PoliceWoman

Link to Olantern's review

Olantern writes:

Feedback I've received so far:


Joe Fedora writes:

By popular demand (well, one person's demand), a feedback thread for:

TALOS
=VICE=
Arc ID: 338380
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 12-20
Description: An 80s instrumental blares as the camera pans over scenes of Talos Island: windsurfers on the water, the Talos statue, shoppers in Wentworth's, bikini babes, sports cars racing down the Argo Highway, a speedboat bouncing on the waves. A title card appears over the waters racing below: TALOS VICE


This is essentially a Miami Vice homage. Originally I wanted to write a story about street-level crime, and I got inspired by seeing Detective Croquette in Talos Island and thinking about the ability to recolor standard PvE mobs.

I made this a shorter arc (3 missions) because I wanted it to be quicker paced and accessible. I also experimented with a different style of storytelling for the writing, which I hope works for this theme. The arc is quite new and could use player feedback. I'd particularly like input on:

* Is the final fight too hard? Too easy?
* It's meant to be a Miami Vice homage, but are parts of it over the line and into infringement?
* Does the writing style I used work? Or is it too weird?
* I place words in the mouth of the player in a few places; is this too much powerposing, or is it OK?
* Is the ending (final debriefing) satisfying? I found this hard to write, because I like the protagonist to "win", but the heroes "winning" is not in the spirit of Miami Vice.

10/27/2009

Last Friday I started off playing Thunder Girl (39 elec/SR scrapper) in a duo for some Mission Architect story arcs. We did Forget the Rose, Send Me the Thorns, which was a fun comedy about an amorous CoT mage and saving the world (I gave it 5 stars), Redoubt Operations Part 2, which was a science fiction adventure that didn't really grab me (I gave it 3 stars), and PUG Hell which was a comedy about pickup teams, but struck me as not being especially funny (2 stars). This got Thunder Girl to level 40.


On Saturday, I played Lt. Mary Sue (9 emp/AR defender on Triumph) on a 5-player team of Mission Architect enthusiasts, doing more story arcs. We played Ctrl-Alt-Reset, which was a fun time travel adventure (4 stars); Invasion of the Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space, which was a hilarious send-up of B-movie films (5 stars); and Cutthroat Competition, a black comedy about helping the Facemaker against the Circle of Thorns; this was my second play-through the arc, and the first play-through I really liked it, it seemed rather more tedious on this play-through (I think at least one mission was broken by recent patches and used the wrong map), so I only gave it 3 stars. This got Lt. Mary Sue to level 15.

I also duo'd Blackout Girl (24 elec/elec brute) through a Steel Canyon mayhem to get to level 25, and played Thunder Girl on a semi-speedy Imperious TF (kin controller, brute, 2 scrappers, fort, some kind of corr) that finished in 39min 54sec.


On Sunday I solo'd Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) through Tina MacIntyre's story arc; at the very end I killed Neuron, the last AV she needed for the Dimensional Warder badge, getting Blond the Portal Jockey accolade (+66HP +5END) as well as 43 reward merits.

Did some Halloween stuff, with Police Woman (50 AR/dev) fighting a zombie invasion, and Thunder Girl joining a Halloween banner raid team to get all the event badges. Thunder Girl went on to join a Sara Moore TF with a team mix of:

2 tankers (shd/axe, inv/SS)
2 controllers (ill/rad, fire/kin)
2 scrappers (elec/SR, spine/regen)
2 blasters

Except for the tankers, we were all pretty squishy against Nemesis and Rularuu; despite being nearly soft-capped, Thunder Girl got clobbered by Vengeance and Overseers. Nevertheless we finished in 2hrs 5mins for 64 merits, and Thunder Girl got credit for about 50 Fake Nemeses along the way.

This got Thunder Girl to level 41, at which point I burned 140 merits on random recipe rolls, receiving:

Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=555K
Lockdown (ACC/END/RCHG/HOLD) Wentw=500K
Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=50K
Scirocco's Dervish (chance of lethal) Wentw=1.5M
Lockdown (chance of +2 mag) Wentw=3M
Mako's Bite (chance of lethal) Wentw=505K
Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=500K

This is a yield of 47K/merit, which is pretty awful, but I've had some good draws in the past, so it's okay.

