PoliceWoman

I started Matchstick Women (3369) on a 2-player team (26 db/ninj stalker and 18 sonic/storm corruptor); we finished the 1st mission but could not complete the 2nd mission. We couldn't find the "Last Recruiter" despite clearing all of the Steel Canyon map.

We think one of the bosses spawned under the map or clipping geometry of one of the buildings or something.

We had to quit the arc at that point, but this seemed like a bug to me, so I left it unrated and will re-try it a little later while solo.

Threefold Rule review
Arc ID: 197183
Keywords: Custom Characters, Complex Mechanics, Magic
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-30, mostly (some variation for both top level and bottom level)

The premise appears to be unifying various magical factions, "an epic story on pagan themes". I played a 26 db/ninj stalker.

The contact is a (newly introduced) member of the Midnight Squad.

Mission 1
Briefing: I like the "Oak and Holly" reference in the subtitle, helps set the "pagan" atmosphere. The briefing says it's a "history lesson", but it also pokes fun at the "Origin of Power" story arc, which is amusing. She says "it's better to show than tell", however.

Second part of briefing: most of the actual briefing seems to be in the part AFTER you accept, which is a little unusual but seems to work. She is sending me back in time and tells me to stay there "until you've learned enough" which seems very vague. Whenever that is, I'm supposed to find the "backwards temporal projection" to get back.

Mission title: "Observe history" sounds neat, but kinda places me as a bystander rather than a participant. Also seems to conflict a bit with the mission objective of "Be a hero" which seems unlikely to be just observing.

Exploring the mission, it appears to be a four way battle between The Cabal, the Legacy Chain, and two new factions: the Inquisition (who look like Western European crusaders) and The Midnight Order (a medieval Midnight Squad). The custom factions have very nice costumes.

All four factions seem to be hostile to me. I'm a little unsure what I'm supposed to do, so I searched the map for awhile until I found a Maiden being held captive by The Inquisition. This seemed like a good "Be a hero" opportunity, so I rescued the Maiden and this seemed to satisfy the first goal. Maiden's dialog is pretty good (her "I'm lost" and "there you are!" messages are used pretty well to give her extra lines) but I'm not sure why saving her was so significant. Maybe she should give a Clue of some sort? Maiden's description is awfully short and vague, could use some more detail.

Found an "Aspect of the Pillar" which looked just like a Nictus crystal, which was a bit jarring; for that reason, I'm not sure this is the best graphic to use. Defeating the guards surrounding it ended the mission. What happens if I rescue the "Aspect of the Pillar" before the Maiden? I wonder if that might make less sense. (Unless they are triggered in this particular order.)

So I return back to the present time. I think either rescuing the Maiden or completing the mission should give some instructional Clue indicating what the player has learned by Observing History; something about the schism between the magical factions, I would say. A lot of this is contained in the briefing for mission 2, but maybe should be clues learned from mission 1. You might also consider adding a clue indicating the Maiden is somehow significant in what is to come.

Debriefing: seems very short and uninformative. I'd suggest adding a recap of what has been learned by observing the past.

** at this point an 18 sonic/storm corruptor friend wanted to team up, so I invited him - but due to being on a team, I needed to move a bit faster, so the rest of my notes are less detailed **

Mission 2
To get the Cabal to respect us, we basically had to beat them up. Eventually I beat up the ones guarding the head witch, who was a hostage; this impressed her enough to join the magical alliance being formed.

Mission 3
It seems the contact has been taken captive by the Legacy Chain? This seems weird, shouldn't they like the Midnight Squad since both factions are heroes?

The drop in min level from 25 (in mission 2) to 21 (in this mission) caught me a bit by surprise; I hadn't lackeyed the 18 corruptor in the previous mission (since it auto-SK'd him to 25) and I had fought 2 mobs in this mission before I realized I needed to LK him here (since it auto-SK'd him to 21, but the mobs were my level, 26). Not a huge big deal but you may want to even that out.

We did find Agatha and rescued her from Legacy Chain.

Right after going up an elevator, my corruptor lackey got hit by an ambush of Heralds, who appear to be present-day versions of the Inquisition mobs encountered in mission 1. This ambush seemed to be silent (I saw no dialog for them) -- they probably need some, to give a little bit of warning. (Unless going up the elevator somehow cut off the text from their initial spawning.)

We rescued the Legacy Chain priest from the Heralds. Found that the stacked web grenade from the Heralds (they all seemed to do it) was pretty nasty.

The "Lead Agatha and priest to door" was pretty interesting; we rescued Agatha first, but she didn't follow us up to rescue the priest, and instead she started following us ONLY after we led the priest by her, on the way out. At first I was thinking, "I wonder how he did that?" but I'm thinking now that Agatha was trying to follow us the first time, but simply lost us (since my stalker was stealthed and the corruptor was using steamy mist).

Mission 4
Briefing: Nice aversion of the "Provide security for summit" trope. Nothing happens at all! But meanwhile, something does happen somewhere else, as there's a big assault on the Midnight Squad base.

We go and clear the Midnight Club. Seemed a pretty nice mission; the objective to defeat the leader seems redundant with the objective to defeat all, though.

Mission 5
The mission title seems overly long -- I like that the "Horned God" has all these titles but it makes the nav tool very cramped.

Mission objectives of "Cabal priestess, Legacy Chain priest, Agatha, Horned God" all just use the name of the NPC, but should have some words explaining how you're supposed to interact with them. Something like "Link up with Cabal priestess" or "Meet up with Legacy Chain priest" or "Rescue the Horned God".

There's a lot of nice looking battle scenes in this mission, with the various magical factions fighting the Heralds, as you round up your crew for the final scene.

The rather nebbishy appearance of the Horned God was very fun. A little disappointing that there wasn't a Herald leader to fight somewhere in here; with 3 allies I have a lot of firepower at hand, more than enough to overrun the normal spawns.

I liked the ultimate explanation of who the Maiden was, and Agatha's final story brought nice closure to the arc.

Overall
I like the premise of the arc, where you're unifying the various magical factions to fight a common foe. Great costuming on the historical Midnighters and Inquisition. Game mechanics worked well and the initial and final battle both looked very good.

I felt the initial motivation for why Agatha is reuniting the Triskele Covenant was weak, though; she mentions "dark forces", but this is vague enough that it felt more like you're beating up Witches and Legacy Chain mostly because you've been told to. I still don't fully buy that the Legacy Chain would capture a Midnighter out of paranoia; they're both hero groups, after all. Later on you begin fighting the Heralds, who I think are meant to be the common foe that all the magic groups unite to oppose. Although the Heralds do have some nice dialog, I felt the involvement of the Heralds and their reasons for doing what they're doing, never felt very clear to me. I kinda guessed they were the spiritual descendants of the Inquisition based on costuming, but I thought their presence and actions could use some more exposition, either from Agatha's briefings or clues dropped by defeating Heralds.

Initially I thought mission 1 didn't really seem connected to the rest of the arc, but as I learned more about the story, the first mission gradually made more and more sense as "back story" for the rest of the arc. I do think that first mission could use more foreshadowing (clues, mainly, or debriefing).

I liked the arc overall; I gave it 4 stars as a gut-feeling rating when I first went through it on a team, but was a little rushed at the time. A bit later I was writing up my notes and thought more about it, and was tempted to raise the rating as I liked how the later story elements fit with the initial "flashback" scene; but held back mostly over issues of story motivation (why Agatha decides to reunite the covenant, why the Legacy Chain captures her, why the Heralds attack -- all things I think I could buy, with a little additional explanation of why it's happening). Call it a high 4.

--------

I owe a review to:

@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

For your consideration:

Samurai and ninja battle for honor in a faraway realm. But someone has introduced firearms to the land, tilting the balance of power towards the evil Spider Clan. Will you journey there to restore the balance? A Warrior's Journey - the Flower Knight Task Force (heroic 45-50, arc 260284; warning: AVs!)

Travel back in time to take over the 5th Column! Lead the Axis powers to win decisive battles in WW2, then crush democracy and conquer the world! Axis and Allies (villainous 30-50, arc id 1379)

The Audition [Missions 4-6] review
Arc ID: 221242
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54

This is a sequel to The Audition (Part 1), which has since been renamed to The Audition [Missions 1-3].

The premise is that you are doing tryouts for the Freedom Phalanx. Synapse is the contact.

I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper on Unyielding (difficulty 4). The arc warns to only play at difficulty 1, but, well, I'm a scrapper, and therefore overconfident.

Mission 1
Briefing: Synapse basically tells me I'm doing poorly. He decides to test me by teleporting me into a bank vault full of money and seeing if I steal it.

This seems a rather implausible test, though; I mean, I know Synapse is testing me, so if I were REALLY a supervillain infiltrating the Freedom Phalanx, I would know not to steal it? A more believable "Resist Temptation" test should not make it quite so obvious that it IS a test, because everyone is "good" when they know people are watching. Sure, the monitoring devices are disabled, but the way this is presented, you KNOW Synapse will know.

The caption for the briefing and the subtitle should probably be in a larger font, boldfaced or otherwise made to stand out from the rest of the briefing.

I do like the "Resist Temptation" mission title though.

"First National bank" should be "First National Bank" (note capitalization).

Second part of briefing: Synapse emphasizes no one will know what happens except me. This seems flawed logic - the bank clearly will know their money is gone, and Synapse will know I did it, because he sent me there.

Once I arrive in the bank, it turns out someone is ALREADY robbing the bank. I guess removing all the security devices wasn't such a good idea after all! Who would've thought!

I like the concept of the bank robbing nuns; fighting them is lots of fun. I found Mother Superior, who spawned as a 52 EB for me; her dialog suggests she's sent some of the gold in the bank to "the future" already. That seems bad.

Olivia versus the Katana-wielding Nuns from the Future!

Mother Superior's background story says she uses the "Mace o' Hearts" but the graphic for her weapon is a hammer, not a mace. Seems inconsistent. She has pretty good dialog; though I can see that I'm being set up to take the fall for this bank robbery.

Counting the "Vault Bullion" with my super-speed counting powers I find that only one bar of gold is missing, which I'm kind of glad about; the way Mother Superior talked, I figured they would've teleported ALL the gold out of the bank, which would've made me very annoyed.

Found the Temporal Transferotron; I kinda expected a device from the 26th century to look a little more futuristic. The person guarding this object maybe should've had some dialog.

Aha, found the "Bullion Manifest" AFTER the "Vault Bullion", which seems to be opposite of the order the mission expected; since the "Vault Bullion" says that I "count off against the manifest", but I hadn't actually found the manifest yet at that point. Consider rewording them so they make sense regardless of the order they are found.

Unlike the missions of the first arc, in this mission you never actually "Resist Temptation" (while in the first arc, you DO perform the stated goal, just in an unexpected way).

Debriefing: Synapse yells at me for stealing the 1 missing bar. I'm quite annoyed that he doesn't believe my story of what happened. But, if we accept that he really doesn't believe my story, shouldn't he fail me out of the Freedom Phalanx tryout at this point? If he really thinks I'm a bank robber, there is no way I should be allowed to continue trying out for the team. Seems a logic problem with the story.

On top of that he is chalking me up for a "fail" on his little clipboard. He had already told me that my previous record meant I *had* to succeed at this point, why would he let me continue on with a fourth "fail"?

Mission 2
Briefing: Synapse is getting kind of rude in his briefings. He's basically saying I've already failed and we're just going through the motions; as a result, I question why my character would put up with any more of this nonsense with him. Maybe if this mission were to kick Synapse's butt, it would make sense.

The mission, however, appears to be to go talk with a prisoner in the Zig. The contact says I should "let him know society's forgiven him his sins", but also says he won't get out of prison for "700 years", two statements which seem logically inconsistent. Also, I find it a little hard to believe that "standard Zig procedure is to give the repentant villain a little pep talk" as described here. Maybe it would make more sense if this were some sort of parole hearing where you can see if he is truly "reformed" as the counselor says?

Second part of the briefing: "the Zig,where" is missing a space after "Zig,"

"Forgive Someone Of Their Misdeeds" IS a cool mission title though.

As I enter the mission, I seem to be on a ship instead of in the Zig, and the mission entry popup and dialog in here are full of musical notes, indicating that .. it's now time for a musical number?

The ship seems unusually empty, with just a few patrols of "mummers", who look like campy (but fun) villain henchmen.

The mission objective is "Meet them and beat them" which sounds fun...not sure if this is a Defeat boss or Defeat All.

I searched around and couldn't find a boss, unless maybe Wah Wah is a boss (he spawned as a lieutenant for me). Wah Wah had dialog, so I figured he must be the boss. He sang a little song for me, that I think meant that his villain group's ultimate goal was to silence the noise in the world, but defeating him didn't update my objective.

It did appear to spawn another character, Boom Boom, who wasn't there on my previous search. I'm guessing there must be a bunch of linked objectives that eventually spawn the boss of this mission. You might consider having the "Meet them and beat them" objective update each time you complete one of the objectives in the daisy chain, to help show the player she's making forward progress. To fit with the theme, maybe each objective could be a line from a song, that when put together is the theme song of the Humming Mummers.

Defeating Boom Boom spawned another boss, Chikka Chikka. He spawned behind me rather than ahead (probably luck of the draw, but required searching).

Aha, defeating Chikka Chikka finally changed the objective, to "Mechanism Wreckanism". Still think the objective should change for EACH boss though.

A guard near the Amplifier objective said:

[NPC] Mummer: Anti-noise, comin' soon | Like a sonic poison to stop all the

....I think he is missing the last word of that line.

Destroying the amplifier switched the objective back to "Meet them and beat them", so I started looking for another boss.

Continued down the daisy chain of objectives, defeating Bow Wow and Badabing, then finally finding Silencio Shanty. This was a LOT of chained objectives; consider reducing their number slightly, or else make them all NON-chained so as to reduce the amount of searching.

Silencio's description is just his name repeated about 8 times, which I guess is his theme song. It would've been nice to know what his story really is, though. Also, if he's dedicated to silence, should he really have a theme song?

I beat up Silencio, which was a little difficult as there were sonic and thermal buffs all over the place, but I managed. A squishier character might've had problems.

Initially it felt like I never actually got to Forgive Someone of Their Misdeeds, as it seemed like all I did was beat everyone up, in a predetermined order defined by the chained objectives. A bit later I found the "Silencio Redemptcio" clue, which I think was the mission complete clue (so I didn't notice it right away). It did explain the idea a little better, though I think it would be a little more effective if you could see the forgiveness and redemption "in game", perhaps via dialog (you can't force the player to say stuff, but Silencio could perhaps ask for forgiveness with his dying line).

A possible logic problem with this clue: it says Silencio is deaf, but he nods and responds to your dialog in this clue as if he can understand it. I guess he COULD be a lip reader, too, but it's a bit of a strain.

