PoliceWoman

The Most Important Thing
Arc ID: 266877
Keywords: Challenging, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 46-54 (but author's note says it should be 30+)

The description says the story is "a tale of the bonds of family" with tragic/mature themes. I played a 39 elec/SR scrapper with a moderate amount of IO sets, on difficulty +1 x1 no AV. The contact is a custom model, a young girl with blue hair.

Mission 1
Briefing: Amy, the contact, is a young mutant who someone named Albright has been blackmailing (via threats to her family) into using her powers to steal stuff for him. She's had enough and wants me to bust Albright; she will have to help defend him for the safety of her family.

She gives me "A family portrait" as a starting clue. In this clue, "There is dark haired woman" should be "There is a dark haired woman".

Inside the mission, I almost immediately run into Amy, who has some nice dialog where she's "pretending" to fight me. Beating her gives me the "Amy Defeated" clue, which is nicely written, and triggers a new objective of "Seek clues to the Callahans' location".


Amy: Make it look good!
Me: Umm... okay... this may sting a little...


There's a bunch of custom stormtroopers in a faction called "Dr. Albright's Mercenaries" populating the map; there are a lot of standard PvE mercenary or soldier groups already, do you think it's necessary to have a custom group of mercenaries? If so, decide what makes them different than Malta, Sky Raiders, Council, KoA etc and try to display it.

I soon find a "Bio-Containment Unit" that gives me "The Callahans" clue, which reveals the fate of the Callahans - a literal example of Women in Refrigerators. "refridgerator" should be "refrigerator" here. This then changes my objective to "Bring Dr. Albright to justice".

Found a "Portable Lab" glowy and a "Sealed Container" glowy - neither of which did anything a all when clicked (spam box does say "You search..but find nothing"). I think these glowies should be made a little more interesting (perhaps giving another clue, albeit a nonessential one).

Found and fought Dr. Albright, who had fairly psychopathic dialog. I'm not sure his reasoning for vivisecting Amy's family quite makes sense; wouldn't it make more sense to just vivisect one of the hostages, then keep one in reserve, to ensure Amy falls in line? Killing both hostages leaves Amy with nothing left to lose.

I do get the "Dr. Albright Defeated" clue at the end of the mission, though, which appears to reveal that Amy is a special project of his, and he's been trying to make Amy's life horrible in order to ... what? Shape her into some sort of villain? Not sure yet. This does seem to be consistent with his killing Amy's whole family though.

Debriefing: It's sad, but could be written to be a little more moving. As it is currently, seems a little short. "Bearing a black eye that you gave her" doesn't quite scan ... I'd suggest something like, "You wince as you notice the black eye that you gave her, and feel even more uncomfortable as you relate the story of what you found." Then go on with her crying and needing to be held. I think you should consider giving Amy some lines here, too; either something deeply regretful ("I only wanted to protect them!") or perhaps accusatory ("You were supposed to save them, $name!").

Mission 2
Briefing: Amy wants me to search Albright's lab again for clues. This seems like a strange response to having your whole family killed; wouldn't it make more sense for her to want to find Albright and make him pay?

Second part of briefing: OK, this explains a little more of what Amy is thinking. I guess checking out the lab is supposed to give clues as to what Albright is up to. She gives me a PDA type device that she'll send me instant messages on; this rings a little false to me, if she's really a hero who is made stronger by tragedy (as the arc has presented her so far), wouldn't she take up this search herself? Or perhaps with my help. Having me do it with her texting me about it doesn't feel quite right.

Inside the mission: "Disable the Self Destruct" is my first objective. I wish you could add a timer to give this objective some more dramatic urgency, but there's not a way to turn off the timer when it's found, so probably that wouldn't work. When was this self destruct sequence activated anyway? I assume when Albright was defeated in mission 1? If so, though, that would be a very slow acting self destruct sequence, if it still hasn't gone off by mission 2. And mission 2 is a whole day later than mission 1 (according to mission 2's briefing). So I'm not sure this self destruct objective makes sense as currently presented.

Finding the self destruct and disabling it, I get "Transmission 1", a text message from the contact asking me to find a device in a wall safe. Finding the safe, I get "Transmission 2" which says I didn't find the device.

Transmission 2 also says that Amy is able to stop data from being deleted (deleted from what? maybe mention a mainframe computer earlier as foreshadowing) which is a little surprising, is Amy a computer hacker in addition to being an 18 year old superhero? Maybe needs some foreshadowing if so.

I now have an objective of "Stop Operative Watkins"; not sure why I know the name Watkins; Amy asked me to stop someone, but didn't give a name. I searched the later part of the mission for Watkins without success, and ended up backtracking to find her at the start of the mission. Defeating Watkins gives me "Transmission 3" which doesn't seem to have much meaning, but my objective has suddenly changed to "Seek Answers". I'm not quite sure why this is triggered by defeating Watkins; I guess the idea is that Watkins would've deleted them otherwise?

Going back deeper into the mission I found "Information Terminal" which satisfied "Seek Answers", giving me "Transmission 4" and triggering the objective "3 pieces of data to retrieve.." (note: has an extra period at the end of it).

The first encrypted terminal gives me "Transmission 5", which says the lead mercenary should've appeared - but I think you meant to say that after the last encrypted terminal is clicked. This is a fairly long standing bug/misfeature with multiples of clickies and clues; two ways you could work around this is to have only one Encrypted Terminal (not sure you get a lot more value out of having 3) or have one specific terminal that triggers both clue and boss spawn, and the other two are generic terminals that count towards the total of 3 pieces of data, but don't trigger anything.

Also, for all the encrypted terminals, my spam message box reports to me "You begin retieving the encrypted data" ... "retieving" should be "retrieving". There are also extra periods after both the "You begin retieving" and "You have retrieved" messages; maybe those are intentional ellipses though.

The third encrypted terminal does indeed spawn a boss. I beat up Operative Westen, who talks big, but only spawned as a lieutenant for me, so was pretty easy. Both Westen and Watkins had the generic mercenary description; if you have space, you might consider writing some individual background info for the named bosses.

Defeating Westen completed the mission and gave me the "Decrypted Info and a Time Device" clue. This turns out to be Amy's origin story clue relates a bit more about Amy's origin story -- apparently as Albright's evil little science project.

I thought this mission went a bit overboard on the triggered glowies; each one is a nice opportunity for a new clue, but some of the "Transmission" clues were really just "Oh, you didn't find it there? Look over here instead!" which felt a little like it was making me jump through hoops to get to the actual material. You might consider reducing the number of links in your triggered objective chain a little bit, to just the ones that are essential for the plot.

Debriefing: Amy reveals a bit more of her tragic back story. I actually find this somewhat less moving than was probably intended; I think it might be more effective for the player herself to find out what happened to Amy's dad, rather than have Amy tearfully reveal it at this moment; since her dad isn't really mentioned in the dossier at all, to have Amy bring it up here is a little odd. Also, there is a pretty big difference in tone between Amy's "Transmission" clues and the debriefing; feels a bit inconsistent.

Mission 3
Briefing: Amy finds "hidden files" in the dossier that reveal more than before; but the way mission 2 currently reads, we've decrypted the dossier and read through it in "gruesome detail", so this doesn't quite fit. Maybe adjust the clues or debriefing in mission 2 to hint that there's still more to be learned from the files, to foreshadow this revelation in mission 3.

Apparently the dossier reveals that there's a hidden device inside Amy that is stealing her powers and feeding a time machine in Albright's possession. And Albright going back in time is Bad. But why can't Amy (who has time travel powers) go back in time to stop him? Because this device is stealing her powers and keeping her weak. Considering Amy and I know about this device implanted in her, why can't we go to the hospital and have it surgically removed?

Second part of briefing: it turns out she has just enough power left to send me back in time to intercept Albright. And bring me back. But that's all, she can't go herself. This feels rather contrived to me.

Mission entry popup: apparently Amy can still send me text messages, even when I'm 11 years in the past (via her weakened time travel powers)? I don't find this believable.

The mission title is "Capture Dr. Albright" and one of the two goals is also "Capture Dr. Albright". Consider changing the mission title to be different, to avoid repetition; also to be inclusive of the "Seek Clues" objective.

I find myself on the university map and pretty quickly locate and defeat Dr Albright. He has pretty good dialog, but he again "phases and teleports away" upon defeat. The "Capture Dr. Albright" mission title no longer seems valid (since he's gone), but I now have "2 clues to seek".

I also get a new "Transmission 1" from Amy, which reveals my CLUE PDA managed to hack Dr. Albright's tech while I was fighting him. I found this a little far-fetched; perhaps have the PDA or Amy somehow trace his teleport instead? Or you could have the player plant a tracking device on Dr. Albright with the idea of tracking him through time and space.

Found a metal crate and clicked it, which spawned a new "Dr. Albright?" and a Test Subject, who attacked me. Test Subject's description, "excrutiating" should be "excruciating". Are these actually re-purposed Crazed minions? Nice choice if so, they look right for this purpose.


Me: Uhh...I'm just looking for the bathroom?
Crazy test subject: Die!


I also got "Transmission 2" from Amy during this time, in which she spends the whole time narrating what I just found in the box. I think you would be better off writing a clue that simply said what I found in the box; Amy describing it (from a remote location 11 years in the future) feels less natural.

I also found a cardboard box, which, strangely enough, has Dr. Albright's old family photos in it. I'm a little puzzled as to why this would be found in the university basement? It would make more sense if it were in his lab or his house or something.

I beat up Dr. Albright? who seemed to be a younger version of the other Dr. Albright, which was a nice touch. This gave me the "a young Albright" clue, which includes more exposition from Amy that is suddenly cut off as someone captures Amy during the transmission. This is kind of weird because Amy's actually in the future, so I'm not quite sure how this works out in terms of timeline. Also, maybe it would make more sense to have young Albright carrying a wallet photo of his family, rather than finding it in a box in the university basement.

Finally I found "An old crate" that contained "A strange device" as a clue, one of three such devices, apparently.

Debriefing: despite being mugged while transmitting to me during mission 3, Amy is still strong enough to time travel me back to her location, where she also was able to beat back her attacker (a misguided hero??). Considering the briefing depicted Amy as greatly weakened, barely able to function, the idea that she fought off another hero who came to arrest her is not believable.

Mission 4
Briefing: "a couple day" should be "a couple days".

Amy says "I'm so tempted to just go back in time and save my mom and sis, but I'm afraid of like, a paradox or something." I don't think it's consistent for her to say this, considering she just sent me back in time to poke around, and while there, I beat up two different versions of Dr. Albright and took at least 3 items from the past.

In the first part of the briefing, Amy is all, "We've got to stop this time traveling butcher!" but in the second part (after accepting the mission), she says something like "But wait, we have to understand why he's doing this!" I'm afraid this also seems inconsistent to me.

Again Amy is "too weak" to do anything but send me back in time. (Wait, what happened to her reservations about creating a paradox?) Meanwhile she is going to look for public information about Dr. Albright. Considering Amy has been working for Dr. Albright for some time now, and we also hacked all his computer systems and stole all his data, I am not sure why we think public info on Albright would be helpful.

Also, considering Amy just got attacked by another hero and has told me that every hero in the city thinks she's a murderer and is out to get her, shouldn't we be taking some sort of precautions about that? Like moving Amy someplace safer, or explaining to the heroes that Amy didn't do it?