After that I joined a Statesman TF; the team leader asked for "someone with slows", so I tried playing Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender). Our team was 2 tankers, 4 defenders, and 2 controllers, and the leader ran it as a "speed STF", something I hadn't seen before. The first two missions were pretty normal, but against the villain respec we immediately attacked the vines (ignoring CoT) and in the Cap au Diable mission we killed only Security Chiefs and ignored ambushes (I tried to use hurricane to prevent the ambushes from harrassing us too much; eventually they gave up once we got fairly deep into the AeonCorp building). In the final mission we outright charged the patron AVs, defeating them all at once; then one tanker off-tanked the Arachnos flyer while the other tanker tanked Lord Recluse, and the rest of us destroyed the yellow tower first (an unusual choice), then the red and the green towers. We left the blue tower up (another unusual tactic) and went after Lord Recluse at that point. This strategy seemed moderately suicidal, but it actually worked, and we finished in 45min 46sec. I got a Centriole.

Finished the night soloing Thunder Girl through The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web, a story about an alternate version of Arachnos invading Earth from another dimension; it's not bad but I felt it needed more details (I gave it 3 stars).


On Monday night, I played Thunder Girl on a pickup team that did the Founders Falls safeguard, then went on to duo some radio missions with an old friend playing a PvP blaster. She was a very aggressive player who had difficulty set on +2 x5 (the highest I've ever seen a blaster play at) but we were able to handle it, and with fire and elec AoEs we tore up the bad guys at an incredible rate. We even defeated Ghost Widow in a Peregrine Island SG. This got Thunder Girl to level 43, and the Slayer badge (we fought a lot of Council).

After that I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on some speed TFs organized on 0.o, knocking out a Lady Grey TF in 24min 25sec and an Imperious TF in 22min 7sec. Most of the same team switched to hero side for a speed Statesman TF, on which I played Idealist (48 fire/thermal controller). This team was 3 controllers, 2 defenders, 2 tankers and a scrapper, and knocked out the STF in 44mins exactly. I got a tasty Ribosome SHO as reward, and going to Wentworth's, found that I had sold the Cytoskeleton SHO that Idealist got on her last STF for a smooth 100M infl.

Later on Monday I did some Trick-or-Treating with Sisterhood SG, which got Star Amethyst (40 dark/ice defender) to level 41, and many of the ToT and Halloween banner badges for several of my hero alts.



From the HeroCon front, I didn't end up winning an award, but it was cool to be nominated anyway. Ironically, The Most Important Thing, the arc that I had given a 3-star review to and ended up trying to persuade the author not to delete, ended up winning the category that my arc was competing in. This demonstrates the essential irony that is fundamental to the universe; but on the bright side, I'm pretty sure the author won't delete that arc now.

In other news, a player who sometimes plays on Liberty has started a Mission Architect Player Awards contest, defining his own award categories and promising in-game prizes. If you're interested in story-oriented Mission Architect, the nominees include a lot of good story arcs that are worth trying out, and voting is open to all players. No, you don't have to vote for mine.

A few words on arc reviews

I've been doing some introspection on the whole "arc review" thing. There's been some backlash on the forum towards reviewers in general lately, and I've been finding it personally difficult to deal with the disappointment that I generate in people when I give them something other than a glowing review. I would love to give everyone 5 stars and make them feel happy (especially the nice people who I frequently interact with on the forums and/or in-game), but I'm afraid honesty is one of my vices, and I find that I can't do that.

This being the case, I've been wondering: why am I doing this? Is what I'm doing useful? Is it really helping anyone?


Why am I doing arc reviews?

Originally I was trying to get publicity for my own story arcs, but if that's all I wanted, I could've quit long ago.

What I'm trying to do now is to help people improve their story arcs (I hope). Truthfully, my reviews are not properly "reviews" at all. The target audience for my reviews is not the player who tries to decide whether to play the story arc; my target audience is the author of the story arc. The format and content of my review is more like structured, detailed player feedback. This is what I think will help the author.


Do my arc reviews help? Why or why not?

From observation, however, my reviews do not always help the author. Some even seem quite unhappy with the results. I spent some time pondering why this is, and my current thinking is as follows.

People ask for arc reviews for one or more of the following reasons:
* Feedback: the author wants constructive criticism and/or suggestions for their arc.
* Validation: the author wants positive reinforcement for having written their arc.
* Publicity: the author wants more people to hear about their arc and try it out.

My review style mainly provides Feedback, and maybe a little Publicity. My review style is actually counterproductive for people who want Validation.

