PoliceWoman

6/26/2009

I started out Thursday night playing Mega (31 SS/will brute) through Power Play, a villainous story about mad science and who'll end up in control of an army of robots. I liked that this story had you betraying the contact instead of the more common arrangement where the contact sells you out. The story implied that "I" had a master plan to play the various mad scientists against each other, but this plan wasn't really communicated very well to me, so at times I was confused as to what "my" plan really was. It was still pretty neat though and I gave it 4 stars.

This also got Mega to level 32, where I took Foot Stomp and started slotting some level 35 Kinetic Combat IOs that I had been stockpiling. I had one set of 4 and one set of 3 and some odds and ends, which totaled +3.75% smash/lethal DEF, +3.0% max HP. The Kinetic Combat (DMG/END) recipe seems the hardest/most expensive to get; I decided to try and spend some tickets randomly rolling for that, and I burned about 1000 tickets on Bronze and Silver rolls without getting anything worth mentioning. I might start slotting Kinetic Combat (chance for knockdown) recipes, which are much easier to get, but don't enhance the power's ACC, DMG, ENDRDX or anything, so I'm not sure whether they are worthy of an enhancement slot.

After spending some time fiddling with the Black Market and IO slotting, I signed on with a speed Sharkhead SF organized on Villains of Liberty channel. I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) for the sake of easy stealth, and our team mix was:

3 brutes
fortunata
stalker (me)
crab

The speed SF went pretty routinely and we finished in 29mins 30sec for 22 merits (44.75 MPH). I spent 20 of these merits on a random recipe roll, and got a 33 Numina's Convalescence (+recovery/+regen) which was very sweet.

This team ended up doing a 1st villain respec after that. Several people switched alts for the respec, and I switched to Mega (now 32 SS/will brute). Ironically we ended up with the same team composition:

3 brutes (including me)
fortunata
stalker
crab

....just with different players in each role. We cherry picked the bosses from the first door mission and went directly after vines in the Thorn Tree mission, which let us finish in a ludicrously fast 10min 31sec for 15 merits (85.58 MPH). I debated taking the respec reward for the badge, but decided I'd rather have merits.

I think it is possible to have good multi-arc storylines, but using multiple arcs for your storyline also has some risks.

I started out chafing under the limited 100K space you're given for a story arc, but over time, I have grown to like it. (This could just be the brainwashing built into the AE system, admittedly.) The space limitations have forced me to trim out "filler" material that didn't seem as cool, stuff that didn't help my story as much as other story elements that I did want to keep -- or occasionally, cool stuff I thought of (or a player feedback thought of) later that I wanted to add, will "push" out old material that wasn't as good. To some extent this is rationalization, as I'm hoping I15 will reduce arc storage sizes, giving more space for more material; but I do think that being confined to a certain amount of data can help challenge the author to refine their material.

Extending a story across two arcs runs into the risk that (unless you are very disciplined) you'll keep all the "filler" because you have plenty of space. It also becomes important to give each arc its own story structure, with an introduction and a climactic finale for each part; you can't just chop the story in the middle and say, "OK now start arc #8675309" (well, you can, but I don't recommend it). Each arc should be a Chapter or a Part of your epic, and if not totally self-contained, should at least have a logical conclusion that segues into the next arc.

It is certainly possible to do a multi-arc story well, but I think it has some dangers. And as earlier posters have said, some people won't run "very long" story arcs, and certainly won't be interested in multi-arc epics. (But - some will, too.)

Anyway, that's just my 2 infl.

Power Play review (arc id 187269)

The premise isn't clear from the arc description, maybe you're fighting some hero? But it seems to involve villainous monologuing. The level range confused me a bit, with 3 missions at 1-54 and one mission at 8-20. With the 8-20 mission, I tried to play a 10 SS/SR brute; will see whether this proves a mistake.

Mission 1
Briefing: A pretty good briefing, written in character for the contact, Dr. Aeon, who wants me to go check out a rival mad scientist's laboratory to see what he's up to.

Inside the mission: neat objectives in the nav tool. Found some custom robots and a nice clue in the form of Doctor Creed's journal.

The robots seem a little generic, all named similarly with similar powers and slightly different numbers, so not much to distinguish them. They are a little hard for my 10 brute (although, all custom mobs probably are), so at this point I decide to switch to a 31 brute. That 8-20 mission is kinda deceptive, I think; the custom mobs are a little too tough for an 8-20 IMHO.

So I restarted the arc on my 31 brute. This makes the custom robots much more doable.

Early part of the mission seemed quiet as there was nothing but robots with no dialog (though I did find the 2 clues near the front). Both Creed and the VAL prototype were spawned in the final room, and they seemed pretty good. You might consider adding some kind of detail near the beginning of the mission where some of the other VAL robots get a chance to talk.

I like that Doctor Creed tries to turn you to his side when you "interview" him. it would be cool if I could actually go turncoat and sell out Dr Aeon. Not sure if that is doable though.

I like the mission exit popup, where "I" intentionally decide to withhold some info from Dr. Aeon as part of "my" master plan...though I'm not quite sure what "my" master plan is yet.

Debriefing: Aeon mentions HAL X-34, which is probably the heroic version of VAL, but this isn't mentioned in the clues at all. I am guessing VAL must be based on HAL, but you might add info to this effect in either the VAL Project Files or VAL Prototype clue.

Mission 2
Briefing: Pretty good briefing, sending me to look for info on HAL.

Mission entry popup: apparently "I" sent a message to Doctor Creed! Hmm, maybe "I" *am* selling Aeon out. I think maybe this needs to be made a little more clear somewhere though; at this point I don't know what "I" asked Doctor Creed to do.

Aha, I found a VAL bot ally to help me. I guess she is part of my master plan? Rescuing her maybe should trigger a clue explaining why she's there. I am guessing I have secretly allied with Dr. Creed somehow.

I like the Longbow dialog and the Computer technician's techy talk.

Debriefing: Hmm, so Aeon basically took out Doctor Creed while I was doing my mission; not sure how this affects my apparent conspiracy with Doctor Creed. Could use some explanation of how this affects "my" plan.

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, for some reason Aeon needs some clockwork to help his robot research. I'm not quite sure what my angle is, here. For what it's worth, I don't think clockwork use the same sort of technology as other robots; I think they're somehow psychic projections of the Clockwork King's mind. The fact that this mission is level limited to 8-20 is rather awkward too. May I suggest using Rogue Robots here instead?

Inside the mission: Aha! I don't go after the Clockwork at all, but instead "my" plan is to rescue Dr. Creed from ... Goldbrickers? I think the official canon is that Aeon hates the Goldbrickers and King Midas because they're committing crimes in Aeon City, so I'm not sure they make sense as Dr. Aeon's lackeys.

The mission is so small that the level 20 limit isn't that bad after all. I like the "Modified key card" clue that I got, I think when I freed Dr. Creed.

Mission 4
Briefing: I like how Dr. Aeon is responding to the fact that somehow Dr. Creed got freed. My guess is that most of this briefing is irrelevant because I won't actually do what Aeon asks, I'm to go attack Aeon in his own lab. This being the case, I'm not sure it is useful to highlight parts of Aeon's briefing in red text, since it isn't going to be important.

I do like the "Coup de Grace" mission title though.

Inside the mission: I'm puzzled as to why the VAL Constructs are enemies now. Aren't I allied with Dr. Creed, and consequently VAL?

I'm not sure why "plant the virus" is my objective. What virus? I guess this is part of "my" plan that I .. uh .. didn't tell me about. Interesting clue that I got from planting it though.

Now my objective has changed to "Spring the trap!" but I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do; do I find and click a Trap glowie? Or I beat up Dr. Aeon? Probably need more guidance from the story here.

Searching the mission, I find Dr. Aeon and battle him; I was worried I'd have to face the AV Dr. Aeon, but was relieved to find he was just a lieutenant. (Maybe he's a custom that looks just like Dr. Aeon.) I like his dialog and his moment of realization that I'm backstabbing him!

And now I need to defeat VAL, who I guess has gone haywire. I'm not quite sure WHY it is necessary to defeat VAL though. I suggest you have Dr. Aeon give some sort of clue explaining further how VAL has gone haywire, and maybe some text motivating why you need to go after her? Aeon does have some good dialog about this, but I think reinforcing it with a clue would be helpful.

I found VAL-X3 and fought her. I liked her dialog. I actually kind of wanted to let her go, all she wanted was to be free; but there wasn't really any way to do that because she was a required objective for the arc.

Mission exit popup: This doesn't quite ring true... "part of me had hoped he'd actually succeed, and that I could have an army of loyal VAL androids" ... surely breaking into Dr. Aeon's lab and assassinating him was guaranteed to make him fail? Or perhaps the idea is that I would steal the controls from Dr. Aeon somehow. "Except VAL-X3, she is more like a Frankenstein's monster" should probably be "Except VAL-X3, she was more like Frankenstein's monster". Unless you are intentionally referring to VAL-X3 in the present tense, which is possible since your next line refers to "her on the loose"....but this is kind of a continuity error because I just smashed VAL-X3 in the mission.

Debriefing: OK, this explains a little more about how VAL-X3 "survived", but considering I don't see it until somewhat after the mission exit popup, the mission exit popup is still confusing. I find the fact that Dr. Aeon considers VAL his "daughter" to be rather squicky and also a little weird because previously it was established that VAL thought Dr. Creed was her "father". Perhaps this makes sense if we consider VAL-X3 to be different than Dr. Creed's VAL, but if this is intended, maybe Aeon's robot should be named something else entirely to emphasize it's not the same model any more.

Souvenir is actually very nice and explains a lot of the stuff about "my" plan that I found confusing during actual gameplay.

Overall
I really like the premise, in which you are betraying the contact rather than the more typical instance where the contact betrays you. I like how you are playing Dr. Aeon and Dr. Creed against each other for much of the arc, and I like the idea of trying to steal an army of VAL robots and the fact that VAL becomes self-aware. The dialog and characterization were quite good.

However, I didn't like that I was kind of in the dark as to what "my" plan was, for much of the story arc. I could catch an occasional glimmer of what "my" master plan was, but I think you really need to make it clearer what the players master plan is somehow - perhaps by use of clues reinforcing what "the player" is thinking about doing, or even adding non-Aeon related text to the briefings, perhaps italicized or colored differently to show it's internal monologue and not Aeon monologue. I think some more explanation and/or guidance as to what "the plan" is would be an improvement.

The fact that mission 3 was a lowbie Goldbricker mission kinda threw me off, too; the custom mobs in the other missions were too hard for my lowbie brute, while mission 3 was kinda low for my higher level brute. You might consider using a higher level enemy group for mission 3, and/or reducing the difficulty of the custom VAL robots (they seemed to have force fields, kinetics and electric blast, which all are potentialy nasty). I don't think it makes sense for Goldbrickers to be working for Dr. Aeon anyway.

I also kinda wish that VAL X-3 were not a required objective in the final mission. Partly this is because I sympathized with her, but partly because even for a hardened villain, there's no obvious percentage in beating up VAL X-3 after you find out from Dr. Aeon that she won't work as a loyal slavebot. I think that either she should be made an optional objective, or else there should be more motivation for defeating her (perhaps you want to steal valuable cybernetic parts from her chassis or download her AI for later analysis or something). Right now it seems like you defeat her just because she's there. If you do make her optional, perhaps you could add a glowie or two of "loot" the player can steal after defeating Dr. Aeon -- you're in Dr. Aeon's lab and have just beat him up, I bet there's lots of tech goodies that would be worth stealing.

This would also help address another problem with the ending, which is basically that the player loses -- her mad plan to play Creed and Aeon against each other, while cool, ultimately fails and the player is left with nothing to show for it. I kinda think the player should end up with something, even if it's just some stolen tech junk. Possibly you could make this tech junk stolen from Dr. Aeon the seed of a new master plan -- giving it a certain symmetry with the theft of the VAL technology from Dr. Creed at the start of the arc. Or alternatively if you can figure out a way for the player to work out an arrangement with VAL X-3 and "let" her go, you could perhaps receive some reward or occasional help from VAL X-3 herself.

