twelfth

Ah Boards to the rescue again, I had three days "charged up" after receiving the accolade and still no self-rez. Feh.

Okay, I ran this between last night and this morning. Since the levels were accomodating, I decided to run this on my level 7 dominator (which is a redside version of my blueside main). Used diff 1, since that's usually where I put my lowbies before level 10.

TL;DR: Three stars - functional arc, just not really entertaining.

I'll start off by saying that I wasn't really impressed by the original Captain Dynamic videos. They were faintly amusing but I never found them actually funny. I also thought it was sort of dumb to post the videos directing viewers to try out the Mission Architect several weeks before the feature it actually launched, but hey, that's just me.

[u]Mission One:[u]

Briefing looks fine, nothing outstanding.
Unfortunately, I didn't think to reclick the contact before going into the mish in order to check the "still busy" text.

I didn't know the tutorial instance was actually available as a MA map. For this "mission", I suppose it works.

How the hell did you get a non-destructible, non-clickable object to spawn where it did? Once you perform the first rescue, there is a nav bar error that causes the compass point to direct you to the wrong place in order to deliver the escort. I suppose that was the rationale for placing the object where it was (to prevent you from backtracking with the escort). It didn't take me long to realize that you need to do what the objective text is telling you to do (and what you do in EVERY OTHER escort objective) - take her back to the entrance.

I'm trying to figure out how you got an escort with no actual guards spawning around them.

The text on the escort is as belabored as one would expect for disgruntled writers, but since the "god why am I writing this" bit never returns again, it's sort of a throwaway gag. This gag was a little better executed in another Arc, "The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space!" (Arc #61013) where it was a recurring theme.

As there were no enemies, there was no XP/inf/tickets/etc for completing the mish. I really didn't care (you didn't do anything worthy of a reward), but others might be annoyed by this. There are no Snakes in this mission, so I don't know where the MA interface is pulling that data from.

[u]Mission Two:[u]

The hacking bit got a lol.

Still busy text references the old Go Hunt Kil Skuls meme, but spells "kill" correctly. Not sure that this couldn't be replaced by a better joke or just tweaked since the hacker has already demonstrated a poor command of spelling in the briefing text.

Now we have Capt Dynamic presumably "hacked" as enemies named after Council groups. These all spawned as LTs for me, so I don't know if they were supposed to be bosses or what. They had boss dialogue (which was unique to each version of CD, that was good), so I presume this to be the case. I wasn't aware that the MA would let you name a Custom Group the same as a regular critter group. Now that I think about it, I can't recall of the group name for The Council is "Council" or "The Council". Also, I suppose you could name them "CounciI" - since the text font will make an I look like an l.

Why are the Lost marked as "Rikti?" Why not use the Lost group and just add in a boss Rikti for the singular use of an actual Rikti in the final mish? ... Furthermore, how did you get a Rikti Boss to spawn when I was on a level 7 char?

The custom critters weren't too awful as they were, but at my level, the effort needed to get past their heals was a little challenging. I'm not sure how a non-control lowbie would have done, but meh. They didn't kill me, so I'm not going to worry about it.

I think there were battles between the Council and the "Rikti", but I only saw their text and really didn't ever see a battle between them. This is consistent with my experience of the AI on the battle feature in MA. I generally recommend leaving them out entirely.

Otherwise, the Mission was unremarkable.

[u]Mission Three:[u]

...more hax. Hmm. And repeating the same joke in the still busy text. I feel fatigue here.

There is a typo in the objective text, some additional/hanging periods and commas. Looks like an error when you were editing the objectives. Should get cleaned up.

I went through the whole mission, got the collection, killed a boss, and THEN I have to run all the way back through three (short) floors to the first floor and re-rescue a hostage/ally - who then tells me that we have to go defeat a raid leader? My thoughts: "Didn't I already do that?" And the Nav Bar text doesn't help because all it is doing is screaming "KILL GREAT FACE". I intuit that we have to go back to the Back of the mission to find this extra boss. Along the way we run into a patrol which has no discernable text to justify why it is there (outside of recharging my Domination Bar - kthanx).

