dragonslay

Secret Origins Snake Women of Epsilon V 42221
Rating 4 Stars

I ran this arc with a lvl 8 Necro/Dark on diff 2.

Overall this is a very well written, fleshed out, fun story arc to play. The custom critters look ok, have cool powers and are fun to kill. The difficultly lvl is just about prefect and the last mish will send you to the hosp if you arent careful.

Mission 1 is a quick simple mish, click a thousand glowies get some info.
Mission 2 is quite fun, map is a little large, but it goes quickly. Number of objectives in fine and at this lvl clockwork are fun and challenging.
Mission 3 is where it gets fun and interesting. Custom critters look good and have fun powers. They compliment the snakes perfectly and the player can tell the author really took his/her time getting the skin and textures right to really look like snake people. I hate caves, but here i didnt mind. Map was not too big and it fit with the story well.
Mission 4 is good. As an MM fighting MMs there is a lot of action and movement going on. The enemies are not overpowered and are fun to kill. Nothing like seeing a robot fall dead as your zombies kill the MM with your health bar in the red.
Mission 5 is a great ending to a very good arc. This last mish is the best in the arc (a rare and wonderful thing) and you get ally help, which is nice.

I will definitely be playing this one in the future, on my villians, as it is a fun way to lvl up. This arc is much more interesting than most of the CoV PVE stuff.

Why not five stars? Rescued snake women didnt help or say anything. Although it feels fast for 5 mishes it still is long. Contact dialogue could have been slightly shorter.

Great job!

Heaven's Not Enough 15831
Rating 1 Star

I ran this arc with a lvl 50 Ice/Ice Blaster solo on diff 3.

Overall I did not find this arc interesting or fun at all. It was long. The maps were too large. Custom critters looked ok, but nothing special. The difficulty from one mish to another was very inconsistent.

Mission 1 was probably the best in the arc. Story shows promise and Ally is very cool. Contact dialogue ok.
Mission 2 is very boring. The map is too large for the number of objectives. Then when you clear the objectives stated an altar appears. The altar then must be destroyed to get mission complete. That's not fun.
Mission 3 introduces the custom critters finally. These needed to be early because their is some excitement when they arrive. Their powers are interesting and varied and they look ok.
Mission 4 map is too big. Map is not appropriate for this arc. Why do siphons appear AFTER the stated objectives are done? Like mission 2 this one feels like it was just thrown in to make the arc longer.
Mission 5 is good but not great. First EB is much better than the final battle EB because the final EB is set to flee after a certain amount of damage is done. The first four missions are easy then this one is suddenly very hard. That's not a good thing. Final EB is hard to get a handle on. Dark heals are tough to overcome (Ghost widow?), but I never lower an arc rating solely because of that, as it is the players responsibility to learn to defeat dark heals, but once I get a rhythm and start killing it, it runs away, that's not fun.

Nuff said.

Training Day 1285
Rating 5 Stars

I ran this arc with a lvl 50 Ice/Ice Blaster on diff 3.

Overall this is a very good arc. It stands out with much better dialogue, smaller maps and great custom critters. The storyline is strong and coherent throughout. Contact dialogue is not longwinded and the in mish enemy dialogue is some of the best ive come across MA or PVE. There are two custom critter groups robot Drones and Cultists. The robot Drones and Ally O'Leary are great critters. Actually they are excellent and their look matches their powers. I would love to run this arc again with a team on an easy diff.

Mission 1 What has happened to O'Leary had me hooked on this mish from the first moment I stepped in. The storyline grabbed me immediately.
Mission 2 Faraday was tough to kill. I think he was set to run but I had like 5 chilblains on him so he finally died.
Mission 3 is a fine mish.
Mission 4 Kill Dr. Armitage again? Apparently he teleported away when I killed him in mish 1, funny he looked pretty dead to me, oh well kill him again.
Mission 5 Yikes. Faraday is friggin hard to kill. He sent me to the hospital three times. That guy just didnt want to die (especially when OLeary would stand next to him not fighting the whole time: some weird AI issue).

Overall this is a very good arc that needs a disclaimer for difficult play. Faradays letter to me (mish 5) could have been better worded and I think Faraday may be a little overpowered, but niether is so bad that it can knock a star off this gem.

