I'll try yours if you'll try mine

Ally power level

It really depends on the situation.

By default, I like to set Allies to be at the "Boss" power level. Weaker than that and they die off too easily; stronger than that and they tend to be overpowering.

But it really does depend on the situation; I've written allies that are minion level (because I wanted them to die off like cannon fodder) and as AV level (which I was reluctant to do, but I felt the player really needed the extra help against a particularly tough enemy AV).

In general, I would try to avoid:

* Using an ally that is higher ranked than the mission's toughest enemy. (e.g., the mission boss is a "Boss" but your ally is an "Elite Boss"; this can end up trivializing your boss fight)

* Making your ally character steal too much of the spotlight from the player. (You don't want the player to feel like her participation doesn't matter.)

* Making your author-insert an AV just because you think your character needs to be awesome. (It's much more convincing to use your writing to show how awesome a character is.)

Usually it's one of the above warning signs that makes me comment that "maybe this ally is overpowered".

It's a tricky balance, and I can't say I've always gotten it right, either. I certainly get my fair share of complaints that the allies I've placed "make it too easy" or "steal all the exp". But I have to balance this against the number of complaints I get that "the mission is too hard".

Hope that makes sense!


[Leaving soon, really! Back in a week.]

In Pursuit of Liberty review
Arc ID: 221702
Keywords: Custom Characters, Complex Mechanics, Origin Story
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 45-54
Warnings: EBs, Extreme EBs, Extreme Bosses, Extreme Lieutenants, Enemies with custom powers, "may contain some humor" (from author)

The premise is to help a child find her destiny. With the "extreme powers" warnings, I decided to play a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense, on difficulty 4. The contact is Ms Liberty.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted, but the text kinda rambles. She wants me to rescue a kidnapped child. She first says "the future of Paragon depends on it", then "Why? Perhaps because I like her name...perhaps I'm bored..." etc.; I suggest you edit this down some, and make her stick to one reason why she's asking (the additional speculation by the contact doesn't add much, IMHO).

Ms Liberty says the kidnapping happened seven years ago and you have to go back in time to save the girl; she cuts herself off before explaining why jumping through all these hoops is necessary.

Finally she says "I am wasting valuable time. A child needs saving." But this seems to contradict the fact that the child was kidnapped 7 years ago? If you're time traveling into the past anyway, I'm not sure how much time urgency there can be in the present.

Second part of briefing: the contact finally tells me some details about the kidnapping; the name of the child, the perpetrators, the fact that she already sent an agent (also via time travel?) to save the girl.

One question I have to ask here is, why doesn't Ms Liberty go back in time to save this girl herself? She obviously thinks this is important and is a hero and all.

Mission objectives: Wow, there's a lot of people named Liberty in this story arc already; the contact, the kidnapped child, AND the agent I'm being sent to rescue. This seems a bit too much coincidence.

With so many people named Liberty, "Free Liberty" is rather ambiguous. Maybe should be "Rescue the little girl" or something. Also, "Find Agent Liberty" is among my objectives, but the contact never told me the name of her agent; she should either be mentioned in the briefing or else this objective maybe should be "Find Longbow agent". Likewise, "Defeat Big AL" is in my objectives, but I don't know who he is; he should either be mentioned by name in the briefing, or the objective should be something like "Defeat Family boss".

I have the objective "Find the safe" also, but it's not at all clear why I need to find a safe; based on the contact's briefing, I really thought getting the girl out was the objective.

Found Agent Liberty being held by some members of the "Anti Liberty League", who seemed to be custom villains with nice costumes and descriptions. I wonder why the contact never mentioned these guys though? They really should have some dialog to help establish what this new villain group is like and who they are; perhaps they could threaten Agent Liberty or expound about the Anti-Liberty League's agenda.

Agent Liberty says:

[NPC] Agent Liberty: OK, we need to go get Little Liberty now!

Is it possible to rescue Little Liberty before Agent Liberty? If it is, this dialog might not make sense.

I found and rescued Little Liberty and she said:

[NPC] Little Liberty: Thank you. Now lets get out of here fast. These people are creepy!

"lets" should be "let's".

Her guards were, again, Anti Liberty League; they do look good, but need more dialog.

Big Al's description refers to his "cousin Al" but the clue "Note to Al" that you get for defeating Big Al refers to "cousin MAL" - name is inconsistent. Also "dedicted" should be "dedicated" in this clue.

I got the "Family Tree" clue from the safe in this mission, which explains how Liberty Rose is related to Ms Liberty and Miss Liberty; having this clue in the Family base seems inconsistent with the "Note to Al" clue that says "Don't ask why, just trust me!" which suggests that Big Al is in the dark as to the girl's importance.

I also think it's a little strange that Ms Liberty didn't tell me about her relation to the girl up-front; it's not like Ms Liberty has anything to hide here?

I got a "Thank you note from Agent Liberty" as a mission completion clue, which has a lot of good information in it. The writing style makes it a little too obviously an info dump though; you might consider revising it to sound a little more natural. For example, part of this clue is:

"All of us in the Liberty League are grateful for your help. You have saved Little Liberty from that evil villain, Big Al. Based on the note that you found on Al, we can see that he had a grudge against Marcus."

Most people don't talk or write like this. I'd suggest rewording to something like:

"Thanks again for saving Little Liberty! Big Al has been holding a grudge ever since Statesman sent him to prison."

Debriefing: It's great that Ms Liberty is excited that I'm successful, but it would be nice if she'd explain a little about the significance of saving Liberty Rose in the past.

Mission 2
Briefing: The first paragraph continues to portray Ms Liberty as being kind of rambling; I don't really picture her as being like that, so would suggest revising that some, but up to you.

The premise of this mission seems to be the same as the first mission, go back in time to rescue this girl who gets into trouble. And find some "treasure", which is a strange motivation for a hero.

Mission title is "Find the Treasure", but shouldn't the hero's main motivation be to save the girl?

I rescued Little Liberty and found the treasure chest which had a costume in it. This mission really didn't seem to have a lot to it. Would the Anti Liberty League hiding her costume really have prevented her from becoming a hero? Surely she could've gotten another costume if need be.

Mission 3
Briefing: Little Liberty needs to be saved again; rescuing her repeatedly seems to be the theme so far. (Only now it's present day Little Liberty instead of going back in time.)

Mission title of "Find the Book" seems odd; the main goal should be to rescue the girl.

"Defeat Fern Fatale" is in my mission objectives, but I don't know who Fern Fatale is (never mentioned in the briefing). Great villain name though.

I like the mix of standard mobs that comprise the "Evil Garden Dwellers" group; they look good together. At least two "Devoured Pyriss" EBs spawned among random garden inhabitants, though; not sure if that was intentional, they had no dialog, so were most likely random spawns.

