I'll try yours if you'll try mine

I started Matchstick Women (3369) on a 2-player team (26 db/ninj stalker and 18 sonic/storm corruptor); we finished the 1st mission but could not complete the 2nd mission. We couldn't find the "Last Recruiter" despite clearing all of the Steel Canyon map.

We think one of the bosses spawned under the map or clipping geometry of one of the buildings or something.

We had to quit the arc at that point, but this seemed like a bug to me, so I left it unrated and will re-try it a little later while solo.

Thanks for the warm review and the constructive feedback.

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Found an "Aspect of the Pillar" which looked just like a Nictus crystal, which was a bit jarring; for that reason, I'm not sure this is the best graphic to use.

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I'm not thrilled with it either, but the MA tools don't have an actual Ouroboros crystal in their options. In the crystal's description, I tried to include an explanation for why it looks different.

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Defeating the guards surrounding it ended the mission. What happens if I rescue the "Aspect of the Pillar" before the Maiden? I wonder if that might make less sense. (Unless they are triggered in this particular order.)

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Bingo. The objectives are actually chained, though I tried to obscure that in the way I worded the nav text.

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So I return back to the present time. I think either rescuing the Maiden or completing the mission should give some instructional Clue indicating what the player has learned by Observing History; something about the schism between the magical factions, I would say. A lot of this is contained in the briefing for mission 2, but maybe should be clues learned from mission 1. You might also consider adding a clue indicating the Maiden is somehow significant in what is to come.

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I think I'll add a mission complete clue, just to indicate that the player has, indeed, learned something from their history lesson. I'm hesitant to give a clue for the maiden, because I want that encounter to be mysterious, so the player can discover her significance as the story progresses.

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Found that the stacked web grenade from the Heralds (they all seemed to do it) was pretty nasty.

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It should only be the bosses and the lieutenants who have web grenade. The minions should have Martial Arts instead of Devices. I'll take another look to make sure they have the correct powers.

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The mission title seems overly long -- I like that the "Horned God" has all these titles but it makes the nav tool very cramped.

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Maybe I'll trim that. Mostly I wanted to build up the players' expectations of the Horned God to set up the joke of his reality. There may be a better way to do that, though.

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Mission objectives of "Cabal priestess, Legacy Chain priest, Agatha, Horned God" all just use the name of the NPC, but should have some words explaining how you're supposed to interact with them. Something like "Link up with Cabal priestess" or "Meet up with Legacy Chain priest" or "Rescue the Horned God".

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I was worried about making the nav text even more crowded than it already was, but I can still work with it. (Particularly if I trim all the Horned God's titles.)

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A little disappointing that there wasn't a Herald leader to fight somewhere in here; with 3 allies I have a lot of firepower at hand, more than enough to overrun the normal spawns.

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I set the final hostage's guards to "Hard" to try to make things a bit challenging at the end, but that may have been insufficient. I'll see what I can do. Maybe set the mission difficulty to "Ramp up."

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A bit later I was writing up my notes and thought more about it, and was tempted to raise the rating as I liked how the later story elements fit with the initial "flashback" scene; but held back mostly over issues of story motivation (why Agatha decides to reunite the covenant, why the Legacy Chain captures her, why the Heralds attack -- all things I think I could buy, with a little additional explanation of why it's happening).

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I'll try to make their motivations more explicit.

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Call it a high 4.

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Thanks!

Matchstick Women review
Arc ID: 3369
Keywords: Custom Characters, Non-Canon Story, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-54

The premise is to investigate a cult of female arsonists.

I played a 26 db/ninj stalker duoing with a 18 sonic/storm corruptor.

The contact is a Rikti computer, purporting to be "A mysterious flame". It looks very much like a Rikti computer, but it does have a yellow energy field above it that could be a flame. Maybe you could make a custom contact that is a featureless female form wreathed in a fiery aura? That would kind of fit in with your "you think you see a young girl in the flames" text later on.

Mission 1
Briefing Caption: Should be in larger font, bold face, or a different color, to stand out from the rest of the briefing.

Briefing: Nice and moody, a little unconventional (due to the unconventional nature of the contact).

I like the "Stop the fire from spreading" mission title.

Map selection/enemy selection: (Minor gripe) It seems unnecessarily complicated to have Council occupying an Arachnos base. After all, the Council have hundreds of pre-fab underground Council bases all over Paragon City (or so it seems in the PvE game). It would be a better fit to have Council in a standard Council base, or Arachnos in the Arachnos base. I'm guessing you want the "burning Arachnos base" to fit with theme of the arc, though.

The first spawn of Council we encountered were all in the "firefighting" pose, surrounding an Explosives destructible object. The Council were flagged as hostile, and my teammate immediately commented, "Why are we killing them if they are trying to stop the fire?" It seems a valid question.

My objective is "Destroy the bomb!" but the destructible object is labeled "Explosives". Consider renaming it to "Bomb" for clarity.

Breaking open the fire hydrants to help put out the fire was a cool mechanic.

Both my teammate and I commented to each other that this firefighting mission was pretty neat.

Debriefing: "council" should be "Council" (note capitalization).

Mission 2
Briefing is kinda mystical; neat to read, but doesn't say much about the actual mission.

After accepting the mission, the second part of the briefing actually explains what is to be done.

Inside the mission, we started fighting the various Matchstick women. We found and rescued Curious Woman, who looked like a hostage but ended up helping out; this seemed surprising, but I guess she just discovered she has fire tanker powers.

With an ally following us, we ended up clearing most of the (largish) map in order to find the numerous objectives. We rescued a bunch of hostages that gave clues indicating that the Matchstick Women were trying to recruit them, and found and fought a Perfect Match Recruiter, who had some decent dialog that expositioned what they were up to.

At some point I ran into a mob that said:

[NPC] Fiery Matchstick: It's Kashira, she ruined our fun at the council base and now our recruiting is interrupted!

I think "council" here should be "Council".

We could not find the last recruiter even after clearing the entirety of Steel Canyon; we defeated every mob we could find, then searched for a few more minutes after that, but still didn't get credit for completing the mission. Unfortunately, we had to quit. I left the arc unrated. We hypothesized that the other boss somehow spawned underground or inside a building or something.

Later in the day, I re-tried this arc as a solo 26 db/ninj stalker. Kinda rushed past mission 1 (stealthing most of it) in order to get back to mission 2 to see if I could complete it.

On my second try of this mission, I almost immediately found Perfect Match Leader, who I think we couldn't find on my first try. Her dialog suggested she wanted me to beat her, and she gave me "The Turncoat Matchstick" with some information about their leader, who she thought was crazy.

Moving a little slower while solo, this time I catch that Curious Woman is being called "the strongest potential" by the Matchstick women, and with the strongest fire powers, it makes more sense why she becomes my heroic sidekick.

I like how the Greenfire Matchsticks have glowing green auras around their hands, to help color-code them for my convenience. Since they are healers, I find I try and take them out first.

Found and defeated the Perfect Match Recruiter, as well; though the objective didn't update after I defeated her, until I cleared all her guards. You might consider changing both "boss" spawns to require defeating only the boss herself.

Debriefing: Pretty nicely written, recapping what was learned in the mission and adding a little more; a bit melodramatic, but seems appropriate based on the tone of the arc so far.

Mission 3
Briefing: Now the flame presents a vision of (I assume) the leader of the Matchsticks, organizing her new villain group. This briefing really doesn't tell me anything about the mission I'm about to do, so isn't (strictly speaking) a briefing, but the vision of flames is compelling enough that maybe that can be let slide.

I like the mission title of "Reveal the mystery of the flame". I'm curious as to what I'll find out.

Good map choice. (Admittedly, there is probably a limited selection of "on fire" maps.)

I searched a bookcase and got "A well read book" as a clue; I think this should be "A well-read book". Minor nitpick. "hundereds" should be "hundreds" in the body of the text. This is a neat clue; I like it as is, but you might also consider adding that Significant Passages are Underlined, to reinforce the message I think you're trying to send here.

Found and fought Emily Metzer. Her dialog was pretty good and appropriately psychotic. The mission completed as soon as I defeated her, even though I hadn't completed the "Find clues" objective (the bookcase didn't update that).

I figured I had missed an optional clue, and was curious as to what the full story was, so I searched the building after that and found the writing desk, with "Emily's Journal", which helped explain much of Emily's back story. It reveals enough info that I almost think it should be a required glowy. But, the story also works as presented (with only Emily herself being required).

Debriefing: "With sadness heavy in your heart" sounds rather awkward (maybe over the line on purple prose) to me. I suggest simplifying to "With heavy heart".

Also:

She merely says thank you before vanishing in a puff of somke. Only to leave nothing but a matchbook.

...is a bit awkward sounding, I suggest rewording to:

She seems to mouth the words, "Thank you," before vanishing in a puff of smoke -- leaving nothing behind but a matchbook.

There are still a number of unanswered questions at this point, but I really like the final line of "Inside is a solitary match, already burnt" ... seems a perfect ending. So I'm okay letting that go.

Overall
I thought this was a very good story, of Emily's descent into madness (and supervillainy) and how she dragged a lot of other women in after her, only to eventually be stopped (and perhaps laid to rest) by the hero. The first mission seemed particularly cool; I liked the idea of a mission where you're stopping a fire, which is hard to present effectively in this medium, but I thought this worked well. Emily's back story and final release were both handled very well.

I liked the writing in the briefings and debriefings; even though often they told me very little info about what the mission actually is supposed to be, they were well written enough that this didn't bother me so much. The prose got a little purple at times, but nevertheless I thought that writing style worked well for the story.

I do have a few nitpicks: why do you fight the Council firefighters in mission 1? How did defeating Emily actually set her free (I don't imagine a hero would simply kill her)? Where did this magical flame that is giving me missions come from?

I kinda would've liked answers to some of these question, but the presentation of the story via the medium of the flame made it all rather dreamlike and mysterious, so this didn't bother me as much as it might otherwise. I found the story itself rather compelling.

