defeating Himmler stopped the Final Solution (since Himmler was one of its chief architects) but decided that might be too heavy-handed. Decided I'd better just steer clear of that can of worms and leave it up to the player's imagination.
* Thought about adding an Eva Braun hostage but I decided against it; I didn't think it would add much, and I thought having Hitler's girlfriend present would make him seem too sympathetic.

The Coldest of Wars review
Arc ID: 299972
Keywords: Canon Related, Save the World, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-45
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise seems to be something about Crey awakening some sleeping horror. I played a 33 MA/ninj stalker (admittedly not the right level or morality; I played an espionage character for thematic reasons). The contact is Janet Kellum.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption should be in larger font, bold face or otherwise different type from the rest of the briefing, to make it stand out more. Good introduction of the contact and the organization she works for. "Crey Corporation" maybe should be "Crey Industries". I like the reference to Invisible Falcon. Janet wants me to rescue one of her undercover agents and get some evidence on Crey. Pretty well-written briefing overall. In the "send-off" part, there is a place where it says "lab terminals --, then extract him"; should probably drop the comma, it looks weird next to the dashes.

I like the mission name, "Infiltrate the Crey compound"; the list of objectives sounds interesting. I see Security Chief Arel pretty close to the front, but sneak by her since she's optional and the contact suggested keeping a low profile.

Found a couple glowy computers that I clicked; they generate some fun messages in the spam message window, but the first three don't reveal anything special. The fourth gives me "A cryptic hint" as a clue, which is a pretty nicely written clue suggesting Crey has found something unusual in Independence Port. Erikson is nearby and rescuing him completes the mission (thankfully... I was half-afraid I'd need to escort him out of this massive complex). Erikson simultaneously gives me "The Insider" clue (I assume for rescuing him) and "A possible lead?" (for completing the mission).

Considering I found the lab computer before I rescued Erikson, having Erikson tell me to search the computers doesn't quite make logical sense; consider rewording the clues so that they make sense regardless of the order you find them in. Alternatively, you could make the computers trigger off of rescuing Erikson, but I think that would end up forcing the player to do a lot of backtracking.

"A possible lead?" is missing paragraph breaks after "the chase" and "dastardly plots". Also, "artificially engineering superheroes" is in larger font; not sure if this is intentional (it's unclear to me that this phrase needs emphasis, but maybe it is intentional).

Debriefing: the contact talks about my "guns-blazing approach" and how I "didn't have a choice"; but, actually, I stealthed the mission, fighting only the 3 mobs guarding Erikson, so this seems a little out of place. May want to rewrite that text to not assume that the player defeated everything.

Mission 2
Briefing: pretty nicely written. The contact plans to cut off power to a Crey lab, then have me sneak in and steal stuff. It does seem likely that Crey would have backup generators though; the contact mentions this possibility but kind of handwaves it away with "that won't be enough". Not sure I buy that though; it seems likely that a backup generator would, well, be enough to act as backup power. (Maybe needs more handwaving, like another imaginary FBSA agent cutting the backup power.) Still, sounds like a fun spy op. One thing that is missing from the briefing, though, is which lab I'm actually infiltrating; I would guess the one that was mentioned in earlier clues, but it's never clearly said. (This is admittedly nitpicky.)

Mission entry popup: very nicely written. It does address the backup generator problem, having it come on-line after some delay. Perhaps the briefing could mention something like "You'll have no more than 1 minute to get in before backup power comes on line".

Nice list of interesting sounding objectives in this mission. Near the door I see Security Chief Ranagol; I like his "unaware" line and how suspicious he is about the power outage.

Clicking a glowy computer gives me "[M2] Research log enry #42: 'The Breakthrough"; possibly the clue's name is actually longer than that, but the right part of the clue's name is cut off due to being too long. May want to make the clue name a little shorter, to fit in a standard clue dialog box. Also, "enry" should be "entry". This clue also seems to be TWO entries, not just one; is the part starting with "Intriguing" meant to be another clue? Should maybe have a paragraph break between the two entries. Also, neither sentence of the clue really seems to be a "breakthrough" as described in the clue title; at best, the second sentence is an observation.

I discover "Soviet Infiltrators" (a custom faction) in the Crey lab; I'm not sure how they got here, but I hope to find out. They look and are described as retro 1960s Soviets; my character is basically a retro 1960s spy girl, though, so this actually works perfectly. Fighting "The Engineer", it sounds like the Soviets were being held by Crey, but escaped when the power was cut.


Spy Girl surveils "the Engineer"

Another computer gives me "Research log entry #12: 'The Discovery'". Should have a paragraph break (basically a <br><br>) after "map!".

I'm a little surprised Crey security hasn't had more of a response to the Soviet Infiltrators breakout; it seems like Ranagol was aware of the risk. Perhaps there should be a Crey patrol or ambush responding to the Soviet escape attempt?

Found "Ruined Equipment" glowy which gave me the "Strange items" clue, which seems consistent with 1960s Soviets in frozen sleep waking up in a Crey facility. Wondering if the blueprints of an ice cream machine will become significant; it seems oddly out of place among the other items.

