PoliceWoman

The Consequences of War - Part II review
Arc ID: 241496
Keywords: Challenging, Canon Related, Drama
Morality: Neutral
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme bosses, extreme lieutenants

The continuation of "The Consequences of War - Part I" (arc 227331). The premise is working with a team of heroes to battle Rikti during the Rikti war. I played a heavily IO'd 50 AR/dev blaster on difficulty 1. The contact is a custom hero, the (new) leader of the SG that the story follows.

Mission 1
Briefing: Does a good job of describing the situation without relying too much on the player having done the previous arc (though I do like the "*As narrated in Part I" footnote, which feels very comic booky). The contact believes someone in Vanguard is feeding defense information to the Rikti and sends me to stop this person.

Inside the mission: not sure if it was chance or intentional placement, but a Rikti Communications Officer being the first thing I ran into was quite fitting for the story; both confirming the contact's suspicions of a Vanguard traitor and fitting the idea that they're transmitting to the Rikti.

Found the Vanguard traitor, who spawned as an EB for me. His description says he's "lucky you're on the heroes' side", but the arc is flagged neutral, so potentially I could be playing a villain.

Fighting the Vanguard traitor, he seemed to be energy blast/force fields and he ran away at low life. I was mostly winning against him, as I'm highly accurate and have web grenade and caltrops to slow down his escape; but then he Detention Fielded me (he did this 3 times over the course of our combat) and ran away while I was "Only Affecting Self", causing me to fail the mission. This was pretty annoying because there's really not much you can do about Detention Field (other than bring more players); you might consider cutting that from his powersets unless it's your intention that he should be able to escape this way.


Police Woman: Hey! What's this bubble thing! That's cheating!
Vanguard Traitor: Feets don't fail me now!!


Fail debriefing: The contact says he sent some Vanguard Rangers that he knows "personally" to intercept the traitor's escape. This seems dangerous considering he already knows at least some of Vanguard has been compromised.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact says that Vanguard has confirmed the information I "got from the traitor", but since I didn't actually defeat the traitor, this doesn't quite make sense. (Possibly this should be rephrased, or the previous mission could be adjusted so the traitor doesn't run away.) He wants me to go to an abandoned circus to destroy some Rikti devices.

Inside the mission: it's a pretty big outdoor map and as a result I end up stealthing around most of it looking for the devices and the heroic allies.

I destroyed a couple jammers, then found and freed Captain Superior, who monologued a bit about trouble at the hospital (also giving me a clue to that effect, which was a nice touch). Based on his dialog, he should run off to reinforce the hospital, but he just stands there after freed (I believe this is a vagary of how hostage rescues work on outdoor maps).

Found and rescued Billy Bad Boy, who says:

[NPC] Billy Bad Boy: Police Woman, those are some awesome moves, dude. Let's go put some smackdown on the rest of 'em!

...and starts following me, but he also gives the "Billy's Invitation" clue, which says "When we're done helpin' the Capster at the hospital, you and me gotta hang. Gonna split now, though." Looks inconsistent; is he meant to help in this mission (making the clue wrong) or run off to help at the hospital (making the dialog wrong)?

I destroyed 3 jammers and searched the whole (fairly large) map twice and couldn't find the 4th. Not sure if I just missed it, or what. They're pretty big, though; I wonder if one somehow spawned inside a building or something. I ended up resetting the mission to try again.

On my second try at this mission the 4 jammers were much easier to find and I got them all.

Debriefing: Not too bad, but seems a little odd that Captain Superior would debrief us but wouldn't mention what happened with the situation at the hospital that he ran off to take care of during the mission.

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, now Captain Superior starts talking about the hospital battle (though I think he should at least mention this in passing during mission 2's debriefing). The briefing is pretty nicely written; though, I kind of think Captain Superior (who "bailed out" of mission 2 early) should've accomplished something in the time he gained by heading to the hospital before I did? Or perhaps it's the intent that Captain Superior gathered the info in mission 3's briefing in that time. This is maybe nitpicky.

The contact mentions time urgency in the briefing three times ("1000 Rikti minutes away" "Time is too precious" and "quicker you can evacuate, the better"); but the mission isn't a timed mission. Maybe it should be.

Mission entry popup: calls this a "MASH" unit, but I believe this is inappropriate, since the hospital is a permanent building. (M is for "mobile" in MASH.) (Very nitpicky)

Mission objectives: "Find Nurse Turner-Hayes" is among the objectives, but Turner-Hayes has not been mentioned in the story yet, so I'm not sure who this is or why she needs to be found. Also I find it curious that there's no objective like "X patients to evacuate" considering the mission is called "Evacuate the Lower Floors of the Hospital" -- unless "2 Heroes to Find" and "Vanguard soldier" are the objectives meant to represent this. Even if so, a phrase like "X patients to evacuate" might be a little more evocative of an evacuation mission.

Inside the mission: Found a Vanguard Soldier who says:

[NPC] Vanguard Soldier: You may kill me, but I'll take half of you with me first!

But he is in the "surrender" animation (kneeling, hands laced on back of head), which doesn't fit with his bold statement. Should have a "fighting" animation (or else a different line).

Upon inspection, the "Vanguard Soldier" is actually a repainted Longbow (in purple and white) and not in a proper Vanguard uniform at all. Maybe you should be using actual Vanguard models or costume pieces? Their background info does explain that they aren't equipped like modern-day Vanguard, which sort of makes sense, I guess.

Although the Vanguard soldier says stuff like:

[NPC] Vanguard Soldier: If you'll cover me, we can take these shellheads!
[NPC] Vanguard Soldier: I'm glad you got here, Police Woman. The rest of my squad's upstairs, and they need help fast!

...when a Rikti patrol attacked me, he didn't seem to help at all, even if the Rikti got really close to him. His dialog seems to suggest he should help fight Rikti (but he doesn't currently), but the mission objective of "Get the Vanguard soldier to safety" seems to suggest I should just lead him out. This seems a bit inconsistent; you may want to clear up whether he's a combat ally or a hostage to escort out.

Later in the mission I found a battle between "Original Vanguard" and Rikti; I jumped in and helped the Vanguard guys win the battle, but being the remnants of a battle, they wouldn't follow me out like the Vanguard I found earlier. I'm not sure how to reconcile this with my mission to "Evacuate the Lower Floors"; I should be getting these guys out of the hospital, but I don't think there's a good way to convert a battle into something like that. Maybe these should be more Vanguard hostages held captive by Rikti, but both doing fighting animations and dialog (but not actually fighting). Though if you have a lot of these, maybe they should either become allies (who help rescue the rest of the hostages) or else just leave from where they get rescued (instead of requiring multiple hostages to be led to the door).

I also noticed in this mission, Rikti talk intelligibly, while in mission 2 they were still talking in pictoglyphs. This felt a little inconsistent until I noticed "The Rikti Decoder" clue, which apparently was issued to me at the beginning of the mission. Nice connection with arc 1 here also.

I found Energy Blastion and rescued him. Before I rescued him (I think as his "active" text), he said:

[NPC] Energy Blastion: ...Police Woman, good! If you can handle these, I want to go find Empathy real quick before I go help Cap.

This seems a rather unnatural thing to say while I'm in the process of rescuing him. I think this line should be split up between a "before I'm rescued" line and an "after rescue" line; something like:

<before rescue>
[NPC] Energy Blastion: ...Police Woman, good thing you're here!

<fight scene>

<after rescue>
[NPC] Energy Blastion: Thanks for the assist! I've got to get to Empathy! It sounded like they're in trouble up there!
<he runs away>

I rescued Commissioner G in a similar way. (Incidentally, his description, while going into great detail about the way he's dressed, doesn't seem to say much about his history or powers.) I can't help but notice both Energy Blastion and Commissioner G left at the same time as an ambush arrived; it strikes me as a little odd for these heroes to leave me in the middle of a fight like that. Consider not having an ambush triggered by their rescue? Maybe switch the ambush to a different objective.

I had missed Nurse Turner-Hayes on the first floor and ended up backtracking to rescue her and lead her out, which completed the mission.

I like the clues I got from Turner-Hayes (referring to Dr Lexis, who is "upstairs") and from Blastion (referring to Empathy, also "upstairs") which hint at things in the next mission. Commissioner G's "A Quick Breather" clue struck me as a little off-key, though; he says

"Life's too damned short. I think it's time for me to go look up the ex. Maybe take her and my daughter on a cruise or something."

This makes it sound like Commissioner G is deserting (to go off and do these things instead of fight Rikti), which I don't think is your intent. Maybe change "I think it's time for me to go look up the ex" to "After the fighting's over, I think I'll go look up the ex".

Though, thinking about this mission, rescuing the various heroes did not really make it feel like I was evacuating the hospital; not nearly as much as rescuing the Nurse, anyway. You might consider adding some more doctors, nurses and/or patients to rescue (to make it feel more like evacuating the hospital).

You might also think about dropping Commissioner G from this mission; the heroes don't seem that strongly connected to this mission (you basically rescue them and they leave; nurse or doctor NPCs would've worked just as well), and while I think you want at least one SOLUS hero here to "carry the flag", Commissioner G seems a little less connected to the story than does Energy Blastion. Or alternatively, the SOLUS heroes could join up with you to help clear the Rikti out of the hospital. Up to you, though.

Debriefing: Though this is a little short, I like how descriptive it is and evocative of how Captain Superior is locked in combat somewhere.

Mission 4
Briefing: Really good briefing, nicely descriptive of what Captain Superior's forces are up to "outside". Basically I'm asked to evacuate the "upper floors" of the hospital now.

I kind of question why it is necessary to split "Evacuate the Hospital" into two separate missions though? Logically, I'd think evacuating the hospital could be a single mission on the hospital map.

I found Dro'Vidt early on; he spawned as an EB for me and I defeated him in a close battle where he called an ambush. I didn't get credit for completing the "Defeat Dro'Vidt" objective until I cleared another nearby spawn though; you might consider making him "Only Boss is required to complete objective". I also noticed that his model clipped pretty badly with the ceiling on this map; not sure you can easily fix that unless you change which model he uses, though.


Police Woman: You're going down, Dro'Vidt, for what you did to Lazon and the others!
Dro'Vidt: ZAAAAAAP!!


Dro'Vidt's dialog about "Eliminate heroes" and "Achieved" is a little ominous, as is his clue.

I found and rescued Empathy, who left as soon as I freed her. I thought her dialog and her clue seemed a bit inconsistent. She says the following:

[NPC] Empathy: I. Have. Had. Enough. If you want to die, be my guest!
[NPC] Advanced Drone: Assistance: Too late.
[NPC] Empathy: Police Woman, they deserve exactly what they gave our friends. Cut loose. I won't stop you.
[NPC] Empathy: If Cap's pulling us, it must be bad. Be careful, Police Woman. I'll see you down there.

...but her clue, "A Reassuring Smile", has her show me a picture and say "This is me, my husband, my son and Captain Superior at Disney World. Aren't they the three handsomest guys you've ever seen?" While each of these scenes is nice on its own, they are both very different in tone, and the fact that they're in such close proximity makes them feel like they don't fit together. I mean, she just said "Kill these scum!" then "Lookit our vacation pictures!" only seconds apart. I'd suggest changing her clue in mission 4 to more closely match the attitude she displays in her dialog; and maybe move the character-building "vacation pictures" clue to a different mission (a quieter one where the heroes have some time to talk about life rather than fight for their lives). This might require her to make an appearance in one of the earlier, calmer missions though.

Found and rescued Dr Sarah Lexis. Her description says something about "she became your contact by default" which is weird because my contact is Captain Superior. After rescuing her, she just stood in place (I kind of expected her to run away like the others). Her clue does say "Go ahead and get down there. I'll join you as soon as I take care of a couple of thing." (should be "things") but a Rikti ambush shows up right after I rescue her, so really she shouldn't stay in place.

Mission exit popup: says "Saving dozens of civilians and injured heroes is great" ... but the mission did not actually have me save any civilians. Perhaps it's meant to be implied; but I think it would feel more like saving dozens of civilians if you can rescue at least a couple civilian hostages.

Debriefing: mentions that "the rest of the heroes on their way to meet Statesman"; unless I missed it somewhere, I think this is the first time Statesman has been mentioned. Since this debriefing is purely the player's own introspection (Captain Superior is still out of contact), maybe this needs to be mentioned in an earlier briefing in order for the player to be able to know it.

The debriefing kind of ominously hints that the hospital building might have just fallen on the SOLUS heroes that were defending it.

Mission 5
Briefing: Well, Captain Superior is still gone, but apparently I decide on my own initiative to go and rescue the SOLUS heroes defending the hospital. Seems reasonable.

The briefing also says I need to "stop Commander Hro'Dath once and for all". I don't think Hro'Dath has been mentioned anywhere before this (unless I missed it); considering this mission is something my character decides to do on her own, it's not clear why I should know this name. He needs to be mentioned earlier (maybe one of Captain Superior's last radio transmissions could mention "OMG! It's Hro'Dath!" - well, paraphrased).

I like the mission title of "Find the SOLUS Heroes and Defeat the Rikti".

Hro'Dath is the first objective I find on the ruined Atlas map. I decide to take a crack at him with no allies to see what would happen. I actually managed to beat him (using 3 purple inspirations), but he ran quite a distance from his original spawn point; killing him didn't actually complete the "Defeat Hro'Dath" objective, I ended up having to go back to his spawn point and clearing the rest of his group (somehow I had managed to pull him away from a Rikti lieutenant he was with). You might want to make him "Only Boss required to complete objective".

Hro'Dath had some more ominous dialog about having destroyed the SOLUS collective. Hmm, thinking about this, I moved over to the City Hall where I found several glowies representing the dead bodies of the various SOLUS heroes. Wow, I guess there weren't any allies to find, after all.


Police Woman: Oh no, not Captain Superior! NOOOOOOOOOOO!


The various clues you get from each one are nicely written. I definitely like the connection between "Blastion's Request" and "Eric Moore's Wedding Band", as well as between "A Reassuring Smile" and "The Moore Family Photograph"; with each pair of clues being linked by an item the player sees during the story arc, I found these to be the most poignant.

In "The Final Moments of the SOLUS Collective" clue, "you move heroic remains to cover" sounds awkward, maybe rephrase to "you move the remains of the heroes to cover". This clue is well written and very sad.

Mission exit popup: "That was easy compared to finding the remains of your six friends." By my count there were only five? (Captain Superior, Billy Bad Boy, Energy Blastion, Empathy, Commissioner G.)

Debriefing: "last six heroes" should be "last five heroes". I'm guessing this is an editing mistake due to cutting a character (maybe Penthouse?) from the story. Good wrap-up of the story though, and epitaph for the SOLUS team.

Souvenir: "last six" should be "last five". "six SOLUS survivors" maybe should also be "five" (not sure if Penthouse got written out of arc 1 too).

Overall
I found the ending tragic and moving. I'm dismayed that destroying the SOLUS SG was the Rikti plan all along (so we were tricked into falling into their trap) but I think the arc had to end this way, so can't really fault it. The little personal touches in the clues were very nice. The writing in the briefings and debriefings was very strong.

Some things I had problems with: In the first mission it seemed way too easy for the traitor to get away; an EB with detention field is going to be able to escape most soloers.

Second mission felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the arc and overly long (though this may be because it's a big outdoor map and I had to complete it twice); the brightly lit circus/city map seemed rather at odds with the grim tone of the later missions. Maybe consider using a different "Ruins" map instead? Also, while destroying the jammers seems important at the time, it seems to have little connection with the plot of the rest of the arc (which is all about the hospital fight). This mission might be a candidate to either be cut, or replaced (maybe with a "downtime" mission where Empathy can logically show you her vacation photos and Commissioner G can talk about how he wants to patch things up with his ex).

Evacuating the hospital (missions 3 and 4) didn't really feel that much like actually evacuating a hospital. I think I'd be happier if there were more civilians to rescue (like Nurse Turner-Hayes and Dr. Lexis); as it is, I actually rescued more SOLUS characters than patients or medical staff, which didn't seem quite right. Also, the SOLUS heroes did not actually participate that much in the earlier missions; they seemed more like cameo appearances. I basically rescued them, then they took off (though most gave some nice clues for the trouble). I initially was thinking they should be written out (and replaced with civilian hostages) but since they are important in the final mission, maybe they should be given a bigger role in the earlier missions. Perhaps make some of them allies to help out, but have it mentioned in the debriefing that they go reinforce Captain Superior?

I gave this arc 4 stars; it was tempting to give more (I really liked the ending) but I did have some issues with earlier missions.

---

My queue is currently:

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EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
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@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
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Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308

Pagkagising ng Kaluluwa ("Awakening of the Soul") review
Arc ID: 230100
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Origin Story
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: Custom power selections

The premise is to "Challenge the Filipino martial arts masters of the Limang Paaralan". I'm not really sure what Limang Paaralan is, but this sounded like a job for a 50 MA/SR scrapper on difficulty 4.

The contact is a custom character in a business suit.

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

The contact introduces himself as an instructor for Limang Paaralan, which turns out to be a martial arts school in the Philippines. The briefing does a good job of explaining the situation and what the various Tagalog terms mean. He offers to let me take the "Pagkagising ng Kaluluwa", which is the martial arts academy's most difficult test. As a martial arts scrapper, of course I'll try it!

Second part of briefing: the contact explains it's just a simulation programmed into Architect Entertainment, and it reproduces a particular test taken while some rebel martial artists were trying to take over the martial arts academy. Hmmm. Seems a little different than what I signed up for, but we'll see where it goes.

Inside the mission are a large number of good looking custom martial artists with descriptions that are both good and fairly educational (I now know a lot more about Filipino martial arts). I have a lot of glowies to click as part of "searching" the base, and need to defeat the leader of the rebel martial artists.

It's awfully quiet in here so far, though; you might consider inserting a patrol or two, or some static boss spawns or something, with some dialog to help establish the setting.

Searching the 3 crates that are in the objectives, the first one gave me the "Mysterious metal parts" clue, but the next two don't seem to add much more. The third one did trigger an ambush though.