I rated this 5 stars.

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I owe a review to:

airhead - Captain Dynamic 190069
@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890

Thanks for the review, I started re-working some things but hit some bugs I didn't have time to fix tonight. I plan on re-working the first mission, even though you did enjoy it quite a bit, to make it fit more with the other two missions. I plan on adding in the Curious Woman in some form, I tried to make her guard the bomb, but I ended up with too few or too many of her. I also got rid of the guards on the water mains, but forgot that having no guards makes them untargettable.

And doing that, I (hopefully) removed all Council references, and changed Curious Woman's dialog in the second mission to refer to your earlier meeting. I also added in a flavor boss (non-required lieutenant class boss) in the final mission to add some extra animation and dialog (and plan on adding at least one more).

I ran into that Steel Canyon map problem one time before, and I later found an extra piece of the map that's harder to notice. I've been meaning to change that to a smaller map as well.

Thanks for the review, PW!

His motivation at that point, admittedly, was personally undecided. Thanks for catching that, I updated his dialogue and clues to make more sense. Heck, I just gave the last mission a makeover, hopefully it'll offer more of a unique experience.

'Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces The Great Face' - Tryouts review
Arc ID: 190069
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Save the World, Comedy
Morality: Heroic
Level range: hard to say?

The premise is the contribute to the "Captain Dynamic phenomenon", something I have no knowledge of. The arc description suggests checking out the "Captain Dynamic videos" on a web site, but I thought it would be more fair to see how well this arc stands on its own, without additional background information from outside the AE system itself.

With "Council, Custom Group, Snakes" listed as opponents and a level 1 mission and two level 5-54 missions, I wasn't sure what level character this arc is targeted for. I decided to play a 50 AR/dev blaster on difficulty level 1.

The contact is Captain Dynamic, a heroic looking fellow with a colorful costume.

Mission 1
Briefing: Apparently I am playing stunt double for Captain Dynamic, who is the hero of the piece. So I'm supposed to test out a scenario for him and the special effects people will later replace my character with him. I have mixed feelings about this; I'd kinda like the story to be about my character, but on the other hand, this is kind of an interesting spin. Will see where this goes.

Second part of briefing: Some fun background information, about how this story arc was co-written with the approval of Captain Dynamic's nemesis. He then goes into some exposition and pseudo-science to deduce that his arch-enemy is working with the Snakes to reinvent Rikti armor. This seems kind of farfetched, but maybe it's not intended to be believable. I'm not quite sure if this is part of the "story arc" co-written between the contact and the big bad guy, or this is supposed to be the actual adventure.

"Lair of Evil" is kind of a weird mission title; it's neat, but usually mission titles have a verb in them like "Destroy the Lair of Evil" or "Save the World".

I like the "Save the cat - save the world!" objective.... though, no cat has been mentioned so far, so it's also kind of puzzling.

I'm exemplared down to level 1 which gives me a total of 2 powers (well, plus a fistful of accolades and temp powers). This doesn't bother me too much, but I know some players are extremely aggravated by that sort of thing.

The map seems to be empty except for a glowy refrigerator labeled "Cat box" ... this actually does not look very much like a cat box (assuming you mean this should be a litter box) though I guess the biohazard symbols sort of work. Aren't there supposed to be Snakes in here? It's very puzzling.

I do get the "Incredible Save!" clue after clicking the cat box. Was a cat supposed to come out of it? It tells me I saved the world, but I also spawned a PPD van and someone named Mindy somewhere in the mission. It doesn't seem like I can interact with the "Badmobile" (can target it but not shoot it).

Found Mindy and her cat; her background story is pretty funny. "annoited" should be "anointed" though.

I'm a little baffled by the fourth-wall breaking comment she makes on arriving at the door:

[NPC] Mindy: Someone must have overwritten your mission with this! I bet they didn't even update your contact.

Perhaps this explains why there's no Snakes or enemies in this mission. I'm still not quite sure why this mission was restricted to level 1 as there were no enemies. I guess it's nice that saving the cat saved the world? I like the story that mirror-universe Mindy who lost her cat turned into an evil archvillain that took over the world, but I am not sure why I know this -- I think there needs to be a more plausible way of learning this information (other than just reading her info).

Debriefing: the contact talks about my having defeated Snakes and learned clues about the Big Bad Guy even though I didn't do anything like that in the mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact now wants me to follow up on a clue from mission 1, the mission 1 that wasn't actually in this arc. He now wants me to (as his stunt double) stop the Council from stealing a macguffin from the Rikti in the RWZ.

Second part of briefing: some (presumably intentionally) over-the-top technobabble from the contact. "Good luc" should be "Good luck" though.

I'm utterly baffled by the 24 point bold faced red text about being hacked by Euronators and Captain Slippery and stuff. Huh?

Mission title, "Supply Dump" is more like a location than an activity. Consider adding a verb to make it "Explore Supply Dump" or "Stop Council Plot in Supply Dump" or whatever.

A large number of the mobs inside the mission have standard Council names like "Nebula Elite Assault" and "Nightwolf" and the correct description for those mobs, but have the graphic of Captain Dynamic. I don't think this is a bug, it must be intentional; perhaps related to the "hacking" mentioned in the briefing. The mixed up mobs have mixed-up dialog suggesting they are aware they aren't supposed to be villains.

Found a couple "Euronator robots" that I assume are somehow related to this plot, but not quite sure how. They aren't in my objective list so I evade them.

Found a ton of glowy Council crates, but they are named "Empty crate", "Another empty crate" and "Crate. Empty"; I searched a few of them, but eventually concluded that I can skip any crates named "empty crate". You might want to give them more vague object names like just "Crate" or "Crate " (with a space at the end) to make it less obvious that they are just decoys; then the player finds out they're empty only AFTER searching them.

Finally found the correct crates which were destroyable objects with some funny dialog from the guards. No sign of Archon Burkholder anywhere though.

I go back and attack the Euronator robots and they turn out to complete the "Defeat Archon Burkholder" objective, which is a little weird. They monologue that they "are the new Archon Burkholder" which doesn't make a lot of sense. Defeating them gives me the "Archon defeated" clue, which says "You have thwarted Archon Burkholder", which is not technically true, as I never saw him.

Debriefing: The contact thanks me for making him look good, then says his own name repeatedly because he likes the sound of it. I'd be annoyed by this except that it's clearly trying to portray him as incredibly egotistical.

Mission 3
Briefing: Supposedly the last mission prevented the Big Bad Guy from taking over the world (??) but now we want to help the Big Bad Guy out, by teaming up with him against the Rikti, in order to prevent the Rikti from learning the secrets of... how to make Rikti armor. Is this meant to be absurd? I'm not sure now.

Second part of briefing: more 24 point text from "Captain Slippery" who is apparently "hacking" these missions, but feels the traditionally villainous need to warn me.

Mission title: "Great Face's Lair", again, sounds more like a location than a mission.

The recolored Rikti are kinda fun looking, as well as the "rescue Great Face" with "KILL GREAT FACE" inserted in the red font of the hacker. I think Great Face has an extra period at the end of his name (which makes his dialog look odd as a result). I'm not sure why the Great Face also was a rikti. (Later I determined it was because he was wearing Rikti armor. But I thought mission 2 sabotaged his plan to make Rikti armor? Possible continuity error.)

Is "Rikti techie taffy" supposed to be a reference to Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi? It could make sense, what with the involvement of Snakes. Or am I looking too hard here for meaning?

I found a bunch of wastebaskets with "emails" in them, that had red vandal-text embedded. Most of them seemed to be about how Great Face gets picked on by classmates; they make Great Face sound more like a troubled schoolgirl than an archvillain. I'm not sure a wastebasket graphic makes sense for an email; maybe a computer would work better? Or you could make them printouts of emails, which would make more sense for a wastebasket.

I found a glowy labeled "annealer" and clicked it, but it didn't seem to do anything (no clue, no objectives changed). Maybe should have a clue or a more obvious purpose, or else be removed. Same for "sinterer" and "extruder".

I fought and beat Djan'zor and his group, which seemed to complete the "raid leader" objective. Djan'zor never said anything, maybe needs some dialog.

I rescued a Snake named Boa Constructor, who gave me a cute "Wire Hero" clue, but seemed just to be a gag and not really related to the plot.

After doing the other objectives I found another Great Face hostage had spawned, which I went and rescued. (I wonder if it is possible to have both Great Faces active at the same time?) I like how the objective changed to "I SAID KILL GREAT FACE" once I rescued him. Leading him to the door didn't do anything though?

I was puzzled as to what to do next to complete the mission. I think it needs to be made clearer. I ended up searching the map again and found Captain Slippery, who I defeated. He had some interesting fourth wall breaking dialog about the nature of this mission. Thought it was particularly brave to have him say:

[NPC] Captain Slippery: Quit this mission! Don't vote! Show Great Face noone cares about him or Captain Dynamic.

Debriefing: the contact is happy that I succeeded, but also mentions that the big bad guy now has the means to make Rikti armor. This seems to contradict mission 2, which said that Great Face having this technology would be catastrophic, causing the end of the world? The contact then goes back into self-worship mode.

Souvenir: interesting style with the vandalized text. The souvenir says "NO YOU SAVED CAPTAIN DYNAMIC'S STUPID CAT" but in the actual mission you save Mindy's cat, which I think is a continuity error. (It doesn't seem likely that Mindy and Captain Dynamic are the same person.)

Overall
The initial premise was interesting and there were fun moments and bits of dialog. I liked the clues about the cat and the various emails from GF, which helped flesh out the back story a bit. But, overall I was very confused by this arc. Perhaps it makes more sense if you know who Captain Dynamic is, or look at the (external) background info.

Rescuing the cat in mission 1 was nice, but didn't seem connected to the rest of the story and was not inherently all that interesting in terms of gameplay.

