PoliceWoman

It sounds like you have a very clear vision of how you want your story arc to work. I felt like this vision needed to be more effectively communicated to the player, but as you said, opinions differ.

Thanks for the discussion, and best of luck!

[ QUOTE ]
#67335: Teen Phalanx Forever.

I hate to admit it (and I apologize for any hurt feelings), but for such a well put together arc, I was rather bored – at least until the 3rd mission.
...
The first two missions were on somewhat long maps that I have done many times before – and are fairly close to simply being replicas of canon missions, with the TFP inserted in. On one level, it works well – since it gives the impression that I’m helping the Teen Phalanx (for example) in *their* run to stop the Vahzilok wasting disease (Dr. Vahzilok even had mostly the same dialog) – but the problem is I’ve stopped the Vahzilok disease so many times before that (one) I’m rather bored of it, and (two) it does kind of break immersion (if “real Pro Payne” actually stopped the Vahzilok plague some time back, shouldn’t Kid Pro Payne and the TFP be stopping an all new plot?). I *may* have missed something, but I think actually adding some clues and changing some text to “flesh out” the tail-end of an all-new Vahzilok plot would be really neat (or even somehow have the Teen Phalanx members relate the stages of the “story arc” they were on prior to you getting there to help with their final battle with Dr. Vahzilok).
...
The clockwork mission was a variation from the finale mission in Synapse’s TF, which was good! But, again, I almost wanted more background story in here, to create the feel that I was part of foiling more of a plot than “kidnap Penelope to make her the clockwork princess” – although, on a sinister note, perhaps some “gear” that suggests the King intended to remove her brain and implant it in a clockwork body. Admittedly, that may be a bit too dark for this arc, though (and really isn’t very “canon”).
...
Basically, missions one and two just didn’t capture my attention as much as I wanted them to
....
My honest opinion: with a bit of “sprucing up” of the first two missions, I’d certainly have been willing to rate this arc a solid 5 stars.

[/ QUOTE ]


I just wanted to say that your review of my arc was very influential on me. With your comments in mind, I've done an extensive revamp of the first two missions of Teen Phalanx Forever! I have given both Dr. Vahzilok and the Clockwork King their own evil plots, which should be nothing like any of the canonical Vahz and Clock arcs; along with supporting dialog, clues and some custom models for eye candy. I'm actually quite pleased with the result.

If you are interested in doing so, I'd invite you to give it another try. I'll understand if you'd rather not, though (I'm sure you've leveled past the range for the first two missions and maybe are looking for new material anyway).

Regardless, thanks much for your thoughtful and constructive feedback, which I feel has helped me improve my story arc considerably. Thanks again!

[ QUOTE ]
I am a little saddened that you missed so many details, though - like the other parts of Rollister's dialogue. Those are the main clue to start the main plot off, so if you don't read them...yeah, you're not going to have any clue what's going on. And since you missed so many of these clues throughout the arc, I can't say I'm surprised that you felt the missions were random.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am reasonably certain Rollister never mentioned a Dark Dragon within the hearing of my character. I do remember he had some exasperated comment about how they had summoned a bunch of random people from a rock concert though. I'll concede that it is possible that I missed something Rollister said. However, if this is, in fact, the "main clue to start the main plot off", I strongly recommend that you award this as an actual Clue in the clue journal after Rollister's defeat. If you'd like to believe I was simply neglectful of your dialog, that's cool, but bear in mind that if a team does this story arc, it's quite possible the first player to arrive at Rollister will see the dialog and the player bringing up the rear of the team will never see it, and will end up missing a part of your story. If it's important to your plot, add it as a clue.

[ QUOTE ]
I know most other people go for verbal, which makes it the 'accepted standard', but Pik's red, so you likely got my take on using standards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, certainly you should adhere to your artistic vision. But I do think sticking with the genre conventions will make it easier for you to communicate the story to the people playing through your story, so bear in mind that violating the "accepted standard" may generate confusion in your audience.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, I don't really know of any other place the CoT has enough magic gathered in one place to cover up their archdemon summoning, so very much I think it's a 'good reason' to go there, which is the reason stated in the briefing. If you know of another such place though, do please inform me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just as a point of fact, the Envoy of Shadows, who I'd argue is the main demon prince the CoT are summoning in the canonical story arcs, does not get summoned at the Thorn Tree. Nor do Baphomet or ARCH-A.

I don't have a problem with your using this map, though; I just feel the player's motivation for going to this particular location needs to be stronger.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Space Pirates apparently hired by the Dark Dragon. I...don't understand why there are Space Pirates here. ... even the contact thinks that Space Pirates are a ludicrous story element.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I hung a lampshade. I like lampshades.

[/ QUOTE ]

It sounds like your intention is that the Space Pirates should be a joke, but if that's the case, I think you need to work on the delivery. Perhaps you could change the Space Pirates' dialog from their current gibberish to some sort of cynical nod towards the ridiculousness of this plot. Have them say something like, "Hey, it's pretty crazy that we're working for this Dragon, but the Space Pirate business has been slow ever since the Rikti built that hyperspace bypass, and the Dark Dragon's coin looked pretty good." It would still be a pretty silly story element, but at least that way the player would get to share the joke.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Inside the safe I find "Arachnos Base Blueprints". In this clue, it says "These are blueprints of a submarine dock....From its location, a skilled navigator could reach any point in the city undetected". I think you are saying that from this base, you can pilot a submarine to, say, Steel Canyon. Is this what you really mean?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes. It's also an easter egg.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying. To clarify, I don't think you could navigate a submarine to the inland parts of Paragon City, which is what your clue is implying. I think it would make more sense and still have the meaning you intend if you said it connected to the extensive sewer system, which would allow villains to rapidly infiltrate any neighborhood of the city.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
why do I have to fight Scirocco, when it seems like we both have a common enemy in the Dark Dragon? Does not really make sense.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wanna know something funny? I had that for a while. People complained that it was out-of-character for their heroes to work with someone like Scirocco (criminal, villain, Arachnos top-tier, etc.) on an arc labeled as heroic. So nowadays, his objective is to kill all intruders in the base, which includes you - and yes, he will attack the Malta as well.

I do have a question here, however: what gave you the idea that he knows about the dragon? I don't recall presenting the Malta attack as anything but a Malta attack from his point of view.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hear you on the "damned if you do/damned if you don't" of some people thinking it's dumb to work with Scirocco and other people thinking it's dumb to fight with Scirocco. Unfortunately, this mission seems problematic either way.

You are perhaps correct that Scirocco wouldn't necessarily know about the Dark Dragon, might not realize the significance of the Space Pirates in his base, and might choose to attack the player even if the player has been fighting the Malta invading his base. However, as the player, I shouldn't need to defeat Scirocco as he isn't relevant to the Dark Dragon investigation. Perhaps you could make Scirocco an optional objective? It seems like eluding Scirocco and chasing after the escaped Dark Dragon would be a reasonable course of action.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
how is it that we have had no clue of where the Dark Dragon is, but random Longbow are able to find him?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll think about it. The idea is that Longbow is an organization with a ton of manpower and resources at its disposal, whereas you're just one person (of a few, if you're on a team) - so now that Peter called them, they help by providing intel

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry, but based on this reasoning, Peter should've called Longbow in the first place; the player was not necessary to the story at all. This may have some real world logic to it, but I feel that making the player irrelevant to the plot really hurts the story. I hope you will consider making the player more important to the plotline; the player should be the protagonist, after all!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I let 30 minutes elapse and talk to Peter again. The final debriefing is rather unsatisfying; he just says "It's done. The Dark Dragon is gone." It would've been nicer if we found out a little more about what the Dragon's motivation was and whether this was the right choice or not. As is, I didn't get much sense of closure.

[/ QUOTE ]
Um...you let the timer expire and expected to be just handed this information? No. For this, you have to fight the end boss. Seriously, you give me all this 'this doesn't make sense' here, and then you want Peter to magic up info out of nowhere? Granted, his is a shaman, but here I'm the one who says 'that makes no sense; how would he know?'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excuse me, but your story blurb specifically states "player chosen outcome", and letting the Dark Dragon go is portrayed as a valid choice. What you are saying here is that you don't get a real ending to the story if you take this choice. If you really want the player to get to "choose" what to do here, you should have a detailed ending of your story for both branches of the decision. If you prefer to give all the story in the "catch him" branch and put no story in the "let him go" branch, I think it would be more honest for the story to label the "catch him" branch as the correct decision and "let him go" as failure, instead of claiming that the player has a meaningful decision here.

I'm sorry to sound so adversarial here, but I do hope some of these suggestions help you out. Good luck!

Hunting the Dark Dragon review (arc id 2922, by DeviousMe)

Premise is that the CoT are summoning dragons to fight the superheroes. Level range is 40-50 hero side. The arc claims the player can choose the outcome, which sounded intriguing.

Played a 50 AR/dev blaster on Heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing: Peter Stemitz is the contact and I like how the briefing is trying to convey his personality (err, personalities). The verbiage is a little awkward though. Instead of "Perhaps you know me not. In such case, I should say I know you not; buzz off" maybe "Perhaps you don't know me. In that case, I oughta say I don't know YOU; buzz off!"

Accept prompt: usually this is written as if the player is saying it. So I suggest you change "Yes, you'll be that hero" to "Yes, I'll be that hero".

So I'm in Oranbega looking for dragons. The first "dragon" I find is a lizardman looking fellow in black clothes whose info says he's a drummer in a rock band. Pik's description says he's a water dragon, but he is a red dragon, which seems to violate the standard color coding for elemental dragons. Maybe he should be aqua blue, or be a fire dragon.

The CoT guarding Pik's dialog: "This thing's too shripmy to be a dragon". "shripmy" should be "shrimpy".

Got "A Drummer's Take" as a clue from rescuing Pik. This refers to "Lanerbalan" without explaining what Lanerbalan is; needs some explanation. I'm not sure I understand what "prefer more sociable forms - something he asked you guard as he went for help." I get that he's a humanoid dragon (sociable form) but not sure how I'm supposed to guard him; Pik actually took off after being rescued, so could not be escorted.

Found Officer Blake, another lizardman who is purportedly a dragon. This one is in a police uniform with a big flashlight. His info describes him as a Mirus dragon, but I have no idea what that is. Also mentions he is the brother of Lanerbalan's Prime Minister; I have no idea who that is, so this info is kind of confusing.

Rescuing him gave me the "Officer Blake's Briefing" clue, which purports that Blake is "filling in more details" but is actually completely confusing, referring to a tornado, a band, Rynn and Blake. My suspicion is that if I rescue the 4 dragons in the correct order, their clues make sense in sequence, but I must be rescuing the later dragons in the sequence so their clues seem meaningless to me.

I found and rescued Player, another dragon-man. This one is apparently the leader of this mysterious band. "Player" is a rather confusing name to give a non-player character, incidentally. For some reason Player spawned as an EB ally for me. Considering the police officer dragonman is only a lieutenant ally, this seems out of line for a musician. I'm guessing on higher difficulty he'd spawn as an AV ally, which I think would be far too strong a helper. As it is, the EB Player utterly crushed Rollister, the big bad guy of this mission, who spawned as a lieutenant for me.

I do like Rollister's dialog though. His exposition helps clear up what the heck is going on in this mission. Apparently the "dragons" were summoned here from an other-dimensional rock concert.

Surprisingly, after Rollister says "This is madness!", the NPC allies neglect to say, "No, this is Lanerbalan!" and kick him down a bottomless pit.

Found Rynn, the last dragon, after extensive searching; turns out she was perched on a little ledge above everything else.

Puzzlingly, after rescuing the dragons they give me a classic guitar and (apparently) dimensionally warp out of there. Why couldn't they have done that before I got there? Seems like a plot hole.

This is pretty weird so far, but I'm starting to get a Buckaroo Banzai sort of vibe from the story, what with the rock band and the funny looking people from the 8th dimension. Will see where this goes.

Debriefing: contact makes the right noises for a punk rock musician confronted with the reality of guitar-wielding dragon people. It's too bad guitar isn't a permissible "battle axe" customization. Stemitz does mention "This Dark Dragon sounds like trouble." Huh? No clue or dialog that I saw mentions any Dark Dragon. Appears to be a continuity error.

Mission 2
Briefing: Contact continues to think we are after someone called Dark Dragon. Since we have no info about Dark Dragon, he wants to send me to the villain respec for no really good reason other than it being a CoT hangout. This mission really needs a better lead-in.

Second part of briefing: there's a great disturbance in the Force between the first part of the briefing and the second part, and Stemitz suddenly can't sense the Thorn Tree any more, and suspects the Dark Dragon. Seems awfully coincidental timing, but okay. I might suggest you have the "Thorn Tree" vanish from magical radar before the mission briefing, and have that be the reason why Peter Stemitz thinks it's a good place for you to check out.

Entering the mission, I find that I'm in an Oranbega mission full of Malta; close to a nightmare scenario. With the objective of finding a "survivor", I end up finding a CoT prisoner who I free from the Malta; I then get ambushed by sappers who promptly drain all my END. I squeaked out a victory against the ambush in a tense fight.

I got a clue called "The Thorn's Story". Nitpick: I'm not sure calling a single CoT a "Thorn" is correct terminology. I've seen Thorn Wielders and Thorn Casters, and they have tools called thorns, but I can't recall ever seeing a CoT person actually called a Thorn. Consider calling him something else like "CoT survivor" or "Guide" (after the actual mob; I assume you pre-placed him and he wasn't random).