Anyway, into the mission. Back in time again, though not quite as far back; Amy can still contact my PDA through time (I still find this unbelievable, I'm afraid).

Found and rescued Emily Sano, which was cool. Then I ran into "A younger Dr. Albright?" ... though, "younger" is a little awkward in this context; he's younger than the present day Dr. Albright, clearly, but I think he's older than "Dr. Albright?" from the last mission, who was described as "A young Dr. Albright". Defeating him gives me the "A younger Dr. Albright" clue; in this clue, "Dr. Albright form the present" should be "Dr. Albright from the present". It also says (present day) Dr. Albright has moved on and I should look for clues to his destination; but considering the CLUE device already hacked Dr. Albright's time machine, shouldn't I already know where his destination is?

A "Looted Workstation" glowy gives me the "Transmission: Venom X-27" clue. In this clue, "C.LU.E." should be "C.L.U.E." and "manufature" s hould be "manufacture". Also "Dr. Albright must have come here retrieve it" should be "Dr. Albright must have come here to retrieve it". Why does the green device fitting into the workstation mean that Dr. Albright came to retrieve it? Not sure I follow the reasoning. This transmission also says "Let's hope he's still here!" but due to the order I encountered the objectives, I already know (present day) Albright has moved on.

Found and fought an Adv. Test Subject who gave me "A test subject" as a clue, bemoaning the fate of her baby. This clue also says that she dies, which I think some players won't like, since it implies that the player killed her. The reference to "prior wounds" softens this a little.

Searching "A cluttered desk" gave me the "Transmission: Misplaced data pad" clue; again, I think it would be more effective to simply give a clue saying the player found a data pad with Albright's next destination, rather than have Amy narrate (from the future) what you found.

A variety of different glowies gave me the five pieces of "Albright's Log". I think it's a bit weird that the five pieces of the same document would be split between a computer, two laptops, a floppy disk and a hard drive, but I guess you need to have it split up somehow for the sake of the story.

In "Albright's Log: Entry 1", "My demands...has been met with threats on my family" should be "My demands...have been met with threats against my family".

In "Entry 2", "Genine" is a rather odd name, perhaps you mean "Jeanine"?

Next I found "A large filing cabinet" which gave me "Albright's Log: Entry 5". "with enough tests" should be "With enough testing".

"Albright's Log: Entry 4" actually does make me feel bad for Albright.

After finding all the log entries, I still had one hostage to find; searching the hospital again, I finally found the last hostage, Veronica Callahan. Huh. She gave me the "Veronica Callahan" clue, which is a pretty neat clue. One thing, though, "she was so pretty back then" is a weird thing for Amy to say -- as of 1990, Amy has not yet been born, so she really shouldn't know what Veronica Callahan looked like at this point in time. I guess she might know from photographs, it would still be a weird thing to say.

Considering I'm with Veronica Callahan in 1990 there seems like there should be something I could do or say that would prevent her grisly demise in the "present" day. Like "Don't let your daughter work for mad scientists."

Debriefing: This debriefing is pretty good, with Amy agonizing over Albright's life choices.

Mission 5
Briefing: "recepticle" should be "receptacle". The revelation Amy gives you here, that all the bad stuff that has happened so far is due to a faulty container, is a cool twist, but also kinda comes out of nowhere. You should consider adding some foreshadowing that hints that the poison cannister was bad. For example in "Albright's Log: Entry 3" you could have Albright write that the cannister ruptured unexpectedly, rather than just say he lost control. Even better would be if you could get the player to discover the info that the cannister was faulty (in one of the earlier missions), and have the player tell Amy (then Amy could go into hysterics about the irony of it all).

The premise of this mission (to save Albright's family, and consequently save Amy's family) is pretty cool, though. I very much like the mission title, "Break the Causality Loop".

Inside the mission: why is this Arachnos base on fire? Also, there's a mix of Dr. Albright's Mercenaries and Arachnos. Based on the story so far, shouldn't these two factions be enemies? They seem to cooperate to attack me, though.

I'm a little surprised that there isn't an objective somewhere in here to weld a faulty cannister so it won't break at the wrong time.

I pretty quickly run into young Dr. Albright and rescue him, then old Dr. Albright and defeat him, then rescued Genine from some Arachnos.


Me: End of the line, Albright! There's no way I'm letting you kill your wife in order to avenge her!


I had defeated Operative Faulks somewhere along the way, but didn't get credit for defeating the Base Commander until I backtracked and defeated a stray Tarantula; you might want to make Faulks "only boss required for objective". Though I'm not totally clear on why defeating Faulks is necessary, shouldn't just rescuing the Albrights be enough to prevent Dr Albright from going evil?

Mission exit popup: I like that Amy can't be found after returning, implying a change in the timeline.

The final souvenir is actually really well written, and I thought it was pretty touching. I think some of the things that are revealed here in the souvenir should have at least a little foreshadowing. There should be SOME hint of Amy's "true origin" (though not the complete story) earlier in the investigation; just enough so that the player, when reading the souvenir, can go, "Ahhh, that fits with the clue I got back in mission 2". I also think this souvenir has too many ellipses in it (nitpicky, admittedly).


Overall
I like the strong "family" theme where the major characters would do anything to safeguard their families. I really liked the final souvenir, and I thought the "Break the Causality Loop" mission was cleverly conceived to tie up the loose threads of the arc. I enjoyed Albright's characterization and his obsession with Darwinian survival, and liked his journal entries. I liked rescuing the various hostages from Albright's hospital in mission 4.

Things I didn't like: the use of time travel was extremely inconsistent. Amy alternately sends you back in time and bemoans the possibility of temporal paradoxes if she changes anything. Then sends you right back to change something else. I'm also not sure any model of time travel could actually produce the "Causality Loop" that we are sent in to break. It seems like the "first" iteration of the loop, young Albright's family should live (or at least die by a different method) and consequently never produce the vengeful Albright who comes back in time to accidentally kill his own family. So I'm not quite sure how the timeline can get to the state where young Albright sees his family killed by old Albright. This could perhaps be overlooked for sake of the story, though, as the ultimate solution is pretty neat.

I felt that Amy was inconsistently characterized; there's the weepy Amy you see in the briefings/debriefings, the chipper Amy you hear in the "transmission" clues, and the determined but tragic Amy that you read about in the final souvenir. It felt to me like Amy was portrayed differently in each of those cases. Personally, I'd like to see more of the determined but tragic Amy from the final souvenir. I felt the way she behaved there was much more moving than the Amy described as crying most of the time -- who I know I'm supposed to feel sympathy for, but the writing in the briefings describing this just didn't grab me as strongly.

It felt to me like a few too many plot elements suddenly materialized out of nowhere, or Amy suddenly discovers and reveals them (self destruct device in mission 2, "hidden files" in mission 3's briefing, the discovery of the flawed container in mission 5); I think it would improve the story if you could have some foreshadowing of these plot elements so they aren't a complete surprise, or have the player herself discover these clues, rather than have Amy just tell you.

The way Amy is just weak enough that she can't do anything, but just strong enough to send you back in time, and pull you back, and communicate across time, and fight off other superheroes, felt rather contrived. I know you want her to be like this to make the missions fit, but that seems like a very precise level of weakness. The idea of a device inside her siphoning off her powers (and feeding Albright's time travel device) was hard to believe too; couldn't we surgically remove such a device? Also, if I erased Amy from existence during mission 5, won't stealing Albright's time travel device not work, since his time travel device depends on Amy's powers? I wonder if you could adjust the story to not depend on a device siphoning Amy's powers away.

I didn't like the C.L.U.E. device in general; it was way too deus ex machina, being able to both communicate across time and hack all computers I ever run into. I'm afraid I felt that having Amy talking you through all the clues didn't work well for me; I think I would've preferred the clue to just tell me what I found, instead of having Amy tell me what I just found.

I'm sorry to list so many issues that I had with the story. I did really like the end of the story, and am sentimental enough that I was tempted to raise my rating just based on the writing in the souvenir. But with the other things I had problems with, I felt like I could only give this 3 stars. Hope you think that's fair!

---

My queue is currently:

@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Backwards Day
Arc ID: 329000
Keywords: Complex Mechanics, Canon Related, Magic
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 25-30
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise appears to be to help Diviner Maros escape some kind of mystical/temporal prison. I played a 29 db/ninj stalker. The contact is Diviner Maros.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted, and in an interesting spin, it starts with "Part Five". I imagine it must count down. The contact monologues about a lot of things; something failing, wishing he hadn't sent me to steal a pendant. He says I can keep the pendant, and then he says goodbye, like he'll never see me again.

I'm guessing that due to the vagaries of time travel, he's talking about stuff that I haven't done yet, but are in his subjective past. For some reason I decide I'll go after the pendant that he's ranting about.

There is a big author's note in green text recommending that I always look at the contacts "busy" message to get extra info. This seems like an awkward mechanic, but I give it a try, and it gives me yet more briefing info. This extra briefing gives some explanation for why I want this pendant.

Inside the mission: it's a cave full of Slag Golems. As a stalker, I just sneak by them, looking for the "6 piles to search" in my objectives.

While sneaking around I see some Freakshow welding a tech device of some sort. Not quite sure what they're up to; they mention something about another relay.

Slipping by the Freaks, I find my second rubble pile and search it; it apparently is the right one, as it awards me a clue and completes the mission. Initially I thought I got "A bronze pendant" clue and "A bronze hourglass pendant" at the same time (clicking the glowy) but now I suspect I got the first one when I started the mission and the second one at the end.

I quit the mission and restarted the arc to try and definitely confirm this.


Mission 1 (second attempt)
Yep, he does give me "A bronze pendant" as soon as I accept the mission. This makes actually doing the mission make less sense; if I already have the pendant in my possession, why would I go on a mission to "Recover the pendant"? I realize that time travel is involved, but I think the reasoning behind this needs to be made clearer.

Debriefing: This appears to be a briefing for a different mission, with the contact mentioning I've lost a "Loupe" that I've not found yet, and he asks me to Enter the Vaults of Time and retrieve the core, and fight the Timekeeper. My guess is that this is the briefing for mission 5, and he'll give me the briefings and debriefings in reverse order throughout the arc? Although this is an interesting idea, it is also quite confusing.

Mission 2
Briefing: it's now "Part Four" and is written like the debriefing for a mission. A mission where I apparently failed to get the Loupe, and saw holes in reality that the contact explains as being shards of "shattered time". He wishes we hadn't done that ritual in the scrying cave.

So naturally my character decides it would be a good idea to go to the scrying cave. This doesn't quite make sense to me since Maros actually regrets having done the ritual there; why does my character think it would be smart to do this?

In the accept message, "Come to Maros' scrying cave" should probably be "Go to Maros' scrying cave".

Second part of briefing has more puzzling commentary about things I haven't done yet. Someone named "Foresight" is mentioned, a time traveler who apparently I'm to take the Loupe from.

In the "mission busy" message, Maros finally explains who Foresight is, one of his associates who apparently stole this Loupe. I have the feeling none of this is relevant for mission 2, and it's all the briefing or maybe the debriefing for mission 4.

Mission entry popup is cute explaining why we're not in Oranbega.