The later missions were better tied into the story, but were mixed up due to the alterations of Captain Slippery. It's confusing that I both stop the Great Face from making Rikti armor, then later HELP him make Rikti armor. I don't really "get" what the story is supposed to be about. At times the Great Face is an evil villain, at others he's a misunderstood ally; this could maybe work if his/her motivations were made clearer.

I am guessing that the confusion in the story is meant to be explained by the "hacking" of Captain Slippery, but while this provides some justification, I still feel like the story is too confusing to make much sense. I do like Captain Slippery's background and motivation, though.

It's not totally clear what the intent of this story arc is, so I'm unsure what to suggest. At the very least, I would try to tie the first mission more closely into the story, and clarify whether leaving Rikti armor in the hands of the Great Face is Okay or Totally World-Endingly Bad (the story as presented contradicts itself on this). I'm not sure that the framing story of being Captain Dynamic's stunt double really works with the story as presented, either. I'd almost suggest shifting Captain Slippery's envious motivations to being jealous of the player, but maybe this wouldn't work as your story seems intended to focus on Captain Dynamic (who, curiously, does basically nothing the whole arc).

With as confusing as I found the story, I felt like I couldn't rate this too high; the bits of humor and the clever clues pulled it up to 3 stars for me though. I hope you think that's fair!


-----

@anachrodragon - The Next War on Drugs 245042
@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890

The Next War on Drugs review
Arc ID: 245042
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: mostly 12-20
No warnings.

The premise is helping Back Alley Brawler battle street crime and drug trafficking.

I played this on a 7 dark/ice defender. An 8 shield/ice tanker was teamed with me initially, but logged after the first mission.

Mission 1
Briefing: A very good briefing. I like how BAB presents the street level problems and his mention of how most heroes are too busy fighting Rikti or time traveling to help with these problems. The background info he provides about the Regulators, the Frost cartel and Illustrated Woman is very good and seems a good match with what I remember of the official canon. He sends me to stop a Troll riot in Skyway City.

Good map choice that I don't see used often. The two of us battle our way through the Trolls; I think we only found one of the optional side missions (the stolen van) before freeing the police officer. The tanker had to log at that point, though, so we exited.

Debriefing: Aww, it's so nice that the police officer mentioned me in his report!

*** at this point the tanker logged, so I continued as a solo 7 defender **

Mission 2
Briefing: Now BAB wants me to help rescue a kidnapped Councilman. He says he told Blue Steel "I think Star Amethyst can handle this on her own" (where Star Amethyst is my character's name), which is nice of him, but might not make sense if I'm on a team.

Inside the mission: I'm a little puzzled that there's all these private security guards here. They kidnapped the councilman? I don't have finding the councilman as an objective, which is strange, but I should find 3 clues, instead.

Found clue 2.1 with the "new uniforms", which partially explains the security guard uniforms, but it is strange that they would wear them while at their home base. I would think they're just impersonating security guards while "out on jobs".

Yikes, found a barrel with "A Gruesome Discovery" inside. The poor Councilman! This clue is quite detailed and horrific, which I hope was your intent.

I still have a timer going, which is rather strange since there is no longer any time pressure to rescue the (no longer living) Councilman. (I think I found the clues in a weird order, since I got clue 2.1 then clue 2.3.)

No one in this mission seems to have any dialog at all. Consider adding some.

The forensic evidence doesn't quite mesh with the timeline, with clue 2.4 saying "You believe that he probably bled out long before...as the barrel seemed too clean", but since he was alive quite recently, it doesn't seem like there was enough time for a body to completely exsanguinate so that the container would be relatively clean.

Debriefing: I like BAB's reaction to this crime. BAB mentions "you dealt with those goons" and "Now we need to figure out...who was hiding behind those security uniforms" -- it seems like we arrested a bunch of those goons and we could just ask them? Under questioning it seems likely they'd reveal this info. Or if not, at least it should be mentioned that they wouldn't admit anything under questioning. The fedora clue does point towards the Family though.

Mission 3
Briefing: BAB seems to think that both the Troll riot and Bryant's kidnapping/murder was merely a distraction in order to steal something from Bryant's office. I can buy the Troll riot being an intentional distraction, but I find the murder to be a less believable distraction -- a murder and dismemberment seem awfully extreme compared to an ordinary theft from his office.

BAB conjectures that Bryant's involvement with construction work in IP might be related and wants me to check out the Councilman's office (with police cooperation).

Second part of briefing: a history lesson about the Frost cartel. "twarted" should be "thwarted". Some good back story is presented; it comes across a little pedantic, but maybe that works for BAB. At this point he calls the murder "a hit like this on a city official", which seems to contradict his earlier statement that Bryant's death was a distraction for another crime. Needs to be made consistent; I'd suggest you make the Troll riot the distraction from Bryant's murder, then this mission be finding out the motive for the murder.

Inside the mission, I see some (friendly) PPD patrols, which seems nice for showing the police are here investigating this too. They maybe should have some dialog to that effect.

No enemies are apparent on the map initially. As a result this 3-floor office map seems awfully large and empty. I kinda wish the map were smaller, but the arc description calls this a "Small size map", so this may be as small as you can get.

Found the desk and searched it, which seemed to spawn some things....now I have 2 files to search and a missing forensics kit to find. I think I momentarily had Sergeant Graham as an objective, but then his objective vanished from my nav tool within about a second. Maybe this was intentional, as I got both clue 3.1 and clue 3.2 from this single glowy (or perhaps 3.2 was triggered by Graham, then Graham was triggered by the desk).

Searching a file gave me clue 3.4 and seemed to spawn more police who had additional dialog, which was neat.

Searched a trash can and got clue 3.5, the forensics kit, which also spawned an objective of "Search for clues upstairs". In this clue, "El Super Mexican" should be "El Super Mexicano".

Going upstairs I found clue 3.6, which cleared "Search for clues upstairs" and triggered "Use forensics kit to search for clues". This led me to find blood spatter on a painting (clue 3.7) triggering "Keep Using Forensics Kit" as an objective, which led me to clue 3.8.

Finally found the last file cabinet for clue 3.3 revealing arguments at city hall.

No enemies spawned at all in this mission, it was all glowy clicking with more glowies linked to them. The descriptions of the various objectives and clues made this neat though, like real detective work; this was very creative and I quite liked it. I've always felt that detective work isn't effectively represented in CoH, at least not to the degree that punching bad guys is. (But be aware that some people will complain that it doesn't give enough exp.)

Debriefing: A good debriefing where BAB reviews the various clues you found.

Mission 4
Briefing: gun registration has led the PPD to determine that a gun found in mission 2 was sold in a particular pawn shop. BAB wants me to check this pawn shop out. This seems an interesting lead for a mission. Though I wonder why the police aren't checking this out themselves?

Inside the mission: looks like this pawn shop is run by Tsoo. Unfriendly Tsoo, at that. The "carrying boxes" animation is funny and works for Tsoo store clerks.

Found a bulletin board which gave me clue 4.1. I like the description of the note being mangled by people using it for shuriken target practice.

Found Ferrous Mantis (a boss and a rough fight for me at level 7; my fault, as my character is below the mission's official 12-20 level range). Really liked his dialog, which I thought was hilarious. In this line:

[NPC] Ferrous Mantis: This is special Preying Mantis style but with FISTS LIKE IRON!

"Preying Mantis" should be "Praying Mantis".

Clue 4.2 indicates this pawn shop is tied into the drug trade. If this is the case, I wonder if the records should show that the gun was bought by the pawn shop, and never sold? It seems sloppy for the pawn shop to actually sell the gun to a thug "on record".

Clue 4.X "Ferrous Mantis's Sweet DVD Collection" was very funny too.

Found the other Tsoo gangster, who said:

[NPC] Storm Dragon: It is a shame my assistants were unable to deal with you. No matter I shall deal with you myself.

"No matter I shall" should be "No matter! I shall" or "No matter, I shall" (punctuation).

In Storm Dragon's dialog, as well as in clue 4.3 and the debriefing, we find out that we seem to have been "set up" by someone to help evict the Tsoo from the shop. I'm not really thrilled by this turn of events, but will see where it goes.

Mission 5
Briefing: BAB goes on and on about Antonio Violi, but then ends up wanting me to check out Dante Enterprises, which keeps coming up over and over in the investigation. This doesn't seem obviously connected to what he was saying in the first couple paragraphs of the briefing, though.

Second part of the briefing: BAB goes on to explain more about Violi and actually connects the dots with Dante Enterprises, in a very tenuous way but it makes perfect sense for his character. I like the way BAB is portrayed here, as the guy who doesn't do everything strictly by the book.

Inside the mission: worked my way up to some boxes, that I clicked; they spawned some pretty heavy duty brutes as an ambush.

A bunch of fairly nice superadine-related clues lead up to spawning "the Middleman", who seems to be the big bad guy of the arc.

It turns out the Middleman is someone I've met earlier in the arc! I was going to complain there wasn't enough foreshadowing of this reveal, but thinking about it, the mission entry popup did hint at this.

I ended up beating the Middleman before finding the last two clues; got the last couple of glowies and finished the mission.

Debriefing: "discretely" should be "discreetly" here. Although the mission was successful, the debriefing suggests it's just part of a much longer struggle. I'd normally like a more upbeat finish with definite closure, but this is actually seems appropriate for a "War on Drugs" arc.

Overall
This was a very nice "street" level adventure. I was particularly impressed by the forensics mission, which was very creative and worked well (some people will complain it awards no exp - ignore them). The characterization of BAB was very good. I thought this arc made excellent use of clues and linked objectives.

Some nitpicks: the gory discovery of Councilman Bryant's body made the arc seem very dark, but this seemed at odds with the humor in mission 4; this made the tone of the arc seem a little uneven here. Mission 4 was pretty cool but actually seemed a bit of a distraction from the main story; I'm not sure what is gained by having the player follow a false lead here. The rival councilwoman and Antonio Violi are both mentioned significantly, but never seem to play a part in the story arc; this with the final debriefing made me think the ending lacked some closure. (The souvenir hints that the door is being left open for a sequel, though.)

