Talen Lee

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Of course, it doesn't solve one of the main issues with Tanks: The redundancy of having more than one on a team.

[/ QUOTE ]If you take attacks, you will find this less of a problem.

QR:

Yes. I showed her how to get out of pocket D, introduced her to the RP conventions people used, and gave her guidance on how to get her police scanner. She thanked me, and moved on.

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anyone not comfy with math

[/ QUOTE ]*raise hand* I don't have a copy of Excel at home any more, so math scares and intimidates me.

Hm. Anyone know off the top of their heads how much -recharge is required to make Regeneration aura permanent?

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they already nerfed scrapper mez protection, they get held faster than a tank.

[/ QUOTE ]Have you tried turning it on?

Arc 16952 and 59456 - Brass Reaver (Parts 1 and 2)
Rating: **

A brief insight, for those who care, as how these reviews look as first drafts. Because I attempted this arc once, gave up, and decided I'd come back to it. With so many arcs I wound up quitting based on difficulty levels or boredom levels, I figured my tolerance had to be declining or something. Therefore, after this first-run through, I decided to take another try at it, later, with a character who was running with green SOs, or maybe common IOs. I've been trying to use these characters to bust through these arcs because I know that not every reader is going to want to see my purpled-out spines/dark or IO'd-out-the-guts, soft-capped Night Widow yawn through enemy groups, then comment 'there weren't any real difficulties.' This is why I've focused on Swivel and Saxon so heavily; Swivel provides nothing but a common damage type, knockback/down, and regeneration. While he's powerful, sure, he's also simplistic - he's not likely to strike onto an enemy's secret hidden weak spot. Saxon provides more survivability, and suffers most of the same problems.

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- The mission already has me worried. For a start, it has the phrase 'nemesis has plans,' and that's all the arc description is. So I'm already on the mental backfoot, since I have no idea what the arc is actually going to be about, and there's a direct mention of a character I've never heard of. The level range jumps. This is the first impression that the arc can make, and at this point, I'm worried. Not enough to reject out of hand - I mean, it would take a fair bit for me to assume the arc is simply nothing I want after the author asked me to review it. At this point I'm thinking I've been too nice and too gentle and it's time to bust out the big knobbly stick with which to treat the arcs that attain that accolade of 'pisses me off.'

Today's victim is Swivel, Claws/WP scrapper, level 31, SOs only. Literally no IOs at all, and all his SOs are level 30, so they're going grey. In essence, we are dealing with a scrapper who is okay, but not amazing. Since I suspect I'm going to face Nemesis and a few custom bosses, I don't expect this to be a big deal - there's a reason Nemesis troops give an XP penalty.

The arc starts in a reasonable place, but the execution lacks the polish and refinement I expect of a great arc. There's an implied heroic impetus for the work but there's also mention of pay - not that there aren't heroes who want to be paid or villains who are willing to do the work, but I found the feeling between the two a bit odd. I'd say it's spoilery of me to provide information like this, but it starts with a mission that features an elite boss fight, and there's no warning of same. I trundled in expecting a boss and was summarily killed by what looked like an energy melee/invulnerability sort. Okay, fair enough - some people don't like the

[/ QUOTE ]That's it. That's as far as I got before I quit. So this is the beta commentary. The problem is, on a second run through, it didn't really change. Nemesis troops remain. Autamatons remain. The NPC elite boss you face in the first mission is still a [censored] freight train that rams itself straight down your throat.

This is where I unfortunately decided to stop. This arc is at least six missions long, and I found myself dissatisfied and disinterested with what was going on. It was against Nemesis, it featured a badass elite boss that kicked my teeth down my throat early on in the arc, and I didn't find myself overly interested to see how it played out. Like watching the first half hour of Lord of The Rings and deciding that Frodo's such a tedious scrote that you'd rather not wait until the end of Return Of The King before you gave up, I decided to stop.

It's entirely possible, to those who are better at wiping out elite bosses like they're not there, that this arc has great stuff later on. It's possible the characterisation takes a better turn, and is more enjoyable. Unfortunately, the opening two missions failed to engage me, failed to make me want to tough it out. If the opening missions had been easy and boring, and the Elite Boss at the conclusion, I might have toughed it out, and when I ran into that roadblock at the [censored]-end of the story, doggedness would push me over the edge. Unfortunately, by putting the 'good stuff' in the later part of the arc - at least, I assume that's where it's going to be - the opening of the arc is both bland and kinda tedious.

Now, contrary to what many writers like to think, the twist is not 'the most important' part of a story. It's just a part. All the parts have to be good - and in the case of an introduction, if you have a weak opening, people aren't going to bother continuing the story.

If you've patience and like fighting Nemesis, give the arc a try. Or give Gaussian's arcs a try. Or give Naylor's arcs a try. Or - well, I'll stop now.