We make it back to the Back (again), and find the architect of this calamity and thrash him pretty soundly while he rails against fate and generally providing some explanation for why he's involved in this at all. I'm not sure about his powersets since I slapped him in a dom'd hold throughout the fight 'cause I was just about tired of this BS and wanted it over with.

The emails were the definition of superfluous.

[u]Overview:[u]

I was bored during most of this, actually. The arc is functional, nothing broken or necessarily unworkable and the custom groups are not overpowered (although their heals, again, are annoying to deal with). I spent most of the time just kinda puzzling over how you executed certain details in the MA.

The plot is meh. I know this is supposed to be a humor arc, and most of the humor is that the Mission Arc has been hacked and derailed from its original intent as a battle between CD and GF - but I just really didn't care. In the original videos, Captain Dynamic is a tool and the Great Face is sort of an obnoxious loser (traits he has in common with the Captain). The emails in the third mish sort of drag that out, along with a really unnecessary (and repetitive) commentary by the hacker in question. I could tell that GF was a loser by the content of the emails, I didn't need big red letters telling me that. Of course, that could be a recursive bit of introspection. Am I as much of a tool for thinking that the Great Face is a loser as I feel the hacker is for pointing it out?

I think you had the right idea by making the hacker the final boss, 'cause while I don't particularly like either the Captain or the Face as characters (or even, really, comedic vehicles) I sort of feel bad for them that they have to be saddled with an even bigger jerk looking to cause them trouble. This threatens to put both of them in Woobie status, which I think is a pitfall, but at least there was some satisfaction in bringing some justice to bear on this guy who just obviously wanted to Kick the Dog (or Poke the Poodle, I'm sorta unclear on which it would be).




Anyway, to answer your questions:

1. It's a simple story with very complicated execution. Does it make some sort of sense?

Um. Sorta. The hacker is angry at CD causing him to have a pretty lame Hero Name & decides to get revenge by ruining the Captain's mission arc.

2. Can it be funnier (at least in the first two missions)? Of course it can. Will you help me?

Um, yeah, but I really can't help ya here. I just sorta found the jokes stale. The idea in general isn't bad, but might be better executed in a single mission rather than over the whole arc.

3. By the end (including mission 3), how does it make you feel?

Relieved that it was over so I could do something else. And then I went to work. :P

3. Should it be more/less challenging? (I've run it solo with 6 different ATs, at levels from 4 to 50).

*sigh* That's two question #3's. The challenge is fine, but I really don't look for UBER challenge missions. It appears to solo just fine.

4. In a word, what is the theme? If I have been too subtle, you might see this as Just a Bunch of Stuff That Happened.

You know, this is almost like uncomedy, actually. I felt like I was in one of those Jim's Journals comics, where [censored] happens and no one really cares and that's the point. It's funny because it's not funny and it's not funny 'cause nothing is really happening. I wouldn't call it JABSTH (I firmly hate that criticism - you could say most of the major works of literature are the same; 'O HAI I IZ WAR N PEEZ, LOL NOOBPOLEEN PWND'), 'cause I could tell you had a point here, but its sort of buried under...dross, really. It's sort of a bait and switch, you go into the mish, expecting to see sort of a logical extension of the fictional world of the Capt Dynamic character and sort of build on the rivalry between him and the Great Face - but then none of that really happens. In fact, the Great Face doesn't even ever show up in person - you just get a Rikti Boss that his avatar has been hacked to look like.

I gave the arc 3 stars, nothing was broken with it mechanically and it played straight enough. But it really wasn't fun, and the jokes were sort of...bleh. Euronators? Sorta weakly juvenile, and a pun that would only earn a sigh, not a groan. Honestly, I would have given the arc 2 stars, but I felt that was sort of mean since my only real gripe is that your sense of humor is not the same as mine - which caused a lot of the jokes to subjectively fall flat.

Anyway, that's what I gots for ya.