Debriefing: Synapse is really being nasty now. I don't see why I am working for him any more. I really don't like having the contact yell at me for "failing" when I am actually succeeding at every objective the story arc presents me. The temptation to quit the arc is strong.

Mission 3
Briefing: So now Synapse has a "serious situation" on his hands and he wants to chicken out and send me. I'm afraid this does not make sense. Synapse, a hero of the Freedom Phalanx, veteran of countless superheroic battles, wants to call in sick, because ... well I don't even understand why he refuses to go. Instead he wants to send me, who he has heaped immense amounts of disdain upon after giving 5 black marks for his various "tests". I don't see how this can possibly make sense.

With how rude Synapse has been to me so far, I'm tempted to tell him to go to hell. But I'm curious as to how this ends, and I *do* claim to be a hero, so I take the mission. Turns out it's something to do with Lord Recluse and some superweapon he's built.

I think it would add a little if you were mention here that Recluse has strangely been a lot more motivated; even ... inspired, you might say. (Referencing the events of The Audition part 1.)

I like the "Save the World" mission title.

Inside the mission: Ack, it's full of storm elementals. What happened to Lord Recluse's plot? I'm in space .. I guess Synapse teleported me to the wrong place again?

Found and defeated Ninoricous, a custom elite boss. He said some dialog that didn't make any sense to me. Same for Eukracious, another elite boss. They both talk about someone or something named "Lem", though.

Found and clicked a Datanode. The progress bar for this glowy is currently blank, should have something on it like "Accessing". (Note: all the Datanodes I checked had this problem) It does give me a clue explaining who Lem is.

Beat up two more custom EBs; I'm getting the idea they're some sort of cosmic entities come to repossess something from the Earth, and accidentally cause an ice age as a side effect. After clicking a couple glowies that resulted in some clues with snarky dialog from the ship's computer, I have some triggered objectives to face Primis and to seek and destroy a Pod. The Pod is explained in the "Lem is irritated" clue, but "Primis" doesn't seem to be mentioned in any of the clues; maybe should say who he is, or else not use his name.

You might want to make "Seek and Destroy Pod" into "Seek and Destroy Movement Pod" ... I kept looking at "Pod" and thinking "iPod". (Very minor gripe.)

Perhaps "Defeat Primis" could be "Defeat 1AU Tall Cosmic Being" to be especially foreboding.

Found and fought Primis. He summoned a Singularity, which I was able to shrug off, but might be nasty for squishies. I love this line:

[NPC] Primis: You won't even notice it's gone! Plenty of systems do just fine without a Sun.

Destroying the Movement Pod seemed a little less dramatic a finish than I'd hoped; the description of the Movement Pod doesn't really say what it does, just says it's the thing I was told about, and when I actually destroy it, all I get is a clue where the ship's computer complains that I saved the world and it's sending me back. Maybe needs some description of huge cosmic forces at work in the background as I prevent the aliens from stealing the sun.

Debriefing: Filled with sarcasm and insults. This is the reward for completing the story arc? The last line mentioning "deeds of massive heroism that go completely unrecognised" is maybe meant to hint that the player should derive their own self-satisfaction for what they've done, but I'm afraid the vitriol Synapse pours on me here makes the ending feel pretty bitter.

Also in this debriefing, "venus" should be "Venus", "Wierd" should be "Weird", "i don't know" should be "I don't know".

No souvenir? A 6-mission epic really oughta have one, I think?

Overall
I like the basic premise, and had a good time fighting the bank robbing nuns. The musicians and the star stealers were interesting but not quite as charming as enemies go, though they did have some nice dialog. The ideas behind the sun thieves and the futuristic bank robbers were fairly clever. I do like that you fulfill the stated mission title in unexpected ways; I thought that was a neat idea. In this arc, I felt the first mission was strongest (I could see how I was being set up for failure and it all sorta made sense); the middle mission felt weakest (felt like I was repeatedly searching the ship for the next mime to kill).

One problem I have with how this is presented is the individuals missions really don't have much to do with each other; the arc is basically 3 (amusing) vignettes that are only very loosely connected by the framing story. There are no recurring characters or plotlines across the missions of this arc (or across the greater 6-mission arc as a whole). I think having some additional continuity between the individual missions would make this feel more cohesive.

The things that WERE common to all the arcs were Synapse's inability to teleport me to the correct place, and Synapse gradually becoming more and more offensive as he blames me for it -- both elements that I felt were negative. I think this was funny the first time, maybe even the second time .... but after FIVE instances of teleporting me the wrong place, and blaming me for the failure, it had gotten really old. Surely he would've either listened to me about him not teleporting me to the right place, or else I would've stopped trying to help this crazy person, long before it got that far? The individual missions were mostly individually charming, but Synapse yelling at me at the start and at the end of each mission really made it less fun.

I was kind of hoping the final mission would let you get recognized for Saving the World and would change Synapse's opinion as he realizes you've been doing the heroic tasks successfully all along. The ending where Synapse feels you're a hopeless failure is something of a downer.

I might suggest you rephrase the debriefings so that maybe Synapse eventually realizes the teleporter isn't working right, and grudgingly acknowledges that you actually accomplished the task he set for you, just in a different way than he expected. As it stands now, after you flunk out on 3 or 4 missions it just doesn't make sense for him to keep asking you to do more -- whereas if he gives you a few passing grades with great reluctance, you can still make him seem unsure that you're the right stuff, but you can also let the player feel like she's doing something right.

Gameplay-wise, I think you went a bit overboard with the linked objectives; missions 2 and 3 involved a substantial amount of backtracking to find the new spawned objective. You might consider either reducing the number of links, making some of the objectives spawn at mission start (instead of being triggered), and/or making the maps a bit smaller so that there's less searching involved.

Anyway, I like the ideas represented by each of the individual missions, but felt the framing story didn't quite work for me. With all that in mind, I gave this arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

--------

I owe a review to:

FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

The Audition Part 1 review
Arc ID: 221240
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54
Warnings: Archvillains

The premise is that the player is trying out for the Freedom Phalanx. The description warns that it is very challenging and should only played by a solo hero on the lowest difficulty.

I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense on Unyielding difficulty. The contact is Synapse.

The author initially requested I treat "Audition Part 1" and "Audition Part 2" as one long story arc, and gave a number of arguments for how the 5-mission limit is an arbitrary limitation that has no real story meaning. While these arguments have some validity, I feel like if it's classified in the Mission Architect tool as two separate story arcs, then I ought to treat it as two story arcs. I'm not against multi-arc stories, but I feel each part needs to be a story on its own, with a proper beginning, middle and end, even if it's part of a larger, over-arching story.

So I told the author I would review each part on its own, and I wouldn't review them at the same time (so that I could approach each part relatively fresh). He asked me not to post a review for part 1 until I could post a review for part 2 at the same time. There didn't seem to be any harm in that, so I agreed.

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption and subcaption for this briefing should be in larger type, bold or colored to stand out more from the rest of the briefing.

Synapse says the Freedom Phalanx is thinking of offering me a position on their team, as long as I do Six Heroic Tasks. Now, it occurs to me that I have this "Freedom Phalanx Reserve" accolade already, that actually took longer to get than two story arcs. But we'll let this go for now.

My mission accept statement, "Uh..." sounds rather less decisive and go-getting than I'd like to present to the premier CoH supergroup.

Second part of briefing: the contact overlooks the grunting noise I make in response to his offer. He wants to send me to defeat one hundred Frownobots from some previously unknown group called the Grumpehemoth Legion. With the Freedom Phalanx being the epitome of a CoH canon supergroup, I think it's a little odd for me to be sent against a non-canon villain group. We'll see how it goes.

I like the mission title, "Succeed Against Overwhelming Odds". This does sound appropriately heroic.

Inside the mission: huh? I thought Synapse said he was sending me to Skyway City? The mission popup tells me I'm not in Kansas any more. I mean, not on Earth. Hmmm. My objective is now "Discover what's going on".

The mission seems to be an outdoor map resembling Eden, populated exclusively by a large number of blue-skinned alien women who are grav/empathy controllers. No Frownobots are apparent. Having all the aliens heal each other seems pretty annoying, but I'm not sure if I actually need to fight them. I'm glad I didn't play a squishy, this seems like a lot of mez.

I found and destroyed an "Arachnos Lifepod", which contained a dead person and the last page of his journal, which babbles about the hive mind occupying this planet and something about "focus nodes", which are now my new objective.

After some searching, I found a "Focus Node" right near the helicopter I emerged from; it's sufficiently large that I think I would've noticed it before, so I guess it appeared only after the lifepod was opened. Destroying the Focus Node results in Destiny uttering a few disturbingly obsessive sounding lines, which I thought were pretty good, but does not change my "Destroy Focus Nodes" objective.

Found another Focus Node and destroyed it. I'm starting to think that instead of triggering 4 Focus Nodes upon breaking the Lifepod, it's actually only generating one Focus Node each time, and destroying that Focus Node triggers the next one, in a daisy-chain like arrangement. This is kind of annoying from a gameplay standpoint, since I have to comb most of Eden each time to find the new "focus node" but I'm thinking you may have done this because you wanted the dialog to occur in a certain order. Nevertheless, this is forcing me to do a lot of backtracking across a largish outdoor map, which some players may find to be too annoying.

Some of Destiny's later dialog where she's begging you to stay with her is rather sad. I'm starting to feel bad for not wanting to stay on her bizarre hive mind prison planet. Though I'm not sure how to reconcile her dialog with the fact that her various component mobs keep attacking me with grav powers. Wouldn't this eventually kill her plaything?

The final ambush at the end is pretty huge, but kinda works for the story. Fortunately I can just punch out since the mission is complete.

Debriefing: Synapse chews me out for not stopping Commander Curmudgeon and the Frownobots. What, this is my fault that he couldn't correctly polarize the neutrons in his stupid teleporter? Harrumph. He claims I failed and I don't get an opportunity to explain.

I wonder if Mynx or Synapse himself might've been more appropriate to clean up the Skyway City mess? Since they live in Skyway City and Blue Steel does not.

Mission 2
Briefing: The player eavesdrops on Synapse's side of a telephone conversation with Swan, but the way it is presented sounds stilted, as all of Synapse's lines to Swan are obviously exposition. Apparently Statesman and Citadel are exhausted and demoralized and need cheering up, and my second task is to go give them a pep talk.

I'm not sure it makes sense for Citadel to be "demoralized", since he's an android.

My "mission accept" message is "No", which is the opposite of accepting the mission. I guess this is intended to be a joke, but seems rather unheroic.

Second part of mission: Synapse ignores my "No" and treats it as a yes. "Marvellous" should be "Marvelous".

I like the "Inspire Another to Greatness" mission title. Though if I'm really inspiring Statesman AND Citadel, shouldn't it be "Inspire Others" rather than "Another"? (I foresee another switcheroo, though.)

Inside the mission: Yep, teleported somewhere random again. The first encounter I find in this cave is... an AV level Lord Recluse with some Arachnos. Weirdly, Lord Recluse appears to be their hostage.

Lord Recluse has rather humorous dialog. Apparently, he is depressed because Statesman keeps beating him up and needs a morale booster.... after his minions fail to destroy me, he attaches himself to me as a (non-combat) follower and challenges me to break his computer system or something.

I run past his various minions and destroy his computer. For some reason this impresses Lord Recluse and he feels inspired by my example. I'm not quite sure I buy this (kicking a computer is inspiring?), but it's kinda funny.

Debriefing: Synapse continues to yell at me for failing his various tests. I kinda think I should get an opportunity at some point to say that he's not teleporting me to the right place, but oh well.

Mission 3
Briefing: Well, I was thinking that having "failed" two tests, he should totally flunk me on this whole application thing, but he actually does a good job of explaining that I still have a good shot at it.

I like his explanation of Praetorian Earth and his landlady's evil duplicate and MY evil duplicate, it's quite fun.

There's this HUGE warning to play only at difficulty 1, but being generally contrary (and too lazy to go find the Hero Corps Analyst), I try it at difficulty 4 anyway.

"Defeat Your Evil Twin" is another fun mission title.

Rather peculiar mission entry popup, with a PA system expositioning something about an Evil Plan and a Cato Initiative.

"Defeat Chimera" is in my mission objectives, but I have no idea why. I'm pretty sure he's not my character's evil twin. Needs some motivation for why this is necessary.

I ran into a Stooge and a Lackey from "My Evil Empire", perhaps henchmen of either Chimera or My Evil Twin. "Marvellous" should be "Marvelous" in Stooge's description. Their costumes are very peculiar, I hope it gets explained later why Stooge is a matador and Lackey is in pajamas.

I found Chimera. I like his dialog, seems pretty fun. He's convinced I'm my evil twin and I'm betraying him. Weirdly, during the fight with him, his katana vanished and he simply was miming various attack moves with an air katana; he looked like the standard Chimera model, so this might not be anything you've done. Possibly an animation error.

[NPC] Chimera: -Ow! That was a bit over the top!

I think that hyphen before Ow might be unintentional? Not sure.


I got the "Stuffed into Chimera's pants is a letter" clue, which strongly implies that this isn't the first time "I" have gotten into Chimera's pants. Ack! My evil twin apparently gets around.

I like the "Photo of Tyrant and...you?" clue; I totally demand to know what the comedic caption is on Tyrant's "cooking apron" though.

"Wall Safe" has a progress bar of "Scanning", which seems weird for a safe; maybe "Cracking" or "Opening" would be more appropriate.

Gah, opening the Wall Safe triggers 6 Praetorians to subdue as an objective. I think this needs to be better motivated; why do I need to defeat 6 AVs now exactly? I guess I have the means and opportunity, just need a motive. Perhaps include something in the Superhuman Immobilizer Ray clue explaining why I want to do this now.

I find an EB Marauder and I pop Focus Chi and rush to attack him only to find ... he's a hostage? OK, that was surprising. Defeating the guards surrounding him seems to count as subduing him.

Marauder's dialog is like this:

[NPC] Marauder: Me like big gloves! Me like big shoes!
[NPC] Lackey: Boss! The other base is now having a Dark Olivia Q theme party! haha..? -agh, OK, not funny!
[NPC] Marauder: Dark Olivia Q! You need big bag for face, haha!
[NPC] Marauder: Haha! You got hit with ugly stick in time loop for seven centuries, yes? - Hey! me not like!
[NPC] Marauder: Me smash Dark Olivia Q! ...when me get out!
[NPC] Marauder: Uh-oh...me need big potty soon!

This really doesn't sound like something the canonical Marauder would say. Perhaps this is an homage to Bizarro or something. Marauder followed me around for awhile, but didn't seem to help in fights; not sure what the point of him following is. I eventually lost him.