Just wanted to toss my coin on the pile. Thank you so much to Mids for all his hard work.

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Well, my idea was that Tankers would get a desired benefit (more damage) as a function of their archetype role (gaining and holding aggro). Yeah, it works like Against All Odds, but that's just one powerset. Plus, this would work even for enemies aggro'd at range.

[/ QUOTE ]A desired benefit is not necessarily an appropriate benefit.

I probably did. I'm an artist, that gives me total leeway to be a hypocrite.

Oh, yes, and if you hang around with super strength brutes? It's the best way to respond to the warning of 'Rage Crash'.

L50 Mind/Energy. Mass Hypnosis and Mesmerize are both awesome undervalued powers. I love Total Focus' animation.

L50 Plant/Thorn. He's a walking DoT.

l41 Fire/Fire. Parked in anticipation of the new changes. He's gunna be soft-capped ranged, I think, and use Fire Cages to tank.

L1 Mind/Elec. Waiting for the changes. And his name is awesome, which is why I wish people would stop laughing at it D:

Okay, so I have a level 35 Empathy/Archery defender. I'm looking at him now and considering that as a level 35 character, it's probably time to start IOing him. After building a lot of dominators, I kinda got used to the assumption that there was a clear, single IO build goal - 71% recharge and change. Now I'm looking at Drawforce and wondering to myself: What the hell do I want on him? More HP? Ranged Defence? Recharge?

Recharge is okay, but it doesn't seem to earn me much. Going from 3 fortitudes to 4 is okay, but going from 5 to 7 without purples seems like a huge pain in the [censored]. The auras need a huge amount of global recharge to perma - anyone know the math on it?

Ranged defence is also tricky because the only set that is readily available for ranged defence in Empathy/Archery is Numina's Convalesence. Problem there, it's got a unique in it, so no stacking.

So what would you build an emp/arch for?

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Note that right now, he has more progress on damage-received badges than on healing badges... and more on healing badges than on debt badges. So let's assume I don't need a lecture about not needing to heal.

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Then we realised that the arena didn't auto-equalise our levels

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This drives me mental. What's the bloody point of letting people fight at different levels?

[/ QUOTE ]Wang measurement?

For myself, the bonus defence is a cute trick. It's something interesting to make the character more interesting. I've only ever done it as a theory build for a friend's character, though.

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Yes, it was entirely for selfish reasons

[/ QUOTE ]By the way, I don't have a problem with that. There are some things I want in this game for selfish reasons.

Like the name field being one letter longer.

I actually went into an arena to actually PVP with an actual character and actually won.

Then we realised that the arena didn't auto-equalise our levels and I felt like a bully. D:

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If your character's concept doesn't include a shield, why are you so dead set on using the shield set?

[/ QUOTE ]Entirely selfish power concerns.

Ugh, sick. Ugh, internet connection being [censored]. Ugh, custom mobs kicking my [censored].

I'm coming to wonder if I'm just mysteriously bad at this game all of a sudden. I went through some normal content and cleaned house, and found myself unimpressed by taking on three +2 freakshow bosses at once, so I don't think I'm quite as bad as it could be.

More on the thread later. Stuff added to the queue. I'm actually at TurboSki's offering. Weirdly, also, I'm getting a lot of RP these days, which is awfully enjoyable, but not something anyone would care about.

It doesn't aggro, it has a good area, it's perma with DOs and it's a great way to get adds to shut up and rack off. You can probably go to 26 without it, but I wouldn't want to.

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There are like, ten people who play doms. Half the posts on this forum are me and the other half are Liliaceae.

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I'd suggest cleaning out your ignore list, but you're not missing much.

[/ QUOTE ]So I can watch false data and false emotions clash against false reasoning? I can imagine the appeal but I find it much better to just stop paying heed to the children and try to offer help to those people who actually want it.

You should start a thread about nerfing seeds.

Or maybe I didn't overstep the rules. Or maybe there's a conspiracy of all the dentists in the world. Or maybe, just maybe, the people who run around saying nothing of any substance except 'You're an idiot' are wasting space, whereas the aforementioned post has, I dunno, useful information in it.

Arc 15381 - Heaven Is Not Enough
Rating: *

Our victim today, Rikis has been waiting patiently so I drop the doctor's bag and produce the corkscrew. I agonised about this review quite a bit, along with its brother in the text file that is my organisation for this project. I don't like giving out low ratings and I really don't like giving out very low ratings, like *. When an arc is offensively bad it can drag out a lot of hack and bile and I'll lay into it with a big knobbly stick. This arc is not offensively bad, though, it's just bad enough to merit one star. To make sure I wasn't being unduly unfair, I gave the arc a second shot, this time bringing along a team - tank, blaster, controller. Same result as before.

