Sultana

I could still use ready to rumble and really hard way on Electroanagesia, but Femfury's been chomping at the bit for RHW; I'd be willing to bring a debuffer for that.

Neat! And thanks for all the volunteer statistical analysis you've done and input given on COH over the years, Arcanaville, you've definitely made COH a better game.

Big Standing Ovation, that's quite an accomplishment to be able to say, Okay, I'm finished with badges for now, what's next?

Issue 22 is coming out soon!

By the way, love your architect storyarcs, good writing.

A badge for souvenirs would be tricky, in that my souvenirs have gotten bugged several times, I've lost at least thirty over the years, and I've only gotten replies that told me that Souvenirs aren't an important facet of gameplay.

Just finished my crazed project: gold starring all the missions on both hero and villainside ouroboroses!

Hilarious! Guess we have clown MM pets now after all.

Yeah, the moSTF is a cinch, I'd gone through with Minos and Great Hope on the -1 regular STF run to check early yesterday, yep, all the AV's spawn at 49. I feel really bad for Aeon, Ghost Widow and Recluse, they've got to be sitting at a bar drinking their troubles away and crying about being nerfed to bits.

After that, I went on a Master of Barracuda run. We completed it successfully... but didn't get the badge. Don't try this one, not until they can fix it to have the badge awarded properly.

Well, time to do lots of moSTF runs before the prices on synthetic HO's completely crashes!

Sure, I'd like to join in! I'd like to get the badges on my defender Electroanagesia and my corruptor Perkiest Goth, but I basically have one of every alt that can help fill out the teams... except a stalker, I just can't seem to get the hang of playing a stalker.

I'm not sure if I'll be available on Thursday, since it's going to be @Femfury's birthday!! (Takes a moment to plug the @Femfury MA arcs for Fem's birthday raffle.) But, Fem works til very late, and we don't have plans yet, if things don't come together I'll get online and see if you need another person for your stf/rsf-7-or-possibly-8-run.

Happy Birthday @Femfury!

I'm @Electroanagesia, and I'd love to do the mstf on my fire blaster, spines/regen scrapper, my peacebringer or my warshade. Out of over 200 mstf runs, I've never had the first death on the team, not even on my spines/regen!

I'd also totally be willing to do "trades" by bringing my defenders, tank or controllers. (The problem with that is, whenever I've tried to do a "trade" before, once I got the other person the badge, they were so fed up with the mstf they never ever wanted to see it again!)

I'd also be interested in the mlrsf, and the new master badges once they come out. @Femfury, @Mass Transit, and @Radix Bubble-Sort are capable members of my SG that I usually team with, and have done a successful mstf with, even when the emp that we didn't know personally went afk to walk her dog while her character was sitting right in front of the tree, we kept her alive, later @Femfury tanked like a dream come true on Recluse, just ask @Zappalina!

I'm really looking forward to the idea of assembling people who are serious about getting the master badges, and ironing out what each of the potential pitfalls are in the new master runs.

I'm busy Tuesday nights after about six, but if you let me know ahead of time, I can be available whenever you'd like to put a master run together, just let me know!

In response to the Hercules review:

Mission 1:

The objectives underneath the mission text, "Rescue the chocolatiers, and maybe score some samples!", are listed as, "French Chocolatier, German Chocolatier, Dutch Chocolatier" (yes, I typed out the single Navigation text, I didn't just leave the hostage names as default). I understand what you are saying, I should type out, Free the French Chocolatier, Free the German Chocolatier, Free the Dutch Chocolatier, so people will know they just need to be freed. Rather than needing to be walked to the exit. Tossed in a little color on them, too. Actually, I've gotten several compliments on using the Chocolatiers' native tongues in their texts, and how the Goldbrickers are completely baffled by non-English speakers.

Changed "Stop you, the strawberry ganache belongs to us!" to, "Stop, the strawberry ganache belongs to us!"

Mission 2:

I'm switching from Goldbrickers to Crey, to continue exploring the story, the stakes have increased from needing to prevent the kidnapping of the greatest minds in chocolate creativity, to preventing the chocolate experience itself from being turned into a tool for enslavement, and a bad-tasting tool at that! I want to demonstrate that the only two villain factions that have any sort of canon-based connection to sweets are both taking action, but for very different reasons.

Found the instance when Extruder was typed with a lower-case "e", thanks!