Despite all that, I thought this was a terrific street-level investigation, and I really liked it. I rated it 5 stars.


-----

I owe a review to:

@baler - A Close Encounter 233720
@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890

Thanks Policewoman. Sorry my arc did not follow your expected conventions. But I have to wonder if you're playing too many arcs in a row. The assumptions you make about how an arc should work are pretty stiff. I didn't want to be one of those people who post infinitely-scrolly replies to their review. But, here I go.

> Level range: hard to say?
There's one odd mission at level 1. But exemplaring doesn't lose you experience in this special case. There is no problem here, only the assumption of a problem. It was fine that you picked a level 50 blaster.

> The arc description suggests checking out the "Captain Dynamic videos" on a web site, but I thought it would be more fair to see how well this arc stands on its own,
> without additional background information from outside the AE system itself.
This has worked for some people. You do not need information outside the AE. But others need the videos to understand that the AE system involves in-game architects (sounds obvious, but clearly from your review, it's not). I provided the suggestion to improve your experience of the arc. The videos are from NCsoft, about the AE system. You can't argue that's "fair", it's just your assumption that my arc is like others.

> ...fun background information, about how this story arc was co-written with the approval of Captain Dynamic's nemesis.
Close, but it wasn't written with "approval". Captain Dynamic wrote an arc, sent it to his nemesis to edit, and then uploaded it without playing it himself. That sequence of events is key to the chaos that ensues.

Subsequent pseudo-science was intentionally far-fetched, your impression there was spot-on. Note that I used the Nav Title for location, since the objectives spell out why you're there. But it is done consistently, I don't understand why that should detract from your enjoyment?

> though, no cat has been mentioned so far, so it's also kind of puzzling.
That's fine. The videos might have explained this, but they might not. Puzzled is good. Something has definitely gone wrong.

> I'm exemplared down to level 1 ... but I know some players are extremely aggravated by that
It's stated in the arc summary. The player can choose not to play the arc. Once they're in that mission, the player will not miss their powers at all. Focus should be on figuring out the plot.

> ...after clicking the cat box. Was a cat supposed to come out of it?
Objective completion text said "cat came out, and ran down the hall".

> It doesn't seem like I can interact with the "Badmobile" (can target it but not shoot it).
Objective text and description of the "Badmobile" indicate you don't need to shoot it.

> Found Mindy and her cat; her background story is pretty funny. "annoited" should be "anointed" though.
Glad you liked it. More silly architect-ing. Will fix typo!

> I'm a little baffled by the fourth-wall breaking comment she makes on arriving at the door
This does not break any fourth wall. The comments are not about you, the player/audience. It's about your character, in a simulation, written by architects in-game, in the AE center. Her comment is key to understanding the arc. Assuming it breaks the fourth wall is assuming your architect-contact didn't exist.

> "Good luc" should be "Good luck" though.
It's hacked, as stated in large, red text. More such "typos" could have been found in objectives in mission 3.

> I'm utterly baffled by the 24 point bold faced red text about being hacked by Euronators and Captain Slippery and stuff. Huh?
From the mission 1 send-off, highlighted in yellow text, the arc was written by one architect, emailed to another. An email came back, and it was uploaded.
But confusion should be short-lived. You did notice the Captain Dynamics were notably hacked up. Even evading the Euronators initially made sense. If you accept that architects are part of the game, then there are plenty of hints dropped indicating something must has gone wrong with the two-architect plan.

> ...named "empty crate"...make it less obvious that they are just decoys
Good idea!

> [The Euronators] monologue that they "are the new Archon Burkholder" which doesn't make a lot of sense.
Many things haven't gone according to plan at this point. Did you remember the hackers signed as "Euronators"?

> Defeating them gives me the "Archon defeated" clue, which says "You have thwarted Archon Burkholder", which is not technically true, as I never saw him.
This isn't good. You're still assuming continuity of the simulation is unbroken at this point, even with it being so obviously hacked?

> I'd be annoyed by this except that it's clearly trying to portray [Captain Dynamic] as incredibly egotistical.
Thanks He happens to be like that in the videos too.

> teaming up with [Great Face] against the Rikti, in order to prevent the Rikti from learning the secrets of... how to make Rikti armor. Is this meant to be absurd? I'm not sure now.
Make Rikti armor, yes, but the text also says, on Earth Prime, our Earth. It further clarifies that Rikti armor is supplied interdimensionally, and this supply route is a critical weakness of the Rikti. Not sure how you missed that.

Separately, it sounds like you've found things to enjoy along the way, that's good... and you've figured the red font is the hacker.

> I think Great Face has an extra period at the end of his name (which makes his dialog look odd as a result).
Unfortunately I have both a captive and an ally objective with the same name, and that's not allowed, so I snuck in a period. I'm curious anyone knows a s less text-intrusive way to make the two objectives different? A trailing space wasn't accepted.

> I'm not sure why the Great Face also was a Rikti. (Later I determined it was because he was wearing Rikti armor. But I thought mission 2 sabotaged his plan to make Rikti armor? Possible
> continuity error.)
The mission intros explain that Great Face has made armor, but is missing the key ingredient to reinforce it, the Rikti techie taffy. He's wearing the armor, it's not finished. I can further elaborate in his description. I think I even have it in his group name.

> Is "Rikti techie taffy" supposed to be a reference to Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi?
You're the first to notice that. It's a throw-away connection, I forgot it might be linked back to those Snakes. Jack Emmert apparently wanted Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi, as a word, in the game somehow - hence "Rikti". I took it a step further, your imagination took it a step further again, very interesting. Since this is the ingredient the Snakes can't manufacture, you're actually right!

> I found a bunch of wastebaskets with "emails" in them, ... make Great Face sound more like a troubled schoolgirl than an archvillain.
He's an architect first, then a wannabe villain. You've rightly deduced, he's probably not a very good one.

> I'm not sure a wastebasket graphic makes sense for an email
Emails being treated as trash by the hacker

> I found a glowy labeled "annealer" and clicked it, but it didn't seem to do anything
I added those three laboratory equipment things later to make the place more "interesting", you have good suggestions for avoiding confusion with those. They're decorative, to show the purpose of this lab - making armor (metallurgy). I have no idea why you find this a problem.

> Djan'zor never said anything, maybe needs some dialog.
Good idea. An opportunity I've missed.

> I rescued a Snake named Boa Constructor, who gave me a cute "Wire Hero" clue, but seemed just to be a gag and not really related to the plot.
Snakes make the armor in this lab. He doesn't help you destroy things, and he's not a required rescue, but he is intrinsically relevant to the plot behind the original arc. Again, I have no idea why you find non-required elements a problem.

> ...I found another Great Face hostage had spawned, which I went and rescued. (I wonder if it is possible to have both Great Faces active at the same time?)
Nope, they're chained. Although, if the first Great Face fails to exit the map due to a bug, then there'd be two. Hasn't happened yet.

> Leading him to the door didn't do anything though?
He's an ally, not an escort. Nothing suggests you should lead him to the door. He says to take him upstairs. A clue you have from the techie taffy also clarifies this. There are no escorts at all in the last mission.

> He had some interesting fourth wall breaking dialog about the nature of this mission.
Architect Entertainment does exist, architects exist, they have a building, they write story arcs in game, the fourth wall is not broken. Fourth wall breaks refer to the player's environment, not your character's environment.

> Thought it was particularly brave to have him say: [NPC] Captain Slippery: Quit this mission! Don't vote! ...
Cool, huh? Unfortunately, the nature of players is to finish arcs, even ones they don't understand, no matter what instructions you might give them. C'est la vie, not so brave. I lampshade again when Slippery repeats "don't finish the arc"... in the souvenir.

> ...the big bad guy now has the means to make Rikti armor. This seems to contradict mission 2, which said that Great Face having this technology would be catastrophic, causing the end of the world?
Technically, you're right, the accept text suggests you're saving the world. I'll tone that down. Great Face having Rikti armor is merely problematic, not world-threatening. Self-armoring Rikti (mission 3) is world-threatening.

> The souvenir says "NO YOU SAVED CAPTAIN DYNAMIC'S STUPID CAT" but in the actual mission you save Mindy's cat, which I think is a continuity error
I'll change it to Mindy's cat. It's the cat that the real Captain Dynamic is supposed to rescue. It's the mission that overwrote the misssion with Snakes you initially thought you were going to do.

> But, overall I was very confused by this arc. Perhaps it makes more sense if you know who Captain Dynamic is, or look at the (external) background info.
Following a previous review that also expected I write a generic arc, I am making the videos recommended, not suggested.

> Rescuing the cat in mission 1 was nice, but didn't seem connected to the rest of the story and was not inherently all that interesting in terms of gameplay.
For 'gameplay', I assume you mean beat stuff up, use your powers. You probably didn't have the truck spawn in the hall (happens usually but not always) so you perhaps didn't have to find a way get past it without any powers (a unique challenge). Even without this, you should be figuring out what might go wrong when multiple architect characters write an arc. A mission doesn't have to provide a set level of challenge or set amount of experience, and it's a very short mission.

> At times the Great Face is an evil villain, at others he's a misunderstood ally; this could maybe work if his/her motivations were made clearer.
His motivations were pretty clear in the mission introductions. He wants to rule the world, Rikti want to destroy it. Once the Rikti get involved, Great Face's objective is the lesser evil. It's stated in the mission intros.

Your suggestions are appreciated for the effort you've put in, but this is an arc where you are helping an architect. Making it more real will only make it less intelligible. Pretending the simulation is real misses the point. There were no Snakes!