Inside the mission, I overhear:

[NPC] Nerva Spectral Daemon: What?! For the sake of our bribes, they must be stopped!

Someone is bribing CoT ghosts to stop me? That's...weird.

While in the cave I click some glowies labeled "Scattered Journals", which give me the "M2) Maros' journals" clue, which isn't very informative, but is fun.

Strangely there are some Family...err, "Marcones", in here, I guess trying to steal stuff. Also some Freakshow trying to steal stuff.

Deep in the mission I find Diviner Maros himself, who seems to be an enemy, along with some CoT and a glowy altar. Sneaking to the altar, I find it's labeled "Maros' Well" and clicking it gives me the "M2) Visions in the well" clue, which is kind of interesting but not sure if I learned anything from it.

Despite having looked at the well and the books, I'm still somewhat in the dark as to how to "perform the ritual". For lack of a better idea, I go over to Diviner Maros and stab him. He has some dialog which seems to actually encourage me to kill him, and it does turn out that killing him completes the ritual; clearing the room completes the mission.

I get the "M2) Maros' final words" where it says "Maros was apparently expecting you to kill him." With his dying words, he tells me to find him (another Maros? I guess the contact?) and tell him to search his sleeve for something. Then he dies in a creative way.

Good mission exit popup which kind of summarizes the confusion of this backwards story so far.

Debriefing: I guess this is really the briefing for mission 4? He thanks me for retrieving him from someplace and tasks me to steal the Loupe from the Legacy Chain. Though, in the earlier briefing he said that Forethought was stealing the Loupe. Not quite sure how that adds up.

Mission 3
Briefing: I have high hopes for this one because even in the backwards format, this briefing should be applicable to mission 3! Though, maybe it's the debriefing for mission 3.

I think in this briefing he's thanking me for rescuing a piece of him from the Vaults of Time (and from this, the script has "me" surmise that I need to rescue him from the Vaults of Time), and he's giving me foreshadowing for Forethought stealing the Loupe in the previous mission. Or maybe the previous briefing. I'm not quite sure, it's quite confusing. But anyway, I'm supposed to rescue him.

Second part of briefing has Maros acting a bit more uncertain and inexperienced and the subtitles tell me that this is the newbie Maros that the Maros I killed wanted me to talk to.

"Busy" message is quite confusing, he casts some kind of spell and divines the name "Garibaldi Electronics", which doesn't mean anything to me yet. Wasn't I supposed to tell him to check his sleeves? Not sure that actually occurred here.

Inside the mission: I immediately encounter a rather surreal sight:


Look out! He's got a gun!

Yes, that IS a Devouring Earth with a sniper rifle. I'm not quite sure why. These are members of a custom group called "Undone Futures" which fill this map, and seem to be an assortment of standard mobs; I can't quite understand the theme of the mob choices yet though.

Checking the info of the various named officers (Operative Brass, then Cpt. Steamer) I can piece together a story that seems to suggest I'm in some alternate universe where President Marchand repulsed Lord Recluse's coup, but the Rogue Isles ended up becoming a client state of the US instead. So this explains why there are lots of police here working with Wolf Spiders; the DE and Coralax they hang out with still aren't explained.

I found some DE and Coralax digging? I have no idea what that was about. The Devoured bosses did have some interesting (alternate universe) background in their info. This sorta explains why there are DE around, but I still don't get why they are working with the police; based on the story it sounds like they ought to be enemies.

I'm a little confused as to what I should be doing here (no sign of Maros yet), so on general principles, I decide to stab the digging DE, because he had a weird name and dialog, so might be relevant. He rewards me with a little more dialog, but his death doesn't count towards the objective. I kill Digging Claw, too, just in case; still nothing.

On the next floor up I found Riverjumper and Reefwalker, a couple of Coralax leading some kind of prayer session (with a cop and a DE in attendance). They have some neat info about Coralax in the alternate universe I'm in.

Up another floor to discover that I'm actually in President Marchand's office. On the roof, I find D-PHI-NR Maros being guarded by a cop, a DE and a Coralax, who are cooperating in some weird magical ritual. I'm not quite sure what D-PHI-NR Maros is supposed to be; some sort of steampunk scientist version of Maros?


Steampunk Maros surrounded by weird mobs on the President's roof


I rescue D-PHI-NR Maros and he gives me the "M3) Maros' tale" clue. This seems to be some mystical explanation for this super weird alternate dimension, as being part of the Vaults of Time.

Mission exit popup: I like that it now hints that I should have some ability to change the "future" now that I've gotten this far. Although it's been interesting so far, it's also pretty confusing and weird, and it'd be nice to straighten it out somehow. We'll see what happens though.

Debriefing almost made sense. Maybe I have enough puzzle pieces to start to understand what's going on. Apparently Maros's soul (or something) got split into a million pieces as part of the ritual he regrets having done.

Mission 4
Briefing: Aha, here I finally tell Maros about the thing he has hidden in his sleeve, which he ends up translating for me in the debriefing of mission 3. This seems to be the newbie version of Maros who doesn't know much. But "I" remember from the briefings way back in mission 2 that I should be looking for this Loupe in the Legacy Chain base.

Second part of briefing: Maros explains I'm supposed to kill him, which I already did in mission 2. Despite being really confusing, this does have a certain elegant symmetry.

I quickly locate 4syte and rescue him. He tells me

[NPC] 4syte: Awright, let's bail. I got that thing for Maros. And don't smash NOTHIN', that's how they got me.

...but my mission objectives say to destroy 3 temporal distorters, so I can't do that without conflicting with what he's asking. But I do notice 4syte's info says that I look through the pendant and recognize him as an imposter. Most people don't look at mob info, so maybe this should've been a Clue on rescuing him? Unless it's your intent that only people who check info will notice (to simulate that you have to really look at him).

Despite identifying him as an imposter, I can't attack him (since he's an ally). I decide to try and pull him to the mission door, in case he betrays. Nope, nothing at the door.

Led him back into the mission and he helped fight some stuff. We destroyed a Distortion Anchor - Age of Technology. I have an objective to "Find the real Foresight" now; not sure if that was from the anchor or saving 4syte.

There's lots of Coralax and SWAT officers around, mixed in with Splintered Instants, all members of a "Snarls of Time" group. This doesn't make much sense to me, but maybe they're just meant to be random people/monsters snatched into this weird place.

I found Blood-stone Jimmy, the Family guy who was in the earlier (later?) mission; he had interesting dialog.

Found and destroyed a Distortion Anchor - Age of Magic, which triggered a "Find the artifact" objective. Why is "Find the artifact" triggered at this moment, instead of being an objective from the start? Since I did enter the mission already knowing I was looking for the Loupe.

4syte got upset at my destroying this anchor (nice line of dialog) and betrayed (now an enemy according to my target reticule) but he didn't actually attack me. Not sure if this is intentional; possibly he can't see me due to stalker stealth. I decide to help him out by attacking him; he died quickly.

Searching a bit more I found Foresight, who counts as the real Foresight, and the Reliquary containing the Loupe. It seems in Maros's past, I didn't do these things (instead getting fooled by 4syte).

I thought destroying the Anchor - Age of Timelessness would end the mission (being my last objective), but instead it triggered a "Defeat the guard at the entrance" objective. I don't know why I suddenly need to do this, though? Perhaps there should be some clue that explains why this is necessary.

Near the entrance, I find The Lock of Distortion; and Foresight earlier spoke of breaking locks, so this sort of makes sense now that I see him.

Debriefing: Maros talks about the ritual that was back in mission 2. The subtitles tell me that I should be able to break this paradox now that I have all the tools.

Mission 5
Briefing: Maros gives me the debriefing from mission 1, I think. He says the pendant is the last thing he needs to perform the ritual. "I" ignore his babble and resolve to enter the Vaults of Time to rescue Maros.

Second part of briefing: I find it rather foreboding that Maros talks about the pendant as his "old master's pendant" and that it was dropped in lava, when I'm about to go to a foundry carrying a pendant. Am I going to end up being Maros's "old master"? Or perhaps a different version of Maros is his own master?

Nice map choice for the "Vaults of Time". It's very visually dramatic. The SWAT officers look kind of out of place here though.

I found a crate labeled "Technological OPARTS" which maybe should've been "Technological Parts" (not sure, OPARTS being all caps maybe was significant). It gives me the "A PDA" clue which I thought maybe was a reference to Bricked Electronics, but turns out to have some kind of world conquest plans on it.

I found a Diviner Maros? who asked me for help, but he was flagged as an enemy (and his description suggested I should kill him too). So I kilt him. He apparently was another imposter.


Diviner Maros?


Ran into a couple more Diviner Maros? hostages with the same dialog, but I figure they don't seem to be needed, so I passed them by.

In the very deepest cave I find the real Diviner Maros, who still has the same dialog as the hostages, but at least he's visibly friendly: blue reticule, no question mark, and his description (using the "pendant" artifact - a nice touch) identifies him as the real one, so I go ahead and rescue him. This gives me the "Maros' instructions" clue and triggers "2 summoned allies to find" and "Confront the Timekeeper" as objectives.

Backtracking a bit, I found "A coffin" glowy which gave me the "Death Notices" clue, which didn't seem to be required, but I got to read my own obituary, which was kind of neat. I also found "D-PHI-NR Maros" as a captive.

Having a heck of a time getting the two Maroses to follow me; not sure if it's the crystal emitters or my stalker stealth. Ended up leaving them behind because dragging them along was too much trouble.

Ended up having to backtrack to very near the beginning of the map before I found the Timekeeper. He spawned as a boss for me, and I beat him up, though he generated a LOT of ambushes. The mission didn't finish until I killed off the rest of his group; I wonder if he should be set "only boss needed for objective"?

Interestingly a whole horde of "Diviner Maros?" friendlies spawned nearby right after I killed the Timekeeper, saying:

[NPC] Diviner Maros?: Please! There is something you must hear!


Me griefing the horde of Maroses by aggroing an ambush onto them


I griefed them by training the ambush onto them, and they actually fought the time critters. They also gave me the "A chorus of Maros" clue which was pretty cool. The chorus of Maros warns me about dabbling with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

Debriefing: Whoa, it's Part Five now instead of Part One! I've broken the cycle. I actually like this ending, where he promises you ultimate knowledge. Or rather he will give you ultimate knowledge at some indefinite time in the future, in his messed up time distorted way.

Souvenir: Very well written, helps explain a lot of the confusion that was going on.

Overall
The plot of this arc, with Diviner Maros on the backwards timeline and me on the forwards timeline, was a very clever idea, but also gave me a headache.

I liked the symmetry of mission 1's briefing being the debriefing for mission 5, and so on, but this also made the first two missions utterly confusing (since I was getting briefings about stuff that hadn't happened yet); however, I believe this was intentional due to the way the plot is set up.

I also found it hard to remember "Ohh I was told this in mission 2's debriefing" for mission 4, etc; the yellow "subtitle" text in the later missions helped a lot for this. I confess I was quite relieved to cross the midpoint of the arc, and then start getting briefings about stuff I already knew about.

Most of these complaints are intrinsic to the nature of the "backwards" plot, and I cannot think of a good way to dispel this confusion that wouldn't fundamentally alter the story. I would normally mark off points for having such a confusing plot, but after reflecting on this for a little while, I believe anyone who actually would play an arc called "Backwards Day" with the description presented, has already bought into the inverted timeline concept and the resulting paradoxes.