Mission 3:

Actually, I'd only had a complaint about Doctor Hershey once, but the person said that the only thing they associate the word "Hershey" with, is "Hershey squirts". I'm going to change the name to Doctor Chocolatefinger, with his backstory... it's a Bond reference, but not a direct copyright violation. To those of you with dirty minds... just deal with it, heh! I have the character dark chocolate-colored, with Dark Melee and Dark Armor, and brown heavy body rocky crumble, I don't know what more I can do to modify his costume to project a more chocolatey appearance. I also really want to keep the white lab coat, for character background purposes.

Went through to correct mixed capitalization. Also, noticed that just yesterday, the Vendor with Cart emote was pulled, which I was using on all my first mission hostages... Gahhh! Must... come up with... something else... fast... Or at least until the next time they take away the emote I was using.

In response to Venture's review:

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you about the review for quite some time, I've been hosting friends from downstate for over a week. Thank you for pointing out the issues with the sonic debuffs when playing solo at higher difficulties using melee characters; most of the AT's I've soloed this arc with were squishies who were just simply glad there weren't massive mezzes being tossed about, and were quite used to basically being gasoline-soaked rags when it comes to being in melee range with bosses, so I tended to use ranged tactics. Thanks for the data point!

Changes to arc 1153, Chocolatier Wars! , as of May 24, 2009:

Gremlin Wranglers are now Electrical Melee/Regeneration, regen replacing sonic resonance.

Midas-Touched were Super Strength standard/Sonic Resonance Extreme, they are now Sonic resonance Hard.

Sonic Blade were Katana/sonic resonance, they are now Katana/Regeneration.

Tech Coordinators were Robotics/sonic resonance, they are now Robotics/Electricity Manipulation.

I've changed the custom group of Crey Chocolatiers to spawn my custom mobs, or random crey, instead of including all the different possible spawns for lower levels, the sheer number of other possible crey mobs from say, 30-39, were causing very few of my custom chocolatiers to spawn in the missions.

I'm going to keep the somewhat low difficulty of the end Elite Boss, I'd had complaints when I'd first written my arc that he was too hard when I'd originally had him at Hard level Dark Melee/Standard Dark Armor, but no one had seemed to mind the Midas-Touched being Super Strength Hard/ Sonic Resonance Extreme until Lazarus set me straight, and I'd toned him down to Super Strength Standard. Thank you for letting me know he needed to be tweaked downward further.

Okay, going to play through the changes with a few of my characters, thank you again for reviewing my arc!

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you about the review for quite some time, I've been hosting friends from downstate for over a week. Thank you for pointing out the issues with the sonic debuffs when playing solo at higher difficulties using melee characters; most of the AT's I've soloed this arc with were squishies who were just simply glad there weren't massive mezzes being tossed about, and were quite used to basically being gasoline-soaked rags when it comes to being in melee range with bosses, so I tended to use ranged tactics. Thanks for the data point!

Changes to arc 1153, Chocolatier Wars! , as of May 24, 2009:

Gremlin Wranglers are now Electrical Melee/Regeneration, regen replacing sonic resonance.

Midas-Touched were Super Strength standard/Sonic Resonance Extreme, they are now Sonic resonance Hard.

Sonic Blade were Katana/sonic resonance, they are now Katana/Regeneration.

Tech Coordinators were Robotics/sonic resonance, they are now Robotics/Electricity Manipulation.

I've changed the custom group of Crey Chocolatiers to spawn my custom mobs, or random crey, instead of including all the different possible spawns for lower levels, the sheer number of other possible crey mobs from say, 30-39, were causing very few of my custom chocolatiers to spawn in the missions.

I'm going to keep the somewhat low difficulty of the end Elite Boss, I'd had complaints when I'd first written my arc that he was too hard when I'd originally had him at Hard level Dark Melee/Standard Dark Armor, but no one had seemed to mind the Midas-Touched being Super Strength Hard/ Sonic Resonance Extreme until Lazarus set me straight, and I'd toned him down to Super Strength Standard. Thank you for letting me know he needed to be tweaked downward further.

Okay, going to play through the changes with a few of my characters, thank you again for reviewing my arc!

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Another Quick Reviews installment!

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quick reviews are cool.

With minimal reading time invested, gives nice insight as to whether I'd want to play these arcs. (and in all 3 cases, I'm gonna add them to the list)

Thanks Lazarus.

I am @Electroanagesia, and I'm trying out School Spirit, arc 89349, by Great Cthulhu, as my earlier nominee arc. Yes, going to review it, don't look further if you don't want spoilers on it.

