Sister_Twelve

Alrighty. I was just wondering why my custom group at the end of my arc was still getting xp-nerfed. I'll have to figure out some way to get a boss in there when I'm already at 99.98% full. ;0)

This may sound like a dumb-dumb question, but what is the minimum number of mobs that can be used in a custom faction to have that faction give normal experience?

1 minion, 1 lieutenant, 1 boss?

The second arc I played today is "A Clockwork Romance."

I tend to like canon-related arcs more and more because authors can dispense with a lot of the exposition necessary when introducing a completely new concept altogether. We are all familiar with the Clockwork King. And the vast majority of us have had Penelope Yin as a contact and have played through Lady Grey's Task Force. So there is at least a passing familiarity with the narrative from which this arc is drawn.

The basic premise is that the Clockwork King still wants Penelope Yin. Since the Clockwork King is more or less a floating brain in a jar, we can assume that this is less a biological imperative and more a yearning of a higher order. The storyline has parallells in Greek mythology with Hades and Persepone. Authors of these types of stories generally conclude that the woman in the non-relationship will ultimately, when confronted with the lousy options offered to her, accede to the necessity of the lesser of two evils and gradually come to accept the day-to-day reality of her situation.

As Persepone accedes to becoming Hades' bride, (at least for 7 or 9 (?) months out of the year, I can never remember), are we to assume that Penelope Yin will similarly accede to remaining with the Clockwork King once the immediate threat to the various kidnapped women has passed? The resolution of the story certainly assumes so, though the nature of the comic book narrative will probably demand that this particular ongoing story be revisited again, if not by Fredrik, then by another writer, who might build on what he has written here or might ignore it altogether.

Another interesting point to note about this arc is that it doesn't really have much to do with your character. Your character serves mainly as a mechanism to facilitate Penelope's choice one way or the other. Yes, you are the one who ultimately frees her from the Lost, but that really isn't a choice per se. The only alternative to that choice is to do nothing at all, which basically guarantees both the loss of Penelope and the loss of the other women. I suppose your character could ignore Penelope's plight altogether and try to track down where the Clockwork have all of the other women trapped, but that seems like a fairly poor choice as well.

At any rate, as I said, this story isn't really about your character. It's about the ongoing relationship between Penelope and the Clockwork King... a relationship with which your character plays only a tangential role.

I will add some thoughts at the end regarding this story and the contest, but for the moment, I will concentrate on the narrative itself.

My Thoughts:

- It appears as though you used the Westin Phipps model for Penelope's father. For some players, since Phipps is such a loathed figure, this might create a negative association with the arc immediately. At any rate, Penelope's father certainly bears a resemblance to Phipps.

- The way you segregated the different mobs in the first mission is very well done. Every time I have tried to do that with two different types of factions on the same map, the mobs have always ended up mish-mashed with each other.

- The writing is simple and the arc is fairly short. This isn't a negative for me, but it did leave me thinking it could have been fleshed out a bit more, even with the player's foreknowledge of the backstory. Given that there is time before the deadline for the contest, you certainly have the option of adding more if you feel it necessary.

- Played on my Widow as 1/+2/Boss/No AV. No problems with any of the factions. The set-up for the fight to free Penelope is a bit tough, but that is mainly because there are a couple of different groups of Lost in her vicinity and they all aggro at once, (or at least did for me).

I would say that this is a strong arc and well worth playing, especially if you like the ongoing Yin/King dynamic. It doesn't re-create the wheel, but it doesn't need to and is certainly a well-constructed addition to that ongoing narrative arc.

As far as whether this story fits the bill for the contest, I would say that it probably really doesn't. It stands up well on its own, but the character really isn't asked to do anything other than be a hero. The chain of events is couched in such a way that ultimately the decision to go to the King or not remains Penelope's to make. The implication is that your character would back whichever choice she makes and ultimately even fight the King for her to remain free if necessary. On that level, I don't ever see the hero do anything evil... which is what the contest asks for.