I found and beat up Guro Kulog, who seemed a decent evil martial artist (albeit elec melee/storm based), and eventually found the whiteboard that revealed that someone was assembling the metal parts into some kind of weapon. This triggered a new objective, to defeat Kapitan Remalante.

Kapitan Remalante was in True Limang Paaralan, which seemed weird as he is clearly working with Dahon and Kulog, and all the other mobs are in Rogue Limang Paaralan. Remalante is also not mentioned in the briefing where the important members of the "splinter group" are described, which seems a little odd because he acts like he can give Kulog orders, and Kulog is important enough to get mentioned.

I like how defeating Remalante gives you a "keycard" that opens a secret door (in the clues, anyway). A neat way to bridge to the next mission.

Debriefing is pretty good and explains a lot of what's going on.

Mission 2
Briefing: Does a good job of explaining what happens next. The arc is using the idea that you are re-creating (in Architect Entertainment) historical events surrounding a power struggle between instructors at this martial arts school. This style initially struck me as strange, but I think the way it's presenting the story is working.

Inside the mission: Defeating Guro Dahon was my only objective, so I simply ran past all the other martial artists until I found Dahon. She had some decent dialog, then surprised me by whipping out pistols and shooting at me. I thought this was a quite weird thing for a martial arts master to do, but she had a pretty detailed description that helped explain it.


Olivia Q: You won't get away with this, Dahon!
Guro Dahon: Let me demonstrate the ancient Filipino martial art of ... GUN FU!


Defeating Dahon triggered an objective to rescue Guro Niyebe, one of the other martial arts masters Dahon had kidnapped. No problem! I eventually found Niyebe (and I liked how she spawned deeper in the map than Dahon, thus requiring no backtracking) and freed her.


Olivia Q: Is rescuing the martial arts instructors part of the standard test?
Guro Niyebe: Not exactly. It's more like extra credit.


Surprisingly, this caused a bunch of Arachnos to spawn; I think one ambush and a Fortunata Chapman somewhere that I now need to defeat, along with escorting Niyebe out of the mission.

I ran into and fought some bosses called "Espada" who were in the "True Limang Paaralan" yet were still aggro. Since they're working for the bad guys, I wonder if they should be in "Rogue Limang Paaralan"?

The Arachnos have some dialog that seems inconsistent; the Arachnos ambush after freeing Niyebe says:

[NPC] Fortunata: Chapman says the meeting's been compromised. We've been instructed to eliminate all targets.

...but when I get down to the ground floor again and find Chapman, she says:

[NPC] Fortunata Chapman: Where is Dahon? Tardiness for this exchange is inexcusable. All squads report in as soon as you find out what exactly is going on here.

If Chapman told the ambush to come in and eliminate everyone, it seems like she should know more about the situation than the above dialog (her "unaware" dialog) would imply.

I like the rest of Chapman's dialog. Though I think you have an extra space between "Eliminate them" and "immediately!"

This mission did a good job of handling triggered objectives; the placement of the new spawns were such that I didn't feel like I had to backtrack at all.

Debriefing: The contact does a good job of explaining why Arachnos showed up to help the rogue Limang Paaralan; apparently it was a part of Dahon's deal to sell special weapons to Arachnos (something that was foreshadowed earlier).

Mission 3
Briefing: It seems that I've foiled the plans of all the bad guys, but to actually pass the Pagkagising, I have to defeat the final martial arts master. This sounds about right for a martial arts test. I think there is an extra space after "defeat" and before "Guro Magsasaka" in the briefing, but I could be wrong.

Inside the mission: I promptly ran into Guro Dahon, who swears to avenge herself on me. This was a pretty nice grudge match and she had good lines. This time she used dual blades instead of pistols and thugs (so I think she was actually a different model) which was a nice touch. She did say the line:

[NPC] Guro Dahon: I will redeem myself in the eyes of Arachnos...starting with destroying the challenger for his meddling.

....which is awkward because my character is female. (I think this is her unaware message; you may need to make it gender neutral, as $hisher won't likely work if she hasn't seen me yet.)

Near the end of the mission I found Guro Magsasaka and fought him for the title. This was a pretty good fight and defeating him completed the mission and the arc.


Olivia Q: I'm ready for the final exam! I can even spell Pagkagising now! Bring it!


Debriefing: A pretty good debriefing where the contact talks a little more about the Pagkagising and the people who prove themselves by passing it.

Overall
This arc did a good job of creating a sense of immersion. Despite the enemies having disparate power sets (not just martial arts, but lots of guys with elemental powers handwaved as "chi" abilities or something), they still felt like part of the same group due to good costumes and background info. Triggered objectives were very effectively used, especially in mission 2. I liked the additional subplot of Dahon going rogue and selling weapons to Arachnos while trying to overthrow the "good" Guros. I also learned an immense amount of info about Filipino martial arts that I never knew before.

Problems I found were mostly nitpicky. Some mobs described as working for Dahon were in "True Limang Paaralan" faction and probably should have been "Rogue Limang Paaralan". Mission 3 felt a little lighter on content than the earlier two, but having Dahon try to get revenge and then having to battle ultimate master Magsasaka was pretty fun nevertheless.

I thought this was a well-written martial arts epic. I gave it 5 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

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EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)
@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352

A Falling Angel review
Arc ID: 133390
Keywords: Complex Mechanics, Magic, Drama
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 40-54; also tagged [HLMA]
Warnings: AVs, extreme EBs, custom power selections.

The arc description is only 'Sometimes the hardest question is, "Who Am I?" ' (followed by some of the old style [XXMA] tags) which says almost nothing about the premise of the story arc. Consider adding additional text to the arc description; as it currently stands, there's not a lot to hook a player who runs across this arc into trying it.

I played a 50 SS/will brute with a moderate amount of IO bonuses. The contact is a custom female character in a trenchcoat with glowing violet eyes.

Mission 1
Briefing: Title should perhaps be in larger font or bold faced, to stand out.

The contact explains she's a vampire and by an accident of birth became a hero (which makes it somewhat odd that she would be recruiting villains for work). She affects a strong accent that I think is meant to be southern US, but she also says she was born overseas, which would seem inconsistent. Despite the accent, I wonder if "wandering" should be "wondering" here. She wants me to break into an Arachnos base and steal a list of base locations.

Second part of briefing: she clarifies she really only cares about the location of a Mu mystic base, but doesn't really explain why. Oh well, the money's good, right?

Mission objectives: although the title of the mission is "Find Base Locations", oddly, I don't have an objective that seems to match with that. Instead I have "Interrogate Researchers"; not quite sure why, since researchers haven't been mentioned in the story yet. (I guess we're meant to assume they know something.)

Found and rescued a Mu Researcher, who turned into a combat ally that I had to lead to the door; it was a bit odd to see him attacking the other Mu with me. I wonder if he should be noncombat? Leading him to the door, he promptly betrayed and spawned a bunch of new mobs (with nice dialog) and a new objective of "Defeat Security".

It wasn't quite clear how to defeat security, so I ended up backtracking back into the mission. Fairly deep in the mission I eventually found "Head of Security", who I defeated; I rather liked his lines when he got low on life:

[NPC] Head of Security: I am surrounded by incompetents. Do I have to do everything myself?
[NPC] Head of Security: I hate you all.

This then triggered a nearby glowy and a "Find information yourself" objective. Got the "Arachnos Research Locations" clue from this and completed the mission. The clue merely says "This is the information you were hired to find" - I think it would be better for player immersion if it gave some details (even if made up) about the various Arachnos bases, perhaps particularly mentioning the location of the Mu base the contact was interested in.

The sequence of objectives was actually pretty neat; though there was a fair bit of doubling back (needing to find the Mu, then lead him to the door, then go back in deep to find the Security Chief). It helped that the map was one of the smaller ones, though.

Debriefing: a little on the short side but I like that she gives you a suitcase full of cash for doing the job.

Mission 2
Briefing: The accent is growing on me, it helps give the contact a distinct "voice". Some significant phrases are in color; though it's not clear why some are in blue and some in green.

I like the "accept" message and her reply to it. Fun.

Inside the mission, the first mobs I run into are Ebon Angel and some Arachnos guards. Their dialog is fun, but they both mention "zombies", which was rather puzzling until I got further into the mission and found some Banished Pantheon guarding a Mu hostage.

Ebon Angel became an Elite Boss ally, which is a bit overpowered against the generic BP zombies we're fighting.


Mega: I hate these Hare Krishnas.
Ebon Angel: Wait, sugah! Let's ask him if he knows something about my origin story!
Mega: Oops, sorry. I think I broke this one.


The Mu hostage had some good dialog; one of the BP said:

[NPC] Rotting Chamber: You cannot be allowed to understand your powers, Ebon Angel..

which isn't a bad line, except it seems a bit out of place for a zombie to say something so lucid. Also, there's an extra period at the end of that line.

Found and rescued Arachnos Security Patrol Member, who gave me a clue called The "Key". In this clue, "It seem the Banished Pantheon" should be "It seems the Banished Pantheon".

I liked the Mu Librarian's lines, too:

[NPC] Rotting Chamber: Your knowledge is a threat.
[NPC] Mu Librarian: If I act dumb, does that help?

Freeing the librarian spawned an objective to protect some research, which I found in the last room where there were some books as a defendable object, along with the Raid Leader. There were also some more talkative zombies who hinted at some dark destiny that Ebon Angel is fated to fulfill.

Protecting the books and defeating the Raid Leader completed the mission, though I never did find the "key"; though the Raid Leader did monologue that the "key is already in the lock". This seems like a plot point that might be important, since the key was mentioned as significant earlier; perhaps there should be a clue to the effect of "The Raid Leader said they already had the key and were about to use it" in case the player misses the dialog.

I did get an "Unbanished Pantheon" clue (which maybe is what the key is being used for, but doesn't explicitly mention the key) and "An Ancient Scroll" which describes a ritual for dimensional travel. In the "Unbanished Pantheon" clue, "interferring" should be "interfering".

Debriefing: a little on the short side. The contact says the BP are trying to start "Armegeddon" (should be "Armageddon"); is this actually definitely stated anywhere? The clues just say they're trying to "break free". Maybe have the contact explain just how this leads to Armageddon? (I'm guessing they'd be trying to release some cosmic horror into the world?)

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact says "the Mu bigshot" is going to be used by the BP as part of their ritual. Although "The Mu Leader" clue does say the BP were after the chief Mu Researcher, the last mission didn't make it clear that the Mu Leader was actually successfully captured by the BP. (The Raid Leader's dialog hints at this, but I think it should be made more clear.)

The contact says she doesn't care about the Mu leader but does want to "chat" with the BP (which I guess would be to defeat some of them) about her personal issues, but the mission title is "Prevent Portal Opening", which differs from what the contact asked. Maybe she should mention that we want to prevent the portal opening because, well, you know. Armageddon.

Inside the mission, I immediately link up with Ebon Angel, who wants me to beat up one of her supergroup "friends". This seems rather unheroic of her, but she's been established as not being particularly heroic as heroes go (her SG label is even "Gray Area"), so maybe is okay.

Rescued "Captured Mu Mystic". In his description, "This the Mu leader who was kidnapped" should be "This is the Mu leader who was kidnapped". Puzzlingly, upon rescuing him I get a clue that says he wasn't needed for this ritual at all. Hmmmm! Danger sense is tingling. Maybe they really want to sacrifice Ebon Angel?

Found my contact's SG-mate, Harlequinne, who Ebon Angel happily helps me defeat. Harlequinne was just a boss, while Ebon Angel was an EB, which didn't seem a very fair fight, especially with me helping. Wondering if Ebon Angel should be downgraded to a boss.


Mega: Good old rock. Nothing beats rock.


Defeating Harlequinne caused the "Prevent Portal Opening" objective to spawn; we knew about the portal being here even before fighting Harlequinne, though, so it's not really clear to me why these two objectives would be linked.

I promptly found Adamastor (my lucky week for encountering him!); he spawned as an EB and had a good monologue about Ebon Angel's dark destiny. One thing I particularly noticed was that he was a bit too tall for the office we're in. Thinking about it, an office building is a weird place for the Banished Pantheon to conduct this ritual; consider choosing a more moody setting, like a graveyard or a cave?


Mega: Watch me 1-shot this EB with a KO Blow to the groin!
Ebon Angel: Umm... undead don't have vital areas, you know that, right?
Mega: Dammit!


Adamastor says stuff like:

[NPC] Adamastor: We knew you would follow us, for we have watched you a long time, Ebon Angel.

I am guessing maybe Ebon Angel is an EB so she can't easily be killed, because she's supposed to be present for dialog like this; but, the player could actually outdistance her and leave her behind, which would cause this dialog to make rather less sense. You might consider rephrasing this so that the mob is talking to the player (who will definitely be there), instead of to Ebon Angel (who might not be there).

Defeating Adamastor caused the mission to complete, so apparently prevents the portal from opening. But it's not clear to me why this would prevent the portal from opening; it didn't seem like Adamastor was actually trying to open a portal. Perhaps needs some explanation, or a separate goal for destroying a portal or defeating a boss shaman that is doing the ritual to open a portal.

Mission exit popup: Oooh, it appears I didn't actually stop the portal from opening, as one is described as opening as I exit. This needs to be made clearer during the actual mission.

I looked back in my clue journal at this point and "The Secret Revealed" indicates the BP were after Ebon Angel all along (which did seem to have some foreshadowing). The phrase "Everything you've done so far has been working towards what they wanted" kind of rubs me wrong, though; it suggests the BP tricked the player into doing this, but truthfully it didn't seem like the BP were actually manipulating me into doing this. It was more like Ebon Angel's curiosity about her own origin drew her into this trap. You might consider rephrasing the clue along those lines or something similar.

Debriefing: it's to the point and kind of works, but a two word debriefing feels much too short to me. Perhaps add some "out of character" text saying something like, As the portal opens and the vortex swallows up Ebon Angel, she says with a startled expression: "Um. Oops?"

Mission 4
Briefing: "Save the World" is a rather weird caption for a villainous mission, but I guess it beats the alternative.

I actually thought Ebon Angel fell into the portal or something, but maybe I misunderstood the exit message in the last mission, as she is giving a briefing here.

She seems happy to have figured out how her powers work, but as an afterthought reminds you how to stop Armageddon by using the ritual from the scroll we found earlier. Though, reviewing my clue journal, I see that "An Ancient Scroll" actually tells how to open a portal, not how to close one. Seems a possible continuity error.

Second part of briefing: I think it's rather funny how little she cares about the Banished Pantheon problem she's created. Wow, she's self-involved! It fits her characterization so far, though.

Mission title: "Close Portal" should perhaps be "Close the Portal".

Inside the mission: it's a huge algae-covered office. I have the objective of 4 rituals to stop.

I eventually figure out that the rituals are the ones with the Spirit masks, partly because they have some dialog; the Spirit masks can't actually do a "magic" looking animation, though, so it is a little hard to tell that they're really the rituals. I wonder if 4 defendable objects might be more suggestive of rituals?

The map is pretty big and it takes me awhile to find and stop all 4 rituals; once I do it, though, the mission is immediately over. This was a little anticlimactic compared to the earlier missions; compare to mission 1, which has a complex sequence of triggered objectives; or mission 3, which has linked objectives, a special boss and an EB.

Debriefing: Ebon Angel seems mildly enthused about the fact that I've saved the world, and she promises to owe me a favor sometime in the future. Not bad, but not super-exciting either. (Maybe another suitcase of money would help. ) "ins't" should be "isn't" here, and there should be a period after Ebon Angel grins at you

Also, despite the fact that we've foiled the current BP plot, now that it's known that Ebon Angel can be used to open portals to evil dimensions, won't she be an obvious target for future Banished Pantheon and maybe CoT plots? It may be worth mentioning how Ebon Angel plans to deal with that - maybe a throwaway line about how she'll be on her guard for that now, or some explanation for why it's a one-time-only sort of thing.

Overall
I liked the way Ebon Angel was characterized; she wasn't exactly likeable, but she definitely had personality! The way the linked objectives were used in the first three missions was pretty good and made those missions more interesting than normal (despite requiring a little backtracking). Although it was a little weird to have zombies with speaking lines, the dialog overall was pretty good.

Although I found the first three missions pretty strong, I thought the final mission (which had much less content, spread over a bigger map) was a bit underwhelming by comparison. The focus was clearly on Ebon Angel's back story (I think this justifiably could use the "origin story" keyword), and the final mission ended up feeling like something of an afterthought. I'd recommend adding some more material to make it more of a "grand finale", or else possibly cutting mission 4 and having mission 3 (which is much more dramatic) be the finale (with minor changes so you don't destroy the world as a side effect).

I felt having Ebon Angel be an EB ally was a bit overpowering against the opposition we faced; though possibly your intent is to make sure she stays alive to "fulfill her destiny". I also found it a little hard to believe Ebon Angel is a hero with how casually amoral she is about having you beat up her SG-mate and how indifferent she is to the danger caused by her personal issues; but there's a lot of groundwork laid for this in her description and early dialog, so I think this actually works.


Anyway, with all that in mind, I thought this was an interesting story (despite it really being focused on Ebon Angel and not on the player) with a lot of good elements. I gave it 4 stars.


---

My queue is currently:

@Bayani - Pagkagising ng Kaluluwa 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)
@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352

Thanks much for trying out Papers and Paychecks!

The Key and the Chain review
Arc ID: 193451
No keywords
Morality: Heroic
Level range: missions are 40-54, but the author description says 22+.
Warnings: AVs, EBs

Premise appears to be helping the Legacy Chain stop the Banished Pantheon from awakening some great evil. I played a 29 archery/dev blaster on difficulty 1. Contact is a Legacy Chain person.

Mission 1
Briefing: Good introduction of the contact, explanation of the Banished Pantheon and their motivations. The contact sends me to recover an artifact that the BP need to awaken a great evil. There's an extra space between "As yet" and the following comma.

I like the "Seize the Spirit Key before the cultists can" mission title. I almost think it should be a timed mission with a name like that.

The briefing says this is a Mu ruin beneath the Rogue Isles. The Oranbega map is full of Banished Pantheon; maybe it would make more sense to have CoT here, with BP invaders (battles or patrols)? (Not required - just an idea.)