Great Job!

Effrego Quartus Parietis 45525
Rating 3 Stars

I ran this arc with a lvl 50 Stone/Stone on diff 3 with a large team of heroes. Diff was lowered for final mish.

Overall this is a fun, although very tough TF. There are some interesting and intriguing elements to the story early on, but the storyline losses focus in the later missions. There are Ritki, Freakshow and Arachnos to fight, but it felt like thousands upon thousands of Arachnos and some of my teammates and I were like 'more Arachnos'. Maps were not too big and were appropriate to the storyline. This arc feels like a TF, not necessarily a bad thing.

Mission 1 the story of Jeremy and why we need to save him is intriguing.
Mission 2 Dreck AV was very fun to kill and not overpowered.
Mission 3 Yikes this is ugly just very ugly. Huge waves of Arachnos alongside custom EB MMs lead to several team wipes. Rogue Scientist surrounded by all those Arachnos was just too hard for my taste. Even with liberal amounts of clear mind (to avoid the perma blinded) and pulling (to avoid avoid fighting 30 Arachnos while pounding MM bosses) this is just a very tough mish. Several of my teammates were frustrated.
Mission 4 was good as I never get tired of fighting Lord Recluse. However, what the hell those cheerleaders had to do with the Jeremy story was lost on me, although I am pretty sure there was no reason.

Overall it was fun and I love fighting custom EB MMs, just not when they are surrounded by dozens of Arachnos.

Why not five stars? Mission 3 is just too difficult. Team wipes cannot be avoided and thats not a good thing. The storyline goes downhill around mish 3/4 as the fourth mish feels just tacked on for no reason.

Rave Against the Dying Light 14910
Rating 4 Stars

This arc was run with 2 lvl 50 Ice Blasters on diff 1.

Overall this is a solid, fun playable arc. Missions feel fast and exciting and the enemies are fun to kill. I would definitely go back and run this arc again with a larger team. Storyline is straight forward and well written.

Mission 1 is a good fun stock mission that is found throughout
CoX. I love this map.
Mission 2 is the best mission in the arc by far. Trainers were tough and fun to kill. Fighting alongside Ghost Widow was great.
Mission 3 is another very good mish that feels very CoX.
Mission 4 was fun as well and fighting alongside Vanessa DeVore was great. There is one slight typo here, one of the freed Harlequins says "$name!" you need to separate the $name from the !, "$name !" for this command.

The characters and their dialogue in this arc were good and straight forward. Mission objectives were clear and maps were usually small. Enemies were tough and fun to kill. All good things.

Why not a five stars? I felt like I was running another stock CoX arc. It didnt feel new and fresh. Ghost Widow was definitely the high point and the last two missions didn't quite match up to that excitement. There were probably too many helpers in the final battle. Granted I was on a very easy setting, still Vanessa and her helpers made a big dent in Mother Mayhems health bar. I was teased with fighting Tyrant, but he never showed up. That was a big disappointment.

Good job!

Marked Man 3463
Rating 5 Stars

I ran this arc with a lvl 50 Thugs/Poi MM on diff 3.

Overall this arc is just pure gold. This is exactly why I wanted to start reviewing arcs people submit. There is actually not one bad thing in this arc. It is all good. IMO this deserves Dev Choice, HoF and all villains should play this arc. This arc should be included in the regular gameplay as it is much better than a lot of CoV PVE stuff.

Mission 1 Heavy looked great. Other custom characters looked ok, but they were fun to kill.
Mission 2 killing the "Controller" robots MM was great fun. Arnold didnt need to be led out (THANKS).
Mission 3 suddenly this easy arc gets tough. I felt it coming so it was a pleasant death. Orth'ack was a pain in the [censored], but I finally let my pets go and kill him without me standing there for him to heal off, then he finally died. Great epic battle. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the near dead pets trotted back to me.
Mission 4 Kill H'sol. I anticipated a large map and I was happily surprised.

This arc deserves 5 Stars because the contact is great. His dialogue is interesting, not long winded and matches his look.
The enemies are difficult, but not ridiculous. This arc feels fast even though its actually 4 missions; a rare and wonderful thing. The enemies are always fun to kill, but you must stay on your toes. Best of all I felt evil. More so than in most of the regular CoV PVE play.