I will probably end up doing 2 arcs today because I have some free time while I listen to football games on my internet stream. I decided to play a couple of the ones that people are entering into the Challenge.

The one I decided to start with is "One Too Many Lines Crossed."

The basic premise of this arc is that your character is infiltrating Arachnos in order to gather information and/or stop an uprising. In the author's thread about this arc, he mentions that the uprising is being led by a rogue member of the 5th Column and that the reason you are doing this is to prevent an all-out war between Arachnos and the Fifth Column and/or the Council.

The initial problem is that there is no immediate evidence of this possibility occurring while playing the arc itself. For the first three missions, (the ones that immediately deal with the uprising), the uprising comes across as so weak that I could not imagine this group ever presenting a real problem for Arachnos. The highest number of enemies I defeated in any given mission was about 5 people. The uprising doesn't seem to have any connection with the Fifth Column unless the Fifth Column sent a truck down to Mercy Island and distributed a crate full of guns and told the citizens to rebel against Recluse. They don't seem to have any distinct plans or even to have lucked into a way of threatening to topple Recluse.

On that level, the player immediately begins to question the necessity of the character even being there. The goal of the contest, as I see it, is to show that sometimes a hero must do things that challenge his/her moral compass in order to preserve the greater good. What good does my character's presence serve here? What does my slapping around the armed citizens of Mercy accomplish? What does my torturing some poor schmoe in a casino accomplish?

Without either: a.) some threat that is so immediate that I have no other choice than to take the darker path or b.) something that occurs that has very personal implications that would drive my hero over the edge, I don't really see what would motivate my character to take these actions.

In short, Arachnos would squash these people in short order whether I am there or not. On that level, there is no reason for me to 'cross the line,' so to speak. And on that level, what my character does makes no sense.

My thoughts:

- Your briefing for the first mission assumes you already know what is going on. In other words, there is no exposition and exposition is necessary to establish some sort of threat level and create some sense of immediacy. Throwing a player into the middle of what's happening tends not to work.

- The 'Psycher' Boss gives no reward. Apparently you have taken an offensive power away from him. This isn't a huge issue for me, but there are reviewers who will find this repugnant.

- There are numerous typos littered throughout. Too many to really list. I would take the time to clean it up before the contest deadline.

- Your Arachnos contact comes across as sort of a dimwit. A thug I can deal with. A stupid thug in an arbiter position is another story. Arbiters in general have reached the position they've reached because they tend to be a cut above the rest. In fact, most of Arachnos comes across throughout the arc as being somewhat mentally deficient.

- There is a brief nod toward philosophical debate between the relative virtues of fascism versus the relative virtues of communism. (I suspect that the Kommisar is the communist under discussion here... though why a dedicated communist would have attached himself to the Fifth Column in the first place is... ummm... well... maybe that's why he left the Fifth Column... although if he's persona non grata with the Fifth, then why would the Fifth be arming his revolutionaries? So I'm now giving myself a headache.)

At any rate, I had a moment of brief amusement because the person the arbiter was telling all of this was Ariadne, my Rogue Islands Communist Guerrilla leader, so her response to his unformed political rantings was sort of a... "Uh huh."

In fact, at the beginning of it, the sentence was awkwardly constucted enough that I thought for a moment that you'd read about Ariadne on the boards and that this whole thing was sort of a shout-out to another player's character, which I briefly found neat and then realized that your arbiter was talking about someone else entirely.

- Played it on my Widow at 2/+2/Boss/No Av. No issues. The first three missions are extraordinarily short. Mission 1, I defeated 5-6 guys. Mission over. Mission 2, I defeated another 5-6 guys. Mission over. Mission 3, I defeated 1 guy, (though this was the point of the mission). Mission over. And unfortunately as I said, out of the 5-6 guys, since 3 in each mission were those Boss level Psychers, there was no reward. So for the first 3 missions, I basically received a total of about 20 Architect tokens.

If you really want to make this group seem like they have any potential for their revolution to succeed, maybe you could create some running street battles against Arachnos or have them wiping out the RIP or something. As it stands, the revolution consists of about three groups of guys standing there on the streets with either a gun or a bat in their hands.