Found the Legacy Chain agent that was sent here ahead of me; it's Virgil Tarikoss? Isn't he an evil villain? Although he maybe was once in the Legacy Chain, he doesn't seem like someone they would've sent to check this out. IIRC the Legacy Chain in the Cap SF even warn against him.

I get the "Tarikoss speaks" clue for rescuing him, which is nicely written; I like that it connects to Mr Bocor, another canon magical villain, who has apparently stolen the artifact.

Found the glowy and clicked it to get two clues: "The Key is gone!" which I think was from the glowy itself, and "More difficulties" which I think was the mission completion clue and gives a good explanation of what's going on so far, which I like.

Debriefing: A good debriefing, aside from the contact thanking me for rescuing Tarikoss (which still seems a little weird).

Mission 2
Briefing: A good briefing; the contact wants me to stop a BP ritual and rescue the sacrifice victims. He so strongly emphasizes the time urgency of stopping the ritual that I wonder if this should be a timed mission.

Second part of briefing: "you will need rescue the captives" should be "you will need to rescue the captives".

Nice mission entry popup, does a good job of establishing some atmosphere for the mission.

Rescued 4 hostages; all had identical appearance and dialog. This is okay, but if you have space, consider mixing them up a little for variety.

Initially I thought Adamastor might be too tough for a level 22+ arc. He spawned as an EB for me. Managed to defeat Adamastor through a combination of trip mines, arrows and griefing him onto the friendly ambush (which luckily spawned close by). So maybe he's fine. Fairly good looking Legacy Chain mobs; I want to say they're custom minions but can't tell for sure (if they ARE custom, they're a good match).

Debriefing: hits the high points, but seems a little short (only 2 lines of text). Perhaps mention what happens to the rescued hostages or reiterate that the BP ritual has been interrupted.

Mission 3
Briefing: Good introduction of Mr Bocor and explanation of the stakes. I like the reference to battles between the Legacy Chain and "his agents". Missing a space after "infiltrate the office," and before "you may wish".

Inside the mission: I think it's a little strange that CoT seem to be working for Mr Bocor in this mission; Bocor actually sends player villains against CoT on one of his missions. Maybe needs some explanation. I did run into a few Arachnos mobs too, not sure what they were doing here.

Rescued "Epiphany of Thought" from Arachnos, who became an ally. I thought his dialog:

[NPC] Epiphany of Thought: You realize a hero will come for me, don't you?

...was a little trite, your mileage may vary. (Perhaps he's just trying to be genre-savvy.) He did explain what Arachnos is doing here; apparently making some sort of deal with Bocor. Though this kind of makes the following line:

[NPC] Tarantula: What were you doing snooping around Arachnos property?

...not make as much sense, because isn't this Bocor's base? Or if it's actually Arachnos property, maybe it should use an Arachnos base map. Also, the ally's clue, "The Legacy Chain's agent", refers to him as "archmage of Thought" but the ally's name is Epiphany of Thought. (Admittedly, this is nitpicky stuff.)

I did really like these lines though:

[NPC] Arachnobot: Everyone says Bocor's so "genial," but, come on! The guy sucks out people's souls for fun!
[NPC] Tarantula: Yes, but he does it in a polite, cheerful manner.

Found and fought Bocor, who was represented by a pretty good looking custom mob with reasonable powers (necro/dark I think?). He was fairly tough for me, but I managed to beat him with some heavy inspiration use. His dialog and his clue end up telling me that

[NPC] Mr. Bocor: Really, Arrow Girl, you should be ashamed of yourself.
[NPC] Mr. Bocor: You've been had . . .

....revealing that Tarikoss basically lied about everything and had kept the artifact for himself. I think it is a little unfair to script the player into being fooled by Tarikoss, especially considering Tarikoss is recognizably a villain so should obviously be untrustworthy.

Debriefing: the contact seems incredulous at the idea that Tarikoss might not be a nice guy. (Still seems inconsistent with how Legacy Chain normally act towards Tarikoss.)

Mission 4
Briefing: So now I'm being sent after Tarikoss after all. It's explained that Tarikoss doesn't need a spirit vessel like Adamastor for his ritual, because he can just sacrifice more people to make up for it. Although this explanation helps some, this seems inconsistent with how the ritual was portrayed in mission 2. Mission 2 portrayed it as important for me to take down Adamastor, but if the ritual works as described in mission 4, why couldn't the BP have just sacrificed more people instead of messing with Adamastor?

Second part of briefing: Tarikoss's rituals apparently involves destroying obelisks, another difference from how the BP were using this ritual. Based on the plot so far, though, I think it would be more consistent if the two rituals (which I think are supposed to be the same ritual) were treated as identical? Or are they really different in some fundamental way?

Inside the mission: neat map choice. The map is full of Legacy Chain enemies; although the mission briefing describes these as "foolish and hot-headed mages", I find it hard to believe that so many Legacy Chain are willing to go along with the mass human sacrifice that Tarikoss apparently needs. They're supposed to be a hero group, after all. Perhaps Tarikoss should have his own villain group? Or at least make his minions members of "Rogue Legacy Chain" instead of "Legacy Chain" to distinguish them from the allies. I'd also suggest giving them more dialog to help explain why they're willing to go along with Tarikoss's fairly nihilistic plan; I saw a little of this while rescuing the loyalist mages, but I'd suggest adding more and/or making what they say more fanatical sounding. I think a key motivation of the rogue Legacy Chain is that they feel it's okay to do a little evil in order to stop a big evil (i.e., the ends justify the means) and the dialog should more strongly support this. (Tarikoss's dialog is pretty good in this respect.)

Mission objectives: "Resuce Loyalist of Thunder" should be "Rescue Loyalist of Thunder".

Found and rescued Mr Bocor, who becomes an ally this time because he thinks Tarikoss's plan will end up destroying the world. He spawned as an EB, with lots of pets, which seems pretty powerful for an ally.

Also rescued a lieutenant level (custom) Legacy Chain ally. This completed the "Resuce Loyalist of Thunder", though he was named Stratus of Thunder.

The guards of each Obelisk say:

[NPC] Cirrus of Thunder: By the power of the Key, open the door to the Sleeper!

...which struck me as a little peculiar, because there's just one key, yet there are four obelisks; not all of them could have the key.

I found and fought Virgil Tarikoss, who spawned as an EB; his holds scared me initially, but I managed to break free and beat him up with the help of the allies. I noticed he was stacking Smoke on me, also, which could be pretty rough for some players (I was fortunate to have Targeting Drone for +per).

Where were the hundreds of sacrifices that Tarikoss was supposed to have in order to perform the ritual? I wonder if maybe this mission should be on a "city" map with some civilian hostages representing the hundreds of sacrifices.

Perhaps there should be a glowy or a clue for the Key that is recovered from this mission?

Decent souvenir, but could use some paragraph breaks; currently it's something of a wall of text.

Overall
I liked the overall story, and especially how it connects to some of the canon NPCs and back story. The custom models for the Legacy Chain and Bocor were quite good looking. The premise of the BP wanting to resurrect Mot while the rogue Legacy Chain wanting to travel to Mot and attack him (despite the costs) was interesting.

However, I had a lot of trouble with how Tarikoss was presented as someone that I and the contact initially trust (my first reaction when I saw him in mission 1 was, "Hey, isn't this guy a villain?"), which made being scripted into be "tricked" by him in mission 3 rather hard to swallow. Despite liking the references to canon NPCs like Tarikoss and Bocor, I wonder if it might be better to use an invented Legacy Chain boss rather than Tarikoss, or somehow present the arc as occurring "before" Tarikoss's first betrayal of the Legacy Chain, in order to make it more plausible that the Legacy Chain and the player would fall for this trick. Or alternatively, have the player "see through" Tarikoss's lies much earlier on.

I felt the ritual using the Key was inconsistently portrayed between missions 2 and 4. The story does attempt to explain some of the differences away, but I think it would be more effective if the two missions were more parallel. I also think that having "hundreds of sacrifices" be an adequate substitute for summoning Adamastor raises the question of why the BP didn't do that in the first place. Perhaps some other big undead could be present as a focus for the ritual in mission 4 instead of Adamastor? I'm tempted to suggest someone like Numina or Ghost Widow; or if they're too powerful for the story, a lesser ghost like Kelly Nemmers. This might change your story too much; it's ultimately up to you. But I do think the ritual should be more consistently shown between the two missions.

There was a good amount of stuff to do in each mission, keeping the gameplay interesting. I thought this arc was pretty good overall. I gave it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)
@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565

8/31/2009

Last Monday I solo'd Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through AE story arcs. I first ran through Speeding Through Time, a story about a time-traveling speedster who saves the world; it had a neat story and used time travel in creative ways. I gave it 4 stars.

Then I solo'd through Old Folks Home, a one mission arc where you battle your way through a retirement home full of angry elderly people. This was highly politically incorrect, but had its moments, and I gave it 3 stars.


On Tuesday night I played Kashira (27 db/ninj stalker) on a Sharkhead SF organized on LBX, with a team of

2 dominators
1 brute
3 widows
2 stalkers

In the first mission, we tried to stealth to Barracuda, then freed her, but got wiped out by ambushes. We had to re-do the mission, and on our second try we managed to clear a path to successfully complete it. We had another wipeout in the Shockstorm mission trying to stealth to the end (due to the ambushes that spawn) and yet another wipeout against the Barracuda ambush in the second to last mission (we weren't the type of team that could stand up to an AV with essentially no support). Our persistence finally got us through the SF in 1hr 15mins. Kashira got level 28 while on this SF, and I took Recall Friend in hopes of helping with stealth/TP duties.

After that I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a couple speed TFs organized on 0.o channel; a 7-player ITF finished in 23min 25sec, and an 8-player RSF finished in 33min 25sec.

Finished the night soloing Mega (50 ss/will brute) through an Ouroboros flashback of Willy Wheeler's There's a Sucker Born Every Minute story arc for 12 merits and the Paragon of Vice badge.


On Wednesday night, my main character Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) earned the Power Seller badge (7000 items sold) as a side effect of various market manipulations. Someone was advertising a PvP event called Warburg tag where you try to kill the event organizer in PvP; this sounded fun so I headed over. I got 3 kills on the event organizer before he told me "only one per account please!" So I switched to attacking the people hunting him, and then eventually just attacking anyone I saw. Apparently he was paying people a 10M infl bounty for each kill (which I actually forgot to collect because I was too busy shooting people). Got 67.9 PvP rep while there (which I think must mean 68 kills?) but I'm sure it's all decayed away by now.

From there I went to a RWZ raid where I picked up my 24th bomb credit (I'll probably get my 25th just in time for them to lower the number needed in I16) and 2 merits for the Master-at-arms.

After that I switched to Blackout Girl (7 elec/elec brute) where I accepted an invite to a 6-player pickup team. Turned out this team was all low level (we were like level 5 to 19) and doing an AE farm which seemed to consist entirely of Crazed and Crey lieutenants (I guess the theme is things that start with Cr?). I tried to stick with this team through one run of the mission for the sake of being polite, but I just couldn't do it; I got bored halfway through and excused myself. This did get Blackout Girl to level 8, though, where I took Thunder Strike, a small melee-range AoE.

After escaping the farm, I briefly signed on with a pickup team that had assembled to take down Deathsurge, which gave Blackout Girl 2 merits and the Surging badge.


I had Friday off, and played CoH a lot. I started by soloing Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) through part of Maria Jenkins' Praetorian story arc, defeating Chimera and Shadow Hunter as EBs.

I also played Blackout Girl (8 elec/elec brute) through Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, an AE story arc where you steal diamonds and battle Outcasts in order to impress a girl. It had some typos but was a pretty good arc overall, and I gave it 5 stars.

After that I played Star Amethyst (32 dark/ice defender) on a 7-player Katie Hannon TF, with a team mix of:

2 scrappers
3 defenders (rad, dark, sonic)
1 controller (rad)
1 blaster

The large amount of debuffs we had made the first mission quite easy. In the last mission we had a little trouble because Katie started aggroing on random mobs and starting fights, but after we fought and cleared a few groups around her, she finally allowed herself to be led out. Finished in 34min 1sec and got Star Amethyst to level 33.

Level 33 is when I like to cash in the reward merits my alts have built up, and Star Amethyst spent 260 merits on 13 recipe rolls (at the 35-39 range), receiving:

1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (chance for psi) Wentw=125K
2 Numina's Convalescence (END/HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=10M each
1 Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=10M
2 Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=4.1M each
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=5K
1 Miracle (+recovery) Wentw=70M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi RES) Wentw=3.3M
1 Decimation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (ACC/FEAR/RCHG) Wentw=500K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=2K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=100 (sold for more at vendor)

This was a total yield of 115.132M, or 442.8K infl/merit, which is an extremely good yield. Most of this was due to the Miracle recipe, though I did get several other good recipes as well.

I also burned 1200 tickets on Bronze reward rolls. Bronze recipe rolls mostly yield junk with occasional goodies; the only worthwhile things I got from this were a Doctored Wounds (END/HEAL/RCHG) and a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (TOHITBUFF).

I spent some time crafting IOs for Star Amethyst, slotting a set of 6 Lockdown in her Freeze Ray power, which adds +3.75% ranged DEF (for a total of 17.5% ranged DEF).

After that I played Kyrie Eleison (37 bs/inv scrapper) as an SK on an Imperious TF organized on LB (the successor channel to LBX). Our team was:

1 brute (elec armor)
2 defenders (TA, dark)
2 scrappers
1 corruptor (rad)
1 blaster
1 fortunata

We fought through most stuff and mostly did fine. Though the brute, who was on point, seemed a little depressed that he was dying a lot; truthfully, "tanking" ITFs is pretty hard on meleers due to the cascading DEF debuffs, and I tried to say so. I found my elec armor brute had trouble with these, too; soft capped DEF or 90% RES seems the way to go against Romans. As an invuln scrapper I seemed mostly okay; partly because I had some DEF and decent lethal RES, but mostly because I let the brute go first. The rad corruptor insisted on being SK'd by the lowest mentor, who was 49, which seemed a little greedy, but didn't make a big difference (especially when the 49 ended up hitting 50). We finished in 1hr 2mins; this got Kyrie to level 39.

I crafted a few IOs for Kyrie Eleison, adding two sets of 6 Crushing Impact to her Hack and Disembowel powers, which gives net global bonuses of +14% acc, +10% rchg, +2.5% hp and +5% psi RES.

Later I played Star Amethyst (33 dark/ice defender) through another Katie TF, with

2 tanks
2 controllers
2 defenders
1 scrapper
1 blaster

We blew through it in 27min 20sec. I got 4 merits, because I totally forgot about diminishing returns. The team did go on to kill Jack-in-Irons, though, for another 2 merits.

After that I played Blackout Girl (9 elec/elec brute) on a 5-player lowbie villain team formed on LB channel. Our levels were something like 3, 4, 6, 8, 9. This was too far apart for everyone to get exp; they asked me to malefactor long enough for some people to level up. It seemed a little silly to malefactor down from level 9, but I decided to go along with this, and we got the 3 up to 4 before long. But we died an awful lot, and I eventually came to the conclusion it was a combination of the level spread (the team leader was picking my level 9 missions, and really the two 4s couldn't do much against what we were fighting) and a lack of support types (we had no heals/buffs/debuffs at all). After a couple missions like this, I dropped out of the team.

I ended up dusting off Lady Arachne (a 47 wolf spider I haven't played in months) and joining an 8 player team of Demolition Girls SG, doing door missions in Grandville. We beat up Agent Indigo and Dr. Aeon and got Lady Arachne to level 48.


On Saturday I played Primadonna (48 sonic/kin corruptor) on a speed ITF that finished in 23min 53sec, getting Primadonna to 49, where I took Acrobatics. I also did some crafting, slotting 6 Positron's Blast into Howl (for +6.25% rchg) and 5 Thunderstrike into Shriek (eventually hoping to get the sixth for the range DEF).

I solo'd Arrow Girl (28 archery/dev blaster) through The Amazing Rat Race, an AE arc starting in a Crey lab for mutant rats which takes you to lots of interesting locations while researching someone's background story; this had a lot of neat ideas but also felt very confusing, so I ended up rating it 3 stars. Arrow Girl also helped take down Babbage in Skyway for 2 reward merits and the Clockstopper badge.

Someone was looking for help with Fake Nemeses in PI, so I logged on Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) and duo'd with him for a bit, getting enough Fakes for the Unveiler badge and the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+133 HP for Blond). The other guy wasn't as far along on badge progress as I was, so I did another 20ish Fakes for good measure before heading out.

I went from there to playing Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on an ITF organized on Sisterhood channel. Our team mix was:

2 brutes
1 tanker (willpower)
1 defender (dark)
2 blasters
1 corruptor (rad)
1 MM (pain)

Though we had a decent amount of support, it seemed like the brutes died a lot, and I got a lot of mileage out of vengeance/fallout/mutation (people noticed I was a little too happy when teammates died, LOL). Despite the occasional deaths we really didn't have any problem clearing the missions, and finished in 1hr 20mins.

Finally on Saturday, I joined a Master of the Recluse SF that was forming on 0.o channel. Out of my laundry list of alts, the team leader asked me to play my pain corruptor -- which surprised me, but apparently high level pain corruptors are not that common. Our team mix was:

2 brutes (elec/shield, SS/stone)
1 crab
5 corruptors (fire/rad, ice/cold, AR/pain, AR/kin)

The shield brute wanted to try starting the MoRSF while dead, hoping to use himself as free vengeance bait for the whole SF. This caused us to instantly fail our first MoRSF attempt, before we could even enter the first mission; apparently, it checks for that!

Our second MoRSF attempt, we started the SF with everyone alive. The leader's instructions were that we should follow the stone brute and stay together. Inside the first mission, though, it seemed like most people peeled off in little clumps to attack chasers; only I and another corruptor were still following the stone brute. Unfortunately, the stone brute started charging into large groups of Longbow, which made following him a lot more hazardous than anticipated. I managed to get killed by Longbow in the process, causing the MoRSF to fail (how embarrassing!). It being the first mission, we decided to restart.