Someone does finally explain why my evil twin's minions are dressed so strangely:

[NPC] Stooge: The Boss is gonna be SO not happy that special costumes for the Presentation aren't here.
[NPC] Stooge: Dark Olivia Q! It's not our fault! The costume suppliers sent us the wrong costumes!

....which is a little silly, but at least it's an explanation.

[NPC] Lackey: Citadel - robot. Evil plan - CLONES? ...Hello? Anything not seem right, here?
[NPC] Stooge: Citadel - robot. Evil plan - CLONES? ...Hello? Anything not seem right, here?
[NPC] Lackey: I guess that's why they call it SUPERscience! But I digress - Initiate Cato Initiative! Attack!
[NPC] Stooge: I guess that's why they call it SUPERscience! But I digress - Initiate Cato Initiative! Attack!

This dialog from the guards of the Citadel Clone Vat seems doubled; this might be a bug with the MA system though. I have to agree with the minions, what's up with cloning an android? Evil Me should know better!

More doubled dialog at the Back Alley Brawler Clone Vat:

[NPC] Lackey: I wish I'd pulled duty at the other base today - I bet the party rocks!
[NPC] Stooge: I wish I'd pulled duty at the other base today - I bet the party rocks!
[NPC] Lackey: Boss!, I'm sorry, oh mighty, malevolent, Dark Olivia Q
[NPC] Stooge: Boss!, I'm sorry, oh mighty, malevolent, Dark Olivia Q

Also the last line should have a period after the hero's name.

[NPC] Stooge: I've been practising my Suprise Ambush Manoever for months - the boss won't know what's coming!
[NPC] Lackey: I've been practising my Suprise Ambush Manoever for months - the boss won't know what's coming!

I think this should be "Surprise Ambush Maneuver" or perhaps "Surprise Ambush Maneouvre".

[NPC] Siege: ...When a man.s an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle, and yet I'm torn apart.

"man.s" should be "man's". It seemed a little surreal to have Siege singing lines from The Wizard of Oz.

Flunky's description: "a chefs outfit" should be "a chef's outfit".

Neuron's clue explaining the Evil Plan is both enlightening (as to what all these clone vats are for) and funny. The "Send clones to Primal earth" part of the clan has a space between the hyphen and "Send" while the other steps do not; for consistency, should make them all have a space or none of them.

[NPC] Diabolique: I fear nothing! I await your leader's rumoured frighteningly ugly countenance with interest

...should have a period at the end.

[NPC] Stooge: The bullfighters and chef's outifits I can deal with, but JAMMIES? What if a hero crashes?

"outifits" should be "outfits".

Haha, Mother Mayhem is doing product placement for other story arcs. I hope you're getting kickbacks from the other author!

Several of the Praetorians seem to want to follow me, despite being "Immobilized". Not sure if that is intentional.

Found and fought Tyrant, who was an EB that wasn't a hostage.

The cloned mash-ups of the Freedom Phalanx are amusing.

[NPC] Sister Posinapse: You! my fashion disaster is all your fault!
[NPC] Sister Posinapse: -well, I've got to blame someone...

"my" should be "My" and "-well" should be "Well".

I think the "2 Protoclones to defeat - at least" and the "Defeat the last Protoclone" objectives are a bit misleading, since each of these is actually a *group* of protoclones, not just one.

[NPC] Neuron: Deciever! When this wears off...

"Deciever" should be "Deceiver"

[NPC] Lackey: Bob attacked once while the Boss was on the job! Got a commendation - postumously.

"postumously" should be "posthumously"

Overall
Neat premise, though kind of a bummer that I am "failing" every test. Mission 3 was an excellent finale for this "part", though it seemed much more zany than the first two missions. I mean, they are all humorous, but the humor in mission 1 (the sitcom humor of the horrible girlfriend you can't get rid of) was a very different style than the humor in mission 3 (the madcap humor of fighting people dressed up as matadors and chefs). This caused the arc to feel rather uneven. I did like all the references to the stuff my evil twin was up to, though.

This felt more like a series of vignettes loosely connected by the framing story; nothing that happens in the earlier missions seems to affect the later missions. It would be nice if there were some recurring characters or events that connected the individual missions more closely together, but this might be hard considering each of the missions is basically in a different dimension.

The middle mission felt weakest to me; I'm still not convinced that breaking a computer should be enough to demonstrate your resolve and cheer up Lord Recluse. In fact I was able to largely avoid combat after freeing LR, by just running past all of the mobs (with capped defense) and attacking the computer directly. You might have Lord Recluse present the player with a series of cascading challenges after being freed: like releasing the hounds to slay the player, then if the player beats the hounds, the killer robots are sent in to dispose of the player. After the killer robots, a team of crack Arachnos operatives. Between each encounter, perhaps award a new "Transmission from Lord Recluse" clue, each one written slightly different so he starts off sounding somewhat apathetic, but becomes more and more animated as he becomes interested in orchestrating the player's demise. When the player finally beats the last challenge, then Lord Recluse thanks her for reinvigorating his spirit and goes off to plot further against Statesman.

I very quickly got tired of having Synapse berate me for things that were really his fault. It was mildly funny in the first debriefing, but it got old quickly. It would be nice to get some recognition after the final mission, where I basically defeat all the Praetorians.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I rated it 4 stars.

The History of Statesman review
Arc ID: 219484
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Comedy
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-54
No warnings

The premise seems to be some sort of futuristic robot is using a wayback machine to show you significant events in the history of Statesman. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing: I'm immediately uneasy at the fact that my contact looks like Nemesis and he seems to be the curator of a museum named after Naruto. But I decide to see where this goes.

"Statesman is among" should be "Statesman was among" (note tense) considering later in this paragraph the contact mentions his death.

Not sure why "name" is highlit in yellow.

I am looking at the "Well of the Furries" in the briefing and trying to decide whether this is a typo or not...we'll see.

Second part of briefing: LOL, I now see why "name" was highlit. "old world" is inconsistently capitalized in this briefing; it's "Old World" earlier on, and "old world" here. A minor nitpick, admittedly.

Inside the mission: the Roman Soldiers, with their bare chests and paint, don't look all that soldierly to me. Is there a reason the default Cimerorans wouldn't work for this?

Clicking a computer gives me an interesting clue from Mender Lazarus. Hmm, wonder what's going on?

I like the choice of model for Baby Statesman. His bio story is totally wrong yet funny. He started following me, but I'm not sure I actually NEED him for anything, so I ditched him in favor of looking for the Well of the Furries (sic).

I found the Well of the Furries and it appears to be a garbage can full of soup? Hmm, that's pretty weird. Maybe a mystic portal or something would look better?

I like how the Romans guarding the Well call on Caesaru-sama. They need a more humorous battlecry than "FOR HONOR!" ... maybe "For great justice!"

I'm a little disappointed that the Well of Furries didn't summon an ambush of anthropomorphic animals. Wondering if it really IS a spelling error.

Should there also be a Baby Lord Recluse trying to drink from the Well of the Furries? I guess it would be pretty hard to find a model for Baby Lord Recluse though.

It appears THE TIEM MASHEEN is not a time machine at all, but is instead just playing little holographic vignettes or something.

Debriefing: The line about "essence of several beasts" confused me until I thought about the soup. Maybe the garbage can's description should specify it's a chunky catgirl soup or something, or maybe you could get a clue to that effect. Otherwise I like the Captain Marvel-esque litany of superpowers attributed to Statesman here. Perhaps "animalistic fury" would sound better as "bestial fury". Or "bestial furry".

"Alas, his face was disfigured in the process and he must wear a faceplate for the rest of his days" is a bit confused on tenses, maybe should be "he was forced to wear a faceplate for the rest of his days".

Mission 2
Briefing: Some fun tall tales here. I assume "Europish fox-trenches" is deliberately mangled language. The idea of fighting the "Axel forces" sounds fun!

Love the mission objective, "Win the World War!" Though based on the briefing, should it be "Win World War Second"?

"WWII Germany" seems a boring name for the bad guys' enemy group. May I suggest "Axle Powers" or "Axle of Evil"?

Wolf Pack Sub-marine is fun.

With the costume Lesser Dictator has got, he totally should work in some sort of M. Bison reference, unless the martial arts powerset is meant to be that.

Statesman's biography seems far too short for the purposes of this arc. Perhaps insert some tall tales about his supposed history in his bio. I'm not sure I understand why he's initially holding a book? I like his "hero of America" catch phrase though!

After rescuing Statesman, I got "3rd Transmission"; you may want to call this "Mender Lazarus - 3rd Transmission" to match the first two clues.

I like the Egyptian Obelisk; though its description says it was constructed by the "Shadow Priests of Ahn'Qiraj", but the historian and Statesman himself both say that Statesman built the pyramids, so this seems to be a continuity error. That is, assuming you want your false history to have internal continuity. Should they even be Egyptian Obelisks? I wonder if they should be American Obelisks, since everyone knows they were built by the Hero of America. Or perhaps they could refer to the Golden Giza casino somehow. (This is all very minor stuff and not too serious.)

Love Charlee Chaplene as the Great Dictator. I would complain that he has no dialog, but how could he, really? (Ironically, "The Great Dictator" is Chaplin's first talking picture. But it's funnier having him as a silent actor.) Maybe you could give him some "title cards" via clues, as I think it would really be funnier if he had SOME sort of captioning.

I was kinda hoping the Scouting Subroutine would be a yellow Submarine, but I guess we can't put submarines as destroyable objects yet. Not sure what the point of destroying the Subroutine was. Destroying the box sets it free? Maybe need a Clue here.

The presence of the Network Guardians (Museum Security) seemed puzzling to me. Needed some explanation, IMHO.

Got clue "4th" at the end of the mission, should be "Mender Lazarus - 4th Transmission" for consistency. I like the false history it presents, it's fun. Or maybe this is "real" history for this arc, not sure.

Mission exit popup: This helps better explain what I was doing in the mission; up to that point I was rather confused. Maybe it should mention the subroutine explicitly though.

Debriefing: I like this debriefing, it's full of wonderful utter nonsense.

Mission 3
Briefing: fun briefing, but it sounded like it was leading up to facing (a mangled version of) Lord Recluse; it's weird that it's "Lawd Nemisis". I wonder if "Nemisis" should be "Nemesis", but it's quite possible this spelling is intentional. Seems to be consistently spelled "Nemisis" throughout the mission.

Mission title: Love the "Statesman in SPACE!" mission title.

Inside the mission: it doesn't really LOOK like we're in Space, but I guess we don't have a good map for it.

Consider giving some dialog to the Network Security minions guarding the Exposed Security Protocols.

I like the description of "Gewehr Jaguar". The Lancer Surgeon is okay, but not as funny as the Gewehr Jaguar. Suggestions for alternate Nemesis minions: Fuschialier the purple minion, Grenadinier the flavor sensation, Hussyar the slutty minion.

Found and rescued "Manticore", who was pretty surreal. I'm not sure I understand the line:

[NPC] Gewehr Jaguar: That's not your Arwing parked out front, is it?

Found and rescued Statesman. His line about the Range Enhancements is great. When he says

[NPC] Statesman: By the way, have you seen my sidekick Manticore by any chance?

...he has two extra spaces before "By the way".

I found Lawd Nemisis, who was really funny with terrific dialog. I especially liked his SG tag of "Prussian Prince of Bel Air". I somehow defeated him while I was chuckling at his description, which caused me to do a double take, because I had a heck of a time balancing a fight against this particular model in another story arc; how did I defeat him accidentally? I conjecture that maybe he was just a hostage that I freed.

Debriefing: "space station crumbled to the stratosphere" is awkward sounding, should perhaps be "space station fell into the stratosphere and tore itself apart". "it's contents" should be "its contents". It's possible this is all intentionally mangled, but noting it anyway.

Mission 4
Briefing: hippie pioneer? This sounds really weird. Why are we picking up garbage? I'm not sure I fully buy the "interactive" explanation the contact gives.

I do like the mission title of "Clean up this mess!"

Found and rescued Mender Lazarus. Whoa, I have a whole mess of clues now. They do a good job of explaining what's going on, though, which I like.

Mainframe Guardian's description, "secruity" should be "security".

"THE TIEM MASHEEN" has the default Fake Nemesis description; he really should have a custom description. Though, his dialog IS like that of a Fake Nemesis and he vowe that Nemesis will conquer the world and stuff. I'm a little puzzled as to why he did the whole History of Statesman exhibit if this was his motivation, though. Maybe he should've been promoting Nemesis's back story instead?

The "8th" clue is nice though. Helps explain a little.

I don't understand why the data banks say:

[NPC] Museum Data Bank: <I'M A COMPUTER>
[NPC] Museum Data Bank: <HELP COMPUTER>

Perhaps this is a reference that I just don't get. I wonder if it would make more sense if they were spewing out technical readouts, or even better, excerpts from the mangled history of Statesman.

No Statesman appearance in this mission? Shouldn't he appear in here somewhere to give lip service to the idea that this is part of the History of Statesman?

I like the mission exit popup, about the "Nemesis Plot".

The souvenir is awesome! I particularly like the description of Statesman, Ms Liberty and the Fake Nemesis in the museum brochure.

Overall
This arc has a great premise, and I like the horribly mangled future history that it presents. Lots of good references and dialog and funny custom models.

I was a little confused by the Lazarus plot initially (the juxtaposition of "network security" and "WW2 Germany" mobs was very puzzling at first), but got the idea eventually. Perhaps I just needed more coffee when I first ran into it; but if you could make it a little clearer how you're helping Lazarus by doing some of the objectives (while other objectives are to follow TIEM MASHEEN's script), it would help.

I found the motivation behind the final mission particularly confusing, especially as to why TIEM MASHEEN sends you to a place where there is no Statesman to present the History of; scavenging space litter seems insufficiently interesting a backdrop for the final mission. Basically, it does not seem as cool as mission 2 or mission 3, which felt the strongest of the arc; the museum security mobs are just not as fun as the WW2 guys or the faux Nemesis. Consider using some other over-the-top Statesman vs Villain scene, like a Rikti invasion or a fight with Arachnos AVs or something.

TIEM MASHEEN's motivation for why he became a museum tour guide never seemed to get explained. The final mission shows that he's still trying to push Lord Nemesis's ultimate goals, but how does impersonating an animatronic robot in a museum display help with this? This being a comedic arc, I think a ludicrous explanation would be fine, but I think I'd like to have SOME explanation.

This arc was surreal but fun. I waffled between giving this 4 or 5 stars. The final mission being weaker than the previous missions, plus not understanding why TIEM MASHEEN did any of this in the first place, ended up making me settle on 4 stars.