Overall, I'd have to say this is one of the weaker arcs that I have played for a variety of reasons. There is still some time left before the contest is over. I would take the time to reconstruct some things and make the revolutionary group more of a threat.

Posting my thoughts on this in my One A Day thread.

Tonight I played through "A Toast to Sweet Villainy."

I admit that I was baffled for a long time until I realized that I was playing the 7th part of an ongoing storyline. Without having played the first 6, the story doesn't make a lot of sense because there is no context for what my character is doing at this point in time. It was an interesting arc to play at this point in time considering the discussion going on in the stickied challenge thread about time travel and causality loops, because that's essentially what this particular arc is about.

In a nutshell, while engaging in a plot of your own, you encounter a group called the Chronologists, who seem to simultaneously want to stop you in a personal way and to collect the treasures of the timestream. You are thrown into the timestream and spend a good portion of the arc attempting to get back. Once you successfully acquire the means to do so, the Menders of Oro attempt to stop you. Then you decide the acquire the treasures of the time stream for yourself, thereby creating the enmity of the group that you encountered at the beginning of the arc.

On that level, the arc is all about causation because it assumes that this group would never have developed into what it became without encountering you, but if you'd never encountered them, you never would have made the decision to set them on the path to become what they become.

At face value, I am not sure how to take it, because again, I am walking into Part 7 of the ongoing storyline and I am not entirely certain what message the author is intending to send.

My Thoughts:

- The custom groups are a hodge podge of seemingly unrelated minions and lieutenants from various other factions. I think the point is that the Chronologists can acquire anyone from any point in the time stream. I am not entirely certain why there is such a concentration of Tuatha, but I encountered a lot of them along the way.

- The actual Chronologist custom faction hits very hard for the type of mob. The minions tend to hit as hard as lieutenants. One of the lieutenants managed to to 2-shot my Widow. I don't mind when a Boss or EB does it. A lieutenant doing it is a bit much.

- The last map is unnecessarily long for what you are getting. There are only about 4 encounters that provide any reward worth speaking of and the map is 5 levels with a glowie that has the potential to be located anywhere. Placing that glowie at the 'back' location may help with the propensity for this to become a pointless 1-hour map trudge. That being said, there is a clever plot device in use in this map that I appreciated. There is also an elite boss battle that occurs at the end that had me going ???

I suspect this is another result of me walking into part 7 of an ongoing storyline.

Overall, I think this arc suffers from sequel phenomenon. That is, there comes a time when sequels can no longer stand on their own. As a single part of an ongoing storyline, this particular narrative might hold up, but on its own, the end result is some scratching of the head and befuddlement as to what is actually going on here.

Apologies for my lack of activity over the last week. I've been in a galactically bad mood about a variety of things and when you are in that state of mind, it's probably best not to take it out on some poor, unsuspecting MA author.

I think unless you go out of your way to advertise your arc, there's a pretty good probability that it will reach the entry date having never been played if you want to go that route.

Reviewed in my One A Day thread - S12.

I would have left you this message in game, but my cat seized the opportunity to jump on the keyboard as I was doing my rating.

Tonight's arc was "The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society" by Wrong Number. I tried to cheat a little bit, because in general I don't really do comedy arcs because I tend to stare with blank-facedness at most gamer and/or internet-related humor. So anyway, this author won one of the player's choice awards, so I figured that she was probably one that I might want to play at some point. Unfortunately, all of her stuff seemed to be comedy.

So you see...

Then she published this arc and in her thread said that it was not comedy, so I dusted off my favorite communist guerilla leader fighting for the future of the people of the Rogue Isles and went to go see what The Firecracker Kid wanted me to do. My communist guerilla leader showed tremendous self-restraint in not immediately skewering him as soon as he started talking to her the way he did. ;p

The Firecracker Kid, it seems, is a grumpy old man...