Some of these suggestions might change your story more than you'd like, so ultimately it's up to you.

I did enjoy the arc and thought it had a neat premise. I gave it 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

Graeve_Digger - Hero Simulator Ch2 172468
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874
@Mr. Joe Black - A Ghost Story 101857

6/25/2009

Tuesday night I solo'd Mega (30 SS/will brute) through finishing the Thief of Midnight arc, getting 6 merits. Then I played Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) through a speed LGTF organized on Villains of Liberty channel; our team mix was:

ice/nrg tanker
2 scrappers (spine/fire, ?/SR)
night widow
fortunata
3 corruptors (AR/pain, fire/cold, rad/therm)

The team leader was a little dubious on my playing a sub-50 on a speed TF; I offered to switch to a 50, but the leader said it was okay. As a result, though, I tried to both be extra helpful (stealthing to stuff to help out) and extra careful (slamming 2 or 3 purples at a time while "stealthing" because Rikti really could see through my Concealment pool Stealth). I think I did pretty well, outsurviving most other team members and only dying once, in the final ambush of the final mission. We finished in 31mins 21sec for 39 merits (74.64 MPH) and got Schadenfreude to level 48.

After that, someone was offering to invite people to the Tyrant mission on several chat channels, and this sounded like fun, so I swapped to Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) and joined a 5-player team that took down an AV-level Tyrant. Blond got the Statesman's Pal badge from this, and a level 50 Obliteration (DMG/RCHG) recipe dropped for her at the end of the mission, which was pretty nice (6M value at Wentworths).

Finished the night playing Mega on a Sharkhead SF with a team of:

bane spider
fire/rad corruptor
SS/will brute (me)
? dominator
night widow

Most of us were getting exp so we fought our way through most missions, finishing in 1hr 23mins for 22 merits (15.90MPH) and getting Mega to level 31.


Wednesday night, I solo'd Mega through the Midnight Squad story arc, earning 5 merits and unlocking the Midnight Club. Some friends were trying to form a low 40s ITF on the Sisterhood channel for exp, so I switched to Primadonna (42 sonic/kin corruptor) and joined a team of:

earth/sonic controller
plant/TA controller
cold/sonic defender
sonic/kin corruptor (me)
MA/shield scrapper
?/ninj stalker
thug/pain MM

Despite being a 7-player team and having no real "tank" (the scrapper and defender both were tanking for us, kinda), the crazy amount of buff/debuff we had carried the day. Finished in 1hr 22mins for 28 merits (20.49 MPH) and got Primadonna to level 43.

After the ITF I did some IO crafting for Primadonna, slotting 6 Stupefy into her Screech power for +6.25% global recharge, +3.13% range DEF, and 6 Red Fortune into her Maneuvers power for another +5% global recharge, +2.5% range DEF. Global recharge is generally useful for everybody, and I'm also focusing on DEF bonuses for Primadonna because I feel awfully squishy as a kin.

A bit later I did another speed Lady Grey TF organized on Villains of Liberty, this time playing Mayday (50 fortunata) on a team of:

2 fortunatas
2 corruptors (sonic/thermal, nrg/kin)
2 scrappers (?/regen, ?/SR)
brute (elec/SR)
stalker (ninj/DA)

The regen said he didn't have enough time to finish the TF up front, but helped us get it started; he had to leave after mission 3. Otherwise we pretty much stealthed/rushed/sped through the whole thing in 38mins 20sec for 39 merits (61.04 MPH).

After that I switched back to Mega (31 SS/will brute) and cashed in 420 tickets for 6 Bronze recipe rolls; highlights of this draw were another Performance Shifter (chance for END) and a Mako's Bite (ACC/DMG/END/RCHG). Not bad at all. I then accepted a pickup team invite, joining a 5 player team that took down a Hero-level Back Alley Brawler, though afterwards we got greedy and tried to clear his entire ship; the interior was easy, but going to the exterior of the ship, we suffered a team wipe from a huge squadron of angry Longbow chasers and eagles. We went on to defeat a Hero-level Mynx (getting me 3 merits for completing one of Crimson Revenant's story arcs) and a few more missions before calling it a night.

[ QUOTE ]
For the record, I did not intend for you to think that Clifford was the bad guy. The errors that he put into the simulations where not the real problem, which is how you interpreted them. Those errors were just to give the beta tester reason to say "Hey! This simualtion isn't ready yet!" (which would buy time continue the investigation)

The real problem with the simulator was revealed in Mission 3. The real problem is that somebody was using the Simulator to addict the users.

To convey the idea of addicition I don't think that I can just rely on clues, rather I will have to tell them directly that this is what is happening.

Overall I will have to connect the dots more directly.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's cool. I did get the idea that Clifford was deliberately delaying the release of the Hero Simulator software in order to "buy time" for something, but it was unclear how the player running through the "buggy" missions really contributed to the investigation. From your further explanation here, it sounds like the player is meant to debrief "Clifford's boss" off-screen about how buggy it is and stuff; this wasn't really clear to me when I ran through it, though.

Also, if this is the case, I think some hero players may have an issue with deliberately defrauding "Clifford's boss" in this manner? Since basically you'd be colluding with Clifford to falsify the tests - that might be viewed as unheroic, unless you can provide some really compelling reason why it is necessary.

One way you might be able to work through this is to make "Clifford's boss" the contact, which would let you have the briefings and debriefings "on screen" and more visible to the player. Then have "Clifford" be an NPC that you don't start out knowing, but gradually feeds you clues within the virtual simulation as to what is going on. This would mean the player would start out really being a beta tester, instead of colluding with Clifford to pretend the tests fail, and would let the "boss" more visibly do the scenery-chewing that is currently indirectly referenced by Clifford's current debriefs.

Anyway, just some random ideas - hope some of this helps, but ultimately it's up to you what you'd like to do with it.

I think it's a little ungracious to meet the newest dev choice story arc with such negativity. So let me say instead:


Congrats on making Dev's Choice!

6/23/2009

[Nearly a week of activity - kinda long.]

On Wednesday night I was playing Adventuress (26 MA/regen scrapper) when I was invited to a Citadel TF by the same person who ran the last Moonfire and Sister Psyche TFs that I was on. Fortunately, I like TFs. We had a team mix of:

fire/therm controller
dark/shield scrapper
emp/elec defender
spine/fire scrapper
MA/regen scrapper (me)
shield/axe tanker
ill/emp controller
sonic/dev blaster

This went pretty routinely (Council base...Council base...another Council base) and we finished in 1hr 27mins for 40 merits (27.59 MPH), getting Adventuress to level 27.

I spent Thursday night soloing Mega (28 SS/will brute) through a couple AE story arcs. I first played A Lame Joke which is about a comedian that turns to crime and recruits a bunch of clowns to help out. This arc was full of puns (some good, some groanworthy) but didn't have a lot more to it; I gave it 3 stars.

After that I ran Arachnos Research and Development: A Security Breach, where you're basically an incompetent lackey of a mad scientist, who sends you to fix problems created by his other incompetent lackeys. I liked the mad science theme, but didn't really like the story and was annoyed by the two Defeat All missions. I gave it 2 stars.



On Friday night, I played Kyrie Eleison (34 bs/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter Three: Apocrypha, the final arc of a 3-arc epic about religion, Rikti, and cross-dimensional invaders. This was a decent finish, but it was just one mission and so it didn't really stand on its own as a separate chapter; I think it would've worked better as the grand finale of Chapter Two. The final boss fight was crazy hard, especially with ambushes of minions that would buff him and debuff me. I ended up giving this 3 stars.

I then played Mega through Hero Therapy which had the interesting premise of being a series of sessions with a psychologist who uses hypnosis to guide you through dream sequences, in which you overcome your personality flaws and turn them into strengths. This was pretty cool, but perhaps could've used a little more symbolism to make it especially dreamy. I gave this story 4 stars.

Mega blew 1050 tickets on a couple Silver rolls (to keep from hitting the 9999 cap) and lucked into a Performance Shifter: Chance for END on one of them, which was a nice bonus.

After that I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through The Revenge of Dr. Radium, where you're supposedly helping Dr. Aeon by gathering items needed to make a super gadget, which he tells you is needed to "Save the World". Spoiler: Don't trust AVs when they tell you stuff like that!! This arc had great characterization but its plot kinda assumes you're gullible enough to fall for this transparent lie, and suffers from the genericness of the "gather X items to activate the Y of Power" plot. I gave this story 4 stars.

Also on Friday night, I joined in for the Friday Night Fights - Ranged Toons Only PvP event. I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) throughout, and had a respectable showing. I think each match had 3 or 4 teams, all about 4-5 players in size.

[u]Match 1[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 dominator
Map: Lab
Result: my team #1, I got 4 kills

[u]Match 2[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 corruptor (one blaster went linkdead early on)
Map: Cargo Ship
Result: my team #2, I got 4 kills

[u]Match 3[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 corruptor
Map: Skyway City
Result: my team #1, I got 10 kills (whee!)

[u]Match 4[u]
My team: 1 corr, 1 blaster, 2 widows
Map: Outbreak
Result: my team #2, I got 4 kills

After the PvP event, I played Mega on a 4 player LEGION team for awhile, getting to level 29; then played Tehuantl (28 night widow) on an 8-player all VEAT team for awhile. We had 1 team wipe against CoT and another wipe against Rikti, but overall did well, getting Tehuantl to level 31. I took Mind Link at 30; for a typical VEAT I would've taken it earlier, but being on an all-VEAT team with stacking +DEF made it a lower priority.

I spent much of Saturday morning heavily revising my Axis and Allies story arc after receiving a marginal review. Although of course my initial reaction was more like "Hey, my arc is awesome!", that isn't really the right way to accept a negative review, so instead I tried to politely ask for more feedback on what I could do to make it better. I got some additional input which I think helped me make a lot of positive changes; mainly adding better descriptions to soldiers (adding more historical detail here) and defining special "Wehrmacht" and "Third Reich" factions (to handle the common complaint that 5th Column should be the term for Nazis operating in the US, not in Germany), and changing the final map. I'm still not fully confident in the map, which changed from "Ruined Atlas Park" to "Shiny Steel Canyon"; while it's nice that the new map actually has a map, and you can see better on it, and the terrain isn't quite as broken (messing up ally pathing), it also kinda loses the iconicness of Atlas and the war-torn look and feel. But I decided to go with it for now to see if people like it better.

The MoSTF organized on this forum was about to kick off on Saturday and had a couple no-shows, and I volunteered to help out. The team leader asked me to play Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) for extra debuff. Our team mix was:

kin/rad defender
will/SS tanker
sonic/nrg blaster
fire/ice blaster
mind/rad controller (me)
ill/rad controller
mind/emp controller
archery/nrg blaster

The archer remembered Spacegirl from a Shadow Shard TF, which was kinda cool. I wasn't that confident in this team being able to succeed at a MoSTF, but didn't mind trying so I went along with it. Paranoid about playing a squishy, I opened most fights with Mass Confusion to reduce the amount of return fire we got. We got through the first three missions just fine, which is actually pretty good because I've never been on a MoSTF that got past the Thorn Tree without someone dying.

In the fourth mission, the tanker went AFK for a few minutes at the door, but the rest of the team was impatient to find the security key, so we ended up going out hunting. We found the key after defeating only two security chiefs, which was pretty lucky; but as we headed for the door to the interior zone, we realized the AFK tanker's life bar was going down, because some of the ambushes were attacking him! Racing back to the zone in, we managed to heal him up in time. Whew!

Inside the building, we beat up the 4 AVs along the way, but unfortunately Dr. Aeon's alpha strike managed to flatten our tanker almost instantly, which blew the "Master of" part of the TF. Oh well. We resolved to continue on, though.