> I hope you think that's fair!
Due to that other reviewer, this arc is dead to the possibility of reaching 5 stars. Your 3 cancels out a further three 5-stars when pursuing the 4.5 stars that gets an arc noticed. Despite the rating, your feedback is fair.

airhead

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

OK, reading your reply, I have a better idea of what the intent of the Captain Dynamic story arc was. If I understand it correctly, you are playing a story arc supposedly promoting Captain Dynamic, with some edits by the Great Face, but actually it's been vandalized by Captain Slippery who has somehow hacked the Great Face's account. This does seem like a premise with some potential, and I can see there are hints to this in the story arc itself. BUT, the fact that the story arc itself is somewhat "meta" to the Mission Architect system, and the way this is presented, is the source of most of my (personal) confusion in this story.

Let me try and clarify why I am confused by how this is presented with the following questions:


1. Is the contact, meant to be the "real" Captain Dynamic (who is asking you to beta test his story arc) or the "simulated" Captain Dynamic (the one in "real" Captain Dynamic's story arc) ? (Currently in briefing 1 it seems to be the former, but in briefing 2 it seems to be the latter - I think if you pick just one and write him always to be THAT version of Captain Dynamic, it would make more sense.)

2. Why does Captain Slippery change the first mission into a cat rescue? How does he benefit from this?

3. If we are inside the hacked story arc, why are Great Face's emails inside the story arc? Your email is not normally inside your story arc file.

4. Why would Captain Slippery include Euronator robots to defeat in the hacked mission? I would think Captain Slippery would be wanting to make his team the good guys, not the bad guys.

5. If this story arc is really just something Captain Dynamic got back in the email and republished without looking at it, why is (the presumably "live") Captain Slippery inside it? He talks like he's the "real" Captain Slippery since he tries to convince you not to complete the story arc.

6. How does the changes Captain Slippery makes actually accomplish his goal of stealing Captain Dynamic's identity? And if he really doesn't want anyone to complete Captain Dynamic's self-promotional story arc, with the level of access he had, couldn't he just crash the story arc or overwrite it with Naruto fanfic or something?



Anyway, I don't have a problem with this being an unconventional story arc that self-referentially uses Mission Architect as part of the story (there's been a couple other story arcs I've played that used AE like that), but I do think the way it's been used is a bit confusing to me.

For some of your specific responses:

Good questions. I've moved my reply to the above to Airheaded Editorials arc. Edit: that'd be a thread, not an arc.

Here.

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

Since I haven't been able to figure out how to subscribe to a thread without doing an advanced quick reply to it, consider this my thread subscription notice. If there is a way, and I'm just senile, hopefully someone will let me know before I type out 20 or 30 of these...

There has been a lot of controversy on this forum about reviewing styles: how harsh reviewer A is, how mollycoddling reviewer B is, and so on. I don't want to get into a huge flame war on this topic, but in the interests of full disclosure to the people who ask for my input, I want to state where I stand on this.


Here are my positions as a reviewer:

* I would love to give every story arc 5 stars; everyone likes getting high ratings, obviously! However, quite often there are problems with a story arc that make me feel that I cannot do so. I will prefer to give a rating that I think is my honest opinion, and this opinion is normalized to vary between 1 and 5 stars.

* The intended audience for my story arc reviews are the authors of the story arcs. Casual readers are welcome to read this thread, but most of my writing is aimed at telling the author what parts of their story arc I consider "good" and what parts I think "need improvement".

* With this intended audience in mind, I will attempt to explain my problems with each story arc and suggest possible ways the problems can be addressed or improved. I feel a low rating must be justified, and my suggestions are intended to help the author improve on their work. (Note: I've given a high rating to an arc I didn't especially like, because it really had no problems; and I've given not-so-high ratings to arcs I really did like, because I felt they did have problems.)

* If I don't like a story arc or part of a story arc, it's my goal to try to communicate these facts in a friendly and non-confrontational way. I am well aware that each story arc represents countless hours of creative effort by the author, and they are certain to be sensitive about their work. It's also my feeling that authors are more likely to be receptive to friendly suggestions than hurled invective; so I feel that this communication style is more likely to be productive.

* Despite this, some authors may still be unwilling to accept my feedback. Maybe it's because my ideas don't fit their vision, maybe it's because they are looking for praise and not suggestions, or maybe it's because I'm flat-out wrong about something. Frankly, the author can choose to use some of my suggestions and throw away others; or they may totally reject everything I say. In such cases, I may discuss these issues a little, but if it becomes clear that the author isn't really interested in hearing it, I'll drop it. The author of a story arc has full creative control of their story. Of course, if they reject all my input, I will continue to feel free to think that I'm right and they're wrong.

* If I do like a story arc or part of a story arc, I will try to say that, too. Positive feedback is equally as valid as negative feedback. For most story arcs, I try to find something I like about it; partly to be nice, and partly because I can say "More of this! Less of that!" and that's usually easier for people to accept. Nearly all story-oriented arcs have some positive aspects to them.

* As a reviewer, I definitely have my biases that will affect my opinions at times. You may have to factor some of these out from my reviews. You can probably get a feel for what they are by reading what I've written so far; at some later date I'll try to figure out on my own what my biases are, and explain them.

* Even though I end most reviews with an overall star rating, don't get too wrapped up in that part of the review. The rating is one byte out of several thousand characters that I usually write for a review; in fact, I tend to put more effort into low-rating reviews than high-rating reviews, mostly because I feel like I need to make suggestions for improvements.


I hope that clarifies where I stand on reviewing style. It's not my intention to say that other reviewers should follow these rules. However, these are my rules for how I try to do reviews.

I think you're doing a great job and wouldn't have asked for your opinion of my work if I didn't respect what you have to say.

Totally not kissing up since you haven't reviewed it yet. Promise.

A Close Encounter review
Arc ID: 233720
Keywords: Easy, Custom Characters, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 1-54

The premise appears to be to help something called the "Special Investigations Unit", some sort of short handed federal bureau.

I ran through this arc twice. I don't do this normally, but the first time, I played a 26 db/ninj stalker duoing with a 19 sonic/storm corruptor as a lackey, and being on a team, I had to move faster and I didn't feel like I got enough detail. So I ended up running the arc again, soloing a 21 archery/dev blaster, to get a better picture. I'm pretty sure some changes occurred between my first run and my second run.

The contact is a custom character in a pseudo-military outfit.

Mission 1
Briefing: The briefing seems a little short, mentioning a paramilitary presence at some crash site and that the "Special Investigations Unit" is shorthanded, so needs my help. Consider adding some explanation of what kind of crash site it is (flying saucers? or just a regular airplane?) and why she would send the hero (and not, say, the National Guard) against the paramilitary presence? I assume SIU is some kind of government agency - maybe it would also be worth introducing Major Davis (the contact), explaining who she is, and what the charter of the Special Investigations Unit is.

Inside the mission, the place is overrun by a custom group, apparently another mercenary organization. Is it really necessary to use a custom group for this? There are a lot of mercenary groups already; you might consider using Sky Raiders or KoA or Malta for this purpose. Or if you'd prefer to use a custom group, somewhere in the story I'd suggest having some clues or dialog which help explain the difference between "Eagle's Talons" and the other mercenary organizations.

The "Command" mob should probably be a "Commander". In his description, "initative" should be "initiative". I'm not sure why he wields twin daggers; pistols would be more typical for an officer, assault rifle could also work.

We rescued an alien, and got an Unknown Alien Being clue, which says "You blinked and then he was gone", but currently the alien just stands there after rescue (probably a bug with MA itself). Squeeg maybe should say something when you rescue him, even if it's unintelligible alien gabble.

The "barrel" clue is really pretty vague and doesn't say much (it's just 7 words). The clue currently doesn't even say what's IN the barrel; maybe elaborate a little on this in the clue.

On my first run through this arc, the debriefing mentioned "Earth for Humans" and I was a little confused as to how they got involved; none of the three clues actually mention this fact. On my second run, I noticed a couple of the mercenaries talking about Earth for Humans; it seems possible to miss this, though, so you might consider changing one clue to refer to "Earth for Humans" or maybe add a new clue to that effect.

The "Crash site data" clue only says "Well, that certainly raises more questions than answers"; I think I got this at the end of the mission. This is pretty uninformative for a clue. You might consider moving this text into the mission exit popup window; I think it would make more sense there. Either that or maybe provide more of a summary of what was learned in this clue.

In the debriefing, Major Davis also seems to know who the "Eagle's Talons" are; perhaps it would be appropriate for her to explain to the player who they are.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to stop the mercenaries from turning over the goodies to Earth for Humans.

Mission objectives: "2 Crates to search" and "2 Shipping crates to recover" should perhaps be combined into "4 Crates to search". "1 Alien corpse" should have some kind of verb, such as "Discover alien corpse".

This appears to be a defeat all mission. Strangely, there are some Qald aliens here, in addition to the mercenaries; not quite sure why there would be aliens in the mercenary hideout. It would be nice to see some Earth for Humans members here; either as enemies or as hostages.

The Qald put out a LOT of mez; they actually were able to mez my stalker (who does have mez protection, albeit the clicky ninjitsu power which wasn't up full time) and were pretty bad for the corruptor lackey and for my blaster on the second run. It seemed like both Squeegs and Squoogs could mez; you might want to reduce the amount of mezzes they throw to make it more doable for a squishy character.

I found a crate that was named Alien corpse; I'm not sure if you meant to use a tech crate? Maybe it should be a body bag (since it's a body) or a refrigerator (since the clue says it's "on ice").

Debriefing seems a little short, could maybe use a little more text.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact now tells me that these aren't aliens at all, but are from an alternate dimension. The reveal that the "aliens" are from another dimension currently seems a little awkwardly placed; it really doesn't have anything to do with the mission the contact is asking me to do (i.e. check out the Earth for Humans lab). As a result it's a little too obviously exposition. You might consider moving this revelation to somewhere more natural? Perhaps the player could even discover this information by finding clues (in either this mission or the previous one).

Second part of briefing: A couple minor nitpicks; maybe put a comma after "all your help", and replace "R and D" with "R&D" (the more normal way to write this).