If you accept the basic concept of the plot, Maros's backward timeline and the player's forward timeline fit together like precision clockwork. I liked the way the pendant was used all throughout the arc, both the initial paradox of finding the pendant when I already had the pendant, and the way you could use it as an item of "true seeing" to examine mobs; that was quite cool. There were a lot of interesting side objectives that were pretty neat.

I found the use of the "Busy" dialog for additional briefing materials to be quite awkward; that "third part of briefing" did give a lot of good extra information, but I felt it was something of a work-around to extend the amount of text in the briefing, and as a result I found it rather distracting. I'd recommend trying to edit the material into fitting the normal briefing/send off fields if possible.

I also thought the initial motivation for the player getting involved in (my) mission 1 (Maros's mission 5) to be rather weak; I think you need a little better "hook" than is currently presented. The motivation for the player getting involved in Maros's mission 1 (my mission 5) worked quite well, though.

I don't think this story arc will work for people who don't like time travel or time paradoxes. For people who do, it's quite well-crafted. I started off rather lukewarm to the arc in the early (confusing) missions, but I liked it more as i got into the later missions. I found the final mission, final debriefing and the souvenir particularly satisfying; they completely explain what "really" happened, which went a long way towards dispelling my earlier confusion.

With all that in mind, I wanted to rate it around 4.5; the strong ending pushed me over the fence to give it 5 stars. The plot still gives me a headache, but the arc is quite good at executing the story it's trying to tell.


---

My queue is currently:

Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

10/19/2009

Last Wednesday I played Lady Autumn (25 plant/emp controller) on a Sister Psyche TF with a team mix of:

2 controllers (plant/emp, fire/kin)
2 defenders (emp/psy, kin/psy)
2 scrappers
1 tanker
1 blaster

We had no serious problems, finishing in 2h 33mins and getting Lady Autumn to 26, where I took Carrion Creepers, which I really like so far.


On Thursday I played Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corruptor) on a Recluse SF with a team of:

1 brute (dark/dark)
2 MMs (robo/FF, nec/dark)
1 fortunata
4 corruptors (AR/pain, fire/rad, fire/cold, dark/kin)

This went pretty smoothly and finished in 51mins 13sec; I got a nice Microfilament SHO as reward, and a Fortunata Hypnosis (SLEEP/RCHG) as a drop.

After that I played Thunder Girl (38 elec/SR scrapper) through the rest of A Surprise Fit for a Baron, a counterterrorist operation where eventually the big bad guy sells out the rest of his Villain Group as a distraction while he attacks a diplomatic summit. This was a pretty decent story, though I still had issues with having to fight police and kidnap someone (as a hero) in the first mission; I ended up giving it 4 stars.


I spent most of Friday night working on a new story arc, Talos Vice, where you help Detective Croquette bust drug dealers. It's a pretty obvious homage to Miami Vice, only ported to the City of Heroes universe, so you're fighting Trolls and Family. I had a fun time recoloring a bunch of standard mobs to have pink, white or pastel outfits for the Miami Vice look, and trying to make all the briefings and clues and stuff look like movie or TV scripts. So far no one else has actually tried it, but *I* am enjoying it, playing my own alts through it repeatedly.


On Saturday I accepted an invite to a pickup Master Dr. Kahn TF, playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Our team mix was:

2 blasters
1 def (emp/?)
2 controllers (?/kin, ?/FF)
2 scrappers
1 tanker (inv/SS)

This TF was painfully slow as everyone wanted to be really, really careful. Plus occasionally they would AFK or go linkdead and we'd have to wait until everyone was back. Some people wanted to "defeat all" even when not strictly necessary "just to be safe", but fortunately we didn't end up doing that. I actually thought we would not be able to defeat Reichsman since we lacked any debuff except the kinetic's, so unfortunately I didn't have a very positive attitude about all this. Ironically, I ended up being the first person to die, in the fight against Reichsman, from his lightning AoEs; the first one stunned me and dropped me to low life (I found it takes more than 1 break free to shake this stun) and then another AoE while I was still stunned ended up killing me. I kinda wish I had brought more break frees, or I had stayed nearer the empath (who had Healing Aura on auto, she was the type who thought that was the best way) or .. something. We ended up having 8 deaths total before the TF was done, but I still kinda felt bad about being the first to die. We did manage to grind Reichsman down eventually, though, despite the lack of debuffs (maybe he resists those anyway), finishing in 2hrs 3mins.

I went on to play Thunder Girl (38 elec/SR scrapper) on a 3 player Liberty Force team running Vanguard missions in Rikti War Zone, which got her to level 39; then on Sunday I played TokyoRose (23 sonic/sonic corruptor) on a 6 player pickup team running radio missions in Grandville, which got her to level 25.

Also on Sunday, I played Psychic Woman (26 rad/psy defender) through Sky King's Ransom, a short story where you pursue and arrest a Sky Raiders boss. This had good writing and some neat extra touches in each mission; I would've liked a little more explanation of the Sky Raiders' motivations and why we need to beat this particular Sky Raider up, but overall this was pretty good and I gave it 4 stars.

After that I ended up on a Sister Psyche TF with Psychic Woman, with a team mix of:

2 controllers (ice/therm, ill/cold)
2 defenders (rad/psy, emp/AR)
2 scrappers
1 warshade
1 tanker (inv/?)

This was a well balanced team and the TF went really smoothly. We finished in 1hr 50mins, getting Psychic Woman to level 27.

Finished the night playing Blackout Girl (23 elec/elec brute) on a 3-player LEGION SG team doing the Westin Phipps story arc, and then helping one of the villains finish his cape mission. This got Blackout Girl to 24, where I took Lightning Reflexes.

This is on my list of arcs I want to play "for fun", too [after I work through my current "owed" queue]. I like the pulp adventure sound of it.

The MA arc team on Triumph played Mission: Awesome over the weekend and I think we had a full team of 8 suffer at least 2 team wipes against the Egyptian robots. Although we were fairly low level (my character was brand new and had no enhancements) which may have contributed to this, but the arc is labeled 1-40. I think perhaps the min level should be at least 25; I thought the custom mobs were not well balanced against a pre-SO character.

I also remember wishing there were more to do during that arc than fight lots of Egyptian robots.

A few more from me:

Arc Name: A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force
Arc ID: 260284
Keywords: Challenging, Magic, Drama
Faction: Samurai, Ninja
Creator Global/Forum Name: @PW / PoliceWoman
Difficulty Level: Hard
Synopsis: Samurai and ninja battle for honor in a faraway realm. But someone has introduced firearms to the land, tilting the balance of power towards the evil Lord Kumo and the Spider Clan. Will you journey there to restore the balance?
Morality: Heroic
Estimated Time to Play: 5 missions, 60-90 minutes
Level range: 45-54



Arc Name: Papers and Paychecks
Arc ID: 298290
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Faction: Longbow, Paragon Police, Devouring Earth, Hydra, Nemesis Automata, Crey, Manticore Task Force
Creator Global/Forum Name: @PW / PoliceWoman
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: JOB OPENING: Entry-level position available in dynamic, fast-moving Fortune 500 company. Seeking flexible, motivated individuals, self-starters willing to think outside the box. Excellent salary, benefits, opportunities for rapid promotion. Qualified applicants, contact Crey Industries HR Dept.
Morality: Villainous
Estimated Time to Play: 5 short missions, 30-60 mins
Level range: 33-45



Arc Name: Talos Vice
Arc ID: 338380
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Faction: Trolls, Family
Creator Global/Forum Name: @PW / PoliceWoman
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: 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.
Morality: Heroic
Estimated Time to Play: 3 missions, 20-40 mins
Level range: 15-20

Random name ideas:

"Players' Choice" ... to mirror Dev Choice.

"6-star award" ... you thought the 5-star arcs are good, this one's a sixer!

"JABOATH" ... Just A Bunch Of Awards That Happened.

Could not find arc 320225 or anything with "Gryfyn" as author, so went on to:


Sky King's Ransom
Arc ID: 232308
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 20-24
Warnings: High level villains at low levels (but author's notes say these are non-combat)

The premise is to bring a criminal to justice, and Sky Raiders are involved somehow. I played a 26 rad/psy defender on +1 x0 difficulty. The contact is Justin Greene (an IP contact).

Mission 1
Briefing: Decently written; essentially a mission to defeat a Sky Raider boss by the name of Major Ransom. They're raiding some kind of warehouse but it's not explained what they're after there.

I like the "Maj. Ransom's dossier" clue that I'm given at the start, it gives some nice background info.

Inside the mission: I found a couple Sky Raiders taunting an Injured Warrior they had captured. He didn't seem required but I rescued him to see what would happen. The Warrior threatened to kick my butt, but was too weak to do it; he didn't seem to do anything more.

Found a couple glowy crates that I clicked, but they didn't seem to do anything (no clue, no objectives updated). My spam text box did mention it looked like they had been searched.

I found a Stolen Relic destructible object that had some Sky Raiders trying to break it, so I stopped them. I guess they were trying to steal the relic, but I'm not sure why; inspecting the Stolen Relic doesn't give any clues. Maybe it should have a more detailed description (currently just "This case holds an unusual item" which may be the default). It does look like the Sky Raiders are up to something, but it's still rather mysterious as to what.

Deep inside the mission I find another captured warrior, Aristodemus. He has pretty good dialog. After rescuing him, he offers to tell me what's going on if I help him escape the mission. My "Defeat Maj Ransom" objective is now replaced with "Escort Aristodemus out". Aristodemus becomes a lieutenant level ally; he hits pretty hard, though.


Yay, someone to tank for my defender!


We fight past an ambush and clear some of the Sky Raiders I had skipped over.

I quite like the "Aristodemus' words" clue that I get at the end of the mission, and the way Aristodemus is characterized here as an "honorable Warrior".

One inconsistency was that in "Aristodemus' words" he says "I can tell you where he was taken", but in Justin Greene's debriefing, he says "I think I can figure out where Ransom was taken. Speak with me soon." I should already know from Aristodemus's confession, though, shouldn't I? So what is Justin trying to figure out?

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, here Justin does say that Aristodemus gave up info about Major Ransom's whereabouts, so maybe the last debriefing was just worded oddly. Apparently Ransom is at a Lockhart Aerotech office, which neatly dovetails with the canon. I have to wonder, though, how does Aristodemus know that Ransom was taken there? Since Aristodemus was clearly stuck in the warehouse since the fight with Ransom. Perhaps mention that Aristodemus overheard some of the Sky Raiders say they were taking him there.

The briefing is decent, but it still seems to boil down to "Defeat Sky Raider boss and guards".

I found and rescued "Perfectly Normal Office Worker", who wasn't required, but his dialog was quite amusing. (I imagine he's what triggered the "high level enemies brought down in level" warning.) "Perfectly Innocent Office Worker" was fun too. Her dialog is substantially identical to Perfectly Normal's dialog, but this actually makes sense in this context.

Found a glowy body bag that gave me "Ransom's body" as a clue. I would think this would end the mission, but instead I have "Seek clues" as a new objective. Not sure why at this juncture, wouldn't finding his body normally close the case? I think there needs to be more explanation for why the player should still be looking for evidence, maybe some text in the "Ransom's body" clue that encourages the player to find out more.