In the final mission we easily handled the 4 patron AVs and the Flyer, but had lots of deaths against Lord Recluse himself. The tanker tried kiting Lord Recluse around south of the big statue, but this didn't really work; LR would get to a certain range, then suddenly rubberband back to where we were killing the towers. We killed 2 towers, then had a team wipe, then regrouped and were able to finish off the rest of the towers and LR himself. I didn't catch the TF time, but I got a Peroxisome HO as reward.


After the STF, I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF. Our team mix was:

2 brutes
kin corruptor
ill/emp controller
blaster
2 scrappers
sonic defender

We pretty much blitzed through the ITF, finishing in 47min 36sec for 28 merits (35.29 MPH). Blond spent 200 merits purchasing a level 33 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global recharge), which I slotted in Grant Cover. This raises her global recharge to +45% overall.

I then played Mega through The Hero Simulator, Chapter 1, the Beta Testers, where you start out as a tester for a "Hero Simulator", which seems to be a lot like Architect Entertainment itself. But your contact, the QA guy, keeps screwing around with the simulation so you end up heroically saving demons from old ladies, and other weirdness. After 3 (intentionally) buggy missions, the contact finally asks you to go arrest someone he thinks is suspicious; but it turns out you get the wrong guy. This story didn't work for me; it felt like a series of random unrelated events. I ended up giving it 1 star.

Late Saturday night, I played Alice Slaughter (32 db/will brute on Triumph). I had noticed there were a lot of Alice in Wonderland themed story arcs in AE, and thought it would be fun to play my Alice themed toon through some of them. I had just barely started on a story arc when I got an invite to a team. I'm a sucker for teaming, so I ended up quitting the arc and joining the 8-player pickup team, which ran through a Talos mayhem and most of Vivacious Verandi's story arc, which got Alice to 34. When I eventually got back to doing AE stories, I ran Alice through Wicked, Wicked Wonderland and Alice in Wonderland part 1 of 2. Both had fun, good looking custom mobs but were pretty light on story, and I rated both of them 3 stars. I really liked the way my Alice character looked while fighting the Wonderland-themed mobs, though, and so I started a thread with screenshots of Alice's Adventures in Architect Entertainment.

Over Saturday and Sunday I played Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker) some, first on an ITF with a team mix of

elec/elec brute
ninj stalker
blaster
widow
rad corruptor
will/nrg tanker
shield scrapper
fire/kin controller

We did mostly okay, though had a team wipe in mission 2 and a near-wipe against the console in mission 3. Finished in 1hr 23mins for 28 merits (20.24 MPH).

On the LGTF we had a team mix of:

2 scrappers (one was bs/fire, other I'm not sure)
?/dark stalker
grav/rad controller
2 defenders (emp/rad, rad/rad)
will/SS tanker (me)
axe/shield brute

One of the scrappers quit the LGTF within 2 minutes of starting the TF, claiming he "had to go". We resolved to press on with 7 players. No one felt confident in stealthing the first mission, so I ended up clearing the way to Penelope Yin and then leading her back. This took awhile, and so the rad defender said she needed us to hurry things up. So we tried stealthing the 2nd mission; unfortunately, most people were not very stealthy (I definitely wasn't, but could just run by the Rikti and not die) and so a lot of the squishy characters died doing this, which I felt bad about. I eventually started following one of the defenders as she tried to "stealth" past the Rikti, taunting Rikti off of them if they seemed to be taking too much fire; this seemed to help some.

In mission 3 we debated whether we would free the captives or get them killed. We felt pressed for time, and so we agreed to get Infernia and Glacia killed (horribly unheroic, sadly), but I think there was some sort of miscommunication because the rad defender again said she didn't have time to do it the "real" way and quit the team anyway. We went ahead and got the two heroes killed, and around this time the scrapper who bailed earlier logged back on and was talking on LBX, and I'm afraid I verbally harangued him on LBX, which I probably shouldn't have done, but I was pretty annoyed because we were now really short-handed, and this wasn't the first time I'd seen him bail on a TF for scant reason. He claimed he had no knowledge of quitting from our TF, blaming "his brother" or maybe "his sister", but I found this pretty unbelievable.

We started mission 4 with a team of 6 and we were all pretty skeptical about beating Hamidon, but decided to give it a try. I taunted most of the Rikti into the goo, then led the charge against the Yellow Mitos, which was no problem for our team; the Blue Mitos were a real problem for us, though, since we had almost no ranged damage (only the emp defender and grav controller, technically). Some of the melee did have range attacks and we all broke out temp powers for range attacks; this was all still pretty feeble compared to even having 1 blaster, but we coordinated fire and it seemed just enough to kill a Blue mito over the heals of the Green mitos. After some patience and teamwork we eventually dropped all the Blues, after which the Greens and Hamidon itself were no problem.

We were kinda tired at this point and for mission 5 I simply ran to the final room with my tanker nonstealth, letting the Rikti attacks bounce off me, and team TP'd everyone there. We beat up Hro'Dtohz without much trouble, but had a marathon battle against the Honoree. Our DPS/debuff was a little light from being shorthanded, and the Honoree went Unstoppable on us 3 times before we finally beat his life bar down to 0. Finished the TF overall in 2hrs 11mins for 39 merits (17.86 MPH). 2hrs isn't all that bad, though it felt much longer; the whole team seemed relieved that we were even able to complete the TF at all.

I cashed in 180 of Thunder Girl's reward merits for recipe rolls, receiving:

1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=4M
2 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=5M
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for Psi damage) Wentw=1K
1 Devastation (chance for hold) Wentw=100K
1 Aegis (+Psi resist/Mez resist) Wentw=1M
1 Aegis (END/RCHG/RES) Wentw=1M
1 Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=13M
1 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=5K

....a total value of 24.106M infl, or 134K/merit. This is yield is a little on the low side, but I figure I'm likely to use the Touch of Death and Devastation recipes at some point, at least.


On Monday night, I played Milady de Winter (12 ice/emp controller) on a small team Positron TF organized on LBX. Our team mix was:

3 scrappers (kat/SR, claw/SR, spine/DA, all exemped)
1 ice/emp controller (me)

Most stealthable missions, the scrappers simply rushed to the end room, trusting their defenses to keep them alive; unfortunately, I mostly couldn't help with those missions due to squishiness and lack of stealth. On other missions I felt like I got to help a lot, though, as exemped to 15 all the scrappers still took a healthy amount of damage from mobs, which both Ice Slick and the empathy heals seemed very helpful for. One of the scrappers complimented me on "playing my toon well", which was really nice (especially considering I don't play controllers that much). With a small team we finished the Positron TF in a blazing (well, relatively) 1hr 49mins for 64 merits (35.23 MPH), getting Milady to level 16. I took Hasten and Superspeed for her new powers.

After that, I logged on Mega to check the Black Market and found a Rikti invasion in Cap au Diable; I ended up joining an 8 player pickup team to fight the Rikti invaders. When the invasion ended, I picked up a friend on a storm corruptor as a lackey and we duo'd some radio missions in Nerva Archipelago, which got Mega to level 30. I took Kick as a new power, to unlock Tough and Weave.

Finished the night playing Kashira (22 db/ninj stalker) on a Silver Mantis SF. Our team mix was:

merc/dark MM
mind/nrg dom
robo/FF MM
db/ninj stalker (me)
fire/fire brute
stone/stone brute
robo/dark MM

It seemed like the brutes did most of the work on this SF, usually running on their own deep into each mission to achieve the various objectives. They were using a trick I hadn't seen before, herding different factions in each door mission into each other to force them to fight; I had not actually realized they hated each other. As a stalker I tried to follow along with them to help out, but not sure if it was doing much good (as a stalker I don't taunt stuff, but I could stab stuff occasionally) and it was kinda risky; I caught aggro a few times, forcing a run back from the hospital. Anyhow, in this way we got through most of the SF, but just before the final mission, my internet connection suddenly died for an hour, so I missed the SF completion. When I got back, it sounded like some people had wanted to wait for me, but there's no way anyone should wait an hour for a linkdead person, so I had no problem with how it worked out. Kashira did get to level 23 before my ISP died on me, though.

More on Hero Simulator Part 1

[ QUOTE ]
When I went through your review very carefully, it was quite evident that you didn't accept the role you were asked to play. This was the fatal flaw. Had you been able to accept that you were a Beta Tester for a Hero Simulator, I think you would have been able to follow the story.

Your suggestion of decoupling the Beta Testing and the Investigation would ultimately produce 2 separate and basic stories, neither which would be terribly interesting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I think I do understand that I was beta testing the Hero Simulator in the early missions. My problem was that what I was doing didn't matter for the overall story. The fact that I rescue the Demon does not affect the story at all. The fact that I rescue Clifford's girl and complete his fantasy quest does not affect the story at all. Completing the farm mission certainly didn't affect the story. None of these events even made a difference for the next mission; I was basically failing even as a beta tester because all the buggy stuff that happened was due to Clifford screwing things up, not due to actual "bugs" in the Hero Simulator. Ultimately, it felt like nothing I did mattered.

These problems all feed into a larger problem I had with the set up: the player does not appear to be the protagonist of the story. The story isn't really about the player. If anyone could be said to be the hero of this story (as currently presented), it's Clifford.

I really think story arcs should focus more on the player, making her feel an important part of the story. Of course the player is doing things for the contact, but it's important for the player to feel like the protagonist. If you can change it so that the player feels like she's actually the star, I think it would be a great improvement to the story.

Anyway, I'm glad that you are making some changes based on feedback, and I hope this all helps you out!

Alice in Wonderland part 1 of 2 (arc id 59657)

A Cheshire Cat

Playing with a full deck.

A Mock Gryphon

Late for an important date

The March Hare

The Mad Hatter

They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here

Wicked, Wicked Wonderland (arc id 1224)

You're all just a pack of cards!

Follow the White Rabbit

Alice and the Mad Hatter

Alice and Tweedledee

Curiouser and curiouser: My Alice and 1224's Alice

Off with her head!

This is a little side project I'm doing just for fun. It is image heavy without a lot of commentary.

Our Heroine (profile)

Our Heroine (front view)

Fatale Attraction review (arc id 181264)

Premise seems to be to battle a new all-female gang that has recently hit Paragon City. Level range is 1-54 blue side. I played a 29 SS/will brute on low difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: I like the background info that the contact gives you here on the Fatales gang. Probably she should ask "Are you interested in helping?" or something similar near the end of her briefing, so that the player's "Accept" message makes more sense.

Second part of briefing: "right here at PCU" sounds a little strange since PCU hasn't been mentioned up to this point; should maybe just say "at Paragon City University", or else mention the university earlier on. Also "sororiety" should be "sorority".

Inside the mission: Possibly "Fatale Virago" in the objectives should be "Defeat Fatale Virago" or perhaps "Defeat gang leader". Or you can omit this objective entirely since it's a Defeat All anyway. The map is pretty small (the university map works really well for this mission) so defeating all isn't a problem for this mission.

Not a lot to the first mission it seems. I do like the clues that I got from defeating the gang members though, and the Fatales have great costumes (very street gang looking) and background info.

Is "Fatale Virago" a named boss or the generic name for Fatale bosses? If all bosses are named that, you might have some confusion if multiple Fatale Viragos are spawned (both in this mission and later ones). May want to give the enemy leader of each mission a unique name.

Debriefing: nicely written debriefing. It's disappointing that the Fatales are let out of jail, but the explanation makes sense.

Mission 2
Briefing: This briefing seems much too short, one sentence that explains nothing about what this mission is about. Suggest you put some more background info about the upcoming mission here, maybe move it from the second part of the briefing (after acceptance), which seems much more detailed.

Mission entry popup: "You know the Fatales are inside" ... actually, the briefing suggested I should just come here and talk to Lisa. The fact that a street gang is here in this jewelry store should (theoretically) be a surprise; you may want to reword the popup message accordingly.