Fatal Follower's description, "Fatal Followers are skilled in all forms combat" ... should be "forms of combat".

I rescued the grown-up Liberty Rose Jones, though I wonder if she should have a hero name by this point; she seems to be in her hero costume. The plant trap "captured" animation was a nice touch. She didn't seem to help fight enemies, but possibly she isn't officially a hero yet.

I found and fought Fern Fatale, who said:

[NPC] Fern Fatale: Don't forget, if I am defeated, protect the swords at all costs!

....which didn't make much sense to me at the time. It was cleared up a little by the "Note to Fern" which said that Fern was holding some swords for MAL and her minions are supposed to send the swords into the future in the event of her defeat. This seems rather convoluted; if they have a time machine right there, wouldn't Fern herself be able to escape into the future, instead of letting me defeat her? Since the "swords" are never actually visible in this mission in any capacity, it might be simpler for your story for the swords to already be in the future, instead of temporarily held here and teleported away (without the player ever getting to see them).

I found a display case for the "book"; consider using one of the bookcase or pile of books graphics instead? The "journal" reveals some of the back story, that Liberty Rose is Miss Liberty's granddaughter and the costume is magic, and mentions the swords. You might consider rewriting the "Journal" clue to sound more like an excerpt from the journal; right now it explains a lot, but is pretty obviously an explanation. Making it sound more like a journal entry would be a little more cool.

Debriefing: Seems rather dry. The debriefing says "She is Miss Liberty's granddaughter", which is a rather odd way to phrase it considering Miss Liberty is also the contact's mother. Also odd that she wonders where the swords are, when we actually have a clue saying they're sent into the future.

Mission 4
Briefing: So now I'm being sent into the future to find the swords. "The future" is a pretty big place though, and the clues were rather vague on just where and when in the future the swords were sent. How do we know when/where to time travel to? Maybe needs some clarification (either in a clue in mission 3, or maybe Ms Liberty has some method of narrowing down where/when to go).

Also with so many characters named Liberty in this arc, you might want to clarify "If Liberty does not fulfill her destiny" as being "Liberty Rose" in particular.

Inside the mission, "The Dark Alliance" is an interesting mix of standard enemies, but the don't seem quite as cohesive as the "Evil Garden Dwellers" group, which actually looked pretty good in the forest. This is just a nit pick really; but you might make "The Dark Alliance" seem more thematically futuristic. I like the robots and the Nazis (all dystopias should have jackbooted stormtroopers), but thought the Rularuu eyeballs were a bit out of place. There were more Devoured Pyriss too. Consider replacing them with more robot types and soldier types? Axis America, Malta mecha and soldiers, Nightstar minions, Arachnos robots, Rikti drones, all spring to mind as possibly fitting the theme you have going here.

I found and rescued Statesman; he was guarded by more Anti Liberty League, which I guess have survived into this possible future. He was in the "cowering" animation, which is decidedly unheroic; maybe give him a more dignified captured animation. It's a little weird that the Anti Liberty League would be able to capture him (since he's really very strong), but I can let that slide for sake of the story. He also says:

[NPC] Statesman: Ah you have come from our past. Free me, we must talk!

How does he know I'm from the past? I kind of thought he'd be a little more surprised. He gives me a note for "Liberty" (again I suggest you clarify as "Liberty Rose"). In "Note for Liberty" (suggest "Note for Liberty Rose"), "fulfull" should be "fulfill". It is kind of weird that Future Statesman is asking present day Liberty Rose to "fulfill her destiny"; in his timeline, shouldn't she ALREADY have become a hero? Since this is in the future, after all. Unless Liberty Rose does not actually become a hero until sometime after this dystopian future? All the time travel is making her origin story rather confusing.

I'm a little surprised Statesman is not more concerned about the fact that Paragon City has been completely destroyed; instead he is fixated on Liberty Rose's swords, which are apparently hidden here somewhere. I would think Statesman would be more concerned about beating up the Dark Alliance and saving Paragon City? I'm also a bit unclear on why MAL wanted the swords sent here in particular.

It's a rather lengthy glowy hunt to find the "swords". It took me awhile as it's a large outdoor map with poor visibility; though I think this is the right map for your "doomed future", the fact remains that searching this large map for a glowy takes awhile. Oddly, the swords are in a wooden coffin; you might consider using the weapon rack graphic instead. Or alternatively, have them in the possession of a dual blade wielding boss (someone who found the swords and is using them); that might make the objective easier to find also. Or at least explain why it's in a coffin (whose coffin is it? future Liberty Rose's? someone else?).

Finding the coffin completes the mission, but leaves me with a few questions: how did this "bad" future come about? I think the implication is that if it weren't for Liberty Rose, this bad future would come about, but would be a little stronger on narrative if there were some clues or dialog that showed exactly why this was so.

Also, "Two Magic Swords" clue says that Miss Liberty owned the two swords; this is a little weird because Miss Liberty is pretty clearly a martial arts scrapper (if you ever run into her in-game), and also, it's not clear why she wouldn't give her magic weapons to Ms. Liberty (who I assume became a heroine first) rather than Liberty Rose. I think this could be explained somehow, but currently I have to guess as to the reasons.

Debriefing: Ms Liberty says that I've "possibly saved our world" by recovering the swords, but it's not at all clear why this actually saves the world. Consider adding some more text somewhere explaining exactly why it's so essential for Liberty Rose to become a hero. Ms Liberty also says "I will give them to Liberty"; suggest you call her "Liberty Rose" for clarity.

Mission 5
Briefing: Despite the magic swords and magic costume making Liberty Rose into a Real Hero, somehow she needs to be rescued again. She is coming close to beating Fusionette's record. Anyway, I think this somewhat undermines the "destined one" vibe that the arc is trying to give Liberty Rose.

Second part of briefing: The contact now tells me I need to defeat Master Al, aka MAL.

In the mission: I have to rescue 3 people named Liberty (Liberty Rose, Liberty Storm and Agent Liberty) and Statesman. Not quite sure how Statesman got involved.

I found and rescued Liberty Storm; her encounter should probably have some dialog before you rescue her. In her line after being rescued, she says:

[NPC] Liberty Storm: Thanks. Lets go rock!

"Lets" should be "Let's" here. Also, Liberty Storm is never mentioned before this, so I don't really know who she is; you might have her briefly introduced by the contact in the mission briefing, or at least have her introduce herself as a member of the Liberty League when you meet her. Strangely her tag is "Liberty Elite", though Agent Liberty earlier said that people with "Liberty" in their name would be in "Liberty League".)

Found and rescued Liberty Rose, who was in a different costume than the last time I saw her. Her swords look awfully ordinary considering how much they've been built up as being magical; consider making them glowy or something?

Found and fought MAL and lost to him on my first try, partly due to allies aggroing additional groups, and partly due to Fearsome Followers stacking enough fears on me to run me out of break frees. Not a big deal, I was playing a bit overconfidently.

