PoliceWoman

4/13/2009

I decided I wanted to promote my story arcs a little more, so I started a new thread on the Mission Architect Stories forum, I'll try yours if you'll try mine. In it, I promise to run through and review other people's story arcs, in return for their running through and reviewing mine; basically the same sort of arrangement that tons of people are already doing informally. This has been very successful for me so far, on all counts; I get people trying my story arcs, and I have a steady stream of decent to great story arcs to try out that I would never have found on my own.

On Friday I started off helping a VG-mate test a mission where we broke into a Catholic reform school to bust out one of the students (a villain based on another of our VG-mates who is a Catholic schoolgirl assassin). We had a good old time beating up ninja schoolgirls and kung fun nuns.

After that I solo'd the "Trademark Infringement" story arc; really just one mission full of villains with "rip off" costumes and concepts. This was actually pretty funny and I gave it 5 stars.

I started getting some bites on my "I'll try yours if you'll try mine" thread at that point, so I started soloing some of the story arcs that got submitted for my review. I'm really into mission architect now and pretty much spent all my time doing Architect Entertainment missions instead of TFs (my normal CoH activity). So I'm afraid my journal will be very Mission Architect focused and not so much TF/merit focused, at least for awhile. Fair warning, spoilers for several of these story arcs!

Playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), I first went through "It does a Body Good?" which introduces the Pugilists, a villain group full of evil jocks who attempted to poison the city's population with performance-enhancing drugs. I liked the overall story but I could never figure out how the Malta were connected to the plot and I found the final mission a little anticlimactic, so I gave it 3 stars.

Next I did "A Hero's Halo" which has the contact sending you out to find out where these "halo" costume pieces that have been popping up REALLY came from. Needless to say, a conspiracy was involved. I thought this was an interesting premise with good writing, and I gave it 5 stars.

The Demo Girls SG was starting a theme team of all VEATs, so I started a level 1 blood widow named Tehuantl ("jaguar" in the Nahuatl language). Tehuantl is a remake of my claws/will stalker "Jaguar Goddess", who I had enjoyed playing for awhile last year, but I eventually grew disenchanted with her name and powersets, so she had been idling at level 18 for months. I thought a claws-based Night Widow might be a good way to recycle her concept. Yes, she's admittedly a catgirl; but a human-sacrificing, blood-drinking catgirl! That should be okay, right? Right?! Heheh. Anyway, 8 VEATs seemed pretty strong; I was actually surprised that occasionally a teammate would die even through all the stacked defense we had (I guess it wasn't all THAT much on Training enhancements). We quickly steamrollered our way to level 11, unlocking our second costume slot.

After that team broke up, I tweaked my Axis and Allies story arc a little, based on suggestions; adding more intro info for the first mission. I then played Police Woman through the "Shadowlight: Part I" story arc, where I was fighting chess-themed time bandits. The villains were interesting and there was a decent story, though I think the time-travel aspect wasn't used enough; I rated it 4 stars.

Then I played Kashira (18 db/ninj stalker) through the "Cutthroat Competition" story arc (which was labeled as 15-22 villainous). In this arc, the Facemaker hired me for a little light bodysnatching, but then I ran into an opposing villain group who was trying to bodysnatch the same people I was! Hijinks ensued. This arc had a great finale where I rounded up a bunch of allies (who were heavily modified versions of the people I originally kidnapped -- basically, they got Vahziloked!) and beat up the opposition to settle the question of who would corner the market on kidnapped victims. This was really pretty cool, and I rated it 5 stars.

After that I played Mega (50 SS/elec brute) on the "Neutrality & Brutality" story arc. Here I repelled a United Nations-backed invasion force trying to pacify the Rogue Isles, then framed them for various misdeeds. This was a cool concept, but I felt the enemy group and the missions both needed some fleshing out, so I gave it 3 stars.

Next I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on the "Midnight Bells Toll" story arc. This arc was confusing to me; I think there were actually 3 separate subplots going on. In plot A you go back in time to rescue a woman from Cimerorans; in plot B you try and steal a dark and evil grimoire from the Midnight Squad; and in plot C you attack a High School Dance. The different subplots didn't fit together very well, and the writing needed a lot of cleanup, so I felt I could only give it 2 stars.

I then played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on the "Unbearable Funk" story arc, which had the premise of Igor, a henchman, who is worried about his mad scientist's depression, and he gets you to commit various crimes to try and cheer the mad scientist up. Like corpse stealing and raiding the tech of rival mad scientists. Although Igor's speech impediment was rather distracting, the premise was pretty fun and the mad scientist theme was very well done, as a feud between mad scientists ensued. Was fun stuff and I gave it 4 stars.

After that, I joined a team for a bit, and we did "Johnny Sonata and the Hitmen", which has the premise that Johnny Sonata is getting his old band together (and will stop at nothing to make it happen). It had a very Blues Brothers feel, and all the dialog had great attitude towards it; very cool, and I felt it deserved the Dev Choice label. I gave it 5 stars.

I tried crafting a heroic mission (since all my published arcs currently are heroic), with the premise that the villains were holding a costume contest in Recluse's Victory and some gullible heroes fell for it and got captured, and now need rescuing. I managed to make a "Costume Contestants" faction that had a wide variety of different humanoid models from the basic factions in it, and yet took nearly no story space. Spent some time testing this mission, but I never could quite get it to work; the Recluse's Victory map has this big tech lab area before you get to the outdoor area, and my hostages would keep spawning down there and something buggy about that map would cause either the hostages or their guards to get embedded into the ceiling. I theorize that the tech lab's Z position is actually beneath the outdoor parts of the map, and some kind of snap-to-ground-level algorithm is catapulting my mobs into nothingness.

I joined a 3-player team of friends testing some arcs they were working on, then did a story arc called When Heroes Fall, a short mission about heroes who turn villainous; it wasn't bad, I gave it 3 stars.

By that time I had collected about 2000 tickets on Police Woman, and I ended up burning nearly all of them to unlock every single map pack and several of the costume packs. I probably don't need all this stuff, but I wanted to have lots of things in my toybox!

I played Schadenfreude (39 AR/pain corruptor) for a bit, joining a Liberty Force SG team that did the Grieving Angels arc, by one of the team members. This was a story about a girl supergroup that turned villainous (this seems a common theme in MA!); in this arc, the back story of the former heroines was developed in a lot more detail, and the dialog and the writing really conveys how some good guys want to still support the former heroines while others are reluctantly trying to bring them to justice. It was a much more convincing "heroes go bad" scenario, and I gave it 5 stars.

Later I played Police Woman on "The Love Talker: A City of Heroes Faerie Tale". I was initially very dubious about this story since I thought "Love Talker" was a silly name for the villain of the piece, but was quickly drawn in by the writing, which established a very strong faerie/Celtic myth atmosphere for the whole story arc. This arc did some pretty cool things with linked objectives and had some pretty spooky dialog and clues. I thought it was a great arc and I gave it 5 stars.

Sunday afternoon I joined a 6 player LEGION SG team doing AE missions, playing Schadenfreude. We ran through a story arc involving a villain group based on signs of the Zodiac, then another story arc based on settling the eternal feud between pirates and ninja; neither arc was quite finished looking, I think we were just testing them out, so I left both unrated. We did run into a weird bug where some team members would zone into a different instance of a mission than the rest of the team; never did figure out how to get rid of that, other than have everyone quit the team and restart the mission.

Another player suggested we do my "Axis and Allies" arc, which was awesome...someone wanted to do my story arc without me pushing them into it! Yay! This was really cool as we had filled up to an 8 player team by this point, and I had never gotten to test it with such a large team. It was also a little weird as I was playing Schadenfreude, who also is both the contact and turns up in some of the missions. I had to explain this was due to a "time loop". I found my teammates' reactions very rewarding, including one scrapper who yelled "OMG IT'S THE FRENCH! Get them!" during the second mission. On an 8 player team, the missions spawn MUCH more thickly than when I'm testing them solo, and I got to see a lot more of my customized bosses; it was really very cool.

After that team broke up, I played Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) on a 5-player Liberty Force team that ran through "The Anarchitect", a story arc involving fighting lots of office workers who have been driven crazy by the unnatural architecture constructed by a weird being called the Anarchitect. It was fun to fight through this but the story didn't quite grab me, so I gave it 3 stars. Then we did another run through "Grieving Angels", as the author wanted to see how hard the AV enemies were on it. We beat them up pretty handily, but we were a strong team; at one point we had some AVs as allies, too (probably due to difficulty setting) which seemed pretty overpowering.

I wrapped up the night tinkering with making the first mission of a teen heroes story arc (I find it easier to think of villainous ideas, but I'm determined to make my third story something heroic for the sake of balance). I made a mini-supergroup of teenage versions of the Freedom Phalanx and had the mission hook be that a teen version of the player's hero was joining this SG. I knew it would be very easy to make the "kid" version of things too cutesy and saccharin, so I dragged an SG-mate through a test run of this mission to see what someone else thought. She was polite enough to say that she liked it, so I may be working on this arc some more in the future.


I got the following badges over the weekend:

Recognized (arc with 100 stars)
Virtual Victor (defeat 10 enemies in test mode)
Virtual Extractor (rescue/kidnap 1 hostage in test mode)
Story Teller (50 players completed my arcs)
Obliterator (destroy 10 objects)
Bug Fixer (test 1 story arc of your own)
Mission Seeker (complete 1 mission in test mode)
Virtual Do Gooder (rescue/kidnap 5 hostages in test mode)
Writer (100 players completed my arcs)
Virtual Ticket Taker (100 tickets in test mode)
Virtual Destroyer (defeat 100 enemies in test mode)
Virtual Victim (die in test mode)
Ticket Master (5000 tickets)
Button Masher (25 glowies)
Virtual Guardian (rescue/kidnap 10 hostages in test mode)

At the end of the weekend, Axis and Allies was up to 72 plays and Celebrity Kidnapping up to 47; both were maintaining an average rating of 4 stars. I was pretty happy with this outcome. I've been trying to gently promote them on global chat (but only when someone asks for a story arc to run; I'm resolved not to spam chat lines needlessly) and my review exchange program on the forums is really working well. I think people who I don't even know and never directly interacted with are starting to find my story arcs and play them, which I find really cool.

I want to thank everyone who has gone through my story arcs and given me comments! (Yes, even the person who hated seeing a "thinly veiled Paris Hilton"!) I hope you all had fun doing them.

Here's my thoughts on some of the things people have written so far:

Axis and Allies

[ QUOTE ]
You need to make one of two things happen in your final mission I think. Either your allies need to become EB/AV's, or you need to create a custom hero instead of using Statesman. While anybody at high level shouldn't have a huge problem, anybody below level 40 getting bumped up hurts way to much. All of your missions up until the last one were designed for all levels in mind, the last one being designed for 40+ sorta throws off the flow of the story completely.

While Statesman is an optional boss, he ended up right next to the mission objective for me and so I had no real way of actually getting to the objective once he one-shot both LT allies.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really feel like meeting and hopefully defeating Statesman and Maiden Justice is necessary for the final mission of the story; I'm hoping this gives the player the feeling that they have crushed the last hope of the good guys, and so at that point they deserve to have "conquered the world".

I've waffled between using the full AV version of Statesman and Maiden Justice, and the "signature pet" version which is significantly weaker. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on both versions. Pretty much all teams of 4 or more players smash the pet versions in mere seconds, but pretty much all soloers have no chance beating the full version of Statesman even when he's downgraded to an EB due to being solo and heroic.

I've settled on using the signature pet version for both. Teams still smash them flat, but they are still very challenging for a soloer. Statesman, even as a pet, is still pretty hard for a soloer because of his Unstoppable. I've had some people give up on soloing Statesman (even the pet version) but I've had a lot more people successfully beat him after a hard fight. I've considered swapping Statesman for an easier hero (Maiden Justice, based on Ms Liberty, doesn't seem nearly as hard for people to beat) but there's just a certain something about beating the game's signature hero.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, Stalingrad is evil. Plain evil. Took 20-30 minutes to fly around the city and find the two people I was supposed to kill.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, sorry about that. The Russian generals have some stealth from Arctic Fog; but often you can see the fog special effect and they have a little dialog to give away their position. I know the map I used is a little large but the look and feel was too perfect for a burned out, war-torn city.