My feeling is that if the reason you want a review is Validation, you won't be satisfied with the type of review that I do. There is nothing wrong with wanting Validation; in fact, most people probably do want it (I know I do). There are several other reviewers in this forum who are better at providing this type of review. If you will be unhappy if I give you any result other than 5 stars, you may want to try one of them instead.

Similarly, if you want a review but refuse to accept Feedback, you won't get much value out of the type of review I do. There's nothing wrong with rejecting Feedback; I, myself, have some story arcs or parts of stories which I probably won't change no matter what kind of feedback I get. But if you are completely happy with how your story is now, or if you think you may say something like "My arc has 200 plays and they all seem happy with it, why do YOU have an issue with it?" -- then you may not really get anything from me reviewing your arc.

But if you're really interested in Feedback, and open-minded about suggestions and constructive criticism, then I hope you'll get a lot out of the type of reviews that I write.

I am strongly tempted to restrict my reviews to "No arcs tagged 'Final', no arcs with 100+ plays" to help focus my effort on story arcs that will actually get something out of my feedback, but haven't definitely decided to do that yet.


What's up with ratings?

* I believe that arc ratings should range from 1 star to 5 stars. In my opinion, restricting myself to only awarding 4-5 stars, or only 5 stars or not rating, or artificially adding a star to all my ratings, is actually a disservice because it decreases the amount of information that my rating is providing.

* If I give an arc 3 stars, or even 2 stars or 1 star, this doesn't mean I hate the story arc, or I think it's bad, or whatever. It only means that I think the story arc could use work; the farther away from 5 stars it is, the more work I think it needs.

* Whether I like a story is not the only thing I rate on. It's arguably not even the biggest factor. I have given 5 stars to arcs I didn't particularly like (because they were, IMHO, well-made) and 3 stars to arcs I liked (because I thought they could be better).

* I make it a rule to not give a lower-than-5 rating unless I can justify it by identifying problems and/or offering suggestions to remedy it.

* That said, my rating is somewhat arbitrary and can be affected by outside factors like, the story had a happy ending, my dinner was especially tasty tonight, my favorite animal appears in the story, a Task Force team wants me to join them right now so I only have a minute to think about my rating, or any number of variables like that. I try to factor these things out to give a "fair" rating, but I'm not perfect.


TL;DR version

I'm just another player providing feedback, just longer and more detailed than most. Like all ratings you get on your arc, take my rating with a grain of salt. Like all feedback you get on your arc, read it over, use the parts you like, don't worry about the parts you can't use.

The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web
Arc ID: 334016
Keywords: Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-28
Warnings: AVs, EBs, high villains at lower than normal levels

The premise appears to be an Arachnos civil war and maybe an alien invasion. My characters in the 25-28 range are mostly squishies, but with "Challenging", "Ideal for teams" and a laundry list of danger warnings, I decided I'd better bring someone tougher. So I played a 39 elec/SR scrapper exemped down.

The contact is Agent Muse, a custom character who looks vaguely Longbowish. Her info does say she's a Longbow agent. In her description, I think "Unfortunately, while Longbow was unable" should be just "Unfortunately, Longbow was unable".

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact immediately starts up with some attitude which will either establish her character or be annoying or maybe both. She wants me to check out an Arachnos base and beat up the base leader. This seem pretty vague, but perhaps I'll learn more in the mission.

Inside the mission, I seem to be in a pretty normal Arachnos base, filled with Arachnos. I hear someone say:

[NPC] Wolf Spider Enforcer: You loosers are dealing with real Arachnos now!

"loosers" should be "losers". I see some Arachnos mobs fighting each other; some of them seem to be the "retro" style Arachnos.

I eventually find Commander Vines and beat him up, getting the "Who are they?" clue. It seems he doesn't know why other Arachnos are attacking his base.

This mission seemed awfully straightforward (all I had to do was beat the boss), could maybe use a little more details to make it more lively. The battles help some, but it could still use more content.

Debriefing: seems awfully short. Also, she never said it would be a "cake run" .... she seemed to think I'd need to be lucky to pull it off. Also, "there was people" should be "there were people". "dressed like somewhat like Arachnos there" doesn't quite scan either - suggest you reword. Perhaps "dressed differently" would make sense?