Entered the mission, and quickly realized the game was counting me as being in a group of two people, although I was solo. I realized this was going to make the arc very exciting to play, as my electric/emp was nearly mauled to death by a cheerleading squad upon entering the mission, but, at least I can send tells to myself in team to keep me company! Fun custom group, those cheerleaders; my 11 year old daughter leaned over, noticing me playing, and said she approves of them, because they have a Sonic, and yelling is appropriate for a cheerleader.

Second mission... Muffy spawned near the door, which made things odd, because after defeating her, the mission still said I needed to look for Muffy. I imagined inquiring after her from each of the cheerleaders and freakshow I fought, and always hearing them say, yeah, we know where Muffy is, she's back there, unconscious on the floor, where you left her. Good map choice for a college party, mission completed after talking to Marissa.

Third mission... oh that's sad. I really didn't picture an arc full of partying cheerleaders to take that kind of turn. Fights between the cheerleaders and ghostly spirits were a good way to put in extra NPC dialog, keeps a map interesting; might want to take the time to have each fight have different dialog, if you can manage the memory space. Oh man, that's really depressing to have my character beat up an undead cheerleader who didn't seem to have any grudges against anyone, and seemed to be a rather sweet young lady. It's a little rough when the writer pigeonholes the player's actions, I realize that sometimes it's hard to get around that, but my character wouldn't strike a Paladin pose and say, Undead are unnatural creatures of Ebil and must all DIIEEE! if the undead in question is just feeling lost, confused, scared, and not about to try to eat anyone's brains. I hear you about it being a lesson that sometimes lives end, and the survivors have to learn to cope with it; but man, that arc left me feeling really depressed, especially after such a perky-looking beginning. I think all in all, it was a pretty decent mission, but I wouldn't nominate it for Dev's Choice.

I would like to nominate Escalation, Arc ID 6143, by @Femfury. I'll try not to give spoilers here. It has a very good reason why you keep fighting against the same villain in each mission, it's not just that they keep breaking out of prison or anything, it's much more elegant than that. I like the story of the villainess developing, becoming stronger over time due to being inspired toward greatness in her struggles against your character. Love the hostage texts, and the villainess rants, too! The boss character changing appearance over time is well executed, and fits the story. There's good humor there, without being silly. Five missions long, but the quicker missions balance with the longer missions, helps keep things interesting. There are a few optional glowies and hostages to give extra depth to the story. It's a highly polished, excellent storyline arc.

Arc offered to Angela Starr, as a fellow, famous sonic manipulator, in Maestro's hour of desperate need.

Arc Name: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Faction: Neutral mission, fighting factions of Goldbrickers and Crey expanded to level ranges 1-50 through custom additions.
Creator Global Name: @Electroanagesia, Forum name: Sultana
Level Range: 1-50
Soloable?: Yes; there is an EB in the final mission, but there is also an EB ally to help with him.
Length: Three missions.
Difficulty Level: Normal
Synopsis: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! Especially Maestro, whose operation that was meant to restore his ability to hear, created a powerful sonic resonance within him instead of healing his sense of hearing. Now, deprived of hearing the complexities of symphonies, fine chocolate is one of the only ways he can experience beauty, through the masterwork of flavors and textures. He must help defend one of his last means of experiencing joy and art!
Estimated time to play: 30-45 minutes.

Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Creator's Global Name: @Electroanagesia
Synopsis: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that!
Number of EB's/AV's: One EB in the final mission, but an EB ally to help with it.
Story type: Humorous, and chocolatey.
Mission count: Three missions, but the second mission can be finished by clicking on the machine glowie if you have a nut allergy.
Estimated time to play: Depends how long you spend drooling over the clue descriptions of the optional boxes of chocolate, four glowies in each of the first and second missions. About 30-45 minutes to play.

Special Note: I ate a total of three bags of Guittard chocolate chips while writing and editing this arc so far. (Not all at once)

Why this arc should be played/discussed: I think that the issue of Maestro fighting for one of the few beautiful, complex sensory input methods left to him is interesting. Also of note is the idea that if you control or manipulate the geniuses on the fore of a particular branch of any endeavor, you will guide the path that branch will lean toward, and lessen the diversity of creations that could be produced. At least, in an environment that lets inventors experiment freely, sure, there will be plums sometimes, for instance, whoever thought that the PT Cruiser Convertible was a really cool looking car that would sell well. But, there will also be amazing creations that defy the accepted ideas of what consumers would prefer, finding new things that just plain "work". That whole moment of, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! I've also noticed that Maestro himself still uses some throwback effects, such as the old grey lines for the visual effects of sonics; it's made me want to find out how many other NPC's still use old visuals for their power effects.

Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Creator's Global Name: @Electroanagesia
Synopsis: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that!
Number of EB's/AV's: One EB in the final mission, but an EB ally to help with it.
Story type: Humorous, and chocolatey.
Mission count: Three missions, but the second mission can be finished by clicking on the machine glowie if you have a nut allergy.
Estimated time to play: Depends how long you spend drooling over the clue descriptions of the optional boxes of chocolate, four glowies in each of the first and second missions. About 30-45 minutes to play.

Special Note: I ate a total of three bags of Guittard chocolate chips while writing and editing this arc so far. (Not all at once)

[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 1153
Arc Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Author: @Electroanagesia
Description: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! (EB in 3rd mission, but ally to help with it.)
Rating: *****

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Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50

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Mission 1:
I've been contacted by Maestro and he is offering to pay me handsomely to stop the feud going on between the World's great chocolatiers as fine chocolate is one of the few pleasures that he has left. Well his money is as good as anyone else's so off I go!

Maestro sends me to the Fruit Infusion wing of the World Chocolate Exhibition, where the Goldbrickers are trying to kidnap some of the chocolatiers and force them to work for King Midas. Since this is a level 50 arc, the author has made some custom Elite Goldbrickers and they do look pretty good, despite lacking the jetpacks and sonic weapons. Still, I wonder why people insist on trying to remake existing groups for a new level range rather than just fitting their arc into the range of the existing groups.

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Well, I've found that if I kept the first mission as 8-20, the span of the Goldbricker faction, there is a surprisingly high percentage of people who will either quit it then and there (fire controllers who really don't like life without fire imps, etc) or they will one-star the arc because I didn't put in the effort to expand the Goldbricker faction upwards with custom creations added to the mix. I really wanted both the Goldbricker faction and Crey faction, though, for story purposes, even though their levels are quite far apart.

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The map is a warehouse, I'm a bit unsure if this is part of the exhibit hall or if this is where the Goldbrickers took them too. Amusingly the German, French, and Dutch chocolatiers speak in their native languages and the Goldbrickers are just as confused as I am. I free all of the chocolatiers and score some rather interesting chocolate samples. Strangely, there was a cart for Pumpkin infused chocolate in the Fruit Infusion wing. Pumpkin isn't a fruit!

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Actually, the carts are for the Chocolatiers, the Pumpkin-based chocolate is a lead-in clue that non-fruit categories are getting pushed into the Fruit Infusion Wing, to make room for something new that year.

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Mission 2:
Meanwhile Maestro has saved the chocolatiers in the Nut Infusion wing but something happened, Crey agents have appeared and stolen the Praline Crafting Machine prototype that was on display there. Maestro doesn't want that somewhere hidden and being reverse engineered for months, he wants his new Praline Chocolates NOW! He also wonders why a new wing has been added to this years Exhibition.

I track the machine down to another warehouse where I find some regular Crey units mixed in with the new Crey Conchers and Crey Chocolatiers. Oddly, the author made them both Dark Melee, which seems redundant.

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I hadn't realized that non-weapon melee powers were preferred by the AI over weapon-based melee powers. Thank you very much for that insight, I've changed the Conchers to dual blades/regen, and leaving the Chocolatiers as dark melee/regen. (I had used Dark Miasma instead of regen a long time ago, but got complaints about overlapping minus acc at lower levels, and people having to stand around waiting for the hostages to count as rescued, until the tar patch disappeared.)

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I found the Praline Extruder at the end of the map (might want to make the names consistent)

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Good point, I'll use the praline crafting machine prototype as the explanation of what the item is, before dropping the big Praline Extruder in yellow. You would be surprised how many people don't know what an Extruder is.

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as well as some Elite Goldbrickers. The Goldbricker boss is obnoxious with the current Standard settings as he has Knockout Blow and the presence of Footstomp indicates that he is set to Hard.