[ QUOTE ]
In the final mission, the dialogue for General MacAurthur comes up like this:

"I hear the $name is planning to attack us. I'd sure like a piece of $himher!"

[/ QUOTE ]

Sometimes this chat worked and sometimes it didn't; I think it has something to do with the perception radius of the mob. I fixed this by changing the dialog to not use the special symbols for substitution.

[ QUOTE ]
Also.. might I suggest for the French at Dunkirk giving them Kinetics? Makes it easier for them to run away lol!

[/ QUOTE ]

I changed the French officers to use kinetics as suggested. I tried adding "run away at 25% life" but this made it possible to fail the mission if Weygand ran away, which caused some logic headaches, so I removed that again without publishing it.

[ QUOTE ]
And also.. I started playing after the Council takeover, so I never got to see any of the cool 5th Column Maps- so seeing the Wolf's Den was a treat!

[/ QUOTE ]

Cool! You can find this map in-game also, in one of the Ouro TFs where you overthrow the 5th Column.

[ QUOTE ]
I was, however, disappointed that Gen. MacArthur did not have his trademark pipe (okay, a cigar, since he can't have a pipe).

[/ QUOTE ]

Hah, yeah, I wish I could've given him a corncob pipe! I just may add a cigar to the costume, though. Both MacArthur and Patton share the same model so they'd both get one, but that's probably okay.

Celebrity Kidnapping

[ QUOTE ]
The second mission was straightforward and quick - not mind-blowingly memorable, but a fine transition between the first and third missions, where the real meat of the story and humor are found.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Short and to the point. Felt a little too brief and the Tsoo as squatters? Might make more sense for one of the gangs or Freakshow but not the Tsoo.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
not entirely sure you wanted the second mission that short, as there's something to be said for chasing down a giant pile of money through an abandoned office.

[/ QUOTE ]

I kinda want to spice this mission up, but am not quite sure what to put here. The story structure I wanted to use for this story arc was that of a classic heist movie: a crime is committed, but once they get away with the money, all the crooks start double crossing each other to try and get the whole pot for themselves. So in my "storyboard" I needed a place where someone goes and gets some of the ransom money, so that there's something to fight over. Unfortunately this isn't a super interesting mission; you pick up the money and go.

I considered adding some police ambushes to this mission, but it doesn't make sense for the police to try to nab the villain before the kidnap victim is freed, and anyway as soon as you click the glowy you can punch out of the mission before the ambush hits you. Giving the "squatters" a boss didn't seem to make a lot of logical sense.

Even thought about deleting the middle mission, but getting the money is necessary for the plot, and I feel like the interlude between the jailbreak and the chaotic final shootout was helpful for the pacing.

Also, as to why Tsoo: originally I wanted to make these Contaminated, but I didn't think people would like exemping down to level 1, so I made them Skulls. This still forced people to exemp down to level 14, and I got multiple comments that having the mission levels go from 38 to 14 to 40 felt awkward to them. So I changed them to Tsoo, since they go up to level 40.

I kinda agree that Tsoo might not be the best fit though. Possibly I should just create my own "Squatters" custom faction for this mission.

[ QUOTE ]
During the prison break, the dialogue from the Ppd vs prisoners was a little repetitive. Though I guess thats more a limitation of the architect in spawning the PPD vs Prisoner battles. Would be something to look at if you had some space left.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, this is an artifact of how I constructed the mission. Basically I have three types of patrols: something like 6 prisoner patrols, 3 longbow patrols and 3 police patrols. They all hate the player, of course, and the prisoners and the good guys hate each other too; so after roaming around a little bit they start fighting. I found this worked pretty well for setting up a "prison riot" looking situation. Each patrol can only get one set of dialog though. I could maybe add more flavors of patrols but I'm not sure it would be an efficient use of mission space.

[ QUOTE ]
Complaining about this: they throw somebody in the Zig, superpowered cold cell central, for drunk driving? I mean, have you SEEN how people drive in Paragon City? How would you tell?

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha, that's a fair comment. But CoH is a world of overreaction to a lot of things; one of the first things you do at level 2 is to "arrest" muggers with katana slashes and assault rifle bursts. So I'm thinking this is okay.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd have liked the celebrity guest villain better had I not teamed up with like half a dozen people with that exact concept and regretted most of it. ... come up with somebody who's only loosely tied to a real-world celebrity and have her put in the Zig after she blows up on reality TV. Like, actually blows up. People, houses, puppy orphanages, whatever. The arc works fine aside from that little quibble.

[/ QUOTE ]

Using her is meant to give kind of a "ripped from the headlines" relevance to the story, as well as giving the player a certain instant recognition of her "archetype". Yes, she IS a silly person though.

[ QUOTE ]
The story was quite amusing though I did wonder why Paris had fire powers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why fire powers? So she can say "That's hot!"

[ QUOTE ]
Greetings, fellow Libertyite. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at "The Love Talker: a City of Heroes Faerie Tale," Arc ID 30242, when you get a chance.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Love Talker: A City of Heroes Faerie Tale

Played on a 50 AR/dev blaster.

I'm a little iffy on the premise, going after a faerie creature called the "Love Talker". I'm afraid "Love Talker" does not sound very scary as villain names go.

Mission 1

Briefing: Salmanca -> Salamanca. Sixteen women being murdered in 2 weeks sounds like quite a lot! More than one per night. Maybe it should be fewer? Even 5 being murdered in 2 weeks would be plenty enough to send police into a panic.

"Some of the women left notes mentioning that they were going to meet a handsome young man they'd just met" ... this strikes me as rather implausible; I don't picture most people writing a note to themselves about a date they're going to have. More believable would be if they confided in a friend over the phone or IM, or maybe writing in a diary (though this is very old fashioned now; maybe a blog now, though that's not very thematic for a faerie tale).

I think Skipper is too quick to jump to the conclusion that a "Love Talker" is involved. It would be better storywise, IMHO, for the hero to get sent on a mission to investigate the mysterious deaths without initially knowing what caused the deaths. Then after finding some clues (such as the diary or rescuing a friend of one of the victims who gives testimony), at that point Skipper would think of the legend of the Cancanagh.

In the mission, met a Captive Soul. Very creepy. I like the dialog she had.

It's not clear to me that shooting the Captive Souls is actually "rescuing" them as the objective states, since the captive souls monologue about how they'll never be free.

Good descriptions and dialog on Cancanagh. Good debriefing.

Mission 2

Very nice mission briefing! Good explanation and exposition without being too preachy and it logically leads to the next mission to talk to Katie.

The map for this mission totally reminds me of the Katie TF. Which makes perfect sense, of course.

Rescued Katie and got a clue at the same time a new objective appeared, to Defeat Snotgurgle. I found and defeated Snotgurgle and as he died he said "All right, I talk!" and I got another clue. I liked how this worked, the mission logic really worked well here.

Debriefing: Skipper's unrequited crush on Katie is really cute.

Mission 3

Another excellent mission briefing. It's neat that you've set this up to be totally stealthable, but the clues are each interesting enough that I didn't just breeze right through it stealthing (my normal complaint about missions where you just click a glowy or two).

The patrols also made stealthing a bit iffy, I did have to fight some while clicking glowies. The patrols had interesting dialog as well, that I suspect is foreshadowing.

I like the Cimeroran skeleton clue. It's not for the mission objective but really helps set the mood of the mission.

I like the "An Ancient Journal" clue as well; it's rather evocative and is a good clue as to what is going on.

Found "The Dagdha"; he has a very cool costume and description. I was a little scared to attack him; it just didn't seem like it would be a good idea to attack the "High King of the Tuatha" even though he's only a boss in my mission.

Aha, the name on the inscription matches the name mentioned by one of the patrols. Nice touch!

The clue of the coin from the chest was also very nice and fey-seeming.

Debriefing: Awesome! I love the description of how a week passed in the "real world" when less than 2 hours did in the mission; very faerie! Minor quibble: the purple font used for part of the dialog here was very hard to read.


Mission 4

I really like the structure of this mission, where you have to free the ghosts of the women before the boss will spawn. The dialog of the captive souls and their captors is wonderful; I love how the captive soul is initially entranced by the glamor, then confused, then angry.

I found I couldn't keep the Captive Souls alive, they kept aggroing Aillen's Followers and getting themselves killed. Oh well, that's pets for you.

In Aillen's dialog, he says "No matter. she is no match for one such as me" .. "she" should be "She". (I think $Heshe instead of $heshe.)

Otherwise, Aillen's megalomaniacal monologue as you fight him is excellent.

Aillen nearly got me with his Dreadful Wail (and did get my last Captive Soul with it) but I narrowly managed to squeak out a win against him in EB form.

Skipper's debrief for this mission is terrific. Crytonuminology Illustrated Swimsuit Edition indeed! I'm not sure Crytonuminology is a word though; maybe you meant Cryptonumerology?

Overall:
I thought this was a great story. The briefings from the contact, the dialog, and the clues all worked well to set up a very nice mood for the story arc. There were lots of little touches that made things seem more fey and spooky, along with giving Skipper some fun personality quirks. The missions used the linked objectives to excellent effect, making each of the missions very interesting.

I still think "Love Talker" is kind of a silly sounding name for a villain, which might put off some people. I might suggest trimming the story arc name to just "A City of Heroes Faerie Tale" or "A Dark Faerie Tale".

Overall I thought it was very well done. Gave it 5 stars.

----

I still owe a review to:

@Servercat
@GlaziusF
@Vox Populi
@Reska
Stratonexus
@Cavatina
@HolyEvilAoD (2 arcs)
Lazarus

in queue:

doodaa

[ QUOTE ]
Unbearable Funk
Arc ID: #3573
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Train Wreck
Difficulty Level: Medium, Arc contains 2 EBs and 0 AVs
Estimated Time to Play: Four missions on small to medium maps. I would estimate 0.5 to 1 hour to play.
Synopsis: Mr. Igor's master hasn't been himself lately, and it is really starting to worry him. Help Igor improve his boss's mood while sabotaging a rival mad scientist's work.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unbearable Funk review

Played on 50 AR/dev blaster

Mission 1

Igor's speech pattern is a cute idea; but I think maybe he should only have trouble with soft "S" sounds and not "Z" sounds, to keep it from being too overdone. (e.g. Greetings, my name is Mithter Igor.) I think it's neat, but I fear that if you make his text too unreadable, some people will quit right then and there.

Briefing: prediciment -> predicament. athithtance -> athithtanth (maybe?)

I like the name of the mission, "Peculiar Present". It makes me think Igor has creepy romantic feelings towards his mathter. Err, master. "5 more corpses to borrow" is a cool objective, too. Though I am starting to think you should label this as "villainous" morality and not "neutral".

I ran into a "Zombo" who I think should be a "Zombie". It's a female Zombo, but her description is "all he wants is your brainsssss"...pronoun trouble. She has a very healthy looking tan skin color, I suggest you make her skin color either paler or more greyish to look more sickly and undead. I like that she tried to hit me with a big bone though!

It's a little unclear why I couldn't get my 5 corpses by knocking down the moving zombies and carrying their corpses back to Igor, instead of being limited to clicking the glowy body bags. Maybe Igor's briefing could explain why this is.

You might be able to save some disk space by reusing Vahzilok zombies (not sure if we have access to zombie apocalypse zombies) and using one of the mortificators as a mad scientist or something. They are really close to what you're looking for here (zombies created by weird science). Using one of the existing sets of zombies (and there ARE a lot of them already) would let you conserve space to add more custom characters somewhere else in the arc, while simultaneously tying your story closer to the existing CoH canon.

I don't think I understand why the Bone Head zombies have grav control powers. Maybe dark miasma or dark armor would make more sense?

Ran into an "Infected" undead also; may want to rename him slightly, there is already an "Infected" villain group that he could get confused with.

Consider using Mother Mayhem's sanitarium map for this mission? The Banished Pantheon cave isn't bad, but I wonder if the creepy looking hospital would work even better for a place you're stealing bodies from. Try it and see what you think, either way probably works.