[ended up getting dragged off to team, later restarted this arc with a 29 db/ninj stalker]

Mission 1 (second try) was pretty easy on a stalker because I just snuck to Commander Vimes and assassinated him (and his group) to finish the mission. I'm struck by how confused Vimes is as to what's going on re: the Arachnos attacking his base. Supposedly Arachnos has a lot of infighting in the normal course of business, though, so I think maybe he would not be this surprised? Though of course he would not know who was really behind these retro Arachnos.

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact wants me to go contain the intra-Arachnos fighting occurring in Boomtown. Boomtown actually seems a strange place for Arachnos to be fighting (there are no Arachnos mobs there normally); perhaps Faultline would make more sense?

Also, how does she know the guy leading the "odd Arachnos" claims to be an Arbiter, as she says here? I kinda thought mission 1 was our first contact with the "odd Arachnos", so not sure where she got that info.

Second part of briefing sounds a little odd. I get that the contact doesn't like heroes, but "I'll start to reconsider what I called you earlier, you costumed clown" sounds rather dissonant. If the intent is that she is considering softening her original opinion of the player, she probably shouldn't call her a "costumed clown" at this point.

Inside the mission there are retro Arachnos fighting modern Arachnos, all with "Arachnos" as their villain group. This is a little confusing, but maybe is the intent. (If not, maybe they should be in two different factions.) Some yell "For Recluse" and some "For Arachnos". Could some of these be Weaver loyalists, I wonder?

Examining a "Wolf Spider Assault" with the retro looking uniform, it actually mentions he's loyal to Lord Recluse. I'm not sure this is intentional - I get the vibe that they're against Recluse, so maybe should have a different description.

I find "Arbiter Bucky" who has interesting dialog claiming "The Arachnos of this reality are weak!" Fighting him, he has more dialog implying he's some sort of dimension hopper. He also gives the "Not From Around Here" clue, which nicely reinforces this.

After some searching I found and defeated "Operative Satchel" which finished the mission. I think this map is a bit too large for the 2 objectives you need to find; also, just beating up the 2 bosses did not feel like it actually would "Stop the Fighting!" since there were quite a LOT of battles raging still.

Mission 3
Briefing: "these Arachnos...might be up to something big, according to an Intel report that I just received. The good news is that we have a chance to find out what it is, thanks to the same report, which claims that there's an office building that they may have taken over." This all sounds rather vague, and IMHO does not sound very authentic for an intel report.

I'd suggest a better way to express this would be to give some sort of hard fact (something that a spy or recon satellite has directly observed) that isn't conclusive in itself; then some guesswork as to what this observation means, from either the contact or from intel analysts. Example: "Satellite reconnaissance shows these odd Arachnos are concentrated in an office building in Boomtown. Longbow has intercepted a lot radio traffic from that building; it's all encrypted, but the increase in radio traffic over the last 24 hours suggests to us that they're up to something big. We need you to check it out."

I do like that Agent Muse is treating me with more respect, now that I've succeeded at a couple of her missions.

Inside the mission, the office building is covered in green slime or something. Is there a reason for this? I didn't see a mission entry popup; consider adding one that describes the environment here.

Found "An Old Magazine" clue on a desk which describes Nixon's third term as the Arachnos party president. This would make sense if I were actually in the "odd Arachnos" home dimension, but I am puzzled as to why they'd bring an old magazine across dimensions to an office in this dimension?

This office map seems a bit overly large for the amount of stuff to do on it. There are some patrols with a little dialog which is nice, but they all say the same lines (3 times that I saw); if you have space, making patrols or details with different lines would be nice.

Found a Widow named Destruction. Perhaps she should be "Night Widow Destruction" (like "Night Widow Nocturne"). In her description, "lead by the mysterious Calamity" should be "led by the mysterious Calamity". The last sentence in her description appears incomplete (ends in "has only").

I decide to stab Destruction in case she has the information I'm looking for; she has some fight dialog, but it seems a little generic to me (any boss could probably use the same lines); consider tailoring her dialog to be a little more unique and specific to her. Also, she says:

[NPC] Destruction: I.... Never loose...

"loose" should be "lose" here.

Defeating Destruction gives me "An Odd Statement" as a clue, where she allegedly says "So, are you a member of the Vindicators in this reality as well?" This line is short enough that you might consider having her actually say this line while you fight her. Then still flag it as unusual by awarding a clue.

Destruction seemed to be on the top floor of the office, and I still haven't figured out how to satisfy the "Find information" objective, so I started killing everything around her in case I had to clear her room or something.