Inside the mission: despite this being an "Earth for Humans" lab, there don't seem to be any EfH members here; instead, the lab is full of Qald aliens. Err, extradimensional critters; whatever the word is for those.

Clicking a "Computer" glowy, I got a "Computer files" clue; but the clue actually doesn't say anything meaningful, just "The SIU should get plenty of information from these files". Maybe add some detail to this clue, explaining the significance of these files? As it stands this clue feels rather uninformative.

After clicking the first computer, the remaining objective shows up as "Computer to search" in the nav tool; it should be something like "Search the last computer".

I found a lab tech who told me that this EfH branch has been working for the Qald; before rescuing him he says:

[NPC] Lab Tech: I. Think. I. Have. It.

...but after rescuing him he says:

[NPC] Lab Tech: Thank you, thank you. I didn't want to help them but I couldn't stop myself.

I think the first line doesn't effectively communicate that he's working under duress; maybe he should be nervously asking the aliens to be patient because his work takes time. And what IS he doing for the aliens anyway? Perhaps "The lab tech's story" clue should explain what exactly it is that the aliens have him doing; it seems like this might be an important thing to know.

Searching the second computer completed the mission and gave me the "Lab recon info" clue, which says "It seems clear that these Earth for Humans guys are just pawns". I think you need a little more supporting information in order to have the player draw this conclusion; perhaps more detail in this clue explaining the reasoning, and/or another clue or two to help show that the Qald are just using EfH.

Considering this is supposedly an EfH lab, I think there really should be more than just one EfH member here; the lab tech is the only human I found in the whole mission. Would be nice to see a few more EfH members, either collaborating with the Qald or being held hostage by them.

Mission 4
Briefing: Here, the contact expositions that the EfH lab was working on solving a problem the Qald have with surviving in our dimension. I like getting this information, but I think maybe the story would flow better if, instead of having the contact tell you, have the player learn this info via clues in mission 3. Maybe each of the computers in mission 3 could give you a part of this explanation; then the contact just recaps it briefly here, to motivate this final mission.

Inside the mission: is this also supposed to be an EfH lab? Maybe could use some EfH personnel.

Found and destroyed 4 machines; I kind of think the Qald guards should have some dialog. Thinking about it, none of the Qald so far have had any speaking lines; they got the EfH people to work for them, so they must have the ability to talk? Consider adding some dialog for the Qald. Even having them speak some gobbledegook alien language would be better than silence

Aha, right after I wrote that, I found Spaal Emt who actually was able to talk, and even had some interesting symbols around his dialog indicating his alien voice. (Still think other Qald should have a few lines, too, though.)

I like the "Spaal Emt's story" clue, which explains something about the original crash. Needs a period at the very end though.

The second time through, this mission definitely was different than on my first run. On my first run, I fought Spaal Emt, then later on I rescued a different Spaal Emt; I'd say the second version seemed to be an improvement.

Debriefing: The contact gives me a very lengthy explanation of what REALLY happened during this story arc. While this explanation is appreciated, having it all in one place makes it feel like the contact is just info-dumping on me here. Consider putting some more clues in the earlier missions foreshadowing this final explanation?

It's an interesting twist to have the "Big Bad Guy" actually work things out peaceably with the contact, rather than have the player kick his butt. I kind of like that.

Overall
First contact with an alien race was a fun idea, and it felt cool finding the alien artifacts early on, then fighting Qald, and eventually making peace with them. I liked how you tied "Earth for Humans" into this plot, but considering how important they are to the story, I really feel like you should have more "Earth for Humans" members show up during the actual missions -- the lab tech in mission 3 is the only EfH member that I ever encountered. I'd really recommend adding EfH as either a custom faction that you fight and/or repurposing some of the civilians to be EfH hostages that you rescue; a mix of scientists, conspiracy theorists and gun nut survivalists would be perfect, and you could give them some fun (if crazy) dialog about alien abductions and crop circles and stuff.

I'm not sure I fully buy into the idea of the Qald using Earth for Humans as a front, especially considering the mercenaries in mission 1 (who were hired by EfH) were holding a Qald prisoner hostage. But I like how conspiracy-esque this is (it's very X-files), so I'd suggest you keep this idea, just make it more believable with some additional foreshadowing or other clues.

Gameplay-wise, I felt the Qald had way too much mez; on my first run my corruptor lackey was almost always mez'd, and they even managed to mez my stalker a few times (though her ninjitsu mez protect isn't 100% on). On my second run, my blaster was pretty non-stop mez'd; fortunately the new defiance made her still fairly viable even while held. But I think you should consider toning down the amount of mez the Qald throw. They also seemed to do a lot of knockback but that wasn't too bad. You might consider narrowing your arc's suggested level range from 1-54 to something like 20-54, I really think the custom mobs are too much for typical lowbie characters to handle, especially with all the mez and KB.

The Qald didn't seem to have much detail in their mob descriptions and had no dialog to speak of (except for the final Spaal Emt). I think they could use a little more of each, to make them more interesting.

On my first (quick) run through I rated this 3 stars, but going through it more slowly on a second run, I noticed more detail and I think I saw some improvements over my earlier run. So on my second try I was waffling between rating it 3 or 4. The way the contact was portrayed (she had a definite personality) and the unusual ending (where the "bad guys" actually work out an understanding with the "good guys") caused me to raise my rating to 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Cain Lightning - 41646
ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890

I loved the Paris arc - so nice to play a real story on AE. Imaginative and creative, well done! In my feedback post, I mentioned you had a boss on the last mission that says "It's $name!" - literally. But when I sent the feedback, it filled the "$name" with my toon's name, Irradium Lad. May have confused you a bit!

My arc is listed below. I imagine you may be swamped with arcs to try, but thank you for providing this service, I expect many other posters on this thread will have good stories as well. Nice to find that.

Ah - I just noticed you're the author of "Teen Phalanx Forever" - no wonder the story telling on this was good. That one was brilliant, well done again.

Global - @Johnny Courageous
Arc ID: 131158
Length: Very Long
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 40 (just happened to work out to a 1 level overlap!)

Description: You've been given the opportunity to test out a device that the obsessed scientist Dr. Sigler claims could end a great deal of pain, suffering and misfortune in the world. It just needs a little test run.

Missions 1 and 2 contain custom bosses with partial extreme settings. Mission 4 is particularly long and grueling with 3 Circle Mage bosses - get your mez protection ready up front, you won't get a chance to go back to the hospital for more. Mission 5 is much easier than the others, a change of pace after the ramp up of the previous 4 missions. No EBs or AVs.

I gave Teen Phalanx Forever a shot. I tried with a toon at the bottom end of the level ranges, so he'd get XP all through. Great premise, interesting random missions, then a couple of missions linked at the end. I didn't get much XP, the allies took so much of it (especially when I was using psi attacks against an all-robot enemy). But it would have taken hours to solo, so I appreciate the allies.

I understand the level ramps up as the story takes place over some length of my toon's career, but I didn't sense that here (perhaps because AE lets you jump so quickly into each mission). It was clear that the bad guys got a lot harder.

Unfortunately it was not possible for me to finish. In the last mission, Citadel XP was the strongest of my sidekicks. Then he went and got stuck in the floor:

Citadel XP floored, floored and trying to get out, floored and dead

After I lost my other allies, I lured the big-bad back to Citadel XP, but he didn't last long with just the two of us. The arc was worth 5 stars up til this point, for interesting premise and good storyline within each mission.

There also seemed to be an ambush on the big bad guy, which would be quite unnecessary, unless I just got unlucky with a passing patrol. My allies got wiped pretty quickly, except for Val, who outlived me 3 times. I hate unwinnable arcs, but this bug appears to be out of anyone's control. So I haven't voted. Hopefully I'll get another chance to play this on a team soon.

Cheers, airhead

Edit: tried again with my character at the bottom end of the level range. Even with all allies present, could not overcome the final baddie. Still well written, a 4 with 5-star potential.

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

Origin 5th Element - Part I "Get Max" review
Arc ID: 41646
Keywords: Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Custom Characters
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 50-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme AVs, extreme EBs

The premise is the origin story of a supergroup, and this is apparently part 1 of that story. The keywords, warnings and level range seemed pretty intimidating. I decided to play a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense.

The contact appears to be a paramilitary-looking superhero.

Mission 1
Briefing: Very nicely formatted, good use of captions, different font sizes, colors, etc.

The contact is very up-front about telling me this is a story arc presented by Aeon Entertainment that reproduces one of his past missions, that was a part of the origin of his supergroup. This is an interesting and unusual way to present a story arc. He does do a good job of briefing me on the opposition I should expect to face. "crimeworld" should perhaps be "crime world".

Mission objectives: "Find Lap Top" is an objective, but the contact never said anything about a lap top. Maybe it should be something more vague like "Find clue", but still have the lap top as the objective.

Intercrime Thug's description says "Thugs make up the bulk of the organization", while Intercrime Ruffian's description says "Ruffians make up the bulk of the organization". Seems contradictory. There's an extra space after "organization" in Ruffian's description.

Intercrime Enforcer's description has an extra space before "Ruffians".

Nice looking costumes on the various Intercrime mobs, though; they seem appropriately villainous. Some people may question having organized crime gangs at level 50, but this doesn't really bother me.

Found and fought the Pulverizer, who spawned as a +1 EB to me, with invuln/energy melee as power sets. He was a tough fight, scared me with a lucky hit and scared me again with a build up; pretty nasty, but at least he didn't go Unstoppable. Build up might be a bit over-the-top for an AV, but it's labeled "challenging", so maybe it's okay.

After I dropped the Pulverizer, he told me where the kidnap victim was being held. I'm not sure why the lap top glowy is required; it seems like I already have the info I came for, though the clue given by the lap top IS a nice-to-know.