Mission exit popup, "Good thing you got out of there before lost your sense of smell permantently"; insert a "you" before "lost" and change "permantently" to "permanently".

Nicely macabre mission debriefing. I wonder if you can add the line "I'd be happy to lend you a hand" somewhere in there.

Mission 2

Briefing: Igor's lisp is starting to grate...I do suggest you tone it down a little.

We're stealing from Dr Weirdthrum again it looks like; is Igor's mad scientist completely a plagiarist?

Love the mission title, "Borrow Doomsday Device" and the objective "Swipe WMD". I think it would be a funny and biting commentary if there actually *were* no WMD, but making the mission impossible would be uncool, of course.

Okay, I like the Remade undead, the zombie with cybernetic parts grafted to it. Now that's a mad scientist minion! Consider giving him one of the targeting optics combat auras too, I think it would be a good touch.

I was able to stealth this mission by simply clicking the wooden crate labeled "Doomsday Device". Seemed a little too easy, I wonder if you could add something more; either Dr Weirdstrum himself or a horrible robotic monstrosity boss or something mad scientist like. Or maybe another glowy or two; maybe plutonium to power the Doomsday Device and the instruction manual for the Doomsday Device, something like that.

I think you should use one of the more techy looking objects instead of a wooden crate though; a doomsday device should look more cool!

Mission 3

The set up for this mission sounds cool! Get the remote control for the super mutant, then kidnap it.

I found the super mutant controller and clicked it and it vanished and changed my goal; I recommend you add a "Super Mutant Controller" clue explaining what happened.

I ran into a "Sarge" undead. In this description, "enterprizing" should be "enterprising", "Troopres" should be "Troopers" and "apetite" should be "appetite". Also the mad scientist found it was too expensive to hire living guards, so he animated some guards...I think it would be funnier if you somehow explained that he originally hired live guards, but when they asked for a raise (or his government grant got cut or the economy had a downturn), the mad scientist killed them and re-animated them.

Found the Super Mutant; the zombies got to say "Braiiinnnsss" here, which was good. I saw a couple earlier mentions of "Braiiinnsss" in ambush dialog (and descriptions); they don't get to say it often enough though (IMHO), you might want to add a patrol or two to each mission where their dialog is also "Braiiiinnsssss". Super Mutant didn't say anything at all; I think he should say something or react somehow, but not sure what he should say. Maybe just "RAWRRR" or some other noise. I think he should also have a glowing green aura, too, since he is "radioactive". Maybe give him some dialog when you get him to the exit, also.

Ran into Splatter House, who I assume is the Base Guard in "Defeat Base Guard" .... I'm not sure why he suddenly became an objective, you may need to give a clue or dialog to indicate he now needs to be killed. I also think his costume is a little too ordinary, and needs some tweaking to look more mad scientisty; maybe give him some robotic limbs, cyborg armor, targeting optics or other stuff.

The popup on mission exit: "Monstrocity" should be "monstrosity" (I think?).

Debriefing: maniacle -> maniacal.

Mission 4

Briefing: Igor lost the lisp for two sentences! IT'S ALL AN AFFECTATION! LOL! Great touch.

The briefing for this mission is a little weird; I guess Igor is actually going on the mission, but he immediately fails it and we need to go bail him out?

We still haven't actually ever seen Igor's master yet .. I'm starting to wonder if this is a Norman Bates scenario where we're going to find out Igor's master is actually dead, and Igor is in denial and just thinks his master is "losing interest" in his normal activities.

Objectives: "get the heck out of dodge.," has an extra period at the end of it.

Wow, Igor is an elite boss! Why is he henching for a minor mad scientist? I think he may be too powerful as an EB.

Also Igor says "Dr. Wierdthrum" (should probably be Dr. Weirdthtrum) .. Weirdstrum's name is inconsistently spelled Weirdstrum and Wierdstrum throughout, pick one and stick with it.

I freed Igor but still have "Help Igor abduct Dr. Weirdstrum and get the heck out of dodge" as an objective. This objective also sounds somewhat redundant with "Kidnap Dr. Wierdstrum".

OK, I found Dr. Wierdstrum and I love his description and dialog, great stuff! I especially liked "Engaging back up power.... oh yah, I haven't installed that yet..." I've had days like that. Dr. Weirdstrum was just a boss though, so Mr Igor quickly schooled him with a little help from me. I'm not sure how we are kidnapping him though, we seem to have KO'd him; but the "Kidnap Dr. Wierdstrum" objective went away. Maybe you need a clue here after defeating Dr. Wierdstrum saying that you've captured him, stolen his notes and experimental devices, or whatever.

Thinking about the mission's premise, I think your clue after defeating Dr. Wierdstrum should be simply "Dr. Weirdstrum's Brain" and the objective "Kidnap Dr. Wierdstrum" should be changed to "Extract Dr. Weirdstrum's Brain".

Dr. Wierdstrum calls out to Igor, which is cool, but if I didn't have Igor with me (due to stealthing to Wierdstrum first) it wouldn't make sense. Unless Dr Wierdstrum is prevented from spawning until after you've freed Igor, maybe.

So I guess "Help Igor abduct Dr Weirdstrum and get the heck out of dodge" actually means to lead Igor to the door; I wonder what would've happened if I took Igor to the door first? I think it might cause problems for your story structure; probably nothing devastating, but just would generate continuity issues.

I notice Igor can fly, that seems kind of strange and unexpected for an average henchman. Unless you give him rocket boots, maybe; but that should be the prerogative of full mad scientists. Maybe give Dr. Wierdstrum rocket boots and flying ability? Igor killed Wierdstrum a little too quick for me to tell what Dr Wierdstrum's powersets were. Based on the story so far though I think it would be cool if he were both a robot MM and a zombie MM at the same time, though I dunno if the architect would allow that.

Debriefing: Squicky and wrong but very appropriate for the end of this arc. Based on Igor's speech patterns, I think "preathence" should maybe be "prethenthe" and "thill" should be "thtill" (2 separate places). "Murmering" should be "Murmuring" and "exthperimenth" should be "experimentth" (?). "thandth" should be "thtandth".

Overall:
I really liked the mad scientist theme. Igor's lisp was extremely annoying and I think needs to be scaled back a little (some words and phrases were practically unreadable, such as "thmathing thuctheth" for "smashing success") but I got a good laugh out of when he briefly forgot to use it.

I kind of feel like we have an AWFUL lot of zombies in the game already, so I thought adding another zombie faction was a little redundant; consider directly adding some of the standard zombies to your custom undead faction maybe? I really liked the look of the "Remade" technozombie, though.

I think the first two missions both needed a little something more to spice them up; both are fairly straightforward glowy hunts with nothing but generic low level minions in them. Maybe some patrols of zombies saying "Braiiiinnnsss" or some sort of weird science boss. I also think having Igor be an elite boss in the last mission is a bit overpowering; after I freed him, all I had to do was get near some enemies and he would smash them flat with only a little help from me.

I had a good time though and thought it was a fun story. I gave it 4 stars.

-----

I still owe a review to:

@Djinniman
@Servercat
@GlaziusF
@Vox Populi
@Reska
Stratonexus
@Cavatina
@HolyEvilAoD (2 arcs)

[ QUOTE ]
Arc Name: Midnight Bells Toll
Arc ID: 12217
Faction: Villain
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Mylia Stenetch

[/ QUOTE ]


Midnight Bells Toll review

Played on a 50 fortunata.

Mission 1
Briefing: "I know it is not what you like" - not sure why the contact thinks he knows what I might like or not like.

"She is known as the old lady, the Cimerorans are after he we need her alive" - very awkward sentence, should rephrase. The old lady is a pretty generic handle; maybe give her a catchier nickname? Or at least capitalize to "The Old Lady". Maybe something like "She is known as the Old Lady. We need to make sure she is alive; but be careful, the Cimerorans are after her too."

Entrance popup, "The Cimeroran do know how to pick their caves, lets clean it up for them", kind of an awkward sentence. Suggest you rephrase it.

One of my objectives is "Lead the old Lady Out"; probably should be "Rescue the Old Lady", then switch to "Lead the Old Lady out" once you free her.

As I rescue the Old Lady, she says: "I sence death for you soon minions". I think this should be "I sense death approaches for you, minions."

When I get too far from her, she says "I require your escout"; escout should be escort.

The clue at the end of the mission:
"You not sure why you had to save this old lady for. The only two things that came from this women was that the Cimerorans were instilled with fear even thinking about her. Also once you met up with this women she had the stentch of feel of death all around her."
....is very awkwardly phrased. I suggest something more like:

"You're not quite sure why you were sent to save this old lady. The Cimerorans were terrified of her, though, and the foul stench of death seemed to surround her."

You may also want to have some of the Cimeroran minions have dialog that shows that they are really scared of her.

Debriefing: "Excellent she will keep you in good grace for quite a while" is awkwardly phrased. Not quite sure what you want to say here.

Mission 2

Darrin now says "Now we need to find the Nekromanteia". The Nekromanteia hasn't been mentioned before here; I think you need either an explanation of why this is needed, or some foreshadowing or clues from the previous mission that show why you need it.

"One of them should have the some information on it leave not Circle unturned" is awkwardly phrased. A more natural sentence would be something like, "I'm sure one of them knows something about this. Question them all if you need to."

Entering the mission I find it's a Defeat all CoT in Oranbega! Aaack. Consider making it not Defeat All, but just defeat a boss (who has the clue) and with nav tool text "Find a CoT who knows something".

Met a boss named Scyrying Lord ... I think maybe he is supposed to be Scrying Lord. In his dialog he says "What Mayday, must not interfere!", should maybe be punctuated "What?! Mayday?! She must not interfere!" (Where Mayday is my character's name)

Clue "Last Word", maybe should be "Scrying Lord's Last Words". "All you heard from the scryer from his last breath was raid at midnight" maybe should be "With his last breath, the scryer told you of a raid at midnight."

Mission 3

I'm afraid the briefing doesn't make sense to me at all. I think you mean to say we're going to stop the raid on the Midnight Squad headquarters though. Also the briefing says we'll take the Nekromanteia, but I thought mission 2 stated that we had destroyed the Nekromanteia; this seems to be a continuity error.

The CoT vs Midnight Squad battles are pretty cool looking. The "Knowledge Warriors" faction suddenly appeared here; there needs to be some explanation for their appearance, I think. When they show up you really have no idea who they are. Also, the Fledging Student should probably be Fledgeling Student, and needs a description.

Nekromanteia clue: "You found the Nekromanteia as it cool feeling rushes through you hands" should probably be "You've found the Nekromanteia. A cool feeling rushes through your hands." I think you need more verbiage here explaining how horrible/ancient/evil it is, also.

I found the Nekromanteia on the very first artifact I searched, but the mission didn't complete even though the mission is "Find the Nekromanteia". I still have "5 Artifacts to search" as my objective, too.

Your glowies are called "Artifacts to Search" but should probably simply be named "Artifact". "Artifacts to Search" is good for in the nav tool though.

When I click a dummy artifact (not the Nekromanteia) it says "you begin to search the artifact"...it should really say something like "You don't find anything special" (the result of the search).

After clicking the last dummy artifact, my objective changed to Defeat Mental Crush; it's not clear why she needs to be defeated though, I think you need to have some explanation for why, or some of the NPCs should have some dialog saying that Mental Crush is coming to get you. Mental Crush is in the All Custom Characters faction, but should probably be in Midnight Squad. She needs a description for her info, too.


Mission 4

I'm very confused by this final mission. I've found the Nekromanteia (twice, it seemed to me) which was the main maguffin. Now I need to go bust up the Kings Row High School Prom? OK, so the Knowledge Warriors are there, and I like the mission title ("Crash the Party!"), but...this still does not seem very well connected to the main plot.

Maybe if the Knowledge Warriors were introduced earlier on and it was better explained how they were this teen superhero group that is really annoying you, then it would make more sense that you want to bust up their high school dance. But having seen them in only one mission where they didn't seem that dangerous, I'm not sure I feel strongly motivated enough to attack their prom night. Needs some build up to have this make sense, I think.