I cleared the top two floors, still no go on the objective. I backtracked further and eventually found a wall safe with "Incomplete Battle Plans" that completed the mission. In this clue, "what look like" should be "what looks like". "they say that Arachnos will be attacking" is a little ambiguous; perhaps you mean "they say that the odd Arachnos will be attacking". And it seems strange that if their attack is in less than an hour, the battle plans would be "Incomplete"?

This mission map felt it was a bit too big for just having one glowy you need to click; I'd suggest either using a smaller map, or adding more stuff to do. The "old magazine" clue was kind of along the right lines, and more clues like that would be nice; but I do think it would be odd for an old magazine to be carried over from another dimension. Fighting "Destruction" was nice though.

Debriefing: seems awfully short. Needs a bit more here; whether recapping the mission, describing ongoing events (maybe the odd-Arachnos-attack has already begun) or something.

Mission 4
Briefing: based on the "battle plans" clue, I'm sent to stop the odd Arachnos who are attacking Portal Corp. These guys need a better name than "odd Arachnos"; try and come up with one if you can.

The contact warns that if the odd Arachnos capture Portal Corp, they can "get reinforcements from their home reality". But this has a problem with logic, as the odd Arachnos got here somehow that didn't involve Portal Corp, so why couldn't they get reinforcements the same way?

She also warns that "our" Arachnos is sending an operative, too. How does she know this?

After accepting, I notice there is a 45 minute timer. You may want to warn in the briefing that this is a timed mission. Doesn't really bother me, but a lot of people expect a warning.

Upon entering the mission, I have "Defeat Wrath" as an objective, but I don't think Wrath was mentioned in the briefing, so I'm not sure why I would know his name. Maybe "Defeat (odd) Arachnos leader".

Wrath is in the very first room I enter, and spawned as a -1 EB bane spider to me. He beats me up on my first try, but after hospitalling and coming back with a load of inspirations, I beat him on the rematch.

Defeating Wrath then triggers a new objective of "Defeat Misery"; I'm not quite sure why.

A bit deeper in the mission I find Nocturne (also a -1 EB) who appears to be an ally. This is pretty powerful for an ally, though maybe is OK as I am running into a lot of other EBs who are probably normally AVs. I rescue her, which triggers a new objective of "Defeat Raid Leader"; not quite sure why the Raid Leader is linked to her. Shouldn't I have wanted to defeat the Raid Leader from the start?


Kashira and Nocturne battle Arachnos (?) and 5th Column (??)


I had to search for awhile before finding Misery, who had spawned on a catwalk as a tarantula EB. Managed to beat it with Nocturne's help. Weirdly, a 5th Column patrol wandered by shortly after and Nocturne went ballistic on them. I'm not really sure what the 5th Column was doing here.

I searched and searched the whole lab, maybe 3 times, but could not find the Raid Leader before time ran out, so I ended up failing this mission.

Debriefing: The contact says that Arachnos didn't get any backup, but did manage to "get a signal back to their home reality"; I never saw any clue to that effect, or any Arachnos guys obviously trying to transmit a signal. Also the debriefing says "you also found out where their main base is", but this never happened during the mission; maybe you get this from the Raid Leader that I didn't defeat, but the text doesn't quite make sense the way it's shown to me. Also, "thier" should be "their".

One thing I think this mission was missing was some hint as to what the odd Arachnos were really doing in Portal Corp. The debriefing explains some of what they're up to, but I think it would be more effective if you show them doing things during the mission itself. The way it currently is, it seems like I beat up one boss to spawn the next boss, so it's just a series of fights. I'd suggest you have some Arachnos guys guarding a radio transmitter, or trying to operate portals to bring reinforcements through, or whatever. Maybe some Portal technicians being held hostage that the odd Arachnos try to strong-arm into operating portals to their home dimension. Basically, show the bad guys in the process of conducting their operation.

Mission 5
Briefing: the contact says we now know the odd Arachnos are from "Null Earth", but I actually never got this info (maybe the Raid Leader had it?).

The contact wants me to take out the commander of the odd Arachnos, but says that if I fail she's going to bring a huge number of Longbow and Heroes to take out the Arachnos base. The text here is well-written but the logic seems strange? There is no time pressure that I'm aware of (now that the assault on Portal Corp has been broken up, they don't have any other evil plans in action that we know of), so why wouldn't she just have me wait for the Longbow and Heroes to be rounded up, and we all storm the base together? The "higher ups have a plan" is mentioned, but even blaming the higher ups, I still don't see the logic in this.