The first tool of choice was once more, Swivel, level 31 claws/willpower scrapper, ticking on low-end SO performance. One might wonder why I keep using this guy after all the EBs keep kicking his [censored], my native inclination is because I feel he offers a good moderate performance; he's not stymied by mez protection, enemies don't tend to dole out big chunks of -regen, and commonly, people use -def dealing opponents like broadsword, katana, or gunners. A minor note, a curiosity. Either way - Swivel stepped up to this plate and we'll see how we went.

First impressions are important, and this arc doesn't really make one. The introduction shows an uneven level range and basically no description of what goes on in the arc at all. There's no story hook, just a bunch of tags and a warning that there are Terrors in the mission. Level range is part of the story to me - the perspective, the type of fiction I'm reading. I've written on this before, so I'll be brief - the arc has a standard ceiling but a nonstandardised floor. Worry, worry... Plus, there's little flavour from the outset. The arc opening fails to do anything wrong at the same time. While I'm not super-fond of the idea of the introduction being purely mechanical information, it's better than bad writing.

The opening of the arc itself provides the simple, basic detail of you going to offer help to someone who probably needs it. I really don't hope to bust in to save a hero only to get an earful of 'Hey, why are you bothering to help me, oh, oops, here's a clue.' Fortunately, no such unluck - the arc plays straight with you, at least insofar as I can tell. The level The rest of the arc plays out sensibly - in mish 1 you get a clue that leads to mish 2, after the contact has had a chance to ruminate on it. Mish 2 has a common element with Mish 1, and while I feel it's a bit predictable it's also not handled too badly - while you get assistance, it's assistance you don't need and so the rest of the mission isn't balanced based on it.

There are some minor spelling errors; I get the impression the author is familiar with storytelling, such as outlining to friends or roleplayers, but not in presenting a story to a reader. There's almost no polish, information is introduced with a kind of scattered character voice - the clues which are very obvious are spelled out in their mystery ('It's from Drols Sesimen, and you're sure you've heard that name before', for example), the ones that could merit spelling out are left ambiguous. And the character that you do meet in this arc develops in an unfortunately obvious fashion.

If I had to pick a theme for this arc I'd call it 'isolated.' The missions have that same feeling many arcs do, in that they feel like the person who made the arc wasn't sure what he could - or couldn't - do with the arc in question. So there's stuff like nesting mission goals, captives that are chosen for the sake of it, enemy groups selected because of the undead theme without any real controls made on that topic. And then there's the custom enemy faction.

The enemy faction has about 4 minion types I saw, and about 4 lieutenant types. There's no clear, cohesive theme for them, beyond powers that say '[censored] you.' On my claws/willpower scrapper, they said '[censored] you'. Trying it a second time on a shield/willpower tank, with backup from an illusion/storm controller and a fire/fire blaster, they still said '[censored] you.' There's a mission that seems to be a Defeat All featuring these guys - hunt for three clues and defeat all. Hard to kill, hard to hit, high damage and without any real cohesion or explanation for their overall level of power, I was left with the distinct feeling they'd been picked for power and thematics were a secondary concern.

So, an obvious plot, inconsistant characterisation of the player character, unremarkable use of maps, civilians and enemy groups, clues, and well, just about everything you can use the mission architect for is... well, inadequate. It's unspecial. If this arc had its spelling errors corrected, its language tidied up and its characterisation made more consistant, it would still just be a three-star arc.

We as arc creators must consider, any threat you present using custom characters has to be compared to the rest of the arcs, the rest of the game. Therefore, for a faction to show up out of nowhere and present a legitimately scary threat to not one but two other groups, you have to have some good, compelling, interesting reason for it, conveyed well through character, and not just through someone saying they're scared. If an existing enemy faction acts out-of-character in the arc, and then acts scared of the faction you introduce, that diminishes the weight of the fear. And this group doesn't. They're mechanically overpowering, sure, but that doesn't translate into a clear sense of power. With the scattered theme they have, I'd honestly have been less surprised to see other undead factions drawn together under the same heading.

I really do wish I had more good to say about the arc - it's clear who made it really likes it, likes the character and likes the work they put in. But it's unfortunately a very simple utilisation of the tools we have available to us. I do hope to see the further work of the creator, though - he clearly has a love of the medium, and a desire to tell stories.

Purely because of plant, on a scale of 1-10 I'd give it Porsche. If you want to solo AVs or be a leading damage-dealer on big hard targets, it's not going to impress you. But it's basically a big walking DoT which doesn't take damage.

What general population?

There are like, ten people who play doms. Half the posts on this forum are me and the other half are Liliaceae.

There's one area where a good player using a tank can outstrip a scrapper for damage - in using the superior survivability of the tanker to leverage better AoEs in missions. On the other hand, there's no need for that with hazard zones around - I did the same thing with a blaster, after all.