I like the map you picked, the rave warehouse is perfect for a dance party. I'm still not sure why we need to beat up Electra Flame; I think you need to write more story that makes Electra important earlier on, and causes the player really hate her, so that showing up at her dance and ruining her dream date makes sense.

I'm not sure it makes sense to have Longbow standing around at the high school dance. I'd probably just put hall monitors, teachers, or maybe police. Though, I guess King's Row IS a tough neighborhood.

OK, I found Electra Flame .. I see that she's actually a teacher and not a schoolgirl. This makes "ruin Electra Flame's dreams" make a little less sense; if she were a schoolgirl, her prom would definitely be a dream date and such. But as a schoolteacher, she's probably just a chaperone, so breaking up the school dance would not be nearly as traumatic. Electra does have a decent background story at least.

The Fledging Students in their kilts and bowler hats look right in the Midnight Squad base, but look very out of place at the dance rave. There seem to be no students at all at this high school dance, only Longbow, kilted scotsmen, and the teacher Electra Flame; I think you really need some more normal looking high school students here, to make it look like a dance.

The "2 Set Trap" glowies are a little out of place looking also; a computer cabinet seems an odd thing to have in the dance hall. It's not clear what kind of trap it is, either; I think some more explanation would be good. When I set the second trap, an ambush was triggered, but nothing really traplike seemed to occur; I kinda would've expected something bad would happen to the dance party. So I didn't really feel like the trap objectives worked for me.

Debriefing: OK, it seems the trap somehow is to ruin the dreams of a girl named Mylia, who never appears in the story arc. I think if the ultimate goal was to cause trouble for Mylia, she needed to be introduced earlier in the story arc; at this late date, the player has no idea who she is and why it is important to ruin her dreams.

Overall:
I found this story arc very confusing. It felt like there were three separate stories going on here: 1. Rescuing the Old Lady, who seems to be someone important and scary, but you never really find out more about her after rescuing her in the first mission. 2. Stealing the Nekromanteia from the Midnight Squad. This plot had some continuity problems because it seemed like you found it in both the second and third mission. And 3. Attacking the High School Dance. This felt pretty unconnected to anything that had happened before, and did not feel very well executed.

I think maybe you need to rethink the story for your arc; preferably, focus on just one of the stories you are trying to tell, then have all your missions support that story. As it is, the different themes seem to fight each other resulting in a dissonant mess.

You may also want to get a friend to help proofread some of your dialog; the sentence structure you use makes me think you might not be a native English speaker, and having the text written properly will help make your story arc make a better impression.

I do feel like you put a lot of effort into this and had some interesting story ideas in mind, and the missions were overall pretty doable. But with the other problems I didn't feel like I could rate this higher than 2 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Train Wreck
@Djinniman
@Servercat
@GlaziusF
@Vox Populi
@Reska
StratoNexus

[ QUOTE ]
Neutrality and Brutality
Arc ID 16338
Length: Very Long
Morality: Villainous
Description: It's time to defend your right to be a villain! The UN has decided to step in and "restore order" in the Rogue Isles

[/ QUOTE ]


Neutrality and Brutality review

Played on 50 SS/elec brute, Ruthless difficulty

Mission 1

Briefing: "nuetral" should be "neutral". "retore order" should be "restore order". Ellipses (...) a bit overused.

Interesting premise, repelling a United Nations invasion from Mercy Island. It's a defeat all, but a small map.

I think the enemy faction "Marshalls" should be something more like "UN Peacekeeping Force". Marshals are a US federal thing.

Both the Peacekeeper minion and Squad Leader lieutenant could use a description in their info; that would help explain why they have robots and force fields. Thinking about it, for a military invasion, I actually would've expected mercenaries MMs.

It looks like the lieutenants are robot/FF and the minions are robot/dev; that's quite a lot of robots running around. I had to wade through a lot of robots; it wasn't too bad for me while soloing, but on a big team it might get pretty crazy, and FF lieutenants plus protector bots may give the bad guys too much defense. I eventually found a "Colonel" boss who seemed to be robot/rad; neat combination. Awful lot of robots though! You might consider making the minions use a different primary power so there aren't quite so many robots.

I didn't see any bosses or dialog or clues or anything during this mission, just beat up minions and stuff. I think it could benefit from having a UN or Longbow commander on the scene, with some dialog about bringing justice to the Rogue Isles.

Debriefing could use a little more, it was very short and did not say much.

Mission 2

Briefing: for some reason the arbiter now thinks I'm suggesting that we frame the UN. Not sure how he got that idea.

"But you must be absolutely certain to succeed or our ruse fail- and Arachnos does NOT accept failure" is an awkward sentence; suggest maybe "Be certain to succeed. Arachnos will NOT tolerate failure."

"Here are the bombs. and the fake security tape" ... should be "Here are the bombs and the fake security tape."

Once I got in the mission I see that it's a Longbow base that I'm bombing. Faking a blue-on-blue incident is a pretty good plot, but if you want to make it even more villainous, you might have them fake an attack on a civilian installation; maybe a building full of contaminated. Even better, a widows & orphans faction, and somewhere in there you can have a shocked Westin Phipps telling everyone how brutal UN peacekeepers stormed in and started killing widows & orphans. That would be a lot more damning for world opinion.

Or another target for accidental UN bombing would be a Spetznaz commando installation, triggering an international incident with Russia, who is a UN Security Council member. Just some ideas.

The clickies here are called "Bombs" .. I think you may want to just call them each "Bomb" to avoid confusion with respect to the "4 Bombs" objective. Those tiny sticks of dynamite are crazy hard to see, also; but not sure there is much you can do about that.

I think it might be cool if you added some allies who were Arachnos operatives dressed up like UN Peacekeepers also, and those allies shot up some of the Longbow/widows & orphans/Spetnaz/whatever. It would add to the feeling that you're staging a fake attack.

I think it'd be neat if you could plant videotapes on the WSPDR map and have the TV station broadcast the fake footage of the UN atrocities. Adding a whole mission might be too much though; it might be enough to just mention in the debriefing that WSPDR broadcast the fake footage and world opinion was shocked.

Mission 3

OK, faking that the Marshalls are Rikti infiltrators and getting Vanguard to attack them sounds like a good plot. It's especially good because Vanguard has more respect for villains (since villains can join) than other factions, and so they can even be allies to you; might be worth mentioning that in the briefing.

The glowy in this mission is called "Find the Email Server", but I think it should just be "Email Server" or even "Server".

After clicking this glowy I got a clue called "Evidence Planted!" with a description of "This should stir a hornets nest among the UN....". I think this clue should explain what you did in more detail, like "You've planted suspicious emails linking the Marshalls with the Rikti".

The mission ended as soon as I clicked the one glowy; this was a little anticlimactic. I had half expected Vanguard ambushes to show up and start beating up the Marshalls.

This map was so big I think you need more to do than just click one glowy in this mission, which seems a little too easy. Maybe add a few more glowies, or a boss to fight; or you have to destroy a firewall before you can hack into the other computers. Something like that.

Also, I'm not totally sold on the idea that Vanguard would attack the United Nations peacekeeping force just based on a few emails; maybe if you planted some physical evidence, also, or faked that they were transmitting info about Vanguard dispositions to the Rikti mother ship or something. You could still have the same method (clicking glowies) for all these though.

Mission 4

Briefing: "trechary" should be "treachery". "vigillantes" should be "vigilantes". Also "patriotic vigilantes" does not make sense for a UN force, since the UN is not a country and so you can't be patriotic towards it.

I see now that part of the premise of this mission is that Longbow and Vanguard are attacking the Marshalls base, which does make it so that mission 2 needs to be a friendly fire incident against Longbow. (I still kinda like the idea of faking civilian collateral damage and pinning it on the Marshalls, though.)

I'm not sure that breaking in and stealing data from the UN computer makes sense at this point; the goal of this entire story arc so far has been to kick the Marshalls out of the Rogue Isles, and since you've hacked into their security once or twice already, stealing data seems moot at this point. So I'm not sure I buy that uploading a virus to the UN computer makes sense; I mean, you could've done that in mission 3 already, since you already planted fake emails on their system there.

Kind of a neat 3-way battle going on in the warehouse. They all seem to hate me, though. I guess that is OK.

Cool, this mission actually has some dialog from the peacekeepers and vanguard and other mobs! I think that was lacking from some of the earlier missions.

Found the glowy and the mission immediately ended.

Debriefing: "invaulable" should be "invaluable".


Overall:
I like the basic premise of repelling the UN invasion and framing the invaders in order to get them to back off. The new enemy group has decent costumes, but I think they need more description and dialog; I never heard any of them say anything until the final mission, and I think some dialog and description could really help flesh out the new enemy group. They could also benefit from having more named bosses, which would give you another chance to add some dialog.

I think the last 3 missions, which are all purely glowy clicking at the moment, could stand to be spiced up a bit by adding more stuff to do. Maybe you could lead Arachnos operatives disguised as Marshalls to attack the Longbow base, or drag some captured and reprogrammed Rikti Drones into the Marshalls base, to help support the faked attack on Longbow and faked Rikti affiliation.

You might consider inventing a UN general who is commanding the whole invasion, who is referred to through the first few missions and in the final mission, Arachnos sends you to assassinate the enemy general in the confusion, partly to put an end to the invasion and partly as a personal vendetta from Lord Recluse. I think that might make more sense than stealing data from the mainframe.

Anyway, I like the basic premise but I think the enemy group and missions need a little more fleshing out! Gave it 3 stars, hope you won't mind.

-------

I owe a review to:

@Mylia Stenetch
@Train Wreck
@Djinniman
@Servercat
@GlaziusF

[ QUOTE ]

Arc Name: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 10171

Creator Global Name: @Frozen Northman

Faction: Storyline is for villains. Vahzilok as allies, Circle of Thorns and Custom Critters as enemies.

Difficulty Level: Can be soloed, as allies have been inserted to help with the big final mission. Level range is roughly 15-22. Of course, the CoT can be annoying at this level range, so solo support-class types at lower levels may have difficulty.

Synopsis: A simple task from the Facemaker to round up a batch of live organ donors swiftly escalates into all-out war with another faction for the limited resource pool of innocent victims.

Estimated Time To Play: Four missions, runs from 30 minutes to an hour solo on Difficulty level 2.

Link to Feedback

[/ QUOTE ]

Cutthroat Competition review

Since this is listed as a level 15-22 villain arc, I played this with an 18 db/ninj stalker.

Mission 1

Love the premise and Facemaker's initial mission briefing; I was eager to accept the mission quickly so she wouldn't decide to break up my character for spare parts on the spot.

Whoa, CoT are here doing bodysnatching before me! LOL... that actually makes perfect sense. The CoT ghosts ARE kind of a pain with their acc debuff, but it's pretty normal to face CoT around this level anyway and I was able to mostly overcome it with Build Up and inspiration use and resting a lot.

I think the CoT guarding Yumi Kawaguchi and Minmae van Whooters should have some ominous dialog about what they plan to kidnap her for. Both Yumi and Minmae had good dialog after I freed them, though, and both Rose Thorne and her kidnappers had some good lines. I also outdistanced Minmae at one point and she had a nice line for having gotten lost, and sat down crosslegged to wait, something I hadn't seen done before. I liked the things they said when you got them to the door, too.

Raxanthris sounded perfect as the put-upon mage doing something he thinks is beneath his dignity.


Mission 2

Another good briefing from the Facemaker.

I like the zombie Abomination's dialog and how he says "Unh" three different ways; sounds silly I know, but he's very expressive! The zombie is so slow that he's a pain to tow along as an ally and I was tempted to ditch him, but really that is just how zombies are, so it shouldn't really be changed. It IS quite nice to have the beef along to help when I get debuffed by the CoT, though.

The Reaper minion kinda confused me; I initially thought he was in a battle with the CoT because of his animations, but he was really a captive, I think. Maybe give him a different animation to clue the player in that he's someone to rescue.