My Thoughts:

- There are two things about this arc that reinforce themselves at every turn. First, the author seems to have an appreciation for the Golden Age of comic books... and manages to hearken back to those days, make them relevant in the present and do so in such a way as to make them not seem DUMB.

Almost every 'retro' Golden Age homage I have seen in comic books has made the way people behaved in the golden age seem absolutely asinine. This author manages to capture the innocence of the time period without simultaneously making the people seem mildly retarded.

- The second is that this storyline is... well... so old-school that it is charming. It's nice every once in awhile, when so many modern books are full of schools full of kids getting blown up, heroines getting *****, heroes acting like villains, established villains with very public identities getting seats on the U.S. National Security Council, etc... to stop a plot by 'Nutsis' to create an army of cloned supersoldiers.

- You are aware, I think, that the final boss' name translates to 'Overalls?' At least I think that's the literal translation of it. If not, then I cracked up over nothing.

- Played it with my Widow at 2/+3/Boss/No AV and she mowed the 5th Column down like wheat. One minor glitch slowed the pace of the 4th mission. The last clue spawned in an odd location and it took quite awhile to find it.

- The EBs were very easy because both of them were extremely vulnerable to the AI's tendency to make critters try to run away from the poison d.o.t. attacks that all widow attacks stack. So basically their tactics consisted not of swinging the ten-ton hammer at me and trying to one-punch me like most other AV/EB types, but to run around the room, stopping every few feet and gathering as many allies as I left still alive by that point to come attack me before starting to run away again.

Overall, it was a nice romp. My communist guerilla leader got to smack down more fascists tonight, (though these were fascists of the more obvious type), and to help out a grumpy old man and his adopted son... and to stop an army of supersoldiers from bringing about the rise of the 4th Reich.

Not bad for a night's work.

So tonight's arc was 'Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black' by Eva Destruction.

There are a number of concepts at work here. Fans of shows like 'The X-Files' will see a bit of The Lone Gunmen. Fans of Thunderbolts will see a bit of the time when Hawkeye led the team. Fans of Kurt Busiek's Astro City will see a bit of his Astro City Irregulars group. Basically, in a nutshell, we see the birth of a supergroup... one comprised of neophytes and misfits and, in a nice nod to the notion that not all factions are carbon copies of each other, a reformed Freakshow.

And you become their 'mentor' figure.

Why they would attach themselves to my communist Rogue Islands guerrilla fighter stretched credulity, but, hey I was the one who brought my widow into this scenario, so that's no big deal. She certainly doesn't mind bashing Malta heads, what with them being nearly the personification of every philosophy she despises.

My thoughts:

- The were a few times when dialogue seemed just a bit stilted. The Paragon Protector's bit in mission 4, for example. My understanding of PPs has always been that even if they aren't, they tend to regard themselves as heroes and actual heroes as anarchistic vigilantes. His line was a bit too "I'm evil" for my tastes. Crushification's dialogue was similarly stilted in a different sort of way. I think you can clean these up and make it a stronger arc.

- There were quite a few self-referential, inside jokes littered throughout. Though that sort of thing is not my speed, you will have an audience that appeciates them. Especially given the overwhelming number of comedy arcs out there. I appreciated this more, though, than an arc that necessarily calls itself a comedy. The best type of humor for me is humor that emerges naturally from within the bounds of the story... not necessarily humor that is a blatant attempt from the beginning to do nothing other than make you laugh.

- Sappers. -mumbles-

- Gunslingers. -mumbles further-

- Played it with my widow at 2/+2/Boss/No AV. I can't remember if there was an EB or an AV reduced to an EB, but there are plenty of named bosses of various factions littered throughout. The factions are pretty much all that they claim to be. If you can handle the listed factions, you can handle the arc with no issues.

Overall, this is one of the best 'straight superhero' arcs I've seen constructed. By that I mean, you aren't confronted with a lot of 'graphic novel' morality or 'Vertigo' type surrealism or deconstruction of the genre or anything like that. It's pretty much straight down the middle. The characters you mentor are all pretty likable and engaging. The plot you foil is not one that is designed to END ALL LIFE ON EARTH or PLACE THE WORLD IN SHACKLES or anything like that, but it is immediate and the consequences, if you failed, would be pretty nasty.