"Fatale Virago" in objectives should maybe be "Defeat Fatale Virago" or "Defeat gang leader".

I couldn't resist clicking the safe glowy; interesting that the gang members showed up to stop me from "stealing" the gems.

Found and fought Fatale Virago; I think she has dialog for each 25% damage she takes, but she spawned as a lieutenant for me, so ended up saying it all really fast. Minor nitpick, admittedly.

I'm a little puzzled as to why Lisa isn't here and there are no jewelry store employees, either.

Debriefing: aha, the debriefing explains all. (A bit later I also saw the second "Virago's Account" clue, which also helps.) The story seems to force the player to have this misunderstanding (beating up "innocent" employees) but it's interesting enough that I'm OK with it so far.

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, I'm kinda uneasy that the contact wants to send me against Rashan again, and even admits she has no evidence other than her gut feeling. Would really like to have at least a circumstantial clue pointing this direction, otherwise this all seems very "loose cannon" of us to continue this investigation. I do like that she cautions me not to confront the Fatales if they aren't doing anything obviously illegal -- she recognizes that the Fatales appear to be legit so far.

Of course entering the mission, the Fatales immediately attack me since I don't have stealth. Oh well.

"Peter Sansone" objective should start out as either "Rescue Peter Sansone" or "Rescue innocent", then when you rescue him, should turn to "Lead Peter to safety" or something similar. Currently it just remains "Peter Sansone" throughout.

Same comment for "Lisa Carpenter" objective; maybe "Capture Lisa Carpenter", then "Lead Lisa into custody" or something. Also, Lisa's description says "From the look of her, she is definitely one of the Fatales' newest members" -- but she actually doesn't look much like the Fatales.

I like the "Chris Jenkins is my lawyer" motif... I fully believe I'm going to get totally sued by him over all this.

Found "Gemstones" glowy; the progress bar needs some text on it. It maybe should be named "Safe" and you find out there are gemstones inside after clicking the glowy. Both this set of gemstones and the last are described as "something doesn't seem quite right about them"...would be nicer to know what this means. This makes them sound counterfeit, but I don't think that's the intent.

Debriefing: "operation on PCU" should be "operation at PCU". Great debriefing otherwise, I like the explanation of what happens to Peter and Lisa and the info we found out about the Fatales kidnapping ring.


Mission 4
Briefing: I like that Meg wants to follow the money and find where the gems came from. This makes sense for an investigation. The reasoning to check the cargo ship seems a little thin though; "we know there is a cargo ship heading for the Rogue Isles" is hardly a smoking gun. There could be a lot of such ships (and airplanes for that matter); I think we need a little more evidence to go on, to pick on this particular ship. "extradict" should be "extradite" also.

Second part of briefing: I like the connection to the "soul trapped gem" invention salvage here.

Inside the mission: "8 Victim" objective should probably be "8 Victims to rescue". 8 seems like a lot of hostages to rescue; you might consider reducing this number, but based on the story premise it makes sense there would be a lot of victims, so I wouldn't have a problem with it staying 8. But if you keep the number of victims high, you should consider mixing together two or more sets of hostage, with different dialog, so it doesn't seem as repetitive.

Found a "Fatales' Payment" glowy; it has no text on its progress bar. This glowy maybe should be called "Safe" and you find out the payment is inside after clicking the glowy.

Very nice debriefing.

Mission 5
Briefing: Very nice set up for the mission. I think I would've preferred the player to find out the clue leading to the place Heist visits, but the description of how Meg finds out is actually quite good, and Meg's reasoning for why this is the place to hit seems spot-on.

Inside the mission: "5 Victim" objective should be "5 Victims to rescue".

I rescued a Victim but he didn't say anything; should have a little dialog.

"Body Bags" glowy has no text on its progress bar, should have something. The clue it gives is nice for supporting the story, though.

"Safe" glowy has no text on its progress bar. Another nice clue for atmosphere.

Heist's dialog: "we may be able to replace some volunteers we lost, thanks to Mega's." (where Mega is my character name) ... doesn't quite scan, maybe should be "volunteers we lost thanks to Mega." or "because of Mega".

Heist's combat dialog: "You can't extradict us!" should be "You can't extradite us!"

Heist's description: "She is the mastermind behind for the kidnappings" .... drop the "for".

Debriefing: "extradict" should be "extradite". I like the fact that even though this is "Part 1 of 3", there is both a definite conclusion here, yet simultaneously there are clues leading to the next arc.

Overall
I actually really liked the plot. It started off slow, but built up over the course of the investigation; I liked how the missing persons case seamlessly flowed into uncovering the horrible truth behind Soul Trapped Gems (now I'm going to have guilty pangs when using those to make IOs). The character designs for the Fatales were very nice, and the writing in the briefings and the debriefings was excellent. Good use of clues and glowies also. I liked the map choices also, which let us see a variety of scenery while making sense in the story. I liked the "You'll be sorry! Chris Jenkins is my lawyer!" references and am somewhat relieved that I didn't actually get sued by him.

I did feel there was missing text in several places (text on the progress bars on some glowies, no dialog/repetitive dialog for hostages in the last couple missions) and had some stylistic quibbles about formatting in places. I think these could be improved, but all that is relatively minor.

I gave this story 5 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Graeve_Digger - Hero Simulator Ch2 172468 [moved part 2 down a couple slots to look at other arcs in between]
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874
@Mr. Joe Black - A Ghost Story 101857

[ QUOTE ]
Grab a standard 5th boss, then type 'Wehrmacht' into the top text field located under 'boss text'. I believe it's labeled 'boss display faction' or something.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, the top text field under "Boss Text" for me is "Boss Description", and top field under "Ally Text" is "Ally Description". Is "Boss Display Faction" a new feature on test server maybe? If so, that would certainly solve my problem.

[ QUOTE ]
Really? I know I did that in my arc, and it was still working as of a week ago or so.

One thing I do recall, though, is that I could not select a "Random" boss for a detail; the boss had to be added individually. Perhaps this is the issue with Gen. Paulus?


[/ QUOTE ]

I've tried this a couple ways, adding to the "Wehrmacht" custom group both "Random 5th Column Boss" and specific bosses from the standard 5th Column enemy group; neither seemed to allow me to use them as Bosses or Allies through the Wehrmacht faction, even though I can use the same mobs as Bosses or Allies from the 5th Column faction.

I think this is probably a bug or at the very least unintended; if you know some workaround I'd be glad to try it though?

The Hero Simulator, Chapter 1, the Beta Testers review (arc id 172700)

Premise is that you are a beta tester for a new Architect Entertainment product. Arc description recommends playing solo on lowest difficulty. "suprise" should be "surprise" in the arc description.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact purports to be a member of Architect Entertainment QA and sends me to rescue a simulated hostage. Hmm, OK; this all seems rather meta, as it is AE that is simulating the story arc with an AE simulation in it.

The contact told me to "log in to the computer", but when I click the computer, the progress bar says "Hacking" ... should probably say "Logging in" if I have legitimate access.

I got a clue, which the mission urges me to read, but at the same time an Arachnos ambush showed up and attacked me, making it difficult to look at the clue at the same time.

After clearing the ambush, I read the "Video Message 1 from Clifford" clue. "Archanos" should be "Arachnos". This message seems to contradict what Clifford said in the briefing; I'm not sure if this message is from the "real" Clifford or is supposed to be part of the simulation scenario.

I start running into mobs of the "Little Old Ladies" faction; the briefing said I was supposed to rescue a Little Old Lady, but they attack me instead. Presumably this is part of the "messed up mission" the clue described.

Nasty Marm's description: "remeber" should be "remember".

The demon being held hostage by the little old ladies is funny.

[NPC] Scared Demon!: Thank Gad, Opps did I just say the G word. My boss is gonna kill me!

I think you mean "God" and not "Gad", but possibly the profanity filter is messing you up.

Mission exit popup: "It looks Clifford tinkered with the mission" should be "It looks like Clifford tinkered with the mission".

Debriefing: rather weird. Is Clifford conspiring to sabotage the AE product release? The clue also suggested I should give a lengthy debriefing, but the actual debriefing is very short.

The little old ladies holding the demon hostage was funny; but how did the Arachnos ambush factor into it?

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact is definitely acting very weird, seemingly acknowledging that he sabotaged the last mission. So now he's sending me on another mission...err...hero simulation test.

I'm not sure what the accept message, "Beta Hero/Villain, I hope not!" means. He again wants me to check a computer.

The contact told me that this should be a mafia type mission where I have to clear my name, but inside the mission, the objectives seem to have nothing to do with that. Instead there is some kind of fantasy adventure thing going on.

Mission title "Destroy the Magic Alter" and objective "Destroy Magic Alter" should have "Altar" for both instances of Alter.

The orcs and goblins are in a faction called "Fantasy Bad", but maybe their group name should be "Bad Fantasy". Also, "He is just a plain old Orc" isn't really a very good description; it doesn't tell anything more than the name of the mob, "Orc".

The progress bar, "Waiting for vidoe popup" should have "video" instead of "vidoe". Another Arachnos ambush shows up with exactly the same dialog.

After fighting the ambush, I read "Video Message 2 from Clifford". It seems that Clifford swapped the mafia mission for this generic fantasy mission as part of his plan to delay Hero Simulator from "going gold", because "something is going on", which Clifford is heroically investigating. Meanwhile, I guess I'm left to fight imaginary orcs and goblins in the simulation.

[NPC] Red Skin Goblin: In Orcish.... Just wave your arms about, this will really freak her out!!

"In Orcish...." doesn't really get the idea they're speaking orcish across. I'd suggest you either make them speak gibberish-looking characters, or surround their dialog in some kind of special symbols, or just have them speak "Common".

I rescue the fantasy girl and she calls me "the great and handsome warrior Clifford", which is kinda funny. The "Cliffords Babe" clue should probably be punctuated "Clifford's Babe".

I found a glowy that generated a clue of "Junk" with the text "Nothin of interest, but suprising fun to poke through this junk!" This glowy and this clue don't seem to add anything to the story; I'd suggest you either put some more interesting text here, or consider deleting it. Also "Nothin" should be "Nothing" and "suprising" should be "surprising".

Found an Elven Archer roaming around, a member of "Fantasy Good" faction... "Fantasy Good" doesn't quite sound right, you might call them "Fantasy Adventurers" or "Fantasy Heroes" or something. Also, her description of "She is tought to hit!" should probably give a little more detail. "tought" should be "tough".

When I ran into more orcs, Helpless Woman pulled out two rapiers and started slashing at the orcs. This seems to defy her name of "Helpless Woman"; may want to rename her if she's going to fight stuff. "Fantasy Woman" or "Clifford's Babe" or something like that.

[NPC] Ancient Artifact: Who disturbs the Magic Alter of Zenges!

"Alter" should be "Altar".

[NPC] Ancient Artifact: I warn you now, You have been Warned!

This is a pretty awful line, but maybe is intended to sound like bad dialog.

[NPC] Ancient Artifact: I will have my vengence on you Clifford!!

"vengence" should be "vengeance". Also, should this Artifact be named Magic Altar to be more clear?

"Fantasy Mission" clue that says "It appears that our friend Clifford inserted a mission that he had made just for himself" got awarded at the end of the mission; probably would've made more sense to give this clue near the beginning of the mission.

Mission exit popup says that I should play along with his game still, and delaying the beta test should buy him time...but for what? Still no idea what is going on.

Debriefing: Clifford again slyly admits to messing up the beta test. This one-line debriefing seems much too short. You might consider moving some of the text from "Mission thoughts" to here; it might make more sense for that text to be in the debriefing anyway.

I'm not really sure I like how this is going so far.... apparently Clifford is investigating something interesting, but I'm not involved in it, as Clifford is instead sending me on, essentially, random unrelated missions that are intentionally buggy or trite.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact says "that last debriefing was pretty rough", but in fact the last debriefing was just one line, which involved him winking at me and essentially admitting he's screwing up the missions. So now he's sending me on another mission, claiming that other testers like it and finishing the mission involves destroying an ant hill. But I'm not sure why I should even listen to the briefing any more, since none of the briefings have been true up to this point.