On my second try I brought most of a tray of break frees (and had to use most of them - the fearsome followers really like to cast fear) and rescued Agent Liberty to help cover me while fighting MAL, and I eventually dropped MAL after a hard fight. You might consider making his objective only need the boss to complete it; I had to clear several stray minions before the mission would complete, and it's easy for his group to get mixed up with other nearby groups on this particular map (his group spawned on the grass in front of the gates of the main cemetery), making it a little confusing to find them all.

Debriefing: Seems to be a little light for the finish of the arc; maybe talk about the eventual fate of MAL and Liberty Rose and have Ms Liberty also express Liberty Rose's thanks.

Overall
It's neat to watch Liberty Rose "grow up" and I like the look and the powers of the Anti Liberty League (even with all the fears). I liked the idea of using custom groups of PVE enemies in the middle missions. I liked the premise of MAL attempting to prevent Liberty Rose from becoming a hero. But, I think it needs additional background material to be more compelling. As presented, the story arc never makes clear: (a) what was Liberty Rose's ACTUAL origin story, before MAL came and mucked it up? I'm sure it wasn't ORIGINALLY that my hero came and gave her a costume and swords (which is what ends up happening), and (b) what exactly is it that makes Liberty Rose so important, that stopping her from becoming a hero causes the world to collapse? Presumably she did something important (probably against MAL) that made that huge difference. I think explaining some of these things (perhaps in clues, briefings or dialog) would help improve the story's background quite a lot.

The use of time travel for the plot was a little confusing; all the time hopping made the various missions seem a bit disjointed from each other. Thinking about it, I'm sent back in time to recover the stolen costume and into the future to recover the stolen swords. Wouldn't it make even more sense to use time travel to prevent the costume and swords from being stolen in the first place? Perhaps interrupting the theft before it happens? MAL's reasoning for sending the stolen swords into the future wasn't apparent to me either; it's not like they're a lot safer there, since you can just find them laying around in a box. Also, I'm still not quite sure why Ms Liberty doesn't go help Liberty Rose herself, instead of sending me (after all, they're family).

I also found it quite confusing to have multiple characters named Liberty (6 that I can think of: Ms Liberty, Miss Liberty, Liberty Rose, Agent Liberty, Little Liberty, Liberty Storm) and multiple characters named Al (both the Family boss and the Anti Liberty boss). You might consider changing at least a few of their names, to reduce confusion (unless you are very strongly tied to them). At the very least, I suggest you always call Liberty Rose Jones by "Liberty Rose" and never just "Liberty", which is too ambiguous.

Some more background about the big bad guy, MAL, and what his evil plans are would be helpful, also. I like that MAL is mentioned significantly a few times before we meet him, setting him up to be the big bad guy; but we never really learn much about what he's up to, aside from interfering with Liberty Rose's origin. Presumably he wants to get her out of the way for some reason? Why is that? Does he have some kind of master plan that she is destined to interfere with?

Anyway, I like the outline of the story and thought some of the custom costumes were quite nice. I felt some of the background details and plotting could use some more work. With all this in mind I gave this arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)

PoliceWoman, would you mind doing a review of my arc "Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black" (ID #161629)? I've played most of your arcs (left some suggestions in your "Warrior's Journey" thread), but if there's one you'd like some feedback on I'll gladly run it again.

Release the Dragon review
Arc ID: 229358
Keywords: Canon Related, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: missions are 30-35, but arc description says 25-35
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise is to help out a businessman who the Tsoo are going after. I played a 27 dark/ice defender on difficulty 1. The contact is Amanda Loomis (a contact in IP).

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption at the top should be in bigger type, bold face or colored to stand out a bit more from the rest of the briefing.

The contact gives a very nice briefing explaining the situation and introducing Leon Wu, the businessman whose life is in danger. "tatoo-wearing" should be "tattoo-wearing" or maybe just "tattooed".

In the mission, I immediately ran into Bao Cai, who had some good dialog. In his description, "renown for his fantastic luck" should be "renowned for his fantastic luck". Though if he's so lucky, why does he say:

[NPC] Bao Cai: Wh-what? Star Amethyst?! Oh just my luck...

Found and rescued Leon Wu. I really like the dialog from his guards and from (I think) a roaming Tsoo patrol. In Leon's description, "reselling of antiques; Something that seems", "something" shouldn't be capitalized. Leon tells me about his computer's files, which changes my objective to "Find Wu's Computer".

I eventually found "Wu's Laptop" which told me that a Ming vase was missing, and completed the mission.

Debriefing and mission complete clue both have a good summary of what's happened so far. The clues and dialog in this mission are well-written overall.

Mission 2
Briefing: Another well written briefing. The contact explains that the vase is a magical artifact, and sends me against the Tsoo to get it back.

Found Donny Choi, a Tsoo boss with a good description and dialog. Though he does say:

[NPC] Donny Choi: Star Amethyst, ehh? And here I was worring about being bored to death. Fight me, if you think you can!

"worring" should be "worrying" here. I was a little surprised that defeating Donny didn't complete the "Defeat the Tsoo Leader" objective, until I found the actual leader farther in. (It did make sense, another Tsoo had been talking about "Haiku".)

Found the vase, which gave an interesting clue.

Found the "Haiku" boss; nice job on having all his dialog in haiku format. I like how his poetry starts getting messed up when you have him nearly defeated.

[NPC] Liang "Haiku" Qian: Formidable blow; But, of no great concequence. A wasted effort.

"concequence" should be "consequence" here.

Mission 3
Briefing: So I've beat up the Tsoo and returned the vase to Leon, but now Sky Raiders are attacking his office and I need to save him.

Some good dialog from the Sky Raiders in this mission, clearly explaining what they're up to and why they're messing with Leon Wu.

I found and rescued Leon, triggering some objectives to find clues and secure Wu's safe, or maybe the magic vase, as well as defeating the Sky Raiders leader.

Found and defeated Lt Anders, a jump bot. I really liked the lines he says while at low life:

[NPC] Lt. Anders: Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. OW! SKY RAIDERS! WHY was I programmed to feel PAIN?!
[NPC] Lt. Anders: Oh great, now I'm exploded. I don't need this!

The clue he drops is very funny, too. The clues point towards Leon Wu being involved in shady business, having hired the Sky Raiders to steal the vase originally.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact now thinks Leon is selling the vase to the highest bidder on the black market and needs to be stopped. This seemed to be a little bit of a leap, but thinking about it, the display case clue said there were no signs of forced entry, so it fits. Pretty well written briefing overall with lots of good detail.

Mission entry popup: "each-other" should be "each other".