In "The Thorn's Story", "attepts" should be "attempts". I think it's weird that the CoT would summon Dark Dragon but be unable to control him; the CoT are constantly summoning demons and stuff, they should have a better handle on this sort of thing. Especially if the Dark Dragon is just another rock musician or something.

It's also rather weird that the Malta came in and "made a deal" with the Dark Dragon. It doesn't make sense to me that the CoT, who are expert at summoning demons and making deals with them, would be unable to work with Dark Dragon, yet the Malta, who aren't magical at all, should be able to come to an arrangement with Dark Dragon. Also this story seems to be missing an explanation of the C-4 and cordite smell in the mission entry popup, which I originally thought meant that the Malta had set explosives to blow up the CoT base.

You might consider (if you have space) inserting some of the villains whose respec got interrupted, as either captives of the Malta, or body bags. Just for flavor.

Found an optional Desk glowy that gave me the "Tome of Transit" clue, but this clue does not seem to give much information; in fact, 3 of its 4 sentences are devoted to telling me what the Tome doesn't say, which is an odd way to write a clue. Would be nicer if the clue said more about what the Tome actually does say. I definitely think this clue needs something more to it; right now it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

A little later I found another optional Desk glowy that also claims to have a copy of a book on summoning beings, but didn't give me a clue that time. I suspect there's multiple copies of this desk, all of which give only one clue; I think it'd be simpler if you just made one glowy for this, since the extras don't give any more info.

I beat Fiction Green Epsilon and got the clue "One Strange Dragon". In this clue, "According to the TacCom" should probably be more specifically "According to Fiction Green Epsilon". "While familiar with magic, he's no stranger to technology, his world advanced in both" doesn't quite scan; also, Paragon City is highly advanced in both magic and technology, and yet people still specialize. Maybe just "The dragon was familiar with both magic and technology."

Also, "For their aid, he 'paid' Malta the Thorn Tree." How exactly did the Malta aid the Dark Dragon? It's not stated here, and it's not clear how the Dragon can pay the Malta the Thorn Tree when pretty much the Malta could've just taken it once the Dragon left, anyway.

The C-4 and cordite smell was never explained, nor was the sudden disturbance in the Force that Peter Stemitz experienced. I conjecture that maybe the Malta used explosives on the Thorn Tree for reasons unknown; if this is the case, though, there should be more clues or dialog to this effect somewhere in this mission. As it stands now, I have no clue what the Malta were doing there.

Debriefing: the contact now says "He said the Dark Dragon called them?" but this is not stated anywhere in Fiction Green Epsilon's clue. Continuity error. I agree with the other questions Stemitz raises; why bring in Malta at all?

Mission 3
Briefing: I'm afraid I don't like this briefing at all. The contact expositions that the loss of the Thorn Tree has dealt the CoT a major setback, which has nothing to do with the current mission and is also probably false since the Thorn Tree is essentially destroyed every time a villain respec trial or a Statesman TF occurs, so how bad could it be? Second, he can't sense Dark Dragon by magic and this makes him paranoid. But wouldn't it be possible that he can't sense Dark Dragon because the Dark Dragon simply went back to his home dimension, which would be good?

Then he says he's going to call Crimson, which he totally could've done before this mission briefing, in order to make this briefing have some sort of actual content in it. So my mission accept message is essentially "wait while Peter's on the phone" and yet he's told me absolutely nothing about the mission at all.

Second part of briefing: OK, so now he explains the plan, which is to attack a random Malta base for no real reason except that we think Malta are involved. Well, that and Crimson thinks we should do it.

These seem like pretty weak reasons to go attack this base; I suggest you come up with a better rationale for why this mission is occurring and how it contributes to finding the Dark Dragon.

At this point in the story I must say that (a) why the Dark Dragon is bad has not been explained, and (b) the contact is sending me to attack random villain bases with no apparent justification other than wishful thinking. The fact that there actually IS information at each of these randomly selected bases feels rather implausible. I really recommend you come up with some sort of clues that the player can find in each mission that lead her to the next mission, rather than having the contact choose seemingly random targets for you to go after. This would give the player more of a feeling that they're on an investigation.

Inside the mission: for the sake of people who aren't familiar with this map (from the RSF or otherwise) you may want to put something in the mission briefing or mission objectives that they need to go through a door to get to an interior part of the base.

Found Sister Hecate, who has some fairly meta dialog wondering why she's just standing around guarding instead of patrolling. If she's the security chief, can't she choose to patrol instead of standing guard?

I got the "Security Code" clue from Sister Hecate. It's described as "You found this code in the satchel." What satchel? None was ever named. Suggest you change to "You found this code on Sister Hecate."

Deeper inside the base, the Malta and KoA give way to a custom faction of Space Pirates apparently hired by the Dark Dragon. I...don't understand why there are Space Pirates here. They haven't been previously mentioned in the story and this mission has no clues, dialog, or other information explaining why there would suddenly be Space Pirates present. The Space Pirates themselves have info stating that the Dark Dragon hired them, but this also seems somewhat unbelievable. They seem to be guarding the safe in the back; the keycode to this was presumably on the KoA boss, so shouldn't the safe be guarded by KoA and not Space Pirates? Anyway, this story element didn't make any sense to me.

Inside the safe I find "Arachnos Base Blueprints". In this clue, it says "These are blueprints of a submarine dock....From its location, a skilled navigator could reach any point in the city undetected". I think you are saying that from this base, you can pilot a submarine to, say, Steel Canyon. Is this what you really mean?

I'm kind of puzzled as to the relevance of this clue to the Dark Dragon main plotline. I'm hoping this will eventually all prove to be connected and explained somehow.

Debriefing: even the contact thinks that Space Pirates are a ludicrous story element.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact is baffled by the plot of this story arc and basically asks me what to do. (I am not kidding.)

Second part of briefing: we somehow decide that Dark Dragon clearly wants to conquer this submarine base from Arachnos, and we can't let that happen. Considering Arachnos is already the arch-enemy of Paragon City, I'm not sure why Dark Dragon controlling this base is any worse, though. And what would a dragon from another dimension want with a submarine base anyway? Seems implausible.

I like the Base Commander's dialog when I rescue him.

It seems like there were some Space Pirates guarding the Base Commander, but the rest of the mobs here are Malta. I kinda would expect the Malta to have some dialog wondering who the heck the Space Pirates are, and whether they could trust them.

I find a glowy that gives me the clue "Message from the Dark Dragon" that basically taunts me for rescuing him. I guess he was shapeshifted into the Base Commander? It was established that dragons can shapeshift in this arc; this is kind of annoying, though, because there is no way for the player to stop this. Also, now I have to kill Scirocco. But why do I have to fight Scirocco, when it seems like we both have a common enemy in the Dark Dragon? Does not really make sense.

Scirocco spawns as an EB for me, and he beats me up the first time with his tornados and electric powers, but on my second try I pop a lot of purple inspirations (he could debuff DEF so I used more than I normally would) and beat him.

Debriefing: contact says "We've been played". Grrr. Stemitz explains the brilliance of the Dark Dragon's master plan to wipe out all mages capable of summoning dragons to this dimension.

Mission 5
Briefing: contact now tells me that Longbow has tracked the Dark Dragon to a building in Faultline. But....Stemitz and I have been on the Dark Dragon case for 4 entire missions now, how is it that we have had no clue of where the Dark Dragon is, but random Longbow are able to find him? This doesn't make sense to me. I suggest you add some kind of clue to the previous mission that lets the player track down the Dark Dragon.

The promised "player decision" occurs here. Stemitz exposits that the Dark Dragon has promised to leave in 30 minutes (I think?) but he's broken our laws, so maybe we should beat him up, too. But I need to decide whether to win the mission and catch the Dark Dragon, or not.

Since so far the Dark Dragon has only attacked CoT and Arachnos, I actually am not sure which "laws" the Dark Dragon has broken. I'm also somewhat annoyed by the plot forcing me into making bad decisions in previous missions. I decide to let the timer run out and see what happens.

I let 30 minutes elapse and talk to Peter again. The final debriefing is rather unsatisfying; he just says "It's done. The Dark Dragon is gone." It would've been nicer if we found out a little more about what the Dragon's motivation was and whether this was the right choice or not. As is, I didn't get much sense of closure.

Overall
I felt like this story really didn't make sense as presented. There does not seem to be a logical progression from one mission to the next. Currently, each mission has the contact send me to a seemingly random location, hoping something of interest is there. I think the story would be significantly strengthened if each mission naturally followed as a result of clues found in the previous mission.

There are also a lot of dangling plot elements that are introduced, but nothing is ever done with them, so they end up being purely a distraction. Why is it significant that the dragons are in a rock band? What purpose do the Space Pirates serve in the story that the Malta and KoA weren't already handling? Why on earth do we think Dark Dragon would care about a secret submarine base? I mean, if I could use the guitar the musicians gave me to prove to the Dark Dragon that we're nice people and he should stop messing with us, that would be great. As it is, the dragons being in a rock band and space pirates guarding the secret blueprints are just bizarre and distracting. I think you should either add some reason these bizarre elements are present (perhaps as a recurring motif or an important later plot element) or else cut some of them to keep the story more focused.

It's also annoying that the plot mandates that the player and the NPCs make unreasonably bad decisions at certain points, in order to make Dark Dragon's master plan really work. (One specific example is the scripted fight with Scirocco, when both parties should really know better.) This makes the story feel more forced. I'd suggest you try and rewrite Dark Dragon's master plan in such a way that this isn't required.

With the problems I had with the story, I could only give this arc 2 stars. Hope you think that is fair.

Hunting the Dark Dragon review (arc id 2922)

Premise is that the CoT are summoning dragons to fight the superheroes. Level range is 40-50 hero side. The arc claims the player can choose the outcome, which sounded intriguing.

Played a 50 AR/dev blaster on Heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing: Peter Stemitz is the contact and I like how the briefing is trying to convey his personality (err, personalities). The verbiage is a little awkward though. Instead of "Perhaps you know me not. In such case, I should say I know you not; buzz off" maybe "Perhaps you don't know me. In that case, I oughta say I don't know YOU; buzz off!"

Accept prompt: usually this is written as if the player is saying it. So I suggest you change "Yes, you'll be that hero" to "Yes, I'll be that hero".

So I'm in Oranbega looking for dragons. The first "dragon" I find is a lizardman looking fellow in black clothes whose info says he's a drummer in a rock band. Pik's description says he's a water dragon, but he is a red dragon, which seems to violate the standard color coding for elemental dragons. Maybe he should be aqua blue, or be a fire dragon.

The CoT guarding Pik's dialog: "This thing's too shripmy to be a dragon". "shripmy" should be "shrimpy".

Got "A Drummer's Take" as a clue from rescuing Pik. This refers to "Lanerbalan" without explaining what Lanerbalan is; needs some explanation. I'm not sure I understand what "prefer more sociable forms - something he asked you guard as he went for help." I get that he's a humanoid dragon (sociable form) but not sure how I'm supposed to guard him; Pik actually took off after being rescued, so could not be escorted.

Found Officer Blake, another lizardman who is purportedly a dragon. This one is in a police uniform with a big flashlight. His info describes him as a Mirus dragon, but I have no idea what that is. Also mentions he is the brother of Lanerbalan's Prime Minister; I have no idea who that is, so this info is kind of confusing.

Rescuing him gave me the "Officer Blake's Briefing" clue, which purports that Blake is "filling in more details" but is actually completely confusing, referring to a tornado, a band, Rynn and Blake. My suspicion is that if I rescue the 4 dragons in the correct order, their clues make sense in sequence, but I must be rescuing the later dragons in the sequence so their clues seem meaningless to me.

I found and rescued Player, another dragon-man. This one is apparently the leader of this mysterious band. "Player" is a rather confusing name to give a non-player character, incidentally. For some reason Player spawned as an EB ally for me. Considering the police officer dragonman is only a lieutenant ally, this seems out of line for a musician. I'm guessing on higher difficulty he'd spawn as an AV ally, which I think would be far too strong a helper. As it is, the EB Player utterly crushed Rollister, the big bad guy of this mission, who spawned as a lieutenant for me.

I do like Rollister's dialog though. His exposition helps clear up what the heck is going on in this mission. Apparently the "dragons" were summoned here from an other-dimensional rock concert.

Surprisingly, after Rollister says "This is madness!", the NPC allies neglect to say, "No, this is Lanerbalan!" and kick him down a bottomless pit.

Found Rynn, the last dragon, after extensive searching; turns out she was perched on a little ledge above everything else.

Puzzlingly, after rescuing the dragons they give me a classic guitar and (apparently) dimensionally warp out of there. Why couldn't they have done that before I got there? Seems like a plot hole.

This is pretty weird so far, but I'm starting to get a Buckaroo Banzai sort of vibe from the story, what with the rock band and the funny looking people from the 8th dimension. Will see where this goes.

Debriefing: contact makes the right noises for a punk rock musician confronted with the reality of guitar-wielding dragon people. It's too bad guitar isn't a permissible "battle axe" customization. Stemitz does mention "This Dark Dragon sounds like trouble." Huh? No clue or dialog that I saw mentions any Dark Dragon. Appears to be a continuity error.

Mission 2
Briefing: Contact continues to think we are after someone called Dark Dragon. Since we have no info about Dark Dragon, he wants to send me to the villain respec for no really good reason other than it being a CoT hangout. This mission really needs a better lead-in.

Second part of briefing: there's a great disturbance in the Force between the first part of the briefing and the second part, and Stemitz suddenly can't sense the Thorn Tree any more, and suspects the Dark Dragon. Seems awfully coincidental timing, but okay. I might suggest you have the "Thorn Tree" vanish from magical radar before the mission briefing, and have that be the reason why Peter Stemitz thinks it's a good place for you to check out.