Great Great job!

The Empire One Alliance 1044
Rating: 2 Stars

By the description I knew this was going to be a very difficult arc and I didnt want to die twenty times. So I loaded this on easy mode a lvl 50 Invul/EM tanker on Heroic. Boy I am glad I did.

Overall this arc starts off great and then slowly sinks into too long too boring. Although it was great to see the Knives of Artemis in a MA arc, fighting them while fighting Malta is just not fun.

Mission 1 had a great map rarely seen in Cox. Play was fun and easy, dialogue was good.
Mission 2 was a medium council base with several objectives. Still fun and good, but getting tired of every single boss, ambush and glowie having some long winded thing to say. Dialogue slowly going downhill.
Mission 3 was starting to get ugly and I wish this was the last mish. It is just my opinion of'course, but fighting a gunslinger while standing on six caltrops is not a fun challenge for me, its just stupid. I dont mind a mish with both KoA and Malta but in the same mobs? No. And the same ambush mobs NO NO. Betty was of no use as she commited suicide 30 seconds after being freed by blowing her self up on a generator she herself destroyed. No lowering of rating there, as that's just bad AI.
Mission 4 UGGGH. Way to many objectives for a fourth mission IMO. If this arc was three mishes maybe. I didnt understand why there were so many objectives, if there had been a reason in the storyline (I doubt) it was lost on me before entering. Ally again was useless, he got lost after second mob. Im not sure why he was there.

Why not a five? This arc is too long and difficult. Its one of those arcs that you know if you ran it with a team people would be quitting left and right. Storyline starts off well, but goes downhill. Too much dialogue during missions. Mobs in mish 3 were not fun to fight. Map for mish three wrong IMO (odd since the other maps were all perfect for what was happening). Overall way too many objectives and too many ambushes. Allies were useless.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
48156 Seldom Told Tales That Castle Fella
I had some trouble running this arc as the server was very busy causing
some lag and DC issues. I ran the first two missions with ease on a lvl 41 Earth/Kin but the second mish loaded bugged and only nine Obelisks loaded forcing me to quit the arc. I decided to wait until after midnight to restart, which turned out well, but i loaded a lvl 50 Ice/Ice blaster which turned out to be a bad idea on the third mission. OK All that aside, here is the review.

48156 Seldom Told Tales That Castle Fella

RATING: 4 Stars

Overview: I enjoyed this arc very much. Overall it is very written. The custom critters look good and the maps added to the overall storyline. It is coherent throughout. There was not really a single thing "bad" about this arc. I would definitely go back and run this again with a team if I was ever "looking for something to do".
Mission 1: I loved the look of the Demons. They fit perfectly in the CoT theme and were not too easy and not too hard.
Mission 2: My gut reaction was "ten" that sounds like a lot, turned out to be fine. I forgot how hard yogurt donkeys hit and when a patrol wandered
into another obelisk group i was fighting i found myself in trouble fast. I tried one of stock cure alls: BU, Blizzard, blue, PFF but I found myself dead before i could even eat the blue.
Mission 3: It was almost impossible to keep Castle alive. Mimes were tough, but really fell for ice patch. Castle kept running right up to them and died before the fifth Mean One was even dead. I actually had to turn the diff down or else it would have taken me forever to get through that mish.
Mission 4: Great map choice. EB was fun to kill. Nice to fight demons of all different powers (storm, ice, etc).

Why not a five? Contact Mindbender was very well written and fleshed out, but his text was a little too long for me. I would have preferred a little less to read there. Twenty mimes seemed like a lot to me. Even for a full team (the way this arc should be played) twenty was too many, I feel 10-15 would have been better. I was slightly disappointed that there wasnt a slight twist at the end. I was expecting/hoping that "Elba, i mean Melba" would actually turn out to be named Joanna or something. Or actually turn out to be Castles girlfriend not the contacts.

Good job!