Nice little Tsoo civil war inside the mission, and some named bosses with good dialog. I found a Tsoo version of Leon Wu, also; in his description, "intent of transforming himself" should maybe be "intent on transforming himself". Also, "person-to-person" should maybe be "mano-a-mano"? Or "in single combat".

Mission 5
Briefing: I'm now sent to battle "Long-Wu", the transformed (via the magic vase) half-dragon version of Leon Wu.

Sneaking around with Shadow Fall I found Long-Wu, who has a new and intimidating looking model. He spawned as a boss for me (on difficulty 1). I managed to defeat him via debuffs and kiting.

Debriefing: nice wrap-up of the arc, explaining what ends up happening to Long-Wu. You might consider mentioning what happens to the Tsoo gangs after Long-Wu's fall, as well.

Overall
This was a very nicely written arc. The dialog was terrific, the briefings and debriefings were all well-written. The transformation of Leon Wu from hapless businessman, to a shady double dealer, and ultimately into a monster, was handled well. I loved the many minor characters with small roles, but good descriptions and dialog. My few comments are mostly minor typos and stylistic suggestions.

I gave this arc 5 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629

The Doctor Returns review
Arc ID: 1152
Keywords: Canon Related, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: missions are 35-54, arc description says 30+ and support ATs may need help.

The premise is to help The Doctor stop some sort of Crey scheme. I played a 37 bs/inv scrapper on difficulty 4.

The contact is a personal computer.

Mission 1
Briefing: The briefing is formatted like an email from the Doctor, which is actually pretty neat.

Second part of briefing: this part is a bit more conversational; possibly it should be formatted like another email reply. It reveals that Crey is planning on trapping users of Mission Architect within the system and replacing them with exact copies loyal to Crey. This is a neat evil plan.

I'm supposed to enter a mission "hacked" by the Doctor so that she can prove her claims. I'm a little dubious about that, though; how can I believe anything that occurs in the mission if it's been "hacked"?

Inside the mission, I rescue Fusionette from some enemies in the "Architect Entertainment" faction. I like their dialog.

Shortly after that I ran into Fusionette?, who was an enemy, while the first Fusionette was an ally. Both Fusionettes were in the "Rogue Copies" faction, despite one being an enemy and one being an ally; I'm not quite sure if that's intentional. I'm wondering if the ally Fusionette is the "real" Fusionette and should be in Vanguard? Or maybe she's a copy too, it's hard to say.

Ran into another three or so Fusionette? copies; they all had identical dialog, but that actually makes sense considering they're copies.

"Investigating the Doctor's claims" ended up requiring defeating the whole map. It's not too big a map though, so it's not too bad.

Debriefing: does a good job of explaining what I saw in the first mission, and the fate of the other heroes who have fallen into this trap. It sounds like the "ally" Fusionette was just a copy. The last line of the debriefing suggests this is again an email, but this message isn't formatted like an email; consider adding the email header (like in the briefing) if you have room.

Mission 2
Briefing: I like the Doctor's fake email address here. Good briefing overall. Possible nitpicks: "in case you don't know" maybe should be "in case you didn't know", and "digitalization" should perhaps be "digitization" (based on earlier usage of "digitized").

Second part of briefing: horribly mispelled, but I assume this is intentional, representing a MA mission-within-a-mission that the Doctor is inserting me into.

Found and rescued Executable Number Six, who became an ally; a nice reference to the canon cyberpunk story arcs. I wonder if he really belongs in the "Paragon Protectors" group, though? Maybe he should be in a "Doctor's Ally" group or something similar.

Found the "Adminstration Rights" glowy; should be "Administration Rights". (The clue is right.)

The mission itself seemed a little light on content; there were a few Arachnoid/AE staff battles that didn't seem relevant. I guess this mission is supposed to represent a "bad" AE mission ("Defeat all bugz lol!") that has been hacked by the Doctor, but it could stand to have some more details in order to make it interesting in its own right. Consider changing it from a "bug farm" into a very stereotypical fantasy epic or origin story, which the player can completely ignore in order to hack the administration rights?

Debriefing: I like the way this looks like an automatically-generated email.

Mission 3
Briefing: Another good briefing; I like the explanation of why the Doctor is working through intermediaries. Now she's sending me to check out some kind of file storage area.

Map selection: I do think a sewer is an odd choice to represent a database, which the mission entry popup seems to acknowledge. I'd lean towards something more techy, though the popup saying "It's just a virtual representation" sort of works too.

The map is filled with Freakshow; it's not quite clear why. Perhaps they are virtual representations of the "network security" mercenaries mentioned in the briefing.

This becomes more clear when I finally find H4XX0R who has dialog explaining that the Freakshow are indeed handling network security. I found him quite deep in the sewers, and none of the other mobs had dialog or other details until I found him; I'd suggest adding a patrol or a boss spawn near the front of the mission with some dialog also explaining this, so that it's clearer what's happening earlier on; or, alternatively, use a smaller map.

I do like H4XX0R's description and dialog though.

Defeating H4XX0R triggered a "3 user files to decompress" objective. This required some backtracking, as H4XX0R spawned in the very deepest room of the map for me. Fortunately Positron.hero and Fusionette.hero both spawned nearby in the same room. They had pretty good dialog and clues from rescuing them. I did have to backtrack about half the map length to find Faultline.hero.

I also ran into my first Technician mobs, who had the ability to "load blank character templates", which I thought was a clever way to explain their Phantom Army.

Debriefing: Seems really short. It says the Doctor's message is waiting for me, but doesn't say what it is. Maybe it's the next mission briefing; this debriefing could use some more text, though.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact wants to send me into the AE system to upload some kind of virus.

I like the mission entry popup and how it warns of "unusual server load". The mission itself seems awfully quiet; none of the mobs have anything to say. A patrol spawn or a static boss spawn with some dialog might be nice.

There's a large number of false "interface node" glowies in here that I think I'm meant to hunt through. Their naming scheme kind of gives away which ones are false glowies though; targeting them, I can see some are named "Bad Upload Node" and are not worth clicking. Likewise, "Ambush Node Back", though I clicked this one just to see what would happen (sure enough, an ambush). I eventually found the proper glowy to click, which was named "Upload Node". I think you may want to rename all these glowies to be something more generic sounding so it's not as obvious which ones are false glowies versus the real one.

Clicking "Upload Node" did complete the mission. This mission ended up purely being a hunt for the correct glowy among a large number of false glowies. The ambush from "Ambush Node Back" was the only thing that happened during this mission, and generated the only mobs that had any lines. I feel like this needed a few more mission details to make it more lively. Maybe add some AE mobs talking panickedly about the security breaches at other facilities, and shouting about how they need to take the interface nodes down?

Mission 5
Briefing: This briefing doesn't have the "email header" format that the earlier ones did. I'm told I need to erase records of what we've done, so as to hide The Doctor's presence. This seems kind of peripheral to the "fix the MA system" theme of the arc, but we'll see where it goes.