Final computer gives me "Research log entry #27: 'Those Russians'" that confirms that the discovery was Soviets in cryosleep. This also completes the mission and gives me the "A threat from the past?" clue. His lunatic ravings definitely make the ice cream machine more significant.

Debriefing seems pretty good.

Mission 3
I LOL'd at the mission title ("In Soviet Russia, ice cream licks you"); perhaps capitalize and add an exclamation point to "YOU!" to reflect the way this kind of joke is normally said (ice cream licks YOU!).

Briefing is well written; the plot is silly but totally appropriate for the 1960s spy genre.

Inside the mission, fighting the Ice Cream machines with their Winter Horde guards seems just right. The Freakshow seem a little out of place to me in Atlas Park, though the briefing and dialog do try to explain them as being looters. I wonder if it would make more sense for the map to be filled with Winter Horde, and Soviet Infiltrators be guarding the devices? The Freaks DO have some fun dialog though.


Spy Girl destroying a runaway ice cream maker

I destroy the six ice cream machines and successfully save Atlas Park. Destroying each machine seemed a little on the easy side, but maybe this is okay.

Atlas Park being the heart of the city, it would be nice to have some civilian hostages that you rescue here, but I remember this map doesn't allow for hostage rescues.

I picked up a "Note about the machines" clue, not quite sure when; possibly at mission start. It's quite nicely written giving a lot of good background info about, well, ice cream machine history.

I also like "the Coldest of Wars" as a double entendre for both the Soviet connection and the ice cream plot.

Mission 4
Briefing: first paragraph talks mostly about the previous mission; wonder if it more properly goes in mission 3's debriefing? Also "July 1963" seems strangely specific; 1963 makes sense in context of the "Strange items" clue, but I'm not sure why July is significant. (Perhaps I missed the reason?) Nicely written briefing otherwise, with appropriate warnings.

I like the mission send-off message and it has some interesting historical background, but with a 45 minute timer starting upon accepting the mission, I fear most players will skip over it due to time pressure.

Inside the mission, there's a lot of interesting objectives. I'm a little puzzled over "Defeat the Doktor" and "Defeat Igor" until I get a chance to read the "Intel on the Soviets" clue. This is quite a nice clue with a lot of good detail.

Found and freed Security Chief Arel, who had good dialog and a good clue. (Though the clue should have a paragraph break in the middle.)

Found Marxman Igor; in his dialog, I kinda think "tovaris" should be "tovarish" or "tovarisch", or at least have an umlaut over the s. (Very nitpicky.) Also he says "I pretended to fight with you for many years" but maybe should say "I pretended to fight on your side for many years" (unless this is intentionally phrased confusingly, which is possible).


Spy Girl versus the Marxman

In his description it says "This agent known only as 'the Marxman'" which isn't consistent with the fact that we know his name is Igor.

Found Doktor Molotov, whose description says "He holds a box of explosives in one hand", but his animation shows him holding a body bag. Maybe he should be holding a crate.

Found Agent Aurora; I like how Marxman's dialog referenced the speech that she starts making as soon as I get near. Her description mentions she is a "KGB operative-turned-superhero", isn't she more properly a "-turned-supervillain"? (Perhaps it's a matter of perspective.) I battle her; she nearly gets me while I'm taking screenshots, but I get serious when I realize I'm low on life and beat her. Her dialog DOES explain she thinks she's a hero (albeit of the USSR). I don't get credit for "defeat leader of the Soviets" until I clear her whole group, though; you might consider making this objective "Only boss required".


The final showdown against Agent Aurora (and some Communist robots)

I eventually find a "Makeshift Nuclear Device", which uses the crate of robot parts as a graphic; you might consider using a more impressive looking graphic for the nuclear bomb. Though it IS makeshift, I suppose. Clicking it completes the mission and gives me the "Message from Agent Kellum regarding the" (right hand side of clue name cut off due to space limits). Probably should make the name of the clue shorter, to fit in the standard window.

A nice debriefing and souvenir. Though in the souvenir you have the arc named "Coldest of Wars" but the actual arc title is "The Coldest of Wars" (nitpicky).

Overall
I liked the retro-Soviet spy plot of this arc (which admittedly was a perfect fit for the concept of the character I played). The evil plan involving ice cream machines was terrific (I actually thought this was more cool than the nuclear bomb backup plan, but the nuke thing wasn't bad). Good use of clues and foreshadowing. Excellent background info in the briefings and various mission begin/end clues.

For things I didn't like, I thought the Freakshow in mission 3 were a little out of place, and the lab map in mission 2 was a bit too large. I found some formatting issues, but mostly minor stuff.

Overall I thought it was quite well done. I gave it 5 stars.


---

My queue is currently:

The_Cheshire_Cat - Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today #337333
@Djinniman - arc to be named later
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
Eraserdog - Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of DOOM! #335926 (assuming he plays/played P&P)

11/20/2009

Monday night I found that my Black Marketeering had secured Mega (50 SS/will brute) an Apocalypse (chance for negative) and an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) recipe, for approx 200M infamy each (which is a lot, but not too bad for this recipe). As a melee character, range attack IOs may not seem that great, but I crafted and slotted them into her Hurl power for the sake of the purple set bonuses. With 4 Apocalypse, she gets +3% max HP and +4% global damage, both good things.