Nice resource, but needs to be updated with the removed/bugged maps. I'd do it but THEY CUT OFF MY HANDS!!

AI seems to handle her pretty well ...

It occurred to me that the AI issues might be why the decision was made, but yeah. Kid Psyche she's not. I also forgot about Posi in Kid Valk's bio. Maybe some laboratory assistance was used? I mean, all that radiation has to be bad for Posi's swimmers.

Okay, I chose Teen Phalanx Forever, mostly because I have a toon in a Teen themed group, with an alliance to another SG called the "Teen Phalanx". I originally assumed that it was something of a vanity arc for the SG - an assumption which was quickly squashed within the first paragraph of the mission.

I had this arc solo on Selene Dioscura 30 MA/SR scrapper, fresh from a respec that left her enhancements about half empty. So, if that's not a handicap than I don't know what the heck is. And to top that off, I ran her on diff 3.

A lot of arcs are enhanced by the cohesion between the toon being played and the story itself, which caused a slight disconnect on Selene. She is NOT the Teen alt I have (she's an emp/psi defender and really completely unsuitable for soloing), and it was sort of a mind twist to consider her having a kid or taking on a teen protege (being as she's utterly looped & is pretty much a Heroic Sociopath). That's not a comment on the arc itself, just a comment on where my head was.

So. Teen Phalanx Forever.

Kid, potentially future kid, versions of many of our Signature heroes. This is classic comic book fare, although not my perferred flavor of story, but on top of that this arc has another classic theme of teen hero stories: SHIPPING! Oh, not just the kids themselves but their progenitors. Manti/Sister Psy, Citadel/Luminary, Valk/Valk (asexual parthenogenesis, I *knew* it!), and BAB/No One! Seriously, can't BABsey get any love? He's a handsome black man with big hands. Trust me, I know people who would line up around the block to get at that. Ah well...

The story ran smoothly throughout the entire arc, so there's really no moment that I felt was broken here or there or that I had exceptional problems with. Obviously the allies pretty much carried the missions once they were assembled (another theme brought to the fore: Teamwork conquers all). It was good to see those low level AVs, since I primarily play redside, so I'd actually never seen Dr. Vahz before and my experience on the Synapse TF was pretty late at night so I never really got a good look at the Clockwork King.

Monitor Duty Mish was one of the most clever missions I've yet seen executed, definitely in the top five.

Was the final mission's boss a redesign of Vandal or one of the Vandal models? I could see that was what you were going for, but I didn't quite see whether or not it had his cannon-hand. If it was a redesign from the MA critter creator, it was very well done. Oh, the RoboTP ambush took quite some time to get to us, so we had already beaten the boss by the time they got there. I don't know if you want to "re-place" where they spawn from.

All in all, a great arc and I will probably recommend it to a number of folks in my SG/VGs for people to play. I think folks who really enjoy classic teen hero flavor will enjoy it more than I, but that's no criticism.

On the issue of the allies, I really wasn't in the mish for the tickets or the XP (which is pretty much not an issue in the first two missions anyway), but I can see that some people have been upset with "kill steals" or whatever. My only complaint on the members of the TP is that there is no buffer. Given Cora's parentage, I think maybe it would be thematically reasonable to switch her secondary to Force Field. Two offensive sets on her seem to be really unnecessary since we have plenty of DPS kicking out when the whole team gets together. Actually, I guess she is a debuffer with the TA, but still, I wasn't feeling the debuffs at the time.

Anyway, a very enjoyable Arc, runs fast, and great for the solo! I can see why the arc is getting a lot of positive buzz and is appearing on a lot of 5 Star lists.

Post deleted by 12th. Forgot to place this in the proper thread.

Teen Phalanx Forever completed, comments placed.

If you please or desire, you are invited* to WIN THE INTERNET. The arc is in the sig, and here is a link to the arc thread.


*No invitation required; the house is a'rockin, don't bother knockin'

[ QUOTE ]
pooh. Looks like it's the newspaper for me then. Thanks.