Wow, the ambush while fighting Mirko was pretty brutal! Mirko as a ruin mage is already fairly tough, then 4 ghosts and 2 archers showed up while I was fighting him and smashed my little stalker flat before I could actually drop Mirko. I'm guessing this was at least 2 ambushes; maybe scale it back to one? I got Mirko and his buddies on my second try though (after candy-popping some purples).

I started off a little confused as to why Leroy the Janitor is a CoT; it's not a very CoTish name, and he's helping me fight his CoT buddies, which is odd. Though near the end of the mission I found that I had clue, "Leroy's Lament"; not sure when I got it, no message seemed to pop up for me (probably a MA bug). It does explain why he's a CoT, but I did find it rather confusing to have both him and CoT minions fighting each other nearby, since they look identical.

I suggest you give Leroy the Janitor a slightly more CoT name, like make him Leroyaxus the Janitor, or even Leroyaxus the Sanitation Mage; but then keep his clue "Leroy's Lament" and explain that his real name is Leroy the Janitor there. Or alternatively his clue can say the CoT tried to call him Leroyaxus (or whatever) but he prefers to just becalled Leroy. You might also consider using a different name than Leroy, since in the mind of most MMORPGers, that name is strongly evocative of Leeroy Jenkins; not a big deal if you keep it that way though. It kinda works as an everyman name also.

Mission 3

I like these new Soulbound guys you added to the CoT hierarchy. Maybe there should be some foreshadowing or exposition about them somewhere before you run into them though. (Later on I found that you discover where they come from in the mission debriefing; I think there needs to be a clue during the mission itself, too.)

Ran into Stratus the Overseer, a named boss, but he didn't seem to say anything special; he needs some dialog to make him more interesting. Maybe he can monologue about what the CoT are up to here.

In the debriefing, Facemaker expositions that you told her the altars are mass producing warrior spirits bound to decaying corpses. I think there needs to have been a "clue" stating this, that you find during the mission, either after destroying the altars or beating up the Soulbound Berserker. Not Stratus, though, unless you make him required to complete the mission (otherwise he could get skipped and the clue would be missed).

I think the CoT making dead bodies into undead warriors is a little inconsistent with their actions during mission 1, where they were trying to kidnap the live supermodels. Not a dealbreaker, but it would be nice if these plots fit together.

Mission 4

Why are the CoT holed up in the PTS Station, I wonder? Hmmm.... demonic entity... uh oh. OK, that DOES make sense.

Azzanthraxxazz the Ravager seems to mistakenly be in the "All Custom Characters" faction, should probably be "Circle of Thorns" or "Demons". I wonder if you can make him taller? I half-expected to have to fight Bat Zul here, though clearly that would've been over-the-top.

OMG the Facemaker-modified versions of the kidnapped supermodels are awesome! Very stylish Vahzilok "makeovers"!

Face Tailored Minmae (and the other Face Tailored models) are also in All Custom Characters, but should be in Vahzilok. I also suggest you consider changing the Face Tailored supermodels names to match the ironic naming convention used by Facemaker's other assistants, like Lovely Linda and Gorgeous Glenda. Marvelous Minmae? Ravishing Rose? Yummy Yumi?

The map used for this mission is pretty huge, taking me quite awhile to clear the way to each of 4 allies, then to the boss. I have to clear the way since allies aggro on enemies, so I'm having to clear nearly the whole map. But I'm not sure if a smaller map would work though, since a lot is going on here (which I like for a finale) and it makes sense that they'd summon a demon at PTS.

Wow, Leroy the Former Janitor is really pretty imposing looking. I love the change. I'm guessing this is a renamed Dr Vahzilok? Having an elite boss ally might be a little overpowering. Then again, it is definitely speeding up clearing the map to find the other objectives.

In the final fight, Azzanthraxxazz was quite a beast, killing all my nurse allies and about half damaging Leroy before me and my mob of allies took him down. I actually had thought the EB Leroy would wipe the floor with the boss Azzanthraxxazz, but it was a closer fight than I expected.

Good debriefing from Facemaker. No souvenir though? Consider adding one.


Summary: I thought this was a great villainous arc. Great dialogue and costumes. I especially liked the horrible fate that befalls all the people you deliver to the Facemaker. I suggested a few minor tweaks but don't feel obligated to do them; overall it was quite a cool story arc. 5 stars.

------

I still owe a review to:

@Benchpresser (2nd arc)
@Mylia Stenetch

Still in the regular queue:

@Train Wreck (if I got a comment from you, I missed it)

Based on player suggestions, I added some more text to the mission contact's initial briefing, to explain better what is going on in the story arc.

Her initial spiel now goes:

"Ahhh, $name! Excellent. I am pleased you have agreed to help me on my glorious mission.

What is my mission? Why, to restore the 5th Column to glory! No, wait, not merely to restore it...but to TRANSCEND its former place. We will CHANGE history and bring about a New World Order where the 5th Column will rule for a thousand years!

Our first step will be to return to the year 1939 and eliminate the foolish painter who led the Fatherland to inglorious defeat. This will clear the way for new leadership."

I hope that speech sounds sufficiently villainous and megalomaniacal.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Had another team complete this arc and say the boss level Statesman and Maiden Justice were too weak. Oh well, I think I need to suck it up to make sure the soloers can still do this.

Oh yeah. I figured since the proper name of the National Socialist Party gets flagged as a bad word, if I named my mob 'Der Fuehrer' I thought I'd get content based complaints. So that's why he's 'Furor' and not 'Fuehrer' or 'Hitler'.

[ QUOTE ]
Arc Name: Shadowlight: Part I
Global: Phoebe Pondera
Arc: 20696
Length: Very Long
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 1-54

M1: Contains Boss (LT), Collection
M2: Contains Boss (Boss), Defeat All (It's a very tiny bank, not a lot of mobs to begin with)
M3: Contains Boss (Boss)
M4: Contains Boss (EB and Optional Boss, although the map layout can force you into fighting the Optional Boss)

Difficulty: Moderate (Bosses on M2, 3, and 4 are a little above the general difficulty curve)

Enemy Group(s): Shadowlight (Custom)

Summary: Time traveling thieves are stealing relics from the past. You need to retrieve those relics before they can be placed into the hands of King Staunton.

[/ QUOTE ]


Shadowlight, Part I review

Solo'd with a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Thanks for having the contact immediately explain who this new villain group is. Though ... how is this Time Crystal able to talk?

Mission 1

I'm a little surprised to immediately be placed in a Shadowlight base; with Shadowlight being a time travel organization, I was thinking a more logical story progression would have you time traveling to a time period where Shadowlight had been seen (or maybe recorded in history) and then trying to find a clue that would THEN point you to the Shadowlight base.

Pawn Swordsman description: "brunt force" I think should be "brute force"

I think it's odd that Rooks are described as having less defense than Pawns; since Rooks are "castles" in the game of chess, I would've expected them to have more resistance. Ironically, the pawns have a Rook symbol on their shields. I'm tempted to say switch the secondaries, but Rooks should really be resist based and not defense based; I picture a Rook as being a brute or tanker. If you had Knights I would give them shields though. You don't have to do any of this, it's just an idea.

High Rook Flarius: "High Rook" is an odd term, it breaks the chess motif you've got going. May I suggest you call him "King's Rook" or "Queen's Rook"?

I think I got two clues from this mission, both Data Files? Unless one of them was from killing the High Rook. If they were both from clicking the computer, maybe they should be combined to the same Data File; if one was from the High Rook, maybe it should be the High Rook telling you something.

Debriefing: "date file" should be "data file". "powerul" should be "powerful". "to dangerous" should be "too dangerous". The Time Crystal is able to read a data file? Seems a little odd. Maybe add some description for why a big crystal can interact with you like this (like the extra description the Radio has when you interact with it).


Mission 2

I don't think I understand why Shadowlight is robbing this bank. That seems a rather mundane crime for a time traveling organization. Since we are time traveling, rather than taking the artifact from the Knight who has it, consider having the hero go back in time just before when the Knight stole the orb, and foil the robbery. (Advanced Time Travel Technique, admittedly, but it makes sense, really!)

I notice that Lord Knight Tesla has the Orb of Tesla ... is he the rightful owner? If he stole it, probably it would be too much of a coincidence that they have the same name. Maybe call him Knight Electric or something?

I was worried about this being a defeat all but it seems a small map so it's not too bad.


Mission 3

Mission title: "Defeat the Knight" is a little too generic, since we just defeated a Knight in mission 2 also. Maybe change it to "Recover the Bow".

Again "Knight Robin" has a name that seems to too closely match the artifact he stole, Robin's Bow. Maybe call him Knight Archer?

Debriefing: Whoa, the giant Crystal took away my prisoner and is torturing him! Eep. I don't want to know how rocks torture people. This text seems kinda unheroic for a heroic arc also. Maybe just say that Sir Robin bravely confessed all he knew.

Mission 4

Briefing: The crystal keeps referring to the time gate but I'm getting the impression we'll never actually see it in this particular arc. So the crystal is sending me after the Arch Bishop in charge of the time gate, but he's not ACTUALLY at the time gate ... this description is a little awkward, may want to rephrase it some. Maybe something more direct like "Knight Robin has told us that the Arch Bishop will be at Such and Such a location at Such and Such a time. The Arch Bishop is one of the highest ranking members of the Shadowlight organization; if we can take him out, we'll deal them a serious blow." I'm not sure I'd mention the King and Queen if they aren't relevant to this particular mission or story arc. Also give some description of the location the hero is being sent to, the briefing as it stands tells you very little about where you're being sent. Maybe a little exposition about the magic pen would be useful too.

Popup as you enter mission: "Giant robots, mad scientists and a magic pen." Hmm, maybe I missed it but I haven't seen any references to giant robots or mad scientists yet?

I don't think I understand why the Bishop is holed up underground. It looks like he wants his worker drones to do some sort of work, but it's not quite clear to me what.

OK, after running into the Bishop, I now see he summons robots ... I'm not quite sure how having a magic pen lets him summon robots. Maybe it's something to do with Da Vinci. I think you maybe need some exposition from the Bishop explainining that he's drawing robots with his magic pen and they come to life, or something like that.

Yow, nasty Thunderous Blast from the Bishop killed me; I guess he is robots/elec blast! I think it's a fair death though, he IS the final boss of the story arc and the mission briefing was littered with warnings not to solo this. Managed to get him on my second try though.

I think this mission, as the final mission of this story arc, maybe needs a little more stuff to do in addition to just killing the boss. Maybe you could click some glowies (recovering other stolen artifacts) or something.

Debriefing: "commend you on your find work" find should be fine.


Overall: I like the new enemy group. They are so chess-themed though that I think they need a more chess-oriented name than Shadowlight. One complaint I do have is that for a story arc where you face time travelers, none of the missions seem to actually involve time travel! I think it would be nicer if you actually had to travel back to Robin Hood's time to stop the Shadowlights from stealing Robin's bow, and got to meet historical personalities and stuff. I think a little more explanation of what the artifacts are doing, via exposition from the NPCs or something, would be good too.

Liked it over all, I gave it 4 stars. Thanks!


----

I still owe a review to:

@Frozen Northman
@Benchpresser (2nd arc)
@Mylia Stenetch

[ QUOTE ]

Also, if you really don't want to lower the difficulty of the AV, upgrading the allies to EB's (or maybe AV's) would significantly increase a solo's chances at survival.

On the other hand, I'm always in the boat of "To easy is better than to hard." If for no other reason than it gives more people a chance to enjoy the story. Once you do an update (and I get some free time) I'll be re-playing your arc.

[/ QUOTE ]

On reflection I don't think it would be a good idea to make the helpers EBs since it would let the player walk over everything else on the map a little too easily. I settled on changing Statesman and Maiden Justice to use the "Boss Signature Pet" version, which should be significantly easier (though they have a scary looking Hero tag). I think I agree with you that making it too easy will be better than too hard.

Based on player feedback I am lowering Statesman and Maiden Justice back to the pet level enemies; the AV versions, even downgraded to EBs, were too harsh on soloers.

I switched them back to required objectives as a result.

Also, fixed a text problem with MacArthur's dialog, and changed French Officers to use kinetics (to run away faster) as a result of a suggestion.