--------

I owe a review to:

MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

[ QUOTE ]
While the rating of the arc drops. Law of Averages has already taken hold.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
It's funny actually, because near the start of this thread, the arc had over 90% 5-star votes, and nearly a hundred votes. Once the 'forum cartel' folk latched on, it all of a sudden got hit with a bunch of 1 and 2 star votes that have been coming in in bursts. But not before, and the arc had literally been around months, and hadn't been advertised at all.
...
The lesson here is, don't dare upset the Forum Cartel because apparently they've got connections. :P

[/ QUOTE ]

It's just publicity, I'm sure. This arc is getting a lot of people playing it due to word of mouth, people playing it because they want to see if Reviewer A is right, people playing it because they want to prove that Reviewer B is wrong, and people playing it just to see what the hype's all about. Heck, I read this whole thread and I haven't played the arc and didn't even have it on my radar before.

Anyway, as a result of your arc getting a lot more exposure, you'll get a lot more plays. As a result, you'll get the guy who gives you a bad rating because your arc isn't good exp, the one who gives you a bad rating because your arc is too easy, the one who gives you a bad rating because your arc is too hard, the one you hates the ruined Atlas Park map, the one who hates Lord Nemesis, the one who just isn't impressed with anything and purposely never rates anything high, the one who gives you a low rating out of pure spite because your rating is too high, the one who loved the arc except for a minor typo in mission 4 which caused him to dock you 2 stars, and so on, and so forth.

Best you can do (IMHO) is smile and say "Thanks for trying my arc!"

Make changes based on suggestions you think are helpful; don't make the changes you think aren't right for your story.

So let's not hear any more about some sort of Forum Cartel Conspiracy. Really, Mr. Doe, do we need to increase the dosage of your medication? It sounds like these delusions of being some sort of mission author are returning! And we were doing so well before! You don't want to have to be transferred back into the rubber padded room, do you? DO YOU?!!

7/23/2009

Monday night, I played Strong Woman (33 inv/SS tanker) as a lackey on a 5-player LEGION team running level 44ish missions. Our team was basically me as a tanker, a kinetic, and a bunch of blasters/scrappers/DPS. We did pretty well overall, beating a Bobcat AV, though we did have one wipeout against Nemesis due to snipers and stacked vengeance. Strong Woman got to level 35, where I took Tough, which puts her smash/lethal resist up to a very healthy 80%. I was capped at 90% RES for a little while from a Mystic Fortune buff, but I'm hoping to slot up Tough to have close to 90% RES all the time. At least against smash/lethal, anyway; I remember from my last invuln tank that psi and weird damage types became really common in the low 40s.

After that team broke up, I solo'd my new version of Star Amethyst (5 dark/ice defender) up to level 6 running radio missions in King's Row.

On Tuesday night, I logged in Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to find that my evil market manipulation has finally made me a billionaire, as her influence total exceeded 1,000,000,000 infl for the first time. I probably had this much inf on all my alts total long ago, but this is the first time I had this much on a single character. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with all this infl yet; I usually don't buy really extravagant stuff off of the market (due to being cheap). I'm sure I'll think of something. Maybe bathe in it like Scrooge McDuck.

A Katie Hannon TF was forming and I joined it with Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender). We had a team of

3 defenders
1 controller
2 blasters
1 tanker
1 peacebringer

and finished it in a fairly respectable 26min 5sec for 9 merits (20.70 MPH). I have Linda with "xp off" to try and get level 33 recipes, and this gave her enough merits to spend 20 on a reward roll. I got a lemony Edict of the Master, though; can't win 'em all!

After that I played Mega (38 SS/will brute) through Superadine Withdrawal Blues, a story arc about a Troll that supposedly has given up Superadine, but in the actual story he seems to be crazy for it. At first you help the Troll steal some drugs, but eventually you get annoyed by him and beat him up. The story was rather thin and not all that funny; I rated it 2 stars.

I then played Mega on an Ice Mistral SF with a team of:

2 corruptors (fire/pain and dark/dark)
2 brutes (elec/fire and SS/will)
1 MM (robo/dark)

We didn't have any serious problems and we cleared a lot of extra stuff for fun and exp. Finished the SF in 1hr 33mins for 25 merits (16.13 MPH), and got Mega to level 39.

Wednesday night, I blitzed through two "quick" LGTFs, first playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) and then another one playing Mayday (50 fortunata). These are getting pretty routine, and they both finished in right around 24-25 mins for 38 merits each (93 MPH).

After that I spent some time on Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) sneaking around my own story arcs taking screen shots, which I used to construct a couple banner ads for City of Heroes Mission Review site, which was kind enough to use a couple of these banners as "Featured Missions" on their site. Yay for free advertising!

[ QUOTE ]
So you stop and whack every purse-snatching Hellion you see?

[/ QUOTE ]

True story: I used to do this when I was a newbie. My friends would be like, "What's taking you so long to get to the mission?" and I'd say, "I'm fighting these Hellions along the way, they're trying to take this lady's purse!"

And they'd be, like, "You know you don't get exp from those"...

I eventually outgrew this habit, but kinda miss that age of innocence sometimes too.

I haven't played the arc in question, so these comments are purely on the subject of variance in level range.

I started off in I14 with the personal opinion that having the level range bounce around a bit during the story arc was no big deal. However, player feedback has had a Pavlovian punishment/reward effect on me, causing me to adjust my opinion. I now think that having the level range vary a lot is mildly annoying, but not a gigantic flaw. I can understand how this might be especially annoying for someone trying to get exp via story arcs. (I have a lot of level 50s so I'm not nearly as uptight about exp; but some people are.)


As purely empirical data, here are my observations based on how my story arcs gradually evolved.

Arc A started out with 4 missions, level 1-54, 1-54, 1-54, 40-54.

Arc B started out with 3 missions, level 30-38, 1-14, 30-39.

Arc C started out with 4 missions, level 15-20, 20-20, 20-25, 29-30.

As you can see, all my arcs initially started with some variance in level. (Of course, this was back in I14 when you couldn't really adjust it unless you resorted to elaborate trickery.)

On Arc A, a frequent complaint I received was, "I enjoyed the first 3 missions, but my level 18 character couldn't handle the AV in the last mission." Which made perfect sense because a level 18 shouldn't expect to beat a level 40 AV, even if sidekicked up to 40; but the low level range on the previous missions gave the player false expectations about what he could handle. Once I15 came out, I raised the minimum level on all my missions, making them all around 25-54 or 30-54, in order to better set expectations for the player.

On Arc B, I very frequently got complaints about the middle mission, which dropped you to level 14 (to fight Skulls). The idea was that you're just sneaking by some random bums in an office to steal something, and I figured Skulls would work for that. But I got so much hate email about the level drop that I ended up having to yank the Skulls out and replace them with a mix of Tsoo, Freakshow, and custom mobs, in order to fit the 30-40 level range that I gave the arc overall in I15. Now I get occasional complaints of, "What's up with the level 40 street vagrants?" which just goes to show you can't make everyone happy, but these complaints usually are less angry sounding than the people who hate being dropped in level.

On Arc C, I almost never get complaints about the level range changing, even though the level range in that arc changes MORE than in any other arc. As a result, I haven't touched the level range even after I15 came out. I think this is because of two factors: (a) the level range always increases, never decreases -- so it never feels like the story is taking powers away from you, and (b, probably the lesser contributor) there are storyline reasons for the level increase.



tl,dr version:

* Use the low end of your level range as a "You must be at least this tall to ride this ride."
* People hate when mission N+1 is a lower level range than mission N.
* People don't seem to mind when mission N+1 is a higher level range than mission N.
* No matter what you do, someone will hate it.
* Make a good faith effort to reduce the number of people who will hate it. But make sure YOU like it.

The Superadine Withdrawal Blues review
Arc ID: 205046
(No keywords)
Morality: Neutral
Level range: 1-54

Premise is something about a Troll who goes straight. The description warns of an EB but says it's for levels 1-50; but with Vindicators and Custom Group listed for enemy groups, a lowbie didn't sound like a good idea. I played a 38 SS/will brute on Malicious (difficulty 2).

The contact is a custom Troll character.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact tries to get me to leave him alone because he's reformed, and off of Superadine. Halfway through his explanation of this, he loses his train of thought, falls off the wagon, and suddenly wants me to help him steal some Superadine.

The briefing is sparse and somewhat inarticulate, but this seems intentional, since he IS a Troll.

The troll wants to go on ahead without me, but if he doesn't come back, I'm supposed to go help him. This seems a rather dim plan (why not have me help him in the first place rather than wait for him to be captured?) but I guess he isn't supposed to be smart.

Map selection: the contact told me this would be a warehouse, but the map is actually an office. Seems inconsistent.

Inside the mission: I'm puzzled by the Council being here, until I overhear some "DEA Agents" wondering why vampires need Superadine. Which explains the Council, but poses another question.

Found a patrol of DEA Agents; they have a decent costume, but need some description in their info.

Found a "Barrel of Dead Rats" as a clicky; the progress bar says "This isn't Superadine". This kinda works, but it's more conventional to name the glowy "Barrel" and have the progress bar be something neutral like "Searching Barrel", and only find that it's Dead Rats and Not Superadine after the progress bar is complete.

Likewise for "Barrel of Red Slime" and so on.

[NPC] Vortex Cor Leonis Sonic: You made a bad mistake, Jimmy. This is our turf.

The Council aren't really a gang, so "turf" is an odd word for them to use.

[NPC] Vortex Cor Leonis Sonic: So the greenskined punk brought friends after all. Time to die!

"greenskined" should be "greenskinned".

I found and freed Jimmy; he becomes an Elite Boss ally, which seems a little overly powerful for fighting ordinary Council. I find that Jimmy doesn't actually fight, though, so maybe this is okay. Though it seems odd to me that a Troll wouldn't fight.

Despite freeing Jimmy, I still have "Find Jimmy" as an objective; only now I have an orange dot on my map. I'd suggest that once you free Jimmy, his objective should change from "Find Jimmy" to "Lead Jimmy to the door" or something similar. "Find Jimmy" vanishes as an objective once I get him to the door, but he doesn't say anything; maybe give him a line of dialog here.

Debriefing: Awfully short, and just sentence fragments; maybe this is in character for a Troll, but I still think you could use a little more text in the briefings/debriefings. The contact suddenly remembers he promised to pay me, so he wants to go rob a bank to pay me now.

Mission 2
Briefing: Another really, really short briefing. Needs more text. Anyway, the contact goes off to rob a bank. I'm sure this will end well.

Inside the mission: So now I'm rescuing the contact from his bank robbery. I'm okay with this, being a brute, but I'm thinking this story arc should really be "villainous".

The mission title is "Find Jimmy" which I think was the same as last mission's title, too. Maybe make the mission titles a little more descriptive, like "Help Jimmy steal Superadine" and "Help Jimmy rob a bank".

A crazy number of ambushes spawn after I rescue Jimmy and defeat Officer O'Malley and get the money. Way more than any low level character could handle; you may want to either cut back on the number of ambushes or else raise your min level.

Again, "Rescue Jimmy" should change to "Lead Jimmy to the exit" once you rescue him, if that's the intent. Jimmy still doesn't fight; not much of a bank robber, is he?

"Bank Vault" clue is kinda funny; apparently the bank was robbed by some other villain even before we got here. "and but the top and bottom" should be "and both the top and bottom" in this clue.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact now wants to have a big party.

Map selection: generic warehouse? Maybe at least use the dance rave map for the party.

Mission objectives: "Protect the Superadine", not quite sure why I need to do this. And "Defeat Mephisto", but Mephisto hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'm not sure who that is or why I should fight him.

There's a bunch of Reformed Troll mobs here; if this is a party, perhaps they should be dancing or playing boomboxes or something.

There's Council at this party? Huh? The mission entry popup described this as a "gang war", but the Council really aren't a gang.

I find and rescue Jimmy, who actually fights for the first time in this mission; also rescued a Reformed Jutal. All 3 of us foot stomped in unison against a DEA Agent ambush, which pretty well crushed them.

I found and beat up Mephisto, who seems to be a named war wolf. I'm not sure why he's special, or why he's particularly mad at me. I beat him up with the help of the two troll allies; I had already rescued the Superadine barrel, so the mission ended.

Debriefing: Only one line. Too short.

Mission 4
Briefing: Only one line. Too short. "wearhouse" should be "warehouse". This mission is another "party" apparently.

Second part of briefing: Now the contact wants to play "who punches hardest", and the mission title is now "Defeat Jimmy".

I like the "Knock some sense into Jimmy" goal. Not sure why "Destroy the Superadine" is necessary, considering last mission I had to defend the superadine. The story seems to be a bit mixed up on whether I should be protecting it or destroying it. Considering Jimmy is only one of the goals of this mission, the mission should maybe have a different name than "Defeat Jimmy"; something that covers both goals under its description.

Destroying the Superadine spawned two or three ambushes of "Reformed Trolls". I guess they aren't as reformed as all that, after all! This many ambushes would be very tough for a squishy or low level character, though.

Found and attacked Jimmy, who was an elite boss. Consider giving him an "unaware" and an "attack" dialog; currently, he is awfully silent until he gets to 50% life where he speaks his first and only line. Being the end boss for the whole arc, the fight with him should have more detail to it.

Debriefing: an "Owww" and one line of dialog. Too short.

No souvenir; the arc could perhaps use one.

Overall
The idea of a reformed Troll trying to go straight is a neat one. But this arc doesn't follow up on this idea; instead, the Troll instantly goes bad again, and you help him on a crime spree until you get sick of him and beat him up. It didn't seem there was much more story than that. The writing and dialogue were very sparse; the story could really use more of both.

I couldn't figure out what my character's motivation was for helping Jimmy, who was characterized as pretty flaky. As a hero, I wouldn't want to rob banks and stuff; while as a villain, once Jimmy obviously can't pay me, why am I sticking around?

Why the Council has Superadine in mission 1 or why they show up to fight in mission 3 is never explained. I think you were looking for a "rival gang" here, so it might make more sense if you use Tsoo or Outcasts instead. The Tsoo are particularly into drug trafficking, I believe.

The DEA Agents had nice uniforms but didn't get enough development, in my opinion; as presented, they just occasionally show up as ambushes when Superadine is around. You might consider adding a subplot about their investigation into Superadine trafficking; maybe they try to rope in the player as an informer, or try to arrest her as a drug dealer. Perhaps there could be a named DEA Agent who occasionally shows up and has Tommy Lee Jones-ish federal agent-style dialog about how he's going to nab the player and Jimmy.

If the arc is intended to be funny, I think you could stand to add more humor and jokes; right now the only joke seems to be that Jimmy is not very bright, and I don't think that's enough to carry the arc. If you want it to be more serious, you could focus on Jimmy's struggle with superadine addiction, the lure of other trolls trying to get him back into gang activity, etc.