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey thanks for the review!! I was worried about mission three in particular. I was really worried that not enough would spawn for a solo player, but from what you said they're spawning juuuuuust plenty. I'll tone back the amount of mimes to fifteen. That, and I'll turn up Castle's difficulty. I had to tone his character back several times during testing because he kept killstealing on me! At one point he would defeat two of three mobs to a spawn, and it got very annoying. So the combination of reducing the count by five and upping Castle should shorten that one completely.

Mindbender Jones can be wordy. I'll tone back his old man rants, as well.

One specific question, if I may: One of my concerns with this arc is that players on teams would be left wondering what the heck was going on, so I added summaries from the AE staff in the mission entry popup. Helpful, annoying, or clicked away immediately?

Thanks again for the review! I'm really happy you liked it!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes helpful.

48156 Seldom Told Tales That Castle Fella
I had some trouble running this arc as the server was very busy causing
some lag and DC issues. I ran the first two missions with ease on a lvl 41 Earth/Kin but the second mish loaded bugged and only nine Obelisks loaded forcing me to quit the arc. I decided to wait until after midnight to restart, which turned out well, but i loaded a lvl 50 Ice/Ice blaster which turned out to be a bad idea on the third mission. OK All that aside, here is the review.

48156 Seldom Told Tales That Castle Fella

RATING: 4 Stars

Overview: I enjoyed this arc very much. Overall it is very written. The custom critters look good and the maps added to the overall storyline. It is coherent throughout. There was not really a single thing "bad" about this arc. I would definitely go back and run this again with a team if I was ever "looking for something to do".
Mission 1: I loved the look of the Demons. They fit perfectly in the CoT theme and were not too easy and not too hard.
Mission 2: My gut reaction was "ten" that sounds like a lot, turned out to be fine. I forgot how hard yogurt donkeys hit and when a patrol wandered
into another obelisk group i was fighting i found myself in trouble fast. I tried one of stock cure alls: BU, Blizzard, blue, PFF but I found myself dead before i could even eat the blue.
Mission 3: It was almost impossible to keep Castle alive. Mimes were tough, but really fell for ice patch. Castle kept running right up to them and died before the fifth Mean One was even dead. I actually had to turn the diff down or else it would have taken me forever to get through that mish.
Mission 4: Great map choice. EB was fun to kill. Nice to fight demons of all different powers (storm, ice, etc).

Why not a five? Contact Mindbender was very well written and fleshed out, but his text was a little too long for me. I would have preferred a little less to read there. Twenty mimes seemed like a lot to me. Even for a full team (the way this arc should be played) twenty was too many, I feel 10-15 would have been better. I was slightly disappointed that there wasnt a slight twist at the end. I was expecting/hoping that "Elba, i mean Melba" would actually turn out to be named Joanna or something. Or actually turn out to be Castles girlfriend not the contacts.

Good job!

I have been reading the forum posts by Venture and Talen_Lee regularly looking for good fun arcs to play and it has inspired me to do the same.

I am starting from scratch here. If you would like your arc reviewed please post below and I will review it. State the level of difficulty.

OK the disclaimers:

1) I would prefer to review arcs that have not been reviewed yet or have only been reviewed a few times. To give those arcs some starting feedback.

2) There is never a good reason for a defeat all. If you have more than one defeat all in your arc, expect it to get a lower rating.

3) Large maps are for missions with a lot of objectives. Dont make me run around an empty map for ten min looking for a mob.

4) I love a challenge. I have rated arcs 5 stars even though I died twice on the final boss and could not complete the arc. However, a challenge and purely ridiculously obscenely overpowered are two distinct things.


That's about it. I love the MA overall and I want to be the guy that finds the next hall of famer.
I will be brutally honest. I will run hero and villain content. I will solo most reviews, but will team others. Hero content may be run on a variety of characters, however, please note if you want your arc reviewed villainside there is a 95% chance it will be run solo by a Thugs/Poison MM.

I am biased to medium length arcs, but I will run any length. I have no bias at all for either custom critters or stock enemies.

I will review short bare bones arcs or long story arcs, but beware very bare bones and very story heavy arcs may get a lower rating. I dont really care about spell checking, but dont give me L33T speak.

I will tell you what I like and what I dislike in every review. I will suggest improvements, but obviously these are my opinion only. If you agree that changes are needed and you make major revisions I will rereview it on a faster lower difficulty. I run most MA content on Rugged with a lvl 50.