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Actually, if you're low enough level on redside (don't know if it is available in Ouro), there is a mission that The Radio gives out that is actually pretty dang good for grinding that badge. With a full team on diff 2 or diff 4 (which give increased spawns), you could definitely grind out a few hundred of those 1000 LB.

How do you back them up? Sorry, this must seem like a total noob question.

Buh? Why are they erased?

I don't think it's an unpublishing thing is it? I'm very certain several of the arcs I'm missing souvenirs for are still live ("Two Girls at Once" and "Hero Therapy!TM" for example).

Maybe it resets when an arc is RE-published? But then, all of the souvenirs I have are from arcs I've done this last week. So, it sounds more like an expiration date?

Devs? Anyone? Bueller?

[ QUOTE ]
All of the Praetorians are Lv40-54 or 45-54. *Except* Anti-Matter, who is Lv40-44.... The devs probably thought it'd look out of place for all of the Praetorian AVs and mobs to be chosen at Lv50 except for Anti-Matter, so they left him off the list altogether.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, there's the explanation I've been looking for!

As far as the robot go, for models and powers, you can use Neuron's robots. Looking at Paragonwiki, they are pretty much identical.

Noticed yesterday night that I only seem to have four souvenirs for the MA Arcs I've completed. And I've completed a lot of them (okay, not a lot, but definitely more than dozen). The remaining four are just the last four arcs I've completed on my account - not the character, as you all probably know, but on my account.

I like the fact that we can collect these souvenirs on every character on our account, but it's sort of ridiculous that I can only keep FOUR of them. The PVE content doesn't give you a limit on these souvenirs, why would the MA content?

I can't grok this one; anyone out there explain? Has this come up before and will there be a patch to allow us to review all of our Architect Souvenirs?

Seriously, if you don't know why its on the profanity filter, your google image fu should let you know PDQ.

Not that odd, just underused 'cause there are a lot more common terms in American vulgar vernacular.

bumped to avoid death-purge-terror-panic

PW - Is there one particular arc of your that you'd like some responses or plays on more than others? Your first two look like they were probably on Test, so I'm guessing you've pretty much got them where you want them; but "Teen Phalanx Forever!" is getting a fair amount of buzz so I expect that it might be the same.

Thanks for any help.

Okay, I did "Curiosier & Curiosier" yesterday and rather enjoyed it. My pointers first, though.

Played solo start to finish on 39 elec/kin corruptor on diff 3

Mission One:

When the "optional" boss spawned, he was directly in my path in a small room where it would have been very difficult (or likely, impossible) for me to avoid him in order to complete the destroy computer objective. I did defeat him and didn't actually die, but it was one of my usual knock-down drag out EB fights that this toon can accomplish (elec/kin end sapping ftw).

I'm guessing this was not your intention as precise spawn location is difficult to predict. If Manti is on "middle", you might want to make it "front". It would cause some backtracking, but at least it comes off as more "bonus content" than something you must confront in order to proceed with the rest of the mission. This is a small map, or a medium one at best, which means there's not much room to avoid notice by mobs.

Glad to see Well Equipped LB again.

Mission Two:

No problem here. However, Becky pretty much ran the show once I picked her up. I don't so much mind, 'cause as a /kin I'm used to being a SB/Healz plz spambot, but other players might be crying "kil steezl!" and wanting to know why they aren't getting tickets. I don't have a recommendation for this, other than to say F** it & leave Becky as she is. Oh, in case you were wondering, SB + Siphon Power on a Tarantula Mistress? Roflcoaster of one-shotting +1 minions. I would have used Fulcrum Shift on her too, but she was killing things TOO FAST! /e evillaugh

Becky also came in handy with Sister Psy, which ended up being a little dicier for a battle, but with BuffSponge Becky tanking for me, it wasn't too bad. Sister Psy conned as a purple EB.

Oh, Dr. Plaht's body was found underneath one of those transition ramps that go from the regular hallways into the sunken "corner rooms" in the arachnos map. This wasn't a problem, but it did foreshadow a problem I had later on in the Arc.