I went on to play Mega on a Cap SF with a team of:

3 brutes (including me)
1 rad corruptor
2 stalkers

The others seemed to die a lot but as an exemped 50 (the others were mostly lower level), Mega was pretty indestructible throughout the SF. We did have Bat'zul and Infernal slug out out for a bit before beating them up. Finished the Cap SF in 44min 17sec.

After that I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a semi-quick ITF with a team of 5 melee, a kin, a rad, and me as a blaster. This went a bit sloppy and we had a lot of deaths, but still finished in 37min 57sec.

I spent some of Thunder Girl's (50 elec/SR scrapper) merits, paying 125 merits for a level 21 Performance Shifter (chance for +END), which lists at Wentworths for 51M so seemed like a good buy; and another 200 merits for a level 30 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+global rchg) which lists for 55M.

I did some crafting to get Thunder Girl closer to the build I listed earlier; 6 Performance Shifter in Stamina gives her +3.13 AoE DEF and 5 Aegis in Tough gives her another +3.13 AoE DEF, which gets her to a total of 44.67% AoE defense. Slotting the LotG +7.5% rchg in Evasion and a fifth Obliteration (costing me 9M at Wentworths) into her Thunder Strike for another +5% rchg raises her total global recharge to +67.5%.

Tried this out by playing Thunder Girl on a speed LGTF (23min 54sec) and a speed ITF (23min 4sec) which also helped replenish some of the merits I spent.

Finished the night playing Mega on a quick 1st villain respec (9min 6sec) and a quick 3rd villain respec (11min 4sec). I took the respec instead of merits for both trials, for the sake of the badges; now Mega has all 3 respec badges.



On Wednesday night, I played Thunder Girl on a pickup Manticore TF with a team mix of

1 controller (fire/kin)
2 tankers (stone/elec, will/db)
peacebringer
2 scrappers (kat/will, elec/SR)
2 blasters (fire/fire, nrg/nrg)

This TF ran into all sorts of buggyness; ran into lots of level 40 Paragon Protector Elites (we had two team wipes against a spawn that had 2 of these), and the nrg blaster quit after mission 1 (not sure he understood what a TF was) which I think bugged the TF. After mission 2 (a defeat all), we ended up getting the very same mission at the very same door; I had seen this happen last week, too, so I was pretty concerned, but the team wanted to go ahead and do it again. I resolved that I would be willing to do the mission a second time, but not a third; but after we finished mission 2 again, somehow one of the tankers broke us out of the infinite loop by calling the contact and getting the next mission. This was particularly weird because he was NOT the TF leader (he didn't have the star) but the TF started treating him like he was (the controller, who did have the star, couldn't talk to the contact any more, and suddenly we were all exemped/SK'd to the tanker's level of 34). Despite this weirdness, we managed to finish the rest of the Manticore TF, with a total time of 2hr 16mins. This got Thunder Girl the Task Force Commander accolade (+52 max hp).


On Thursday night, I logged in Police Woman to find I had gotten awarded the "Vigilant" badge, which puzzled me for awhile until someone told me it was the "Thanks for not playing CO! badge" which made me laugh. I messed around with tweaking my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc. Recent AE changes make it so that any enemy group that doesn't have all 3 ranks (minion, lieutenant and boss) gets a heavy nerf to the exp, so I adjusted the "Robotic Teen Phalanx" group (used only in an ambush during the final mission). Originally it was all-minions, but I promoted my robotic Back Alley Boy to be a lieutenant, then added a recolored Siege Android as a boss, which I named "Citadel ME".

A friend was forming a Numina TF so I signed on with Star Amethyst (46 dark/ice defender). Theoretically this was a pickup LB task force, but a lot of people I knew ended up on this TF. We had a team mix of:

2 scrappers
3 defenders (dark, emp, sonic)
1 controller (mind/ff)
1 blaster

This was a very good team, support-heavy with powerful buffs and debuffs; whenever we were relatively close together, I was both RES and DEF capped. We were basically in god-mode and steamrollered over everything, finishing the TF in 1hr 16mins. This also got Star Amethyst the Task Force Commander accolade.

A Teen Phalanx update!



Projectionist sent me a concept drawing for the Teen Phalanx art he is working on:



With this sketch, he wrote:

With "Romance" being a valid story arc keyword, within the limitations of Mission Architect, how can one most effectively make a believable love interest for the player?

Q. What's the best way in Mission Architect to depict a villain stealing the giant doughnut in Faultline?


[This has been an ambition of one of my villain PCs for quite some time.]

11/16/2009

Last Thursday I played Pyre Woman (16 fire/SS tanker) for a couple missions on an 8-player Sisterhood SG fire-themed team, which got her to level 17. Also on Thursday night, Jello Shooters Radio gave my Talos Vice arc a glowing review on their AEntertainment Tonight show; I enjoyed the DJ doing a dramatic reading of my story arc description, and how much they got into the Miami Vice vibe that my story was trying to set up.