Soon after I find the robotic Maj. Ransom (now a jump bot) and fight him; he was a bit troublesome for my defender, but defeating him (and his group) completed the mission. You might consider making him "Only boss required for objective", since it's a PITA to run down fleeing Porters.

I noticed a glowy crate labeled "spare parts" near where I fought Maj. Ransom, which I thought was a nice touch.

The popup message on mission exit is pretty funny.

Debriefing is well-written and I like that it asks some questions about the Sky Raiders uploading minds of dying soldiers into Jump Bots.

No souvenir? Could use one.

Overall
Good writing in the clues and dialog, and I like the many little side objectives and extra glowies/hostages that aren't required but add some color to the missions. I like the idea of telling the story of Ransom's transformation into a Jump Bot. I liked the characterization of the Warriors and the Perfectly Normal Office Workers. I liked that the arc was just long enough to tell the story it wanted to tell, and no more.

A few things I didn't like: each mission briefing, while decently written, basically boils down to "Defeat Sky Raider boss and guards" without a lot of reason other than, hey, it's a Sky Raider boss. This made the mission seem radio-mission-esque, at least until I got inside the mission and some of the nice extras were apparent. Some more definite motivation for why we need to go after Maj. Ransom (and not, say, Col. Burkholder or Lt. Blechley some other boss) would be nice.

I think you could perhaps provide more explanation in the first mission of what the Sky Raiders were after and why. From what I saw, they were trying to steal artifacts from the Warriors, but Sky Raiders usually aren't interested in magical stuff so it's not clear why they would want to. I know that plot-wise it's just to set up the duel, but some supporting detail would be nice. Also, those glowy boxes in mission 1 could use some fleshing out; they didn't seem to do much.

I think I would've liked a little more supporting clues or dialog foreshadowing Major Ransom's transformation, also. I'm surprised they could download him into a Jump Bot on such short notice; I'd think there should be special equipment or technicians involved. The box of spare parts did help with this. I thought the fact that they went to Lockhart Aerotech would've been significant somehow (maybe they specialize in uploading memories into Jump Bots) but I don't think the fact that they were at Lockhart came up during the mission itself. (Except perhaps as a reason for the Perfectly Normal Office Workers.)

Anyway, it was a good story overall, and with all that in mind, I gave it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

I started a newbie and joined this team. It was a lot of fun.

This was me, for what it's worth:

My review queue is getting rather smaller, so I spent some time working on a new story arc, which I published last night:

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

It's essentially a Miami Vice homage. Originally I wanted to write a story about street-level crime, and seeing Detective Croquette and thinking about the ability to recolor standard PvE mobs, it all kind of clicked. I made it a shorter arc (3 missions) because I wanted it to be quicker paced and accessible, and 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.

Of course I'll count any plays through this new arc for the whole QPQ thing, too.

Thanks all! More reviews soon.

A Surprise Fit for a Baron review
Arc ID: 318352
Keywords: Challenging, Canon Related, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 32-54
Warnings: EBs, custom power selections

The premise is to help a supergroup provide security for some kind of global diplomatic summit. I played a 38 elec/SR scrapper with some IO bonuses. The contact is the City Representative.

Mission 1
Briefing: the text is nicely formatted and well-written. But the idea seems strange? The contact wants me to kidnap one of the representatives at the Global Summit? That seems contrary to the goal of providing security for the summit.

The contact rationalizes violating diplomatic immunity as avoiding "red tape". She further warns me that Representative Vann has police protection, so I'll have to fight PPD to actually capture him.

The whole idea of this mission seems decidedly unheroic.

Mission entry popup: "Pargon Police" should be "Paragon Police".

I got "The Two Global Powers" clue on mission start, that describes Global Heroics Supergroup, but I haven't actually interacted with any Global Heroics characters so far, so I'm not sure how this is relevant. The League of Rogue Nations info is a little more pertinent. "disatisfied" should be "dissatisfied".

I like the casual dialog that some of the PPD officers have though.

Found Representative Vann, but he's in a "captured" pose, which probably isn't right if the PPD are providing him police protection. The PPD does have some good dialog for when I attack them.


Representative Vann and his security detail


After I kidnap Vann from the police, an ambush of "League of Rogue Nations" occurs; they're fairly decent looking stormtrooper types. Strangely, they want to kill Vann too; but Vann is supposedly a representative from the League of Rogue Nations, so I wonder why?

Militia Engineer's description, "maintence" should be "maintenance".

In Vann's description, "Representative Vann, sees super-powered beings as threats", delete the comma.

Consider using a smaller map, since there's really only one thing to do in this mission (rescue/kidnap Vann). I ended up having to lead Vann through 3 sets of elevators to get back to the entrance. Not a huge dealbreaker, but I don't know that the mission NEEDS to be so big.

Debriefing: pretty decent, recapping the mission and some of the clues found. "There hasn't been any attacks" should be "There haven't been any attacks".

Mission 2
Briefing: I'm asked to stop a terrorist attack that Vann gave us some info about. "They wont be constructing" should be "They won't be constructing".

Inside the mission, I found and defeated Le Souverain, but despite the mission being titled "Defeat Le Souverain", the mission doesn't end because I still need to destroy the Bomb materials. You might consider giving the mission a title that is a little more general, so it still makes sense after defeating Le Souverain. Something like "Save Peru" or "Stop the bombing plot".

I like the extra dialog provided by the roaming patrol; it's not plot related but adds some local color.

I found the Bomb and destroyed it by hitting it repeatedly. This seems a rather unsafe way to get rid of a bomb, but I guess the Rikti bombs work the same way.

A clue dropped by Le Souverain hits at the location of more League of Rogue Nations villains, though it's phrased to make it sound a little too convenient that I got this clue. (Betrayal seems likely somewhere in this arc...)

Mission 3
Briefing: I'm sent to go after the villain base and beat the AVs there. The contact keeps telling me about things Mr. Sweden told her to pass on; I kinda wonder why Mr. Sweden isn't the contact instead of the city rep. (Treachery? OK, getting paranoid.)

Inside the mission, I found and hacked the System Access Point, giving me "The League's base of Operations: 46~12'N 6~" clue; this clue's name, while cool, is actually too long to fit inside the width of the clue that I'm given. May want to shorten it to fit.

Also in this clue, "League of Rogue Nation's" should be "League of Rogue Nations'". "Its underground, at the listed coordinates" should be "It's underground at the listed coordinates".

I wonder if "Militia Fearmonger" should be named "Militia Terrorist"? For the double meaning.

I found and fought Harvester, who had some interesting dialog about someone "setting him up". In his description, "sacrified" should be "sacrificed".

Found and fought Nachtbandenkampfer in the same room. For someone with such a very Germanic name, her dialog seems very American:

[NPC] Nachtbandenkampfer: Woah! Heroes attacking! Gents you know what to do!
[NPC] Nachtbandenkampfer: Hey, ouch! Somebody cover me!

...wondering if her dialog should be more formal or use German words or something? Anyway, defeating her completed the mission.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact wants me to go assault the League of Rogue Nations base, but in the briefing "I" realize the Global Summit is in danger, so instead, I rush to defend the Global Summit. I think the intent here is that I realize all the clues thus far are meant to lure Global Heroics (and me) to attack the Rogue base, drawing security away from the Global Summit; but I think you may want to make this a little more clear in case the player doesn't get it right away.

I like the mission title, "Stop the Real Threat".

The mission entry popup mentions "The meeting room for W.O.S."; I think this previously was called the "Global Summit". Also "It" should be "it" in the second sentence.

"Defeat Le Souverain" is in the objectives, but I didn't know Le Souverain would be here (as far as I know, he should be in jail), so this is something of a spoiler. You might change this to "Defeat Rogue Nations leader" or something generic like that, so as not to give away that you fight Le Souverain again.


Thunder Girl vs Le Souverain


Surprisingly, Le Souverain is encountered pretty near the front of the mission; he has some dialog mentioning that hostages are in the sewer level. I was a little surprised defeating Le Souverain didn't trigger an objective (to find the hostages, or find the Baron he was talking to).

Down in the sewers I rescue Secretary-General Ban Ki-Suun, who is in the World Organizational Summit. Wasn't this called the Global Summit before this? I'd suggest standardizing on one name and using the same one everywhere through the arc.

Rescuing Ki-Suun down in the sewers gives me "A Paragon Sewer Map" as a clue, and he has a line of dialog thanking me. But it also changes my objective to "Defeat Baron Von Doffen". Neither Ki-Suun's dialog nor his clue refer to this Baron; so I'm not sure why Defeat the Baron should be triggered from rescuing Ki-Suun. I could understand triggering Defeat the Baron from defeating Le Souverain, since Le Souverain is actually talking to the Baron.

I had to backtrack all the way to the office part of the map to find Baron von Doffen. If you can set him to spawn closer to the objective that triggers him, that would be great.


Thunder Girl vs Baron von Doffen


His name is currently "Baron Von Doffen" but I believe would be more correct as "Baron von Doffen" (note capitalization). The Baron does have a terrific costume. In the Baron's description, "After a successful coup with Doctor Velocity the Leader of the League of Rogue Nations, the Baron became the accepted leader" ... this seems awkwardly phrased. I'd suggest reprhasing to something like "Baron von Doffen became the leader of the League of Rogue Nations after overthrowing the former leader, Doctor Velocity."

Also "One of Nosferatu's finest vampyr" should be "One of Nosferatu's finest vampyrs".

I beat up Baron von Doffen after a fairly decent fight, which completed the arc.

Debriefing: a decent wrap-up and the contact is suitably grateful that I "saw through" the plan. It seems that some other diplomats were kidnapped and spirited away before I got there, though.

Souvenir: a nicely written souvenir that summarizes the events of the arc.

Overall
I thought this was a good investigative story with well written briefings and good use of clues. It's nice that player sees through the elaborate plot instead of being scripted to be tricked by it. The dialog was okay; not great, but not bad.

Some problems I had: having the hero start the arc by fighting police and kidnapping a diplomat felt wrong to me. There is never any follow-up to the player's actions in beating up the police; I'd expect the police to issue a warrant for the player's arrest, or at least someone would need to do some damage control to explain why the hero was attacking the PPD. You might consider changing Vann's security detail to more Rogue Nation Militia, or Private Security Guards; and avoiding having the player fight police altogether.

There's a certain moral equivalency between the hero kidnapping Vann in mission 1 and van Doffen kidnapping the diplomats in mission 4; why is the former "Good" but the latter "Evil"? I could buy that the hero might be an "above the law" type who feels like she can ignore diplomatic immunity to arrest bad guys, but I think it's a big stretch for the group in charge of security for the summit to actually encourage you to kidnap someone from it. I'd feel a bit better about this premise if the player starts with a warrant (from Interpol or someone) to arrest Vann, instead of simply kidnapping him for interrogation.

The name of the summit was rather inconsistently portrayed; at various times it was called "Global Summit", "World Organization Summit", "World Organizational Summit", and "W.O.S." I'd recommend you pick the name you like best of these, and standardize all references to use the same expression.