The Doctor tells me "Your administration rights have been revoked" in the briefing; I think you should consider having the player learn this by getting a clue in either mission 4 or mission 5, perhaps when you try to use your admin privileges, or as an automated email telling you that your admin access has been revoked due to suspicious activity. This would be more dramatic than simply being told it's happened.

Found and fought Agents Chalmers and Ruthven, who had some fun dialog trying to play mind games with me.

The Doctor told me she would send me into an "ordinary mission", but it seems filled with Crey. Granted, an ordinary AE mission COULD have Crey in it, but it's a bit too coincidental. Unlike missions 1 and 2, which were also "ordinary missions" that I was inserted into, this mission-within-a-mission doesn't appear to have an obvious theme or objective (not even "Kill all bugz lolz"). Of course, I have my "real" objectives to get the passcodes and stuff, but I think the mission-within-a-mission that I'm inserted into, should have its own story logic.

Mission objectives: "Delete log files." has an extra period at the end of it (the punctuation looks wrong when it's written "Delete log files., Delete back upfiles" in the nav tool).

The female "Technician" and the "Restoration Tech" both have Paragon Protector heads, which seems kind of odd when all the other AE mobs (including the male Technician) have normal human appearances. This might be on purpose, but it seemed a little jarring. Restoration Tech also doesn't have the standard light green shirt the other AE mobs all seem to wear.

The technicians surrounding the backup files managed to defeat me, a combination of me being unable to target the right mob through the phantom army, and stacked psi damage cutting right through my invuln defense set. Probably fine on difficulty.

In the AE hospital I now see why Restoration Tech has a Paragon Protector head and a white jacket -- there's a Restoration Tech in the official AE hospital, that I never really looked at before! He has an orange horizontal stripe across his white jacket, though, unlike your version; not sure if you can get that effect in the costume creator. Maybe "angelic" pattern would look close?

On my second try I destroyed the backup files, completing the mission.

Mission exit popup: apparently "I" actually *was* a digital copy, just as Chalmers and Ruthven claimed! But now that I've deleted all these files, "I've" forgotten everything that happened. An interesting twist.

Debriefing: Ouch, so the Doctor deliberately sent "my copy" to her death/deletion; pretty cold! She gives a good wrap-up of the plot, though, and her solution to Crey's tampering.

Overall
I liked the overall Crey plot to take over heroes via the AE, and the use of The Doctor was handled quite effectively. I liked the way The Doctor communicated to you via emails; in fact I think all the briefings/debriefings that aren't already in this format should be converted to it.

It's pretty hard to pull off a meta story arc about Architect Entertainment itself, but I felt this did a fairly good job of it; although I do think missions 2 and 5 need more details to make them seem more like a "mission within a mission" that you've been inserted into.

I liked the writing in the briefings and most of the debriefings (except for #3 which seemed unusually short); I felt several of the middle missions (#2 through #4) needed a little more content to make them more interesting, though. Mission 3 did have the triggered rescue objectives, but you pretty much have to fight (or stealth) through a whole map of generic Freaks (with no dialog or other details) before you can trigger them.

I thought the final reveal that you've really been playing a "copy" of yourself the whole time was a clever twist. But, the final mission was a little lacking in drama overall; you're sent to clean up the traces of the Doctor's intrusion, which I'll agree makes logical sense, but "performing cleanup" does not feel very dramatic as a grand finale for the arc.

I might suggest changing the briefing to ask the player to "escort" the Doctor or "stand guard" at a network node while The Doctor is doing her dirty work -- but once you get into the mission, you find the two Agents are moving to intercept the Doctor before she can do it, so the Doctor then sends you to beat the two Agents, which eventually triggers the objective to "clean up" traces of the intrusion. If you can somehow work it in that the player realizes she is "just a copy" during the mission, yet knowingly deletes all the records and backups anyway, it would make the "your copy was a real hero!" speech the Doctor gives in the final debriefing ring a little more true -- as presented, it seems like the copy unwittingly deletes herself, then gets praised as a hero by the Doctor (who tricked her into doing it).

Anyway, it was a good story overall. I gave it 4 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629

Played through Papers and Paychecks & posted in the thread.
Mind taking at look at "Inhuman Resources..."? Arc info is in the sig, but details are here.

Thanks for your review!

I don't really have much to say, I agree with most of your points and will keep your review in mind when I finally get around to do some extensive changes. I'll try to fix those strangely named glowies in mission 4 soon - I didn't know they showed up like that.

-placate-

Nothing to see here...

Speeding Through Time review
Arc ID: 51728
Keywords: Challenging, Save the World, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: mostly 40-50 with some variation
Warnings: Extreme AVs, Extreme EBs, custom power selections

The premise is that you help someone who claims to be a retired hero against some unknown threat, but you're not sure if he's for real or just a crazy. With "Challenging" and "Extreme AVs" on this arc, I decided to play a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense, on difficulty 4.

The contact is a custom character who says he was in the Freedom Phalanx in the 1960s.

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption for this briefing should perhaps be in a larger font, bold, or a different color so as to stand out from the rest of the briefing.

The contact introduces himself as a former Freedom Phalanx member, but is rather vague about details, saying he doesn't have time to explain; which is a little weird because he apparently can time travel (and consequently I don't see why he would be in a big hurry).

Second part of briefing: the contact skirts with temporal paradox as he explains he's taking me back in time to meet him for the first time. Hmm, we'll see how confusing this gets.

Mission entry popup: pokes fun at the paradox. "Having someone send you to retrieve themselves" seems like it shouldn't have a plural at the end; maybe "retrieve himself"?

I'm a little confused as to why I'm doing this, but I guess that is intentional.

I found and rescued The Red Blur; I liked his line:

[NPC] The Red Blur: Nice to meet you. If I vouch for you, then you must be all right.

He obviously has dealt with time travelers before. The way he uses siphon speed to zip around really worked well for a "speedster" hero. He spawned as an EB for me, which seemed pretty powerful compared to the 5th Column enemies here (who supposedly had captured him).

There didn't seem to be much of interest in this mission other than Red Blur and his guards; the Red Blur's guards had some good dialog, but the mission could perhaps use a few more enemies with speaking lines (perhaps a patrol or a boss spawn near the entrance with some dialog to help establish the scene).

Nice mission exit popup I was kind of thinking in terms of time paradox, too.

"The Past Reaches Forward" clue seems a bit too short. The movie reference is fine, but I think the clue needs some more content explaining what's going on.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact realizes I'm still not sure why I'm helping him (since he hasn't explained anything) and wants to demonstrate by sending me somewhere awful, apparently. He still doesn't explain much about what's going on, but does say that I shouldn't mess with the mobs there. Hmm.