Mission Three:

Sausage works joke was GOLD. I didn't catch it until the patrol, of course, which made it even funnier. This was the mish I had the most problems with, both with difficulty and other design issues.

On clue "Plaht Research Notes", the text states that he was "too fond of chronic himself". This phrase isn't logically supported by the context. Too fond compared to whom? The player? Someone else? There's really no other mention of chronic until you get to the boss (who was extremely well named). I presume that this was supposed to refer to the player, since the arc takes liberties in assuming particular player behavior (South Park, getting a latte, etc) - but I had to grope to make the connection. Man, I'm so leaving myself open with that last bit. My only suggestion here is that the reference to the reefer come a little earlier or in some other critter text.

Boss "4-2-0" has a text error in his player defeat text. "See if $he has any munchies". This should be $heshe, I think.

On Objective: Find Another Clue - this one was a rat [censored]. I spent at least 10-15 minutes looking for the clue, a body bag. I don't have the screen cap here, but it was stuffed in one of those small nooks along the left side wall ("left" relative to where you enter the room) and was hidden behind some of the boxes/tech parts that are on this map. I had gone through the entire mish two or three times looking all over the place and finally turned off iTunes, yanked up the sound all the way and listened for the glowy. Again, this is an item placement spawn issue, and YMMV depending on where the RNG decides to place the clue. Still, I might avoid this completely and just make it a "middle" placement rather than "back".

Fake Nemesis wasn't too difficult, again thanks for wicked end sapping and my leeetle friend, the Voltaic Sentinel. I did get into a little trouble once Fake Nemi put on that damned personal force field, but prevailed without any deaths.

Frustratingly, Fake Nemi was way easier to deal with than the Malta Boss, which caused me to have about three or four deaths even after I mopped up his pals. I was popping a lot of greens and break frees, but wtf, that's malta for you.

Mission Four:

No real issues. This was straightforward, actually. I was expecting a little more in the way of explanation during the mission, some more substantial clues. Given the conclusion, this plays well, 'cause it builds a sense of disappointment in the player. Now, normally this wouldn't be a good idea, but you used this well to set up the conclusion.

As I sent in my in-game tell, I finished the objectives before tackling the bonus boss - which turned out to be a bad idea since I had him on the ropes when he finally hit Personal FF & bled me through my insps. I had to go to the hosp, but (of course) could not get back into the mission. So, I didn't get to see the bonus clue for defeating Nemi at the end of the Arc.

Conclusion/Souvenir:

Some people might find the ending cheap, that there's a lot of tacked on exposition to "solve" things. But, that's how real life works, sometimes you don't get all the clues or you get the clues and they don't make sense anyway. I appreciate that. Execution counts for a lot, though, and the souvenir took that Expo-Speak and made it just as good as the content itself. Besides, anyone who gets Nemesis to say "makin' bacon" is freaking awesome. And, another tip of the hat for pointing out that Nemesis ALWAYS puts the cart in front of the horse (after reinventing the wheel for the cart, from trees grown from a pastureland which had been levelled from a pre-existing forest) when putting his plots together.

There is at least one typo in the souvenir. In the phrase, "relieving their boredom", 'their' is misspelled. I wasn't looking for any other typos, so I might have missed them.

Overall:

I liked "Two Girls at Once" better, it had a higher comedy-to-action frequency, but this was more of a Plaht..er..Plot driven arc rather than an excuse to take us from joke to joke. And for once, Nemesis actually shows that he can be a Chessmaster without requiring that the hero or anyone else hold the Idiot Ball. Let me clarify that I liked 2GAO better than this in so much as I like sashimi better than a regular sushi rolls. I love both, but if I have to pick a favorite...

I still like the short, quick missions, I was glad to see WELB back again, and I REALLY liked the idea of the Bonus Bosses (which is an idea I was toying with but hadn't fully formed). You executed that option very well, I and liked that it was clearly stated in the beginning. Good use of the text customization options, color well used. The Arachnos Lts were a little less, I dunno, outstanding on this arc - but that might be 'cause I was used to their characterization in 2GAO. I will be using "As The Spider Spins" in my RP with my characters now, though. Just a quick suggestion, Veridian's Margaritas should be strawberry.