On Friday night I played Thunder Girl (48 elec/SR scrapper) on a speedy Lady Grey TF; we got a bit overconfident in mission 2 and had a team wipe against the 3 Riders spawn, mostly due to Famine draining us all dry of END. In the final fight we had one controller who was linkdead, so we purposely delayed until he reconnected before finishing the TF, to make sure he got merits. Finished in 49min 29sec and got Thunder Girl to level 49, where I took Lucky. Lucky is a good power for SR, but I had respec'd Lucky out of my build earlier and penciled it back in for level 49. Because of the way you only get 3 slots at level 50, my level 49 power needed to be something that doesn't need many slots. (i.e., NOT Fireball, which I had moved down to level 47 in my respec.)


On Saturday I played Lt. Mary Sue (17 emp/AR defender on Triumph) on an AE team of story arc fans. The team leader decided we would try random arcs that had 5 stars but less than 100 plays, to test whether they "really" deserved 5 stars or not. First we played Metabolic Invation Arc (sic), which technically had a story about how some mad scientist was turning Paragon citizens into dogs and badgers (or "Bagers", as the story called them), but the Defeat All on an outdoors map made it awfully farm-y. I gave it 1 star, though I was tempted to give it another one due to at least trying to have a plot, but couldn't quite justify it.

Next we played Paragon Science Fair which was actually a pretty cute story arc about a bunch of mad scientists holding an unconventional convention. Most of the story was pretty fun, but I felt like the final mission (where Nemesis shows up and tries to take over) didn't fit well with the rest of the story. I gave this story 4 stars.

Then we played Challenge of the Splendid Pals part 1, a story arc that was an homage to the old Superfriends cartoon. This wasn't terribly deep but it was a fun guilty pleasure interacting with the various Superfriends and Legion of Doom knockoffs. I gave it 4 stars.

Late Saturday night I solo'd Blackout Girl {28 elec/elec brute) through The Descender, a story arc where you find out that you're the prophesied messiah of this underwater race of fish-people that have been enslaved by the Coralax for millions of years. You become their leader and take over the world. This was actually pretty cool; some of the missions needed a little more detail, though, and the final mission was much too hard compared to the earlier ones. I ended up dying 5 times battling Lord Recluse (even as an EB, with lots of fish-people allies on my side). I ended up giving it 3 stars; would've given it a bit more (the story was cool and I learned a lot about Coralax) but the last mission was just too hard.


Sunday afternoon I started off tinkering with Wentworth's and invention sets. Star Amethyst (45 dark/ice defender) finally picked up the sixth piece of the Cloud Senses set (which I slotted into her Dark Servant power) and the sixth piece of the Lockdown set (which I slotted into her epic Dominate power), each of which gave +3.75% range DEF. I'm focusing her IO sets on +DEF to make her a bit more survivable in the late game TFs, and I figure it'll have good synergy with the -ACC from dark miasma.

I briefly joined a Moonfire TF that Sisterhood SG was organizing as a SG event. 9 people showed up for this event, though, so we had too many for a single team; and Moonfire needs 6 to start, so we didn't have enough for two teams. The 9th person to show up had never done the Moonfire TF, though, so I volunteered to drop out so that he could play. I ended up getting on an Imperious TF instead, which finished in 26min 14sec and got Star Amethyst to level 46.

I also played Thunder Girl (49 elec/SR scrapper) on a speed Lady Grey TF which finished in 23min 48sec, and another Imperious TF which wasn't exactly a speed TF (we didn't Defeat All, but we did clear everything that got in our way) but nevertheless finished in 42min 51sec. Thunder Girl hit level 50 just as Romulus was defeated in mission 3.

Finished the evening playing Arrow Girl (38 archery/dev blaster) on a 6 player Sisterhood & friends team doing door missions mostly fighting Rikti and Crey.

The Descender review
Arc ID: 339222
Keywords: Non-Canon, Rule the World, Magic
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 25-31 (for 4 missions), 45-54 (last mission)
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme EBs, custom enemies.

The premise from the description sounds like you play messiah to some sort of lost civilization. I played a 28 elec/elec brute. The contact is Captain Mako.

Mission 1
Briefing: "Descent" looks like it is meant to be a heading; should be in larger type or bolded for emphasis. I like that Mako explains why he contacted the player and gives a little background info about Leviathan -- though I don't think it's established that Leviathan is a "massive shark" (perhaps Mako would like to think this, though, being a shark). "Sharkhead isle" should be "Sharkhead Isle" (note capitalization) and "slip away" should be "slipped away".

It sounds like this is a follow-up to the Sharkhead SF and/or Mako's patron arc. I'm not sure I fully believe that the Leviathan's power "is now drained" as stated here; Leviathan seems like such a massive creature.

In any case, Mako wants me to check on a strike team he sent in to destroy the Leviathan. It's not quite clear why I should help Mako though; maybe he should offer some incentive (or threat, perhaps). The send-off part of the briefing is very short; he is a little insulting here, which is fine considering who he is, but further makes me question why I'm working for him.