Our third MoRSF attempt went much better. This time the corruptors were told to stay together and away from heavy concentrations of Longbow, and we managed to pull Longbow chasers away from dangerous areas and kill them. Agent Crimson went down pretty easily to us, and a 2-boxed thermal corr was giving us fire shields between missions for an extra safety net. The second mission we mostly did the normal way except the fight against Slinger, where we made sure to pull all the extra minions out of his room before confronting Slinger - then positioning squishies at the back of the room while fighting Slinger himself, farthest from the ambush waves. The third and fourth missions were pretty straightforward for us; even fighting small groups of heroes wasn't too bad, as long as we were careful. I did find that travel in Grandville was kind of a pain for me (Schadenfreude uses Sprint plus the temp fly pack for travel, and MoRSF turns off the temp travel powers) but managed to get around with a lot of running around between the various wards of Grandville.

We started the final mission with great trepidation. Unable to use the normal veng-bait tactic, we candy-popped a lot of purples and oranges as preparation instead, along with our normal corr buffs. We didn't try to pull or anything; instead, the brutes took the Freedom Phalanx head-on while the squishy corruptors formed a support huddle a little ways away, to avoid AoEs; with the crab midway between us to provide VEAT buffs to both. I was nervous about the DEF-based shield brute getting dropped by a lucky shot, so put Painbringer on him and kept him targeted for quick heals. This actually seemed to work, and after a few minutes of careful play, we beat the Freedom Phalanx and earned the Master of the Recluse Strike Force badge. The time was 1hr 11mins.

More on 'The Amazing Rat Race'

The Amazing Rat Race review
Arc ID: 1144
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Origin Story, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-29
Warnings: EBs, high level enemies forced to a lower level

The premise seems to be helping a "Crey cleaner", whatever that is (a janitor?). The contact is a custom character in a uniform I don't recognize. I played a 28 archery/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact introduces himself, and tells me he's worked with Statesman, so I should trust him. This actually seems rather suspicious; the fact that he TELLS me that he can be trusted immediately makes me question whether he can be trusted.

The contact wants me to beat up one of his employees and bring him back. This is heroic? The "I'll use my judgement" mission accept message was a good response, though.

Inside the mission, I ran into some Crey janitors, who I think were nicely repainted normal Crey.

There was a "lever" object (actually, a parking meter) that I left alone, then an "Employee Records" computer that I couldn't click, getting "You can't complete this objective yet".

I went back and destroyed the lever to see if anything would happen, and it generated a new objective of "Defeat ratters".

Black Ratter's description, "mating a lab rat with a Flaming Bat'Zul. It is assumed the Bat'Zul was female"...this is funny, but I'm pretty sure Bat'Zul is the name of a specific demon, not a generic demon type, so "a Bat'Zul" doesn't quite make sense. Maybe use the name of a generic CoT behemoth or something.

The description of Fairgo's power is quite funny. He fled after I rescued him from the ratters, though.

After rescuing Fairgo, the Employee Records glowy became active, and I could click it. This gave be "Fairgo's employee record" clue, and simultaneously completed the mission, which gave me the "Fairgo explains" clue. It might make more sense for "Fairgo explains" to be awarded when you rescue Fairgo (since he leaves immediately after that).

The sequence of triggered objectives in this mission is neat, and the small map size makes it so there isn't too much running around required; however, I think there needs to be better motivation for why the player should destroy the lever, and why you can't access the computer records (which are visible, but not clickable) until the very end. Right now it doesn't seem obvious why you are forced to do things in this particular order; needs some explanation.

Debriefing: So I end up explaining that Fairgo "escaped". It looks like the idea behind this arc is that you are now subtly sabotaging the contact's evil plans. A potentially interesting spin.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to go capture Fairgo at an orphanage.

Inside the mission: apparently this orphanage is run by the Family! The mobs make some sympathetic noises about helping Fairgo out. This being the case, I'm not quite sure why they are hostile to me.

Found and fought Matron Holicapo, whose dialog and clue were all pretty funny.

I like all the fun extra objects in this map, representing toys and baby cribs and such.

Found the Orphan Records which gave a clue pointing to where Fairgo came from.

I like the mission exit popup that helps reiterate what's going on and why you bother to keep talking to the contact.

Debriefing: Seems too short, really. The "Unless.." at the end seems a bit disjointed; I guess it is meant to lead into the next briefing.

Mission 3
Briefing: Hmm, the contact wants to hire me to clean rat cages. This seems very weird, considering at the end of the last mission he wanted to "fire" me from .. whatever I was doing for him. Why would he hire me for a different job? Also, he recognizes that I'm a superhero; why would he believe that a hero would be interested in cleaning rat cages? Even for giant, mutant rats.

Second part of briefing: The story seems to let me refuse the rat cage cleaning job. The contact continues to try and talk me into doing it. But I now have a mission that seems unrelated to anything the contact wants.

Inside the mission: So I'm looking for Fairgo at this veterans hospital. But weirdly, it's a veterans hospital that caters to Void Hunters and Quantums... that's kind of weirdly surreal.

Wing Quantum Raider's description, "efectiveness" should be "effectiveness". (I *think* this was custom text on a renamed PVE mob, but not sure.)

I like the medical equipment and the shadow cysts you have placed in the mission to help it seem more hospital like. You might consider using Mother Mayhem's sanitarium map for the hospital? Though the tech lab isn't bad. I suggest you also give some dialog to the various mobs guarding the objects, or to the many patrols roaming this map. Maybe have them complaining about unique ailments that only quantum gunners would ever have; like getting beat up by kheldians, or how they almost nabbed a kheldian but some tanker got in the way. Stuff like that. As it is, the mission seems very silent.

I clicked a couple computers that generated ambushes that I fought off, then rescued a nurse who gave me a clue as to Fairgo's origin. The nurse also gave me her phone number in the clue, which is a nice touch; but it's too short to be a real phone number. Should add a digit.

I found Fairgo and proceeded to rescue him. One of his guards said:

[NPC] Void Seeker: Hi intruder! How are you doing?

....which is a very weird thing for an enemy to say. What is Fairgo doing here anyway? Trying to investigate his parentage? He should probably say (maybe in a clue after rescue). Fairgo runs off after rescue, which seems odd; seems like he should want to stay and learn more. Rescuing him completed the mission, and I got a "555-318-008" clue, apparently from calling the nurse. (Again, this phone number is one digit too short.) In this clue, "fighting & war" should be "fighting a war".

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact is willing to talk to me again, only now he no longer wants to hire me as a cage cleaner. He wants me to go after Fairgo again, only Fairgo has traveled to Laos to find his origin. This makes me wonder, why exactly is Fairgo so important to Rat Race? I thought he was just an employee that the contact disliked. This doesn't seem like it would be enough reason for Rat Race to hire people to go after him in another country. Also, Rat Race's attitude towards the player after mission 2 was sufficiently negative that I don't see why he'd try and re-hire me to look for Fairgo again.

I also have to ask, why does Fairgo travel to Laos? I just found out he's from Laos from the nurse in the last mission, and it's never said that I shared this info with Fairgo, and Fairgo didn't seem like he penetrated the quantum hospital deeply enough to find out on his own. I suppose he could remember Laos from when he was really little, but in that case, he would've had no reason to even visit the quantum hospital -- he could've directly gone to Laos. I think this may be a plot hole. Could be fixed with some explanation of how he gets the idea that he needs to go to Laos.

Inside the mission: So I arrive in Laos (an outdoor forest map) and start looking for Fairgo and his parents. There's a lot of the mutant rats around, sent by the contact to, umm... I guess eat Fairgo?

There are lots of "jar" glowies which are kind of neat looking but don't seem to be functional. The "crate" glowies are labeled "Crey Rat Labs" (in the window text; may want to also give a clue) and make sense for how the mutant rats got here.

Clicking the jars seemed pretty unrewarding; nothing happened after each click, until the third one (a marble jar) which gave me the "Jars on a Plain" clue, which still wasn't terribly informative.

I rescued a couple "Friendly Ratter" mobs that seemed to be allies; they had dark blast (which I don't understand) and claws (which makes sense). The mobs guarding the friendly ratters should have some dialog; if the friendly ones can talk, no reason the others can't talk too.

I found and rescued Fairgo, who explained the white rats were his friends, and warned against "nesting ratters", whatever those are. My objectives updated to include "Defeat the nesting ratters". I'm not sure why they need to be defeated in particular; is nesting somehow causing problems?

I found and rescued Mr Bahn. Weirdly, though Mr Bahn says his wife was eaten by rats, he also gives me a clue called "Mrs Bahn's tale" which says "Mrs Bahn immediately recognized Fairgo". But Mrs Bahn should be dead based on Mr Bahn's story? Seems a continuity error.

Rescuing Mr Bahn triggered a new objective of "Defeat Pha Xiong", which I think I am supposed to defeat because he's oppressing Mr Bahn somehow.

I heard a few Proximity Mines saying "CLICK" which was nice and ominous, but I never did see them.

I found and defeated "Chief Nesting Ratter", who gave me the clue "Fairgo's real mummy?" This describes a mummy who recognizes Fairgo somehow and then falls down and dies. But I never saw a mummy at all - just more rats. So where did this come from? I wonder if maybe this clue is connected to the wrong objective. Perhaps there should be either a body bag glowy or a custom mob that looks like a mummified corpse. Also, "dessicated" should be "desiccated".

Found Pha Xiong, who spawned as a Tsoo boss for me. His description says it's just the astral form of Pha Xiong; this seems unnecessarily complicated? I'm in Laos as it is, no reason we couldn't have a physically present Tsoo boss.

Pha Xiong's dialog is actually pretty fun though, and he says things that actually make it work for him to only be here astrally.

Mission exit popup: Nice summary of the mission, but it says I "solved an ancient mystery" (I guess what are the jars for?) but I don't believe I ever got a clue that explained the jars. Maybe they had something to do with the missing mummy.

Debriefing: apparently as a result of my investigations, somehow the contact has been demoted to rat cage cleaner (the job he previously offered me) and has the Tsoo, Family and Nictus all after him. Kind of funny; though, I'm not quite sure why they're all after the contact. Would it make more sense if they were after me, since I'm the one who busted up the Family orphanage, the Nictus hospital and the Tsoo thing in Laos? Maybe needs some explanation saying how they somehow figured out that I was "working" for Rat Race.

This is a neat mission, but seems messed up somehow, with the inconsistent dialog and clues (was Mrs Bahn eaten by rats or did she see Fairgo? where was this mummy? what was the secret of the jars?). I wondered if this was a result of some editing mishap where some plot elements got incompletely changed.

Mission 5
Briefing: Seems very short. Could use some more text. It looks like the idea is that we go dig Rat Race out of the Crey Rat Lab.

Inside the mission: I like the variety of options that the mission gives you, to "lure Rat Race outside OR feed him to the ratters OR just abandon him".

I found Rat Race; his description and biographical story were pretty fun. I beat up 2 or 3 ratters and clicked the computer and this seemed to complete the mission. The glowy didn't give me a clue or anything. The text box says I looked up Rat Race's employment record, and saw that he was scheduled to clean rat cages for a very long time; I'm not quite sure what my finding this information out accomplished.

This seemed a little anticlimactic; I almost wonder if it would be better to cut this mission and have mission 4 be the finale, and in mission 4's debriefing, elaborate on the fact that Rat Race got demoted to rat cage cleaner, making that the point where Rat Race gets his "just desserts".

Debriefing: Rat Race says "You win! But someday you'll see!" I like winning, but not quite sure what I did. I'm guessing that I got him in trouble so he has to clean rat cages? Maybe explain this a little more clearly. Also, whatever happened to Fairgo? Did he stay in Laos?

Overall
I thought it was neat to track Fairgo's background story to the various scenes at the rat lab, the orphanage, the quantum VA hospital and Laos. Each of those locations was creative and fun and had interesting custom mobs staffing them.

I'm a bit baffled at Rat Race's motivation. It's not really well explained why Rat Race has such a huge grudge against Fairgo; I can believe that he might want to have someone beat up a troublesome employee while Fairgo's in the Crey rat lab, and even have thugs chase Fairgo around the city a bit....but to have someone follow Fairgo to Laos? I think Rat Race needs to have a stronger reason to hate Fairgo to do that.

It's also weird that Rat Race would hire a hero to rough up Fairgo (does not seem very heroic); and after Rat Race "fires" you after mission 2 (for failing to rough up Fairgo), it doesn't seem consistent for Rat Race to keep employing you in missions 3 and 4. Needs more explanation, I think.

I actually liked looking into Fairgo's background story; but with plot continuity problems and the finale being rather anticlimactic, I felt I could only give this 3 stars. I hope you think that's fair.

I do think there are some pretty easy steps you could do to improve - clearing up the inconsistencies in mission 4, and giving a better explanation of Rat Race's interactions with the player, would help a lot IMHO. Hope that helps.

---

My queue is currently:

@Djinniman - The Key and the Chain 193451
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend review
Arc ID: 114284
Keywords: Challenging, Magic, Drama
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 15-20
Warnings: EBs

Description says it is "a story of love, death and betrayal" where I have to deal with a new hero group trying to clean up the Rogue Isles. I didn't have a good match for the 15-20 level range, so I tried playing an 8 elec/elec brute.

The contact is Desdemona the Glint, one of the CoV brokers.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact sends me to rob a bank. I like her dialog here, it helps define her character "voice".

Second part of briefing: minor quibble, "extra bonus for extra special bonus" is a little awkward sounding (with "extra" and "bonus" being repeated).

I like the "Business as usual" mission title and "Get the ice" objective.

Inside the mission, it seems suspiciously empty (nice that the popup highlights this also). Ran into "Ice Age", an Outcast boss with good dialog explaining that this is really a trap.

I'm a little disappointed to find that there are no diamonds here, but Ice Age's defeat clue (which I think is misspelled "Ica Age" ... should maybe be "Ice Age talks" or "Ice Age's story") helps explain this.

It might be nice to add an optional glowy that is an "empty safe deposit box" which formerly held the diamonds, to help reinforce the idea that the diamonds are gone.

Mission exit popup: I like how it suggests you still steal some money even though you didn't find the diamonds.

Debriefing: pretty well written. Though "I have idea" should be "I have an idea". The second paragraph actually sounds like it should be part of the briefing for the next mission?

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to kidnap a celebutante bimbo and then lure the Outcasts into a trap where I'll beat some info out of them. Seems pretty reasonable to me! "going after young, hot, trendy, beautiful celebrity girl" should be "going after a young, hot, trendy, beautiful celebrity girl". (Unless dropping words like "a" and "an" is meant to be an intentional speech mannerism; this being the second instance, I'm not sure.)

Second part of briefing: pretty funny! I liked the explanation of who the "celebrity" is.

Inside the mission: Why are there Longbow inside Desdemona's "penthouse apartment"? Maybe private security guards or Cage consortium guards would make more sense.

Getting closer to my "kidnap target", Desdemona's dialog seems to reveal that our trap has mistakenly lured in Longbow instead of the Outcasts we were looking for. Darn meddling heroes! I had to get pretty deep into the mission before finding this out, though. Consider adding a patrol or static boss spawn near the front with a little dialog explaining Longbow's presence earlier?

Rescuing Desdemona triggered a "Find the Outcast hero" objective; I had to backtrack all the way to the front of the mission to find him, which was a little annoying, but the map wasn't too big, so maybe it's okay. Firezone's description, "one of the supposedly heroic Outcast" ... Outcast should be Outcasts. His dialog does explain why he appeared at the very entrance, which does make some sense.

Defeating Firezone gave a very informative "Firezone Begs for Mercy" clue. "us Outcast" should be "us Outcasts".

Debriefing: A missing "the" in this debriefing makes me wonder if this is intentional to depict Desdemona having an accent?

Mission 3
Briefing: Seems a bit short compared to the others. "everyone are heading" should be "everyone is heading" (English is weird). We just found out about the diamonds being in Bloody Bay in the last mission, though, who is this "everyone" going after them and how did they find out? "with Arachnos flyer" should be "with the Arachnos flyer". It's possible that these are intentional to give Desdemona a particular manner of speaking, but I am not absolutely sure because she isn't that consistent about it (some bits of text she uses "a/an/the" just fine) and some of the clues (not spoken by Desdemona) have minor mistakes of this type too.

Second part of briefing: "everyone are fighting" should be "everyone is fighting".

Mission entry popup: tries to explain away the usage of the St Martial "Flush" map as Bloody Bay, and the fact that you can see the Golden Giza from it. I almost would prefer to omit this, because it actually draws the player's attention to the Golden Giza; I'd just ignore that the Giza is visible. The actual architecture of the buildings in the playable area IS a decent match for (parts of) Bloody Bay.

Found and defeated Teremex, who had pretty nice "evil wizard" dialog, and helped fill in who the diamonds were stolen from originally. The "so decrees Teremex!" was classic. "Now you made me lose my concentration" should perhaps be "Now you have made me lose my concentration". Teremex was actually pretty hard for me (with his ambush and control powers) but a big part of this was that my character was below the correct level range (at 8 I didn't have any mez protection, for example). I did manage to defeat him through heavy use of inspirations, though.

Defeating Teremex triggered a new spawn, and I found and defeated "The Cthonic", as part of a "deal" with Teremex to get more information. The clues provided by defeating Cthonic and completing the mission ("Discussing Business With Teremex") were pretty good.

Mission 4
Briefing: Seems awfully short; maybe justified by the fact that really you're doing a mission for Teremex now, not Desdemona. You could perhaps have Desdemona go over the details again; namely that you're going down the secret tunnel to the Outcast base to recover the crystals. Also "(shiny, sparkling, etc)" is not something someone would normally say, you may as well spell it out the way it has been before.

Second part of briefing: Ahh, much more detail here as "Teremex" gives you the rest of the briefing.

Mission entry popup: "cemetary" should be "cemetery".

Seems to be a defeat all of a medium-big map; is this really necessary for the story? Both Desdemona and Teremex really just want the crystals (in order to get the diamonds). Though a case could be made for a Defeat All if one of them was feeling particularly annoyed at the Outcasts and wanted them utterly destroyed; one of them should mention it during the briefings in that case, though. Teremex comes close to saying this with his comment about "swift retribution and vengeance".