[ QUOTE ]
You need to make one of two things happen in your final mission I think. Either your allies need to become EB/AV's, or you need to create a custom hero instead of using Statesman. While anybody at high level shouldn't have a huge problem, anybody below level 40 getting bumped up hurts way to much. All of your missions up until the last one were designed for all levels in mind, the last one being designed for 40+ sorta throws off the flow of the story completely.

While Statesman is an optional boss, he ended up right next to the mission objective for me and so I had no real way of actually getting to the objective once he one-shot both LT allies.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm really torn on this. For awhile I had Statesman and Maiden Justice as the "pet" level critters that you see in the Mender Silos TF, to make them easier, but I had a 5-player team tell me these Heroes were pushovers in this form. So I upgraded them to AV level heroes, but then a solo character on heroic can't really solo them even if they're EB status, so then it's too hard.

I'm thinking I will downgrade them back to pet level critters; I'd rather keep the story arc soloable. I'll try to change that now. Though if I make them easier I think I should put them back as required objectives; you really ought to beat up all the Heroes to officially Conquer the World.


[ QUOTE ]
In the final mission, the dialogue for General MacAurthur comes up like this:

"I hear the $name is planning to attack us. I'd sure like a piece of $himher!"

[/ QUOTE ]

Ugh, that really should substitute the player's name there. I'll fix it though, thanks for the catch!


[ QUOTE ]
Also.. might I suggest for the French at Dunkirk giving them Kinetics? Makes it easier for them to run away lol!

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm, good idea! I don't want to give the regular soldiers kinetics though because stacked siphon speed would wreck the players, but I'll change the bosses to use that. I'll change the French general to run away at low life too.

A Hero's Halo review

I immediately like the arc name, a pun on A Hero's Hero. Interesting premise about investigating the halos.

I duo'd this, playing my AR/dev blaster with a dark/SR scrapper teammate.

Mission 1

Good mission briefing and NPC descriptions. I chuckled at the contact saying he was actually going to go do stuff while I was doing the mission.

Minuses for having a catgirl, but reversed to plusses because the NPCs promptly make fun of the catgirl.

Mission 2

I like the custom hero ghosts you put here. I don't know these heroes but the description you gave them helped explain what was going on, and the way you used the custom characters made sense with respect to the story arc's plot. Thanks for not making them EBs/AVs.

Quantum Cowgirl's description, "apropriate" should be "appropriate"



Mission 3

Good job on the stolen essences. Their Rularuu dialog is great.

Yay Fusionette! Glad you included a canonical hero as one of the soul-stole. My teammate's comment: she died fast.

Powerthrust's stolen essence: tough boss, he went unstoppable but we managed to wear him down through it. Appropriate difficulty for final boss of an arc though.

Wow, even a fairly detailed souvenir.

Overall: good premise, well written, good use of custom characters. I liked it a lot. Gave it 5 stars.

---

I still owe a review to:
@Phoebe Pondera
@Frozen Northman
@Benchpresser (2nd arc)

I currently owe reviews to:

@Vanden
@Phoebe Pondera (she said she saw my arc in this thread; not sure she posted an arc though)
@Frozen Northman

[ QUOTE ]
I'll definitely put mine up for review pw!

It Does a Body Good?
Arc ID 12798
Length: Long
Morality: Heroic
Description: Is fitness always a good thing?


[/ QUOTE ]

It does a Body Good?

First mission:

Warehouse employee, Warehouse Employee 2, Warehouse employee 3 : use the plural field to make this "3 warehouse employees to rescue"

I didn't get a very clear idea why the Pugilists had taken over the warehouse and were holding hostages? Their dialog seemed to suggest they wanted to make the hostages get in shape. A suggestion, maybe give the hostages the "working out" or "kata" animations and the kidnappers one of the "training you" animations, like the ones the Council have in Boomtown. Then you can make the dialog imply they are forcing the hostages to get in shape .. or else!

In the debriefing, "abalyzed" should be "analyzed".

In the clue, "you noticed" should be capitalized "You noticed". Put a period at the end of the sentence also.

Second mission:

In the briefing, "Hero, we may have a problem" ... I suggest you change to "$name, we may have a problem". "phramacuetical" should be "pharmaceutical". "Better World Pharmacueticals" should be "Better World Pharmaceuticals". "Than you" should be "Thank you" and "wierder" should be "weirder".

Aack it's a Defeat All Malta mission ... ohh the humanity! Please make this either a smaller map or change it to rescue a few lab techs and recover lab samples instead of a defeat all. I think having some bosses or hostages would give the mission more interest as well; the Malta should have some dialog which hints at their intentions here.

In the clue, I suggest you include Superadine or other CoH-lore drugs in the drug cocktail.

I echo Det. McLord's confusion as to why Malta were involved. Hopefully it will become more clear in the next mission.

Third mission:

"check out old gym" is not capitalized right. Maybe "Check out Old Gym". Some punctuation problems in the briefing too: I suggest you change "About a year ago. we raided a gym that was being used as a drug operation.. the owner was selling" to "About a year ago, we raided a drug operation based out of a local gym. The owner was selling".

I suggest you change the mission title from "Defeat Gym Trainer, find Evidence" to "Investigate Suspicious Gym". Defeating the trainer and busting the drug lab are already listed in the mission objectives, after all.

The trainer looks surprisingly skinny and weasely considering he's training the beefy Pugilist guys. I really think he should be at least as bulky; I'd make him look like Sylvester Stallone or Arnie. Also I don't get why he is stone melee; the kin part I can understand (he's here to buff the pugilists).

I got a ton of clues in this mission, "The Trainer talks", "designer drug" and "Homemade drug Lab" ... I think the Trainer Talks is a good clue but the "designer drug" and "Homemade drug Lab" both seem to say the same thing. Maybe get rid of one of them as redundant. "Homemade drug lab" says "It's not over!" but doesn't explain why you'd think that; I suggest maybe it include some records saying that a big batch of the drugs went to this other guy, Mick. Also "The Trainer Talks" clue is missing a closing quote.

Your designer drug needs a catchy name, rather than just "homemade drug" ... no kid would buy that! In the last mission you call it "Super Steroid" in the final clue, maybe use that term more often.

The Trainer referes to Adrian and Apollo; there oughta be a couple mobs named that maybe

Fourth mission

Mission briefing overuses ellipses (..), suggest you tidy up the punctuation a bit. Also "ovwerrun" should be "overrun". The contact wants me to go to "Paragon Park", wherever that is; is that a real neighborhood somewhere? The map looks like Steel Canyon. Maybe use the name of one of the standard PvE train mission locations, like Waxahachie Park.

I suggest you change the mission title from "Find all drug barrels" to "Stop the Pugilist Plot" or "Save Fitness Fun Day" (something higher level) ... 6 Drug Barrels is already listed in the objectives.

Saw some Malta battling the Pugilists but I really don't understand why ... their dialog should maybe give a hint as to what's going on.

I was able to finish the last mission purely by stealthing the 6 Drug Barrel clickies, which I think was a little anticlimactic; I think maybe you should add a few more items of interest to the last mission to make it seem more like a dramatic conclusion of the arc. I suggest you add:

* A Pugilist boss that you have to take into custody. Doesn't have to be an AV or anything, a boss is fine; we just need to capture the mastermind of this evil plot. He should have exposition explaining his master plot and how the citizens will all become more physically fit (or whatever) after ingesting the super steroid.
* For being a citywide festival, there aren't enough citizens on the streets. Maybe add some as hostages. Maybe add the mayor as a named hostage who can thank you for saving Fitness Fun Day.

If this feels like too much stuff to do, you can reduce the number of barrels some.

OK, in the final debriefing the contact says the mastermind behind it all got away. That's kind of unsatisfying; I really would've liked to confront this "Mick" and get him.

The Malta involvement is never explained; I'm afraid I really think there needs to be some reason for them to be there. You might consider switching them for Trolls (who are into performance enhancing drugs, which is exactly what your drug is; you can have them looking for a new drug and getting beat up by Pugilists; it will force your level range lower to use them though) or Tsoo (who are working to control the drug trade). Maybe even Crey, who think the Pugilists are ripping off one of their patented medicines.

Anyway I like the overall story and the Pugilists are a good enemy group. I think the Malta involvement needed a lot more explanation and the final mission needs a little more stuff to do to make it feel like an accomplishment; letting the big boss get away is a bit unsatisfying. Gave it 3 stars, hope you think that is fair!

I love Mission Architect so far and want to run more story arcs, but there are so many that it's hard to decide which to run. So I've conceived the following scheme to figure out which stories to run, and simultaneously get people to try my stories:

I will run through one of your story arcs, give it a rating, leave feedback (if there is room in your mailbox), and mention your story arc in my blog on the Liberty forum, if you'll agree to try one of my story arcs, rate it and leave feedback.

Since there is only one of me and probably 100,000 of "you", I'll set the following ground rules so that I don't get overwhelmed:

1. Post here with your story arc name and number, and your global name.

2. Run through one of my story arcs, give it a rating, and leave me some feedback so that I know you did it. You don't have to give me a good rating, but if you want to give me a bad one, please give me suggestions!

3. If you have multiple story arcs, please run one of mine for each one I run of yours.

4. My current rate of progress seems to be 1 or 2 arcs per week.

5. I will give each story arc a fair chance and try to get through it if at all possible. I'll only quit early if it's impossible to complete (buggy, all AVs, or Defeat All on huge maps).

6. After finishing each arc I'll post a review here and I'll mention your story arc in the next entry of my blog on the Liberty forum.

Please note that I cannot guarantee I will give your arc a high rating! If you will be unhappy if I give you anything less than 5 stars, then you may not want to ask me to give you a review!

Also, my review style seems to be most helpful for people who are willing and able to make changes to their arc as a result of player feedback. It is least helpful for people who are completely happy with their story arc "as is" and aren't interested in suggestions for changes. So if you've marked your arc "Final", and you mean it, my review style might not be as helpful to you.


Here's a list of things that help my rating for a story arc:

10. Good costuming.
9. Amusing side objectives (e.g. rescue random hostages, glowies with interesting clues)
8. Helpful clues (in particular, I prefer if the clue directly tells the player some info, rather than forcing the player to bring the clue to the contact, who then explains it)
7. Clever concept (some arcs just stand out for being different than the standard formula)
6. Dynamic missions (I like when it appears "stuff is happening" as you progress through a mission)
5. Believable plotline (some slack is allowed because it is a superhero game, but try not to make the player swallow anything too ridiculously unbelievable)
4. Descriptive mission briefings/debriefings (I really like to know what I'm doing on each mission and why I'm doing it)
3. Good dialog and characterization (too easy to leave dialog blank or give very generic dialog that any enemy could say; much more impressive if you get the feeling from dialog that "This is a real person, with personality")
2. A Grand Finale (final mission is your last chance to make an impression on the player; make it count!)
1. Sense of immersion (some arcs set a "mood" or a "tone" that is maintained through the whole story arc - IMHO this is one of the best attributes of a good story arc, as it "grabs you" and makes you part of the story)


Here's a list of things that hurt my rating for a story arc:

10. Custom enemies that re-implement CoH enemies that already exist. (Do we really need ANOTHER zombie/mercenary/robot faction?)
9. Player isn't the "star" of the story and/or Badly handled Author insertion. (The player should be an important part of the plot; don't let your NPCs dominate everything and leave the player as just an observer. Also, Author insertion that "makes sense" for the story is OK.)
8. Lack of dialog/clues/description from NPCs.
7. Just not much to do during a mission (Complexity = radio mission)
6. Time wasters (Defeat All on large or annoying maps; lengthy sequences of triggered objectives on large or annoying maps; objectives set up in a way that requires excessive backtracking)
5. Continuity errors (your clue tells me X, but your debriefing tells me Not X)
4. Mission Impossible (custom mobs and/or AVs are just too darn hard)
3. Game over: You lose (even though I do everything right, the arc is scripted to make me lose)
2. Not knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing (what's my motivation for this mission again?)
1. Missions aren't connected into an overall story (an arc needs an overarching plot!)