Like I said, if you clean up the dialogue just a smidge... inch a bit toward a little more natural style to what they say... I'd say you definitely have one of the better arcs in MA right now.

I will probably replay this at some point. I don't think my Rogue Isles Communist Guerilla Leader has adequately demonstrated to her young proteges what the appropriate amount of force is to use against the likes of Mako... or Malta... quite yet.

-shrugs-

I do not miss the halcyon days of yore when I'd be harassed by blind tells asking me to be a doorstop all night long.

Still on 2 plays after about a month after publication. It seems that either the early mediocre reviews while the arc was largely unfinished did more damage than even I envisioned or that the subject matter appears disinteresting at face value.

Ah, well. Can't win them all, I suppose.

I logged in intending to run Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black by Eva Destruction and was told that I had ten minutes to pack my stuff and get out of the game.

So.. tbc...

Today's arc was 'Matchstick Women' by Bubbawheat.

Most of what I post usually revolves around the narrative strength of a given arc. Sometimes I tend to forget that MA isn't just a medium for telling a story. In the midst of what is essentially one of the better devices ever developed for an MMO for storytellers, there actually is a game behind it and, as such, there will be authors who primarily view the tool from that angle.

This arc sort of reminded me of that fact, because what the author has done is create a very playable arc with a very well designed custom faction that balances, well I think, enough difficulty that it doesn't become a yawnfest type of walk through and a degree of conceptual clarity that I doubt I conveyed all that well in my own arc to date.

Basically, in a nutshell, you are asked to investigate a cult of burnt women with fire powers. The story reveals enough about them for your character to recognize the danger they represent, although the threat they pose within the scope of the arc itself is neither all that immediate or grave.

You are trying more to save them from themselves than anything else.

I think the success or failure of this specific faction will probably have less to do with what the author has done with them in this particular arc and more to do with whether they become an ongoing type of menace in later arcs that he constructs. There are some authors in any medium whose effectiveness isn't immediately apparent... and then perhaps 2 movies into a series or 3 books into a series, you realize how well developed a certain character has become or how well-defined a specific ongoing theme has been written.

- I played it on my widow at 2/+2/Boss/No AV. The pacing was good. I ran into no technical hitches. There is only one map of any length and he has designed the objectives well enough that they can be clearly spotted from a distance, so you don't get into a nasty search pattern. The faction itself is pretty hard-hitting, as most fire archetypes tend to be, but I did not run into any situations that overwhelmed me. The end boss seems balanced as well.

As I said at the outset, this is an arc that on the first run through PLAYS much better than it reads. It is an extremely fun arc to play with a compelling faction, but as to how compelling, it will largely depend on whether the author chooses to go back them and utilize them further.

Tonight's arc was 'Axis and Allies' by Policewoman. I went into playing this with a good deal of optimism because I have enjoyed of her other arcs that I've played. I also recall a Champions scenario written about 20 years ago called 'Wings of the Valkyrie,' which was based loosely on the same premise. My friends and I have played through quite a few variants of the Valkyrie scenario at various points in time during our roleplaying careers.

I think the further we get away from WWII as a society, the less resonance this particular type of scenario will have in our game play, simply because we will have other, more immediate historical events on which to focus.

The basic scenario, however, goes something like this, 'if you were to go back in time and kill Hitler, what would happen?'

In the 'Wings of the Valkyrie' Champions scenario, there was the caveat that, in addition to Hitler, you would also have to kill enough of the Nazi high command to reach a true historical tipping point that would enact real change to the timeline. The scenario mainly concerns itself with the hypothetical changes that would occur if that plan to do this were to succeed. Probably as much or more fun has been had over the years arguing and debating whether the 'Wings' alternate timeline is at all plausible or whether something else would occur entirely.