Entering the mission, I find that I'm in an Oranbega mission full of Malta; close to a nightmare scenario. With the objective of finding a "survivor", I end up finding a CoT prisoner who I free from the Malta; I then get ambushed by sappers who promptly drain all my END. I squeaked out a victory against the ambush in a tense fight.

I got a clue called "The Thorn's Story". Nitpick: I'm not sure calling a single CoT a "Thorn" is correct terminology. I've seen Thorn Wielders and Thorn Casters, and they have tools called thorns, but I can't recall ever seeing a CoT person actually called a Thorn. Consider calling him something else like "CoT survivor" or "Guide" (after the actual mob; I assume you pre-placed him and he wasn't random).

In "The Thorn's Story", "attepts" should be "attempts". I think it's weird that the CoT would summon Dark Dragon but be unable to control him; the CoT are constantly summoning demons and stuff, they should have a better handle on this sort of thing. Especially if the Dark Dragon is just another rock musician or something.

It's also rather weird that the Malta came in and "made a deal" with the Dark Dragon. It doesn't make sense to me that the CoT, who are expert at summoning demons and making deals with them, would be unable to work with Dark Dragon, yet the Malta, who aren't magical at all, should be able to come to an arrangement with Dark Dragon. Also this story seems to be missing an explanation of the C-4 and cordite smell in the mission entry popup, which I originally thought meant that the Malta had set explosives to blow up the CoT base.

You might consider (if you have space) inserting some of the villains whose respec got interrupted, as either captives of the Malta, or body bags. Just for flavor.

Found an optional Desk glowy that gave me the "Tome of Transit" clue, but this clue does not seem to give much information; in fact, 3 of its 4 sentences are devoted to telling me what the Tome doesn't say, which is an odd way to write a clue. Would be nicer if the clue said more about what the Tome actually does say. I definitely think this clue needs something more to it; right now it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

A little later I found another optional Desk glowy that also claims to have a copy of a book on summoning beings, but didn't give me a clue that time. I suspect there's multiple copies of this desk, all of which give only one clue; I think it'd be simpler if you just made one glowy for this, since the extras don't give any more info.

I beat Fiction Green Epsilon and got the clue "One Strange Dragon". In this clue, "According to the TacCom" should probably be more specifically "According to Fiction Green Epsilon". "While familiar with magic, he's no stranger to technology, his world advanced in both" doesn't quite scan; also, Paragon City is highly advanced in both magic and technology, and yet people still specialize. Maybe just "The dragon was familiar with both magic and technology."

Also, "For their aid, he 'paid' Malta the Thorn Tree." How exactly did the Malta aid the Dark Dragon? It's not stated here, and it's not clear how the Dragon can pay the Malta the Thorn Tree when pretty much the Malta could've just taken it once the Dragon left, anyway.

The C-4 and cordite smell was never explained, nor was the sudden disturbance in the Force that Peter Stemitz experienced. I conjecture that maybe the Malta used explosives on the Thorn Tree for reasons unknown; if this is the case, though, there should be more clues or dialog to this effect somewhere in this mission. As it stands now, I have no clue what the Malta were doing there.

Debriefing: the contact now says "He said the Dark Dragon called them?" but this is not stated anywhere in Fiction Green Epsilon's clue. Continuity error. I agree with the other questions Stemitz raises; why bring in Malta at all?

Mission 3
Briefing: I'm afraid I don't like this briefing at all. The contact expositions that the loss of the Thorn Tree has dealt the CoT a major setback, which has nothing to do with the current mission and is also probably false since the Thorn Tree is essentially destroyed every time a villain respec trial or a Statesman TF occurs, so how bad could it be? Second, he can't sense Dark Dragon by magic and this makes him paranoid. But wouldn't it be possible that he can't sense Dark Dragon because the Dark Dragon simply went back to his home dimension, which would be good?

Then he says he's going to call Crimson, which he totally could've done before this mission briefing, in order to make this briefing have some sort of actual content in it. So my mission accept message is essentially "wait while Peter's on the phone" and yet he's told me absolutely nothing about the mission at all.

Second part of briefing: OK, so now he explains the plan, which is to attack a random Malta base for no real reason except that we think Malta are involved. Well, that and Crimson thinks we should do it.

These seem like pretty weak reasons to go attack this base; I suggest you come up with a better rationale for why this mission is occurring and how it contributes to finding the Dark Dragon.

At this point in the story I must say that (a) why the Dark Dragon is bad has not been explained, and (b) the contact is sending me to attack random villain bases with no apparent justification other than wishful thinking. The fact that there actually IS information at each of these randomly selected bases feels rather implausible. I really recommend you come up with some sort of clues that the player can find in each mission that lead her to the next mission, rather than having the contact choose seemingly random targets for you to go after. This would give the player more of a feeling that they're on an investigation.

Inside the mission: for the sake of people who aren't familiar with this map (from the RSF or otherwise) you may want to put something in the mission briefing or mission objectives that they need to go through a door to get to an interior part of the base.

Found Sister Hecate, who has some fairly meta dialog wondering why she's just standing around guarding instead of patrolling. If she's the security chief, can't she choose to patrol instead of standing guard?

I got the "Security Code" clue from Sister Hecate. It's described as "You found this code in the satchel." What satchel? None was ever named. Suggest you change to "You found this code on Sister Hecate."

Deeper inside the base, the Malta and KoA give way to a custom faction of Space Pirates apparently hired by the Dark Dragon. I...don't understand why there are Space Pirates here. They haven't been previously mentioned in the story and this mission has no clues, dialog, or other information explaining why there would suddenly be Space Pirates present. The Space Pirates themselves have info stating that the Dark Dragon hired them, but this also seems somewhat unbelievable. They seem to be guarding the safe in the back; the keycode to this was presumably on the KoA boss, so shouldn't the safe be guarded by KoA and not Space Pirates? Anyway, this story element didn't make any sense to me.

Inside the safe I find "Arachnos Base Blueprints". In this clue, it says "These are blueprints of a submarine dock....From its location, a skilled navigator could reach any point in the city undetected". I think you are saying that from this base, you can pilot a submarine to, say, Steel Canyon. Is this what you really mean?

I'm kind of puzzled as to the relevance of this clue to the Dark Dragon main plotline. I'm hoping this will eventually all prove to be connected and explained somehow.

Debriefing: even the contact thinks that Space Pirates are a ludicrous story element.

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact is baffled by the plot of this story arc and basically asks me what to do. (I am not kidding.)

Second part of briefing: we somehow decide that Dark Dragon clearly wants to conquer this submarine base from Arachnos, and we can't let that happen. Considering Arachnos is already the arch-enemy of Paragon City, I'm not sure why Dark Dragon controlling this base is any worse, though. And what would a dragon from another dimension want with a submarine base anyway? Seems implausible.

I like the Base Commander's dialog when I rescue him.

It seems like there were some Space Pirates guarding the Base Commander, but the rest of the mobs here are Malta. I kinda would expect the Malta to have some dialog wondering who the heck the Space Pirates are, and whether they could trust them.

I find a glowy that gives me the clue "Message from the Dark Dragon" that basically taunts me for rescuing him. I guess he was shapeshifted into the Base Commander? It was established that dragons can shapeshift in this arc; this is kind of annoying, though, because there is no way for the player to stop this. Also, now I have to kill Scirocco. But why do I have to fight Scirocco, when it seems like we both have a common enemy in the Dark Dragon? Does not really make sense.

Scirocco spawns as an EB for me, and he beats me up the first time with his tornados and electric powers, but on my second try I pop a lot of purple inspirations (he could debuff DEF so I used more than I normally would) and beat him.

Debriefing: contact says "We've been played". Grrr. Stemitz explains the brilliance of the Dark Dragon's master plan to wipe out all mages capable of summoning dragons to this dimension.

Mission 5
Briefing: contact now tells me that Longbow has tracked the Dark Dragon to a building in Faultline. But....Stemitz and I have been on the Dark Dragon case for 4 entire missions now, how is it that we have had no clue of where the Dark Dragon is, but random Longbow are able to find him? This doesn't make sense to me. I suggest you add some kind of clue to the previous mission that lets the player track down the Dark Dragon.

The promised "player decision" occurs here. Stemitz exposits that the Dark Dragon has promised to leave in 30 minutes (I think?) but he's broken our laws, so maybe we should beat him up, too. But I need to decide whether to win the mission and catch the Dark Dragon, or not.

Since so far the Dark Dragon has only attacked CoT and Arachnos, I actually am not sure which "laws" the Dark Dragon has broken. I'm also somewhat annoyed by the plot forcing me into making bad decisions in previous missions. I decide to let the timer run out and see what happens.

I let 30 minutes elapse and talk to Peter again. The final debriefing is rather unsatisfying; he just says "It's done. The Dark Dragon is gone." It would've been nicer if we found out a little more about what the Dragon's motivation was and whether this was the right choice or not. As is, I didn't get much sense of closure.

Overall
I felt like this story really didn't make sense as presented. There does not seem to be a logical progression from one mission to the next. Currently, each mission has the contact send me to a seemingly random location, hoping something of interest is there. I think the story would be significantly strengthened if each mission naturally followed as a result of clues found in the previous mission.

There are also a lot of dangling plot elements that are introduced, but nothing is ever done with them, so they end up being purely a distraction. Why is it significant that the dragons are in a rock band? What purpose do the Space Pirates serve in the story that the Malta and KoA weren't already handling? Why on earth do we think Dark Dragon would care about a secret submarine base? I mean, if I could use the guitar the musicians gave me to prove to the Dark Dragon that we're nice people and he should stop messing with us, that would be great. As it is, the dragons being in a rock band and space pirates guarding the secret blueprints are just bizarre and distracting. I think you should either add some reason these bizarre elements are present (perhaps as a recurring motif or an important later plot element) or else cut some of them to keep the story more focused.

It's also annoying that the plot mandates that the player and the NPCs make unreasonably bad decisions at certain points, in order to make Dark Dragon's master plan really work. (One specific example is the scripted fight with Scirocco, when both parties should really know better.) This makes the story feel more forced. I'd suggest you try and rewrite Dark Dragon's master plan in such a way that this isn't required.

With the problems I had with the story, I could only give this arc 2 stars. Hope you think that is fair.

Changes:
* Mission 2 extensively revamped.
* Clockwork King has a new plot: to set up the "World of Clockwork" virtual reality game, in direct competition with Architect Entertainment. This wouldn't be so bad except that he is kidnapping people and forcing them to beta test.
* Intent of this change is to address player feedback that mission 2 is too similar to existing Clockwork content.
* Added two new Clockwork models to support this change.
* Added a kidnapped beta tester hostage.
* Revised Coyote's briefing and Citadel XP's analysis to match.
* Added a glowy ("advertising poster") as an optional clue.
* First boss in mission 3 given a name ("C4TS") in response to player feedback.
* Objectives in mission 4 reordered to make it more likely that you will rescue Manticora before you fight the Big Bad Guy.
* Gave spiffy LED auras to robotic teens in mission 4.

The cumulative effect of the changes has added considerable content to the story arc; if you tried playing it early on, you might try giving it another run; there's LOTS of fun new stuff.

Thanks to everyone who has tried playing through Teen Phalanx Forever!, and thanks especially for all the wonderful feedback!

Changes made:
* Updated mission 4 to change the big bad guy's ambush from generic minions to custom minions.
* I basically had so much extra story arc space that I felt I could afford to add 2 custom models solely for this ambush, for the sake of fun. (I'm only up to 81% usage after adding these two, even.)
* Tried to make the custom minions relatively easy since the player might be a solo lowbie and it IS an AV fight already. Let me know if anyone finds them excessive.
* Intent of this change is to highlight the big bad guy's obsession with the Teen Phalanx team, and hopefully make the final fight a little more dramatic and fun.

I also gave Escalation another run through. Love the improvements; I increased my rating to 5 stars.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also, how is it that any of the geeks have been turned into Freaks so far, when the Geek-Freak Transformer is still in pieces and not yet assembled? Seems like a possible logic error.

[/ QUOTE ]
The procedure is already operational: failed attempts with both Luther and Dr. G and a successful one on Dr. Hu. As the clues describe, t3h Uberd0rk is pursuing a machine to mass-produce the Geek Freaks. The ambush wants to imply that a handful of Geek Freaks have been created, but the army is yet to come. I understand that I may not have given the player enough info to reasonably conclude this on her own.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, this makes some sense. To get this across, you might consider having a pre-op Geek as a hostage in this mission (I suggest re-using one of the student geeks from mission 1), guarded by some post-op Geeky Freaks who have dialog telling the pre-op Geek how much better s/he'll feel after the G33k 2 Fr32k transformation. Maybe also have a prototype transformer as something to destroy also.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
but in my opinion, your story arc is trying to be more lighthearted and fun. The death of one of the characters is a sharp departure in tone from the lighthearted and fun aspects...

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is where you've hit on the crux of the dilemma with a certain style of writing (which happens to be mine ) and MA: I never set out to write a "humorous" or "serious" story - I just imagine a story and try to portray it. This arc was not actually meant to be funny and lighthearted in tone; it was meant to use humor and tragedy to tell the story of a disgraced and obsessed Freak-Geek's plan for revenge. Where the "fail" may be for many players is in the disappointed anticipation of a "humorous" arc, which I undoubtedly create through my choice of topic (geeks) and what happens in most of the first mish. The loss suffered at the end of mish#1 impacted you the way I meant it to, being fully intended to signal a shift in tone towards the more serious through the remainder of the story and hoping that the player will go with me. But that will instead be a letdown for many players, and I get that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I actually think you could spin this story in a more serious direction (instead of towards humor) if you preferred. Perhaps the students in the first mission could be bitter, aging grad students living lives of quiet desperation, avoiding the reality of the outside world by staying permanently in school as indentured servants to tyrannical professors. I think I'd find a "Freaks and Geeks" that was completely cynical and bleak in tone to also be quite believable.