Debriefing: Seems really short, just one line without much content in it; I'd suggest maybe recapping some of the stuff found out during the mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: Nicely formatted. The contact says that Pulverizer "was a fountain of information", but doesn't actually SAY anything that was learned from Pulverizer. Instead he has me follow up a clue from mission 1 leading to another warehouse.

Inside the mission, the mission is called "Search the warehouse for Max Savage", but the objectives are "Defeat Bonfire" and "Defeat Bone Yard". Neither Bonfire nor Bone Yard have been mentioned in the story at this point, so I have no idea who they are or why it is necessary to defeat them. Consider either having the contact warn the player about them, or else give them a more generic objective like "2 Intercrime bosses to defeat".

It's also odd that I don't actually have "Find Max" as an objective, which makes me immediately think Max isn't going to be here (the "princess is in another castle"). You might add a glowy or something with a clue to Max's location, and have the glowy's objective be "Find clue to Max's location" or something similar.

Found and fought an Intercrime Heavy; as non-named custom bosses go, I thought he seemed a bit too tough. He used both Build Up and Dull Pain against me; I still beat him, but it took awhile. Though in part this is because I was using smashing damage, which I'm sure he resisted heavily with his invulnerability.

Likewise for Intergang Eraser, a boss that used Instant Healing against me. I fought the IH'd Eraser for a few rounds and she healed all the damage I did to her. I ended up abandoning fighting her in order to just move on; I'm sure I could have beat her, it just felt like a bit of a time waster.

Found and fought Bonfire, who spawned as an EB for me (probably an AV for a larger group). The contact should probably warn the player of AVs in the mission briefing (he did mention something in the debriefing of mission 1, but it's worth mentioning in the briefing of the mission they're actually in).

I beat up Bonfire, and all the while he was expositioning about the ambush he was calling down on me. No ambush actually reached me until AFTER Bonfire died, and which point an ambush promptly spawned and attacked. This might've been intentional (making Bonfire's dialog deliberately ironic) but I wasn't sure, so thought I'd mention it.

[NPC] Bonfire: Its better to burn out than fade away . . . .

"Its" should be "It's" in that line.

Found and fought Boneyard, another AV.

Neither Bonfire nor Boneyard seem to have background info tying them to Intercrime, and their appearance and powersets don't seem similar to the other Intercrime members. You might consider adding some supporting background info (whether in briefings, clues or their descriptions and costumes) to better connect them to Intercrime. As currently presented, the mission doesn't give any info that ties them to Intercrime (other than having the "Intercrime" villain group tag) which makes them seem more like cameo appearances by unrelated villains.

Debriefing: Again, too short and uninformative. I'd suggest recapping some of the info learned during the mission.

Mission 3
Briefing: Following up on a clue extracted from Boneyard, I'm sent to go after Lustre (thought to be the boss of Intercrime) and a mind-controlled hero that I'm supposed to find. Apparently Lustre is able to "mind swipe" heroes into being controlled by her. It occurs to me that I should probably not go after her unless I have some defense against this "mind swipe" device? Otherwise it seems like she could just "mind swipe" me and it would all be over. Consider adding some item that you acquire along the way that gives protection against mind swiping.

Mission popup: The popup message says I should locate and destroy the mind swipe device, but the mission objectives say only Defeat Max Savage (the hero) and Defeat Militech Commander (not sure this is actually Lustre, but certainly it isn't the mind swipe device). Seems a bit inconsistent.

I found and fought Max Savage, who was a +2 EB to me; he had purple triangles so I'm sure he's an AV on a bigger team or higher setting. The contact should more clearly warn of upcoming AVs (he does kind of hint that the player should "shed the kid gloves" but I think it should be more clear that the player may want to recruit help).

Max ran away when I got him to low life, then I finally dropped him half a room away from his original spawn point. Unfortunately this did not actually complete the "Defeat Max Savage" objective, since there were some straggling minions somewhere; consider changing him to "defeat boss only" being enough to complete the objective.

Found the loose minions and cleared them to get "Max's Story", where he implicates Militech. This also triggered a new objective, "Destroy Mind Swiper Device". The way the objectives are triggered seems a little mixed up; I entered the mission knowing I need to destroy the mind swiper device (the contact and the entry popup both told me so), so "Destroy Mind Swiper Device" really should be a valid objective from the start. I don't know anything about "Militech" when I come into the mission, but "Max's Story" tells me about them, so maybe "Defeat Militech Commander" should be triggered from defeating Max.

Found and fought "Militech Commander". Thinking about it, I don't believe the Militech Technologies company has ever been mentioned before this mission, so their involvement is kind of out of the blue. You might consider adding some foreshadowing in mission 1 or 2 hinting at their involvement, or at least their existence.

In Militech Commander's description, "equiped" should be "equipped". His escort was an Intercrime Ruffian, but his group maybe should consist of other Militech lackeys.

Defeating him triggered Lustre to spawn; I'm not quite sure why she wasn't an objective all along, though.

After destroying the Mind Swiper device I got the "Destruction of Mind Swiper" clue. There's an extra space after "destroyed" in this clue.

Found and fought Lustre, who was an illusion EB (downgraded AV, I'm sure). I'm not quite sure how she ended up boss of Intercrime, she doesn't look like them or have powers like them; thinking about it, hardly anyone talks about Lustre before this mission. She could use some more background info, to help build her up as the big bad guy of the arc.

Lustre spawned a bunch of illusion pets and beat me up once (I think maybe because illusion attacks bypass SR's positional defense). During the fight she spawned 3 full ambushes; this, along with her 4 phantom army pets, 1 phantasm and 1 spectral terror, seemed a bit over the top! I managed to beat her on the rematch, though.

Overall
I liked how clues led from one mission to the next, and I liked the lower ranked Intercrime custom mobs. The boss custom mobs seemed too tough (Instant Healing, Dull Pain and Build Up are all pretty rough for most players to handle). I felt the custom AVs weren't closely enough tied to Intercrime and its themes; I'd recommend adding more background info that supports the idea that they're members of Intercrime. Maybe even change their costumes and powers to match the Intercrime look and feel (though if they're actually cameo appearances by player villains, you might not want to do that). There should be a bit more foreshadowing of Militech's involvement, and some closure on that plot thread (currently it doesn't seem to lead anywhere - I guess it is in Part 2 or something). Some dramatic build-up of Lustre and the other big bad guys would be nice too; maybe have other mobs talking about Lustre, Boneyard and Bonfire before they actually appear.

The idea that you're actually "playing" Drake Steel's role in this drama was introduced at the very beginning, but never came up later in the arc. I kept wondering why the contact, who is obviously a hero, doesn't come help rescue his own partner; I had to keep reminding myself that "I'm" Drake Steel (I think that's your intent, anyway?). But this which was kind of awkward because the contact is also Drake Steel. As a result, I'm not sure that story mechanism really worked well. You might consider either reinforcing that the player is in Drake's role (in the briefings/debriefings) or else dropping this concept or being more subtle about it (maybe make someone else the contact who asks the player to help find Max). Personally, I think most people would feel more comfortable playing their own character.

Beating up Max didn't feel very much like rescuing him; if you could work it somehow so that destroying the Mind Swiper device somehow releases him, that would feel much better. Maybe breaking the device spawns Max as a hostage? Also, with the way the Mind Swiper is described, I don't see why they couldn't just use the Mind Swiper to mind control the player herself; maybe come up with some gizmo that "protects" the player from mind control for the sake of the story.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I gave this story arc 3 stars. Hope you think that's fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
Geek_Boy - Speeding Through Time #51728
LarryJablonski - Old Folks Home 261041
FredrikSvanberg - #114284
airhead - 1144 Amazing Rat Race
@Djinniman - something
@cruise - A Falling Angel 133390
@Bayani - 230100
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War Pt2 #241496
@Tahlana - The Fracturing of Time 171031
@EraserDog - Hooray for Hamster Hell 246464
PoptartsNinja - Wretch 'Trike Force 249890
@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158

More on "Find Max"

Quote:

Now, I must inquire, in all seriousness: did you play through the entirety of the arc in one sitting, or perhaps took an extended break and forgot most of the information which had been presented to you before??

Actually, I did play mission 1 of this arc at one sitting, and the rest of the arc at another sitting. As a result, it looks like I must not have remembered the clues in mission 1; so I'll agree that my asking for more foreshadowing of Militech's involvement isn't warranted.

Quote:

I wrote: The contact says that Pulverizer "was a fountain of information", but doesn't actually SAY anything that was learned from Pulverizer. You wrote: There are two things you have currently been told by The Pulverizer: Boss Defeated Clue (The Pulverizer’s Tale)

Okay; the wording seemed to imply that the Pulverizer revealed more "information" under later interrogation. It wasn't clear to me that this line was simply referring to the clue I got by beating him. Consider rewording it? Or recapping some of that clue here?

Quote:

I wrote: The contact should probably warn the player of AVs in the mission briefing You wrote: Mission Send Off Dialog: Intercrime central is bound to be aware of your activities by now, so be on your toes. They have plenty of Rogue Island rejects at their disposal so be ready to spit some blood on this one. Back in the day, it was really hard finding Heroes to team with, but today they are everywhere. If only there had been others to help me find Max I might not have ended up in the hospital after this one. Well not really, but almost.

This wasn't clearly an AV warning to me at the time; I thought it was just colorful description. In particular, "Rogue Island rejects" doesn't suggest AV to me. In hindsight I can see what you meant to say here, but when the briefing was first presented, it wasn't obvious to me that I should be recruiting help for an AV fight. You might consider rephrasing to the more standard "You should bring help for this one" warning, or alternatively, color the "warning" text yellow for significance.