Should have a period after "ant hill".

Mission accept message, "Area you ready" should be "Are you ready".

Second part of briefing: He tells me he didn't change it, so it should run exactly as planned. Sure, Clifford. Like I believe you any more.

Need to add a period after "but most of all be careful". "Archanos ambush" should be "Arachnos ambush" with a period after it.

Mission title is "Have a Blast, Destroy the giant ant hill to exit"...seems not very descriptive of the mission. Suggest rewording it to ...whatever the actual goal of this mission is. Maybe make destroying the ant hill an objective.

Inside the mission, it seems to be an outdoor mission with all mobs named "Farmer Bob", who are battle axe/fire armor minions. I think this is meant to be a parody of MA farming missions, but it doesn't quite work for me. A real farm mission has mobs in it other than the farmers. It might be funnier if the farmers had some sort of dialog, also.

There's lots of glowies labeled "Big Machine", and clicking one gives me a clue of "Wow, that was a lot of fun!!" This doesn't seem to add anything to the story though.

I'm not really into farming the Farmers, so I go out and find the giant ant hill, which rewards me with the dialog:

[NPC] Ant Hill: Your about to exit the mission.
[NPC] Farmer Bob: Finish all the Farmers first, then come here.

I'm not sure why an Ant Hill can talk, but "Your" should be "You are". And fortunately this doesn't appear to be a defeat all, so I can ignore Farmer Bob's one line encouraging me to farm Farmers. I bash the giant ant hill, which continues to insist that I should go out and finish off the other mobs before killing it. I think this is intended to be some sort of parody, but I'm afraid it did not come across as being very funny.

At the end of the mission I get two clues, "Odd sensation" which just says I found the simulation very stimulating, and "Fun Stuff" which says "That was a lot of fun to do! ... I wonder how Clifford made out while we were in the simulator?" It really does not feel like these clues add much to the story.

Debriefing: Seems kinda short, but the contact does say the Paragon Police were here while I was in the simulation. It seems most of the plot of this story arc occurs elsewhere while I'm doing the missions. This kinda makes the player seem irrelevant to the story. I am actually not sure what the player's role in this story is meant to be. It seems like Clifford is the protagonist.

Mission 4
Briefing: Clifford has discovered "the one that is behind all of this tampering with our Hero Simulator" and wants me to go after him. But...up to this point, the only one who has been tampering with the Hero Simulator is Clifford, himself. So this doesn't quite make sense.

Also Clifford claims he found this out from an "insider at the Paragon Police depatrment" (sic). What exactly has Clifford been doing all this time if he just got fed this info by someone else anyway? I thought he was doing some kind of technical investigation. Also, "depatrment" should be "department".

So I'm sent on another mission...but this is weird, because the first three missions were all "simulated" inside AE's Hero Simulator. Is this fourth mission also "simulated" or am I actually finding the bad guy in real space? This is rather confusing and should be made clearer.

Ran into some custom zombies named "Dead Beat" with a description of "Dark Invuln Minion" ... needs a better description. Or, consider using an existing zombie mob, like Vahzilok or Banished Pantheon zombies.

I found Grave Digger, who seems to be looking for eye of newt. So he's some kind of witch? I thought he was hacking into AE, so oughta be a techy. Seems inconsistent. Grave Digger's description is just "Grave Digger"; should actually have some description there.

Found documents that gave me the "Smoking Gun? Hardly!" clue. In this clue, "grave Digger" should be capitalized "Grave Digger", and I think "Holographic simulator" should be "Hero Simulator" based on previous usage.

I exit the mission and find the story arc is over? Taking care of Grave Digger was enough to make Clifford happy. But the evidence found in Grave Digger's mission indicates that he didn't really do it? (Whatever "it" was.)

I guess the story continues in Chapter 2, but this seems an awkward place to end Chapter 1. The story itself calls it "anticlimactic" in the mission exit popup.

Overall
I thought it was amusing that Clifford switched the Old Lady and the Demon in the first mission, and Clifford's fantasy adventure was kinda funny. I didn't much like the third mission, which seemed to be trying to make fun of farms, but really was pretty much the same as a farm. The fact that Clifford was clearly sabotaging the missions and was running his own investigation of something that I wasn't really included in (until the final mission) didn't work well for me; it felt like I was being sent on completely random missions that had nothing to do with the main plot, and meanwhile Clifford is off doing whatever the actual heroics in the story are.

The final mission is the only one where I got included in Clifford's investigation, and it turns out we don't even catch the right guy, and then the story suddenly ends.

The mission briefings were all deliberately misleading, rarely having anything to do with the actual mission, and the debriefings and custom mob descriptions were nearly empty of text. Along the way there were also a lot of clues that don't say anything meaningful. I like clues, but they need to communicate something either relevant to the plot, amusing, or at least interesting to read. I think you could greatly improve the story if you rewrite some of these briefings, debriefings, descriptions and clues to have more direct relevance to the plot of your story arc.

My suggestion for how to improve the plot: focus either on the "beta testing" of the simulation, or else on the "investigation" of wrong doing. Having both these plotlines in the same story arc didn't seem to work well. Pick one as your main story, and cut out everything that isn't connected to your main plot.

If you choose "beta testing" as your main plotline, rewrite it so that it's not Clifford sabotaging the Hero Simulator, but rather some kind of software bugs or file corruption or something. You could then still have a sequence of seemingly random missions with screwed up results, and play it up to be funny. (I'd drop the farm map though.) Make Clifford, the QA guy, chagrined that the product is malfunctioning (instead of knowingly winking that he's sabotaged it, like he currently does). Have the finale of the arc be isolating whatever the malfunction is.

Or if you choose "investigate the saboteur" as your main plotline, drop the first three missions as irrelevant and start with tracking down Grave Digger, then add more missions that follow up to find who the real perpetrator is. Do a little more build-up of whatever the bad guy actually did; as the story is currently presented, I have little idea why we're after whomever this bad guy is. Clifford claims it's someone who has been messing up the Hero Simulator, but the way it's presented, the only guy messing up the Hero Simulator is Clifford himself.

Anyway, as it stands right now, I feel the story is buried under a series of random, seemingly irrelevant missions which keep the player away from the actual plot, which seems to be mostly handled by Clifford off-screen. I'm afraid having a farm mission in the middle, having weak descriptions, and finally having the player catch the wrong person and fail to catch the real bad guy in the end, all gave me a negative impression too. With all that, I felt I could only give this 1 star. Sorry!

-----

I owe a review to:

Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Graeve_Digger - Hero Simulator Ch2 172468 [moved part 2 down a couple slots to look at other arcs in between]
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484
FoundBoy - Threefold Rule 197183

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874
@Mr. Joe Black - A Ghost Story 101857

Changes as a result of feedback:
* Added a new faction, "Wehrmacht", containing 5th Column minions, lieutenants and bosses. (I considered deleting all the fantasy elements, vampires and werewolves and such....but, heck, it's a comic book universe. Left them in.)
* Added a new faction, "Third Reich". Der Führer is the only member of this faction.
* Schadenfreude, the initial contact, remains 5th Column (since she is from the present day).

Mission 1
* Enemy group for this mission is now Wehrmacht.
* Ambushes, patrols are now Wehrmacht.
* Der Führer's guards, and Schadenfreude's guards, all Wehrmacht.
* Changed Der Führer's weapon to be a Council submachinegun.
* Mission complete clue changed to remove 5th Column reference and to insert the word "putsch", which feels like a word that needs more use. Clue is now:

"After a successful putsch, you have become the new Führer. The forces of the Third Reich are at your command!"

Mission 2
* British models now have the description:

"Following the German invasion of Poland, the British Expeditionary Force was sent to the Franco-Belgian border. The rapid advance of the Wehrmacht through the Low Countries as part of the Manstein Plan has left them trapped in Dunkirk, cut off from Allied reinforcements."

* French models now have the description:

"The French First Army marched north to oppose the German advance through the Ardennes. The Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg tactics have left them trapped in Dunkirk, cut off from the rest of the French forces."

* Costume tweaks for French lieutenant: added moustasche, removed gloves, changed style of pants, changed color of undershirt.
* Deleted ambush when fighting Lord Gort, to make space.

Mission 3
* Mission is now titled "Case Blue", which more accurately describes the 1942 German operations in southern Russia.
* Battles are now between Red Army and Wehrmacht.
* I was unable to author General Paulus as a Wehrmacht boss; for some reason, standard PvE bosses added to a custom faction cannot be used for "boss" or "ally" details. I don't have enough space to make a new custom model for General Paulus, so he remains 5th Column (for now; may change in I15).
* Changed Soviet Trooper's costume to distinguish him from the officers: removed shoulder epaulets, changed shirt to tank top, changed boots to combat boots.
* Soviet troops now have the description:

"This soldier is part of Operation Uranus, a Soviet counter-offensive which has trapped the German 6th Army in Stalingrad."

Mission 4
* Changed map to Steel Canyon; others had complained about Ruined Atlas Park before, but the searing white hatred that Glazius expressed ultimately pushed me over the edge for this. This is kind of a big map (may even be bigger than Atlas Park) but it's better lit and has a map. It's a little less iconic for CoH than Atlas Park, but oh well.
* Steel Canyon is a little less iconic than Atlas Park, but hopefully will work. If I get a lot of complaints about Steel Canyon not looking right for Invasion America, I may switch back.
* Stormtroopers remain 5th Column, mostly because the interface won't allow me to make them Wehrmacht allies. However, since this mission is set in Paragon City, having 5th Column allies actually works.
* Added "Ally Stranded Dialog" for Schadenfreude and Stormtroopers.
* American troops now have the description:

"Recalled from overseas to defend the American heartland, this soldier stands ready to repel the enemies of the United States."

* Deleted "American Surrender" mission completion clue to make space; it's kind of redundant since the arc ends immediately after.

Souvenir
* Cropped some less-needed text out to make space.


I ran one test with a 29 SS/will brute and this all seemed to work fairly well. Searching Steel Canyon in the last mission was a little annoying because it's bigger than the Atlas Park map, but at least it HAS a map, so going to try it for now.


Things I want to do when I15 comes out and hopefully I have more space:
* Add back some ambushes at key points.
* Add back the American Sergeant mob in mission 4.
* Add some Wehrmacht/US Army and 5th Column/PPD battles to mission 4
* Add some non-required destructible objects to mission 4 (maybe hero statues like in the cape mission).
* Figure out some way to give Maiden Justice Unyielding (for KB protection) without giving her Unstoppable.

[ QUOTE ]
I would have to check the arc again, but I think Hitler is already the Fuhrer. There may be a specific date given, but I think it's supposed to occur late in the war, when Germany is losing the war after opening a second front w/Russia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just as a point of fact, the first mission has dialog explicitly placing it after the annexation of Sudetenland (Sept 1938) and prior to the invasion of Poland (Sept 1939).

[ QUOTE ]
That means Nazi ideology has been active for maybe a dozen years and concentration and extermination camps in full operation, also for years.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wikipedia's article on the Final Solution describes the Final Solution being decided upon in around Jan 1942, with some scholars arguing for as early as Dec 1941. People were killed earlier than that, of course; but that's when it was institutionalized.

[ QUOTE ]
PW has stated in several places that in this arc you, the player, Set Right What Once Went Wrong. But you don't prevent any atrocities commited by Nazi Germany. Instead you become the new Fuhrer and ensure Nazi Germany's victory.

[/ QUOTE ]

As the Holocaust is rightfully a very sensitive subject, I would rather steer clear of depicting it in this story in any way. After the initial assassination, the story is primarily focused on military action.

Based on the timeline presented, you are welcome to imagine whatever you like your character would've done about this. I'd rather keep the main story focused on the war, however.