Inside the mission I ran into a lot of "Virtea" mobs, that seem to be some sort of shark people. Virtea Torpedo's bio is actually rather educational, I didn't know about electric torpedo rays. I have to wonder, is there a reason for using custom Virtea instead of standard (or perhaps recolored) Coralax? After all, Coralax are already-existing fish people who normally live in this cave. Maybe this will become more clear later. [Note: later on, I found that "Virtea" are actually a race that is mentioned in the official CoV lore! I had no idea.]

In some of their lines:

[NPC] Virtea Mako: They mean to kill the sleeper!
[NPC] Virtea Mako: In the name of the descender! And all the Virtea!!!

...I wonder if you should capitalize "the Sleeper" and "the Descender", who sounds like a special, unique critter (maybe Leviathan itself?) based on the way they talk about it. Also, this same dialog is repeated about 4 times (presumably 4 instances of battles); you may want to add some variations to mix it up.

In Virtea Manta's bio, the sentence fragment "Not unlike squid ink." probably should be merged with either the sentence before or the sentence after. The ink explanation for their dark powers IS kinda cool.

I found and rescued Tsunami Force Leader Eberlein.

[NPC] Tsunami Force Leader Eberlein: Oh thank the lord, Blackout Girl! Over here!

...is a rather strange thing for him to say; maybe he's referring to Lord Recluse, but this phrase sounds especially Christian. Eberlein has the generic Crab spider description, but being a named character, perhaps deserves more description.

I had to lead Eberlein back to the door; this seems reasonable, but bear in mind that a large cave is kind of an annoying map to lead a hostage out of. There's no ambushes or triggered spawns on the way back, so I'm not sure the mission gains a lot by having to lead him out. I'd suggest you either make the mission end as soon as you free him, OR you add some enemies that either ambush you or spawn behind you, so you have to fight your way out.

At the end of the mission, I've run across several Virtea/Arachnos battles and fought a lot of Virtea, and rescued the Arachnos leader, but still don't have much clue what is happening. Would be nice to have gotten some clues by now, to help establish what's going on; perhaps by rescuing either some generic Arachnos hostages or from Eberlain, or perhaps by finding glowies along the way. Maybe the dialog could be shaped to hint at what is going on, too.

Debriefing: the contact says "Only the strike force leader survived?" but, in fact, a lot of the generic Arachnos troops lived through their battles with the Virtea (sometimes with help from me) so this doesn't quite match what I saw in the mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to find out more about the Virtea; apparently he thinks the CoT should know something about them, so I should go ransack one of their libraries. This seems basically reasonable, though it occurs to me that, especially for Captain Mako, asking Barracuda (who has a Coralax-ish origin) might be a good approach too.

Inside the mission I have "9 more bookshelves to search". The first bookshelf I find is named "Red Herrings" which is ... a bit of a giveaway as to what they are. You might want to name it just "Bookshelf". The message for searching it should probably mention "You don't find anything about Virtea", just to be clear.

After fighting past some CoT I eventually find a bookshelf labeled "Tome of the Depths.", which should probably also be simply named "Bookshelf" to avoid being a giveaway. Clicking it gives me the "Tome of the Depths" clue and completes the mission. The clue DOES mention the Coralax, so helps explain why the Virtea are different from them. I got "The Prophecy of the Descender" clue at exactly the same time (probably the mission complete clue); it makes the "Tome of the Depths" clue a bit redundant (maybe consider merging them). In this clue, there should probably be a period or a colon after the second paragraph. I'd suggest that you italicize the third paragraph or make it a different color, to emphasize that it's a quotation; also, use some Strategic Capitalization of Key Words to make the text seem more portentious. For example "Hound of the Spider King" instead of "hound of the spider king". Also "marking him as The Descender" should perhaps be "marking $himher as The Descender" (it says "him" for me, and I'm playing a female character).

It strikes me as odd for shark people to be the slaves of fish people, considering sharks eat fish.

This mission seemed a little too simple in terms of gameplay? Could use more stuff to do or see (unless I just didn't see it). Perhaps some CoT with lines of dialog, some additional clues or interesting text attached to the various red herring books, or something. Right now it's just click the right glowy and you're done.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. Also it implies that I lied to the contact and said nothing about what I found; while this seems like a fine idea, I'd suggest you make this fact much clearer; perhaps put some text either in the mission exit popup window or the debriefing itself, saying something to the effect of "You decide not to tell Mako of your findings."

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, here we get some internal monologue about what "my" plans are. I apparently have a theory about an "Inadvertant Messiah" - this is the first mention of this theory. It makes sense, but you may want to insert some text earlier on emphasizing that I now realize I am the "inadvertant messiah" and what I plan to do about it.

The briefing says I need to "confirm my theory" but doesn't give any detail on how I hope to do this; since it is "my" idea, I should really, umm, "tell myself" more about my plan.

"This could quite possibly be, the most lucky thing" - I think you should delete the comma.