Second part of briefing: He now says we're going to the "late 1960s" which is in the past to me, but is the future he's trying to prevent. This actually doesn't make sense to me. If it's in the past to me, it should already have happened (from my point of view), so I should be able to observe the aftereffects of whatever bad thing happened. I think this could be explained away with some technobabble about parallel timelines, or the player being in some kind of temporal bubble while reality is shifting around her, or something; but as currently presented, it doesn't quite add up.

Inside the mission: I emerge into what appears to be a zombie apocalypse.

Burning Dead's description: "as it's flesh falls from it's bones" should be "as its flesh falls from its bones". I kind of wonder if it would make sense for Burning Dead to be a former Hellion (since those are so common in Atlas).

All of the zombies on this (rather large) map seem to be silent; would be nice if a few would say something, even if it's just a groaning noise or the standard "Braiiinsss" zombie call.

Found Statesman; he's in a "cowering" animation which is rather unheroic for the signature hero of the game. Though maybe this is because the zombies are berating him for letting them get killed.

I like Statesman's lines that demonstrate how upset he is about Miss Liberty's fate. The zombie Miss Liberty had a pretty good looking costume (for an undead Miss Liberty), though I didn't kill her since she was pretty tough and wasn't required.

Debriefing: Seems too short. I'd suggest having the contact go into the key events that led up to the zombie apocalypse, and maybe some more hyperbole about the millions of people who got zombiefied when whatever-it-is happened. Then reinforce that you need to stop this.

Likewise, I think "The Disaster to Come" clue is a little too short. It needs some description beyond "You can't allow the world to end". It's still rather confusing to me that it's a "disaster to come" when the story says it happened in the late 1960s.

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact now says that back in the 1960s, right after the mission I extracted the 60s Red Blur from, he discovered a 5th Column plot to set off a nuke in Washington DC, and that he attempted to stop it by recruiting other versions of himself from different places in time, but he's worried that still isn't enough so wants me to help too.

I feel like this has some logic problems. I've already taken RedBlur1960 to the present day; it's never mentioned that he returned to his original time after that, but maybe it should be (though, if that's what happened, why did RedBlur2009 ask me to bring him to the present?). Since the eastern seaboard was not nuked in the late 1960s, then clearly RedBlur1960's plan to stop the nuke must have succeeded. RedBlur2009 should remember the outcome of RedBlur1960's attempt to stop the nuke, so shouldn't have this uncertainty as to whether it is successful.

I think this could be explained away in a number of ways; RedBlur2009 could remember that my hero was instrumental towards helping the plot succeed and needs to go back (predestination), or you could say that the timeline is in flux and RedBlur2009's memories seem to be changing as the timeline changes (malleable timeline), or there could be some explanation involving multiple timelines. But I think you need some additional explanation in order for this to make sense.

Inside the mission, I have "Find the Red Blur" and "Find their mysterious benefactor and take him out" as objectives. I'm a little surprised that there isn't a "Disarm the nuclear device" objective, since I thought that was what we were stopping?

There are multiple versions of Red Blur here, but the first 3 that I save (who are labeled 12:01:12, 12:01:18 and 12:01:20) don't seem to actually count as "Find the Red Blur", which is a little confusing. All three of them gave me a completely blank clue entitled "And Again"; possibly this makes sense if I rescue them in a certain order (maybe the "earliest" Red Blur gives a clue with more content), but since this map is an outdoor map, there isn't any way to guarantee the player rescues them in the right order. You should put some text in each clue to explain what it's talking about; as it is, I have 3 empty clues.

The three versions of Red Blur racing around IS a pretty cool effect. All of them are speed boosted Elite Bosses, though, which seems pretty overpowering! Also, from a story logic standpoint, shouldn't 12:01:12 despawn after 6 seconds in order to become 12:01:18, while 12:01:18 should despawn after 2 seconds in order to become 12:01:20? I wonder if you should make their timestamps a couple hours apart to avoid questions like that.

Found also 12:01:13, 12:01:04, 12:01:03, 12:01:19, 12:01:01, 12:01:11, 12:01:10, 12:01:14, 12:01:15, 12:01:17, 12:01:12. I now have fourteen speed boosted EBs following me around, which is a pretty crazy amount of firepower; I'm not sure what opposition could possibly be a threat to this force. I also have a very large number of blank "And Again" clues in my journal.

Finally found "The Red Blur", which I guess is the main version, and also an EB. He finally gave me the "Time Traveling Doppelgangers" clue which helps give the "And Again" clues some context; but considering there are at least 15 possible Red Blurs you can find in this mission, I think it would be a lot to hope that the main Red Blur is the one the player finds first. (You could maybe trigger all the copies from the main Red Blur, but that would add a lot of backtracking, which would be awkward on an outdoor map.)

There always seems to be one guy (always 12:01:12 for me) who doesn't get SB from the others and lags behind; probably not much you can do about that, but it required a little extra ally herding to keep them together. I eventually gave up on 12:01:12, figuring I could afford to ditch one of my 15 EB allies.

I finally found Dr. Aeon, who had terrific dialog; I very much like the idea that he's just going to go back even further in time to fix this. He spawned as an EB for me, but my herd of 14 speed boosted EB allies tore him apart in nothing flat -- even before his ambush of 3 more Dr Aeon EBs showed up. The visual of an army of Red Blurs fighting an army of Dr Aeons was pretty cool! But the Dr Aeon team really had no chance since the Red Blur team outnumbered him so badly. I barely had to attack.

Defeating the first Dr Aeon triggered a device to destroy, which DID require me to backtrack and search the whole map again (kind of a pain on an outdoor map). I ditched all the allies to be able to search faster, and found parts of the map with 3 or 4 more copies of the Red Blur, then eventually found the device guarded by a group of Dr. Aeons. I managed to destroy the bomb on my own, which completed the mission.

-- took a break for a few days here --

Thinking about it, the swarm of Red Blurs is very cool and is a great use of time travel by a super-speedster; visually it looks terrific. I think making them all EBs (or maybe AVs downgraded to EBs, not sure) is way too overpowering though, especially since they SB each other; consider dropping them to Bosses or even Lieutenants and/or reducing their number. As it is, once you get 2 of them, they can stomp everything, even Dr Aeon, without much interaction from the player. (Although possibly you have Aeon set to an AV while Red Blur is an EB and my difficulty level makes them both EBs; I can't easily tell.)

I'm somewhat confused by the story logic here, though. In the briefing, RedBlur2009 mentions that the 5th Column were going to set off a bomb, and that RedBlur1960 stopped it. But in the mission itself, the only bomb is the one Dr Aeon (himself a time traveler) is placing. If RedBlur2009 remembers a 5th Column bomb (due to living through that event), where is it? Or if what RedBlur2009 remembers is Dr Aeon's bomb, why doesn't he say it's Dr Aeon's bomb (I don't think Aeon is mentioned until you run into him mid-mission), since he would know? I think maybe it would make more sense if in the mission briefing, maybe that Red Blur just knows that the "point of divergence" that creates the zombie apocalypse in Mission 2 is in 1969, and that it's crucial that the player is there (maybe a different Red Blur told him), but RedBlur2009 doesn't know it's Dr Aeon until you actually get into Mission 3.