Found a "locked chest" which requires me to find a key. Seems like a wooden chest wouldn't strictly need a key (the clue says you shouldn't break it open, but arguably you could pick the lock, disintegrate the wood, etc) but let's go along with this for sake of the story.

Found "Jiggles", an EB with the "key around its neck" in his description. Managed to defeat him by using a handful of purples; my elec aura and attacks drained him of END, which helped, too.

I found two "Spectral Knight" allies who didn't say anything when I picked them up. Scrolling back in my chat log, I think they may have said:

[NPC] Spectral Knight: I serve the one who wears the amulet of Bal-Thoom.

...near the beginning of the mission, possibly because each of them has no guards and thus was "freed" instantly upon entering. May want to have them guarded by Outcasts, or else move the "I've been rescued" message to the "I've been stranded but you found me again" text.

Debriefing: The debriefing is from Teremex, which sort of makes sense (but visually is weird because the contact is still Desdemona). He promises to meet up with me to swap the crystals for the diamonds. My danger sense is tingling at this remark. "cemetary" should be "cemetery" here.

Mission 5
Briefing: Desdemona is suspicious of this meet-up too, but for her, diamonds > all, so off we go. This briefing is a little short, could maybe use some more writing here. "cemetary" should be "cemetery" here.

Mission title: "Cemetary" should be "Cemetery".

Mission entry popup: I thought this would be a CoT trap, but it looks like the Outcasts have shown up to mess up the deal. "cemetary" should be "cemetery". "screaming for your blood and head" sounds very awkward ... I think either "screaming for your blood" or "screaming for your head" would work, but "blood and head" sounds very weird.

Found and defeated Tunguska, who had good duakig (if a little depressing, since he's pretty upset that I've messed up all his plans to be a hero and kicked his puppy besides). He was an interesting looking custom Outcast.

Found Teremex, who was held captive by Outcasts. He said:

[NPC] Teremex: There you are. Did you bring the crystals? Your diamonds are hidden nearby. Lead the way, please.

...before I actually rescued him. He shouldn't say "Your diamonds are hidden nearby. Lead the way, please." until I successfully free him from the Outcast guards.

Leading Teremex to the door completed the mission. I am impressed that he didn't actually double cross me; who would've thought! The exit for this outdoor map is a little awkward in that it is tricky to find a spot that counts for completing the Teremex objective without actually zoning yourself out; there's not really a good way to solve that other than changing maps or making the "diamonds" objective something else.

Debriefing: The contact's response to finally getting the diamonds is pretty funny.

Souvenir: nicely written. Minor nitpick: souvenir calls your arc "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friends", but the arc's actual title is "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" (no S at end). "travelled" is usually spelled "traveled" in USA; acceptable spelling in UK though. "headquarter" should be "headquarters".

Overall
I thought this was a pretty well done arc. I like the way Desdemona is portrayed throughout the arc (though, either fix her grammar errors or make it clearer that this is an affectation of speech from very early on). I liked the way Outcasts are used; you don't see them very often in AE story arcs, and I feel their attempting to redeem themselves by being heroic is consistent with Frostfire's back story. I thought the dialog throughout the arc was well written and entertaining. Causing angst for the final Big Bad guy by killing his housepet was a nice touch.

I do feel that some of the briefings could've used a little more writing, and there were a number of minor typos/minor grammar errors. Gameplay-wise, I liked how most of the missions had several things to do, to keep them interesting. I did find it a little awkward to backtrack to find Firezone in mission 2 and to have to Defeat all in mission 4.

Overall it was a good arc, and the issues I found were relatively minor. I gave this arc 5 stars.


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My queue is currently:

airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)

Old Folks Home review
Arc ID: 261041
Keywords: Challenging, Custom Characters, Non-Canon Story
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 1-54
Warnings: Extreme Bosses, Extreme Minions, Enemies with custom power selections.

This is a single mission arc with the premise of battling the "Octogenician", a supervillain who can only mind control people over the age of 80, so you have to battle your way through an army of very old people to get him.

Fighting old people (and presumably making fun of them) doesn't seem very politically correct, but I'm going to take the arc at face value and give it a try.

The contact is a custom nurse character.

With the mission containing only custom characters, some with extreme settings, I am pretty sure this won't be doable for a level 1. Consider upping the level range to something more appropriate (I'd guess at least 25).

I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense on difficulty 4.

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption for the briefing should be in larger text, bold, or differently colored in order to stand out more from the rest of the briefing.

"Pleas, you must help" should be "Please, you must help".

I wonder if "Octogenician" should actually be "Octogenarian" (the term for an 80 year old)?

Based on the premise, is it really possible for him to "subvert the minds of everyone at Shady Acres rest home"? Usually a rest home will have nurses and/or attendants who are normal working age, taking care of the old people; these wouldn't be affected by Octogenician's powers and probably could restrain their 80-year old charges if they got out of hand. Maybe explain what happened to the nursing staff (held hostage, ran away, something like that).

Mission accept message: "Agree to beat up some old people" doesn't sound very heroic. But I guess it's the premise behind this story.

Second part of briefing: "loveable" should be "lovable". "you kow" should be "you know". "The ones that shake their fists at you when you play Neil Diamond too loud" does not quite make sense -- most young people probably don't know who Neil Diamond is. Consider name dropping a more trendy pop singer.

Aha, here it explains "The hospital staff isn't aware of what's going on". But .. how is this possible? Nurse Betty clearly knows, and she looks like a hospital staff. And if 80-year olds are roaming around doing villainy, it seems like their attendants would notice?

Mission entry popup: some good text here, helps set the mood well!

Mission objectives: "The Octogenician" should perhaps be "Defeat the Octogenician". Though then you might want to make the mission name something different, like "Stop the Old Folks plot", to mix it up.

Map selection: this map looks like a normal office. Maybe you should use Mother Mayhem's sanitarium instead?

Mr. Jenkins description: "liscence" should be "license". Shouldn't his hair be white, or at least grey, if he's 80+ years old? The age lines on his face and the balding hairstyle help though.

Mrs. Papadapolis description: "see,s" should be "seems".

Mrs. Rabinowitz is a minion with sonic shields, while Mrs. Papadapolis is a minion with empathy heals and Mr. Lipschultz is a minion with thermal heals; this will make your custom group have a LOT of buffing and healing in larger spawns, which could easily overpower some teams - especially with stacking sonic blasts on top of that. You might consider reserving buff/debuff sets only for lieutenants or higher, or at least having fewer custom minions with them.

Mr. Lipschultz description: "oinments" should be "ointments". His hair is also a bright red, should maybe be grey or white.

Considering Mrs. Addams hates noise, it is a little weird that she has sonic powers. I guess she could be a hypocrite. In her description, "drag to tough old broad" should be "drag the tough old broad". She maybe shouldn't have Build Up (it's pretty powerful against players).

I'm actually quite surprised that Mrs. Ratchet isn't a nurse.

Found some Orderly mobs; I'm not quite sure why they are enemies, shouldn't they be allies in helping regain control of the rest home? One of them does ask me to leave, though, saying the home is "on lockdown". Wow, that makes it sound like a prison! I suppose it is, really.

I'm also not sure why the Orderlies have gravity powers. They keep throwing random junk at me with Propel; this actually seems disorderly!

I found a battle between the staff and the old folks, but later I found a patrol of the support staff that wouldn't aggro the old folks, which seemed weird. Nice to see some dialog from the battle and the patrol. Most of the dialog I've seen so far has been from the staff, though; it would be nice to have more cranky old folks dialog, since the story is really about them. Some lines about the good old days, complaining about young folk today, or demanding the staff help them do stuff, might be helpful.

I did see a few lines from the old people later, but more would be better! It's the main schtick of this arc, so play it up.

When I got near the end I heard this dialog:

[NPC] The Octogenician: Oh you young fools who put me here - I could never get enough eighty year olds in one place to cause true mischief! Even $name can't stop me with this many old folks under my command!

...but I was too far away for him to correctly substitute my name into his dialog. I think it's his unaware line, so you may want to take $name out of it since he won't know who the player is yet, when he says it.

Slightly later he said:

[NPC] The Octogenician: Aha, $name! You're an old soul - I think I may have an effect on you!

but I still haven't seen him. I wonder if he was fighting other NPCs?

Finally found Octogenician. In his description, "subvery" should be "subvert". He spawned as a Boss for me and I fought him for awhile, but had to run away -- his mind control has all untyped psi damage which fairly thrashes my SR scrapper (just a bad matchup on powersets) and he was surrounded by minions that healed and buffed him, and healed and buffed each other. Plus he had pain secondary and was healing his own minions. Took out a couple minions before I had to run.

After getting my act together again I went back for a rematch and beat up all his healy minions, then beat him; mainly I had to use Focus Chi and red inspirations to boost my spike damage high enough to kill minions before they got a heal from another NPC. His dialog complaining about how I'm beating up an old man made me feel guilty for beating him up, which maybe is the intent.

Seemed like all I had to do was defeat the boss (though admittedly he was hard). You might consider adding some more stuff to do in this mission; I do like the patrols and battles, maybe add more. You only have one mission in the arc, so I think it's worth having more to do in that one mission.

Debriefing: Really needs more text here.

Maybe should have a souvenir also.

Overall
This mission seemed pretty silly but had decent looking custom mobs and stayed true to its concept. There's some decent lines of dialog - I'd suggest adding more along the lines of what you've already got, especially more cranky old people dialog, if you can. That's really what this story seems to be all about.

There didn't seem to be a lot to do except defeat the boss, which makes the gameplay of the mission pretty similar to a typical radio mission; some plusses over that for interesting looking custom mobs and dialog, but also some minuses because the custom mobs had too many buff and heal powers which made them harder than is really reasonable. I'd certainly suggest cutting back on the heal powers the minions have; it's probably fine for lieutenants and above though.

I gave this arc 3 stars.


----

My queue is currently:

FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132

Speeding Through Time review
Arc ID: 51728
Keywords: Challenging, Save the World, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: mostly 40-50 with some variation
Warnings: Extreme AVs, Extreme EBs, custom power selections

The premise is that you help someone who claims to be a retired hero against some unknown threat, but you're not sure if he's for real or just a crazy. With "Challenging" and "Extreme AVs" on this arc, I decided to play a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense, on difficulty 4.

The contact is a custom character who says he was in the Freedom Phalanx in the 1960s.

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

The contact introduces himself as a former Freedom Phalanx member, but is rather vague about details, saying he doesn't have time to explain; which is a little weird because he apparently can time travel (and consequently I don't see why he would be in a big hurry).

Second part of briefing: the contact skirts with temporal paradox as he explains he's taking me back in time to meet him for the first time. Hmm, we'll see how confusing this gets.

Mission entry popup: pokes fun at the paradox. "Having someone send you to retrieve themselves" seems like it shouldn't have a plural at the end; maybe "retrieve himself"?

I'm a little confused as to why I'm doing this, but I guess that is intentional.

I found and rescued The Red Blur; I liked his line:

[NPC] The Red Blur: Nice to meet you. If I vouch for you, then you must be all right.

He obviously has dealt with time travelers before. The way he uses siphon speed to zip around really worked well for a "speedster" hero. He spawned as an EB for me, which seemed pretty powerful compared to the 5th Column enemies here (who supposedly had captured him).

There didn't seem to be much of interest in this mission other than Red Blur and his guards; the Red Blur's guards had some good dialog, but the mission could perhaps use a few more enemies with speaking lines (perhaps a patrol or a boss spawn near the entrance with some dialog to help establish the scene).

Nice mission exit popup I was kind of thinking in terms of time paradox, too.

"The Past Reaches Forward" clue seems a bit too short. The movie reference is fine, but I think the clue needs some more content explaining what's going on.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact realizes I'm still not sure why I'm helping him (since he hasn't explained anything) and wants to demonstrate by sending me somewhere awful, apparently. He still doesn't explain much about what's going on, but does say that I shouldn't mess with the mobs there. Hmm.

Second part of briefing: He now says we're going to the "late 1960s" which is in the past to me, but is the future he's trying to prevent. This actually doesn't make sense to me. If it's in the past to me, it should already have happened (from my point of view), so I should be able to observe the aftereffects of whatever bad thing happened. I think this could be explained away with some technobabble about parallel timelines, or the player being in some kind of temporal bubble while reality is shifting around her, or something; but as currently presented, it doesn't quite add up.

Inside the mission: I emerge into what appears to be a zombie apocalypse.

Burning Dead's description: "as it's flesh falls from it's bones" should be "as its flesh falls from its bones". I kind of wonder if it would make sense for Burning Dead to be a former Hellion (since those are so common in Atlas).

All of the zombies on this (rather large) map seem to be silent; would be nice if a few would say something, even if it's just a groaning noise or the standard "Braiiinsss" zombie call.

Found Statesman; he's in a "cowering" animation which is rather unheroic for the signature hero of the game. Though maybe this is because the zombies are berating him for letting them get killed.

I like Statesman's lines that demonstrate how upset he is about Miss Liberty's fate. The zombie Miss Liberty had a pretty good looking costume (for an undead Miss Liberty), though I didn't kill her since she was pretty tough and wasn't required.

Debriefing: Seems too short. I'd suggest having the contact go into the key events that led up to the zombie apocalypse, and maybe some more hyperbole about the millions of people who got zombiefied when whatever-it-is happened. Then reinforce that you need to stop this.

Likewise, I think "The Disaster to Come" clue is a little too short. It needs some description beyond "You can't allow the world to end". It's still rather confusing to me that it's a "disaster to come" when the story says it happened in the late 1960s.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact now says that back in the 1960s, right after the mission I extracted the 60s Red Blur from, he discovered a 5th Column plot to set off a nuke in Washington DC, and that he attempted to stop it by recruiting other versions of himself from different places in time, but he's worried that still isn't enough so wants me to help too.

I feel like this has some logic problems. I've already taken RedBlur1960 to the present day; it's never mentioned that he returned to his original time after that, but maybe it should be (though, if that's what happened, why did RedBlur2009 ask me to bring him to the present?). Since the eastern seaboard was not nuked in the late 1960s, then clearly RedBlur1960's plan to stop the nuke must have succeeded. RedBlur2009 should remember the outcome of RedBlur1960's attempt to stop the nuke, so shouldn't have this uncertainty as to whether it is successful.

I think this could be explained away in a number of ways; RedBlur2009 could remember that my hero was instrumental towards helping the plot succeed and needs to go back (predestination), or you could say that the timeline is in flux and RedBlur2009's memories seem to be changing as the timeline changes (malleable timeline), or there could be some explanation involving multiple timelines. But I think you need some additional explanation in order for this to make sense.

Inside the mission, I have "Find the Red Blur" and "Find their mysterious benefactor and take him out" as objectives. I'm a little surprised that there isn't a "Disarm the nuclear device" objective, since I thought that was what we were stopping?

There are multiple versions of Red Blur here, but the first 3 that I save (who are labeled 12:01:12, 12:01:18 and 12:01:20) don't seem to actually count as "Find the Red Blur", which is a little confusing. All three of them gave me a completely blank clue entitled "And Again"; possibly this makes sense if I rescue them in a certain order (maybe the "earliest" Red Blur gives a clue with more content), but since this map is an outdoor map, there isn't any way to guarantee the player rescues them in the right order. You should put some text in each clue to explain what it's talking about; as it is, I have 3 empty clues.

The three versions of Red Blur racing around IS a pretty cool effect. All of them are speed boosted Elite Bosses, though, which seems pretty overpowering! Also, from a story logic standpoint, shouldn't 12:01:12 despawn after 6 seconds in order to become 12:01:18, while 12:01:18 should despawn after 2 seconds in order to become 12:01:20? I wonder if you should make their timestamps a couple hours apart to avoid questions like that.

Found also 12:01:13, 12:01:04, 12:01:03, 12:01:19, 12:01:01, 12:01:11, 12:01:10, 12:01:14, 12:01:15, 12:01:17, 12:01:12. I now have fourteen speed boosted EBs following me around, which is a pretty crazy amount of firepower; I'm not sure what opposition could possibly be a threat to this force. I also have a very large number of blank "And Again" clues in my journal.

Finally found "The Red Blur", which I guess is the main version, and also an EB. He finally gave me the "Time Traveling Doppelgangers" clue which helps give the "And Again" clues some context; but considering there are at least 15 possible Red Blurs you can find in this mission, I think it would be a lot to hope that the main Red Blur is the one the player finds first. (You could maybe trigger all the copies from the main Red Blur, but that would add a lot of backtracking, which would be awkward on an outdoor map.)

There always seems to be one guy (always 12:01:12 for me) who doesn't get SB from the others and lags behind; probably not much you can do about that, but it required a little extra ally herding to keep them together. I eventually gave up on 12:01:12, figuring I could afford to ditch one of my 15 EB allies.

I finally found Dr. Aeon, who had terrific dialog; I very much like the idea that he's just going to go back even further in time to fix this. He spawned as an EB for me, but my herd of 14 speed boosted EB allies tore him apart in nothing flat -- even before his ambush of 3 more Dr Aeon EBs showed up. The visual of an army of Red Blurs fighting an army of Dr Aeons was pretty cool! But the Dr Aeon team really had no chance since the Red Blur team outnumbered him so badly. I barely had to attack.

Defeating the first Dr Aeon triggered a device to destroy, which DID require me to backtrack and search the whole map again (kind of a pain on an outdoor map). I ditched all the allies to be able to search faster, and found parts of the map with 3 or 4 more copies of the Red Blur, then eventually found the device guarded by a group of Dr. Aeons. I managed to destroy the bomb on my own, which completed the mission.

-- took a break for a few days here --

Thinking about it, the swarm of Red Blurs is very cool and is a great use of time travel by a super-speedster; visually it looks terrific. I think making them all EBs (or maybe AVs downgraded to EBs, not sure) is way too overpowering though, especially since they SB each other; consider dropping them to Bosses or even Lieutenants and/or reducing their number. As it is, once you get 2 of them, they can stomp everything, even Dr Aeon, without much interaction from the player. (Although possibly you have Aeon set to an AV while Red Blur is an EB and my difficulty level makes them both EBs; I can't easily tell.)