My concern is that switching from the comedy of the first act to the more serious elements of later missions felt like a very stark change of tone. I understand now that you meant for Luther's death to signify this transition, but my personal opinion is that it would be more effective if you decided whether you'd rather your story to be primarily lighthearted or primarily serious and dark, and then made all the story elements support that narrative.

Anyway, I do hope this helps.

Freaks and Geeks review (arc id 55715)

Premise seems to be protecting geeks from some kind of threat? Level range around 20-50 to 30-50 heroic. I started this on a 25 inv/ss tanker, then got distracted by getting invited to a team; when I got back to it, I re-started it on a 12 ss/will brute. Ironically, the brute moved through the content faster, due to higher DPS.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact, a scientist in a white lab coat, wants me to go to a university and save the local NERD club from mystery assailants.

I think there's an actual university building map in MA somewhere, that was used for the invention tutorial; have you tried using that?

I like the Neil model, very geeky looking costume.

Midge says "Luther! Help!" when I get near her, but Luther isn't around; not sure if this is intentional. I like her dialog when you rescue her though. Dwayne's dialog is funny too.

"only to encounter the lifeless body" suggest "discover" instead of "encounter".
"your brief inspection calls to notice an odd discoloration"

Debriefing: There's too sharp a transition between Dr. McSwiggins' grief over Luther and him thanking me and expressing a huge debt of gratitude. I think you need a paragraph break and/or a moment (or sentence) where McSwiggins pulls himself together and realizes he should thank the player.

Mission 2
Second part of briefing: "eminates" should be "emanates".

The briefing says Freakshow kidnapped the scientists, but I find this mission is inexplicably full of Crey.

"The Orderly" speaks in broken English, I'm assuming this is intentional.

The "GenEx Re-Encryptors", as minions with rad debuff, were quite dangerous, especially in multiples. They seem to be mixed with some dual blades minions, so hopefully aren't too overpowering, but you might keep an eye on them; they could prove problematical in large spawns.

I really think that you should get a clue from freeing one of the doctors; maybe a brief story of what happened to them, or at the very least explaining the condition the doctors are in, if they can't themselves talk about it. Especially Dr. Hu, who is clearly acting oddly.

I'm kinda puzzled as to why I need to lead Dr. Hu to safety but Dr. Galakiewicz didn't need to be led out; seems inconsistent. You might want to make the reason why a little clearer (perhaps Dr. Hu is more disoriented, which would fit the way she acts).

I did get 2 clues when I got Dr. Hu to the exit. I think I got "Like a doughnut hole in my memory" from delivering Dr. Hu to the exit; probably this clue should've been awarded when you first rescue her from her guards.

I think I got "The Orderly's Orders" from actually completing the mission. I like the way this clue is written, and it makes sense the way my run went (where I bashed everything, since I was a brute), but considering the Orderly is not a required objective, it seems possible for a player to not kill him, and yet somehow get this clue. Also this clue refers to "Freak genetics", but I don't believe Freakshow actually get powers from genetic engineering; according to ParagonWiki, their powers are from a Crey super-serum combined with cybernetic implants. Perhaps "Freak cybernetics" would make more sense here.

Debriefing: rather than have Dr McSwiggins say "Countess Crey, as usual, denies any knowledge" you might consider having him take Countess Crey at face value. I think the official line is that most people think she is a noted philanthropist and corporate magnate, and only a few crackpots believe she's a villain. Though this can work too, if Dr McSwiggins is among the people who "know" Crey is dirty.

The debriefing makes it sound like Dr. Hu is about to become a superhero ... or maybe supervillain. We'll see.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact says there was an address and an engineering schematic scribbled on the back of the Orderly's Orders; this fact should be mentioned in the "Orderly's Orders" clue, because the player is described as taking a good look at it, at the end of mission 2.

I'm a little puzzled as to why the Freaks want to transform nerds into Freaks in particular, but hopefully this will become apparent later.

I think you should consider renaming "Geek-Freak Transformer" to be something like "G33k2Fr34k Xf0rm3r". Though I guess it IS named by the Crey, who would probably name it something boring like "Experiment 49/c (patent pending)".

"Though it worries me as before" -- not clear what is worrying him; the text immediately preceding this phrase is "her beautiful mind seems sharper than ever" which doesn't sound very worrisome. Maybe needs to be rephrased.

Aha, Dr. Hu has become a hero as a result of her experience. Being a martial artist is not very geeky, though; maybe she should have radiation powers, force fields, or grav control or something? Physical attacks just don't seem geeky enough. I also think Dr. Hu's dialog could stand to be a bit more geeky. "You gravely understimate my capabilities!" sounds more like a martial arts film quote. Also, "understimate" should be "underestimate".

"Destroy crate" is such an ordinary sounding objective compared to the other pseudo-techy-gadgets that are part of the Geek-Freak Transformer. You might give it another mad science name that sounds more impressive than "crate". Also, how is it that any of the geeks have been turned into Freaks so far, when the Geek-Freak Transformer is still in pieces and not yet assembled? Seems like a possible logic error.

I destroyed all the Geek-Freak Transformer components, but the mission has not ended despite being named "Destroy Transformer Components", because now the Geek Freak boss has been spawned and I have to defeat him. I think you might rename the mission to something that more generally covers everything that happens in this mission, like "Stop the Geek-Freak Conspiracy" or something like that.

Found and fought teh Ub3r-d0rk; he called an ambush in when he was very low on life, but the ambush didn't arrive until after I actually killed Ub3r-d0rk, so were somewhat irrelevant (though fun looking). You might consider triggering this ambush earlier on. Maybe even have some of these Geeky Freaks spawn surrounding Ub3r-d0rk, as his "posse".

I could see from Ub3r-dork's background info that he is going through this elaborate plot because he's angry at Dreck kicking sand in his face or something, but most players will not catch that -- you may want to give clues to the player that reveal this earlier on. I see that ub3r-d0rk does mention Dreck in his dialog, but I think that isn't quite enough.

Debriefing: The contact calls me "sweet prince" despite my character being female.

Overall
I really like the first mission, where the younger geeks have pretty good dialog as they are threatened by Freaks and rescued by the player. The second and third missions did not seem quite as charming, though, as the adult geeks and the geeky Freaks didn't really talk or act very geeky. I suggest you try and give both regular geeks and Freaky geeks more geeky dialog in both the later missions, to stay with the theme. I might even suggest that you cut all the "adult" geeks from the plot, and just re-use the younger geeks from mission 1 in the later missions (maybe with Midge taking the place of Dr. Hu), and give them more "young geek" dialog, which worked better to communicate the "geek" theme than the "scientist" dialog that Dr. Hu and Dr. Galakiewicz had.

I also saw you had Geek Freaks as the ambush Ub3r-d0rk calls, but I didn't see them anywhere else in the story arc. I think they were very good looking models, but they were dreadfully underused! I think you should consider adding some static spawns of Geek Freaks in mission 3, giving them geeky animations like floatingbooks or lecture or similar, and dialog expressing their dual nature as Geeks and Freaks. For example they can debate whether they oughta go to chess club or fight club; or whether they prefer Star Trek or The Terminator. They can also talk about how their boss has an axe to grind against Dreck. That would all help build some Geek/Freak ambience.

Finally, I think you should consider not killing off Luther in the first mission. This is, of course, totally up to you -- but in my opinion, your story arc is trying to be more lighthearted and fun. The death of one of the characters is a sharp departure in tone from the lighthearted and fun aspects. Having Luther badly hurt and hospitalized would probably work just as well for your plot, and maybe better.

With all that said, I ended up rating this story 3 stars. (I almost rated it 4 stars based on the first mission, but felt the later two missions weren't quite as good as the first one.) Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@Sakura-Kishi - Invasion of the Land of Oz 168841
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - second arc
@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

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477


You can make me owe you a review if you post a message here, and you play through and leave feedback for one of my story arcs.

Changes:

Added a mission title and subtitle to each mission briefing, in "comic book" style, for sake of flavor. The missions are now officially "Teen Phalanx #21" through "Teen Phalanx #24", and each is subtitled in the style of a comic book cover blurb.

Mission 1 against Dr. Vahzilok has been heavily revised to add more content as a result of feedback.
* An overall kidnapping plot by the Vahzilok has been added. The intent of this is to address player feedback that the Vahzilok mission was too similar to existing canon missions that people have done hundreds of times before.
* One new model used to support this plot. Should be a relatively weak minion; I was worried about custom models overpowering lowbies.
* Three hostages and two clues added to support this plot. This makes the mission objectives a pretty long laundry list, but I'm hoping it will be interesting enough that this is OK.
* Some rewording/grammatical fixes.

Ooh, seconded. I would love to have the older (elite boss) Miss Liberty as a usable hero too.

I actually have a story arc with Maiden Justice (Miss Liberty's mother, Ms. Liberty's grandmother) in it. I'm currently using Ms. Liberty's model to represent her, but the older hair style would look better.

5/22/2009

I started Monday night duoing Mega (8 ss/will brute) with a stalker friend, going through the Out of the Gutters arc. This was a pretty well done alternate villain starting story, where you're a Rogue Isles resident who gets fed up with all the Destined One nonsense and decide to become a villain yourself. Despite a team wipe fighting Arachnos in one of the missions, I gave this arc 5 stars.

After the stalker logged I went on to solo through Angelo Vendetti's Council Cargo story arc, beating up the vampyr for 4 merits and getting Mega to level 10, where I took Indomitable Will.

I then solo'd Kashira (19 db/ninj stalker) through the MacGuffin Delivery Service arc, a story about stealing a cursed item, then trying to get rid of it. This was very well done with cleverly crafted missions, and I gave it 5 stars.

I finished Monday night playing Primadonna (38 sonic/kin corruptor) as a lackey on an Imperious TF with a team mix of:

storm defender
fire scrapper
regen scrapper
plant dominator
fire tanker
kin corruptor (me)
FF mastermind
shield brute

This ITF went pretty well, except for the final fight against Imperious which got pretty messy as the 6 other players started the AV fight without either the tanker or me (lackeyed to the tanker). Nevertheless we won, finishing in 57min 50sec for 28 merits (29.05 MPH). This also got Primadonna to level 39.

I spent most of Tuesday night working out a respec for Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker); my main goals for the respec were to keep max HP near the cap, but also try to get her defense to various damage types as high as I could. Plus give her high regen. Yeah, I guess I wanted it all. Anyway, her build isn't quite "done" but after using her free respec, her current powers and slotting give her:

69.45% lethal resist (willpower toggles + tough)
43.76% lethal defense (willpower toggles + weave + IO bonuses)
39.66% energy/negative defense (willpower toggles + weave + IO bonuses)
3118.60 max HP

I felt pretty good about these numbers. I was particularly worried about cascading defense failure against Cimerorans on the ITF, so I'm hoping the high lethal resist/defense and natural willpower regen will make this situation more manageable.

I ended up testing Thunder Girl's respec on a Katie TF, which exemps her to 34 (negating some of her IO bonuses and higher level powers), but she still seemed pretty invincible. Though a big part of this was probably our team mix, which had 4 defenders:

kin defender
emp defender
storm defender
rad defender
nrg blaster
will tanker (me)
fire scrapper
regen scrapper

With this team mix we had no real problems and finished the Katie TF in 34min 45sec (a good but not great time) for 9 merits (15.54 MPH). Thunder Girl hadn't done the KTF before, so I got the badges and costume unlocks also.

Someone was recruiting team members for high 20s Croatoa door missions on LBX, so I switched to Star Amethyst (28 warshade) and joined this 6 player pickup team. We had no healing on our team, but we did have a sonic and a stormy, so seemed to do okay. With sonic shields and kheldian synergy buffs from the team, my resists were capped, so I felt pretty good on this team, which quickly got Amethyst to level 29. I also found that Ghosts are incredibly annoying for my warshade to fight; with no bodies left behind, two of my powers were completely negated.

After that team broke up, I started Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on the Enter the Darkened story arc, which I solo'd through over Tuesday and Wednesday nights. This story had me fighting off a drow elf invasion from another dimension; it had some plot and balance problems, and I gave it 3 stars.

I also solo'd Mega (10 ss/will brute) through a few radio missions and a King's Row mayhem. A friend on a low 40s brute was having trouble finding a team, so I switched to Schadenfreude (42 AR/pain corruptor) and we teamed up with a scrapper to make a 3-player team that ran through several of Levantera's missions in Rikti War Zone. This got Schadenfreude to level 43.

On Thursday night, I solo'd Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) through The Strange Tale of Silent Witness. This was an arc about the magical origin of another hero, and then that hero's archnemesis comes and steals his powers and I need to help get them back. This all left me feeling somewhat like a spectator to the story, which was really about someone else. I gave the arc 3 stars.

I also spent some time tinkering with possible changes for my Teen Phalanx Forever! story. As-published my arc comes in at a trim 59% of the story arc space, so I have some room to play with to add more material. I've gotten feedback that the first two missions could use more content in them, so I've been trying to come up with ideas to add.

I'm currently thinking of reviving (ha ha) my Vahzilok Stepford Wife idea, only instead of playing it straight, have everyone think it is a terrible idea except for Dr. Vahzilok himself, who doesn't understand why people don't want zombie wives. And everyone who tries to tell him it's a bad idea gets consigned to being broken up for body parts. I've played around with this in Test Mode a little and may end up pushing it to Live eventually.