Quote:

I wrote: Neither Bonfire nor Boneyard seem to have background info tying them to Intercrime .... their appearance and powersets don't seem similar to the other Intercrime members. .... You might consider adding some supporting background info (whether in briefings, clues or their descriptions and costumes) to better connect them to Intercrime. As currently presented, the mission doesn't give any info that ties them to Intercrime (other than having the "Intercrime" villain group tag) which makes them seem more like cameo appearances by unrelated villains. You wrote: Here are the three backgrounds of the signature villains that you have defeated thus far: Boss Description: The Pulverizer Sgt Joe Hall considered himself a career marine he'd been in for ten years and planned to go on for at least another ten. That was before he lost both of his hands while serving in the Gulf War. His loyalty is now to Intercrime after receiving new robotic hands from them. As The Pulverizer, he has no compunction against killing, as long as the money is right and it doesn't conflict with American interests. Boss Description: Bonfire Jeff Becker is a reckless mutant with a red hot temper. A slick schemer, he likes to live high and fast. He has no scruples about hurting other people to get what he wants. As Bonfire, he accepts the occasional hit from his organized crime contacts, such as Intercrime, for the extra money it brings. It also provides him plenty of opportunities to burn things. Boss Description: Boneyard Boneyard's background is a complete mystery. His residency in Dark Astoria suggests that the rumor of his being one of the "Lost Sons of Adamastor" may be accurate.

I totally buy Pulverizer as an Intercrime boss, and his background makes sense. I didn't feel like Bonfire and Boneyard really fit in with the rest of the Intercrime enemy group. With their codenames and powers, I would find them completely believable as a Hellion boss and a Skull boss, but there just isn't enough material linking them to Intercrime. I see you've quoted their in-game description, which basically says Bonfire is a mercenary and says nothing about Boneyard; I'm afraid I don't think this is enough to believably connect them to Intercrime. It would be nice if there were a story reason for them to be in this mission; maybe some dramatic build-up before you simply walk into them.

Right now, it feels like they are here purely because you wanted a couple AV fights in this mission. Their connection to the actual story seems tenuous enough that I think you could swap them for Infernal and Nosferatu and basically not impact the story.

I'm guessing it's your intent that they're simply hired guns that show up for this one mission, but using them as "guest stars" actually steals the focus from Intercrime and the rest of the story. I really think this mission would be more effective if you either reworked these two AVs to be more obviously connected to Intercrime, or else used bosses that were created from the ground up to be members of Intercrime.

Quote:

I wrote: It occurs to me that I should probably not go after her unless I have some defense against this "mind swipe" device? Otherwise it seems like she could just "mind swipe" me and it would all be over. Consider adding some item that you acquire along the way that gives protection against mind swiping. You wrote: Two reasons: Drake knows that it's unnecessary to have defenses against it since he knows it won't affect you, or Drake wants to preserve the suspense by not alerting you of this fact, just like he experienced it for himself. Not knowing.

How does he know it won't affect you? And if Drake "experienced it for himself" like this, what was HIS idea for avoiding getting his mind swiped?

This is really up to you, but the story thus far seems to suggest that Lustre could simply "mind swipe" anyone who attacked her. So I'm not sure it makes sense for a player to go after her, without having some plan to avoid getting "mind swiped".

Quote:

I wrote: The contact should more clearly warn of upcoming AVs (he does kind of hint that the player should "shed the kid gloves" but I think it should be more clear that the player may want to recruit help). You wrote: "We know that Lustre is controlling Max, so it's gonna be a knockdown, drag out fight! Teach that fair-haired filly Lustre a lesson and knock some sense into Max. .... I don't have much have to give you on Lustre, but Max is a MOUNTAIN of a man and a well rounded fighter. I should know, I trained him. .... Leave the mercy rounds at home and shed the kid gloves for this one."

I see what your text is hinting at here, but I still think it would be a good idea to make it clearer. Or if you want to go with the idea that every one of your missions has had AVs in it so far, so why would the last mission be any different, I guess that works too.

Quote:

I wrote: Found and fought Lustre, who was an illusion EB (downgraded AV, I'm sure). I'm not quite sure how she ended up boss of Intercrime, she doesn't look like them or have powers like them thinking about it, hardly anyone talks about Lustre before this mission. She could use some more background info, to help build her up as the big bad guy of the arc. You wrote: Boss Description: Lustre Sharon Hilton is very hung up on herself. She continually checks mirrors to see whether her hair is straight or that her outfit is just right. In battle, she is a grinning, taunting adversary, always trying to provoke her opponent into a mistake through insult or innuendo. As Lustre she has only one goal: World Domination! With men serving women in this new Utopia. I wonder if this was even read.

I actually did read Lustre's description and saw nothing there that connects her to Intercrime at all. I don't think any of the Intercrime minions ever talked about her, and there was very little info about Lustre before actually encountering her. Perhaps "background info" was the wrong phrase to use in my original text; what I mean is that as the big bad guy of this story arc, the player should encounter story elements that help build her up as a threat, prior to actually fighting her -- with the goal of making Lustre seem more ominous before you meet her, and then making the player feel more of a sense of accomplishment after having beat her.

Quote:

I wrote: I felt the custom AVs weren't closely enough tied to Intercrime and its themes I'd recommend adding more background info that supports the idea that they're members of Intercrime.

I stand by this comment.

Quote:

I wrote: There should be a bit more foreshadowing of Militech's involvement, and some closure on that plot thread (currently it doesn't seem to lead anywhere - I guess it is in Part 2 or something). You wrote: At last, your assumptions are correct! By your opening comment, it sure seemed like you realized this is a multi-part series. Origin 5th Element - Part I <--- That's the title, just for reference.

I recognize this is "Part I" of a lengthy saga, but personally, I like each individual story arc to have a certain amount of closure. Your mileage may vary, but my feeling is that a lot of players feel similarly. Not everyone is going to play your whole multi-arc epic from beginning to end.

That said, in a multi-arc epic, it's certainly justifiable to have some plot threads that lead the player from arc 1 to arc 2. I didn't feel like defeating the Militech Commander really worked for this; it seemed like I just beat him up and that was it for his role in the story.

Quote:

I wrote: The idea that you're actually "playing" Drake Steel's role in this drama was introduced at the very beginning, but never came up later in the arc. I kept wondering why the contact, who is obviously a hero, doesn't come help rescue his own partner I had to keep reminding myself that "I'm" Drake Steel (I think that's your intent, anyway?). But this which was kind of awkward because the contact is also Drake Steel. As a result, I'm not sure that story mechanism really worked well. You might consider either reinforcing that the player is in Drake's role (in the briefings/debriefings) or else dropping this concept or being more subtle about it (maybe make someone else the contact who asks the player to help find Max). Personally, I think most people would feel more comfortable playing their own character. You wrote: You are playing your own character!

No, not really. The way the arc is presented, I'm playing my character in a dramatic production of one of Drake Steel's past adventures, in which I play the role of Drake Steel. I did think this was a potentially interesting spin on presenting an origin story, but ultimately it didn't feel like it quite worked for me.

It's up to you how you want to present your story, but I thought the framing story maybe would work better using a more conventional structure, where someone (probably not Drake Steel, who is obviously a hero) asks the player character for help rescuing Max -- and then the arc follows the adventures Drake Steel experienced, but presents it as more of an interactive story, and not as a dramatic re-enactment. Your call, though.

Quote:

I wrote: Beating up Max didn't feel very much like rescuing him if you could work it somehow so that destroying the Mind Swiper device somehow releases him, that would feel much better. Maybe breaking the device spawns Max as a hostage? Also, with the way the Mind Swiper is described, I don't see why they couldn't just use the Mind Swiper to mind control the player herself maybe come up with some gizmo that "protects" the player from mind control for the sake of the story. You wrote: Are you trying to write my story for me? Re-write Drake's past? The fact that you were bothered was the emotional reaction I was looking for! How do you think Drake felt when he had to do it himself? It's not like the mind-controlled Hero fighting his friend isn't a common comic book premise.

I'm not trying to write your story - but I am trying to help edit it. Beating up an AV-level Max just didn't make me feel like I was really rescuing him. I will grant you that this is a subjective feeling. Perhaps you want the player to feel this way, based on what you're saying here.

Quote:

You wrote: While playing a football game, do the players need constant reminding as to why they're wearing a helmet and pads?

I'll freely admit that I miss stuff sometimes. I should warn you, though, the great majority of players are even less attentive than I am. Constant reminders of previous plot elements can actually be helpful.

Anyway, sorry you didn't find my review helpful. I hope some of this additional text is more helpful. Or if not, good luck, anyway.

Since I've played two of your arcs, I'll request that Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue (163967) be put up for re-review due to changes.

I've just published a new story arc, for anyone who would prefer to try to run through new and relatively less polished material. No one has run through this yet but me (as of this writing) so any feedback would be appreciated (and count towards review credit, of course).

Papers and Paychecks
Arc ID: 298290
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 32-45

Description
JOB OPENING: Entry-level position available in dynamic, fast-moving Fortune 500 company. Seeking flexible, motivated individuals, self-starters willing to think outside the box. Excellent salary, benefits, opportunities for rapid promotion. Qualified applicants, contact Crey Industries HR Dept.

-----

Also, I will be gone from Tue 11 Aug until Mon 17 Aug, out of town for a game convention and with limited internet access. So I won't be playing CoH or publishing reviews for that week; I'll try and catch up some when I get back, though.

My review queue is currently:

ArrowRose - 221702 (In Pursuit of Liberty)
mrNebs - "Release the Dragon" (arc#229358)
FredrikSvanberg - #1152
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@Johnny Courageous - Dr Sigler and the Chronojumper 131158
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Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)

I would like to get some input from you on how you feel about "overpowered allies".

I have received feedback from several critics who have played my arc that my allies are overpowered.

I did this by intent, since my arc is meant to be light-hearted and upbeat. I felt that if the allies died (one of which is key to the arc), it would ruin the story and the mood.

Also, I created them that way, to help lesser skilled players complete and enjoy the arc. As an aside, more skilled players I have watched play don't use them and don't seem to need them.

However, at least 3 critics have told me that my allies are overpowered, and that this hampered their enjoyment of my arc. I would love your opinion on this issue.

Thanks