The mission name, "Defeat the Invasion Commander", is identical to the mission objective, "Defeat the Invasion Commander". I suggest you rephrase one of them, so they aren't so obviously repetitive.

The Arachnos base appears to actually be the 5th Column headquarters and is full of 5th Column. I don't understand this?

I eventually locate Vandal, who is a +0 EB to me. His description has his alternate universe life story, describing his rise to power in odd Arachnos; "lieutenants" should be "lieutenant" there. His dialog explains that he's the evil mastermind behind "odd" Arachnos.

Defeating Vandal finishes the mission and the arc. I think I would've liked a little more to do in this mission; all I had to do was beat the boss. Perhaps there would be some clues or objects hinting at what Vandal's plans for conquering the world were.

Final debriefing does a good job of wrapping up the story and the souvenir is a good recap.

Overall
The idea of an alternate version of Arachnos trying to invade our world is neat; the contact is cool and I like how you eventually win her over after doing a couple missions. Most of the briefings have some good info in them (though some of the debriefings are too short, IMHO); the final debriefing and the souvenir do a good job of wrapping things up, though. I like that there are some patrols and battles in each mission with a little dialog to add some color.

I do think each mission could use a little more detail, and/or could use a smaller map. In several of the missions, it felt like I was on a very large map with only one or two things to do on it; either making the map smaller or adding more things to do would help keep the pacing more lively.

It's never really explained (as far as I could tell) how the "odd Arachnos" actually arrived on our Earth. I would think that finding this out would be a top priority for Agent Muse, because she's worried about them getting reinforcements from their home dimension (this was her motivation for stopping the Portal raid). Some further explanation of the goals of Null Earth's Vandal and his expeditionary force would be helpful, too; just how were they hoping to conquer the world? The way it's currently presented, Null Earth Arachnos just sorta shows up from nowhere, and you have to beat them up; I really think adding some more background info to them (by adding more clues and/or dialog hinting at their history) would help flesh them out.

Also it seems like Null Earth Arachnos is actually an arm of Null Earth's 5th Column. I'm not sure how this jibes with Nixon being re-elected a third time (Nixon had issues, but was NOT a Nazi AFAIK). And the mobs that I saw in game were distinctly EITHER Arachnos models OR 5th Column models; I think maybe it would be helpful if you had a few custom models that were a hybrid between Arachnos/5th Column models, to bridge the gap. Or perhaps you could repaint the Arachnos and 5th Column models to all be the same color, or something like that. (Note: some of the "odd Arachnos" still have descriptions that mention Lord Recluse in them, which I don't believe is intentional.) As it is, they appear to be two separate groups, when I think your intention is that they're sort of amalgamated together. You may want to put them in the same villain group, for that matter. Furthermore, the 5th Column seem to suddenly appear in mission 4 without much warning or explanation; I saw them start spawning after beating one of the bosses, but didn't understand why they were there until much later. I guess they are meant to be a surprise, but maybe you should also get a clue to that effect when they spawn, like "Whoa, why are there 5th Column all over the place now?"

I'd also recommend you come up with a name for the Null Earth Arachnos guys, something more catchy than "odd Arachnos"; it's hard to call them "odd Arachnos" for the whole story (maybe "Araknos" or something similar?). You may also want to rename Vandal or give him an Arachnos style name, like "Arbiter Vandal" or maybe "Arbiter Doul", to reinforce that it's not OUR Vandal, it's a different Vandal.

For that matter, for the other named bosses (Destruction, Misery, etc.) you might consider reusing the names of other 5th Column or Council bosses (only with Arachnos ranks; e.g. Operative Ubelmann), to more strongly hint at the 5th Column/Arachnos connection.

Anyway, I think it is a decent start but could use some editing and a little more detail. I gave it 3 stars, I hope you think that's fair.

---

My queue is currently:

@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317
@Mr Squid - The Descender #339222
Zaphir - The Coldest of Wars #299972

I would appreciate feedback on Talos Vice (arc ID 338380). It's relatively new and with little feedback so far, so I'm pretty open to suggestions. And as an homage to a phenomenon of the MTV generation, a review from someone with a short attention span seems ... fitting.