For the second mission I'm thinking of having the Clockwork King try to set up "World of Clockwork", a rival virtual reality game to Architect Entertainment. I think this would be funny, but not sure what other people will think; with how well Teen Phalanx has been received so far, I'm a little afraid to change it too much. Going to probably tinker with all these changes some more this weekend and see if it works well enough to publish.

The Strange Tale of Silent Witness review (arc id 114250)

Premise seems to be to investigate the origin of a mute superhero. I'm guessing that this story arc is all about this other hero, and not so much about me, which makes me a little uneasy. We'll see.

Level range was 40-54 with neutral morality. I played a 50 bs/shield scrapper with capped defense, on Unyielding difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: entire briefing purports to be in the form of a "handwritten note". The briefing is very detailed about Silent Witness and his background; one minor quibble I have is that the writing style sounds more like spoken dialog to me. You might consider editing it a little to make it seem more like the written word (since it's a note) rather than the conversational tone it currently has.

Second part of briefing: also good on detail, but a similar suggestion. Since this is some kind of telepathic or empathic link now, maybe reword this part of the briefing to be more like visions that you see and/or emotional impressions, instead of the conversational tone it currently has. This would better convey that this is telepathy at work.

Mission objectives: "Doctor Ominous" probably should be "Defeat Doctor Ominous" or something similar.

I immediately ran into several "Magic Ninja" who happened to be on fire. This struck me as being a little silly; but, I'm not sure yet whether this story is a comedy, drama or tragedy yet.

I quickly found they were working with Doctor Ominous and some Magic Apprentice mobs, who all look like very western magicians. The flaming Magic Ninja don't really seem to fit the theme very well; being "magic" doesn't feel like enough to me.

Doctor Ominous is in a faction called "Magic Practioners"; should probably be "Magic Practitioners".

His speech could use a little punctuation. I suggest you change:

"We can leave now gentlemen. The transfer isn't complete, but it will finish with us out of the building The group monitoring Mr. Train will just need to make sure he stays for the full treatment, so to speak."

to

"We can leave now, gentlemen. The transfer isn't complete, but it will finish after we have left the building. The group monitoring Mr. Train will just need to make sure he stays for the full treatment, so to speak."

The new objective "Find Buddy Train and rescue him from the building" is awkwardly phrased; I suggest simply "Rescue Buddy Train".

Found Buddy and he can talk in this mission; maybe that is correct for this timeline, though. Magic Ninja's dialog "Blond Justice ! There is no time for this!" has an extra space after my character's name (Blond Justice).

I fought a lot of Magic Ninja while freeing Buddy, then got immediately hit by an ambush of more Magic Ninja. With them all being dark melee, I think their stacking accuracy debuffs would be very frustrating for some players. You might consider switching them to martial arts or ninja blade, or if you have space in your arc, make a few flavors of ninja, each with different attack sets.

Did you mean to give Buddy Train a horribly scarred face and fire aura powers?

Once I get Buddy to the door, he says "Ugh, this is..." and falls down. Then he gets up and opens the door and runs out. Not sure if what he says is supposed to mean anything.

I got a "Living History" clue saying that Doctor Ominous started the fire, but Doctor Ominous never actually said he started the fire and I never clicked a glowy that gave me any evidence to that effect. So I'm not sure how I came to this conclusion. This clue also says the fire disfigured him and made him unable to speak; Buddy was indeed disfigured in this mission, but he seemed to speak just fine. Seems inconsistent.

Exit popup dialog says "Dr Ominous escaped". But I know I defeated him in the mission? I went back through my combat log and did find a message saying "Doctor Ominous teleported before he was defeated", but this message wasn't really noticable. You might want to add a clue saying that Doctor Ominous teleported away, or perhaps clarify the exit popup to say that Dr. Ominous teleported away.

Debriefing: make it clearer that this is being done through telepathy. This debriefing sounds like the contact is just talking normally.

Also, it occurs to me that since the player went back in time to rescue Buddy Train, who later becomes Silent Witness, then Silent Witness should totally recognize the player the first time she talks to him -- even if the player doesn't know who Silent Witness is. Or at least Silent Witness should have some vague memory of a hero who pulled him out of the fire, then figures out that hero is the player in the debriefing.

Mission 2
Briefing: Interesting set up. I'm to escort the contact to talk to the (apparently now retired?) Doctor Ominous.

Mission title: I think you should rephrase this; "Assist Silent Witness" instantly casts me the supporting character, and Silent Witness as the star. Maybe something more neutral like "Investigate the warehouse" or "Meet with retired supervillain" or something.

I found a "Weak Silent Witness". Strangely, this version can talk; I think this is a continuity error.

After destroying the altar I got a clue called "Power Transference Altars?" which refers to "The strange altars". But there was only one, so not sure why this is plural.

Weak Silent Witness is still weak after destroying the altar. Also, if I ditch him, then come back to him, he says "Let's find and destroy that altar" even though it's already been destroyed.

I like the lengthy monologue Doctor Ominous has while I fight him; maybe it's a little silly for him to be monologuing while fighting, but it's pretty classic for villains to do that. Except for the bit where he says "someone who looke da lot like your flunky Blond Justice". Grrr! Further reminder that this story arc is not about me.

I got the clue "Not So Ominous" and "No Honor Among Thieves" that seem very redundant with each other, relating much the same information about Doctor Ominous's plot in 2004. I'd keep "No Honor Among Thieves" (it has a little more info) and delete the other one.

"No Honor Among Thieves" claims I wasn't there in 2004, but in fact, I was there when I rescued Buddy in mission 1. It does try to clear that up with the "at least you weren't until you were sent there". I think maybe you are trying to foreshadow a later mission where I go back to 2004, again, but as written it is rather confusion; suggest you rewrite to make it more clear.

Mission 3
Briefing: "I have found someone who has fought with them recently." Then later, "We must find him and get the location" makes it sound like he wasn't really found.

How does Silent Witness know that this Anestra stumbled into the main Carnie base, yet doesn't know where the main Carnie base actually is? That seems a somewhat implausibly specific level of knowing something while not knowing it.

"I will check one of two of Anestra's known locations" doesn't quite scan. Suggest "Anestra has two known hangouts. I will check one of them." or something similar.

I like Anestra's dialog, berating his students. "permenent" should be "permanent" though.

I got a "Better Security Needed!" clue which was pretty funny; but I kind of expected to get a clue from interrogating Anestra, too. The mission exit popup mentions "Madame Cynthia's hideout" but maybe this should've been also mentioned in a clue that Anestra gives you.

This mission was amusing and quick but didn't seem very closely tied to the main plot.

Debriefing: I'm a little uneasy at how Silent Witness talks about "recovering his power", considering we've learned that "his power" is actually stolen from the souls of his dead friends. I almost wonder if he's better off letting it go.

Mission 4
Briefing: So now Silent Witness wants to beat up Madame Cynthia, who a lot of his power has been transferred to. I'm not sure why defeating her would actually get his power back, though; I mean, it took a magical ritual to siphon the power away from him and into Cynthia in the first place, right? So shouldn't it require a ritual to move the power back, too? Possible plot problem.

Mission title is "Defeat Madame Cynthia" but there are tons more objectives other than just defeating her. Title should probably be more general so that it makes sense even after Cynthia has already been defeated.

I found a mix of Carnies and Magic Ninja/Magic Apprentices guarding Silent Witness. I started off thinking it didn't make sense that Doctor Ominous's lackeys would be working with Carnies after the big backstab, but eventually found that Doctor Ominous had ousted Cynthia and taken over, which sort of makes sense. However, the "Defeat Madame Cynthia" mission title really needs to be replaced with something more general.

I found Cynthia and she instantly became an ally; it seems odd that Silent Witness would allow this, since I think Silent Witness wants to take his powers back from her.

Madame Cynthia summons 3 generic Illusionists as pets, which is really confusing when fighting other Carnies. Consider changing Cynthia to be one of the non-pet-summoning bosses.

Doctor Ominous II's description, "deceipt" should be "deceit".

At the end of the mission, the "Ominous No More" clue strongly implies that Silent Witness is asking me to leave so that he can kill Doctor Ominous. My character doesn't have a problem with this, but some heroes will. Maybe this is okay for a neutral arc though.

Also near the end of the mission it is strongly implied that Doctor Ominous now has all of Silent Witness's power; this seems to contradict the earlier missions which said that Madame Cynthia had intercepted them before they got to Doctor Ominous. The most likely explanation is that after Doctor Ominous took over, he somehow stole the power from Madame Cynthia, but this is never explicitly stated anywhere. Should probably have some clues or dialog to that effect.

Debriefing: Silent Witness basically admits to killing off Doctor Ominous. He also seems to question whether I was present at his origin in 2004; which is very odd because he sent me there in the first place, so he should totally know that. Unless somehow a time paradox has caused him to forget that, but if that's the case, it needs to be made more clear. "It appears the past cannot be changed" is a weird thing to say after sending me on an Ouroboros mission at the beginning of the arc, too.

Overall
This story arc really seemed to be about Silent Witness: his origin story, his powers getting weakened, and his powers being regained. I'm afraid I don't like how the actual player seems a very peripheral character in this story; I really feel that the player character should be the star of the story arcs they play through. If you can change things around a little bit so the player gets more of the limelight, I think it would be a great help.

Silent Witness is supposedly mute, but this is used rather inconsistently; all of his dialog seems to be in a conversational style that would be natural for someone speaking, but wouldn't be right for someone writing down their speech on a notepad, or for someone doing telepathy. He also sometimes has spoken dialog in the missions where he appears as an ally. Since being mute is a defining characteristic for Silent Witness, I think you should make him more consistently quiet, and his communications (via notepad or telepathy) should be written in a style to more strongly convey the feeling that he's actually writing you a note, or beaming telepathically to you - and not just talking normally.

After going back in time in mission 1, the rest of the arc seems to semi-forget that Silent Witness actually sent you back in time to do stuff. This was kinda jarring and felt like a series of continuity errors. Time travel IS tricky and confusing, so if this was all some weird side effect of time travel, you should make it more clear what happened.

I think the rules for how powers can get siphoned from one person to another in this story arc need to be better defined and then applied consistently. In mission 2 it was very important to use a magical altar to steal Silent Witness's powers, so destroying the altar helped stopped the bleeding; but in mission 4 it seems like Doctor Ominous steals the power from Cynthia without need of an altar, and then Silent Witness takes it back from Doctor Ominous without an altar too; this seems inconsistent.

Anyway, with the above concerns, I ended up giving this arc 3 stars. I hope you think that is fair.


-----

I owe a review to:

@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@Sakura-Kishi - Invasion of the Land of Oz 168841
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - second arc
@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

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477


You can make me owe you a review if you post a request here, and you play through and leave feedback for one of my story arcs.

Enter, the Darkened review (arc id 107230)

Premise is to help Lady Grey face an unspecified new threat. Arc warns it is combat intensive but soloable.

I played a 50 broadsword/shield scrapper with soft capped defense, on Unyielding difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: Lady Grey explains that Vanguard is meant to fight "otherworldly threats", and this apparently includes CoT (at least in this story arc). The Vanguard article on ParagonWiki really says they only fight Rikti, but we'll let this pass for sake of the story.

Mission objective "Find spell book." should remove the trailing period, as it looks weird with a comma after it. It would also be nice if the contact told you about the book and 4 spires to destroy in the briefing.

"Spellbook" clue: It would be nice if this clue told you more than "You should be able to get more information from Lady Grey". At least describe the book and its contents. Ideally, give enough info that the player themselves can guess something from the clue. It's nicer to let the player figure things out rather than have the contact just tell them.

Found a "Summoning spire", and it uses the obelisk graphic instead of the spire graphic, which is kind of weird. The "Stone fragments" also refer to them as obelisks. I like the floating books animation you gave the guards though.

Mission 2
Briefing: I think "their summonings" should be "their other summonings", since you stopped one in mission 1. The fact that Lady Grey tells you the summonings succeed anyway makes me feel like doing the first mission didn't really matter, which isn't a good feeling. This also seems to completely negate the "The Circle is stopped" clue awarded by mission 1.

You might consider adding dialog or clues to mission 1 that tell the player that there's other, backup rituals going on. That way the player discovers the fact that there are extra CoT rituals, and can tell Lady Grey about them, then she can ask you to look into them.

I'm a little unsure why Lady Grey is the contact for this very magic-oriented story arc; I wonder if one of the more typical magic contacts would make more sense.

"Lastly, I'm sure that some sort of boss needs to be stopped" isn't a good line, IMHO; it reminds the player that the mission is just another door mission. Maybe rephrase to something like "Lastly, defeat the leader of these summoned beings to keep them disorganized until we can develop a strategy for containing them."

Mission title of "Destroy altars, find captive, and defeat enemy boss" is too long and basically just recaps all the mission objectives, which are listed right below the mission title in the nav tool anyway. I suggest you give it a simpler, high level title that describes the whole mission, like "Contain the Damage", "Control the Situation" or "Secure the Area".

The "4 spires to destroy." objective should remove the trailing period, as it looks weird with a comma right after it.

"Defeat Krx'azzt" is in the mission objectives, but Krx'azzt hasn't been introduced yet. Maybe rephrase this to "Defeat enemy boss" or "Defeat Darkened leader".

Ran into several groups of, basically, drow elves. They seem to be okay, with reasonable dialog (if a little stilted), as drow elves go.

