brophog02

With enough people, ignoring the northern lights works. The smaller the group, though, the bigger priority they become.

Because once they get established on smaller sized groups, they become a huge pain.

Can we get a thread about how people will start using the search function when GR hits?

Only those things that can't be knocked back.

I ran through it again.

Mission 1 and 2 I feel the same way as before.

Mission 3 was definitely helped, imo.

Mission 4: Timer seems about right (still not excited about that being the mechanism, but at least now if you have your settings set for enough people you can run around and kill things while it burns off). However, I released the fractures on a run this time and they put a serious hurting on CWK. I thought he was pretty easy without them, but he becomes pretty much a joke with them.

Overall, the arc still seems far too easy.

And it is the leechers causing all of the damn lag!!

There are still a lot of simple typos.

Storywise, I really enjoyed this one. The pacing works well, and you get a really good sense why both the protagonist and antagonist are in the situation they are in.

That's tough to do in the structure of an MA arc, but it is done rather well here. The story is not only told well, but it has that omniscient inner monologue that works so well in comics. This makes what we have to read very concise and informative, and we get the mindset of the characters very readily.

For purposes on the contest, however, the story is pretty 'safe'. I found it enjoyable, but understated. The story, nor the mechanisms, really go beyond the outline of the contest.

I agree with most of what others have previously said. Like a lot of games these days, this was more to view/read than it was to play. The first level is really gorgeous, given the limits of the architect system, but it failed in keeping any interest. It really lacked much of an objective.

Mission 2, imo, would have worked better if it hadn't been on that map. It's just too open for those objectives to really play out.

Mission 3 really portrays the problems I had to a T. Great storytelling, but not fun to play. I understand that you were using that setup to tell the story, and from that aspect it worked, but not from a gameplay aspect.

Finally, I agree with the above on Mission 4. If it is possible to fail without waiting 45 minutes, I didn't know how. That is not going to work as a mechanism, imo. I'm not sure if we can use the Mayhem mechanism in AE, but it may work better to go the opposite way: Start with a shorter time limit and if players choose to not fail, they can destroy objects to increase the limit.

Also, the CK was pretty front and center for me, so I never released the 3 heroes and just took him on. I'm not sure if that is random or intentional.

To address your questions:

1) More of 'something'. That's pretty ambiguous, I realize, but I felt like I was reading a book rather than playing a game.

2) I found the entire arc too easy. I did it with a Blaster and was never the least bit threatened, even on the last mission. And, like I said, I didn't release the others on the final mission.

3) Re-structured.

4) Not really, and it doesn't really seem to fit to what I perceive Dr Aeon's challenge to be. A good example of what I feel his challenge is represented by is the story 'Identity Crisis'. Without giving anything away, that's a story about making and living with a choice that was made that simply "had to be made"......at least in the heroes eyes. I enjoyed this arc's story, but I didn't feel like my character ever had to make that same kind of decision.

5) The obvious one, based on the fact I had nothing else to do for 45 minutes.