Anyway -- in response to Glazius's earlier suggestion that the assassination of Hitler be reshuffled to be the very last mission in the timeline -- I think I can't do that as it will become too morally objectionable to some players. It seems necessary for the assassination to be the very first mission, as I'd rather the player be "in charge" of the war from an early date.

Oh, and in response to the person who left feedback saying that "The Wolf's Lair" is in Poland.... it is now. Back then it was part of East Prussia. After WW2, the Soviet/Poland and Poland/East Germany borders were both moved westwards.

Thanks for the input!

The Revenge of Dr. Radium review (arc #100293)

Premise is that you help Dr. Aeon avert some sort of future catastrophe. Level range is 40-54 heroic. I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense on Unyielding difficulty.

The contact is Dr. Aeon. It's a little odd for a heroic arc to have a villain as contact, but he's a scientist too, so maybe it works.

Mission 1
The mission title "Dr. Radium's Revenge" and subtitle "Part 1: Crey Chronal Chaos" maybe should be in a larger font or in bold, to make it stand out from the rest of the briefing.

Briefing: Aeon immediately addresses the fact that he's a villain "but only in the name of science!" which handles my earlier concern. He doesn't really say much about what I'm supposed to do before I accept the mission.

Second part of briefing: I like how he goes into technobabble, before realizing he needs to explain it in normal terms. It's weird that he wants me to steal things for him. He does address the fact that I'm a "hero" so would have concerns about this.

I'm a little worried that it looks like he wants me to gather X objects to assemble his device. I feel like that's an awfully generic sounding fantasy quest type plot.

I'm also kind of iffy on doing all this just on Dr. Aeon's say-so, when he's a known supervillain and all. How do I know I'm helping him build a device to save the world, and not a doomsday device? Seems questionable.

Inside the mission, there's some very colorful custom Crey enemies with a particle physics theme going on. I like the random bored chatter they have, before I bust in on them.

I found lots of false glowies (with neat descriptions), then found a safe that is labeled "Tachyon Displacement Field Emitter" ... I kinda think this safe should be "Safe" and you only find it has the emitter inside when you open it.

Mission 2
Subtitle: "Counfounding" should be "Confounding".
Briefing: I like how Dr Aeon is totally trash talking Vandal in this briefing. Aeon is generally well-characterized in the dialog he's had so far. He sends me to steal another object for him.

More nice dialog among the Council as I run past them. I find a glowy labeled Vandal's Helmet, but it seems to be a box of tech parts, which is a little odd; not sure there is a good helmet or robot looking clicky though.

Mission 3
Briefing: steal item 3; afraid this plot feels rather generic. This time it sounds like the widget I'm stealing is actually part of an enemy boss, a psychic clockwork; at least that's different. Also, "Transferance" should be "Transference" in the first part of the briefing, and also in the mission name (in the nav tool).

I kinda think Krzz'nok Klachak'zzt's description should mention a spiral-shaped copper device glowing with a pinkish purple light (matching Aeon's briefing). Minor nitpick, admittedly.

I like the "Intruder alert!" dialogs, very Robotron.

Mission exit popup: "Transferance" should be "Transference".

Mission 4
Briefing: Now that I've gotten Dr Aeon the 3 things he needs to save the world, I am so totally shocked that he's actually going to build some kind of weapon and not save the world at all! Like totally surprised!! Um, no, actually that was pretty obviously what would happen, and helping this guy out was a bad idea from the start.

Having Dr Radium be, basically, Dr Aeon's evil twin (can you be an evil twin if the other twin is also evil?) is a nice twist. I wonder if I should tell him that Dr Geist is ripping off his hairstyle, too?

Second part of briefing: "temporaldimensional" should be two words (two instances of this)..unless it's intended to be a made-up pseudoscientific word.

"morpholuminascent" should be "morpholuminescent".

Inside the mission: I'm not quite sure why it is necessary to Defeat Dr. Radium, when Dr. Radium has stated that he wants to take out Dr. Aeon, who is, as it happens, a supervillain. I don't think it's clearly established that Dr. Radium is, in fact, a villain too; okay, so there's the evil laugh and the mad scientist attitude, but that's kind of circumstantial. The only crimes we've seen Dr. Radium commit so far is hiring someone to steal a bunch of stuff....which the player is complicit in....

I kind of wonder if Defeat Dr. Aeon should be an objective, too? As long as we're in his lab, anyway.

Weirdly, there are friendly Arachnos in this mission. I guess to fight the hostile "Radium's Raiders" mercenaries. I kind of wonder if it might make sense for Radium's mercenaries to be Rogue Arachnos, or maybe Malta/KoA? They ARE mercenaries, and would let you reuse an existing group (to save space).

I like the AeonCorp Labtech that says "Please don't hurt me! I just work here!"

Dr. Radium really needs a description. The fact that he was an EB with Aim was pretty nasty for me (since I'm SR and rely only on defense) but maybe is ok for the end boss of the arc. At around half life he announced he was activating the Chronal Psychostabilizer, and I thought this meant an ambush or something, but nothing ever happened.

Curiously, I killed Dr. Radium, but the mission didn't end. Exploring the room further, I found a Dr Radium #2! Aha! So this is what the Chronal Psychostabilizer does. I got Dr. Radium #2 down to half and he again announced he was activating the Chronal Psychostabilizer, and watching the nav tool I now see I have "2 Dr. Radiums to defeat". I beat up #2 then started looking for the next one. I defeat #3, then I had to destroy the Chronal Psychostabilizer, then I beat #4 to complete the mission.

Defeating 4 willpower EBs in a row is quite a tall order! I think some players might find that annoying, though. I soon learned to run away for 10 seconds every time he did the Aim animation, though. I do like the player needing to destroy the machine to stop the final Dr. Radium, though.

I think you might want to add a clue linked to the defeat of Dr. Radium #3 hinting to the player that she should find the Chronal Psychostabilizer and destroy it; it does appear in the nav tool, granted, but an additional clue flashing in front of them would help to emphasize that.

Debriefing: Totally like the way Aeon is portrayed here, snooty and arrogant but unable to understand when a microphone is live. Very fitting.

Overall
I very much like the characterization of both Aeon and Radium, the mad science elements, and the extra background dialog and optional glowies that were sprinkled all over the missions. Good final mission also, battling Dr. Radium and then eventually destroying his gadget in order to beat him.

I had some problems with the overarching plot, though; I immediately found it unbelievable that the player is forced to steal a bunch of stuff for Dr. Aeon, ostensibly to "save the world", merely on his say-so. Unsurprisingly, "Dr. Aeon" ends up betraying you. The plot forces you to be gullible enough to be fooled by this fairly transparent lie. I'm afraid I also don't care for the "Gather the 3 Scattered Pieces of the Magical Artifact of Power" plot that the story begins with; it's such a generic fantasy quest type plot. I also am somewhat confused as to why it is necessary to take down Dr. Radium; Dr. Radium is not explicitly shown doing anything particularly bad or threatening, and seems to only really be a menace towards Dr. Aeon, a known villain.

These plot problems keep me from giving the arc a perfect score, but I did really like the dialog and characterization and the extra details in the missions. I ended up rating this 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046
@jjac - The History of Statesman 219484

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874
@Mr. Joe Black - A Ghost Story 101857

Hiya ridiculous girl - you can find my review of Hero Therapy here.

[Trimmed out dead links as of 5/19/2009. Marked some reviewers as no longer accepting submissions. Added PW's second review thread.]

Arranged in alphabetical order for fairness and ease of use:
<ul type="square">[*]Altoholic_Monkey -- Indies (1 mission) | Sequels (2-3 missions) | Epics (4-5 missions)[*]Beach_Lifeguard[*]Bubbawheat | (In Character) [*]DeviousMe (QPQ) (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Dragonslay[*]Frozen_Northman (QPQ)[*]Glazius (read first post for conditions)[*]HolyEvilAoD (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Jophiel[*]Lazarus (QPQ)[*]LaserJesus[*]Misho[*]Peacemoon (QPQ)[*]PoliceWoman (QPQ) | Reviews of arcs written by other Reviewers[*]ridiculous_girl (QPQ)[*]SteelSky[*]Stomphoof (QPQ)[*]Talen_Lee[*]theHedoren (QPQ)[*]Venture[*]Wrong Number (Humor Arcs, QPQ)[/list]
EU reviewers
<ul type="square">[*]Col.Blitzkrieger (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Leese[*]Master_Zaprobo (In character)[/list]
Review sites
<ul type="square">[*]City of Guides - Mission Architect[*]CoH Mission Review[*]Mission Architect Advanced Search Site[/list]
Note: QPQ = quid pro quo: Play and rate/give feedback to the reviewer first in order to get a review on your arc, some are more lenient on this than others. Also, tends to have a shorter queue.

Also, some non-QPQ have more than one reviewer with some not accepting new submissions, check the most recent page for up-to-date information.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "Reviewers List" link for Rapulis appears to be a dead link, so I'm going to assume his thread got purged for inactivity and he isn't a reviewer at this point. So skipping over him in the review order.

EDIT: Same for Bayani, no review thread still active.

EDIT2: Same for Sooner, no review thread still active.

EDIT3: Same for Dominemisis, no review thread still active.

Hero Therapy!, by Ridiculous Girl (arc id 119228)

Premise appears to be some sort of counseling service for heroes who are stressed out about fighting bad guys. Level ranges scale up, with the first and lowest mission at 5-20, ramping up to the final mission which is 41-54. It's blue side, but I'm trying to level my brute, so I played a 28 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact, "The Therapist", wants to put me through some sort of "dream therapy" to help me with the inner demons that are tormenting me. He then "hypnotises" me. Interesting setup. "refered" should be "referred". "surpised" should be "surprised".

The various mission captions, "Therapy Session One" etc should perhaps be in larger font, bolded, colored or otherwise made to stand out from the rest of the text.

Inside the mission are some low level mobs with fairly surreal dialog. I find the Therapist and he wants me to confront my grade school librarian. This kind of make sense for the character I'm playing, who became a villain after a traumatic experience in grade school....

Found "The Steel You Lack" as an ally too, which is kind of weird...if I lack this "steel" shouldn't he not appear in my subconscious? I also kinda think he should have a more profound name, like "Determination" or "Initiative".

Consider awarding a clue on defeating the Librarian or completing mission 1, indicating the player has conquered one of her fears. (It is explained in the debriefing, but this could be missed by players on a team that don't see the debriefing.)

Mission 2
Briefing: more psychobabble and another dream session.

Inside the mission, someone says:

[NPC] Wing Talon Agent: So, I am wondering why we are patroling this place...

"patroling" should be "patrolling".

Ran into a group of Little Nightmares, custom dual blades/kinetics minions. Multiple stacked siphon speeds is actually pretty nasty. I think this was an ambush. You might consider playtesting them against a mid-sized to large team; a large ambush of kinetics minions might be too nasty.

Then I fought some Wyvern who were in a faction called Middle Random Encounters; not sure you meant for that faction name to be visible to the player.

Found glowies called "Broken Friendship" and "Broken Promise"; each put some nice text into my Global Chat window, but this would be easy to miss for most players. You might consider having each one give a clue for the clue journal. This would also let players on the team who didn't click the glowy know what happened.

What is the significance of the little rabbits and clowns with afros? Is there meaning to being in the hospital? I guess they are just part of the dream, but I'm thinking everything here must have some kind of symbolism.

I think it's odd that this mission's boss is Vanity, but the previous mission's boss was a Librarian. Vanity and Librarian seem disparate concepts. Maybe it should be Vanity and Fear, or maybe Ex-Girlfriend and Librarian.

Mission 3
Briefing: basically a third therapy session where I link up with the psychologist and go fight a symbolic representation of one of my problems. This was kinda cool the first time but is now feeling a little repetitive.

"Lost Memory" glowies, same comment as previous mission; consider having them give a clue.

I like rescuing the "Repressed Memory" hostage.