For what it's worth, these are my story arcs as of this writing:

LOOKING FOR PLAYS
This arc is pretty well polished, but I'd welcome more players to play through it, in order to try and achieve the 999 threshold.

Teen Phalanx Forever (arc 67335)
The Teen Phalanx is on a recruitment drive, and they've extended an invitation to a teen version of your hero to try out! Do you have what it takes to join Paragon City's most prestigious teen superhero team?
(heroic, level 15-30, but exemping from 50 actually works really well for the story too)


LOOKING FOR FEEDBACK
These are arcs that I feel can benefit the most from player feedback.

A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force (arc 260284)
Samurai and ninja battle for honor in a faraway realm. But someone has introduced firearms to the land, tilting the balance of power towards the evil Lord Kumo and the Spider Clan. Will you journey there to restore the balance?
(heroic, level 45-50, challenging; an AV-fighting team or strong soloer is recommended)

Papers and Paychecks (arc 298290)
JOB OPENING: Entry-level position available in dynamic, fast-moving Fortune 500 company. Seeking flexible, motivated individuals, self-starters willing to think outside the box. Excellent salary, benefits, opportunities for rapid promotion. Qualified applicants, contact Crey Industries HR Dept.
(villainous, level 32-45)

Axis and Allies (arc 1379)
Travel back in time to take over the 5th Column, and lead the Axis powers to win WW2 and conquer the World!
(villainous, level 40-44)


FINAL
These are arcs that I consider pretty well polished and are "done", at least for now. But, you're still welcome to try them, enjoy them, and leave feedback.

Talos Vice (arc 338380)
An 80s instrumental blares as the camera pans over scenes of Talos Island: windsurfers on the water, the Talos statue, shoppers in Wentworth's, bikini babes, sports cars racing down the Argo Highway, a speedboat bouncing on the waves. A title card appears over the waters racing below: TALOS VICE
(heroic, level 12-20)

Celebrity Kidnapping (arc 1388)
Boy, does Willy Wheeler have a deal for you! A celebrity heiress has been sentenced to jail for drunk driving. The plan is to break her out of the Zig with the help of some thugs, then hold her for ransom for immense profit! What could go wrong?
(villainous, level 30-40)


LOCKED
I can't change this arc any more (without jumping through lots of hoops) so I can't easily respond to feedback, but you are of course welcome to play it and (hopefully) enjoy it.

Two Tickets to Westerly (arc 374002)
While patrolling in King's Row, you see her. Trashy outfit, smeared makeup, unkempt hair; just another Skulls Girlfriend, you think. You're about to pass her by when she starts waving to you. "Please! I need help!" she pleads. "My boyfriend...I think he's in trouble."
(heroic, level 5-12)

4/10/2009

I logged on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to find I had gotten some feedback on my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc (#1388); one person told me it was not very challenging, while two others told me they nearly died to the paparazzi ambushes. With some people saying "too easy" and some "too hard" I decided to leave it as is.

Someone on LBX was asking people to try the Poor Polly story arc, where you try and rescue a little girl's lost rabbit. But when you enter the mission you find you're too late, the rabbit is already rabbit stew and you have to destroy the stew pot to complete the mission. This takes like 10 seconds to do. There really wasn't much to the mission, but I gave it some bonus points for gleeful meanspiritedness (you have to go back and tell the little girl her rabbit is dead) so ended up giving it a 3 star rating.

I then tried Digital Love, a story arc by another Liberty person, which starts out with you helping this robot out, but then turns into a plot about a squicky but doomed love affair between the robot and a girl Carnie. I'm a sucker for tragic romance, so I gave it 4 stars.

From there I went into soloing Big Trouble in Little Paragon, a story arc written by someone I know on Triumph. This story had the premise that Fusionette had gotten in trouble with the law and you're helping her clear her name, and you uncover an anti-hero conspiracy in the police department. I'm not sure it's actually a good idea to go around shooting police officers just because Fusionette says so, and I think there wasn't enough evidence (and flavor text) explaining why the cops turned against Fusionette, and I ran across a couple bugs in the story arc (one mission completed instantly as I entered it, and the final mission was a defeat all on the Atlas map with that darn meteor, and I had to kill the meteor to finish it). Some of the dialog was cute though, so I ended up giving this 3 stars.

After that I joined a Recluse SF started by a friend. We had one false start where we were on Relentless difficulty, then quit and restarted the SF on Villainous difficulty. The team leader asked me to play a rad, so I brought Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team mix ended up being:

mind dom
rad corr (me)
dark corr
2 dark brutes
stalker
poison MM
fortunata

I thought we were too light on support classes with this team mix, but we gave it a try anyway. A lot of team members weren't real familiar with the RSF, so this went a little slowly. I wasn't really at the top of my game either, though; I was lagging horribly and playing a little carelessly and suffered a few needless deaths early on. Nevertheless we managed to get through all the early missions successfully, only to hit a brick wall in the final fight against the Freedom Phalanx. Our first two attempts at a frontal assault on the heroes resulted in team wipes without dropping any of the heroes. We then made a third attempt where the dominator used Domination and Mass Hypnosis to try and pull just a few heroes at a time; we got 4 of them, which was still enough to wipe us out. We just seemed to die too easily to the hero team; we maybe needed more buff/debuff or more aggro control. More something, anyway. After the third attempt we decided to call it quits on the SF.

I decided to try playing a sub-50 character on Architect Entertainment missions, so I brought on Millie Volt (27 elec/invuln brute). I first tried a story arc called Anvil of Evil, which I picked at random from the list of villain arcs with no ratings yet. This arc didn't look finished (most text was blank), and wasn't true to the "villain" morality as the contact would say "Good luck, Heroes!" and you were there to destroy the Anvil of Evil instead of take it over and use it. I quit that arc and gave it 2 stars.

Then I tried the It's a Little Earth As It Is story arc, by a Liberty player, which had the premise that the robots on a Disneyland ride went crazy and started taking hostages. This was actually a pretty funny concept and I loved the costumes; though, on the down side, the mobs were too tough for Millie to handle, especially the sonic blast/force field minions who would stack buffs on bad guys and debuffs on me. Ouch! Mission Architect enemies are surprisingly hard relative to normal PvE enemies. I enjoyed the concept behind this arc but didn't feel up to clearing the whole map (which was the mission goal) so I quit the arc but still gave it 4 stars.

After that I did a quick story arc called From Killjoy with Love, which was a basic mercenary op to take out some CoT assets. This seemed a decent and playable mission (though the force field bosses at the end were a little rough) but I felt it needed more story; I gave it 3 stars.

Someone on LBX was shilling his new story arc, Immortal Kombat, and with a name like that I decided I had to give it a try. I switched to Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) expecting it to be a martial arts tournament for the fate of Outworld, but it actually seemed to be a mission to rescue a hero named Kombat from the clutches of some new villain organization. I thought the basic premise was okay but the mission needed to explain a little more about the back story of Kombat or these new bad guys, as I didn't really know what was going on. Gave it 3 stars and wrote a lot of suggestions in feedback.

After that I switched back to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and joined a 4-player Liberty Force SG team doing Architect Entertainment missions. We were tanker, scrapper, warshade and me, and people wanted to play on Invincible, which I wasn't sure was a good idea since I was the only "healer" with Aid Other, but it actually worked fine.

We first ran one of the warshade's story arcs, Alter Ego, where we did a lot of dimension hopping to encounter alternate universe versions of his main hero character. All of the alternate universe versions turned out to be horribly evil supervillains, so we killed them all, and then we decided this must make his hero character evil, so in the final mission we confronted his main character (who was in the process of turning evil and had just roasted a hero sidekick) and beat him up. I thought this was pretty fun (though admittedly it helped that this was a vanity arc where I was "in" on the in-jokes) so rated it 5 stars.

We then ran a very silly arc called Clowns, Fast Food & McArchvillains, which had fast food-themed enemies. I started off thinking this was absolutely too silly, but midway through I actually started enjoying fighting the hordes of Ronald McDonalds ambushes, beating up the Wendy boss (our team unanimously agreed she needed to be a sluttier redhead than the author depicted) and rescuing the Colonel Sanders hostage. It was just one mission long, but required a lot of fighting; I think this was just the right length as the joke would've worn thin in a second mission. This was fun enough that I gave it 5 stars too.

Finally we ran another teammate's story arc, Scourge of the Phalanx: Reunion, where he depicts the reformation of the Scourge of the Phalanx villain group (which my alt April Fool used to be in). This was pretty fun because I recognized all the villains we were recruiting, including a copy of April Fool (although the author couldn't make her a thug/TA mastermind since Mission Architect chokes on that powerset combo due to redraw issues). I've seen a lot of these vanity arcs so far and it seems they are much more fun if you know the players who are being shown, as I liked this a lot (gave it 5 stars); some of the ones where I didn't know anyone involved left me a little cold. This arc did fill in more back story on each of the characters, which I think helps.

After that our team broke up and I slightly edited one of my published arcs. I had gotten feedback from multiple people on my Celebrity Kidnapping arc that the second mission being so much lower level than the other two is jarringly inconsistent, so I ended up changing the second mission's enemies from Skulls into Tsoo. This changes the mission levels on the story arc from 38-14-40 to 38-40-40, which seems to flow smoother.

Over the course of the night, Police Woman got the following mission architect badges:

Poor Impulse Control (clicked 10 glowies)
Adventurer (played 10 story arcs)
Creator (25 players played my story arcs!)
Savior (25 hostages)

On Wednesday, I14 came out and I eagerly copied my test story arcs over to the live servers. I republished Axis and Allies as story arc #1379 and Celebrity Kidnapping as story arc #1388. I decided not to republish the Netrunner arc yet, since it didn't seem well received on test server, and after some self-reflection, it just isn't as cool as the other two. Not sure if I will rework it or create a totally different story for my third story arc.

I didn't have either the Freedom Phalanx or the Vindicators unlocked on live servers, of course, so I had to delete Statesman and Maiden Justice from the Axis and Allies arc before I could publish it. But I solo'd my own Celebrity Kidnapping arc, partially to test whether it imported correctly and partly for tickets. Just soloing one short arc gave me 140 tickets, plenty enough to unlock the Freedom Phalanx and Vindicators.

I then re-inserted Statesman and Maiden Justice into my final mission of the Axis and Allies story arc, using the "pet" versions that you see in the Mender Silos TF so they'd be somewhat soloable. Strangely, this pushed my story arc over the size limit; this was maddening because it was under the size limit on test. So there was some sort of bloat that occurred. I ended up deleting a custom character, the Soviet Sergeant, to make enough room for the heroes. I ran some tests and found I had some of my custom characters in the "All Custom Characters" faction instead of their proper custom faction; not sure how that happened, maybe an import/export from test problem. Fixed it though.

An LBXer was asking people to try out his story arc, so I found myself trying to solo the "Circle of Thorns Mistake" story arc, playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Despite being on the lowest difficulty, every other mob in the first mission had an elite boss in it, and all the mobs that weren't elite bosses were regular bosses. I tried stealthing around in this mission, but the mobs could see through my stealth. I really did give this story arc a try but after dying twice and realizing the objective was "Defeat Striker" and there were dozens of EBs each named Striker, I decided this mission would be impossible for me to complete, so I quit. I could not honestly give this arc a good rating since it was completely impossible, but I felt it would be awfully mean to give him a 1 star rating, so I ended up rating it with 2 stars and wrote the author some feedback explaining that I thought having an EB in every spawn was way too hard. The author later contacted me and told me his custom enemy group was bugged and it wasn't supposed to spawn all EBs, and made me promise to try it again later after he made some fixes.

Over LBX chat I heard someone ask whether "Police Woman" was a new custom character in the Paragon Police faction. This made me smile. Someone was playing one of my story arcs.

In response to another LBXer I next tried the "Cat War" story arc, which was really just one mission that had a lot of custom allies and enemies named after the author's cats. Plus lots of ninjas. This didn't make a lot of sense and was clearly full of in-jokes about the cats that I wasn't in on. But it was an okay mission, fun and quick, so I gave it 3 stars.