TO range arc

#1. Nuclear in 90: The Fusionette Task Force (just saying that makes me want an Up-and-Away burger. Darn you Pavlov!)
#2. Mercytown, the one with the fish (loved Krylov and his obsession with super soldiers!)

DO range arc

#1. The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space! ("Destroy..." "Destroy... (You stole my line, dude!)" .... hilarious!!)
#2. Ctrl + Alt + Reset (I first played this very early on under the "Time Loop" name, played it again recently and it seems much more polished)

SO range arc

abstain (I know the rules allow and even encourage you to vote for your own arc, but my personal sensibilities do not allow for this; I understand this puts me at a disadvantage. I'm OK with it.)

Epic level arc

abstain

Short arc

abstain

Multi-Part arc

#1. The Lost Choir (insanely epic with world-shattering scope)
#2. The Consequences of War (a terrific war drama)

Best use of Mechanics

#1. The Next War on Drugs (forensics mission is very technically impressive)
#2. Macguffin Delivery Service (really like the pawn shop breakin and the fence meet-up)



(Haven't played enough of the Serious/Comedy nominees to have a reasonable opinion yet.)

Big congrats to Aisynia, Twoflower, Silvers1, Redbone and Witch_Engine! Very nice job!

A Near-wipeout against Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space

In one of my arcs, I have a ham sandwich in a refrigerator, and the ham sandwich pays the ultimate price in order to give one of the male characters stronger motivation to defeat the bad guys....

10/23/2009

On Monday night I played Kashira (29 db/ninj stalker) through Backwards Day, an arc where you interact with Diviner Maros, who has somehow gotten his timestream flipped so that he experiences things in the opposite order from the player, and you end up helping him. This arc started really confusing, but by the end, everything neatly fell into place like a carefully crafted puzzle box. I think you will only like this arc if you are into time travel stories, but if you do like those, it's quite good at it. I gave it 5 stars.

After that I played April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) on a Recluse SF with a team of:

4 corruptors (dark/kin, 2 fire/rad, ice/cold)
2 brutes (*/inv, */dark)
1 MM (thug/TA) (me)
1 bane

This went pretty well, though I died a couple more times than I'd like to, and not having stealth was kind of a pain at times. Finished in 36min 21sec and got a Lysosome SHO.


On Tuesday night, the Halloween event started, and I played Thunder Girl (39 elec/SR scrapper) on a Halloween banner raid. It seems like the way this works is that four banners are spread across a city zone, and Halloween monsters start spawning at each one. You can't make any progress at all, until someone is fighting the monsters at every banner. Once there are people fighting at every banner, there's a progress bar that slowly moves to the right, and when it finishes, the banners "become vulnerable". Usually the whole zone then converges on one banner at a time, trying to destroy it. If all four banners are destroyed, then a giant monster is spawned, that you have to find. You get a badge for each banner you drop, and another badge for the giant monster (though your team has to do at least 10% damage I think); then another badge for collecting the whole set. There's a timer that ends the Halloween event in that particular zone, so there's time pressure to actually complete the various tasks.

After the banner raid, Thunder Girl went on to RWZ to join a mother ship raid, then played through a story arc called The Most Important Thing, which is about a teen heroine and a mad scientist and the extreme lengths they each would go to in order to protect their respective families. This story had a great ending, but I felt it had problems with characterization and time travel logic, and some instances where it exceeded my suspension of disbelief, so I ended up giving it 3 stars. I wrote a review for it on the MA forum; I didn't think I was that negative about it, but the author took it pretty hard and was talking about deleting the arc, which I tried to discourage her from doing (I was mortified that I had made someone feel that bad about their story). Ultimately, however, the most persuasive argument for not deleting it was that it got nominated for the Mission Architect Awards at Hero-Con. Life is ironic like that, sometimes.


On Wednesday night, Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), my main character, finally accumulated enough time at the Vaults to get the Banker day job badge, and the Security Chief accolade. I then participated in two Halloween banner raids where I picked up all 5 new badges: Hell Hath No Fury, Dark Fiend, Terror, Monster Masher, Monstrous, Hell and Back. This puts my badge count at 609.

I also started playing Arrow Girl (36 archery/dev blaster) on a story arc called Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today; I'm only partway through, but so far it seems to be a fun retro sci-fi adventure.