The Global Heroics SG and their member Mr. Sweden are mentioned a lot by the contact, but their actual presence in the missions is zero. This made the Global Heroics references seem rather distracting without adding much, and getting a badge from Global Heroics at the end of the arc rang a little false for me, because I never even saw any Global Heroics characters, much less worked with them. I think you could actually edit them out of your story entirely, and use Longbow instead of Global Heroics where appropriate; this would make the story a little tighter. Even in the arc as presented, Longbow is the group that acts as backup for the player in mission 3 (not the Global Heroics SG). I suspect Global Heroics may be an actual SG that you are referencing, though, so you may be reluctant to cut them from the story. Alternatively you could increase their presence (maybe make the contact Mr. Sweden, or add some Global Heroics allies to some missions) so that they seem more relevant to the story.

Also, Baron von Doffen was never mentioned in the story until the last mission. If I remember correctly, the first reference to the Baron is by Le Souverain in the last mission. Considering the Baron is the Big Bad Guy of the story arc, I'd suggest mentioning von Doffen earlier in the story, perhaps in casual dialog or embedded in some of the clues. Basically give some foreshadowing / build up to the Baron being the Big Bad Guy of the arc, to make defeating him seem more of an accomplishment. As currently presented, Le Souverain is mentioned a lot more in the story than Baron von Doffen, which I don't think is your intent.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I gave this arc 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

10/14/2009

I played a lot during double exp weekend; too much to list everything, so I'll just summarize:

Thunder Girl (elec/SR scrapper) from level 31 to level 38. Took Lightning Rod, Evasion, and Hover; kinda regretting taking Hover, but didn't have any good ideas for a level 38 power. (Planning to soft cap DEF so Elude didn't seem like a great choice.)

Psychic Woman (rad/psy defender) from level 8 to level 24. Took all the basic rad powers, Stamina & prereqs, Hover and Fly. I really like the sky blue color I made all her rad and psy powers.

Lady Autumn (plant/emp controller) from newly created to level 21. I've been meaning to make a plant controller for some time, and with power colorization I thought making her plant powers Autumn colors would be a good character theme.

Arrow Girl (archery/dev blaster) from level 34 to level 37.

Primadonna (sonic/kin corruptor) from level 49 to level 50, dinging 50 during a Recluse SF during the final fight with the Freedom Phalanx. I like hitting 50 doing something dramatic. Got a Centriole though.



On Tuesday night I started off playing Psychic Woman (24 rad/psy defender), recruiting and leading a pickup team through some of Stephanie Peebles' missions on Striga Isle. Most of these missions seemed to involve fighting Council on a cargo ship. We had a couple early wipeouts due to overaggroing multiple groups of Council (my little rad heal couldn't keep up with the incoming DPS) but after picking up a FF defender and a traps defender we hit the defense cap and everything went much more smoothly. This team ran for a couple hours and got Psychic Woman to level 26 before we broke up.

I solo'd Thunder Girl (38 elec/SR scrapper) partway through an AE story arc A Surprise Fit for a Baron. I found it a little weird that it's a heroic arc, but the first mission has you beat up Paragon Police to kidnap a diplomat from a foreign country (described as a "rogue nation"). I'm about halfway through it, and I think the story is trying to cast me as a Jack Bauer style "above the law" counter-terrorism agent; but politics aside, it seems a pretty decent story so far.

I switched from soloing to play Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a Dr Kahn TF mostly organized on the Sisterhood channel. Our team mix was:

3 blasters
1 scrapper
2 controllers (ill/emp, fire/rad)
1 tanker (will/SS)
1 defender (emp/psy)

I was the last person to join this team (someone else actually went to bed and gave me his spot, which I said he didn't have to do, but apparently the lure of bed was strong) but somehow got handed the star, since the person who organized the team was only level 45 and we thought the TF would spawn at level 50.

The TF got off to an inauspicious start as we almost immediately had a team wipe to the first AV, Schadenfreude (who totally stole my alt's name!). I think we just weren't prepared for the DPS from the AV and the 5th Council surrounding him; after we hospitaled and came back, we pulled him a little more carefully and beat him up without further problems.

The rest of the TF went basically fine though. The final fight against Reichsman was something of a tedious grind, though everyone laughed at my "Pokemon" explanation for how the Reichsman fight works. ("I choose YOU, Countess Crey!") I spent some time using Surveillance to snoop on Reichsman's stats; he starts with over 200,000 HP and has like 40-60% resists to everything, and occasionally goes Unstoppable to raise his resists to 99%. We thought the special dimensional weapon was supposed to lower his resists, but I couldn't see any effect on my Surveillance watch; nevertheless we all shot him with the weird weapon whenever he went Unstoppable, because it made us feel better. I called on the DPS to kill each AV as it was released from its Pokeball. After a protracted fight, we won the TF in 1hr 35mins for 20 merits, which feels rather low reward for the effort. I did get the Column Breaker badge, though, which is badge number 601 for Police Woman.

I submitted Teen Phalanx Forever! for heroic story arc. It's the most comic booky of my story arcs, so I thought this was the appropriate category. My screen shots ended up being a little murky and I'm not sure the pictures are pretty enough to draw someone into trying it, but I'm going to hope for the best.

I wanted to submit A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force for non-canon story arc, but after reading the rules carefully, I don't think it is actually non-canon according to the official rules, since it uses both canonical CoH characters and alternate dimensional versions of canonical CoH characters. So I ended up submitting it for canon story arc, which might or might not make sense, since it's a very Elseworlds sort of story. The whole canon/non-canon classification kinda boggles me; I seem to write story arcs that straddle the line. We'll see what the judges think, I guess.

I submitted the Paparazzi from Celebrity Kidnapping for custom enemy group. This is maybe a long shot since the Paparazzi only have 4 custom models in it, but I get a lot of positive feedback about how funny they are, so I thought I'd give it a try. Due to the tight disk space budget, I usually make custom enemy groups with just a few figures each in them (enough to give the enemy group a little variety with a common theme), then try to sprinkle them in among "normal" mobs.

Since I already had gathered all the files for it anyway, I went ahead and threw Celebrity Kidnapping into the ring for villainous story arc, too. It was that or Papers & Paychecks; my other villainous arc, Axis & Allies, I really like but is something of a guilty pleasure that I don't think is as good as my other stuff. There's more of a story in Papers & Paychecks, but ultimately I felt that Celebrity Kidnapping was better polished and more tightly edited, so I went with that.

Based on the sample taken here so far, it sounds like there's a lot of competition for the "heroic" and "canon" categories, and relatively less for "villainous" and almost none for "non-canon". If only I had a "non-canon" arc to submit! But by the official definition, I don't see myself writing "non-canon" arcs, because I really like my stories to have some connection to the actual CoH world.

10/12/2009

Been awhile since my last update; I've admittedly been slacking. Partly this is because I'm starting to feel like my journal entries have a certain sameness about them; so, in an effort to mix things up, this entry will be in a different format, mostly screenshots with some captions.




This is my db/ninja stalker battling Captain Mako at the end of Inhuman Resources - Inevitable Evolution at Work, a story arc (#298132) that a Virtue VG uses for recruiting new players. It didn't seem like a very villainous VG (most of the time they're beating up Arachnos) but it was a pretty well-written arc and I gave it 5 stars; which maybe was a little overly generous, but I enjoyed the final fight.




This is a screen shot from A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force (arc #260284) which I took as part of my submission to the First Annual Architect Awards contest. I really thought this screen shot came out nicely; I especially like the color of the sky and the leafy trees in the background, that make it look almost like an Asian painting.




This is my dark/ice defender fighting Lusca with a team of 8. This team beat up Kraken, Adamastor, the monsters in Croatoa, and finally ended up facing Lusca. I was the only defender/controller/debuffer/buffer of any sort on our team, which made it quite painful (until one of the other players eventually brought a dual-boxed rad to help). I found I needed to keep chomping Lucks to stay alive and spam Twilight Grasp to debuff the tentacle's regen; if I did that, we could usually wear a tentacle down to 0 life. After a long battle (including 2 wipeouts) we managed to take Lusca down.




This is Police Woman (my main character, an AR/dev blaster) teaming up with an NPC scrapper to fight a robot mastermind at the end of In Pursuit of Liberty, an AE story arc (#221702) about the origin of the db scrapper I'm teamed up with there. It's fun seeing the NPC sword girl grow up over the course of the arc, but there were a lot of plot problems, so I ended up rating it 3 stars.



This is Helen Highwater (my storm/psy defender on Triumph server) rescuing a hostage from Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria in D Minor, a horror-themed story arc (#41565) set in Dark Astoria. Helen is an aquatic themed hero so I tried to recolor her storm powers to be a deep blue, to look like water. Although parts of this story were confusing and didn't make sense, this was actually a really creepy story arc that did a great job of setting up an atmosphere of horror. I gave it 4 stars.




During double XP weekend, my elec/SR scrapper led a pickup team for several hours and got enough levels to take Lightning Rod. I love this power -- the bolt of lightning, the huge KABOOM, and all the mobs taking huge damage and falling down. I love it!




This is me finding an amazing bargain on Wentworth's, by total luck. I was shopping for Dam/Rech PBAOE recipes (planning to frankenslot Lightning Rod for max damage and recharge) and noticed a Fury of the Gladiator: Dam/Rech for sale. I placed a lowball bid just to try it; I was quite surprised to actually get it for 100K! PVP recipes usually sell for 10M to 500M infl.




This is Psychic Woman (a newbie rad/psy defender) leading a pickup team (with some friends) against Silver Mantis in a bank safeguard mission. I made her costume and all her powers a sky blue color which I really like. Double XP was really good to Psychic Woman, getting her from level 8 to level 24.

Heya, I did try this arc back in June and wrote some feedback, but quite likely you never saw it since I'm on a US server. I'm afraid I didn't rate it very highly, but hope you can get some value out of my notes on the arc anyway. My main complaints were: (1) the hook leading the player into the arc seemed rather weak to me, (2) the contact treats the player like an incompetent lackey the whole time, and (3) two defeat all missions seemed excessive. [Though, in fairness, I did play through this arc four months ago, so it could have changed since then.]

Hope that helps!

More on Astoria in D Minor

Astoria in D Minor review
Arc ID: 41565
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Horror
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 20-29

The premise is a horror arc based in Dark Astoria. I played a 23 storm/psy defender on difficulty +0 x0. The contact is a boombox-type radio.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted and good introductory text that helps set the mood. "Irine" seems a strange name though; did you maybe mean "Irene" or "Irina"? "She stops suddenly" should perhaps have a period (or other punctuation) after it. "Romero street" should perhaps be "Romero Street" (note capitalization).

Apparently Irine is in trouble and I go off to rescue her.

I like the mission objectives, they sound neat.

Inside the mission, there's a mix of "Unusually Small Zombies" and "Banished Pantheon" zombies. Perhaps they should all be Banished Pantheon, just some of them happen to be unusually small? I kind of wonder why the custom zombies are necessary; I imagine there is something ominous about the Unusually Small Zombies that has yet to be revealed. The description of the "Small Zombie" mobs seems very terse, perhaps could use more text.

Found Irine Benson pretty quickly; she was in the WSPDR News faction (probably left over from renaming Amanda Vines) but probably shouldn't be. I like the "Haley's Photograph" clue that she gave me.

Irine promptly left after being rescued, but the mission didn't end, despite the mission being titled "Find Irine" (which I've now done). You might consider giving the mission a title that is more general that still is valid even after rescuing Irine. Like "Investigate 121 Romero Street" or something.