I think you might want to limit your level range some. Currently it is 1-50 and the custom mobs and the ambushes are much too hard for a level 1; and Trolls in general are an enemy type you normally fight in your teens, so may not be an appropriate enemy for level 50s. You might consider using actual Troll and Supa Troll mobs (maybe mixed in with your Reformed Trolls to give a variety of models) and using their level range for the arc.

Anyway, it did not feel like there was a lot of story here, so I felt I could only give this 2 stars. Hope you think that's fair!

--------

I owe a review to:

@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

The last mission of Celebrity Kidnapping contains my most complex sequence of triggered objectives.

The basic set up is a small, fairly linear map, with a hostage and a boss in the very back. The sole required objective is to first free the hostage, then lead the hostage to the door.

Fighting the initial boss and freeing the hostage both trigger the first of a long chain of ambushes and (optional) objectives. Despite all the triggered objectives being optional, you end up having to face most of them because you rescue the hostage in the very back of the map, and having to drag her to the front of the map results in the player aggroing and having to fight just about everything along the way.

It's still possible to miss some of the objectives through the vagaries of random spawning and/or player purposely not cooperating with the script, but overall it's pretty reliable.

Changes made:
* For some reason, clicking "default" for About Contact will put the canon description of the contact into the edit box, but the description shows up blank if you look at it in runtime under "Ask about this contact". Probably a MA bug. I ended up writing some custom text and putting it into the About Contact edit box, which then allowed the contact's description to show up.
* While the arc is inspired in part by L5R, I decided my "Oracle" terminology was much too derivative of L5R, so I changed it.
* In mission 3, "Oracle of Void" is now "Oracle of Amaterasu" (to parallel the "Oracle of Phoebus" in the ITF).
* In mission 3, reworked clues and dialog to refer to Amaterasu in several places.
* In mission 5, "Oracle of Wind" is now "Master of the East Wind" (to sound more like a kung fu master you ought to beat up on the way to the final boss).
* In mission 5, Hawk Clan Bushi are now katana/regen (previously were katana/SR) to make them more evenly matched against the Spider Clan Bushi in mission 5's battles.

7/20/2009

I started off last Thursday playing Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a speed Lady Grey TF with a team mix of:

brute
controller
tanker
corruptor
2 scrappers (including me)
fortunata

A teammate complimented me on Blond Justice's name and costume, which was nice. Otherwise the LGTF went by in a flash, finishing in 24min 25sec for 39 merits (95.84 MPH).

I went on to play Star Amethyst (32 warshade) on a Katie Hannon TF. I forgot to write down our team mix, but I think we were blaster heavy. We had a team wipe on Mary #10 but otherwise did fine, finishing in 31mins 21sec for 9 merits (17.22 MPH). This got Star Amethyst to level 33 and I cashed in her reward merits for 14 draws from the level 35-39 recipe reward pool, getting:

2 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=15k each
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=500k
1 Unbounded Leap (+stealth) Wentw=5M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=2M
1 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/END) Wentw=2M
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.5M
1 Trap of the Hunter (ACC/INTRDX/RCHG) Wentw=250K
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global rchg) Wentw=65M
1 Freebird (+stealth) Wentw=4M
1 Impervium Armor (RES) Wentw=4.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (chance of +tohit) Wentw=1M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=20M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=160K

This comes to an average of 381.9K influence per merit spent, which is significantly above average. The LotG and the Kinetic Combat were the real prizes of this pull.

At this point I wasn't that excited about warshades, though, and after crafting & stashing the best of these IOs, I ended up transfering Star Amethyst (warshade) to another server and re-rolling a new Star Amethyst on Liberty, this time as a newbie dark miasma/ice blast defender. I figure that come I16, I can re-color all her dark and ice powers some shade of purple (I think both powersets will look really neat when colorized), and still be kind of a controlly damage dealer (which was my play style as a warshade), only with much more buff/debuff, and hopefully more solo capability. Yeah, it's a little weird to say a defender is a better soloer than...well, anything else. But I think in this case it may be true.

The new dark/ice version of Star Amethyst emerged in Atlas Park in the middle of a Rikti invasion; hopping onto a Rikti-fighting team, I was level 4 by the time the invasion was over. From there I ran a few of Azuria's newbie missions to get to level 5. I'm impressed by the DPS output of defender ice blasts at low level; though Tar Patch had something to do with this, I'm sure. We'll see if this keeps up as she levels up.

Went on to play Kashira (25 db/ninj stalker) on a quick Sharkhead SF. Our team was:

3 brutes
2 fortunata
1 bane
1 stalker (me)

This team blitzed through the SF in 28min 5sec (support? who needs support) for 22 merits (47.0 MPH), getting Kashira to level 26, where I took Kuji-In Rin (ninja mez protection).

Went on to run a quick Imperious TF on Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). I was a little nervous about playing a squishy on a "quick" TF as they always get left behind to get gacked by mobs, but the team leader wanted a "healer" so I volunteered for the job. Our team mix was:

3 corruptors (rad, cold, kin)
2 fortunata
3 scrappers

I really didn't have to do much healing as we were mostly at the defense cap, though we suffered occasional deaths from lucky hits. Finished in 26mins 59sec for 28 merits (62.26 MPH).

After that I was on a quick Lady Grey TF, this time as Mayday (50 fortunata). Our team was:

1 corruptor
1 fortunata (me)
1 dominator
1 blaster
1 tanker
2 scrappers
1 defender

We had no special problems. The team leader asked me to be the "main assist" for blue mitos in the Hamidon mission, and later asked me to solo the generators in the final encounter while the rest of the team fought the AVs; this was kinda cool and both jobs were no problem for my fortunata with her high defense and DPS. VEATs are pretty strong. We finished in 30min 32sec for 39 merits (76.64 MPH).

Went on to play Mayday on a 1st villain respec with a team of:

2 corruptors (cold, kin)
1 dominator
1 fortunata (me)
1 bane
2 brutes

At level 33 I was missing some of my powers (mostly stealth and AoE attacks) but seemed to manage okay. We finished in a ludicrously fast 9min 20sec for 15 merits (96.43 MPH).

After that I played Mega (37 SS/will brute), duoing with a friend playing a brute through the Ghost Widow patron arc. We beat up a mission full of Circle of Thorns, getting Mega to 38, where I took Stamina, for extra endurance recovery on top of the Quick Recovery that I already had.

Finished Thursday night soloing Terrific Woman (14 SS/SR brute) through The Horsemen Chronicles Part 1, which was a lowbie arc where you're trying to foil a Praetorian plot. You don't actually fight any Praetorians except for one custom enemy boss, but that one guy somehow stirs up trouble with lots of other lowbie enemy factions. Each individual mission was interesting with lots of stuff to do in it, and decent dialog; but the overall plot had problems and there were a few plot elements I found hard to believe. I gave it 3 stars.

On Saturday I played Mystery Girl (37 ff/nrg defender) on a 4-player LEGION team running through low 40s missions. We had a team wipe against Antimatter, then beat him on our second try; this ended up getting Mystery Girl to level 38, where I burned her free respec trying to re-build her for maximum ranged DEF. Previously I had tried to slot all her powers with various damage procs, just for fun, so I ended up trying to yank most of those out in order to not lose them.

After that I played Mega (38 SS/will brute), joining a 3-player villain team to help a friend defeat Numina.

Late Saturday night, a friend asked me to come to Pocket D to help her get the Tournament Victor badge. The way this worked is we had 8 players join a Swiss Draw tournament, and we basically "fixed" the result of each tournament, having most players forfeit so that a particular player would win and get the badge. This felt a little cheaty, but I don't think I've ever seen a real PvP tournament, so it's not like you can get this badge in any "legit" way. I participated in this for 3 "tournaments" and got Police Woman the Tournament Victor badge.

On Sunday night, I played Miss Scarlett (9 mace/SR brute on Victory server) as a lackey on a 7-player Demolition Girls team, mostly running through Seer Marino's story arc, then moving to Cap au Diable for a couple missions. Seer Marino's story arc, as always, was packed with Mu Mystics that flatlined my END for about 80% of the time, which was quite annoying, but a helpful teammate kept feeding me blues to keep me going. We probably had two or three team wipes while fighting Arachnos mobs. Nevertheless this got Miss Scarlett to level 14, and I picked up Swift, Focused Senses and Agile. I found that I'm really liking the war mace powerset (the attacks seem to flow pretty naturally and do decent damage), and I'm quite tempted to start a mace character on Liberty sometime. Teammates got into Miss Scarlett's "concept"; every time we found a body bag glowy I would say "I didn't do it!" and someone else would say "It was Miss Scarlett, with the wrench, in the Arachnos base!"

Finished the night soloing through a couple MA story arcs. First I played Mega (38 SS/will brute) through The Consequences of War - Part 1, a high level arc depicting the brutal violence of the Rikti war and sacrifices made by lesser-known heroes that fought in it. The first few missions of this arc were kinda generic Rikti fighting, but the last two missions were particularly compelling, as you and some other heroes make a last stand against a Rikti assault on a hero base. I gave this story arc 4 stars.

After that I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through The Audition - Part 1, a high level arc where Synapse tries to recruit you to the Freedom Phalanx, only there's, like, tryouts. The author of this arc asked me not to say much about it until I've played Part 2, but I think I can say that I did end up rating it 4 stars.

I finished a run through The Audition part 1 (arc id 221240). I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper.

The author and I have some slight disagreement on how multi-arc stories should be handled. The author has stated that he'd prefer both "parts" to be considered a single story arc; however, it's my preference to review each story arc on its own merits.

Consequently, the author has asked me to defer posting a review of part 1 until after I've run through both "parts". I don't see any harm in that, so I'll post my notes on The Audition part 1 somewhat later.

I owe a review to:

@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

I thought I'd start a separate thread on this story arc, in order to separate it out from my review thread and give me a place to track changes and comments.


A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force
Arc ID: 260284

Keywords: Challenging, Save the World, Magic
Length: Very Long
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 45-50
Description: Samurai and ninja battle for honor in a faraway realm. But someone has introduced firearms to the land, tilting the balance of power towards the evil Lord Kumo and the Spider Clan. Will you journey there to restore the balance? SFMA, Asian fantasy, L5R, wuxia, dimensional travel. Warning: AVs!

Design notes

This is my fourth story arc. I'm purposely trying to make each of my story arcs fairly different from the previous ones (as a sort of "stretch" goal), and so I can't guarantee that someone who liked my previous arcs will like this one. I'm hoping I've learned something about writing story arcs over time, though, and I tried to make my initial publication of this arc as polished as possible. Nevertheless, I generally find player feedback to be invaluable for shaping a story arc to be better, and so I'd welcome any comments or suggestions.

The final mission is fairly challenging, including several AVs and several allies. I'd particularly like input regarding game balance of that mission. I was able to solo it on a level 40 katana/willpower scrapper (the theme of this arc is squarely aimed at katana scrappers), but it may be quite tough for squishy characters. It seems like about half my player base so far has been able to solo the final mission, and the other half has had some trouble. I've made some adjustments over time to try and compensate. It's not intended to be some kind of "challenge" mission, and ideally I'd prefer if everyone could complete it; but I feel like the story leads up to a final confrontation with a particular canon AV, and he's not exactly a pushover.

External sites

* A Warrior's Journey on CoH Mission Review

Forum reviews (spoilers)

* Airhead's first impressions and final review

* Olantern's review

* GlaziusF's review

The Consequences of War - Part I review
Arc ID: 227331
Keywords: Challenging, Canon Related, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 38-54

The premise seems connected to the Rikti war; the arc is flagged with warnings about AVs, EBs, extreme EBs, extreme bosses, and extreme lieutenants. Whew!

I ran this on the Rikti invasion weekend, which seemed particularly appropriate.

I tried playing a 38 SS/will brute on Malicious (difficulty 2).

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact seems to be some kind of fiery entity, the leader of something called the "SOLUS Collective", which has been battling the Rikti invasion. He's lost contact with two of his operatives, fighting Rikti in the sewers, and he sends me to help. A decently written briefing that explains the situation and what I'm expected to do.

Good clue at the beginning of the mission explaining the history of the Rikti war and explaining the SOLUS Collective. Vanguard is mentioned here; I wonder if this arc should perhaps be Neutral since Vanguard is a neutral organization that fights Rikti? Heroic works fine too though.

Inside the mission: The Rikti talk in weird indecipherable symbols, which is cool but is different than the typical way we see Rikti talking in other story arcs.

I destroyed one of the bombs and got the "Bomb Placement" clue, which had a nice explanation of what was at risk.

I found Billy Bad Boy and he was surrounded by Rikti holding wooden crates, which I thought was an odd animation for them to begin in. (Billy's clue later explains this a bit more, but it still seemed odd at first glance.) I like Billy's sassy dialog.

Found and rescued Captain Superior...I really like his look. Very heroic. A shame he couldn't stay!

Found the Rikti leader and he starts off spouting symbols, but then actually starts talking intelligibly in the normal Rikti syntax, which was kinda cool, like they're just learning to speak the human language. In order to trash talk me, admittedly.

Hmm, I got "Tro'naht's Translator" as a clue, which was well planned as I was just thinking about why he changed languages on me.

I like the "Radio Transmission from Lazon" clue and how it's described as blurry due to the jamming; nice description. "but it's use this close" should be "but its use this close".

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact asks me to try and plant some kind of virus on the Rikti computers, and says that two more of his team will meet up with me. Starting to think this is a series of cameos from someone's SG.

Inside the mission, I rescue Empathy, and she talks about Eric as if it's someone I should know. Perhaps Energy Blastion? If I'm supposed to know him, maybe his name should be mentioned earlier.

OK, I find Energy Blastion, and his description DOES say he's named Eric; still would've made more sense if I knew that before seeing Empathy's dialog.

Mission seems to finish fairly straightforwardly after finding the right glowy and releasing the two allies.

Mission 3
Briefing: This briefing mentions they are puzzling over some "battle suit parts" that I had apparently recovered; I did get an encrypted file, but don't remember bringing battle suit parts back. Possibly I missed it, but in any case, if this is an important clue, you may want to add an official "Clue" indicating you brought this back in a previous mission. Although looking back at my clue journal, I wonder if these "battle suit parts" are meant to be the same as the "parts" described in the "Tro'Naht's Translator" clue; that might make sense, but the connection isn't entirely clear.

The contact wants me to rescue a scientist in Galaxy City and give her these battle suit parts. This seems reasonable, though I wonder what happened to the encrypted file that I found in mission 2? If the battle suit parts are, indeed, from Tro'naht's Translator, then I got it in mission 1 and maybe should've immediately done this new task?