'Axis and Allies' doesn't really concern itself with any of those questions. It presumes totally that your character killing Hitler will result in a desirable outcome, at least as far as your character is concerned. Following that, it places you at two historical points during the war, which the author indicates were important enough that if they were to fall, the defeats would lead, in succession, to the surrender of France and England, and then Russia. Finally it places you into a completely hypothetical situation which presumably would result in the surrender of the United States.

The topic at hand is very large... probably too large to adequately deal with in the course of only 4 missions. I could see this scenario possibly being expanded into perhaps 3-4 or more separate alternate history arcs, one dealing with each of the military campaigns touched upon in 'Axis and Allies.' As it stands, though, I felt as though I barely touched the tip of the iceberg.

- Despite feeling as though the subject matter was dealt with in cursory fashion, the pacing of the arc was plodding. This had a LOT to do with the fact that in every mission, I spent a good deal of time wandering around an essentially empy map trying to locate an orphan mob to kill so that the mission would end. This even happened in the Center Map because the spawn point for one of Hitler's associated mobs was way up at the top of the catwalk neatly concealed so that I missed him even though I passed by him three times.

On each of the outdoor maps, the was at least one, if not more, mission objective that took a lot longer to find than expected. I do not mind if a scenario is HARD. I do mind if it is dull. Wandering the empty map is a lot more dull than it is hard for the most part.

- The inclusion of obvious superpowers on regular army types was unexpected. The Soviet soldiers, for example, had superstrength. At first I was a bit confused, but it occurred to me that I was playing in the COH variant of WWII, so I wasn't overly offended by it or anything. The combination of cold powers, MM soldiers, and superstrength in the adjacent mobs did manage to do what few things have managed to do lately... absolutely pulverize my Widow. I took a 1-shot from an EB at the end of the COW arc from one of the AV's that was reduced to EB status, but the soviet generals and their adjacent mobs were the first things that really made me feel like I was outmatched by something.

Not complaining about this... I don't think it's necessarily a good thing if I wipe the floor with everything I ever run across. Just saying that I'm one of the few people who think harder enemies aren't that bad a thing and sort of take them in stride, so I know that if they were tough for my Widow, they probably are devastating for characters who don't have the set bonuses that my characters tend to have.

- Played it at 2/+2/Boss/No AV. Other than the aforementioned soviets, I did not have ay significant problems with any of the custom mobs. I think with the preponderence of outdoor maps, you might consider changing the victory condition on the bosses to just the bosses themselves, simply to avoid situations where your player has to get into a long search pattern to locate an orphan mob.

Overall, I think this was a fair arc, certainly a notch below the other superior arcs we've seen from this author. The subject matter is not addressed with a great degree of depth and she reaches some debatable conclusions regarding the outcomes of certain events in WWII. I am not entirely sure if this is the correct venue for telling the type of story that she is trying to tell with this.

Alrighty. After debating with myself whether it would be correct to vote in this when I clearly have not played all of the arcs nominated, I've decided that I will only vote in select categories. In those categories, I have played all of the arcs, so I think my vote would be fair.

SO -

1.) Astoria in D Minor
2.) Teen Phalanx Forever

Epic -

1.) The Most Important Thing
2.) A Warrior's Journey: The Flower Knight Task Force

Multi-Part

1.) The Consequences of War
2.) The Audition

Ah, cool. I did not know that. I was still operating under my old Oro knowledge. When I ran Oro arcs, I was always pretty much stuck with whatever I started with. Is this a relatively recent change brought about because of that sort of thing?

Today's arc was 'Escalation' by Shagster.

Even if an arc is well known and has been reviewed many times, which is probably in the case of one with this low of an arc ID# and many plays, I try to avoid reading what other people have had to say about an arc prior to posting my own thoughts. That way I try to keep from being overly influenced by either 'gee, they have a point' or 'huh? what could they possibly be thinking?'

As such, even though Shagster's thread is there, I haven't read it and won't until I finish posting my reaction to the arc here.