Thursday night, I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a couple red-side Halloween banner raids; with low villain population, we had trouble making much headway against the various banners. The one time we dropped the four banners, the final giant monster never spawned, we weren't quite sure why; someone petitioned and a GM showed up to poke around for a bit, but not sure anything came of it. I did participate in an Eochai kill that got me the Hallow Spirit badge and 2 merits, though.

After that I spent endless time fiddling with my newest story arc, Talos Vice. I can't decide if I want the level range to be 15-20, 20-20, 5-20, or what. The main mobs in it are Trolls and Family, and I started with it published at level 15-20, but then I thought, hey, Trolls and Family go down to level 5, so no need to be so exclusive. So I lowered the level range to 10-20, and tuned down the final big bad guy from "hard" thugs to "standard" thugs. But then I got to thinking, hey, Talos Island is a level 20+ zone ... so I should really make it a level 20+ arc. But Trolls max out at 20, so that caused me to make the arc level 20-20. Now I'm thinking, having only one level for the arc seems awfully exclusive ... so I may open it back up to 10-20 or 12-20 or something after all.

Finally, my story arc Teen Phalanx Forever! got nominated for Best Hero Arc in the Architect Awards for Hero-Con. I'm quite psyched about this. Some nice people even started a thread about this, which was awfully nice! Thanks! A lot of good arcs were nominated, so the competition for the award is quite tough, but I'm still pretty hopeful.

Thanks much for reviewing Papers and Paychecks! Glad you all liked it.

The reason the Manticore TF is having difficulty defeating Hopkins is, of course, because it's a pickup task force.

Glad you caught the "like a well-oiled machine" remark.

I thought it was interesting that all 3 of you chose the "mean" ending; sounds like the timer really spurred you all into action though!

Anyway, thanks again! You guys are too nice, I'm totally going to spam the AEntertainment mailbox with more story arcs.

Arrow Girl (my archery/dev blaster) restarted the arc and got through mission 1. Haven't been able to do the whole thing in one sitting; last night was especially bad for distractions because I went out IRL for fajitas and margaritas, then did a lot of tweaking on my new story arc (struggling with level range choice).

I also spent some time trying to pose Arrow Girl near Captain Skylark in a "swooning" pose to get a screenshot in the style of an old Flash Gordon serial, but none of the animations I could find really seemed to work for this. Alas.

After restarting the arc, I tried shortcutting through mission 1 by purposely getting my allies killed, hoping to exploit the "timed mission fails if ally dies" bug, but it didn't work (mission didn't auto-fail). Possibly because the allies aren't required. Unheroic, I know, but I was trying to fast forward back to where I was before.

I love the retro science fiction "feel" so far. Took me awhile to realize the Tomorrownauts were recolored Longbow - they look great. Reminds me of Bubbawheat's comment about how versatile Longbow were, with the recoloring capability.

Only nitpick I have so far is that "Acadamy" should be "Academy" in mission 1's briefing.

Wow, thanks so much! You guys are awesome, thanks for even noticing.

There's a lot of good arcs on their list, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But I'm psyched to be nominated!

I've played just over half of the nominees for the Architect Awards. Based on the 8 arcs I've played, I've drawn the following conclusions for how to get nominated:

#1. Include a teen or pre-teen girl as a major character. (4 of 8)

#2. The big bad must shout "NO! This cannot be! I am..INVINCIBLE!" (or similar) before being defeated. (4 of 8)

#3. The story should involve time travel. (3 of 8)

#4. The player should fight undead. (3 of 8)

#5. A mystical artifact must be used as a plot device. (3 of 8)

#6. A mad scientist is used as an adversary. (3 of 8)

#7. An adversary must murder a relative of a major character for shock value. (3 of 8)


Conclusion:

* The next arc I write should be about a teenage girl with a magic sword who goes back in time to fight the evil mad scientist vampires who killed her cousin.



PS. In case it's not obvious: Just kidding. Having fun with statistics.

Doh, my 30s blaster is between missions 2 and 3 right now ... am I better off restarting?

Why not, I'll buy a lottery ticket.


Talos Vice
Arc ID: 338380
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-20
Description: An 80s instrumental blares as the camera pans over scenes of Talos Island: windsurfers on the water, the Talos statue, shoppers in Wentworth's, bikini babes, sports cars racing down the Argo Highway, a speedboat bouncing on the waves. A title card appears over the waters racing below: TALOS VICE



I won't claim this is my "best" arc; but it's the one that needs feedback the most.