The briefing says to destroy altars, but the mission objectives say to destroy spires, and when I actually find a "Summoning spire", it uses the obelisk graphic. I think you need to pick just one thing to call these and use the appropriate graphic for whatever that is.

When I destroyed the first spire, I got the clue "The last of the altars are being destroyed", which seems wrong since thre are still 3 more to go. Also the text of this clue is just "Lady Grey will like the news" which doesn't really give the player any information at all. I think this should have more information in it; or if that's all you think the player should get out of destroying the spires, you don't really need a clue for them at all.

I found a captive Circle of Thorns mage being guarded by some Darkened; I suggest you give them some "inactive" dialog to try and set the stage for why the Darkened have captured a CoT. As soon as I freed the CoT mage, though, he ran away. But, one of the things Lady Grey asked for is for me to bring back a captive mage, so it's weird that I can't do that with this hostage. I suspect there is one particular mage that will let me escort him back to the door, but the fact that there is another mage who won't let you do that is confusing.

Found the Captured Madness Mage. His objective in the nav bar is just "Captured Madness Mage", should probably start as "Capture a Mage" and then once you free him, change to "Lead Mage to Exit" or something similar. Also, I'm not sure he should say "Many thanks" when you get him to the door, considering you're about to turn him over to Vanguard for interrogation. I suggest you give him some more arrogant sounding dialog.

The Darkened mobs used a ton of electric blasts, voltaic sentinels and short circuits when fighting me. A little bit of this would be okay, but they all seemed to do it, including all minions, and the amount of stacked END drain was too much IMHO. With my high defense I was able to shrug most of it off, but I think you will get some players who will find the END drain incredibly annoying and not want to fight your mobs. I might suggest that you move the electric powers to only lieutenants or only one particular flavor of minion, instead of having all of them have electric powers. If you can scale the electric powers down so they don't do short circuit, that would help also; they'd still do END drain then, but not insane amounts of it.

Found and fought Krx'azzt the Crusher. His dialog didn't quite make sense, with him coughing and choking a lot, and saying "I see you have fight. Greeeaaghh", which doesn't scan. For the "Spidery amulet" clue you get from defeating him, again I suggest you give more detail to the clue so the player can think about it, rather than just asking the player to take it back to Lady Grey; I think that would help keep the player more involved in the story.

When I finished the mission by breaking the last altar/spire, I got a clue called "Darkened amulet" which is supposedly from the Crusher; this seems redundant with the "Spidery amulet" clue. I think you should merge these into just one clue that is awarded after defeating Krx'azzt.

Debriefing: Now Lady Grey says she's going to ask the captive about the text in the book. This does make sense, but I think the briefing should more clearly state that this is why she wants a CoT captive. (Unless I missed it, she was still trying to get Dark Watcher to look at the book.)

Mission 3
Briefing: Lady Grey now expositions that the CoT were trying to summon the Demon Queen of Spiders, hoping to broker an alliance between the Demon Queen and Arachnos. But the Demon Queen basically screwed over the CoT, and with her Darkened lackeys has taken over some Arachnos assets.

I'm afraid I find the plot, as presented, hard to believe as it depends on the CoT being smart enough to plan a duplicate summoning ritual, but also stupid enough to not set up any protective spells or signed any demonic contracts to ensure the Demon Queen would actually work with them after being summoned.

What's the Darkened's motivation for taking over an Arachnos base and not another CoT cave in Oranbega or something?

Mission title: "Stop the pillaging"; what pillaging? Nothing like that was mentioned in the briefing.

Mission objectives: "Find Lady Grey." should remove the period at the end, looks weird with a comma after it. Not clear why "Defeat Kalinda" is necessary when the idea behind this mission is to stop the Darkened; it seems like Kalinda might actually want you to do that.

Ran into a group of hostile Arachnos, which was unexpected; I thought this base was taken over by Darkened.

Found Lady Grey and Serpent Drummer; they are both Hero level allies, which seems pretty overpowering.

There are a lot of Darkened and Arachnos mobs here which don't seem mutually opposed to each other, which seems odd; based on the mission briefing I'd think they should be mutual enemies.

Mission exit popup: Says that Dark Watcher has returned, but we never saw him in the mission, so this doesn't seem relevant. Maybe rephrase to "You emerge from the Arachnos base to find that Dark Watcher is waiting for you" or something similar.

Mission 4
Briefing: Suddenly Dark Watcher is safe, having escaped from the Darkened. It would be nicer if the player was the one who saved Dark Watcher instead of having it happen "off camera".

Lady Grey also expositions about the Demon Queen's plan being to combine Darkened magic and Arachnos technology. How does she know that, since the Demon Queen isn't exactly someone we've had contact with before? How does Lady Grey know about Handmaiden and the 5 generals? My understanding is that the player is the main person investigating the Darkened threat; as a result, it would be much better if you had the player uncover this plot through finding clues in previous missions, rather than having the contact simply tell her about it. This would also keep the player more involved in the story.

Also, the story rather suddenly changes from using the name Handmaiden to using the name Zi'riin. If you want Handmaiden to just be a title, maybe introduce her as "Zi'riin, a Handmaiden of the Demon Queen".

Inside the mission: Defeat Zi'riin is both the title and the sole objective, which is a bit repetitive. I suggest you mix these up a little, like maybe make the mission title "Defeat Darkened Handmaiden" while keeping the objective "Defeat Zi'riin". Also what happened to the 5 generals? I guess the Vanguard Shield is taking care of them off-screen?

This map seems pretty large for a mission with only one "defeat boss" objective (defeating Zi'riin). I suggest you either add more content to this mission map or else use a smaller map. Since the Demon Queen is trying to merge magic with technology, maybe some glowies relating to that, giving clues as to what she is up to, would be helpful.

Found Infernal, he spawned as a Hero for me and he spawned a set of four giant Demon pets as helpers; this was pretty overpowering for an ally, especially considering Zi'riin spawned only as an Elite Boss for me.

I was quite surprised to find Zi'riin was a male Darkened, so he wasn't the Handmaiden at all, but just one of the five generals. The original briefing needs to be a little more clear

Mission 5
Briefing: despite everything I've done we're still losing the war against the Darkened somehow? The Darkened have conquered the Rogue Isles and are conquering Paragon City shortly. Lady Grey says to give up, but I still am being offered a mission for some reason.

There's an extra space after "$name" in the first sentence.

Second part of briefing: It's nice the Lady Grey is discouraging me from going and getting killed by the big boss, but as a hero I need to go. Kind of a nice touch.

Inside the mission: the briefing said that Numina and Infernal went back to talk to the Freedom Phalanx, but in the mission they are actually objectives to find. Seems inconsistent, maybe need to rephrase the briefing.

Destroying the first conduit gives me the "Magic Conduit" clue which reads as if I should get it after ALL the conduits are destroyed.

I nearly died rescuing Infernal due to END drain from multiple short circuits dropping all my toggles; I am not sure you ended the END drain to be this severe, though.

Infernal is a Hero ally which is a little overpowering.

The final Handmaiden boss was only an Elite Boss so was outmatched by my Hero pet. Admittedly her Dark Armor (which I think was on Extreme) was very annoying -- all the Infernal pets fed her Dark Regeneration, and she self-rez'd after I killed her the first time. Fortunately managed to drop her the second time before she healed again. She looked like she was doing a stun AoE, this would make her super hard for a squishy character to handle; her self-rez actually did stun my scrapper through her mez protection.

I actually found Numina after defeating the Handmaiden and rescuing Lady Grey, so having Numina say "They have taken Lady Grey. I think they plan to kill her" and the "Numina has been freed" clue that says "She urges you to hurry to keep Lady Grey from being killed" didn't actually make sense. You may want to rework these dialogs and clues to make sense regardless of the order that you face these encounters -- or you can make Lady Grey's spawn linked to rescuing Numina first.

The "Lady Grey has been rescued" clue and "The world is safe again" clue have no text in them at all, just a clue title. I suggest you either add some text to these clues, or if there's really no info to be given, remove them as clues and put this text in the mission exit popup box and/or the final debriefing.

Overall
The missions all work fine functionally, but I think the plotting needs some work. It really felt like almost nothing I did in the missions actually mattered to the plot, and in fact the plot moved the opposite way from the actions I took. For example, in mission 1 I stopped the summoning ritual, but it turns out the CoT manage to summon the Darkened anyway. In mission 2 I defeat the Darkened boss and destroy another summoning altar to prevent more Darkened from teleporting into our world, but the rest of the arc seems to just have more and more Darkened show up, so it doesn't seem like it really worked. In mission 3 I'm supposedly stopping the Darkened from taking over an Arachnos base, but the Darkened are still occupying Arachnos bases in the later missions. In mission 4 I defeat one of their generals, but the Darkened are winning the war and about to conquer the world. It just feels like nothing I did had any positive effect on the storyline.

The current plot is the Darkened incursion starts really small in mission 2, but then gets bigger and worse with each mission, and the Darkened are ultimately their strongest in mission 5 where they've conquered the Rogue Isles. I think it would work better if the Darkened were at their strongest in mission 2 or 3, having them conquer the whole Rogue Isles midway through the arc, but through the hero's efforts she is able to chip away at the edges of the Darkened organization, until a final confrontation with the big boss in the last mission. Basically I think you should give the player some sort of positive feedback along the way that she's making some progress towards solving the Darkened problem.

Too much of the story was related through Lady Grey telling you what happened, rather than the player actually getting to see that information for themselves, via clues or dialog inside missions. It would be much more involving for the player to uncover these clues that lead to the next mission themselves, to rescue Dark Watcher themselves rather than have him escape off-panel, and so on.

The power level of the allies should be toned down, in my opinion; having multiple AV level allies following you around is far too overpowering. Especially considering the final end boss actually spawned as an EB (weaker than either of the allies). Infernal is especially annoying because he summons so many demon pets that get in your way. If it doesn't mess up your artistic vision too much, I might suggest that you create a couple named Vanguard bosses as allies (kinda like Captain Dietrich and Lt Sefu for the Longbow). Since you're working for Lady Grey, Vanguard allies would make more sense than Numina and Infernal. You would have a chance to give them some dialog and characterization also.

Regarding the enemies, their costumes look okay but I think you should reconsider the powerset selection or at least the powers you give them some. Having multiple minions with Short Circuit would cause them to drain all END very quickly, making them very unpleasant to fight. I'd suggest that you reduce their powers so no minions have Short Circuit; maybe lieutenants would be ok to have it. I think you mean these electric attacks to be "magic spells" cast by the dark elves; you might make some of the minions use energy, fire or dark blast instead of electric blast, to mix up the damage types and cut down on the END drain some.

I thought the Handmaiden with her extreme dark armor was pretty crazy tough, but she is the end boss of the whole arc, so maybe that is okay. I think you maybe should drop her self-rez power though, it's kind of a pain for players to deal with and I'm not sure it adds much to the story.

Finally, I totally suggest that you consider using some of the webbed Arachnoid cave maps in your story arc, and maybe steal and reuse some of the Tarantula mobs from Arachnos for your faction; it would add to the "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" feel that you're going for here.

With all that said, I rated this story arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!


-----

I owe a review to:

@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@Sakura-Kishi - Invasion of the Land of Oz 168841
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - second arc
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477


You can make me owe you a review if you play through and leave feedback for one of my story arcs, and post a request here.

I have to admit I was quite excited to see that the revised Escalation got such a good review. I totally will have to re-play it sometime, just for fun.

What they really should do is conscript some of the enormous number of player reviewers in the other forum to help identify potential dev choice story arcs. Maybe if 3 different recognized reviewers gave an arc 4.5 stars or higher average it could get queued for play by a dev. Some limitations would be needed to prevent "gaming" this system, of course.

[ QUOTE ]

I might have had enough room to keep the Minion and LT imps but that would have left the group without a proper Boss. I'm not sure what would have happened if a large group needed a Boss to spawn; potentially it could have spawned multiple copies of Diablo Navarra. Not good.

The Freaks don't make much more sense than the imps, really, but at least I was able to toss in some dialog lampshading the fact that they'd turned into some kind of warped Greek chorus.

[/ QUOTE ]

I kinda think Hellions would make more sense as backup, since in a lot of ways Navarra is the uber-Hellion, what with his fire powers and diabolic name. But Hellions would make the level cap on this mission way too low.

A possible workaround for the fire imp boss issue is that you could insert some of the standard CoT Behemoths and Behemoth Overlords into the custom faction? They have fire powers, look demonic, and have a wide level range, so I think they would kind of fit.

The other thing you could do is put Navarra into a different faction than the fire imps that follow him around; then you could guarantee that even if the game wants to spawn a fire imp boss, it won't spawn an extra Navarra (since he's not in the same villain group).

It's not mine, but last night I did a lowbie villain arc on my level 8 brute called "Out of the gutters" that was pretty fun and was explicitly described as an alternate path for lowbie villains to take instead of the standard Arachnos contacts.

MacGuffin Delivery Service review (arc 1567)

Premise seems to be that you steal an item that is a hot potato that every villain faction wants to take back from you. Stated level range is 35-40 red side; I played a 19 db/ninj stalker.

The "Your Laptop" contact is kind of cool.

Mission 1
Briefing: A little confusing as it seems to start me in the middle of the story, saying that it's been a few days since I stole a statue and it's now a big deal. It doesn't actually pose any sort of mission briefing, it's more like an "In the previous issue" recap of imaginary events. Perhaps this is a narrative trick.

Second part of briefing: OK, definitely a narrative trick, my first mission is in fact to steal this statue that I "previously" acquired, relative to the first part of the briefing. Interesting.