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I was just told by @Femfury (my sg leader), that what makes Hard level Superstrength nasty is the combo of Knockout blow from Standard, Footstomp from Hard, both boosted out of proportion by Rage from Hard. I hadn't realized that Rage would be quite that effective especially against certain AT/power combinations, thank you for pointing it out! I now have the Midas-Touched bosses set to Standard Superstrength, and the Extreme Sonics I'd always kept them at. (No one seems to point out Extreme Sonics, it can greatly reduce resistances, but lowering the damage output should balance things out, and visually it's neat to have the big golden sonic field for a Goldbricker.)

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Mission 3:
Maestro has discovered that Crey sponsored the new wing and that it's for chocolate made entirely of artificial ingredients. Even worse, he has discovered that they are adding ingredients to make the Crey chocolate addictive and all other chocolate taste bland in comparison. They have gone way to far this time.

I head in to destroy Crey's chocolate operation, smashing their machinery, freeingtheir test subjects and defeating the lead researcher. Just now I noticed that the Crey Conchers are Dark Melee/Dual Blades, they've been sticking to Dark Melee so much that I never saw the swords before. I wonder what the Crey Chocolatiers are now. Using two melee sets doesn't work well, especially is one is weapons and the other unarmed as the AI will tend to prefer the unarmed one.

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Very cool to learn, thanks!

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Before long I found Maestro inside as I had expected to from the briefing. He's one of the most useful allies I've had yet in a MA mission to tell the truth.

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I like him a lot; his sonic powers really help reduce resistances of your opponents if the character you are playing is a good damage dealer, and if you are a buffer or debuffer you can take his damage to a whole new level. What's interesting about Maestro, is that some of his sonic effects are still the old grey-colored, pre-golden visuals.

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There were two test subjects to free and unfortunately they had already been exposed to the Crey chocolate. Never again will they know the joy of real chocolate.

We reached the back of the warehouse and confronted the mad Doctor Hershey. With him defeated the Crey chocolate operation was destroyed and the world of fine chocolate was safe again.

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The Verdict:
I can see that the author was certainly having fun with this arc from the writing and the dialog. The missions were well designed within the limits of the tileset and what the author was attempting to portray, plus the setpeices and dialog made them quite memorable. I can see that the custom Goldbrickers were necessary due to the problems of overlapping level ranges between all of the NPCs involved, but they might need some rebalancing, especially that boss. The Crey Conchers and Chocolatiers could use some tweaking, as they are not using their powers very effectively and are rather redundant when using the same powersets for both Lieutenants and Minions. There were also some issues of redundantly repeating dialog in mission 3.

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Sadly, I'm told that for destructible objects guarded by a custom faction at higher than heroic difficulty, the guards will have multiple repeats of the same statement for the same object, sigh.

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All in all I give it 5-stars for being fun and memorable.

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Thank you very much for trying out my arc! I've made a few changes with your insights, always trying to make it better.

Arc: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Author: @Electroanagesia
Number of missions: Three
Description: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! (EB in third mission, but an ally to help with it.) SFMA

Maps are medium, small, medium, with two custom groups. King Midas is only out to obtain quality chocolate because he has a big sweet tooth, but to Maestro, whose operation to restore his hearing went wrong, giving him sonic powers but not his sense of hearing, it is a battle for the freedom of chocolate creativity! Chocolate is one of the only great pleasures he has left to sense!

Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Creator's Global Name: @Electroanagesia
Difficulty level: Easy
Synopsis - Fight for creative freedom! An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition has made European chocolatiers targets for villainy, for the one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the direction that the Future of Chocolate will take. Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! Hazelnut Carmel Pralines: Crunchy textured hazelnuts balanced by smooth, buttery carmel within a dark chocolate casing. Dark Chocolate Raspberry Infusions: Velvety raspberry filling centered in scrumptious dark chocolate. Want another taste? You'll have to try out the arc!
Number of EB's/AV's - One Elite Boss in the final mission.
Story Type - Humor
Mission count: 3 missions in the arc
Estimated Time to Play: Depends on how quickly or slowly you want to play it, the second mission is just click a glowie, but if you enjoy reading delicious descriptions, I recommend taking the time to click the boxes of sample chocolates just to read the clues, even though they aren't required for mission completion.

Note: Due to overwhelming feedback about it, I've made a custom group that extends the Goldbrickers in the first mission (the last two are Crey) up to level 50. Level 50's won't be exemplared down anymore, and characters level 25 to 49 will get exp in the first mission now.

I'd love to get feedback on this arc, thanks very much if you try it out. Feel quite welcome to give me your arc number in your feedback response so I can try out your creative work, too! (Doesn't have to be chocolate-flavored.)