Inside there's a nice little battle between Rikti and Vanguard. One of them says:

[NPC] Vanguard Soldier: $name! Several shellheads just got past us! Get back to Brinell! We've got this!

...without actually using my name, so I'm guessing maybe fighting the Rikti triggered this dialog before I got within range. Maybe rephrase to not include the player name.

I like the map choice, it gives very much a damaged air raid shelter sorta feel.

I found the Jammer Info Data File glowy and clicked it; it spawned an ambush, but didn't give me a clue (which seemed surprising).

Debriefing: Basically empty, as you can't get through to Lazon. Though this is explained by the mission exit popup, which warns of an attack on the SOLUS base. You might briefly recap this in the mission debriefing, though, to make sure the player sees it.

Mission 4
Briefing: It looks like I'm asked to help fight off the Rikti attack on the SOLUS base, with some name dropping of more SOLUS members that are about to be introduced.

Inside, I have 9 heroes to find, wow.

[NPC] Lazon: 22nd Century Man and Translucent Girl, if you can read me, team up with Mega!

There's an extra space between "if" and you"

[NPC] Lazon: They're hitting the residential section! The less experienced heroes are getting chewed up up there!

"up up there" maybe should be "up over there".

Found the various bodies of dead heroes, killed in the attack, getting "The Ultimate Sacrifice" clue, which is well-written and a nice touch.

I found and rescued Prince Nigel IV, who has pretty nice dialog that helps characterize him as one of the "rookie" heroes that got caught flatfooted by this attack. He asks me to get him to a door, but I don't have an objective to lead him out, and unlike Penthouse, it doesn't seem like he helps fight; yet, he IS following me. Not sure what the intent there is.

I rescued Commissioner G and oddly he ran off rather than helping me, despite Lazon's previous instructions for Penthouse and G to work with me.

Once I got down to "Find the last hero", I searched the whole base without finding any more heroes; then I finally led Prince Nigel IV to the door, which completed the objective. This is a little unintuitive (since I had already "found" Nigel) and I'd suggest you make it so that when you rescue Nigel, it changes him from a "X heroes to find" objective to a "Lead Nigel to safety" objective.

Debriefing: Seems awfully short, but perhaps this is justified by the situation, as it implies that the Rikti attack is continuing on (into the next mission).

Mission 5
Briefing: The final mission seems to be to save the "upper floors" of the SOLUS base and warns of an AV.

Map selection: the burning office is cool, but looks very different than the "lower floors" so it requires a little extra suspension of disbelief to imagine this is part of the same base; especially with all the pentagrams and cabalistic looking stuff. The burned-up tech lab map in the villain arc where you fight ARCH-A would've been perfect, but doesn't seem available.

Objectives: another 8 heroes to find! Wow, feels like a lot.

I rescued Translucent Girl; had to lead her to the door before I got credit for "finding" her. Same suggestion as for Nigel, change her from a "hero to find" to a "Lead Translucent Girl to door" when she is rescued. Although I am surprised she wants medevac after her brave dialog about the nature of heroes; I can understand that Nigel (as a newbie) needed to get out, but wouldn't Translucent Girl want to help save the rest of her friends? I guess she is being depicted as "too wounded to help".

I found and rescued Lazon; he has some nice dialog. I think you might want to reinforce that Lazon's powers are overloading here somehow; perhaps use one of the animations where he's in an energy field, or change his model so that the aura is more pronounced or a different color, or maybe just have him exposition a little more about "I'm overloading!" after "You don't understand!" and maybe add "I've got to get out of here, fast!" before he says "Tell Captain Superior to get the data...". I very much like the "Lazon's Ultimate Sacrifice" clue, though.

Found and fought Hro'Dath. Wow, he looks HUGE in this little, low-ceilinged office! I beat him, but he "teleports away" in the "Hro'Dath's Escape" clue upon defeat. Grrrr.

I searched a body and got the "Deceased Heroes" clue, which says "you didn't even have time to look at her I.D. card"...but the progress bar for searching the body actually says "Searching for identi-card", so this seems to be inconsistent. May need to change one or the other, to match.

Got the "Lazon's Last Orders" clue on mission complete, which was actually pretty nice.

Mission exit popup seems to recognize that this is a pyrrhic victory, at best.

Debriefing: Not bad; but I liked "Lazon's Last Orders" a bit more. Consider repeating some of that clue here, though I think you should keep the clue so that other team members will get to see it, too.

Overall
This arc did a good job of portraying the brutal violence of the Rikti War and the sacrifices made by the people who fought in it. The final two missions were particularly compelling, as they depicted a desperate struggle as you rescue who you can, but you find many have given their lives in defense against the Rikti.

The first three missions seemed rather generic fights against the Rikti by comparison, however. There was a good introduction to the arc, but it seemed like the plot thread about researching the translator never really went anywhere.

Countless heroes that were SOLUS members made brief cameos in this arc, appearing for one mission and then never being seen again; I felt this really made it impossible for any of them to get enough character development, except for Lazon himself, who was handled pretty well. It occurred to me that these may be guest appearances from members of the author's SG. For sake of the story, though, you might consider reducing the cast size, and instead focus on developing the story for a few recurring characters. Perhaps one could be one of the rookie heroes who works with the player in the early missions, but ends up dying against hopeless odds in the later missions. This would give you a stronger connection to what happens in missions 4 and 5, where you find a LOT of body bags, but they're (as currently presented) mostly nameless statistics. Even the one that IS named isn't anyone you "know".

I did really like Lazon's final scenes, though, which I thought gave him a pretty heroic ending.

I was rather disappointed that even though I beat the final boss, he "teleports away" so you don't really win against him. Despite beating back the Rikti attack, due to the enormous loss of life the final mission has a sense of failure. Considering some of the final clues and debriefing, this may be your design intent. I might suggest you let the final boss get "really" defeated, though, to partly balance the deaths of Lazon and the others, and allow the player to have some sense that she accomplished something beyond survival.

Anyway, I did like the arc overall, but thought there were a few things that could be improved. I rated it 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

Thanks for playing through A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force!

I wrote a nice bio for Gaki-Onna at one point, but it somehow got clobbered in my editing and re-editing of that final mission. I've republished a version which *should* fix that.

You're the second person who noted the Hawk Clan rank-and-file were mostly beating the Spider Clan rank-and-file. The Hawk Bushi are katana/SR while the Spider Clan bushi are katana/regen; I guess that extra defense toggle really makes a difference! The generic minions on both sides are just meant to die in droves in the background, to make it feel more like an epic battle. So I'll depower the Hawk Clan minions so they'll be on a more even footing.

Thanks again!

The Horsemen Chronicles (Part 1) review
Arc ID: 195149
Keywords: Canon Related, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 10-14

The premise is to stop a new Praetorian villain who is collecting some sort of artifacts. I played a 14 SS/SR brute on villainous difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: The briefing is nicely formatted and the contact does a good job of introducing himself and his organization. The way the briefing is presented, though, it sounds like I'm going to need to stop Tyrant ... at level 14. Eep. Nevertheless I accept this heavy duty and join his organization.

Second part of briefing: So he wants me to check out the sewers, which seems a bit more level appropriate for me. His briefing is well written, but he does neglect to mention what I should do if I run into Tyrant down there. Presumably, run away!

Mission entry popup: "Your very first adventure as a Horseman...and it's against them?" makes it sound like this mission is against the Horsemen organization? But it looks like there are Vahzilok here.

I like the "Find Source of Anomaly" mission name, and the "Keep an Eye Open for Anything Unusual" objective, they sound fun.

Deep inside I found some glowy body bags; searching one of them triggered Omega's "ambush" (I think he must've been a boss detail, but he spawned right on top of me). I manage to defeat him, but the story calls for him to "teleport out" and escape. Strangely, he stole a water department worker's badge.

The glowies and Omega's appearance seemed to be the only things of interest on this map; you might consider adding more stuff to make the mission more lively, or else using a smaller map.

Based on the naming scheme, I am guessing Omega and the Wolfpack are the Praetorian counterparts to Alpha and the Horsemen?

Debriefing: basically a good recap. I might suggest rephrasing "one of his small guns" to "a covert operative", as calling Omega a small fry kind of diminishes the importance of his story.

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact explains that since Omega is not in a database of known supervillains, then Omega is "not of this world and is indeed from Praetoria". I think the logic here isn't quite right. First, being low level, it's totally possible Omega is a newbie who hasn't been identified yet; second, even if we presume he's from another world, there are countless alternate dimensions defined in the game, so it wouldn't necessarily follow he's from Praetoria. I'd suggest you rework the explanation here; maybe give some kind of technobabble about energy signatures detected characteristic of Praetorian portal technology, or something.

Altenatively you could postpone the reveal that Omega is a Praetorian until later, maybe having the player discover this for herself via clues in the next mission. (Though I have to say, having the new characters be named Alpha and Omega kinda gives it away already. )

He goes on to say that Omega is causing Skulls to attack Oranbega. Huh? This seems random; what possible motive could he have for this? I guess we'll find out.

Second part of the briefing: OK, the contact explains a possible motive, to recover more "artifacts". Though if a water department badge is an artifact, who knows what he's after.

Inside the mission: I like how the Skulls' dialog explains what's going on, although:

[NPC] Gravedigger Chopper: Yeah, what were they thinking? Stealing our bandana, then putting it in a case like a trophy?

....is a little too obviously exposition; I don't think anyone would actually say this. Maybe reword it a little to sound more natural.

I like the mission title "Find Out What Omega Is Up To", but think the objectives of "3 display cases to find, Defeat Tarsis" should maybe be "Find artifact, Defeat Circle of Thorns leader" (since you're really here just to find the artifact, not the other stuff they might have here; and you don't enter the mission knowing anything about Tarsis).

With the "artifacts" being a water department badge and a Skulls bandana so far, it looks like Omega is actually collecting story arc souvenirs for some reason. Wonder why?

I'm puzzled as to why the CoT would steal a Skulls bandana, though. I found Tarsis, the CoT boss, and he says:

[NPC] Tarsis: Too late, Terrific Woman. Omega knows where the Skulls Bandana is.
[NPC] Tarsis: Omega! Help me!

and Tarsis gives a clue about how Omega conned him into helping. The briefing said the Skulls were working for Omega; but the CoT act like they're working for Omega. Yet they're fighting each other. This doesn't seem to add up.

After clicking all the glowies, Omega appears with an escort of Skulls and I fight him. So yes, both the Skulls and CoT are working for Omega. But the earlier Skulls dialog suggests they want their bandana back, and were willing to fight the CoT for it; yet Omega plainly says that he's taking the Skulls bandana back to Tyrant. Shouldn't they be mad at him for that?

Debriefing: The contact is understandably puzzled as to why Omega would steal these two objects, which don't appear all that significant in the grand scheme of things. Based on this info so far, I kind of wonder the Horsemen may need a little more motivation for why they care whether Omega is out stealing bandanas and badges.

Mission 3
Briefing: Ohh, so now the contact searches a special database specifically about Praetorians and finds out about Omega from it. Why didn't the contact search the special Praetorian database before the previous briefing? He had already believed Omega was a Praetorian at that time.

He sends me to find out why Omega is working with Outcasts in the Hollows now. I can see now that each mission parallels one of the canon newbie story arcs, which is a nice concept.

I like the Trolls and Outcast dialog inside the mission.

Gosh there's a LOT of false glowies. An ambush jumps me after I find the right one, and I end up punching out of the mission without finding the (optional) Omega. At least this time I got the artifact first!

Mission 4
Briefing: I kinda like the set up here, where Omega calls me out. The "LBx Inc. building" is a funny reference, but I'm not sure any non-Liberty person will get it. Also, "concidence" should be "coincidence".

I like how the mission accept message is "You do realize that you're asking me to walk into a trap, right?" This seems exactly true based on the setup.

Mission entry popup: Exchanging the key for the hostages here is a neat idea, though it is a little awkward that you then have to fight the Hellions to free the last 3 hostages. I mean, if I can beat up Hellions and free the last 3 hostages, why couldn't I beat up the Hellions in the first place, to free ALL the hostages without giving up the key? Seems to be a plot hole.

Found and rescued Cynthia Lee, though I don't quite get why she's in group called "Cryptographer" or why she mentions magazines.

I rescued all the hostages and defeated Omega, but we're again scripted into losing as he escapes with two more of the questionable artifacts.

Mission 5
Briefing: So now the contact suddenly realizes the five items Omega is capturing are intended to create a permanent portal between Praetoria and Paragon City. This is explained with some technobabble about the energy fields relating to the origins of power. I found this explanation somewhat unconvincing; there's no hint (either in official canon or earlier in this story arc) that five energy fields, one based on each hero origin, are protecting the city. And if they were, wouldn't it prevent Omega (and all other Praetorian AVs) from ever entering Paragon City in the first place? You may want to come up with a better explanation, or if you stick with this one, to have some clues or dialog earlier on that foreshadows this revelation. As it's currently presented, it sounds a little contrived.

Second part of briefing: "Somehow" Omega convinces the Clockwork King to help him; how is it that Omega is able to persuade all these Primal Earth villain factions to work with him, anyway? He shouldn't have any background with them, so it's not clear why they trust him.

Found the clockwork piece in the first bin of clockwork parts, which was handy. This was linked to an objective of destroying 3 portal devices. Minor quibble: shouldn't the portal devices have been there all along? Not sure how finding the clockwork piece could trigger them to appear.

Destroying the 3 devices causes my objective to change to "Defeat Crackhammer and gang". When I fight Crackhammer, I start out with the clockwork piece, but the dialog and clues tell me that while fighting, the clockworks manage to pickpocket this item from me and run off with it. This seems kinda cheaty on the part of the story. But now I need to defeat Omega.

Omega has a more detailed description explaining the plot (I think this wasn't present for previous missions). In Omega's description, "scrunity" should be "scrutiny". This time, when I defeat him, he gets captured.

While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Omega: Haven't you wondered which one of your precious heroes I'm a counterpart to?

and the mission exit popup asks the same question. But I think it is fairly obvious that Omega is the Praetorian counterpart to Alpha? Maybe this is okay, though, in case some player doesn't notice their similarities.

Debriefing: It's rather dismaying that after all this, the five artifacts still (probably) got sent to Praetoria, meaning that capturing Omega might not have been enough. "extra vigil" should be "extra vigilant", and "souvineurs" should be "souvenirs".

Souvenir: "Embelm" should be "Emblem". "sewage-filled sewer" is rather redundant, maybe just "sewer". Near the end of the synopsis, I think "Omega opened a portal to Paragon City" should be "Omega opened a portal to Praetoria".

Overall
I like the way each mission is set up, with lots of interesting things to do in each mission, and good dialog from the mobs inside.