Mission entry popup: "Looks like you aren't the only one interested" doesn't quite make sense as I don't see anyone else where I zoned in; maybe it should say "You see/smell/hear Xxxx. Looks like you aren't.." or maybe be different entirely.

Why does confirming my theory involve "3 Chieftans to save" and "Defeat Calystix"? Needs some explanation. Also, "Chieftans" should be "Chieftains".

I overhear in the cave:

[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: A stubborn one arent you? Let see how stubborn you are after calystix finishes with you...

"calystix" should be "Calystix" (note capitalization). The cave seems full of Coralax, who I end up fighting; I think this is part of "my" plan, to rescue the oppressed Virtea from the Coralax. (If so, this should be made clearer.)

I rescue Redjaw, a loyal Virtea member of my new cult. I get a better look at him now that Virtea are friendly to me; the costume isn't bad, but you might consider playing with the head and body sliders to make the Virtea look more inhumanly sharklike. Also Redjaw says:

[NPC] Redjaw: I never gave out hope Descender!

"gave out" should perhaps be "gave up".

Rescued Whitefang and Blackfin as well.

[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Your rebellion ends here slave!

... should be "ends here, slave!"

[NPC] Blackfin: The descender has come! The age of the Virtea is reborn!!!
[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Kill the descender!!!

"descender" should be "Descender" based on previous usage.

[NPC] Blackfin: You have my undying loyalty Descender....

...should be "undying loyalty, Descender...."

The three chieftains join up with me; it's actually a bit of a pain steering allies through this limestone cavern, I find that I lose them repeatedly and have to go back for them. Though maybe not much that can be done about that; this DOES seem an appropriate map.

I like the "Redjaw speaks" "Blackfin speaks" and "Whitefang speaks" clues, they help fill in a lot of the back story. (Minor nitpick) Each of these clues ends in an ellipsis, but probably should just end in a period. Maybe "ascenders" should be "Ascenders" to mirror "the Descender". In "Whitefang speaks", "prophesized" should be "prophesied". "60 million years" seems an implausibly long time for them to keep history, but it's just comic book history, so maybe this is okay.

Deep in the caverns I find Calystix (an EB for me) who I manage to defeat with the help of my loyal minions. The "Calystix Speaks" clue should perhaps be reordered to be after "Blackfin/Redjaw/Whitefang speaks", since hopefully the player fights Calystix AFTER rescuing the other chieftains. In "Calystix speaks", "more powerful then" should be "more powerful than", and "Levithan" should be "Leviathan" (in two places).

After being Calystix, Barracuda suddenly came out of nowhere and I had to fight her. I'm not sure it makes sense for Barracuda to be in the same place as Calystix (they are NOT allies), but her dialog is terrific; I love the idea of having "stolen" her destiny as the Virtea's Chosen One.


Your destiny is MINE now, Barracuda!

Beating up Barracuda finished the mission and gave me "The Chieftans speak" clue. "Chieftans" should be "Chieftains" both in the clue title and the text.

Debriefing: I am actually not sure why I would return to Captain Mako at this point, since the last mission was "on my own" and I just killed his lackey Barracuda. He does exposition that the Leviathan has awoken and destroyed Sharkhead isle (note: should be "Sharkhead Isle") and part of St Martial, which is...impressive. Fortunately I'm in the Cap au Diable AE building.

Mission 4
Briefing: Mako as contact seems decreasingly relevant as this briefing isn't from him at all, instead describing a big Coralax/Virtea battle in St Martial. I apparently decide to go help my loyal minions wipe out the Coralax.

Map selection: I'm a little surprised that Bile's ruined city map was used instead of one of the St Martial outdoor maps, since this is stated to take place in St Martial.

I can understand the 3 Coralax Exarchs to defeat (with "Exterminate the Coralax" as mission name, I'm glad it's not actually a Defeat All on an outdoor map) but am puzzled as to why I should "Find the Virtea Khan" -- needs explanation.

I see lots of Virtea/Coralax battles and even mix it up with a few of them; maybe they should have some dialog, though, as currently they are completely silent. Though I see there are a LOT of battles; it might take some doing to make their dialog not all the same.


Me helping the Virtea commit genocide against the Coralax. What? Don't look at me like that! They needed killing!

Found and defeated Exarch Lotryz; he seems to have a generic Coralax Black description, maybe should have a special one considering he has a special name. He does have some decent dialog. One of the things he says:

[NPC] Exarch Lotryz: There is no prophecy. The Virtea have some magical talent but not the capability to prophecise.

"prophecise" isn't a word; should perhaps be "prophesy" or "know the future".

I found and rescued the Virtea Khan; in his description, "heirarchy" should be "hierarchy". He becomes an elite boss ally, which seems a little overly powerful considering the biggest enemy seems to only be a boss. He hasn't been mentioned before this mission; I wonder if it would be better to re-use one or several of the Chieftains from mission 3 as allies instead? Either that, or perhaps those guys should tell you that they will carry the message of the Descender to the Khan, to give his existence some foreshadowing.