I'm somewhat confused by the story logic here, though. In the briefing, RedBlur2009 mentions that the 5th Column were going to set off a bomb, and that RedBlur1960 stopped it. But in the mission itself, the only bomb is the one Dr Aeon (himself a time traveler) is placing. If RedBlur2009 remembers a 5th Column bomb (due to living through that event), where is it? Or if what RedBlur2009 remembers is Dr Aeon's bomb, why doesn't he say it's Dr Aeon's bomb (I don't think Aeon is mentioned until you run into him mid-mission), since he would know? I think maybe it would make more sense if in the mission briefing, maybe that Red Blur just knows that the "point of divergence" that creates the zombie apocalypse in Mission 2 is in 1969, and that it's crucial that the player is there (maybe a different Red Blur told him), but RedBlur2009 doesn't know it's Dr Aeon until you actually get into Mission 3.

Though then that might mess up your explanation for why RedBlur2009 is old compared to RedBlur1960. But as it stands now I think some of the stuff he tells you doesn't quite add up. I guess the crux of my confusion is: when (subjective time) does Red Blur become fully cognizant of Dr. Aeon's plot to bomb Paragon City? If it's DURING mission 3, then the briefing shouldn't mention the bomb; if it's sometime in the past before this story arc even starts (which seems hinted at), then why wouldn't he tell you up front that he needs your help against Dr Aeon? Also why is the device a triggered objective and not initially placed -- since RedBlur2009 already told me there's a bomb, I ought to be looking for it right away. Making it triggered works a little better for the flow of the mission, but maybe you should have RedBlur2009 not know there's a bomb until the first Aeon is defeated and says, "I'm just going to time travel right back to here and set off a bomb before you can do anything about it!" (causing the bomb to spawn) -- or something similar.

Debriefing: I do like this debriefing and the mental imagery of Red Blur burning the rest of his subjective life time-hopping around to try and stop Dr Aeon. It is a little puzzling that superspeed time traveler is unable to ever actually stops Aeon for good, yet somehow I think I can (in the next mission).

Mission 5
Briefing: So now I'm going after Dr Aeon. The briefing explains I need to take down Dr Aeon on my own, but considering previously in this arc, Dr Aeon has said he can just go farther back in time to fix any problems with his plan, what is to stop him from time traveling back in time to avoid me defeating him? Maybe by preventing my own origin as a hero, preventing my parents from ever meeting, or something like that.

Second part of briefing: seems awfully short. Needs a period at the end.

Inside the mission: why is this map on fire? I just got here.

Found and destroyed Aeon's research and got the "Forgotten Aeon" clue, which seems to imply that Red Blur's actions after mission 4 somehow prevented the Aeon from mission 4 from ever coming to exist. Hmmm, interesting...if paradoxical!

Found and fought Dr. Aeon. His dialog was actually pretty cool! I like how he seems to have forgotten all about me and Red Blur and enjoyed the "A Hero Forgotten" clue and "Red Blur's Revenge" clues. Minor nitpick: both clues appeared at once (since defeating Aeon also ended the mission) and they are a little redundant. (Wouldn't be a big deal normally, some redundancy is good to make sure the player "gets it" - but they both appeared at the same moment so it was especially noticable.) The idea that Red Blur completely changed the course of Dr. Aeon's life is kinda cool. (Though I wonder how he managed this without Dr. Aeon ever noticing him? Superspeed, maybe.)

Debriefing: a nicely written wrap-up of what happened and eulogy for Red Blur.

You might consider repeating what Red Blur's final fate was in a clue somewhere? I believe mission 4 essentially says that he used up his entire subjective lifespan in superspeed and/or time travel mode trying to reshape Aeon's life to avoid missions 2 and 3; but it would be easy to miss this, especially if on a team and not the leader (since you wouldn't get the debriefing in that case), and it's pretty important to the plot.

It occurs to me that if the Red Blur foiled Dr Aeon's plot SO thoroughly that Dr Aeon never constructed the device of mission 4, then the hero who became Red Blur never would've needed to sacrifice his life here, and so Red Blur ought to (paradoxically) still be alive (albeit unaware of the events of this arc). It might make sense to come back and discover Red Blur, in the debriefing for mission 5, has forgotten everything that has happened because it all got removed from existence by his own actions. But, I think this would be a less cool ending to the story, so maybe it's better to ignore this paradox.

Overall
I like the way time travel is used in more creative than normal ways in this arc - the way it shifts the timestream repeatedly, the way Red Blur creates tons of duplicates of himself, and how Dr Aeon threatens to time travel further back in time to redo his plot. I originally walked into the final mission thinking "There's no way that this story can explain how we defeat a time traveling Dr Aeon when Red Blur, another time traveler, couldn't do it", but the story of how Red Blur dealt with Dr Aeon and the final fate of Red Blur actually worked and made sense. The visuals of the mob of Red Blurs assaulting the mob of Aeons in mission 3 were really good as well.

A few things I had problems with: the army of speed boosted EBs in mission 3 just was too staggeringly powerful. I really like how they look, and it's a cool effect for a superspeedster, but I think you should consider dialing them back on power and/or numbers, so that the player still feels like what they're doing is making a difference.

The explanation of what was happening in mission 3 didn't quite add up to me; I couldn't reconcile what Red Blur told me in the briefing with what actually happened in the mission, and the many duplicate empty clues inside the mission didn't help dispel this confusion. I do think this mission is visually cool, but I think some of the text explaining what's going on could be improved. Time travel is pretty confusing as it is, so making it as clear as possible what's happening would be helpful.

Mission 1 felt a little lightweight to me; I understand it's mainly to introduce Red Blur to the player, but I think it needs a little more to make it interesting (perhaps some clues or foreshadowing of later events), or else perhaps could be cut to move the zombie apocalypse up to the first mission (more quickly getting the player into the meat of the story).

Anyway, I thought it was a neat story overall. I gave it 4 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132

8/24/2009

It's been awhile since my last update; I was on vacation (and away from computer) for about a week, then really sick for about a week. But I did get some CoH play in while sick.

Last Monday I played Mega (49 SS/will brute) on a speed RSF organized on 0.o channel with a team of:

2 brutes including me (inv, will)
5 corruptors (a mix of rad and kin)
1 mastermind (dark)

We blitzed through the RSF in 34min 6sec and I got a Peroxisome SHO as reward. After that a friend invited me to an Imperious TF on Invincible difficulty with a team mix of:

2 brutes including me (will, shield)
1 tanker
3 defenders
1 controller
1 blaster

This was a non-speed run where we basically tried to bash everything (on difficulty 5, yet). We ran into trouble rescuing Sister Solaris at the end of mission 1 where the ambushes basically swamped everyone except me; Mega was fairly IO'd out for +lethal defense, and along with her natural lethal resist and regen, I was able to keep on fighting despite everyone else dying, and I rescued Solaris and dragged her to the altar and completed the mission. It was pretty cool. The rest of the TF went pretty well, though with the high difficulty there were a lot more deaths than normal, but we still got through it in 1hr 25mins. This also got Mega to level 50, re-achieving the level she had before I re-rolled her a few months back. I ended up adding some slots to Quick Recovery and Stamina that gave me enough room to slot 2 sets of 3 Performance Shifter, for the extra +HP bonuses; it came to about +56hp altogether, making Mega's total 2303.2hp - nowhere near the cap, but not too bad considering she's mostly slotted for +def.


On Tuesday, I solo'd Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through In Pursuit of Liberty, an AE story arc about the origin story of someone's hero who turns out to be related to Ms. Liberty. It was kind of neat to watch the new hero "grow up", but I thought the plot and background info needed more detail; I gave it 3 stars.

Later I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a speed Sharkhead SF, which finished in a speedy 31m 29sec; spent the merits on recipes but got junk.

After that I played Fire Emerald (40 fire/fire blaster) on a LEGION team fighting Praetorians, which beat Bobcat, Shadow Hunter, Neuron and Anti-Matter and got Fire Emerald to level 41. While on this team, I was rezzing our controller and suddenly was conspicuously aware that I often take Resuscitate (Medicine Pool rez) on blasters, but avoid taking Resurrect (Empathy rez) on empath characters, which struck me as very weird; a couple teammates said this was probably just because I like to do things that aren't expected. Despite this, at 41 I decided to stay with the "fire" theme for Fire Emerald, selecting Char as a new power, from the fire epic pool.


On Wednesday I played Kyrie Eleison (37 bs/inv scrapper) through The Doctor Returns AE story arc. This was a pretty good arc where you stop Crey from trapping superheroes inside MA missions and replacing them with evil duplicates; I gave it 4 stars.

Anticipating the changes to electric armor, I started a new elec/elec brute named Blackout Girl, who is basically a rerolled version of Millie Volt (my previous elec/inv brute) with a different name. Ran through the tutorial and Kalinda's first story arc, then an AE story arc called Burning of Hearts where you help a thug wreak horrible revenge on his ex-girlfriend and the guy she's now seeing. This was quite black-hearted and evil, but I kinda like that in a villain arc, so I gave it 5 stars.

Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) joined a speed ITF formed on O.o channel which easily blitzed through the TF; but a corruptor went linkdead in the very last mission and the whole team agreed to wait around a bit to give him a chance to log back in and get the rewards. After 9 minutes the team kinda felt we had waited enough, so we completed the TF, with a final time of 35mins 42sec. (Later we found out that this corruptor had suffered a power outage, so wasn't able to get back on until much much later.)

From there, Blond joined a STF formed on LBX channel with a team mix of:

3 controllers (kin, rad, FF)
1 tanker (stone armor)
1 scrapper (bs/shield) (me)
3 blasters (AR, psy, ice)

We got through the early missions OK, but had a partial team wipe fighting Dr. Aeon (I think the tanker forgot to use the special power from the previous mission to debuff him), but some of the support characters kept their cool and TP'd people out of the fight to resurrect them back in, and we eventually overcame him. In the last mission, my game crashed while we were fighting Ghost Widow, so I missed getting the Diplomat badge (for the 4 patron AVs), but I got back in time to help with the Arachnos Flyer and to join the wipeout against Lord Recluse, who I think we jumped while some people weren't quite ready. It took some doing to get the tanker set up with enough support to stay up against Lord Recluse, but we eventually got this right, and then once we dropped the red tower it was pretty easy after that. The FF controller was using Force Bubble to keep Arachnos Repairmen and misc Banes at bay, and after the red tower went down one of the controllers was using the plant control Tree of Life to keep the stony healed, which surprised me because I never thought the regen from that Tree was much to speak of. We finished the STF in 1hr 49mins; I took an HO but don't remember what I got.

Finished Wednesday night making some edits to my latest AE story arc, Papers and Paychecks, based on player feedback.


On Thursday, I played Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender) through a speed Manticore TF organized on O.o channel. We did it pretty quickly but the game didn't report a time for us. I spent 20 merits to get a fairly worthless Edict of the Master (5% def for pets) recipe.

Ran my newbie brute Blackout Girl through the Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette TF AE story arc, which I've done before, but I like it for really low level characters, which most story arcs aren't suitable for. This got Blackout Girl to level 7. I also got a compliment on Blackout Girl's biographical story from a random passerby, which was nice.

Also on Thursday I spent some time soloing Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) through Maria Jenkins' story arc, in order to work on the Portal Jockey accolade. Managed to beat Nightstar and Dominatrix while solo, and picked up a tasty Armageddon (RCHG/ACC) recipe while doing so.

After that I played Schadenfreude (49 AR/pain corruptor) on a Recluse SF with a team mix of:

2 brutes
2 MMs
4 corruptors

With this much support we easily finished in 44mins 35sec and I got level 50 and a Centriole SHO for my trouble.

Finished the night playing Star Amethyst (27 dark/ice defender); I formed a Citadel TF with a mix of people from various channels I'm on, ending up with:

2 defenders
2 scrappers
2 tankers
1 controller
1 blaster

This was pretty well balanced and we beat up lots of Council without any serious problems. Finished in 1hr 11mins, getting Star Amethyst to level 29. I took Bitter Ice Blast at level 28, which gives Star Amethyst a pretty good array of attack powers between the 3 ice blasts, ice storm and freeze ray (which I'm getting used to and starting to like). I'm really liking how dark miasma/ice blast works together.


On Friday I played Arrow Girl (23 archery/dev blaster), joining a Sister Psyche TF with a team mix of:

1 tanker (dark armor)
2 scrappers
4 blasters
1 controller (stormy)

This seemed pretty light on support, but wasn't too bad. Had a little drama early on between some exemplared people who wanted to speed through much of the TF, and some people at the low end of the level range who wouldn't SK (despite dying lots) and wanted to clear more for exp; this eventually got worked out, mostly clearing early on and mostly stealthing later on. We did manage to have a team wipe against Devastation, a pretty ordinary Freak boss in one of the train missions, simply due to over-aggroing the large number of groups around him. Finished the TF in 2hrs 43mins, which is a little slow but not too bad. This got Arrow Girl to level 26; I took Fistful of Arrows at 24 for extra AoE, and Aim at 26.

Joined a friend for Numina TF later that day, playing Kyrie Eleison (37 bs/inv scrapper). Our team mix was:

3 scrappers
3 tankers
1 kin controller

Although I didn't form the TF, I got volunteered to be TF leader and to call out where the various hunt missions would be. We were actually really efficient and finished in a speedy 58mins.

Went on to join another Citadel TF, this time with Arrow Girl (26 archery/dev blaster), with a team mix of:

2 blasters
3 scrappers
2 defenders (empathy, kinetics)

We really had no problems getting through it and finished in 1hr 22mins, getting Arrow Girl to level 27.

After that I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed Lady Grey TF, which blitzed through the TF in 27min 29sec.

Finished the night playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) on a 3-player Liberty Force SG team running Vanguard story arcs in Rikti War Zone. We managed to twice fail to rescue a Nemesis Defector (between hordes of Fake Nemeses and multiple Nemesis ambushes), but all 3 of us had the same mission and through persistence and patience (and a much more cautious approach on the third attempt) we managed to rescue the silly blue-coated Nemesis guy on the third try.


On Saturday I played Star Amethyst (29 dark/ice defender), forming a 5 player pickup team in Striga Isle, where we did Tobias Hansen's story arc and Lars Hansen's story arc, which got me 14 merits, level 30 (took Aim for new power) and unlocked Ernesto Hess as a TF contact. Started on Croatoa story arcs after that and did a couple missions there before the team broke up.

After that I had about twenty minutes until the Bunny Run event, and I spent that time wracking my brains for a good bunny rabbit name and costume and powersets. It takes me way too long to actually make a character, and by the time I had Police Rabbit (a name I had originally thought was too dumb, but settled on it after I realized I couldn't come up with a good name and character concept for a rabbit character on short notice) in game, I had already missed the bunny run. So I ran over to the finish line anyway, and there were quite a lot of bunnies there, which was pretty funny. (Will try to remember to post a screen shot later.)

After that I brought Star Amethyst back on, and joined a Manticore TF with a team of about half Midnight Fight Club SG and half Paper Street Soap SG (no, I don't know what those mean).

3 blasters
1 scrapper
1 tanker
1 dark/ice defender (me)
1 emp controller

We fought Crey the normal way, clearing most missions with occasional stealthing. We had one early team wipe in mission 1 due to the team splitting up and going different directions, but otherwise seemed to do fine. Finished in 2hrs 17mins, getting Star Amethyst to level 31.

I finished the night helping someone on LBX with a very old Snaptooth mission from the Valentine's Day event. It was all pretty grey (it was a level 29 mission and the owner was in his 40s). I think the mission owner was nervous and asked for help due to the EB; but it proved to be pretty easy for us to handle, and finishing the mission unlocked the Toga costume piece for Star Amethyst.

In-game feedback so far

Thanks much for the detailed review, twelfth! Glad you enjoyed it. Your review was hilarious, I laughed a lot reading it. Though I'm not sure whether to be flattered or disturbed by the screen shot.

I'll look at adding some mission exit popup dialogs and chat window text for clickies (it's so easy to miss these in game text spam that I didn't bother originally).

You're right that some of the Nemesis Automata are actually custom models; I had to add a few custom robots because none of the regular models count as "bosses" that you can add as mission details. The only boss in the standard Nemesis Automaton group is a Warhulk, and he definitely doesn't look right for an office setting. I made them elec armor because "it made sense" for a robotic duplicate, and it gives them an interesting looking electric aura when their powers are running; I guess this DOES make them hard for an elec blast character (who is almost purely energy damage I think?). Do you think it's bad enough to warrant changing their defense set to something else? I think Electric Barbarella has to keep elec armor, though, just due to her name.

Mission 5 admittedly has a really short timer (15 minutes), but I thought this was justified because I wanted to make it easy for the player to let time run out if desired. It's a pretty small map and in my testing I could finish the mission with time to spare; I could bump up the time limit if some characters are having problems with it though.

I'm glad you liked the "nice" ending; I've tried a few "choose your own ending" arcs before and I usually found that the "fail" ending didn't have as much writing in it, so I tried to make sure both branches of the story had a solid ending.

The Doctor Returns review
Arc ID: 1152
Keywords: Canon Related, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: missions are 35-54, arc description says 30+ and support ATs may need help.

The premise is to help The Doctor stop some sort of Crey scheme. I played a 37 bs/inv scrapper on difficulty 4.

The contact is a personal computer.

Mission 1
Briefing: The briefing is formatted like an email from the Doctor, which is actually pretty neat.

Second part of briefing: this part is a bit more conversational; possibly it should be formatted like another email reply. It reveals that Crey is planning on trapping users of Mission Architect within the system and replacing them with exact copies loyal to Crey. This is a neat evil plan.

I'm supposed to enter a mission "hacked" by the Doctor so that she can prove her claims. I'm a little dubious about that, though; how can I believe anything that occurs in the mission if it's been "hacked"?

Inside the mission, I rescue Fusionette from some enemies in the "Architect Entertainment" faction. I like their dialog.

Shortly after that I ran into Fusionette?, who was an enemy, while the first Fusionette was an ally. Both Fusionettes were in the "Rogue Copies" faction, despite one being an enemy and one being an ally; I'm not quite sure if that's intentional. I'm wondering if the ally Fusionette is the "real" Fusionette and should be in Vanguard? Or maybe she's a copy too, it's hard to say.

Ran into another three or so Fusionette? copies; they all had identical dialog, but that actually makes sense considering they're copies.