I'm afraid I don't like the "collect the 5 artifacts to complete the ritual" plot, as this sort of plot always feels very generic to me. Also, the way Omega is scripted to escape with each artifact (or to steal the artifacts FROM you, if you find them first), even if you defeat him in combat, is somewhat annoying because it feels like the hero is railroaded into "losing" each encounter, no matter what they do. I think it would be nice if you could reword this somewhat so the hero feels like she is mostly succeeding; as it is now, it feels like you basically lose every mission except for mission 3 (but the artifact you get from mission 3 is stolen in mission 4), because Omega gets away with the artifact every time -- except the last mission, where you catch Omega but he still manages to teleport the artifacts away.

I do like the motif of the various artifacts being the souvenirs from lowbie story arcs; however, it feels somewhat unbelievable that mundane items like a water department badge, a bandana, a medal, and a clockwork piece, would be the key that allows Tyrant to invade Paragon City. If you stay with the "gather 5 items" plot, I think you may need to make each item more special, and/or insert more text justifying why they are so important.

I also found it difficult to believe that Omega, who is from another dimension, would be able to make friends with so many Primal Earth villains so quickly; in this arc, he has Vahzilok, Clockwork, Skulls, Hellions, CoT, Outcasts and Trolls all working for him. Although the variety of enemy types is nice, it seems unlikely that Omega could so easily get all these people to work for him. At times it seemed like several of these factions were fighting over artifact X, but then at the same time they're all working for Omega and happy to give artifact X to Omega, even though they said they really wanted it for themselves. You might consider making it more clear why each of these disparate villain factions decided to help out Omega (who, as a dimensional traveler, would be a total unknown to them), or else make them into hapless bystanders that don't know what is going on, as the player and Omega fight their way through their base.

Anyway, I do like the dialog and the gameplay of the missions, but thought the plot and the motivation for the various characters could stand some improvement. I rated this arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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

Some changes I made to "A Warrior's Journey" based on feedback:
- Changed "Daimyo" model to have more gold trim on the helmet and the "Arachnos" cape, to hopefully be more visually distinctive. I quite like how adding a cape worked out, thanks for the suggestion!
- Costumes of Fujineko and Hawk Bushi tweaked slightly to make the dragons stand out more.
- Descriptions of Fujineko and Hawk Bushi changed to standardize spelling for "Lord Setaetsemon".
- In mission 1, Fujineko and both Peasants will now use the "Thank You" animation when rescued.
- Costumes of General Mako and Black Scorpion tweaked to be more visually different than other characters (was mostly green with some black, now mostly black with some green; also changed to "San" pattern for armor pieces to look more wavy).
- Changed Spider Archer's description to be a little different.
- Removed Ohanko from missions 2 and 5 for being insufficiently interesting.
- Removed Powder Kegs from mission 2, I felt they weren't adding anything over the Arms Caches already there.
- Standardized all references to "Sister Sayaki" or "Lady Sayaki" to always be "Lady Sayaki".
- Changed mission 3 to use a smaller map. Eliminated all "Jonin" and "Shinobi" ninja bosses in favor of always using "Gorgon". With the smaller map, there are also fewer ninja spawns.
- The Ambush triggered from defeating the Jonin is moved to now occur upon rescuing Lady Sayaki.
- "Kharmic Tie" clue is now titled "A Dream of Flying". The clue's text is now prefixed with: "[While traveling through the portal back to Primal Earth, you have a strange, dreamlike vision]"
- Sadly I don't have room enough to make different custom characters for Mako and Black Scorpion, so they look the same. I considered using their default Arachnos AVs, but thought they would look a little too out-of-theme.



I'm about 80% through Horsemen Chronicles Part 1, will post more soon.

7/16/2009

I played Mystery Girl (35 FF/nrg defender) as an SK on an Imperious TF, with a team mix of:

3 scrappers (spines/fire, 2 claws/regen)
3 defenders (FF/rad, FF/nrg, cold/ice)
1 tanker (shield/ice)
1 brute (DB/will)

This was kind of an unconventional team in that we had no proper "healer", and instead we had three people casting +DEF buffs. Most of the melee characters had regen or self-heals, though, so this actually worked fine. The other FF defender had horrible connection problems, so most of the time we only had one set of bubbles and one set of cold shields, but this was still plenty enough DEF. Against the Phalanx computer I had a moment of glory using Force Bubble to push away all the animating robots, which impressed the team for a few seconds until the final wave of robots was able to overwhelm my defense and knock me out. Capped DEF is lovely, but only gets you so far.

Romulus in the final mission was a little worrisome, but between cold debuffs and one of the meleers luring the healing Nictus away, we were able to beat him. Finished in 1hr 32mins for 28 merits (18.26 MPH) and got Mystery Girl to level 37.

After that I did a couple speed respecs organized on Villains of Liberty channel; played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj) on 1st respec with fortunata, stalker, 2 brutes, getting 15 merits in 11min 40sec (77.14 MPH) and Mayday (50 fortunata) on the 3rd respec with 2 fortunatas, 2 brutes, getting 15 merits in 17min 6sec (52.63 MPH).

Later I played Mystery Girl some more as an SK on a 6-player LEGION team that beat an Infernal AV and a Dominatrix AV. A friend on villain side was complaining that no one would team with him, so I ended up dropping from this team to go duo with him; it seemed to make sense at the time, but in hindsight I fear it might've been rude of me to ditch one team of friends to go team with another friend.

In any case, I played Kashira (23 db/ninj stalker) duoing with a friend playing a Wolf Spider, and we played through Vince Dubrowski's Any Body Will Do story arc, for 2 reward merits, then did some more paper missions which got Kashira to level 25 and my friend to 24, where he could respec into a bane.

Tuesday night, I played April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind) on a continuation of a Barracuda SF I started last week with Liberty Force SG. Our team was:

2 corruptors (ice/rad and fire/rad)
3 dominators
2 masterminds (thug/TA and robo/FF)

Our team was rather squishy and we suffered two team wipes against Reichsman; or, strictly speaking, to the ambushes that appeared while we were fighting Reichsman. For awhile my team was fixated on the control panels behind these laser grids in the final room, thinking that clicking those control panels was the key to winning the encounter; we couldn't get anyone to them without them dying to the laser panel damage, though. We thought maybe a stalker would have the ability to disarm these somehow, but since villain SF teams don't consider stalkers desirable, I've never actually teamed with a stalker on the BSF so couldn't say for sure.

We eventually resorted to concentrating on the ambushes (only), avoiding aggroing Reichsman until we killed every single 5th Column minion who dared to show its face. We definitely determined that there is an end to those ambushes, eventually; once we got to that point, we were able to face Reichsman alone. He still was ludicrously tough; even with 2 sets of rad debuffs and some TA debuffs, we couldn't seem to kill him. Each time we got him low on health, he would use some power that made him pseudo-phase shift, leaving him "unaffected" by our attacks while he healed up a bunch before that wore off. After going through this cycle a couple times, I was annoyed enough by this guy that I dropped a chem nuke and 2 charges of my shivan shard on him. This seemed to help some, and we eventually dropped him to complete the SF. The results dialog said it took us 97h 21min and we suffered 111 deaths, for 20 merits (0.20 MPH).

Also on Tuesday, I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through Of Liberty and State, a story arc where you're helping Ms Liberty investigate corruption in the Longbow organization, but then Statesman gets involved and basically tramples her investigation in a high-handed manner. This was actually a pretty cool story, and you get to interact with a lot of the signature heroes and villains of the game, but it also had some plot points I found hard to believe and didn't have much closure at the end (mostly due to being part 1 of a longer epic). I gave it 4 stars.

On Wednesday night, I joined a Barracuda SF forming on the Villains of Liberty channel; the team leader asked me to bring a debuffer, so I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor). Our team mix was:

1 mastermind (robo/trap)
3 corruptors (elec/therm, ice/cold, ice/kin)
2 brutes (mace/shield, elec/shield)

The thermal corruptor warned she only had an hour to play, and considering the previous painful experience with the BSF, I felt rather dubious about the idea of a 5-player team taking on Reichsman. The team leader assured me that Wednesday's patch had improved things (by "fixing" the MM power to disable his phase shift-like power). I wasn't too sure about this, but was willing to give it a try.

We got to the final showdown with Reichsman just as the thermal's time ran out and she had to go to work (she did tell us up front about this, so can't blame her a bit). We suffered one wipeout against Reichsman and his ambushes, after which we cleared most of the ambushes to make it a little safer. The MM initially reported that his temp power to disable Reichsman's phase shift "wasn't working", but after Reichsman's first phase shift, he never went into phase shift again, which allowed us to beat him even short-handed. I theorize that maybe you can't hit him with the anti-phase-shift power when he's already phase shifted, so probably the power needs to be used as a preventative (i.e., before Reichsman phase shifts).

We finished the BSF in 1hr 26mins and I was pleasantly surprised to find out the merit reward had been increased to 30 merits (20.93 MPH). I think this change was totally justified, the old value was far too few for the effort.

After that, I spent some time on Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) tinkering with writing a new villainous story arc on Mission Architect. My basic premise is that you're an entry-level employee at Crey Industries, and you're working in an office having Dilbert-like adventures, trying to get promoted while dodging frequent raids from superheroes and police.

While doing this, I got a compliment on Spy Girl's name and background story from a passerby in AE building, which was nice. He said I must've gotten the name a really long time ago in order to get such a good name, and I had to admit I had just made the character late last year. I do think someone must've had the name before me and deleted the character or lost the name due to inactivity; someone once tried to tell me that he had teamed with a character named Spy Girl months before my character's creation date.

Finished the night joining a Katie TF with Star Amethyst (31 warshade). My ISP actually died for about 5 minutes right after I agreed to join the team; after internet came back up, I totally expected the TF would've gone forward without me, but they had been nice enough to wait. Our team makeup was:

2 peacebringers
2 emp defenders
2 blasters
1 tanker
1 warshade (me)

Before starting the KTF we beat up an Eochai giant monster for 2 reward merits; this was a pretty lengthy grind, since we had no debuffs to speak of, and this made me nervous about our ability to defeat 10 AVs in a row. We actually seemed okay against the 10 Mary's, if just a little slow. I didn't have any KB protection to speak of, so got knocked around an awful lot by the stormy witches; may need to fix that at some point. I also noticed our ice blaster had a habit of dropping a Blizzard right on the spawn point just prior to each wave, which I thought was a pretty awesome way to reduce the alpha strike.

In any case, we got through the KTF in 43mins, gaining 9 merits (12.56 MPH). This got Star Amethyst to level 32, where I took Quasar (the warshade nova). Though, I'm not sure how excited I am overall about playing a kheldian AT; the whole reason Star Amethyst is a kheldian is because I like the purple color of the warshade powers, and with power colorization coming in I16, I'm very tempted to re-start her as some sort of dark defender with recolored powers.

[ QUOTE ]
- "Lord Kumo" changed from using Lord Recluse model (AV) to Crab Spider Webmaster model (Boss). The Crab guy doesn't look quite as much like Lord Recluse, but is better than nothing.
- Lord Kumo's escorts are now a custom group called "Spider Clan Hatamoto", which exclusively spawns dark blast/pain dom corruptors intended to buff and heal Lord Kumo.
- Lord Kumo's group size increased to "hard", hoping to spawn a lot of these healers.
- These guys won't spawn for any other encounter, they are solely meant to make this one single encounter a little harder, since I'm afraid downgrading him from an AV to a boss may make him seem underwhelming.
- Removed "Shugenja" from the main Spider Clan group in order to make room; repurposed their model to be the "Maho-Tsukai" that are Lord Kumo's bodyguards.

[/ QUOTE ]

I ended up reverting this change out, I decided it was just too anticlimactic to defeat 4 AVs then have the final Big Bad only be a regular Boss (or a Lieutenant on Heroic). The Crab spiders really don't look as much like Lord Recluse as I had hoped. And with Sir Recluse's armor being mentioned in a previous clue as foreshadowing, I felt like I really had to use the Lord Recluse model in order to fulfill the implicit promise that was made. Unfortunately this also restores his ability to summon Bane soldiers.

To try and make him more manageable, however, I bumped Flower Knight up to AV rank, and Fujineko up to EB rank, as well as restoring the "friendly" ambush that occurs at 25% life. I'm a little worried this may make the allies too strong, but it seems like 2 out of 3 people who have played so far were enjoying the arc until they found themselves unable to defeat Lord Kumo, so I want to make it possible to win. Archery/Trick Arrow is not too flashy so I'm hoping this will make the ally tougher without obviously stealing the player's thunder.

Feedback is welcome, of course.

Of Liberty and State Part1 review (arc 218636)
Keywords: Custom Characters, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: mostly 40-47.

Premise appears to be working with signature heroes to fight Arachnos AVs. I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped DEF, on Unyielding difficulty. The contact is Ms. Liberty.

Mission 1
Briefing: There's an extra space after the player's name and before the first period. You may want to add an extra <br> after "secrecy" and before "Sergeant" to make a paragraph break.

It's nice that you've highlighted some of the text with color to make it stand out, but I think the dark green text is actually quite hard to see against the default background color of the dialog box.

The last sentence, starting with "The place is", has extra spaces before and after it.

Why exactly do we think Sergeant Lennelson is a Rogue agent within Longbow? I think it would be nice if the contact explained a little bit about why this is suspected; maybe mentioned some of the evidence, what he's been up to, that sort of thing. Ms. Liberty is actually the head of Longbow; why is it that she would get the player to arrest Sergeant Lennelson, instead of taking care of it herself? (I think it's possible to make this believable, but may require some text explaining why.)

Second part of briefing: "but am sure" should be "but I am sure".

Inside the mission:

[NPC] Fortunata: If I take you down, I'll be the envy of everyone in the Ilses.

"Ilses" should be "Isles".

I found and rescued Statesman, who became an ally. He explains the Freedom Phalanx heard of Arachnos activity here and he offers to let me help him clean out the warehouse. This kind of makes the player a supporting character, which I don't quite like; it's also a little surprising that Statesman and Ms. Liberty wouldn't have coordinated on this, since Ms. Liberty is basically his sidekick.

Statesman as an ally is pretty insanely powerful; even spawning as just an EB, he is one-shotting mobs I run into.

I like the miscellaneous dialog that stray Arachnos mobs are saying, they definitely add some nice color to the mission.

I found Sergeant Lennelson, he had some pretty good dialog; having his spawn be Arachnos made it look like a "meet", which can be tricky to do in mission architect. His line:

[NPC] Sergeant Lennelson: Olivia Q and Statesman?! N-no! I can't be caught here!

...is pretty nice, but might not make sense if I didn't bring Statesman along (either failing to rescue him or ditching him). Also has an extra space after my character's name (Olivia Q).