After briefly leaving the Khan behind and coming back, the Khan says:

[NPC] The Virtea Khan: Come, let us paint our blades red with the blood of the Coralax

Nitpick: Coralax probably don't have red blood. Also, needs a period at the end of that line.

The map is pretty huge, so rather than drag the Khan around clearing the whole place, I ended up leaving him behind in order to look for the last Exarchs. I like Exarch Ferrix's angry dialog, though Ferrix and some of the earlier clues seem to imply that the Coralax are aliens from another planet. I'm not sure this is consistent with the official lore; ParagonWiki says that Coralax were "conjured from the coral" by Merulina. I could be wrong, though (I didn't even know Virtea were in-canon until I looked up Coralax).

Finally found Exarch Nautyll; I like his dialog and how deeply in denial he is. In this line:

[NPC] Exarch Nautyll: You dont exist! You are just a dream!

"dont" should be "don't".

Defeating the last Exarch finished the mission and gave me the "Blood of the Leviathan" clue. "The Khan kneels before" should be "The Khan kneels before you", and "crystaline" should be "crystalline". I kinda like that this clue indicates you are now fully joining the Virtea cause by transforming into a crazy fish goddess, but some players may object to being railroaded into this change in their character.

Debriefing: "our bothers swarm" should be "our brothers swarm". "If there is anything we could do to repay you ... we are in your eternal debt" rings a little false; aren't I their crazy fish goddess now? What is this talk of "debt" and "repayment"?? They should already serve me!

At the end of the mission, although I liked the battle scenes I have to say it did not *feel* very much like a ruined version of St Martial. Perhaps consider using the "St Martial" outdoor map (though admittedly, this doesn't have as much water on it as the map you used); also, I think there should be battered Arachnos and Family survivors here, either as hostages or hapless victims being slaughtered by the Virtea and Coralax, with dialog screaming "WHY? WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US, OH CRAZY FISH GODDESS?" or something similar. None of them would need to be required objectives, but I think it would add some ambience.

Mission 5
Briefing: needs a period or colon after "plan". The idea of "abyss wells" that can magically summon Arachnos leaders seems a bit hard to believe. I do like the "Destroy Arachnos" mission title though.

Suddenly the level of the mission jumps to level 45 for me, which seems like a big jump; I suppose it makes sense if we're about to fight the Arachnos AVs though. "The Virtea Khan" as objective should be something like "Rescue the Virtea Khan" or "Link up to the Virtea Khan".

I almost immediately run into the Virtea Khan; somehow he's been captured by Arachnos minions (how did this happen?). Neither the Khan nor his guards have any dialog as I rescue him though.

Found the "Ghost Widow Abyss Well" which clicking apparently summons Ghost Widow ... though, she doesn't appear near me, just somewhere on the map somewhere. I know you can't make her appear right in front of me, but this still seems like a rather awkward mechanic to bring the AVs to the player.

A bit later I ran into Whitefang again, which was cool (nice to see recurring characters) and clicked the Lord Recluse well. It occurs to me that "proper" magic naming rituals require the True Name of the subject; shouldn't I be yelling "STEFAN RICHTER" into the well, not "LORD RECLUSE"? I found and clicked more wells for Scirocco and Captain Mako, as well as linking up with Blackfin and Redjaw. None of the allies (or the Arachnos guarding them, for that matter) seem to have any lines in this mission; would be nice to give them some dialog.

Near the submarine pens I found Scirocco and narrowly defeated him with the help of my 4 pets and heavy inspiration use. While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Scirocco: You! You are the one they call the descender!

"descender" should be capitalized here.

As soon as I beat Scirocco, though, my allies promptly aggroed onto both Captain Mako and Lord Recluse, who had spawned within line of sight. (The Virtea allies seem to have a huge aggro radius - may want to tinker with their powersets to reduce this some.) I was already a bit weakened from Scirocco and my real level is only 28, so I promptly got defeated by Lord Recluse. In hindsight maybe I should've activated the wells one at a time, defeating each AV before activating the next one.

Second try, tried to fight Lord Recluse but he was too close to Mako and I ended up having to fight both at once. Almost got LR but my allies had their damage split between the two AVs, ended up getting Lord Recluse to about 20% life and Mako to about 40% before dying.

Third try, I loaded up on purple inspirations and managed to beat Lord Recluse (still weakened from my second try), then Captain Mako. I did like their dialog during the fight and as they went down, and I like that it seems to have spawned more Virtea as I defeated them.

Climbing onto the catwalks, I discover that the Virtea Khan can fly. Not sure that makes sense for a fish person? Found and fought Ghost Widow up there. Her dialog as she is being destroyed is rather cool and a little haunting. The last abyss well was on the catwalk as well, which summoned Black Scorpion.

Had a lot of trouble finding Black Scorpion; I searched the whole complex four times over and couldn't find him. The map seems very linear, so I ought to be able to find him, but he doesn't seem to be findable; I guess he spawned somewhere inaccessible? Running around I left some of the allies behind; none of them seem to have "I'm lost" or "You found me" lines in this mission.