"Secret Shame" has a nice costume and dialog; definitely implies I did something really bad in my past. Though I confess that bludgeoning a schoolgirl to death doesn't seem like it should really be good therapy for "my Secret Shame". The symbolism of beating up "shame" may be wrong for what the therapist is trying to do; I wonder if it would be better symbolism if you were to rescue "Secret Shame" and lead her to the door, letting her go? Confessing your Secret Shame and then learning acceptance seems like it would be more mentally healthy than repressing it further.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact asks "Are you ready for your 4th and final session?" He goes on to repeat it's the final session at least 3 times. This rings false to me; I don't believe a psychologist would state this was a final session, as there is no certainty this session will be successful (and thus it might require follow-on sessions). It would be better if the contact tells you that you're done after you succeed with the mission, rather than setting up possibly false expectations.

Second part of briefing: contact mentions my "Secret Shame" will be present as an ally; but symbolically, it makes no sense for "Shame" to be something that helps me.

I like the symbolism of the negative attributes that you overcome in each mission, returning to help you in the next mission. But I think you could deepen this symbolism by changing the name of the mob each time.

For example in mission 1 you could defeat Fear (the librarian); in mission 2, the librarian returns but is now named Courage. (You can change the name while still using the same model, so shouldn't require much more space). In mission 2 you defeat Vanity (the Roman girl), then she returns in mission 3 as your ally, now named Self Confidence. In mission 3 you defeat Secret Shame, and she could return in mission 4 named Self Image. Something like that.

Second part of briefing: "curiousity" should be "curiosity". "Would you like fries with that hamburger?" seems a poor choice for a post-hypnotic trigger phrase since someone could easily say that to the character at Up-and-Away Burger and accidentally trigger the hypnotic suggestion. Should use a more nonsensical phrase that no one is likely to say.

In the mission: gah, Sappers! There's sappers in my dream!

I destroy an object called "The Trip to the Emergency Room" .. not sure what destroying this represents; destroying a memory doesn't seem correct symbolism. Also clicked a "Your Toy Box" glowy. Neither one gave me a clue; possibly both of them should give me something, for the sake of color, even if it is not specifically plot relevant.

Lots more interesting objects representing petty annoyances that maybe festered into seething rage. I especially like "That One Parking Ticket!" Consider giving the mobs guarding these destructible objects dialog that is relevant to the particular psychological problem they are guarding; the guys guarding the parking meter would say something about how public parking bothers you now, or the guys guarding the Crate of Bad Memories could hint at the bad memories you've suppressed, the guys guarding "Your first car accident" could bemoan the damage to your car, stuff like that.

[NPC] Air Thorn Caster: Well, it is certain a nightmare for me..

"certain" should be "certainly"

Found a Happy Memory glowy, which I clicked; should maybe give a clue, too.

Met some CoT and Crey in a faction called "Random Encounters"; probably should have a better group name.

I found "Your First Car Accident" and thought it was a little weird that I should destroy the car, when the info is "You loved that car". It seems like damaging the car until it explodes would actually be damaging to my psyche, if I really loved it that much.

"That one summer" maybe should have a clue. "Vegetables for dinner" is funny, also.

I kinda think I should be destroying all the destructible objects in this mission, but they aren't a required objective, and actually trigger ambushes. So I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea to be doing these side objectives. But they're too interesting not to do, so I end up fighting the ambushes.

"Your old bookself..." should be "Your old bookshelf". Should give a clue.

Found "The Door" and beat him up. From looking at him and his description, I have no idea what he's supposed to symbolize; certainly he is the "final obstacle" but what does he represent? Based on his dialog...maybe "Doubt"?

I kind of think that all of the Door's dialog should be this negative, self-hating stuff that he currently says -- except his final defeat message, which should become a message of hope. Since you've defeated Doubt, unlocked the Door, etc.

Debriefing: "to point a few little things" ... should be "to point out a few little things".

The contact does explain some of the symbolism of the Door, but I still think it would make more sense for the final boss to represent some particular concept, like Doubt.

"aspects of you mind" should be "aspects of your mind".

"recurrance" should be "recurrence" .. or maybe "reoccurence".

Overall
A very interesting concept for an arc. I like the idea presented here, of mentally overcoming certain obstacles and turning them into strengths.

I like the symbolism presented - however, I think there should be even more symbolism, since every mission is really just a dream sequence, everything should mean something. I love the little non-required side objectives (non-required glowies, hostages and destructible objects) and I think some or all of them should be given clues for the player to read in their clue journal. The ones that have mobs guarding them should have dialog talking about the memory or the concept they are guarding. I also think the maps should have some symbolism; I'm quite puzzled as to why the hospital map, the burning office and Dr. Vahzilok's lair were chosen. They should mean something. I'm sure you must have some reason for choosing these maps, but it wasn't quite apparent to me; perhaps their symbolism should be made more clear. I got pretty obsessed with dream interpretation and wondering what everything in this arc "meant" (like what's up with the bunnymen and the clown people?) and would really like if the symbolism of these elements were made more clear to the player. (Or if they really don't have symbolism and are just meant to be weird, if they could be made to represent some part of the player's psyche.)

I thought it was quite a neat arc overall; but I think there's several things that could be added to deepen the symbolism and make the dream sequence even more immersive. I gave it 4 stars.

Hero Therapy! review (arc id 119228)

Premise appears to be some sort of counseling service for heroes who are stressed out about fighting bad guys. Level ranges scale up, with the first and lowest mission at 5-20, ramping up to the final mission which is 41-54. It's blue side, but I'm trying to level my brute, so I played a 28 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact, "The Therapist", wants to put me through some sort of "dream therapy" to help me with the inner demons that are tormenting me. He then "hypnotises" me. Interesting setup. "refered" should be "referred". "surpised" should be "surprised".

The various mission captions, "Therapy Session One" etc should perhaps be in larger font, bolded, colored or otherwise made to stand out from the rest of the text.

Inside the mission are some low level mobs with fairly surreal dialog. I find the Therapist and he wants me to confront my grade school librarian. This kind of make sense for the character I'm playing, who became a villain after a traumatic experience in grade school....

Found "The Steel You Lack" as an ally too, which is kind of weird...if I lack this "steel" shouldn't he not appear in my subconscious? I also kinda think he should have a more profound name, like "Determination" or "Initiative".

Consider awarding a clue on defeating the Librarian or completing mission 1, indicating the player has conquered one of her fears. (It is explained in the debriefing, but this could be missed by players on a team that don't see the debriefing.)

Mission 2
Briefing: more psychobabble and another dream session.

Inside the mission, someone says:

[NPC] Wing Talon Agent: So, I am wondering why we are patroling this place...

"patroling" should be "patrolling".

Ran into a group of Little Nightmares, custom dual blades/kinetics minions. Multiple stacked siphon speeds is actually pretty nasty. I think this was an ambush. You might consider playtesting them against a mid-sized to large team; a large ambush of kinetics minions might be too nasty.

Then I fought some Wyvern who were in a faction called Middle Random Encounters; not sure you meant for that faction name to be visible to the player.

Found glowies called "Broken Friendship" and "Broken Promise"; each put some nice text into my Global Chat window, but this would be easy to miss for most players. You might consider having each one give a clue for the clue journal. This would also let players on the team who didn't click the glowy know what happened.

What is the significance of the little rabbits and clowns with afros? Is there meaning to being in the hospital? I guess they are just part of the dream, but I'm thinking everything here must have some kind of symbolism.

I think it's odd that this mission's boss is Vanity, but the previous mission's boss was a Librarian. Vanity and Librarian seem disparate concepts. Maybe it should be Vanity and Fear, or maybe Ex-Girlfriend and Librarian.

Mission 3
Briefing: basically a third therapy session where I link up with the psychologist and go fight a symbolic representation of one of my problems. This was kinda cool the first time but is now feeling a little repetitive.

"Lost Memory" glowies, same comment as previous mission; consider having them give a clue.

I like rescuing the "Repressed Memory" hostage.

"Secret Shame" has a nice costume and dialog; definitely implies I did something really bad in my past. Though I confess that bludgeoning a schoolgirl to death doesn't seem like it should really be good therapy for "my Secret Shame". The symbolism of beating up "shame" may be wrong for what the therapist is trying to do; I wonder if it would be better symbolism if you were to rescue "Secret Shame" and lead her to the door, letting her go? Confessing your Secret Shame and then learning acceptance seems like it would be more mentally healthy than repressing it further.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact asks "Are you ready for your 4th and final session?" He goes on to repeat it's the final session at least 3 times. This rings false to me; I don't believe a psychologist would state this was a final session, as there is no certainty this session will be successful (and thus it might require follow-on sessions). It would be better if the contact tells you that you're done after you succeed with the mission, rather than setting up possibly false expectations.

Second part of briefing: contact mentions my "Secret Shame" will be present as an ally; but symbolically, it makes no sense for "Shame" to be something that helps me.

I like the symbolism of the negative attributes that you overcome in each mission, returning to help you in the next mission. But I think you could deepen this symbolism by changing the name of the mob each time.

For example in mission 1 you could defeat Fear (the librarian); in mission 2, the librarian returns but is now named Courage. (You can change the name while still using the same model, so shouldn't require much more space). In mission 2 you defeat Vanity (the Roman girl), then she returns in mission 3 as your ally, now named Self Confidence. In mission 3 you defeat Secret Shame, and she could return in mission 4 named Self Image. Something like that.

Second part of briefing: "curiousity" should be "curiosity". "Would you like fries with that hamburger?" seems a poor choice for a post-hypnotic trigger phrase since someone could easily say that to the character at Up-and-Away Burger and accidentally trigger the hypnotic suggestion. Should use a more nonsensical phrase that no one is likely to say.

In the mission: gah, Sappers! There's sappers in my dream!

I destroy an object called "The Trip to the Emergency Room" .. not sure what destroying this represents; destroying a memory doesn't seem correct symbolism. Also clicked a "Your Toy Box" glowy. Neither one gave me a clue; possibly both of them should give me something, for the sake of color, even if it is not specifically plot relevant.

Lots more interesting objects representing petty annoyances that maybe festered into seething rage. I especially like "That One Parking Ticket!" Consider giving the mobs guarding these destructible objects dialog that is relevant to the particular psychological problem they are guarding; the guys guarding the parking meter would say something about how public parking bothers you now, or the guys guarding the Crate of Bad Memories could hint at the bad memories you've suppressed, the guys guarding "Your first car accident" could bemoan the damage to your car, stuff like that.

[NPC] Air Thorn Caster: Well, it is certain a nightmare for me..

"certain" should be "certainly"

Found a Happy Memory glowy, which I clicked; should maybe give a clue, too.

Met some CoT and Crey in a faction called "Random Encounters"; probably should have a better group name.

I found "Your First Car Accident" and thought it was a little weird that I should destroy the car, when the info is "You loved that car". It seems like damaging the car until it explodes would actually be damaging to my psyche, if I really loved it that much.

"That one summer" maybe should have a clue. "Vegetables for dinner" is funny, also.

I kinda think I should be destroying all the destructible objects in this mission, but they aren't a required objective, and actually trigger ambushes. So I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea to be doing these side objectives. But they're too interesting not to do, so I end up fighting the ambushes.

"Your old bookself..." should be "Your old bookshelf". Should give a clue.

Found "The Door" and beat him up. From looking at him and his description, I have no idea what he's supposed to symbolize; certainly he is the "final obstacle" but what does he represent? Based on his dialog...maybe "Doubt"?

I kind of think that all of the Door's dialog should be this negative, self-hating stuff that he currently says -- except his final defeat message, which should become a message of hope. Since you've defeated Doubt, unlocked the Door, etc.

Debriefing: "to point a few little things" ... should be "to point out a few little things".

The contact does explain some of the symbolism of the Door, but I still think it would make more sense for the final boss to represent some particular concept, like Doubt.

"aspects of you mind" should be "aspects of your mind".

"recurrance" should be "recurrence" .. or maybe "reoccurence".