I'm recommending this one again to my SG/VG mates, and five stars on it (no points off for spawn issues mostly out of your control, easily fixed, nothing broken, and great manipulation of player expectations to deliver a great punchline).

I wish I had another Arc for you to QPQ, but consider this a raincheck for when I have another Arc prepped (which may not be until i15 to use the new tweaks).

I think I'm going grab my SG friends and spam this arc and make sure everyone gives 5 stars. Or I will break their fingers. With my psychic mind rays. And a crowbar. A psychic crowbar of iron!

In other news, I think we need a new tag for this kind of MA arc. Total Waste of Time: [TWOT]

Caution: This post gives no XP, inf, tkts, merits, cookies, or catgirls.

I'll take at look at it this week, looks like work is going to be a bear, so I'm not sure what my online time will be like.

Looking forward to it, though.

I was actually looking forward to making a mission like the Terra Volta trial through MA, I was a little disappointed that the system doesn't really let you do it on a single map.

I don't think so, but it might be saved in your chat logs, you'd just have to datasift through the logs for that day to find them. Or, you could cut/paste them into a text file outside the game and save them for later.

Patch Note: 05/23/2009 - all changes to Mission 4

1. Mission 4 enemy group changed to a custom (Map's Army) with all regular critters. Mixture of Neuron robots & storm elementals (supposed to be corrupted programs), and the Nictus for flavor & to keep the bare-bones plot basically intact.

2. since Posi's guarding group makes an off-color joke, makes sense to have his guards be Prawn.

3. Changed Prawn patrol to spawn due to event in the same area where they are found. also changed text to reflect why the prawn are there at all.

4. AV's ambush moved up to 50% health. Adjusted text appropriately.

5. Changed to Arc Description to include warning for solo Kheldies.

Tested with duo, seems to run much faster and less sloggy. Hopefully Kheldies will be not so aggrieved with less Nictus (although most mob groups will have at least one)

Don't get me wrong, I wanna see 'em! For those who don't quite remember them, here's links

Paragon Heroes

Rogue Isles Villains

Generic Heroes

Now I'm annoyed since I assumed Kadabra Kill and Sigil were both in the Midnighters group and they aren't. They too are Generic Heroes. Bah! Devs help us!

I've been looking for generic "Rogue Isles Villains" too, I'd like to pepper my arcs with them here or there since they're part of the canon, but we don't see them too often. I'd be sad if they were forever stuck in bank missions.

However, I think I know why you won't see them - being as most (if not all) of them are Bosses, it'd be very easy for them to be exploited as a farm resource. Just set up a regular defeat all mish with "Generic Heroes" and "Rogue Isles Villains" as the regular units, and ....

EDIT: The blueside version of these guys are "Paragon Heroes"

[ QUOTE ]
A regen brute?

[/ QUOTE ]

Or maybe she's /dark, I have no idea. I don't run brutes man, I'm all about the pew pew pew.

[ QUOTE ]
I was worried that the Wardens were too hard... Maybe I'll give them Devices and give the minions something else... a few people complained about Web Grenade spam.

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The wardens did generally use the ranged attacks instead of their melee attacks. They were challenging, but with the duo we had going it wasn't impossible - just a little tense. I think it's fine if they only spawn with a team. I would have been worried if they showed up in solo, even then I could have hit & run the group a few times and taken my lumps. The Webgrenade spam was a little annoying, but unless it was a full immobilize, I personally could just siphon speed out of it while giving my teammates seizures with SB & IR.

Other AT/powersets might have found it a lot more annoying, but then bank mishes red side abound in web/glue grenade spam anyway.

I agree that the debuffers should not be minions, making them LTs would bump their powers up a bit but would also make them less frequent. At the LT level, there's likely only to be one or two (if solo) in a group and those could be handled by soft controls that many ATs have or at least alpha targets.