Though then that might mess up your explanation for why RedBlur2009 is old compared to RedBlur1960. But as it stands now I think some of the stuff he tells you doesn't quite add up. I guess the crux of my confusion is: when (subjective time) does Red Blur become fully cognizant of Dr. Aeon's plot to bomb Paragon City? If it's DURING mission 3, then the briefing shouldn't mention the bomb; if it's sometime in the past before this story arc even starts (which seems hinted at), then why wouldn't he tell you up front that he needs your help against Dr Aeon? Also why is the device a triggered objective and not initially placed -- since RedBlur2009 already told me there's a bomb, I ought to be looking for it right away. Making it triggered works a little better for the flow of the mission, but maybe you should have RedBlur2009 not know there's a bomb until the first Aeon is defeated and says, "I'm just going to time travel right back to here and set off a bomb before you can do anything about it!" (causing the bomb to spawn) -- or something similar.

Debriefing: I do like this debriefing and the mental imagery of Red Blur burning the rest of his subjective life time-hopping around to try and stop Dr Aeon. It is a little puzzling that superspeed time traveler is unable to ever actually stops Aeon for good, yet somehow I think I can (in the next mission).

Mission 5
Briefing: So now I'm going after Dr Aeon. The briefing explains I need to take down Dr Aeon on my own, but considering previously in this arc, Dr Aeon has said he can just go farther back in time to fix any problems with his plan, what is to stop him from time traveling back in time to avoid me defeating him? Maybe by preventing my own origin as a hero, preventing my parents from ever meeting, or something like that.

Second part of briefing: seems awfully short. Needs a period at the end.

Inside the mission: why is this map on fire? I just got here.

Found and destroyed Aeon's research and got the "Forgotten Aeon" clue, which seems to imply that Red Blur's actions after mission 4 somehow prevented the Aeon from mission 4 from ever coming to exist. Hmmm, interesting...if paradoxical!

Found and fought Dr. Aeon. His dialog was actually pretty cool! I like how he seems to have forgotten all about me and Red Blur and enjoyed the "A Hero Forgotten" clue and "Red Blur's Revenge" clues. Minor nitpick: both clues appeared at once (since defeating Aeon also ended the mission) and they are a little redundant. (Wouldn't be a big deal normally, some redundancy is good to make sure the player "gets it" - but they both appeared at the same moment so it was especially noticable.) The idea that Red Blur completely changed the course of Dr. Aeon's life is kinda cool. (Though I wonder how he managed this without Dr. Aeon ever noticing him? Superspeed, maybe.)

Debriefing: a nicely written wrap-up of what happened and eulogy for Red Blur.

You might consider repeating what Red Blur's final fate was in a clue somewhere? I believe mission 4 essentially says that he used up his entire subjective lifespan in superspeed and/or time travel mode trying to reshape Aeon's life to avoid missions 2 and 3; but it would be easy to miss this, especially if on a team and not the leader (since you wouldn't get the debriefing in that case), and it's pretty important to the plot.

It occurs to me that if the Red Blur foiled Dr Aeon's plot SO thoroughly that Dr Aeon never constructed the device of mission 4, then the hero who became Red Blur never would've needed to sacrifice his life here, and so Red Blur ought to (paradoxically) still be alive (albeit unaware of the events of this arc). It might make sense to come back and discover Red Blur, in the debriefing for mission 5, has forgotten everything that has happened because it all got removed from existence by his own actions. But, I think this would be a less cool ending to the story, so maybe it's better to ignore this paradox.

Overall
I like the way time travel is used in more creative than normal ways in this arc - the way it shifts the timestream repeatedly, the way Red Blur creates tons of duplicates of himself, and how Dr Aeon threatens to time travel further back in time to redo his plot. I originally walked into the final mission thinking "There's no way that this story can explain how we defeat a time traveling Dr Aeon when Red Blur, another time traveler, couldn't do it", but the story of how Red Blur dealt with Dr Aeon and the final fate of Red Blur actually worked and made sense. The visuals of the mob of Red Blurs assaulting the mob of Aeons in mission 3 were really good as well.

A few things I had problems with: the army of speed boosted EBs in mission 3 just was too staggeringly powerful. I really like how they look, and it's a cool effect for a superspeedster, but I think you should consider dialing them back on power and/or numbers, so that the player still feels like what they're doing is making a difference.

The explanation of what was happening in mission 3 didn't quite add up to me; I couldn't reconcile what Red Blur told me in the briefing with what actually happened in the mission, and the many duplicate empty clues inside the mission didn't help dispel this confusion. I do think this mission is visually cool, but I think some of the text explaining what's going on could be improved. Time travel is pretty confusing as it is, so making it as clear as possible what's happening would be helpful.

Mission 1 felt a little lightweight to me; I understand it's mainly to introduce Red Blur to the player, but I think it needs a little more to make it interesting (perhaps some clues or foreshadowing of later events), or else perhaps could be cut to move the zombie apocalypse up to the first mission (more quickly getting the player into the meat of the story).

Anyway, I thought it was a neat story overall. I gave it 4 stars.

----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132

Old Folks Home review
Arc ID: 261041
Keywords: Challenging, Custom Characters, Non-Canon Story
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 1-54
Warnings: Extreme Bosses, Extreme Minions, Enemies with custom power selections.

This is a single mission arc with the premise of battling the "Octogenician", a supervillain who can only mind control people over the age of 80, so you have to battle your way through an army of very old people to get him.

Fighting old people (and presumably making fun of them) doesn't seem very politically correct, but I'm going to take the arc at face value and give it a try.

The contact is a custom nurse character.

With the mission containing only custom characters, some with extreme settings, I am pretty sure this won't be doable for a level 1. Consider upping the level range to something more appropriate (I'd guess at least 25).

I played a 50 MA/SR scrapper with soft capped defense on difficulty 4.

Mission 1
Briefing: The caption for the briefing should be in larger text, bold, or differently colored in order to stand out more from the rest of the briefing.

"Pleas, you must help" should be "Please, you must help".

I wonder if "Octogenician" should actually be "Octogenarian" (the term for an 80 year old)?

Based on the premise, is it really possible for him to "subvert the minds of everyone at Shady Acres rest home"? Usually a rest home will have nurses and/or attendants who are normal working age, taking care of the old people; these wouldn't be affected by Octogenician's powers and probably could restrain their 80-year old charges if they got out of hand. Maybe explain what happened to the nursing staff (held hostage, ran away, something like that).