"Investigating the Doctor's claims" ended up requiring defeating the whole map. It's not too big a map though, so it's not too bad.

Debriefing: does a good job of explaining what I saw in the first mission, and the fate of the other heroes who have fallen into this trap. It sounds like the "ally" Fusionette was just a copy. The last line of the debriefing suggests this is again an email, but this message isn't formatted like an email; consider adding the email header (like in the briefing) if you have room.

Mission 2
Briefing: I like the Doctor's fake email address here. Good briefing overall. Possible nitpicks: "in case you don't know" maybe should be "in case you didn't know", and "digitalization" should perhaps be "digitization" (based on earlier usage of "digitized").

Second part of briefing: horribly mispelled, but I assume this is intentional, representing a MA mission-within-a-mission that the Doctor is inserting me into.

Found and rescued Executable Number Six, who became an ally; a nice reference to the canon cyberpunk story arcs. I wonder if he really belongs in the "Paragon Protectors" group, though? Maybe he should be in a "Doctor's Ally" group or something similar.

Found the "Adminstration Rights" glowy; should be "Administration Rights". (The clue is right.)

The mission itself seemed a little light on content; there were a few Arachnoid/AE staff battles that didn't seem relevant. I guess this mission is supposed to represent a "bad" AE mission ("Defeat all bugz lol!") that has been hacked by the Doctor, but it could stand to have some more details in order to make it interesting in its own right. Consider changing it from a "bug farm" into a very stereotypical fantasy epic or origin story, which the player can completely ignore in order to hack the administration rights?

Debriefing: I like the way this looks like an automatically-generated email.

Mission 3
Briefing: Another good briefing; I like the explanation of why the Doctor is working through intermediaries. Now she's sending me to check out some kind of file storage area.

Map selection: I do think a sewer is an odd choice to represent a database, which the mission entry popup seems to acknowledge. I'd lean towards something more techy, though the popup saying "It's just a virtual representation" sort of works too.

The map is filled with Freakshow; it's not quite clear why. Perhaps they are virtual representations of the "network security" mercenaries mentioned in the briefing.

This becomes more clear when I finally find H4XX0R who has dialog explaining that the Freakshow are indeed handling network security. I found him quite deep in the sewers, and none of the other mobs had dialog or other details until I found him; I'd suggest adding a patrol or a boss spawn near the front of the mission with some dialog also explaining this, so that it's clearer what's happening earlier on; or, alternatively, use a smaller map.

I do like H4XX0R's description and dialog though.

Defeating H4XX0R triggered a "3 user files to decompress" objective. This required some backtracking, as H4XX0R spawned in the very deepest room of the map for me. Fortunately Positron.hero and Fusionette.hero both spawned nearby in the same room. They had pretty good dialog and clues from rescuing them. I did have to backtrack about half the map length to find Faultline.hero.

I also ran into my first Technician mobs, who had the ability to "load blank character templates", which I thought was a clever way to explain their Phantom Army.

Debriefing: Seems really short. It says the Doctor's message is waiting for me, but doesn't say what it is. Maybe it's the next mission briefing; this debriefing could use some more text, though.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact wants to send me into the AE system to upload some kind of virus.

I like the mission entry popup and how it warns of "unusual server load". The mission itself seems awfully quiet; none of the mobs have anything to say. A patrol spawn or a static boss spawn with some dialog might be nice.

There's a large number of false "interface node" glowies in here that I think I'm meant to hunt through. Their naming scheme kind of gives away which ones are false glowies though; targeting them, I can see some are named "Bad Upload Node" and are not worth clicking. Likewise, "Ambush Node Back", though I clicked this one just to see what would happen (sure enough, an ambush). I eventually found the proper glowy to click, which was named "Upload Node". I think you may want to rename all these glowies to be something more generic sounding so it's not as obvious which ones are false glowies versus the real one.

Clicking "Upload Node" did complete the mission. This mission ended up purely being a hunt for the correct glowy among a large number of false glowies. The ambush from "Ambush Node Back" was the only thing that happened during this mission, and generated the only mobs that had any lines. I feel like this needed a few more mission details to make it more lively. Maybe add some AE mobs talking panickedly about the security breaches at other facilities, and shouting about how they need to take the interface nodes down?

Mission 5
Briefing: This briefing doesn't have the "email header" format that the earlier ones did. I'm told I need to erase records of what we've done, so as to hide The Doctor's presence. This seems kind of peripheral to the "fix the MA system" theme of the arc, but we'll see where it goes.

The Doctor tells me "Your administration rights have been revoked" in the briefing; I think you should consider having the player learn this by getting a clue in either mission 4 or mission 5, perhaps when you try to use your admin privileges, or as an automated email telling you that your admin access has been revoked due to suspicious activity. This would be more dramatic than simply being told it's happened.

Found and fought Agents Chalmers and Ruthven, who had some fun dialog trying to play mind games with me.

The Doctor told me she would send me into an "ordinary mission", but it seems filled with Crey. Granted, an ordinary AE mission COULD have Crey in it, but it's a bit too coincidental. Unlike missions 1 and 2, which were also "ordinary missions" that I was inserted into, this mission-within-a-mission doesn't appear to have an obvious theme or objective (not even "Kill all bugz lolz"). Of course, I have my "real" objectives to get the passcodes and stuff, but I think the mission-within-a-mission that I'm inserted into, should have its own story logic.

Mission objectives: "Delete log files." has an extra period at the end of it (the punctuation looks wrong when it's written "Delete log files., Delete back upfiles" in the nav tool).

The female "Technician" and the "Restoration Tech" both have Paragon Protector heads, which seems kind of odd when all the other AE mobs (including the male Technician) have normal human appearances. This might be on purpose, but it seemed a little jarring. Restoration Tech also doesn't have the standard light green shirt the other AE mobs all seem to wear.

The technicians surrounding the backup files managed to defeat me, a combination of me being unable to target the right mob through the phantom army, and stacked psi damage cutting right through my invuln defense set. Probably fine on difficulty.

In the AE hospital I now see why Restoration Tech has a Paragon Protector head and a white jacket -- there's a Restoration Tech in the official AE hospital, that I never really looked at before! He has an orange horizontal stripe across his white jacket, though, unlike your version; not sure if you can get that effect in the costume creator. Maybe "angelic" pattern would look close?

On my second try I destroyed the backup files, completing the mission.

Mission exit popup: apparently "I" actually *was* a digital copy, just as Chalmers and Ruthven claimed! But now that I've deleted all these files, "I've" forgotten everything that happened. An interesting twist.

Debriefing: Ouch, so the Doctor deliberately sent "my copy" to her death/deletion; pretty cold! She gives a good wrap-up of the plot, though, and her solution to Crey's tampering.

Overall
I liked the overall Crey plot to take over heroes via the AE, and the use of The Doctor was handled quite effectively. I liked the way The Doctor communicated to you via emails; in fact I think all the briefings/debriefings that aren't already in this format should be converted to it.

It's pretty hard to pull off a meta story arc about Architect Entertainment itself, but I felt this did a fairly good job of it; although I do think missions 2 and 5 need more details to make them seem more like a "mission within a mission" that you've been inserted into.

I liked the writing in the briefings and most of the debriefings (except for #3 which seemed unusually short); I felt several of the middle missions (#2 through #4) needed a little more content to make them more interesting, though. Mission 3 did have the triggered rescue objectives, but you pretty much have to fight (or stealth) through a whole map of generic Freaks (with no dialog or other details) before you can trigger them.

I thought the final reveal that you've really been playing a "copy" of yourself the whole time was a clever twist. But, the final mission was a little lacking in drama overall; you're sent to clean up the traces of the Doctor's intrusion, which I'll agree makes logical sense, but "performing cleanup" does not feel very dramatic as a grand finale for the arc.

I might suggest changing the briefing to ask the player to "escort" the Doctor or "stand guard" at a network node while The Doctor is doing her dirty work -- but once you get into the mission, you find the two Agents are moving to intercept the Doctor before she can do it, so the Doctor then sends you to beat the two Agents, which eventually triggers the objective to "clean up" traces of the intrusion. If you can somehow work it in that the player realizes she is "just a copy" during the mission, yet knowingly deletes all the records and backups anyway, it would make the "your copy was a real hero!" speech the Doctor gives in the final debriefing ring a little more true -- as presented, it seems like the copy unwittingly deletes herself, then gets praised as a hero by the Doctor (who tricked her into doing it).

Anyway, it was a good story overall. I gave it 4 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629

With the final encounter being a little easier, I downgraded Fujineko from an EB ally to a Boss ally for the sake of better balance. This also helps the balance in mission 1, where she also appears.

I was considering reducing Flower Knight in rank as well, but left her alone for now until I get a feel for how the other changes are working out.

I really liked Zamuel's take on the Lord Kumo costume; the "sinister plate" pieces looked especially spider-like and evil, and the purple glowing eyes looked pretty evil, too. I tried to incorporate some of his costume ideas into the live story arc, and ended up with this:



I started trying to color the costume black with red accents, but after looking at the "real" Lord Recluse, I thought grey armor with black accents (and the purple cloak!) was a color scheme more evocative of the "real" Lord Recluse (whose armor is mostly this gunmetal color).

I've gotten some feedback saying that sometimes he didn't spawn ninjas and was something of a pushover as a result. I tried to fix this by changing him to be "hard energy assault/standard willpower", and giving him some extra ambushes to simulate pets. Energy assault is because the real Lord Recluse periodically fires off energy beams and/or does a nasty melee attack, while willpower is purely to give him some extra staying power due to the extra HP and regen. I only set him on standard willpower because I've run into some extreme willpower AVs that are basically unkillable due to crazy regen; I may up him from standard WP if he still seems too easy.

Thanks much for all the feedback!!

Release the Dragon review
Arc ID: 229358
Keywords: Canon Related, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: missions are 30-35, but arc description says 25-35
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise is to help out a businessman who the Tsoo are going after. I played a 27 dark/ice defender on difficulty 1. The contact is Amanda Loomis (a contact in IP).

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption at the top should be in bigger type, bold face or colored to stand out a bit more from the rest of the briefing.

The contact gives a very nice briefing explaining the situation and introducing Leon Wu, the businessman whose life is in danger. "tatoo-wearing" should be "tattoo-wearing" or maybe just "tattooed".

In the mission, I immediately ran into Bao Cai, who had some good dialog. In his description, "renown for his fantastic luck" should be "renowned for his fantastic luck". Though if he's so lucky, why does he say:

[NPC] Bao Cai: Wh-what? Star Amethyst?! Oh just my luck...

Found and rescued Leon Wu. I really like the dialog from his guards and from (I think) a roaming Tsoo patrol. In Leon's description, "reselling of antiques; Something that seems", "something" shouldn't be capitalized. Leon tells me about his computer's files, which changes my objective to "Find Wu's Computer".

I eventually found "Wu's Laptop" which told me that a Ming vase was missing, and completed the mission.

Debriefing and mission complete clue both have a good summary of what's happened so far. The clues and dialog in this mission are well-written overall.

Mission 2
Briefing: Another well written briefing. The contact explains that the vase is a magical artifact, and sends me against the Tsoo to get it back.

Found Donny Choi, a Tsoo boss with a good description and dialog. Though he does say:

[NPC] Donny Choi: Star Amethyst, ehh? And here I was worring about being bored to death. Fight me, if you think you can!

"worring" should be "worrying" here. I was a little surprised that defeating Donny didn't complete the "Defeat the Tsoo Leader" objective, until I found the actual leader farther in. (It did make sense, another Tsoo had been talking about "Haiku".)

Found the vase, which gave an interesting clue.

Found the "Haiku" boss; nice job on having all his dialog in haiku format. I like how his poetry starts getting messed up when you have him nearly defeated.

[NPC] Liang "Haiku" Qian: Formidable blow; But, of no great concequence. A wasted effort.

"concequence" should be "consequence" here.

Mission 3
Briefing: So I've beat up the Tsoo and returned the vase to Leon, but now Sky Raiders are attacking his office and I need to save him.

Some good dialog from the Sky Raiders in this mission, clearly explaining what they're up to and why they're messing with Leon Wu.

I found and rescued Leon, triggering some objectives to find clues and secure Wu's safe, or maybe the magic vase, as well as defeating the Sky Raiders leader.

Found and defeated Lt Anders, a jump bot. I really liked the lines he says while at low life:

[NPC] Lt. Anders: Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. OW! SKY RAIDERS! WHY was I programmed to feel PAIN?!
[NPC] Lt. Anders: Oh great, now I'm exploded. I don't need this!

The clue he drops is very funny, too. The clues point towards Leon Wu being involved in shady business, having hired the Sky Raiders to steal the vase originally.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact now thinks Leon is selling the vase to the highest bidder on the black market and needs to be stopped. This seemed to be a little bit of a leap, but thinking about it, the display case clue said there were no signs of forced entry, so it fits. Pretty well written briefing overall with lots of good detail.

Mission entry popup: "each-other" should be "each other".

Nice little Tsoo civil war inside the mission, and some named bosses with good dialog. I found a Tsoo version of Leon Wu, also; in his description, "intent of transforming himself" should maybe be "intent on transforming himself". Also, "person-to-person" should maybe be "mano-a-mano"? Or "in single combat".

Mission 5
Briefing: I'm now sent to battle "Long-Wu", the transformed (via the magic vase) half-dragon version of Leon Wu.

Sneaking around with Shadow Fall I found Long-Wu, who has a new and intimidating looking model. He spawned as a boss for me (on difficulty 1). I managed to defeat him via debuffs and kiting.

Debriefing: nice wrap-up of the arc, explaining what ends up happening to Long-Wu. You might consider mentioning what happens to the Tsoo gangs after Long-Wu's fall, as well.

Overall
This was a very nicely written arc. The dialog was terrific, the briefings and debriefings were all well-written. The transformation of Leon Wu from hapless businessman, to a shady double dealer, and ultimately into a monster, was handled well. I loved the many minor characters with small roles, but good descriptions and dialog. My few comments are mostly minor typos and stylistic suggestions.

I gave this arc 5 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629

In Pursuit of Liberty review
Arc ID: 221702
Keywords: Custom Characters, Complex Mechanics, Origin Story
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 45-54
Warnings: EBs, Extreme EBs, Extreme Bosses, Extreme Lieutenants, Enemies with custom powers, "may contain some humor" (from author)

The premise is to help a child find her destiny. With the "extreme powers" warnings, I decided to play a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense, on difficulty 4. The contact is Ms Liberty.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted, but the text kinda rambles. She wants me to rescue a kidnapped child. She first says "the future of Paragon depends on it", then "Why? Perhaps because I like her name...perhaps I'm bored..." etc.; I suggest you edit this down some, and make her stick to one reason why she's asking (the additional speculation by the contact doesn't add much, IMHO).

Ms Liberty says the kidnapping happened seven years ago and you have to go back in time to save the girl; she cuts herself off before explaining why jumping through all these hoops is necessary.

Finally she says "I am wasting valuable time. A child needs saving." But this seems to contradict the fact that the child was kidnapped 7 years ago? If you're time traveling into the past anyway, I'm not sure how much time urgency there can be in the present.

Second part of briefing: the contact finally tells me some details about the kidnapping; the name of the child, the perpetrators, the fact that she already sent an agent (also via time travel?) to save the girl.

One question I have to ask here is, why doesn't Ms Liberty go back in time to save this girl herself? She obviously thinks this is important and is a hero and all.

Mission objectives: Wow, there's a lot of people named Liberty in this story arc already; the contact, the kidnapped child, AND the agent I'm being sent to rescue. This seems a bit too much coincidence.

With so many people named Liberty, "Free Liberty" is rather ambiguous. Maybe should be "Rescue the little girl" or something. Also, "Find Agent Liberty" is among my objectives, but the contact never told me the name of her agent; she should either be mentioned in the briefing or else this objective maybe should be "Find Longbow agent". Likewise, "Defeat Big AL" is in my objectives, but I don't know who he is; he should either be mentioned by name in the briefing, or the objective should be something like "Defeat Family boss".

I have the objective "Find the safe" also, but it's not at all clear why I need to find a safe; based on the contact's briefing, I really thought getting the girl out was the objective.

Found Agent Liberty being held by some members of the "Anti Liberty League", who seemed to be custom villains with nice costumes and descriptions. I wonder why the contact never mentioned these guys though? They really should have some dialog to help establish what this new villain group is like and who they are; perhaps they could threaten Agent Liberty or expound about the Anti-Liberty League's agenda.

Agent Liberty says:

[NPC] Agent Liberty: OK, we need to go get Little Liberty now!

Is it possible to rescue Little Liberty before Agent Liberty? If it is, this dialog might not make sense.

I found and rescued Little Liberty and she said:

[NPC] Little Liberty: Thank you. Now lets get out of here fast. These people are creepy!

"lets" should be "let's".

Her guards were, again, Anti Liberty League; they do look good, but need more dialog.

Big Al's description refers to his "cousin Al" but the clue "Note to Al" that you get for defeating Big Al refers to "cousin MAL" - name is inconsistent. Also "dedicted" should be "dedicated" in this clue.

I got the "Family Tree" clue from the safe in this mission, which explains how Liberty Rose is related to Ms Liberty and Miss Liberty; having this clue in the Family base seems inconsistent with the "Note to Al" clue that says "Don't ask why, just trust me!" which suggests that Big Al is in the dark as to the girl's importance.

I also think it's a little strange that Ms Liberty didn't tell me about her relation to the girl up-front; it's not like Ms Liberty has anything to hide here?

I got a "Thank you note from Agent Liberty" as a mission completion clue, which has a lot of good information in it. The writing style makes it a little too obviously an info dump though; you might consider revising it to sound a little more natural. For example, part of this clue is:

"All of us in the Liberty League are grateful for your help. You have saved Little Liberty from that evil villain, Big Al. Based on the note that you found on Al, we can see that he had a grudge against Marcus."

Most people don't talk or write like this. I'd suggest rewording to something like:

"Thanks again for saving Little Liberty! Big Al has been holding a grudge ever since Statesman sent him to prison."

Debriefing: It's great that Ms Liberty is excited that I'm successful, but it would be nice if she'd explain a little about the significance of saving Liberty Rose in the past.