But yeah, the balance is in your hands. I would say that if you kept them the same that you recommend team play or some kind of disclaimer. It's hard for me to say now 'cause I don't know what the critters are power wise and I'm not in game to look at them.

Oh, also buffing the LT to a Boss would depend on on the powerset, but with AR/?? (never saw him do anything since I died immediately after activating him)...it would increase the ally's survivability; although that might not be a priority. At this time, you sort of have a challenge-lite mish for a solo character. It doesn't seem to mesh with the lighthearted/humor tone you're going for. If I got further into the mission, I might able to say more.

Just as a matter of curiosity, what AT/powerset did you test the mission using?

[ QUOTE ]
...missions showing off how t0Ta11y 4WE$Ome your character is tend to suck harder than a ten buck ****** at 3pm on Friday afternoon.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only thing that sucks harder than that is an eight dollar ******. Why? 'Cause she's gotta make change.

Anyway, here's what I can tell you about Two Girls At Once, which I ran a little spastically over the last two days 'cause my RL has been sapping my richly deserved need to stare at a computer screen for hours on end. Oh wait, I do that at work anyway.

In any case, as I commented after I finished it, I was cut/pasting dialogue from the early part of the arc into my VG chat & had two people demand to get in on the team to participate. So, this was a team effort for most of it: a 38 elec/rad corr (myself), a 41 ice/elec dom, and a 45 dark/regen brute (mal'd to 38) running the arc on diff 3.

It's a quick arc, I think we could have burned through it pretty freaking fast if we hadn't been so interested in RPing through the various clues. It helped that my character is a notorious womanizer, so this whole thing was right up his alley (which is the same alley you might find those hard-working folks mentioned above). I like short missions, particularly for a humor-based MA, TIMING where the most important thing about getting the comedy right is .

The customs were pretty well balanced, and I think the only thing I would have had difficulty handling solo was the Wardens in mish 5 (& possibly the final EB). I liked that everyone had flavor text placed in, and I really appreciated that the Ally text changed between the two missions that featured them, despite being the same people. Those are the little details that make a MA Arc quality. I loved Mistral as a cocktail swilling ne'er-do-well.

I noticed a few things that could use improvement:

* I liked the colored text for each of the Arachnos lieutenants in the mission breifings/debriefings. I think you should standardize it throughout the missions though. The first mission briefing could use it, and the fourth mission accept text (Black Scorpy's dialogue) should be changed to his color of text. In that latter case, I got confused why Lord Recluse suddenly was using a very different voice. The confusion wouldn't have occurred if it had gone back to the blue text you were using for Scorpy.

* I'd also recommend dropping the quotation marks from the normal dialogue from Recluse. They are cluttering up the text and were a little distracting. I know you want to separate narration of action from the dialogue, but you could use italics/bold or another color to separate the narration. Most of the mission briefing/debriefing text doesn't look expansive, so I think you have the character space to do such customization.

* I wasn't watching the grammar specifically, but I did notice that you mispelled "significant" in the 1st debriefing text. Otherwise, I didn't notice anything spectactular. There might have been some capitalization issues in the flavor text, but meh...

* Spawning issues: In the 4th mission - Ice Mistral spawned in the room behind Mantis, so you had to fight through all the groups to get the ally I assumed you needed to ...fight the groups. The brute and I duo'd this level without too much difficulty although the brute did die one or two times when I couldn't fire off my heals fast enough.

* Gameplay Issue: In the 5th mission, the allies you get are on some sort of PCP version of "aggressive" 'cause they were running all over the place barrelling into mobs of critters. Being the healzplz /kin I am, I kept them upright through the mission - but they might not have made it in solo with another AT. I know there's nothing you can really do to change that other than to maybe indicate that the allies will be quite bloodthirsty, which might bring aggro on the player.

Anyway, that's it. Great arc; I'm recommending it to my VGs/SGs. We might try the sequel, but I've got a few other arcs on my queue at the moment. Oh, also the souvenir was excellent.

RATING: On a scale of empty of win to full of win, you get a WIN!!