So, my thoughts on it:

- The story is relatively simple and linear and is a pretty good 'superhero' concept. The overriding theme would be, for the player anyway, 'beware, because what you do has consequences and you can create your own nemesis.' This theme has seen a good amount of usage over the years in many comic books, mostly in the Batman/Joker/Almost every reference to Arkham Asylum dynamic in recent years and probably most effectively, (in my opinion anyway), in the classic Miller Daredevil run that featured Daredevil/Black Widow/Elektra/Bullseye.

The general assumption in this arc is that a villain is tired of the constant failure, especially at the hands of one particular hero and the obssession gives the villain who would ordinarily be riding the bench the skill and effectiveness to become an actual threat.

Miller's run is particularly effective because we see Bullseye simultaneously unravel before our eyes AND strive to overcome what he has always been... a z-stringer. After all, up to this point in Marvel history, the guy was a joke. He'd been spanked by every hero he'd ever come across and after a few truly spectacular beatings at the hands of the street level, non-powered Daredevil, he gradually lost his mind and decided to destroy everything that Daredevil loved and, in his finest moment from a villain standpoint, managed to kill the much cooler and much tougher Elektra, spurring Daredevil to deliver one of the most brutal beatings any hero has ever personally laid on a single villain.

This story is probably the benchmark story for the writer of Escalation. I am not saying that he needs to aspire to be Miller or to write his story in the same manner that Miller wrote his story or anything like that, but there are things that Miller does that 'Escalation' does not do.

a.) "This is Personal."

Yes, Escalation calls you, the hero, out personally several times as the story progresses, but you are never really given a reason WHY she has fixated on you, rather than, as the cop tells you, any one of the many other heroes who have beaten her in the past and turned her into such a joke. Once the writer delineate's what is different between her defeat in Atlas Park and those defeats of the past, then the story becomes inherently stronger.

b.) "I am not going to kill you. I am going to kill your family in front of you one by one and make you watch. And I'm going to do it slowly. And I'm going to make sure that they know before the end that the reason they're dying is because you weren't good enough to save them."

Miller's treatment of this concept is particularly good, which is why I think his handling of the overall theme is stronger than the Bat-writers. Once Bullseye fixates on Daredevil, everything he does, he does to destroy Daredevil. Escalation's rampage is potentially dangerous and she does things to bring the hero to her, but for being such a smart person, she really never tries anything nasty enough to get underneath the hero's skin. This means that she never moves from 'she is a threat that needs to be stopped' to 'if I wasn't a hero, I would KILL you.'

c.) "I HATE YOU! YOU'RE EVERYWHERE I LOOK! YOU'RE EVERYTHING I DESPISE! BEES! BEES! BEES!"

Like I said, Bullseye becomes more unhinged with each passing issue. Escalation sort of logically comes to the conclusion after every defeat the player lays on her that the reason she's losing is because she's not powerful enough. And actually, this is a pretty sane and logical conclusion. This means that the progression in her danger level comes not from what she is WILLING to do, but from what she is capable of DOING. That means again that she never progresses from 'you're a threat so I must stop you' to 'my god, if I don't stop you, some really, REALLY BAD things are going to happen.'

- Played on my Widow at 2/+2/Boss/No AV. When the last form of her popped unstoppable, I had to leave the fight until it wore off and return to defeat her. Unfortunately, by the time the contact gives the customary 'you should grab a team' speech, if you've already soloed the rest of the arc, you need to be able to solo her, because you can't add anyone to an already existing TF or SF... at least to my knowledge. So having to leave the fight and return broke immersion a little bit, but, hey, I've had to do that against other AV/EB types for whatever reason before. It was not that big a deal.

The customs seemed pretty balanced for the level range and I had no particular problem with any of them. The defense bots hit pretty hard for lieutenants, but the game could use a bit more hard hitting adversaries every now and again.

Overall, I think the arc was fairly well written. I think with some additional tweaking and changing one or two of the 'disposable' plots like the bank robbery and the police station to plots solely directed at the hero, designed to target the hero in a particularly personal and singular way, this particular story could be much stronger... and possibly strive to jump into the 'classic' range.