Mission 2
Briefing: The first paragraph continues to portray Ms Liberty as being kind of rambling; I don't really picture her as being like that, so would suggest revising that some, but up to you.

The premise of this mission seems to be the same as the first mission, go back in time to rescue this girl who gets into trouble. And find some "treasure", which is a strange motivation for a hero.

Mission title is "Find the Treasure", but shouldn't the hero's main motivation be to save the girl?

I rescued Little Liberty and found the treasure chest which had a costume in it. This mission really didn't seem to have a lot to it. Would the Anti Liberty League hiding her costume really have prevented her from becoming a hero? Surely she could've gotten another costume if need be.

Mission 3
Briefing: Little Liberty needs to be saved again; rescuing her repeatedly seems to be the theme so far. (Only now it's present day Little Liberty instead of going back in time.)

Mission title of "Find the Book" seems odd; the main goal should be to rescue the girl.

"Defeat Fern Fatale" is in my mission objectives, but I don't know who Fern Fatale is (never mentioned in the briefing). Great villain name though.

I like the mix of standard mobs that comprise the "Evil Garden Dwellers" group; they look good together. At least two "Devoured Pyriss" EBs spawned among random garden inhabitants, though; not sure if that was intentional, they had no dialog, so were most likely random spawns.

Fatal Follower's description, "Fatal Followers are skilled in all forms combat" ... should be "forms of combat".

I rescued the grown-up Liberty Rose Jones, though I wonder if she should have a hero name by this point; she seems to be in her hero costume. The plant trap "captured" animation was a nice touch. She didn't seem to help fight enemies, but possibly she isn't officially a hero yet.

I found and fought Fern Fatale, who said:

[NPC] Fern Fatale: Don't forget, if I am defeated, protect the swords at all costs!

....which didn't make much sense to me at the time. It was cleared up a little by the "Note to Fern" which said that Fern was holding some swords for MAL and her minions are supposed to send the swords into the future in the event of her defeat. This seems rather convoluted; if they have a time machine right there, wouldn't Fern herself be able to escape into the future, instead of letting me defeat her? Since the "swords" are never actually visible in this mission in any capacity, it might be simpler for your story for the swords to already be in the future, instead of temporarily held here and teleported away (without the player ever getting to see them).

I found a display case for the "book"; consider using one of the bookcase or pile of books graphics instead? The "journal" reveals some of the back story, that Liberty Rose is Miss Liberty's granddaughter and the costume is magic, and mentions the swords. You might consider rewriting the "Journal" clue to sound more like an excerpt from the journal; right now it explains a lot, but is pretty obviously an explanation. Making it sound more like a journal entry would be a little more cool.

Debriefing: Seems rather dry. The debriefing says "She is Miss Liberty's granddaughter", which is a rather odd way to phrase it considering Miss Liberty is also the contact's mother. Also odd that she wonders where the swords are, when we actually have a clue saying they're sent into the future.

Mission 4
Briefing: So now I'm being sent into the future to find the swords. "The future" is a pretty big place though, and the clues were rather vague on just where and when in the future the swords were sent. How do we know when/where to time travel to? Maybe needs some clarification (either in a clue in mission 3, or maybe Ms Liberty has some method of narrowing down where/when to go).

Also with so many characters named Liberty in this arc, you might want to clarify "If Liberty does not fulfill her destiny" as being "Liberty Rose" in particular.

Inside the mission, "The Dark Alliance" is an interesting mix of standard enemies, but the don't seem quite as cohesive as the "Evil Garden Dwellers" group, which actually looked pretty good in the forest. This is just a nit pick really; but you might make "The Dark Alliance" seem more thematically futuristic. I like the robots and the Nazis (all dystopias should have jackbooted stormtroopers), but thought the Rularuu eyeballs were a bit out of place. There were more Devoured Pyriss too. Consider replacing them with more robot types and soldier types? Axis America, Malta mecha and soldiers, Nightstar minions, Arachnos robots, Rikti drones, all spring to mind as possibly fitting the theme you have going here.

I found and rescued Statesman; he was guarded by more Anti Liberty League, which I guess have survived into this possible future. He was in the "cowering" animation, which is decidedly unheroic; maybe give him a more dignified captured animation. It's a little weird that the Anti Liberty League would be able to capture him (since he's really very strong), but I can let that slide for sake of the story. He also says:

[NPC] Statesman: Ah you have come from our past. Free me, we must talk!

How does he know I'm from the past? I kind of thought he'd be a little more surprised. He gives me a note for "Liberty" (again I suggest you clarify as "Liberty Rose"). In "Note for Liberty" (suggest "Note for Liberty Rose"), "fulfull" should be "fulfill". It is kind of weird that Future Statesman is asking present day Liberty Rose to "fulfill her destiny"; in his timeline, shouldn't she ALREADY have become a hero? Since this is in the future, after all. Unless Liberty Rose does not actually become a hero until sometime after this dystopian future? All the time travel is making her origin story rather confusing.

I'm a little surprised Statesman is not more concerned about the fact that Paragon City has been completely destroyed; instead he is fixated on Liberty Rose's swords, which are apparently hidden here somewhere. I would think Statesman would be more concerned about beating up the Dark Alliance and saving Paragon City? I'm also a bit unclear on why MAL wanted the swords sent here in particular.

It's a rather lengthy glowy hunt to find the "swords". It took me awhile as it's a large outdoor map with poor visibility; though I think this is the right map for your "doomed future", the fact remains that searching this large map for a glowy takes awhile. Oddly, the swords are in a wooden coffin; you might consider using the weapon rack graphic instead. Or alternatively, have them in the possession of a dual blade wielding boss (someone who found the swords and is using them); that might make the objective easier to find also. Or at least explain why it's in a coffin (whose coffin is it? future Liberty Rose's? someone else?).

Finding the coffin completes the mission, but leaves me with a few questions: how did this "bad" future come about? I think the implication is that if it weren't for Liberty Rose, this bad future would come about, but would be a little stronger on narrative if there were some clues or dialog that showed exactly why this was so.

Also, "Two Magic Swords" clue says that Miss Liberty owned the two swords; this is a little weird because Miss Liberty is pretty clearly a martial arts scrapper (if you ever run into her in-game), and also, it's not clear why she wouldn't give her magic weapons to Ms. Liberty (who I assume became a heroine first) rather than Liberty Rose. I think this could be explained somehow, but currently I have to guess as to the reasons.

Debriefing: Ms Liberty says that I've "possibly saved our world" by recovering the swords, but it's not at all clear why this actually saves the world. Consider adding some more text somewhere explaining exactly why it's so essential for Liberty Rose to become a hero. Ms Liberty also says "I will give them to Liberty"; suggest you call her "Liberty Rose" for clarity.

Mission 5
Briefing: Despite the magic swords and magic costume making Liberty Rose into a Real Hero, somehow she needs to be rescued again. She is coming close to beating Fusionette's record. Anyway, I think this somewhat undermines the "destined one" vibe that the arc is trying to give Liberty Rose.

Second part of briefing: The contact now tells me I need to defeat Master Al, aka MAL.

In the mission: I have to rescue 3 people named Liberty (Liberty Rose, Liberty Storm and Agent Liberty) and Statesman. Not quite sure how Statesman got involved.

I found and rescued Liberty Storm; her encounter should probably have some dialog before you rescue her. In her line after being rescued, she says:

[NPC] Liberty Storm: Thanks. Lets go rock!

"Lets" should be "Let's" here. Also, Liberty Storm is never mentioned before this, so I don't really know who she is; you might have her briefly introduced by the contact in the mission briefing, or at least have her introduce herself as a member of the Liberty League when you meet her. Strangely her tag is "Liberty Elite", though Agent Liberty earlier said that people with "Liberty" in their name would be in "Liberty League".)

Found and rescued Liberty Rose, who was in a different costume than the last time I saw her. Her swords look awfully ordinary considering how much they've been built up as being magical; consider making them glowy or something?

Found and fought MAL and lost to him on my first try, partly due to allies aggroing additional groups, and partly due to Fearsome Followers stacking enough fears on me to run me out of break frees. Not a big deal, I was playing a bit overconfidently.

On my second try I brought most of a tray of break frees (and had to use most of them - the fearsome followers really like to cast fear) and rescued Agent Liberty to help cover me while fighting MAL, and I eventually dropped MAL after a hard fight. You might consider making his objective only need the boss to complete it; I had to clear several stray minions before the mission would complete, and it's easy for his group to get mixed up with other nearby groups on this particular map (his group spawned on the grass in front of the gates of the main cemetery), making it a little confusing to find them all.

Debriefing: Seems to be a little light for the finish of the arc; maybe talk about the eventual fate of MAL and Liberty Rose and have Ms Liberty also express Liberty Rose's thanks.

Overall
It's neat to watch Liberty Rose "grow up" and I like the look and the powers of the Anti Liberty League (even with all the fears). I liked the idea of using custom groups of PVE enemies in the middle missions. I liked the premise of MAL attempting to prevent Liberty Rose from becoming a hero. But, I think it needs additional background material to be more compelling. As presented, the story arc never makes clear: (a) what was Liberty Rose's ACTUAL origin story, before MAL came and mucked it up? I'm sure it wasn't ORIGINALLY that my hero came and gave her a costume and swords (which is what ends up happening), and (b) what exactly is it that makes Liberty Rose so important, that stopping her from becoming a hero causes the world to collapse? Presumably she did something important (probably against MAL) that made that huge difference. I think explaining some of these things (perhaps in clues, briefings or dialog) would help improve the story's background quite a lot.

The use of time travel for the plot was a little confusing; all the time hopping made the various missions seem a bit disjointed from each other. Thinking about it, I'm sent back in time to recover the stolen costume and into the future to recover the stolen swords. Wouldn't it make even more sense to use time travel to prevent the costume and swords from being stolen in the first place? Perhaps interrupting the theft before it happens? MAL's reasoning for sending the stolen swords into the future wasn't apparent to me either; it's not like they're a lot safer there, since you can just find them laying around in a box. Also, I'm still not quite sure why Ms Liberty doesn't go help Liberty Rose herself, instead of sending me (after all, they're family).

I also found it quite confusing to have multiple characters named Liberty (6 that I can think of: Ms Liberty, Miss Liberty, Liberty Rose, Agent Liberty, Little Liberty, Liberty Storm) and multiple characters named Al (both the Family boss and the Anti Liberty boss). You might consider changing at least a few of their names, to reduce confusion (unless you are very strongly tied to them). At the very least, I suggest you always call Liberty Rose Jones by "Liberty Rose" and never just "Liberty", which is too ambiguous.

Some more background about the big bad guy, MAL, and what his evil plans are would be helpful, also. I like that MAL is mentioned significantly a few times before we meet him, setting him up to be the big bad guy; but we never really learn much about what he's up to, aside from interfering with Liberty Rose's origin. Presumably he wants to get her out of the way for some reason? Why is that? Does he have some kind of master plan that she is destined to interfere with?

Anyway, I like the outline of the story and thought some of the custom costumes were quite nice. I felt some of the background details and plotting could use some more work. With all this in mind I gave this arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

----

My queue is currently:

mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)

8/11/2009

Last Thursday, I was playing Fire Emerald (40 fire/fire blaster) and accepted an invite to an 8-player pickup team going after Anti-Matter. This team wasn't terribly good and we had a team wipe against the AV, but we beat him on the second try.

After that mission I excused myself and swapped to Kyrie Eleison (34 bs/inv scrapper) and started my own pickup team, which rapidly filled up to 8 players. We had 2 force fielders and 1 cold defender; we lacked a traditional healer, but with capped defense we easily stomped lots of CoT and other enemies. We only ran into trouble against Devouring Earth, who dealt us two team wipes due to their Quartz (+tohit emanators) overcoming our defense. We got past that though and otherwise did well all night, getting Kyrie to level 36.

Later that night I joined a few speed TF runs. I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a speed Lady Grey TF (taking 22min 44sec) and a speed Recluse SF (taking 32min 29sec; got a Lysosome); and Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF (taking 21min 7sec).


Friday night, I played Strong Woman (39 inv/SS tanker) on a Numina TF, with a team mix of:

2 scrappers (fire/fire and claw/reg)
2 controllers (ill/emp and fire/thermal)
1 defender (cold/ice)
2 tankers (inv/SS and ice/EM)

Our team had a bad habit of getting strung out and separated in the early missions, but it didn't seem to be a big deal. We did suffer a wipeout in the first Eden door mission, where we got overwhelmed by stacked DE emanators. We managed to dust ourselves off though and finish that mission and the rest of the TF, completing it in 1hr 25mins. This got Strong Woman to level 40 and earned her the Task Force Commander accolade.


On Saturday, I found my main character Police Woman (50 AR/dev) had finally sat in Warburg long enough to get the Predator day job. So after some market manipulation (up to 1.25 billion-ish) I moved her to park in Cimerora.

I played Star Amethyst (21 dark/ice defender) for awhile; first duoing radio missions with a tanker friend, then sidekicking to a 5-player team. This got Star Amethyst to 22, where I took Ice Storm for some AoE damage. Later that night, I formed a Sister Psyche TF with a team mix of:

2 defenders (dark/ice, cold/ice)
4 blasters (fire/dev, 2 fire/fire, nrg/dev)
1 scrapper (claw/will)
1 controller (ill/TA)

This was a well-balanced team with lots of DPS, and we breezed through the TF in 1hr 54mins, getting Star Amethyst to level 25. I took Freeze Ray at 24. I've been liking Ice Storm (it works great with Tar Patch) but have been underwhelmed with Freeze Ray so far. I think this is because Star Amethyst already has Fearsome Stare and Howling Twilight, both of which are AoE controls, while Freeze Ray only holds a single target so just doesn't seem as cool by comparison.

I also played Arrow Girl (21 archery/dev blaster) as a sidekick to a 36 tanker for a bit, getting to level 22 (where I took Cloaking Device) and SOs. Later that night I joined a 5-player pickup team doing missions in Striga, which got Arrow Girl to 23. I'm really enjoying playing Arrow Girl so far; I think maybe it's because she has a good name, and as a */dev blaster she plays a lot like my main character.

Also on Saturday night, I joined an all-storm ITF organized on LBX, playing Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender). Our team mix was:

3 defenders (all stormy)
4 controllers (all stormy)
1 corruptor (stormy)

We basically trounced the mobs in the first mission, but in a moment of great irony, we discovered that the immense amount of knockback we were throwing around had caused multiple mobs to get knocked through the geometry, and as a result we weren't able to free Sister Solaris. We were able to kill two mobs that had gotten stuck in walls, but we still couldn't free Sister Solaris (there had to be more mobs that were knocked through the walls entirely or something) and as a result, we had to quit the TF.

We wanted to retry it, though, so we restarted the ITF with the same team - only, we were cautioning each other not to use Hurricane, Tornado, etc. during the first mission. This felt incredibly ironic for an all-stormy team. Once we got through the first mission, though, we felt free to let loose the dogs of storm for the rest of the TF, and we finished in a pretty reasonable 1hr 8mins. I think controller pets were tanking the AVs, or maybe their attacks were just debuffed to nothingness; it was pretty hard to see under all the Lightning Storms and Hurricanes.


On Sunday I picked up the Abiding veteran badge (57 months). I played Star Amethyst some more, sidekicking to a level 36ish LEGION team, which got her to level 27; I finally broke down and took a travel power, Teleport, at level 26. I had been getting by on the Raptor Pack but it just looks so gauche for a magic-origin character to be using that.

That night I played Miss Scarlett (17 mace/SR brute on Victory) on an 8-player Demolition Girls team, lackeyed up to 25 and running door missions for a few hours. This got Scarlett the Soul Taker badge and level 20, where Stamina was a welcome relief; mace/SR had seemed very END expensive, at least the way I had slotted it.

After that team broke up I spent a lot of time working on my newest story arc, which I finally felt was complete enough to publish: Papers and Paychecks (arc 298290), a level 32-45 villain arc where your villain decides to "go legit" and get a real job at a Fortune 500 company. Only the company you work for is Crey Industries, so the job turns out to be a little less "legit" than originally expected. Hijinks ensue.

On Monday I got a detailed review of the Flower Knight TF from one of the leading story arc reviewers on the CoH forums. He highlighted a problem with the final boss of my story arc, who is a renamed Lord Recluse, who, when near death, ends up summoning an army of Bane spiders, who look extremely out-of-theme for my story arc. At least 2 other people had also flagged this as something they thought was a problem, so this finally motivated me to actually start doing something about it.

So on Monday night I tried to make a new custom AV to replace my "Lord Recluse" clone. There was no way I could make a costume that looks just like Lord Recluse (there's just no way to add extra arms), but here's my initial stab at a samurai-themed Recluse:



I may do more costume tweaks eventually; despite being in mostly samurai armor, I thought the purple cape helped make him look a lot more like Lord Recluse than anything else (there's not that many heavily armored guys in purple cloaks in CoH). I started by making him a ninjas/energy assault AV, but in my testing that seemed too easy, so I switched him to ninjas/poison.

I had to delete a custom mob in order to make space for a new custom mob; but I found a way to work around actually losing any characters. I ended up deleting my "Shugenja" (a Japanese spellcaster) custom mob and replacing her with a slightly repainted Mu Mystic. This ended up looking like this:



I actually like how that turned out, as the arc is depicting a feudal Japan-themed alternate universe, so alternate versions of Mu Mystics kind of works.

I played Kyrie Eleison (36 bs/inv scrapper) on a LEGION team for a bit, but for some reason the lag was really bad on Monday night (people and mobs were doing little twitchy mini-teleports on my screen). This was making me dizzy enough that I had to drop from the team; I ended up spending the rest of the night fiddling with Mission Architect edits.

Also on Monday night, I got my first two plays through Papers and Paychecks. Both players seemed to like it. The arc is written with a "player decision" at the end (basically, the player chooses to complete the mission, or fail it), and both players so far chose the "nice" action rather than the "mean" action. It'll be interesting to see how many people choose each path.


Anyway, this afternoon I'm heading out of town for about a week and will have limited internet access; so I won't be on CoH until next week sometime. Will see you all then!