Go For It!

First after Posi !!!!

[ QUOTE ]
I've been polishing my two arcs, I'd appreciate any feedback both pro and con.

Arc 14679 - Monsters under the Bed!
Little Johnny's been seeing Monsters and they've made off with his Daddy!

3 missions, unique mobs, the MOnsters under the Bed, or MOB Inc. Beware of Tanglers!

Arc 27506 - Lights, Camera, Mortuary!
Someone's kidnapped Mr. Fabulous, the World Famous Action Movie Hero! Bring him back before crew call!

1 mission short, Mr. Fabulous has been snatched by a group of independent zombie film makers. Defeat the Leading Lady, the Legend in his own Mind and free Mr. Fabulous! The Director may have other plans however.... ROLL CAMERAS!

[/ QUOTE ]

I just ran 14679 "Monsters under the bed" with a lvl 50 ice/ice blaster solo on rugged. Honestly I didnt enjoy this arc much. I rated it 3 stars (I was probably being a little generous). I was going to rate it a one, however having a Kinetics ally was great and the disclaimer in the story description said "soloable with good dam/defenses"; being a blaster I have terrible def, so the disclaimer was perfect, adding another star.

What I liked; the Vixxen looked great. Parents vomiting was very cool. The EBs were very tough but not ridiculous. Had a Kin ally to help.

However, the story was too bare bones for me. The enemies all looked way too similiar. The maps were way too big for the number of objectives (use smaller maps!!). Worst of all was the guard group included a plant controller: twice when rescueing someone I had to stand next to them for 20 seconds (after all the critters were dead) waiting for all the carrion creepers to spawn so I could access the rescuee. You need to remove the plant whomever from the guard group.

[ QUOTE ]
Hellooos. Would really appreciate an honest review and feedback. I also would love to do the same for someone who wants it.... just let me know

Name: Once Upon a Time
Arc ID: 29448
Your global/forum name: @Dark Tarani
Length: 3 missions/long
Arc Synopsis: A bit of a fairy tale

I have really been enjoying playing all the new and creative arcs.... many of them have really been outstanding.

[/ QUOTE ]

I enjoyed this story very much. The dialogue was much better than most in the MA. The enemies looked good and were fun to kill. The look of the chars was perfect for the storyline. I rated it a four. I would love to go back and run this again with a small team. Because:

The EBs were tough but not ridiculous. Except Alice, I could not defeat her at. Clearly this arc is for teams and not for soloers. I may have been able to solo this on heroic, but maybe not. I played with a lvl 50 ice/ice blaster with many accolades and a lot of global rech that PVEs on invinc with easy, but I could not defeat Alice on rugged (she sent me to the hosp three times and I quit). Between the permaheld and
the repeated confuse I couldnt target her let alone hurt her.
I got her down the 75% health once and that was it.

Overall very good.

Please critic mine:
Ciblorg Invasion
ID 10445
@Healer Troy

Very tough for soloers but doable on the lowest setting.
Perfect for well made midsized teams. No AVs.
May be too easy for large well made teams on lower settings.

For the MA critter creator
An EB is always an EB correct?
So if I make an EB and a team of eight on invincible
walk in, he is still an EB (not an AV) correct??

ty

I have come here to Kick [censored] and chew bubble gum.
. . .
. . .
. . .
and I'm all outta bubble gum!

Real Numbers
As a general quality of life improvement we will be adding new functionality in a coming version of the game to display the “real” numbers behind your characters and their powers. This includes a user configurable display of important characteristics such as movement rate, regeneration rate, resistances and many more! Additionally, you will be able to see how those statistics are affected in real time by buffs and/or debuffs affecting your character.

Thank You and Thank You

69

That's my favorite number!

Best thing I've seen all day.
. . . heck all week.
. . . heck all . . . you get it.

PUBLICE SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
Remember Heroes when making Voltaic popsicles, Eat Them Quickly !! Because they will thaw and try to kill you.

Voltaic Popsicles

web page

Snowcone had the pleasure of working with friends over the weekend. We killed the horrible AV clockwork king. Click above for the proof.

FANTASTIC !!
Thanks Seldom