After that I joined a 5-player Liberty Force SG team doing Saul's Discount Task Force. This arc struck me as pretty silly initially, as the contact sends you to do trivial errands while promising great glory, but the execution was fantastic and the story was really pretty funny, so I had to rate it 5 stars. It was a Dev Choice arc, which meant it dropped no tickets (to the dismay of my team, who didn't realize this until we finished) but was lucky for me as I got an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/END) recipe.

We wanted tickets and I ended up with the star somehow so I dragged my team through my own story arcs, first Axis and Allies and then Celebrity Kidnapping. It actually felt a little weird because we were a hero team doing villain arcs, but some of my teammates got into the spirit of things and changed to "incognito" costumes since they didn't want their hero to be recognized while breaking someone out of the Zig. Of course, the photographer ambush probably spoiled THAT plan....

My team was a little disappointed in how easily Statesman and Maiden Justice dropped ("those weren't Heros!" one person said) so I decided to upgrade them to full AV status, but make then optional goals so the arc would still be soloable. Running through my arcs was really beneficial to me, since my friends all rated them highly (probably influenced by the fact that they knew me) and I got a packet of tickets for each person who played through it. (I think this is based on the rating they gave; I'm not sure if tickets are awarded if someone re-plays the arc.)

After that one of my teammates had enough tickets to re-publish his arc (which depended on some weapon lockables) and so we ran that next; I think it was called The Yellow Sign. This was an extremely cool Cthulhu Mythos story arc. We started off fighting mostly Longbow and acquiring mystical tomes, but soon started running into Innsmouth people and Deep Ones and other aberrations. The flavor text for this story arc was perfectly written in the Lovecraftian style, with extensive use of obscure words like squamous, antediluvian and congeries. The mood was perfect and I rated this arc 5 stars. The only problem I think was the final AV, a dual blades/willpower, was way too tough; the regen an AV gets from willpower seems ludicrously high, and our team of 5 (2 blasters, peacebringer, tanker, rad defender) beat on him uselessly for half an hour, before our peacebringer switched to a blaster for higher DPS which let us wear down the AV after only another 20 minutes. We finally whittled him down to 0 life which completed the mission, but then he instantly rez'd; but we decided to get out while the getting is good. Thinking about it, though, it kinda works for the final AV in a horror story to rez itself right after you thought you killed him.

Our team broke up at that point and I decided to make good on my promise to re-try the Circle of Thorns Mistake arc, again trying to solo it with Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). This time it spawned in a more natural fashion with lots of minions and lieutenants, and I was able to see enough of the mission to get a feel for the story, which was apparently that the CoT summoned an entire race of angry lizardfolk which need killing. There was an invuln EB at the end of the first mission that I barely managed to solo after a hairy fight (he went Unstoppable, raising all his resists to 90%, and had minions healing him; had to drop all the fire lizards who were doing thermal buffs and heals first, then wear him down), then a regen EB at the end of the second mission who had an annoying habit of flying up into the ceiling and getting his head stuck in the roof so I didn't have line of sight to shoot him. I eventually beat him by luring him down and out-waiting his Instant Healing, then dropping him before it recharged. It was still pretty hard but significantly more doable this time, and I was actually able to complete it; I tried to raise my previous rating on the arc but I'm not sure if it took.

Another player was offering to play people's arcs if they would play his, so I found myself trying to solo the Fall of the Blackguards (Part 1) story arc. This was kind of a vanity arc where the members of the author's villain group all appear and are enacting some kind of evil plan, and you have to stop them. It was pretty EB-heavy and I got smashed flat twice by EB ambushes; technically they probably weren't ambushes, but a boss spawn that was triggered from rescuing a hostage, and the EB happened to spawn directly on my head (ow!). I think these EBs could probably have been regular bosses to make it more soloable, but I can understand that in a vanity arc you want all your characters to be AV level. But the EBs were fairly soloable (at least for Police Woman), so it wasn't too bad; except for the invuln brute who was quite hard for me since he would go Unstoppable frequently. I managed to drop him when Unstoppable was down; I'm finding Surveillance power to be invaluable for figuring out what custom bosses are doing, what powers they have running, and so on, not to mention the nice debuff it applies. I thought the back story was a little thin; I did recognize some of the players who were represented by enemies in this arc, but the mission didn't really tell you a lot about them and their "info" was left blank. The author told me she was mainly focused on functionality and would add more description later though. I think I gave this arc 3 stars, it was playable but felt a little unfinished, and it was a little light on background info. I really would've liked to know more about who these villains were and what motivates them, and other plot stuff like that.

I got a ridiculous number of Mission Architect badges on the first night, including:

Customizer
Workaholic
Extractor
Activated
Gamer
Ticket Taker
Admiring
Thrill Seeker
Hot Shot (I decided to set this as my new badge)
Eliminator
Early Bird
Architect X
Liquidator
Ticket Hound
Do Gooder (ironically, for kidnapping people)
Executioner
Author
Went the Extra Mile
Ticket Fiend
Encouraged
Destructive
Assassin
Safekeeper
Decimator
Motivated
Architect XXV

This puts me up to 571 badges. I had a ton of fun; I'm loving I14 so far and can't wait til I log in to play some more.


[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
39.61MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 59.08mins (avg of 9 runs)
36.54MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 24.63mins (avg of 5 runs)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
31.73MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 28.36mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.74MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 109.4mins (avg of 5 runs)
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.20MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 124.98mins (avg of 10 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
18.02MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 93.21mins (avg of 27 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.84MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.82mins (avg of 9 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
14.23MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 37.96mins (avg of 8 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
11.54MPH Breakout at the Zig villain flashback: 8 merits in 41.6mins (1 run)
9.92MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 72.6mins (avg of 5 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 runs)

4/9/2009

On Monday night, Police Woman's (50 AR/dev blaster) marketeering pushed her over 3000 sales, getting me the Auctioneer badge and a 19th auction house slot.

I solo'd Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) through a couple of Maria Jenkins' missions, and managed to beat an Infernal EB and a Marauder EB.

I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a "weather channel" Imperious TF that was recruiting from LBX. The premise of this TF was that every team member had to be some sort of storm, cold, electric or ice character. Our team ended up being:

2 storm defenders
1 storm controller
1 ice/cold corruptor (me)
1 emp/elec defender
2 cold defenders
1 elec blaster

The team leader (who was, in fact, a stormy) warned against using hurricane or tornado, which seemed very un-stormy to me, but as a cold corr I didn't have these things so I sorta shrugged. Capped defense from cold shields let us easily coast through the early missions, though our DPS felt a little low; we had only one blaster for DPS and he seemed AFK most of the TF.

In the final mission we made our first attempt against Romulus while the blaster was still AFK, but with no real "tanker", weak negative resist (sadly neither Steamy Mist nor Arctic Air help against negative damage) and low DPS we ended up suffering a wipeout. We had a second attempt where we nearly suffered another wipeout, but the blaster returned from AFK and things seemed to turn around from there, letting us knock the rest of the Romuluses out to complete the TF in 1hr 45mins.

After the TF finished, I burned a free respec for Yuki-Onna in anticipation of the I14 respec grant. I respec'd to the following build:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Yuki-Onna I14: Level 50 Science Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Ice Blast
Secondary Power Set: Cold Domination
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Hold%(7)
Level 1: Infrigidate -- HO:Lyso(A), HO:Lyso(7), ImpSwft-Dam%(9), LdyGrey-%Dam(9), ShldBrk-%Dam(11), Achilles-ResDeb%(11)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(13), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dev'n-Hold%(17)
Level 4: Ice Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(25), LkGmblr-Rchg+(27)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Freeze Ray -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(17), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(23), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(25), NrncSD-Dam%(27), G'Wdw-Dam%(29)
Level 10: Glacial Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 18: Bitter Ice Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(19), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(23)
Level 20: Arctic Fog -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(37), TtmC'tng-ResDam(37), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(37)
Level 22: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(29), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(36), P'Shift-End%(36), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 24: Ice Storm -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), RechRdx-I(31), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(31), Posi-Dmg/Rng(31), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Dam%(33)
Level 26: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 28: Benumb -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(39), RechRdx-I(40), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 30: Tactics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Blizzard -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), RechRdx-I(33), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(34), Posi-Dmg/Rng(34), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Posi-Dam%(36)
Level 35: Sleet -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 38: Heat Loss -- Efficacy-EndMod(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(39), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(39), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(42), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(42), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx(43)
Level 41: Shark Skin -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), TtmC'tng-ResDam(43), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(46)
Level 44: Spirit Shark Jaws -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(45), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(45), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Hibernate -- Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(48), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(48), Dct'dW-Heal(48), Dct'dW-Rchg(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge


I have some of the IO sets listed above but not all of them; I'm actually missing all the LotGs, Basilisk Gazes and most of the Positron's Blast from the above build, along with one set of Decimation. The main change I made in this build was to drop Mace Mastery for Shark Mastery (or whatever Mako's thing is called). I had originally planned to respec back into Aid Self, but decided Hibernate actually thematically makes more sense for Yuki-Onna (who is a snow spirit) and is probably better in a lot of situations (maybe PvP).

Tuesday night I saw a friend playing a newbie fire/SR brute, and I logged on April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and malefactored down to duo with him for some level 6ish missions in Port Oakes. He was shocked that I had Aid Other at level 6; I'm a Medicine Pool junky, I guess! We got him to level 8 before calling it a night.

I ran through this with a 5-player team, and Statesman and Maiden Justice (using the "pet" version from the Mender Silos TF) were disappointingly easy with a team. Consequently, I upgraded them both to AVs, but to make sure this is still doable by a soloer, I changed them to non-required objectives.

[ QUOTE ]

AE System
--------
Welcome to Architect Entertainment -- Neutral
Death for Dollars! -- Neutral
Bare Knuckles of Rage (9304)
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
--------
Birth of a Fossil -- Heroic
*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
--------
*

Comedy
--------
The Extadine Lab -- Heroic
The Great Chicken Caper of '09 -- Heroic
ParaCon -- Heroic
The new and improved Lord Recluse Strike Force -- Villainous (though I wouldn't recommend against a hero )


*

Comedy/Drama
--------
A Super Team is Born -- Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749) -- Neutral
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings -- Neutral
Lawyers of Ghastly Horror -- Heroic
How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- Heroic
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare -- Neutral
*

Crime/Gangs
--------
The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (16809)
*

Drama
--------
*

Global Domination
--------
Axis and Allies -- Villainous (1379)
*

Heist
--------
Celebrity Kidnapping -- Villainous (1388)
*

Historical (Realistic)
--------
*

Historical (CoH Lore)
--------
*

Holiday
--------
*

Horror
--------
Small Fears -- Heroic
Dark Dreams -- Heroic (18914)
*

Large-Scale Crisis
--------
A Hero's Halo -- Heroic
This Is War, Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz -- Neutral
Win the Past, Own the Future - Heroic
*

Magic
--------
The Amulet of J'gara -- Heroic
Chains of Blood (5492) -- Heroic
*

Military
--------
Redoubt Operations #1: Fires over Kalago -- Heroic

Red Storm Rising Arc 4912 Heroic
*
Misc. Adventure
--------
The Portal Bandits -- Heroic
*

Mystery
--------
Blowback (18575) -- Heroic
Dream Paper -- Heroic (13030)
Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep -- Heroic (16797)
Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams -- Heroic (13064)
*

Mythology
--------
Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld -- Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) -- Neutral
*

Nemesis Plots
--------
Brass Reaver: Part 1 -- Neutral
*

Player-Chosen Outcome
--------
Hunting the Dark Dragon
*

Sci-Fi
--------
Adventures of the Space Marines -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 -- Neutral
Above Mars: Part 1 - The Wellington -- Neutral
*

Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
--------
The Meatgrinder -- Neutral
*


[/ QUOTE ]

This story arc has been republished on the live servers as arc #1379.

Thanks for the input, everyone!

On live, my story arcs are now:

1388 Celebrity Kidnapping (villainous)
Kidnap a spoiled rich celebutante and hold her for ransom!

1379 Axis and Allies (villainous)
Go back in time to lead the Axis powers to victory in WW2!