The computer was nearby and checking it triggered "Find the other hero" as a clue.

Deeper in the mission I found Event Horizon, a hero being guarded by Council. Hmm, what are Council doing here? Weird. Fighting the zombies guarding him, I suddenly remembered that Banished Pantheon are horribly psy resistant. Doh. It takes me about 8 blasts to kill a minion. This was a poor choice on my part (for bringing psy damage into a Banished Pantheon arc).

I eventually sawed through the zombies with my psy attacks and rescue Event Horizon, who has no idea where Irine's daughter is, but "knows a guy" if I help him out. I end up leading Event Horizon out and he gives me "Schism's Photograph". This strikes me as a little odd; he has photos of his contacts? Maybe a business card would make more sense. Event Horizon says Schism is eccentric but does not explain why he thinks Schism can help find a girl that neither of them has ever heard of. I suggest maybe he should say a little about why Schism can help here?

Debriefing: Irine talks to me over the radio and suggests I ask Event Horizon for help. But I already talked to Event Horizon and he just passed me off to another contact, so not sure that her suggestion is really helpful.

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, apparently Irine is more persuasive than my character, as apparently she has talked Event Horizon into helping. (Seems a little inconsistent with his behavior in mission 1 where he just wanted to pass me on to another contact.) She also suggests that I follow up with Schism, but I still don't know why anyone thinks Schism can help with this.

Inside the mission: apparently the address that Event Horizon gave me is that of an abandoned hospital, which seems a little weird. In my objectives I have "7 Survivors to Find" but I'm not sure why; survivors of what?

I almost immediately found Schism, who is in a faction called "Ally Heroes"; not sure if this is meant to be his supergroup or what. Perhaps he should be in "Astoria Heroes" or something similar. In his description, "tendancies" should be "tendencies". His costume makes him look rather villainous, like maybe a Hellion; not sure if that's your intent.

Schism does mention "Sometimes I find survivors" and asks me to rescue some people, which makes more sense for why I need to find 7 survivors now. Maybe "7 Survivors to Find" should be triggered from rescuing Schism?

I've also successfully met Schism (the mission title is "Meet Schism") but the mission has not ended; perhaps the mission title should be rephrased to something more general that will still apply even after rescuing Schism.

I found several glowy body bags labeled "Find Survivors" that, when clicked, satisfies a "Survivor to Find" objective. This doesn't quite make sense; I think the body should perhaps be labeled "Body" instead, and the fact that it gives me the clue "Dead Civilian" makes it clear that this unfortunate fellow is not, in fact, a "survivor". Perhaps "7 Survivors to Find" should be "7 Refugees to Find" or something similar.

I found a live survivor and freed him; Schism is a big help with my DPS problem while doing so. The hostage gives me the "I saw a little girl..." clue.

Rescued a man in a brown suit who was in the "Diplomat" faction; probably because he uses the American Diplomat model. He should probably be just a Civilian.

A bit later I found a guy in a blue uniform named "Civilian" but in the "Soldier" faction, which is contradictory. He should perhaps be in the Civilian group and use a less militant model. After rescuing him I suddenly have "Find Haley!" as objective; I think this was triggered by rescuing the soldier but I'm not sure. I didn't get a clue at the time; maybe I should, though -- currently I'm wondering why has this objective suddenly appeared?

On the final floor of the map I find Haley and rescue her. I'm actually rather relieved, I half expected her to be another body bag, or, worse, an Unusually Small Zombie.


Helen and Schism rescue Haley


For some reason I need to lead Haley out, even though I didn't have to lead any of the other hostages out. Schism and I fight our way through an ambush to get Haley out.

Debriefing: Haley "runs off" into the mist after her mother, and I lose her, but her mother (or the radio pretending to be her) seems to think she wasn't there.

Mission 3
Briefing: Irine wants me to chase after Haley. She mentions strange things she saw in the fog.

Although the mission is titled "Rescue Haley" I soon find a body bag labeled "Haley" that gives me the "Haley's Body" clue. It seems a bit of a leap to immediately assume Schism is responsible, but I guess it works since I lost sight of both of them at the same time and he's known to be unstable.

I find and defeat Schism, which completes the mission (despite the mission being titled "Rescue Haley"). He has some pretty nice insane dialog.

This map seemed huge considering there's really only 2 things to do on it, but the map fits the Astoria theme. The various static mask spawns help give it some color; though, they don't really seem to be connected to the plot with Haley (unless I missed it). I would've thought maybe Haley's death should've fed them energy, or woken them up or something?

Debriefing: pretty nice writing of Irine's response. I'd suggest changing "wanders off into the fog" to "wanders away from the fallen radio" though, since talking over the radio, I wouldn't see her wandering into the fog.

Mission 4
Briefing: So I'm looking for Irine in the fog, and "somehow" I decide to search the graveyard and find a crack in the side of a mausoleum, which leads me to go into it. This seems like a bit of a stretch to get me into the next mission, but we'll see where it goes.

Second part of briefing: the text here (just "Go down") seems very abrupt and terse compared to the rest of the writing. Perhaps it should be a little more descriptive.

For some reason the mission title, "Search the Mausoleum", is in bright red. Not sure what the significance of that is, yet.

Mission entry popup: Full of weird symbols. What does this mean? Is it just supposed to be weird? Likewise, the first objective in the nav tool is just weird symbols. "Find me" is an intelligible objective, but "It's your fault" is not.

This map is very foggy with poor visibility making it painful to explore, but it fits the setting.

I did find "The Great Herald" who I defeated, satisfying "Find me". It said:

[NPC] The Great Herald: When the great feast comes we will all become angels

This line should have a period at the end of it. I don't really understand much of his dialog and how it connects to the story thus far. He either had a Tuatha de Danaan (in the "Heralds" faction; different than the "Great Herald" faction, but maybe should be the same) ambush or with him (hard to say due to poor visibility). The Tuatha had the normal Tuatha description, may want to change it if it's meant to represent something else.

Found and fought "The Great Clown". The Clown's dialog was very cool and very creepy:

[NPC] The Great Clown: Helen Highwater, a psycho, and a little girl walk into a graveyard...
[NPC] The Great Clown: Ten minutes later, Helen Highwater walks out alone.
[NPC] The Great Clown: Because she murdered them. Get it?

For some reason defeating him satisfied "It's your fault" and gave me the "It's your fault they're dead, Helen Highwater" clue. I like the crazy font changes in the body of the clue. I'm not quite sure why I'm supposed to think I murdered the others, other than crazy Clown says I did. It IS kind of freaky though.

A little later I hear (paraphrased)

[NPC] Rotting Husk: ҸҦЂҨЋҜЏЮѾ҂ҖҒҸҦЂҨЋѾ҂ҖҒҸЉѪѺ ѺЉЉ??
[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Î*νακείμενοχωρίςνόημαγιατ

So the zombie and the Coralax are speaking the same language? That's weird. Exploring the mission further, I never do find the Coralax.

But I find a telephone. And it's ringing. This is very weird.


A surreal discovery

The phone isn't clicky, but it has some interesting dialog, and destroying it satisfies the garbled mission objective and gave me the "Phone Conversation" clue where Event Horizon expositions about the dead god Mot buried beneath Dark Astoria.

This mission left me confused and creeped out, but I think that was the intent. The mission exit popup sums it up perfectly:




Mission 5
Briefing: On the radio with Event Horizon, he blames himself for what happened to Haley (with some justification considering he sent us to Schism). He wants to show me something, but won't explain what. My danger sense is tingling at this point but I have to see it through. After I accept the mission, the second part of the briefing is even MORE ominous.

Mission title: "Meet Event Horizon" doesn't seem like a good name for this mission, considering I've already met him before. Though it occurs to me that perhaps it has some kind of double meaning, and I'm about to find out I actually did murder everyone and have crossed a moral event horizon without realizing it.

Mission objective is also "Meet Event Horizon". I'd suggest you reword either the mission title or the objective in order to avoid repetition.

Just inside the building I find Event Horizon. He's being guarded by two civilians who appear to be hostile. It occurs to me that perhaps killing the two civilians is intended to cause me to immediately cross the moral event horizon.

Looking back at the morality of this arc, it's labeled "Heroic". As a hero, should I attack the civilians? Probably not. But...there is no mechanical way to not do so other than quit the story arc.

I have a bad feeling about continuing here, but decide to see it through. As I'm attacking one of the civilians, he says:

[NPC] Civilian Mace: Why are you attacking us?

...reinforcing the idea that doing this is wrong. Meanwhile, Event Horizon says:

[NPC] Event Horizon : Ah, Helen Highwater, right on time. Have you seen what's happening here?

There is an extraneous space at the end of Event Horizon's name. But freeing him gives me a "Find Event Horizon again" objective, so perhaps this extra space is some sort of trickery to allow Event Horizon to appear multiple times in this mission. After I rescue him, he also says:

[NPC] Event Horizon : A question we should always ask ourselves: Is what I'm doing right? Whose side am I on?

This is a question I already had. At this point I'm regretting freeing him. I'm pretty concerned about what the next objective will entail.

While exploring I heard some people and zombies say:

[NPC] Dry Chamber: Urrrrr......
[NPC] Civilian Mace: Get ready! They're coming!
[NPC] Dry Chamber: Hold the barricades! Don't let them get to the children!
[NPC] Civilian Mace: Barhah!

I *think* the third and fourth lines are mixed up and the zombie should say "Barhah!" and the civilian should say "Hold the barricades". Though what's happening here is sufficiently surreal that I could be wrong.

Thankfully, the next encounter with Event Horizon, I find him guarded by some zombies, that I don't mind beating up. Event Horizon's dialog goes on about philosophy, but his monologue about predestination and the illusion of free will is ultimately only a justification for amoral behavior. Ominously, he says that Schism understands this.

I find Event Horizon for a third time and now he's a Nictus in dwarf form, and we fight.


Helen reaches the final Event Horizon


His dialog tries to mess with my mind, saying:

[NPC] Event Horizon: You see monsters as people... people as monsters...

Now I'm even less sure about whether that transposed dialog catch was right or wrong.

Debriefing: insane babbling from .. Haley? possessed Haley? Not sure. "inacosmbliss" maybe should be "inacosmicbliss". There are three spaces in between various words in the insane rant that doesn't match the formatting of the rest of the text, which is devoid of spaces; not sure if this is deliberate or a typo.

Souvenir: I love the souvenir. Good choice for the item to use and it's really well written.

Overall
I had a lot of trouble deciding what I thought about this arc. I felt it didn't make sense and parts of it confused the heck out of me, but at the same time I thought parts of it were compellingly evocative and disturbing.

I don't like that we never really succeed at rescuing Haley, but this isn't an unreasonable outcome by the conventions of a horror story.

I really liked the creepy atmosphere that the story set up, the constant references to the obscuring fog that blankets everything, and the generally downbeat tone that all the writing does a good job of conveying (EVERYTHING is negative except "Haley is smiling", which is repeated twice and ends up seeming even more disturbing by comparison).