" Lennelson's Personal PDA" has an extra space at the start of the name.

Mission exit popup: Statesman takes the PDA and says he'll have Positron look at it. Hmm, I'd kind of prefer if the player were able to decode the contents of the PDA rather than give it to someone else to do it, but that's admittedly a stylistic choice. Also, there is an extra space before " If you don't mind".

Debriefing: "jeapordy" should be "jeopardy", and there's another extra space after my name in "Thank you Olivia Q , but this". Ms Liberty comments on how surprising it was that Statesman was there, so this being rather odd is clearly intentional. I'm not quite sure why she is so upset that Statesman got involved though; she exposits on how this will tip off anyone connected to Sgt Lennelson, but I'm not sure why this would happen; maybe the debriefing could use more explanation about why this is so.

Mission 2
Briefing: Needs some paragraph breaks. I think it's neat that Ms Liberty regards Statesman's intervention as interfering in her investigation. She sends me to follow up on a different lead from mission 1; I like that the clues from mission 1 are used to lead into the next mission.

The mission is filled with custom "Office Workers" armed with assault rifles; pretty good costumes and descriptions. It's a little odd that there are Arachnos patrols mixed in with them, though; I guess this is to reinforce that this office is an Arachnos front.

Office Security's description, "formidible" should be "formidable".

I found a computer named "Suspicious Data"; I think it might be better if it were just named "Computer" and you get the "Suspicious Files" after you click it.

Found Mr. Klebitz; he spawned as a +1 boss for me. Wow! His build up smashed through my scrapper's defense, defeated me almost instantly; you might consider dropping build up from his powers, I imagine he would beat up a squishy even faster. I managed to defeat him on my second try, though. "Be on you guard" should be "Be on your guard" in his description.

Found all the objectives except "Find Memo", which I searched the office complex repeatedly for; eventually found it in the room with the boss, a bulletin board. Totally my fault; for some reason I never notice flat glowies on the wall.

Some nice clues from this mission though, between Suspicious Files and Mysterious Memo.

Mysterious Memo, "dispose any evidence" should be "dispose of any evidence". Also, the first quotation mark in the clue doesn't have a closing quotation mark; may want to either remove it or switch to single quotation marks anyway, since you have an embedded quote in it.

Debriefing: pretty good explanation. I like the explanation of the significance of the "Sigma Squad" and now Ms Liberty seems pretty naive about the implications. I'd question why Statesman seems so uncooperative with Ms Liberty's investigation, except that Statesman is a jerk sometimes, so I totally buy it. Maybe add a paragraph break after "want to know about it" though.

Mission 3
Briefing: Ms Liberty has a phone call with Statesman and he basically gives her marching orders. Wow, he IS a jerk! Anyway, the phone call dialog could perhaps be formatted a little better to stand out from the briefing that is being told to the player. It's interesting that Ms. Liberty feels overshadowed by Statesman and Miss Liberty.

"indentified" should be "identified".

Mission entry popup: "Positon" should be "Positron".

Misison objectives: I have "Rescue Major Daniels" as an objective, but I have no idea who that is. Considering making this objective more generic, like "Rescue prisoner", have it spawn only after you find out why you need to rescue him, or have Ms Liberty mention him.

I found a generic Longbow Soldier who I rescued, who told me:

[NPC] Longbow Soldier: Thanks! Look for Major Daniels!

There's an extra space before "Major". It's still not totally clear who Major Daniels is, maybe he should tell you with a clue or something. Also, I think his dialog might not make sense if you find and rescue Daniels first.

Found a computer labeled "Longbow Codes" but I couldn't figure out any way to interact with it; didn't seem to be either clickable or destroyable. (Later I found out it was a triggered glowy.)

Found and rescued another Longbow Officer I kinda like rescuing these random innocent people even though they're not strictly required.

One of Daniels' guards says:

[NPC] Fire Tarantula: Looks like this is your last mission Soldier.

This has an extra space after "Looks"; should probably have a comma after "mission".

[NPC] Positron: Spiders Everywhere. Luckily I have my own personal flyswatter.
[NPC] Bane Spider Commando: Great! More univited guests. Let me show you the door!

"Everywhere" should be "everywhere" (note capitalization); put a comma after "Luckily". "univited" should be "uninvited".

After rescuing Positron, I now have Search Mainframe, Security Tape as objectives (maybe these are the computers I couldn't interact with before), and also "Dr. Quatrexin". I do know who Dr Quatrexin is, but he hasn't been introduced in the story thus far; since he shows up after you rescue Positron, maybe Positron should have some dialog mentioning him, or give a clue saying that Quatrexin is here.

With its multiple elevators, this lab feels a little large to have to backtrack to find 3 new objectives after rescuing Positron. Consider using a smaller map, if you can.

I'm now able to access "Security Monitor" and got the "Ms. Liberty Revealed?!" clue, which hints that Ms Liberty herself is the mole in Longbow (which I don't really believe; I immediately suspect it's a frame up). "Your not sure what this could all pertain" should be "You're not sure what this could all portend".

When I outdistance Daniels, he says:

[NPC] Major Daniels: Hey where are guys?

Should probably be "Hey, where are you guys?"

Found Quatrexin; he says:

[NPC] Dr. Quatrexin: I won't be defeated by you Positron!
[NPC] Dr. Quatrexin: You'll be a permant ornament on the end of my tail Olivia Q!

You might not want to mention Positron directly here, in case the player has ditched Positron or gotten him killed by this point. Also, "permant" should be "permanent".

I'm not absolutely sure why the two glowies needed to be triggered by rescuing Positron; is there a reason they couldn't be active objectives at the very start of the mission?

The mission exit popup has:

Positron turns to you and says ," Please Listen.

should probably be:

Positron turns to you and says, "Please listen.

Debriefing: Wow, Statesman basically fires Ms Liberty from being in Longbow. I don't think he can actually do this, though, since Ms Liberty is, in fact, the head of Longbow? I don't believe Longbow reports to Statesman at all. I have to say I think he is pretty quick to jump to the conclusion that Ms Liberty is guilty; it DOES seem like an obvious frame-up.

Mission 4
Briefing: Ms Liberty is understandably upset at being framed and talks about recruiting a team to try and clear her name. But then she sends me to go investigate a burned out building instead. I think it would be nicer if Ms Liberty actually tried to include the player in the effort to clear her name? Or perhaps this briefing could be rephrased so that this investigation is part of that effort. The way it is presented right now, it sounds like you're doing something completely unrelated.

Inside, I find a lot of Freaks who have become squatters in this building and a lot of glowies.

Broken Machine clue: "as to it's purpose" should be "as to its purpose".

After exhaustive searching, I finally found the right 3 clues from the sea of glowies: the Longbow Insignia, Broken Machine and Partially Destroyed Documents. The clues they give are interesting but I can't quite make much sense of what they're supposed to mean; "Longbow Insignia" and "Documents" at least give names, while "Broken Machine" has no hint to what it even is. Would be nice if the clues were just a little bit more illuminating.

Debriefing: Ms Liberty does mention the significance of Daniels' name in the documents, but the other two clues are still very puzzling.

Mission 5
Briefing: Suddenly, a huge intuitive leap occurs where Ms Liberty decides Sigma Squad is corrupted and Major Daniels is dirty. OK, so we do have a clue with Daniels' name on it, but I think there's not quite enough evidence to believe that Daniels is guilty here. After all, we have more evidence pointing to Ms Liberty than to Major Daniels, and Ms Liberty wants us to believe she's innocent. I think it would help motivate things more if the clues more directly pointed at Major Daniels and/or Ms Liberty seemed more convinced of his guilt. (Ms Liberty seemed much less certain of Daniels being guilty in the debriefing for mission 4, than she does in the briefing of mission 5.)

Map selection: You might consider using an actual Freedom Corps base rather than the tech lab that this mission is set in.

Inside the base, there are numerous Arachnos/Longbow battles which are kinda interesting ... not clear what is going on though, other than Arachnos is attacking, I guess. Would be nice if dialog from Longbow battles or patrols, or clues from Longbow you rescue, would tell you what's going on and how this fight started.

I found Ms Liberty, but for some reason she's guarded by hostile Longbow, while the rest of the Longbow I've run into in this mission are friendly. Ms Liberty is appropriately shocked at having to fight Longbow, but it still seems inconsistent that some Longbow are hostile and others aren't.

When I outdistance Ms Liberty, she says:

[NPC] Ms. Liberty: Don't go to far Olivia Q .

This should be "too far" and there shouldn't be a space after the player's name.

The encounter with Colonel Bennett is kinda weird. It starts off with him saying:

[NPC] Colonel Bennett: I want Ms. Liberty captured!

...but he's actually a hostage (sort of) of the Longbow group surrounding him. Only by defeating the Longbow surrounding him (and though he is dressed in Longbow uniform, he doesn't fight back) do we convince him of Ms Liberty's innocence.

I eventually get tired of dragging Ms Liberty around and run off leaving her behind. I find and fight Major Daniels, who immediately says:

[NPC] Major Daniels : It's that traitor, Ms. Liberty!

...though Ms. Liberty isn't with me any more. Also, he has a space at the end of his name.

Defeating Daniels triggers a "Join up with Statesman" objective. The various triggered objectives are cool, but this lab map is huge, making it painful and time consuming to repeatedly backtrack and search for each new objective, especially when dragging slow-moving allies behind me. Consider using a smaller map.

I free Statesman and this spawns Black Scorpion, Silver Mantis and Dr Quatrexin as enemies. This is kinda cool, though I don't think Black Scorpion and Quatrexin really would work together (they hate each other).

[NPC] Dr. Quatrexin: Sometimes at night... I dream of you Ms. Liberty.
[NPC] Dr. Quatrexin: I'm not at "liberty" to ask this... but do you date guys in suits of armor?

These lines are nicely squicky, but don't make as much sense for me, since I left Ms Liberty on the previous floor because she was too slow.

Statesman was in the very last room with Quatrexin, then I had to backtrack to the very first floor to find Silver Mantis and Black Scorpion. This was a looong hike while dragging Statesman and Ms Liberty along behind me.

[NPC] Silver Mantis: I don't think I like you to much Olivia Q.

"to" should be "too" here.

[NPC] Black Scorpion: YOu gonna come play anytime today States?!

"YOu" should be "You" here.

Mission exit popup: 'Statesman looks sternly at both you and says," Olivia Q . This is not over yet.' Should be 'Statemsan looks sternly at both of you and says, "Olivia Q. This is not over yet.'

Mission debriefing: Ms Liberty is ordered to "turn herself in" ... for what?! She asks me to go see Positron (presumably part 2). Plot seems to be left kinda open.

Overall
I liked the investigation into the corrupt Longbow and the tension between Ms Liberty and Statesman. I thought Statesman and the Longbow were a little too quick to believe the worst about Ms Liberty, but I liked Ms Liberty's reaction. Clues were used pretty well to lead the player from one mission to the next, and the miscellaneous dialog, the optional hostages to rescue, and the triggered objectives made each mission individually interesting; though I might suggest making the maps with triggered spawns a little smaller so the player isn't chasing triggered objectives all over the map repeatedly.

Although the final mission had some suitably climactic fights against AVs, I felt like the story didn't really reach a resolution; the arc ends with Ms Liberty (who I still presume is innocent) having to surrender to the authorities, and although we beat up Arachnos and some of the dirty Longbow, we really don't know what happened or why the corrupt Longbow turned bad. I know it is just "part 1", but I think I would've liked a little more closure at the end of the arc.

There were also a couple plot points that I felt strained credibility, which I mentioned above (Statesman removing Ms Liberty from Longbow; Ms Liberty rounding up a team to clear her name, but sending you to do something unrelated; and Ms Liberty leaping to the conclusion that Major Daniels did it, from scant evidence); these probably could be fixed with some rewording or explanation.

I thought it was an interesting story with some good moments though; I rated it 4 stars.

----

I owe a review to:

@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt2 221242
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183
@Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369
airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
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: I'm pretty much asking for people to run one of my story arcs in order to get onto my queue. Hope that's not too much to ask. ]

Thanks for the feedback on A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force! Based on the feedback so far, it sounds like Lord Recluse is way too hard. (I'm a little surprised everyone was able to handle Ghost Widow pretty easily though.)

Following Olantern's suggestion, I am trying to adjust the Lord Kumo encounter as follows:

- "Lord Kumo" changed from using Lord Recluse model (AV) to Crab Spider Webmaster model (Boss). The Crab guy doesn't look quite as much like Lord Recluse, but is better than nothing.
- Lord Kumo's escorts are now a custom group called "Spider Clan Hatamoto", which exclusively spawns dark blast/pain dom corruptors intended to buff and heal Lord Kumo.
- Lord Kumo's group size increased to "hard", hoping to spawn a lot of these healers.
- These guys won't spawn for any other encounter, they are solely meant to make this one single encounter a little harder, since I'm afraid downgrading him from an AV to a boss may make him seem underwhelming.
- Removed "Shugenja" from the main Spider Clan group in order to make room; repurposed their model to be the "Maho-Tsukai" that are Lord Kumo's bodyguards.
- Changed "Daimyo" model to have a lot more gold trim, to hopefully be more visually distinctive.
- Hawk Clan group should be fixed so they won't spawn multiple Fujineko and Sister Sayaki mobs (I hope).
- With the removal of Lord Recluse, I removed the "Challenging" keyword, replacing it with "Custom Characters".

I plan to work on the stylistic and writing changes a bit later; I rushed through the above gameplay changes since the final encounter's difficulty seems to be a showstopper for everyone who has tried so far.

I'm a bit worried it may be too easy now, but I'll try it this way for a bit to see what happens.


Thanks VERY MUCH for the detailed feedback!

[ QUOTE ]
The arachnos ambush on Lord Kumo seems completely unecessary. He's wearing a suit sent to him via Chimaera, he's not an Arachnos. How did the Arachnos cross dimensions? This makes no sense and cost me my ally. I make a couple more tries, and I give up. I was just scraping by before the ambushes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oooh, I wish I could get rid of this. I'm sure you must've guessed Lord Kumo was a thinly disguised Lord Recluse. The Bane spiders that show up when he's low on life aren't an ambush, they're one of LR's innate powers. I tried to counter this, to some degree, by spawning a "friendly" ambush at 25% life (which I think is when he also summons Banes), but friendly ambushes are not working very well as-implemented, so you generally only see one of those guys show up. If you have any other thoughts on how to mitigate this ambush, I'd be happy to consider them! I would totally replace him with a custom model except that you can't make a custom model that looks like Lord Recluse.

Thanks a ton for playing through this. I'll definitely incorporate as many of your suggestions as I can.