I decide to reset the mission to try and complete it. This is kind of a pain because I have to re-do 4 AV fights, but I feel I've come too far to simply quit. On my second try, with my new knowledge of how this mission works, I click only one Abyss Well at a time, killing each AV before spawning the next. This requires a lot of backtracking (most of the wells spawn in the front caves part of the mission, while all the AVs spawn in the submarine base in the back) but goes much more smoothly. Even solo, though, Lord Recluse does manage to defeat my 28 brute four more times, even bringing all the allies. A big part of this is because of his Summon Army power that he uses at low life; the extra banes tend to distract the allies and also do enough damage to kill me, and after a few tries all my allies were dead but his summoned banes still seemed to stick around, so I was in something of a downward spiral. Finally managed to drop him on the fifth try, though it was a close thing.


What do you mean, you can't swim?

I'm a little surprised there wasn't an end-of-mission clue for this mission, describing some scene with the Virtea, like the last two missions had. This mission seemed a little light on description in general; there wasn't much to it except the fighting, though the fighting was indeed epic.

Souvenir: nice scene described here, though the way it is written, I almost think this text belongs in the final debriefing instead of the souvenir.

Overall
I thought this was a pretty cool "conquer the world" plot; there just aren't enough story arcs where you get to conquer the world. Discovering that I'm the messiah to a warrior race who will help me destroy all my enemies was quite cool. I liked how the story tied in with the existing lore about Leviathan, Captain Mako and Sharkhead Isle. I initially thought the Virtea were a made-up species and was pleasantly surprised to find they're actually in-canon (albeit very obscure); I learned something from that!

Problems I had: the ramp-up in difficulty in the last mission was much, much too sharp. Although I like the idea of fighting the Arachnos AVs to conquer the Rogue Isles, while my level 50 brute could probably have handled that mission, my level 28 brute really couldn't. The fact that the first four missions are level 25-31 kind of lulls the player into thinking someone level 25-31 should be able to do this arc, but I think most characters that level will run into a brick wall against the final AVs. I don't believe most level 31s (even if malefactored up to 45) reasonably will be able to defeat Lord Recluse, even with the four allies that were provided. You may want to think about what you can do about that. Perhaps you could make the earlier missions higher level, but I'm not sure Coralax go that high. At the very least provide a suggested character level in the arc description, and/or add the "Challenging" keyword.

Although I like the idea of defeating the leading Arachnos AVs in order to conquer the Rogue Isles, the mechanism for summoning them (the abyss wells) felt very contrived. A magic well who can summon anyone if you say their name? Why haven't the Coralax used those to destroy ALL their enemies long before this? I think it would be more believable for the mission briefing to just say that your minions saw the Arachnos leaders retreating to a secret submarine base, which would explain why they're here.

The way the abyss wells are set up, it's very likely that a player will click all the abyss wells before finding any of the AVs, resulting in the player fighting multiple AVs at once, which will be bad for most players. Additionally, I think it would be more dramatic if Lord Recluse was the last AV that you fight. To make this happen, you might consider daisy-chaining the AVs together as triggered objectives, instead of having them trigger off of the abyss wells; and make Lord Recluse the very last AV that is spawned.

It seemed to me that some of the earlier missions (particularly the CoT mission and the St Martial mission) needed more stuff to do in them, other than just fight stuff; or else should be on smaller maps. (On the other hand, mission 3 was very good about providing clues and details.) Also, the motivation for why you're working with Mako at the beginning seemed a little weak to me, and by the end of the arc, the fact that Mako is your contact is actually distracting and meaningless since you're basically on your own starting with mission 3. You even kill him in mission 5. I almost wonder if a Virtea would make more sense as a contact.

I wanted to give this around a 3.5 rating; the educational use of Coralax/Virtea/Mako back story was a big plus, but the huge increase in difficulty in the last mission was a big minus. I did really like being anointed the crazy fish goddess though.

I think I have to go with 3 stars for now (though I waffled between 3 and 4 several times); that last mission, though I like the idea of crushing all the Arachnos AVs, just seems too much of a player killer for most people in the 25-31 range. I'd definitely recommend straightening out the difficulty of the final mission compared to the earlier ones (either by making the last mission easier or by increasing the recommended level of the arc) and perhaps adding some more detail to some of the earlier missions. I hope you think that's fair.

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My queue is currently:

Zaphir - The Coldest of Wars #299972
The_Cheshire_Cat - Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today #337333
@Djinniman - arc to be named later
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
Eraserdog - Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of DOOM! #335926 (assuming he plays/played P&P)

Thanks for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed Talos Vice.

A few notes on your comments:

* The clue in mission 1 is linked to the Superadine; freeing Croquette shouldn't have a clue at all. Perhaps these happened in close succession though.

* I'll try and rearrange objectives in mission 2 to make the key objectives more likely to spawn in the back. (They are supposed to, but I think the order I defined them in doesn't always allow for it. Reshuffling the key ones to be first might help though.)

* I'll relabel the Marcone mobs to be classic "Family". I do think that makes more sense.

* Love the screenshot of the final shootout! With everyone holding guns and pointing them at each other, it's a very cinematic final showdown.


Thanks again!