Mission entry popup: "if not non-existent" is awkward due to the double negative. Maybe rephrase to "maybe even nonexistent".

I like the mission title, "Rob the Pawn Shop" and the objective of "Find Something Interesting". Sounds fun!

The multiple safes with a variety of "loot" are very fun. You might consider putting them in the clue journal so the whole team can see the messages (if it's not just one person), though there's a lot of them so this might be spammy, and they aren't that relevant to the plot (I assume). So maybe not getting clues for them makes sense too.

"You found a couple gold bricks!" should be "You found a couple of gold ingots!"

I love the emerald parakeet as the MacGuffin; wondering if it's a reference to the Maltese Falcon. The new objective of "You heard someone...Dispose of any witnesses" is nicely phrased, also.

Red Viper's dialog is excellent.

"The Emerald Parakeet" clue says that some Family men came in the back door; I went back there and did see them, but they didn't seem required for the mission, so I left without fighting them, which seemed to be in the spirit of the mission. Though, this seems to violate the "Dispose of any witnesses" objective that I had previously.

Mission 2
Briefing: continues to refer to events in the past tense, but it's kind of a neat way to tell the story. Now I need to go fence the Emerald Parakeet.

In the mission: It's cool how there's all these other villains in the warehouse who are NOT actual enemies, and are treating the shop as neutral ground.

I like the setup with the Family and then the Carnies coming after the item. Very cool.

"Amanita Explains" says "Security didn't even hear it, apparently since they never came, that bunch is fired today for sure!" -- awkward phrasing and punctuation. Suggest "Security didn't even hear it, apparently, since they never came. That bunch is fired for sure!" Also I think Amanita should more clearly explain that she can't take the parakeet off your hands now, due to the fighting -- it isn't made clear enough that you can't fight these thugs off, then still fence the parakeet to her.

"Fight your way out of the warehouse" is kind of an ambiguous objective though... as a stalker I thought maybe I could just stealth out of the warehouse easily enough, but I was sure that wouldn't complete the goal. So I wondered if it was a defeat all? I eventually found that defeating Mistress Ruby's group was sufficient. I think "Defeat Carnie leader" would be clearer, but have to admit "Fight your way out of the warehouse" sounds more cool.

Debriefing mentions the Carnies were after the statue, but forgets to mention the Family was also after it.

Mission 3
Briefing: very cool explanation. "That guy you sold it to is certainly mad, but that's the least of your worries" should be "That guy you sold it to was certainly mad, but that was the least of your worries", to fit with the past tense you use everywhere else in this briefing. I think "You had picked up a clingy MacGuffin!" doesn't quite scan either; maybe "The Emerald Parakeet seemed somehow cursed!"

Second part of briefing: First sentence is awkwardly long, suggest you separate into two sentences, changing "you needed to go and get some knowledge on magical things and the best place for that was" to "you needed to go get some knowledge on magical things. The best place for that was".

Not quite sure what the point of the Obelisks are, I clicked some of them and it didn't count as a book to examine and didn't give me any info.

Mistress Belle: "These mages got to know something" should be "These mages have got to know something".

The names of the various books you find are quite fun.

Mission 4
Briefing: This briefing has trouble keeping its tenses straight; I think you want it all to be in the past tense. "You would have kicked yourself if you could" is a little awkward, suggest rewording as "You felt like kicking yourself".

"realized that it is the same kind" should be "realized that it was the same kind"

"It's going to be hard to go back there" should be "It was going to be hard to go back there".

"You'd have to find another" should be "You had to find another".

"everyone needs to know" should be "everyone needed to know".

I like the massive number of intra-villain battles between many different factions inside the mission, and their dialog. Found a couple of 3-way battles even. It really gives a chaotic feeling and helps convey how many different groups want the parakeet.

Had some Ink Men say "We'll teach you women some respect!" while fighting a group of 2 (male) Iron Strongmen. Not a huge deal, just a little weird.

The map was quite huge, but using my cheaty stalker powers I snuck by all the battles and put the parakeet in the box; the computer didn't seem required (never did find it) despite it being in the objectives list.

Debriefing: "As none of them had the same explanation for what it did it probably did nothing" .. should have a comma after "what it did". "Macguffin" should be capitalized "MacGuffin", for consistency with everywhere else you use that word.

The last line and the souvenir are a nice final touch. "somehow aways comes back" should be "somehow always comes back".

Overall
I thought this was a fun arc with a cool premise. Normally, I would complain that the story never reveals "what's the deal with the parakeet", but the story makes it quite clear that the Emerald Parakeet is purely a MacGuffin, so this didn't detract from the story too much. Adding a few more hints as to the origin and purpose of the Emerald Parakeet might be nice though.

I thought the set up of the pawn shop robbery and the fence mission were both very clever, and I love the feeling of the huge rogues gallery of villains coming after you throughout the story arc.

I gave this story arc 5 stars.

MacGuffin Delivery Service review (arc 1567)

Premise seems to be that you steal an item that is a hot potato that every villain faction wants to take back from you. Stated level range is 35-40 red side; I played a 19 db/ninj stalker.

The "Your Laptop" contact is kind of cool.

Mission 1
Briefing: A little confusing as it seems to start me in the middle of the story, saying that it's been a few days since I stole a statue and it's now a big deal. It doesn't actually pose any sort of mission briefing, it's more like an "In the previous issue" recap of imaginary events. Perhaps this is a narrative trick.

Second part of briefing: OK, definitely a narrative trick, my first mission is in fact to steal this statue that I "previously" acquired, relative to the first part of the briefing. Interesting.

Mission entry popup: "if not non-existent" is awkward due to the double negative. Maybe rephrase to "maybe even nonexistent".

I like the mission title, "Rob the Pawn Shop" and the objective of "Find Something Interesting". Sounds fun!

The multiple safes with a variety of "loot" are very fun. You might consider putting them in the clue journal so the whole team can see the messages (if it's not just one person), though there's a lot of them so this might be spammy, and they aren't that relevant to the plot (I assume). So maybe not getting clues for them makes sense too.

"You found a couple gold bricks!" should be "You found a couple of gold ingots!"

I love the emerald parakeet as the MacGuffin; wondering if it's a reference to the Maltese Falcon. The new objective of "You heard someone...Dispose of any witnesses" is nicely phrased, also.

Red Viper's dialog is excellent.

"The Emerald Parakeet" clue says that some Family men came in the back door; I went back there and did see them, but they didn't seem required for the mission, so I left without fighting them, which seemed to be in the spirit of the mission. Though, this seems to violate the "Dispose of any witnesses" objective that I had previously.

Mission 2
Briefing: continues to refer to events in the past tense, but it's kind of a neat way to tell the story. Now I need to go fence the Emerald Parakeet.

In the mission: It's cool how there's all these other villains in the warehouse who are NOT actual enemies, and are treating the shop as neutral ground.

I like the setup with the Family and then the Carnies coming after the item. Very cool.

"Amanita Explains" says "Security didn't even hear it, apparently since they never came, that bunch is fired today for sure!" -- awkward phrasing and punctuation. Suggest "Security didn't even hear it, apparently, since they never came. That bunch is fired for sure!" Also I think Amanita should more clearly explain that she can't take the parakeet off your hands now, due to the fighting -- it isn't made clear enough that you can't fight these thugs off, then still fence the parakeet to her.

"Fight your way out of the warehouse" is kind of an ambiguous objective though... as a stalker I thought maybe I could just stealth out of the warehouse easily enough, but I was sure that wouldn't complete the goal. So I wondered if it was a defeat all? I eventually found that defeating Mistress Ruby's group was sufficient. I think "Defeat Carnie leader" would be clearer, but have to admit "Fight your way out of the warehouse" sounds more cool.

Debriefing mentions the Carnies were after the statue, but forgets to mention the Family was also after it.

Mission 3
Briefing: very cool explanation. "That guy you sold it to is certainly mad, but that's the least of your worries" should be "That guy you sold it to was certainly mad, but that was the least of your worries", to fit with the past tense you use everywhere else in this briefing. I think "You had picked up a clingy MacGuffin!" doesn't quite scan either; maybe "The Emerald Parakeet seemed somehow cursed!"

Second part of briefing: First sentence is awkwardly long, suggest you separate into two sentences, changing "you needed to go and get some knowledge on magical things and the best place for that was" to "you needed to go get some knowledge on magical things. The best place for that was".

Not quite sure what the point of the Obelisks are, I clicked some of them and it didn't count as a book to examine and didn't give me any info.

Mistress Belle: "These mages got to know something" should be "These mages have got to know something".

The names of the various books you find are quite fun.

Mission 4
Briefing: This briefing has trouble keeping its tenses straight; I think you want it all to be in the past tense. "You would have kicked yourself if you could" is a little awkward, suggest rewording as "You felt like kicking yourself".

"realized that it is the same kind" should be "realized that it was the same kind"

"It's going to be hard to go back there" should be "It was going to be hard to go back there".

"You'd have to find another" should be "You had to find another".

"everyone needs to know" should be "everyone needed to know".

I like the massive number of intra-villain battles between many different factions inside the mission, and their dialog. Found a couple of 3-way battles even. It really gives a chaotic feeling and helps convey how many different groups want the parakeet.

Had some Ink Men say "We'll teach you women some respect!" while fighting a group of 2 (male) Iron Strongmen. Not a huge deal, just a little weird.

The map was quite huge, but using my cheaty stalker powers I snuck by all the battles and put the parakeet in the box; the computer didn't seem required (never did find it) despite it being in the objectives list.

Debriefing: "As none of them had the same explanation for what it did it probably did nothing" .. should have a comma after "what it did". "Macguffin" should be capitalized "MacGuffin", for consistency with everywhere else you use that word.

The last line and the souvenir are a nice final touch. "somehow aways comes back" should be "somehow always comes back".

Overall
I thought this was a fun arc with a cool premise. Normally, I would complain that the story never reveals "what's the deal with the parakeet", but the story makes it quite clear that the Emerald Parakeet is purely a MacGuffin, so this didn't detract from the story too much. Adding a few more hints as to the origin and purpose of the Emerald Parakeet might be nice though.

I thought the set up of the pawn shop robbery and the fence mission were both very clever, and I love the feeling of the huge rogues gallery of villains coming after you throughout the story arc.

I gave this story arc 5 stars.

Aries: This is a good day to make new friends, start a new endeavour, or join a new supergroup, like the Teen Phalanx (arc id 67335).

5/18/2009

On Thursday night, based on some player feedback I started off trying to think of more plot ideas to add to the first couple missions of Teen Phalanx Forever! to explain what the Vahzilok and Clockwork are up to. Basically I had set up those missions mostly to introduce the teen supergroup, and the motivation of the villains in those missions was incidental, and someone called me on that.

I came up with the idea that Dr. Vahzilok would be operating an illegal mail order bride operation in order to raise funds for his research. Only, instead of getting a desperate East European woman, Dr. V instead would provide a female zombie stitched together from parts provided by involuntary donors (thus explaining why Ms. van Whooters is being held captive).

I got as far as making models for a Vahzilok Bride (a zombie in a wedding dress) and a Vahzilok Wife (a zombie in a pink sun dress) and ran a test mission where these aberrations would attack the player, groaning "Love me...!" But then I had a change of heart and decided this was Too Silly, so I didn't end up actually publishing these changes. I figure I'll scrap these changes and try to think of something less ridiculous.

Instead, I ran Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) solo through a run of Why Do Bad Girls Like Bad Boys?, a very fun story where you help a charming cad work out the issues he has with his two mistresses, who happen to be a Carnie boss and a Knives of Artemis boss. It's a very different sort of plot from the norm, has good characterization and was a lot of fun; I gave it 5 stars.

After that I solo'd my new version of Mega (2 SS/will brute) through Kalinda's first story arc, getting to level 5; I took Mind over Body at level 4.

Finished on Thursday night playing Schadenfreude (42 AR/pain corruptor) on a 4 player Liberty Force SG team running coed architect missions in Rikti War Zone; we did a run through a Scourge of the Phalanx story arc (basically a vanity arc about our villain group).

I had been letting unclaimed tickets pile up in my reserve, and on Friday night I found that the unclaimed pile caps out at 9999 tickets. I did get the Bounty badge for 50 "over the cap" tickets, from overnight story arc authoring rewards, though. I didn't really want to "waste" tickets, so I claimed 500 of them; but in hindsight maybe I should let these pile up some more so as to ensure I get all the "over the cap" ticket badges (those are probably easy to get while farming, but I've been mostly avoiding farming).

I solo'd Mega (6 SS/will brute) through The Siphon, a low level villain story arc where you basically are trying to complete a magical ritual that supposedly will give you incredible cosmic powers. This was decently written with good clues, but didn't have many characters of interest and had a lot of somewhat tedious hunting for ingredients for the ritual. I gave the arc 4 stars. Mega leveled up to 8, regaining the wonderful Knockout Blow power.

I played Tehuantl (23 blood widow) on an 8-player all-VEAT Demolition Girls SG team running mostly missions in Sharkhead; we ran through Fortunata Hamilton's If At First You Don't Succeed story arc, and Darrin Wade's Midnight Draws Near story arc. This got Tehuantl to level 26. I had a forced respec at 24, but ended up basically picking the same powers I had taken before. At 26, however, I took Mental Training, which locked Tehuantl onto the Night Widow career track. While playing, I got a level 24 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% global DEF) recipe drop, which was really nice. I crafted it and am still pondering which alt will use it.

Late Friday night I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a quickie Sharkhead SF. Our team mix was:

fortunata
3 brutes
2 stalkers (including me)

We blazed through this SF in 33min 52sec for 22 merits (38.98 MPH). I spent 20 merits on a recipe roll, getting a rather unexciting Aegis (END/RCHG) recipe.