Several elements of missions 4 and 5 made me really wonder: did I really murder Haley? Is it really my fault? Am I about to do something completely unredeemable? I started thinking about whether Event Horizon's name had some kind of symbolism, and his philosophical diatribes made me think further about what was going on. I was a bit disappointed that these themes were not really explored more deeply, actually. The clown accuses me of murder, and Event Horizon gets me to attack the innocent civilians, but there's really no follow-up to either action that either vindicates me or damn me for what I did.

Mission 4 was quite confusing to me; I didn't get the significance of the hieroglyphics in the speech, and the dialog from the NPCs seemed calculated to be confusing but didn't seem to have much deeper meaning. I'm guessing the Great Herald and lesser Heralds were meant to be minions of Mot or something, but I'm not sure what all the other stuff meant. Escaping via the telephone sort of didn't make sense at all either, but also seemed pretty cool; I lean a little more towards the "cool" side for that element. It was a really surreal and confusing mission and the arc seems somewhat self-aware of this fact. It's pretty neat, but I think it needs to have more significance. Is this the dream of the sleeping dead god? Is this some kind of acid trip in my own subconscious due to my guilty feelings over failing Haley? What's the significance of the Coralax and the Tuatha and the weird symbol-speech? As presented, it's confusing and surreal and it felt like weird stuff was added mostly to make it more confusing and surreal. There is definitely some coolness factor to that, but I think it needs more meaning and/or symbolism.

The three encounters with Event Horizon in mission 5 were interesting, but really the first one was the best, and the later ones had trouble living up to that. This might be because I had worked myself up into a frenzy thinking that killing the civilians (to rescue Event Horizon #1) was the point where my hero finally crosses the line, and I truly "meet" the moral Event Horizon. I half expected to discover that all the zombies I killed were actually normal humans, or that I really did murder Haley and Schism, or some equally horrifying revelation. This scared the crap out of me, but what actually happened after that didn't seem nearly as scary as what I had been afraid of, so was a little bit of a let-down. (Stupid overactive imagination.) Event Horizon's final fight is okay, but I feel like it could maybe be better if it brought more closure to some of the loose threads. Among these are: what really happened to Haley, what it means to be killing the "civilians" in mission 5, and maybe what is motivating Event Horizon to do this anyway?

Also, what was the deal with the unusually small zombies in mission 1 anyway? I never saw them again and I had totally expected to find out that someone was reanimating small children or something equally awful.

Anyway, the arc was a thought-provoking experience. After much indecision, I ended up rating it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352
Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

In Pursuit of Liberty re-review
Arc ID: 221702
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Canon Related
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 45-54
Warnings: EBs, Extreme EBs, Extreme Bosses, Extreme Lieutenants, Enemies with custom powers

The premise is to help a child turn into a hero. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on difficulty +0 x0. The contact is Ms Liberty. This is my second run through of this arc, so I may refer back to some of my earlier comments.

Mission 1
Briefing: Seems to be the same briefing as my previous run through, so my same comments apply (see previous review). Needs editing; she still rambles, she still inexplicably says "there's not much time!" when you're about to travel back in time. I still wonder why Ms. Liberty doesn't save the girl herself, since she IS a hero after all?

I like the change in the objective names. I also like that the bad guy's name has changed, but I do still think there are way too many people named "Liberty" in the story; I'd really suggest changing some of them to reduce confusion, if you can.

I rescued Agent Liberty and with her help rescued Little Liberty and beat Vito Marcone, the mission's boss. Vito's description could use some work, currently it says "Vito is the most evil of all the Family leaders. He was once sent to prison by Statesman. So, he hates him and all he represents." These lines don't quite work together; "the most evil" and "sent to prison" are kinda different in tone. I imagine Statesman sends a lot of bad guys to prison, so that wouldn't be something that proves Vito is especially evil. Perhaps just drop the "most evil" part and say "Vito was once sent to prison by Statesman. Ever since, he's hated Statesman and all he represents."


Police Woman and Agent Liberty saving Little Liberty from the Anti-Liberty League


Still not quite sure why the Family has a "Family Tree" in the safe; it still contradicts the "Note to Vito" which has MAL say that Vito doesn't need to know why the child is important.

Debriefing: It's kind of immersion breaking for Ms Liberty to remind you to read your clues; I'd suggest cutting that line. This debriefing is pretty short and could use some more writing, too; maybe Ms Liberty could explain a little more about the significance of saving little Liberty.


Mission 2
Briefing: This mission is still basically the same as the first one, go back in time to rescue little Liberty. Since it is established by the "Family Tree" that the little girl is actually the grand daughter of Miss Liberty, I have to ask, why didn't Miss Liberty or Maiden Justice or Statesman himself save little Liberty?

I still don't think "Find the Treasure" is a good title for this mission. As I wrote before, the hero's main motivation should be to save the girl.

The mission basically plays identically to my first run through it, so my same comments apply. It still needs a bit more to do in it, and I still don't think stealing a costume would really prevent someone from becoming a hero.

Mission 3
Briefing: Seems identical to my first run through.

I still think the mission title of "Find the Book" is odd; the main goal should be to rescue the girl. Maybe the contact should explain why the book is important. But in the actual briefing, Ms Liberty basically implies the book isn't important, so it seems weird that finding the book should be a required objective.

On this run through, the Evil Garden Dwellers spawned kind of weirdly ... there were a lot of grey-con level 45 Devouring Earth, and just a few level 49s. This may be a bug in how MA is spawning mobs, not sure. On the bright side there were no Devouring Pyriss spawns.

I rescued the girl, beat up Fern Fatale, and found the book. I still think "display case" is the wrong choice of glowy for the book, it should be a bookcase graphic.

The journal says that Liberty Rose is "destined one day to defeat MAL"; where is this prophecy from, anyway? The journal is just supposed to be Miss Liberty's diary, and she doesn't have precognition or anything.

Mission 4
Briefing: Into the future to find Liberty Rose's swords. Since Liberty Rose is grown up now and becoming a hero, why doesn't she get her swords herself, instead of having her aunt send someone to get them? That would be more dramatically appropriate for a vision quest to find and fulfill your destiny.

Inside the mission, there were a bunch of Rogue Fortunata mobs that spawned at 42 instead of 50 for some reason.

I found the swords in a coffin by the city hall; I'm still puzzled as to why you used a coffin graphic for the swords. Wouldn't a weapon rack be more appropriate?

I rescued Statesman after finding the swords. But when I free him, he says:

[NPC] Statesman: Thanks! Take this note and the swords to Liberty Rose. They are hidden near the ruins of City Hall.

...which doesn't make sense considering I found the swords first. Maybe should be rewritten so it makes sense either way.

I still think it is weird that Statesman (a) is being held captive by 2 minions that would never really be able to capture him, and (b) does not seem worried that all of Paragon City has been destroyed around him and occupied by evil villains.

Mission 5
Briefing: I still think it is kind of weird that Liberty Rose, despite having her costume AND her swords now, still needs me to rescue her, and needs me to beat MAL. This really undermines her "destined one" status. I mean, if she is "destined" to defeat MAL, shouldn't she beat MAL on her own? As it is, it seems more like I am defeating MAL.

I see some back story was added for MAL's motivations, which is nice. It's all presented in the form of Ms Liberty's briefing, though; would be nicer to learn it along the way during the arc (maybe via clues or something), rather than having it all simply told to us near the end.

I freed Liberty Rose (I skipped Agent Liberty and Liberty Storm) and fought MAL. Liberty Rose was an EB and MAL was only a Boss, so this was actually a pretty easy fight; I think maybe MAL should be at least the same rank as the allies.


Police Woman and Liberty Rose against MAL and his robots


Overall
Although I did see some changes you made in response to my feedback, it seemed like there were a lot more things that I had problems with that were basically the same between both runs. So I'm a little puzzled as to why you asked me to look at it again; I still have a lot of the same concerns.

I still believe the use of time travel in this plot was confusing. It's still confusing to have 6 characters named Liberty in this arc. I still don't understand why Ms Liberty doesn't go help Liberty Rose herself.

My biggest problem with the arc right now are plot problems. The initial premise of missions 1 and 2 (where you go back in time) doesn't make sense to me; I don't find it believable that Ms Liberty, Miss Liberty and Statesman would all forget about their niece/granddaughter/great-granddaughter and neglect to rescue her for 7 years (until I go back in time to help). I'm still kind of unclear on what Liberty Rose's "real" origin was, before MAL started messing with it? I kind of think the idea is that Liberty Rose would've become a real hero if it weren't for MAL, and I'm intervening only to counteract whatever MAL is doing to mess up her origin ... or is this the idea? As it stands, having me find all of Liberty Rose's stuff for her, rescue Liberty Rose, then killing MAL for her, doesn't seem to fit with the prophecy that she (not me) is destined to defeat MAL.

To fix these problems would require changing the plot quite a bit, so I'm not sure you would be OK with that. For example you could avoid the question of why Ms Liberty (and friends) don't go back in time to help by making the contact someone else; or maybe Liberty Rose is a "long lost" relation that none of the heroes knew about, or maybe MAL somehow erased all memory of Liberty Rose from her relatives' minds. Or you could cut the "back in time" missions entirely and start the first mission in the present. Something like that; as it's currently presented, it just doesn't seem to make sense that one of the many heroes that Liberty Rose is related to, hasn't saved her in the intervening 7 years.

I do think some of the background details have improved since my last run, but I still think the plotting needs work, and a lot of things were still unchanged, so many of the comments I made in my previous review still apply. So I felt I still should rate this arc the same, 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

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My queue is currently:

@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352
Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

This sounds like lots of fun! I probably can't make it at noon most weekends (I usually am busy with RL chores around then) but I do have alts on Triumph and may drop in occasionally.

Just as a point of fact, Teen Phalanx Forever! has missions that are level 20, 20, 25 and 30, and so is probably a better fit for "DO Range Arc (15-25)" than "SO Level Arc (25-40)". However you want to label it is fine, though, I know it's kind of weird to have the levels escalating like that. (It's meant to represent the player leveling up with the team.)

Also, many thanks to the nice people who spoke up for Teen Phalanx, Flower Knight TF and Celebrity Kidnapping.

I spent some time taking screen shots for the contest, couldn't resist sharing some of them.



At +0 x6 difficulty, Jinkenzo had a rifle platoon with him.




I love the color of the sky and the trees in the background, I thought it looked like a painting.




An encounter with Perogan's resident mad scientist.




A battle against the ninja.




I thought this action scene looked really dynamic.




This was a really good shot of Gaki-onna.




Gaki-onna and Flower Knight.

* Best TO Range Arc (1-15)

Nuclear in 90: The Fusionette Task Force #58363 @Cavatina

* Best DO Range Arc (15-25)

Cutthroat Competition #10171 @Frozen Northman

* Best SO Level Arc (25-40)

Escalation #6143 @FemFury

* Best Epic Level Arc (40-50)

Found this too tough to call.

* Best Comedy Arc

Becky's Revenge #60197 @New Age Ronin

* Best Serious Arc

Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name.... #178774 @Silvers1

* Best Short Arc (1-3 missions)

Becky's Revenge #60197 @New Age Ronin

* Best Multi-Part Arc (2+ arcs, list all for this category)

The Lost Choir #123675, 136959, 141011 @MrSquid

* Best Foreign Language Arc

Pass. (Haven't played any; even Pagkagising ng Kululuwa was in English)

* Best use of Mechanics

The Next War on Drugs #245042 @arachrodragon