Overall
A very interesting concept for an arc. I like the idea presented here, of mentally overcoming certain obstacles and turning them into strengths.

I like the symbolism presented - however, I think there should be even more symbolism, since every mission is really just a dream sequence, everything should mean something. I love the little non-required side objectives (non-required glowies, hostages and destructible objects) and I think some or all of them should be given clues for the player to read in their clue journal. The ones that have mobs guarding them should have dialog talking about the memory or the concept they are guarding. I also think the maps should have some symbolism; I'm quite puzzled as to why the hospital map, the burning office and Dr. Vahzilok's lair were chosen. They should mean something. I'm sure you must have some reason for choosing these maps, but it wasn't quite apparent to me; perhaps their symbolism should be made more clear. I got pretty obsessed with dream interpretation and wondering what everything in this arc "meant" (like what's up with the bunnymen and the clown people?) and would really like if the symbolism of these elements were made more clear to the player. (Or if they really don't have symbolism and are just meant to be weird, if they could be made to represent some part of the player's psyche.)

I thought it was quite a neat arc overall; but I think there's several things that could be added to deepen the symbolism and make the dream sequence even more immersive. I gave it 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874
@Mr. Joe Black - A Ghost Story 101857

The Lost Choir: Chapter Three: Apocrypha review (arc id 141011)

Part 3 of the 3-arc Lost Choir epic. Premise is battling an interdimensional horror who has a pantheon of rogue angels serving him. Level range is 41-54 blue side. I played a 34 broadsword/invuln scrapper mostly for thematic reasons.

The contact is now Thellos, the Rikti deity who was freed in Part 2; a good change.

Mission 1 (the only mission)
Briefing: The dark blue font is actually quite hard to read against the aqua-green colors of the AE building.

This briefing would be rather confusing to anyone who hasn't played Part 2; maybe unavoidable, but just saying.

The "dipping a sponge into water, but instead of expanding, it contracted" analogy completely boggles me; is it meant to be a sort of koan? In any case it seems there is an "aspect" of Xhantranos coalescing that must be defeated. But I defeated "Mind of Xhantranos" in part 2; how is this different? If this aspect of Xhantranos is just a "tendril of its form" extended into our universe and given substance, I am not sure defeating it will necessarily accomplish the stated goal, "put an end to the menace of Xhantranos once and for all".

Also "insticts" should be "instincts".

A bunch of dialog goes off just as I enter the mission. One of these is:

[NPC] Thellos-Ra: - $name! Help me dispatch these wretches! -

...but I'm not close enough to Thellos-Ra for her to actually use my proper name.

I can see why Thellos would want to link up in the mission, but I'm not as sure why I need to find Sergeant Joan, Sergeant Luther or Sadu'sii; they perhaps should be mentioned in the mission briefing.

There's a bunch of "Xhantranic Reflections" that appear to be repurposed Shadow Shard Reflections; I'm not quite sure I buy them as minions of the cosmic horror Xhantranos. It's sort of weird to see Council and Crey working in this capacity.

[NPC] Vanguard Ranger: Switch to etherial rounds! Fire at will!

I think "etherial" should be "ethereal". I do like the effect of the Choir vs Reflections and Vanguard vs Reflections battles.

[NPC] Guardian: Thellos: arrives! Make: way!

... does not sound quite right. Maybe "Thellos: Arrival imminent. All: Make way."

I found and rescued Thellos-Ra; curiously, she is only a Lieutenant this time (she was much higher rank in part 2). Maybe this is OK, though; having an EB ally was excessive.

[NPC] Sergeant Joan: Thanks Kyrie Eleison. Ill buy you a beer when this is all said and done.

"Ill" should be "I'll".

Found Xhantranos Unbound, who was an EB to me. He immediately 1-shotted me with some kind of huge energy melee attack. Yikes.

Loading up on purple inspirations, I went back and gave Xhantranos another try, this time soft capping my defense with purples before engaging. This seemed to go better (though he clipped me with another energy transfer at some point that dropped me to 10%) and I got him pretty low on life, but 3 ambushes spawned. They had dialog like this:

[NPC] Xhantranos Unbound: &lt;Hrrrrrrrgh!&gt;
[NPC] Anger of Xhantranos: SREEEEE!!!
[NPC] Xhantranos Unbound: &lt;KREEEEEE!!!!!!!&gt;
[NPC] Rage of Xhantranos: URAAAAAAAAH!!!!
[NPC] Xhantranos Unbound: &lt;RAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!&gt;
[NPC] Hatred of Xhantranos: RAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!

Shouldn't they all have dialog in &lt; &gt; brackets?

The 3 ambushes had some good looking custom mobs, but also had a lot of electric blast that sapped my END to 0, causing my toggles to drop. I tried flying up in the air since I could see the boss could fly, hoping to leave the ambushes behind, but at least some of them could fly, too. The boss + ambushes ended up killing me when I had the boss down to around 10% and was out of inspirations. My allies got killed somewhere in the shuffle.

On my third try I saw Xhantranos seemed to be with some custom minions; several of them had stacking Dispersion Fields up. When I attacked Xhantranos, something immediately hit me with a Blizzard or Ice Storm that reduced my recharge a lot. I managed to pull Xhantranos away from all these horrible minions, but by that point I had bled out so much that I couldn't beat him, so I ended up zoning out and restocking on inspirations.

Fourth try I pulled Xhantranos away from the other mobs and was soloing him, but he hit me with Total Focus, then Energy Transfer, which killed me through my capped DEF due to chomping 3 purple inspirations.

On my fifth try I again pulled Xhantranos away from the other minions and finally managed to defeat him after eating 3 purples, then when those ran out, eating another 3 purples; using Dull Pain and 5 greens to counteract the lucky hits he got through. Whew! At that point the mission completed, though I hadn't yet found Sadu'sii or Sergeant Luther yet, but that's probably okay.

"You have defeated Xhantranos. Existance is saved."

"Existance" should be "Existence" here, or maybe "All of existence".

Debriefing: A nice wrap-up from Thellos. "Existance" should be "Existence".

This was the only mission in this story arc.

Overall
This mission was a nice finish to the multi-arc story as a whole. However, I didn't think Part 3 really works as a component chapter of the story. It's basically a single mission which is the final boss fight for the whole epic, so really has little story to speak of, aside from that fight. With the pacing of the story, however, I don't think there is enough story to insert into Part 3 to give it a similar amount of material as the first two parts. It really feels like this should be the last mission of Part 2, and not separated out into a Part 3. Part 2 also ends in a battle with an Aspect of Xhantranos; I wonder if you could make that into the real finale of the epic instead? The "Mind of Xhantranos" was somewhat more interesting than "Xhantranos Unbound" due to the "Mind" having some actual dialog, while Xhantranos Unbound, as written, is a mindless entity.

I did like the various battles between factions you met during the first two chapters against the Xhantranos reflections. I kind of thought the Xhantranos reflections were pulled out of nowhere, though, since they never appeared in parts 1 or 2, despite Xhantranos being heavily present in those parts.

The Wrath of Xhantranos and Hatred of Xantranos etc. mobs were pretty cool as ambushes and I can see why they wouldn't appear until you actually fight an aspect of Xhantranos; I kinda wonder why they wouldn't appear when fighting Mind of Xhantranos in arc 2? (Space limitations, I assume; but it would be logical for them to show up there.)

The actual boss fight was very hard; an energy melee EB is a rough customer. I think this is justified by him being the final boss of an epic arc, and admittedly I am playing a character that is low for the stated level range. However, I do think some of the ambushes should be tuned down a bit, though -- having a bunch of enemies suddenly show up mid-fight with force fields (+DEF for the EB), ice storms (-RCHG for the player) and electric blast (END drain for the player) is pretty killer. I did end up eventually beating the boss, but I went to more effort than I expect most people will. I suggest you do some more playtesting of this final encounter to make sure it is reasonably fair.

Mainly, though, I think this mission feels like it should really be the finale for the previous chapter; it doesn't quite have enough story to be its own chapter.

With all that in mind, I gave this part 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

Arachnos Research and Development: A Security Breach, by @Master Zaprobo (arc 28817)

Premise appears to be helping Dr Aeon and Arachnos R&amp;D with security problems. Level range is 15-54 red side. I played a 28 SS/will brute. Contact is a custom mad scientisty looking guy who happens to be named Master Zaprobo.

Mission 1
Briefing: All the text is completely garbled, intentionally to represent a hard to understand transmission. I can puzzle out a lot of the words, but it's actually quite annoying and I have no idea why I should be helping this guy.

Inside the mission, I now find I am on a mission called "Teleport Override: AE Firewall Bunker #3" but have no idea why. I'm also supposed to disable a firewall and Defeat All. Getting further in, I see the mission is full of rogue Arachnos. I think the briefing wanted me to "rmovee any sutciery datiel" which I interpret as removing a security detail, but why it's Rogue Arachnos, I have no idea.

I begin defeating the Rogue Arachnos, then I click the glowy and disable the firewall, and then I ultimately defeat them all. I've now finished the first mission and have not received any clues, and no dialog was uttered by anything in the mission, so I'm still quite clueless as to what is going on.

Debriefing: OK, so now the mad scientist is able to ungarble his transmission because the firewall is down. And now he has a "backdoor" into the AE system. Great, I guess. Last sentence is missing a period after the player's name.

This first mission has been extremely annoying and I am tempted to quit the arc right here, but I push on.

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, now the contact actually introduces himself and offers me a job, without telling me anything about it whatosever.

Second part of briefing: After I accept the mission, he tells me the particulars, which is to go extract one of his scientists from one of his bases.

There's a mix of Arachnos and some good looking mad scientist custom mobs in the mission; but in the very back there are some Longbow surrounding Dr. Brubaker, the guy I'm supposed to extract. I am not sure it makes sense for this small group of Longbow to have made it past an entire mission full of Arachnos in order to be here.

[NPC] Longbow Eagle: Do not interfere citizen, we're not here for you today
[NPC] Dr. Brubaker: Y-you must believe, I'd never betray Arachnos

Both the above lines of dialog should end in a period.

I also got a "Suspicious Computer" clue from a non-required glowy; in it, "was instead some form of scrolling machine code" doesn't quite make sense. Maybe you mean "was instead scrolling some kind of machine code."

The mission exit popup should also have a period at the end.

Mission 3
Briefing: This keeps refering to "basecode" for an AI, but I think you may mean "source code"; unless perhaps "basecode" means something like that in Europe. Anyway, I'm sent to deal with Longbow stealing the "basecode" of the AI.

[NPC] Longbow Minigun: TFL Papa says to keep that EMP Glove trained on her - or we'll all be trouble

dialog should end in "we'll all be in trouble" and a period.

[NPC] Dr Darkespark: YES! Come on Mega - about time you got here

should have a period at the end.

Dr Darkespark is an ally who is an EB mastermind. I'm on the minimum difficulty, so she's probably really an AV ally; this seems too powerful for an ally.

The EB and I end up clearing the base and getting the glowy back. I guess we don't think Longbow has any backups of this valuable data.

Mission 4
Briefing: Dr Darkespark takes a helicopter out of the last mission and crashes into a robot making factory in this one. It's the contact's robot factory but now the contact wants me to destroy all his robots.

The mission turns out to be a Defeat All with a 30 minute time limit, but it is quite late and so I decide to log and let it time out to see what happens.

The next morning I log in and the contact yells at me some, and the arc ends.

Overall
I like the mad science theme of the contact and the ARAD mobs, who look pretty good. I'm afraid I really don't like the "hook" for the story arc, though; it seemed like I did the first mission for no reason, then the rest of the arc treated me as the contact's incompetent lackey. For the most part, I am sent on missions to clean up after or kill the contact's other incompetent lackeys; this concept didn't really grab me. Having two Defeat All missions was excessive, I thought (admittedly I opted out of the second by letting it time out).

I kinda want to give this arc around 2.5 stars, but ended up settling on 2.