On Saturday I played Strong Woman (21 invuln/SS tanker) on a Sister Psyche TF, with a team mix of:

kin controller
FF controller
2 invuln tankers
will tanker
nrg blaster
archery blaster
scrapper (disconnected after mission 1 and never returned)

Though 3 tankers is probably too many, and the scrapper dropping so early left us at a DPS deficit (since I think the missions will now still spawn for 8), the nice kin and FF buffs kept things moving along at a good rate. I tried to let the higher level tankers lead the way (well, sort of..) but if they hesitated, I was pretty quick to jump into the next group of Freaks, or pull the next group towards us. I seemed to be the only tanker with Taunt (I have pretty conservative beliefs on tanker builds) and being an invuln with bubbles, I felt utterly fearless. I excused this by saying "They were looking at me funny!" and another team member said, "It's probably your costume!" So I had to say, "What's wrong with my costume?" And the team was all like, "uhh.. nothing! It's awesome!" Strong Woman has a pretty traditional superheroine costume; I really don't think it's anything too racy, but it's admittedly a Leotard of Power.

We got through the Sister Psyche TF without any serious problems; I ended up crashing on exiting the final mission of the TF (I think other people did too; this seems a new bug) so didn't get a time on the TF, but did get Strong Woman to level 25, taking Invincibility at 22 and Knockout Blow at 24, and upgrading to SO enhancements.

After the TF, I ran Strong Woman through her cape mission and 2nd costume mission, which let me readjust her "shoulder" cape (from veteran rewards) to be a more traditional "half mantle" cape (from the cape mission). Also blew through a very grey story arc from Flux, destroying Frostfire in record time for an extra 7 merits.

Late Saturday night I played Police Woman for a bit, accepting an invite to a 5-player pickup team that did a couple of missions against Malta and Cimerorans.

After that team broke up, I solo'd Police Woman through Torchbearer, a story arc that has you recreating some of the Freedom Phalanx's "historical" battles against Nemesis, the 5th Column and the Rikti. This was kinda cool and had some fun "historical" detail (historical is in quotes since it's CoH history, not real history), though I did catch some errors compared to the "canon" CoH history. The missions weren't terribly immersive and the framing story was kind of awkward, but it was still fun, so I gave it 4 stars. Along the way I got the Unpredictable (100 glowies in AE missions) badge and my ruthless profiteering at Wentworth's scored me the Marketer (sold 5000 items) badge, which gave Police Woman an extra auction house slot.

On Sunday I played Adventuress (10 MA/regen scrapper) through the Dream Paper story arc, which was an entertaining investigation about some mysterious apartment break-ins. Midway through this story arc, a friend invited me to a Positron TF, so I quit the arc to do that.

The Positron TF had a team mix of:

regen scrapper (me)
archery blaster
storm defender
peacebringer

This team actually did quite well; the stormy was careful not to blow stuff all over and was using O2 Boost for occasional heals, and the rest of us did pretty decent damage. We didn't have a stealther, so fought our way through everything, but it didn't seem to be a problem for us. Finished in 2hrs 34mins for 64 merits (24.94 MPH) and got Adventuress to level 16; I took Focus Chi, Combat Jumping and Integration as new powers.

I then went back to finish Dream Paper, having to re-do the first two missions. The investigation was pretty good and fairly fun, mostly fighting Lost. There were good characters and clues and I got to redeem a hapless paperboy from the Trolls gang. But at the very end, despite busting the big bad guy I still had no idea what was going on or why the Lost were stealing this stuff, and I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. It was still pretty good overall, though, and I gave the arc 4 stars.

Late Sunday night, I played Schadenfreude (42 AR/pain corruptor) on a 4-player Liberty Force SG team doing coed architect missions in Rikti War Zone. I joined for the tail end of Legacy of Joe, the Longbow Eagle and dragged the team into doing the first two missions of Axis and Allies before we called it a night.

Dream Paper review (arc 1874)

Premise is investigating a series of breakins to apartments; level range seemed to be mostly 11-20. I played a 10 MA/regen scrapper.

Mission 1
Briefing: Not a bad intro to the situation. I think "Get over here" maybe should be "Get over there"; with the contact's avatar standing right in front of me, I think the assumption is that you're meeting him.

Second part of briefing: "but there's a lot of people where the Singer Lofts is all they have" is awkwardly phrased. Maybe rephrase to something like "but for a lot of people, all their worldly possessions are in those apartments."

Rescued a Nervous Outcast who claimed to be a tenant, though it didn't update my objectives.

Rescued Grandma Yan, she seems cool. Not quite sure what to do with her; she's following me, but doesn't fight and doesn't seem to want to be led out.

Some puzzling clues from Grandma Yan and the Ransacked Possessions collections; haven't figured out what they mean yet. I also like the frantic dialog that the Lost seem to have, looking for ...whatever it is.

The clues say "You look through the cardboard boxes" and "This box is full of..." and the graphic is a pile of boxes. The latter message should probably be "These boxes are full of..."

It was a defeat all, but not too huge a map, so wasn't a problem.

Debriefing: nice debriefing explaining Grandma Yan's medicine, though perhaps this explanation should also be in a clue somewhere so that players other than the team leader can see it too.

"Grandma Yan's never told anybody about what this stuff is" ... probably should drop the "about".

Mission 2
Briefing: Found this a little confusing. The lab found the powder is some kind of drug peddled by the Tsoo, and the contact concludes that the Tsoo are drugging old ladies? Considering it's "Grandma Yan's medicine", wouldn't it be more logical to conclude that Grandma Yan is mixing this drug into her medicines? Seems a leap of logic to assume that the Tsoo are secretly poisoning Grandma Yan's snake oil.

OK, from the second part of the briefing, I see that "Grandma Yan's medicine" is medicine that Grandma Yan takes, not makes...this wasn't entirely clear to me until this point. Though in this case it seems more logical to find whomever actually gave Grandma Yan the medicine (apparently not a pharmacy as there is no label on the jar). Maybe it would be worth mentioning where Grandma Yan supposedly gets her medicine, and have that also point towards the Tsoo.

Decent dialog from Cloud Guardian. In his description, "oaganization" should be "organization".

----at this point a friend dragged me away from this story arc and into a Positron TF; when I got back to the story arc, I was a level 16 scrapper and had to redo mission 1----

Interesting that Stalking Tiger seemed to be expecting someone else (someone more important than my little scrapper).

Stalking Tiger's clue is very interesting, and I think contradictory with what the contact has been telling me. Alphonse Rubel acts as if he's so close to Grandma Yan, it is rather weird that he wouldn't have known that Stalking Tiger is one of her grandchildren; and the if Stalking Tiger's statement that the "drug" is a painkiller in small doses is true, then I have difficulty believing that the lab analysis would be inept enough to show that it's some kind of poison (eastern vs western medicine notwithstanding). Possibly Rubel is just mixed up and the lab actually said something much less and he just jumped to conclusions; but if this is the case, this makes Rubel look pretty bad, which would make me wonder why I'm working for him. Anyway, this plot seems to rely on either the lab or Rubel being dumb, which is rather awkward.

Debriefing: Well, at least Alphonse has the good grace to be surprised to find out that Yan is Stalking Tiger's grandma.

Mission 3
Briefing: Now Alphonse says that it's the paper the Lost are after, not the "drug", and his evidence is that the police lab was attacked. This seems kind of weird because the debriefing for mission 1 explicitly said the papers were from the Tsoo warehouse; so why are the Lost attacking the police lab and not the Tsoo warehouse? Seems like a possible plot hole.

I like the Lost/PPD battle that I ran into fairly early in the mission, it gave me a stronger impression of the Lost were attacking the police lab.

I found the "Discarded Paper" collection, but it was a computer terminal -- the name doesn't seem to match the graphic. Maybe use a desk or a bulletin board or something.

The "Odd Visions" clue probably should mention that the paper is blank (currently a message to that effect shows for the person who clicks it, but other teammates won't see that).

I found several Lost Bombs; I'm a little surprised that disarming them isn't among the objectives.

"Mather's Malaise" clue doesn't make very much sense to me; just seems like some disjointed sentence fragments indicating that Mathers is all confused. I suggest you make it clearer that he caught a glimpse of the paper, or picked it up or something. Then after that became really confused.

"The techician's story" clue should be "The Technician's Story".

"Recovered Paper" clue is a little confusing; it says "There are a few of Grandma Yan's packets, a small stack of office-sized sheets, and some half-hearted attempts at folded origami animals". I thought that "Recovered Paper" would just be one sheet of paper; I wonder if it should be "Recovered Papers"? Also, where did all these pieces of paper come from? I thought they would only have the paper from Grandma Yan's medicine packets that Rubel sent over?

"Lt. George's story" is interesting. You have an extra space after "embedded in it".

Debriefing: good writing style but the content is confusing. Now Rubel says he got the paper from a youth hostel? But the paper Rubel gave to the PPD was the paper that was used to wrap Grandma Yan's medicine; and the debriefing to mission 1 specifically says the paper that Yan's medicine was wrapped in was from the Tsoo warehouse! Seems to be a continuity error. It sounds like maybe Rubel gave some EXTRA paper to the PPD at some point, in addition to that; if so, I think that needs to be made more clear.

Mission 4
Briefing: Rubel now tells me that a Troll dropped off some more papers at this youth hostel, so I need to go after this Troll. I think the police lab really needs to check to make sure these new papers are also psychically active (or whatever the last batch of paper is) before Rubel sends me off after this Troll; without doing that, it seems entirely possible that it's just innocent newspaper and I'm going off on a wild goose chase. After going in and beating up the Tsoo at Rubel's request, then finding they were completely innocent, I am uneasy about blindly doing what Rubel asks me to do.

I like all the extra, non-required stuff in this mission; the superadine stashes, the clues hidden in the garbage, the dialog from patrols and trolls guarding the superadine.

The Troll paperboy vomiting from Superadine withdrawal was a nice touch!

"The paperboy's story" clue, "withdrawl" should be "withdrawal". I do like that you get the paperboy out of the Trolls and into a detox program... very nice touch.

Mission 5
Briefing: OK, this sounds like a dramatic finale where we find out who is giving the Lost their orders, and warns about lots of psy or mez or both. I confess I'm curious as to who is behind this and what their motivation is. And why the Lost call the blank paper "Scripture".

Second part of briefing: this is the first time Alphone Rubel says that HE brought the paper home and gave it to Grandma Yan to wrap her medicine in! If this is really true, shouldn't he REALLY have mentioned it sometime around the end of mission 1? I mean, the paper being traced to a Tsoo warehouse was half of the reason he wanted me to go thrash the Tsoo in mission 2! If he knew that he gave Yan the paper, he shouldn't have sent me there. Seems to be a plot hole.

Inside the mission, I like the pseudomystical dialog the Lost have, talking about their Scripture and their Prophet (presumably the big bad). Very nice dialog overall in this last mission.

I like that you have a lot of things going on in this mission. I originally thought "9 printing supplies" was too many glowies, but after finding some of them, I thought that the fact that there are several different kinds of supplies, each with their own clues, was pretty cool.

Thinking about it, if all the paper I've encountered so far has been "dream paper", shouldn't I have experienced weird visions when I first picked up the folded paper packets used for Grandma Yan's medicine in mission 1, and again when I recovered the paper from the PPD safe in mission 3? This seems to be an inconsistency. OK, a little later I found "Finished Dream Paper" that is described as "identical to the ones pulled out of the PPD's evidence locker" that apparently do not generate visions, so this explains that away. Though I wonder why the Lost are so hot to recover the non-imprinted paper then?

The troll paperboy ally was cute. I like his lines of dialog when I outdistance him, then come back to him.

I found Blaloch and "rescued" him; I guess I'm not too surprised that he turned out to be the "Prophet" the Lost were seeking.

Debriefing: So Blaloch is rescued and we got the paper off the streets but I'm still quite confused as to what just happened; Rubel doesn't seem to know either. I'm left with tons of unanswered questions. Who was really behind the Dream Paper plot? It doesn't SEEM like it was Blaloch, he got co-opted somewhere along the way...I think. Or I guess it's Blaloch's split personality?

Why did the Lost try to steal the paper back from Grandma Yan in the first place? The paper on her medicine wasn't psychicly active (was it?) because I didn't get visions when I picked it up. Likewise why did they try and steal it from the PPD? The "safe" contained explicitly non-active paper, while the "computer" had one piece of blank (active) paper. Was there a point to the Tsoo mission or was that just a big red herring?

How did the Troll paperboy get involved in all this? If Blaloch controls the paper production AND controls the youth hostel, couldn't he just have one of his Lost minions deliver the paper and not get the Trolls involved at all?

What was the point of the paper? It was hinted that it could be used for mind control, but this wasn't really developed beyond having some of the PPD investigators act weird.

Overall
I like the writing style and especially the dialog, and there's some decent characterization. I like that you get to redeem the troll paperboy. I liked the structure and the amount of content in the final mission. The premise is neat and the idea of the dream paper is cool.

However, I thought the plot itself was rather confusing, and I felt there were several plot holes and inconsistencies that I found distracting. The end of the story left me with a lot of questions unanswered, and I never did feel like I knew what exactly happened or what the ultimate goal of the paper mill was, even at the end. I think the story could benefit by having some of this background plot explained by the end, to give more of a sense of closure to the story arc.

I gave this story 4 stars.

-----

@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@Sakura-Kishi - Invasion of the Land of Oz 168841
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - second arc
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477


You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:

Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)