Mission accept message: "Agree to beat up some old people" doesn't sound very heroic. But I guess it's the premise behind this story.

Second part of briefing: "loveable" should be "lovable". "you kow" should be "you know". "The ones that shake their fists at you when you play Neil Diamond too loud" does not quite make sense -- most young people probably don't know who Neil Diamond is. Consider name dropping a more trendy pop singer.

Aha, here it explains "The hospital staff isn't aware of what's going on". But .. how is this possible? Nurse Betty clearly knows, and she looks like a hospital staff. And if 80-year olds are roaming around doing villainy, it seems like their attendants would notice?

Mission entry popup: some good text here, helps set the mood well!

Mission objectives: "The Octogenician" should perhaps be "Defeat the Octogenician". Though then you might want to make the mission name something different, like "Stop the Old Folks plot", to mix it up.

Map selection: this map looks like a normal office. Maybe you should use Mother Mayhem's sanitarium instead?

Mr. Jenkins description: "liscence" should be "license". Shouldn't his hair be white, or at least grey, if he's 80+ years old? The age lines on his face and the balding hairstyle help though.

Mrs. Papadapolis description: "see,s" should be "seems".

Mrs. Rabinowitz is a minion with sonic shields, while Mrs. Papadapolis is a minion with empathy heals and Mr. Lipschultz is a minion with thermal heals; this will make your custom group have a LOT of buffing and healing in larger spawns, which could easily overpower some teams - especially with stacking sonic blasts on top of that. You might consider reserving buff/debuff sets only for lieutenants or higher, or at least having fewer custom minions with them.

Mr. Lipschultz description: "oinments" should be "ointments". His hair is also a bright red, should maybe be grey or white.

Considering Mrs. Addams hates noise, it is a little weird that she has sonic powers. I guess she could be a hypocrite. In her description, "drag to tough old broad" should be "drag the tough old broad". She maybe shouldn't have Build Up (it's pretty powerful against players).

I'm actually quite surprised that Mrs. Ratchet isn't a nurse.

Found some Orderly mobs; I'm not quite sure why they are enemies, shouldn't they be allies in helping regain control of the rest home? One of them does ask me to leave, though, saying the home is "on lockdown". Wow, that makes it sound like a prison! I suppose it is, really.

I'm also not sure why the Orderlies have gravity powers. They keep throwing random junk at me with Propel; this actually seems disorderly!

I found a battle between the staff and the old folks, but later I found a patrol of the support staff that wouldn't aggro the old folks, which seemed weird. Nice to see some dialog from the battle and the patrol. Most of the dialog I've seen so far has been from the staff, though; it would be nice to have more cranky old folks dialog, since the story is really about them. Some lines about the good old days, complaining about young folk today, or demanding the staff help them do stuff, might be helpful.

I did see a few lines from the old people later, but more would be better! It's the main schtick of this arc, so play it up.

When I got near the end I heard this dialog:

[NPC] The Octogenician: Oh you young fools who put me here - I could never get enough eighty year olds in one place to cause true mischief! Even $name can't stop me with this many old folks under my command!

...but I was too far away for him to correctly substitute my name into his dialog. I think it's his unaware line, so you may want to take $name out of it since he won't know who the player is yet, when he says it.

Slightly later he said:

[NPC] The Octogenician: Aha, $name! You're an old soul - I think I may have an effect on you!

but I still haven't seen him. I wonder if he was fighting other NPCs?

Finally found Octogenician. In his description, "subvery" should be "subvert". He spawned as a Boss for me and I fought him for awhile, but had to run away -- his mind control has all untyped psi damage which fairly thrashes my SR scrapper (just a bad matchup on powersets) and he was surrounded by minions that healed and buffed him, and healed and buffed each other. Plus he had pain secondary and was healing his own minions. Took out a couple minions before I had to run.

After getting my act together again I went back for a rematch and beat up all his healy minions, then beat him; mainly I had to use Focus Chi and red inspirations to boost my spike damage high enough to kill minions before they got a heal from another NPC. His dialog complaining about how I'm beating up an old man made me feel guilty for beating him up, which maybe is the intent.

Seemed like all I had to do was defeat the boss (though admittedly he was hard). You might consider adding some more stuff to do in this mission; I do like the patrols and battles, maybe add more. You only have one mission in the arc, so I think it's worth having more to do in that one mission.

Debriefing: Really needs more text here.

Maybe should have a souvenir also.

Overall
This mission seemed pretty silly but had decent looking custom mobs and stayed true to its concept. There's some decent lines of dialog - I'd suggest adding more along the lines of what you've already got, especially more cranky old people dialog, if you can. That's really what this story seems to be all about.

There didn't seem to be a lot to do except defeat the boss, which makes the gameplay of the mission pretty similar to a typical radio mission; some plusses over that for interesting looking custom mobs and dialog, but also some minuses because the custom mobs had too many buff and heal powers which made them harder than is really reasonable. I'd certainly suggest cutting back on the heal powers the minions have; it's probably fine for lieutenants and above though.

I gave this arc 3 stars.


----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132

I would like to request that you add a re-review of my arc to your list:

In Pursuit of Liberty - 221702
by @Gypsy Rose

I have made many changes that you and other reviewers suggested which I hope improved it. Anyway I would love your thoughts on this.

I reviewed your arc Papers & Paychecks and left you comments on your thread.

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend review
Arc ID: 114284
Keywords: Challenging, Magic, Drama
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 15-20
Warnings: EBs

Description says it is "a story of love, death and betrayal" where I have to deal with a new hero group trying to clean up the Rogue Isles. I didn't have a good match for the 15-20 level range, so I tried playing an 8 elec/elec brute.

The contact is Desdemona the Glint, one of the CoV brokers.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact sends me to rob a bank. I like her dialog here, it helps define her character "voice".

Second part of briefing: minor quibble, "extra bonus for extra special bonus" is a little awkward sounding (with "extra" and "bonus" being repeated).

I like the "Business as usual" mission title and "Get the ice" objective.

Inside the mission, it seems suspiciously empty (nice that the popup highlights this also). Ran into "Ice Age", an Outcast boss with good dialog explaining that this is really a trap.

I'm a little disappointed to find that there are no diamonds here, but Ice Age's defeat clue (which I think is misspelled "Ica Age" ... should maybe be "Ice Age talks" or "Ice Age's story") helps explain this.

It might be nice to add an optional glowy that is an "empty safe deposit box" which formerly held the diamonds, to help reinforce the idea that the diamonds are gone.

Mission exit popup: I like how it suggests you still steal some money even though you didn't find the diamonds.

Debriefing: pretty well written. Though "I have idea" should be "I have an idea". The second paragraph actually sounds like it should be part of the briefing for the next mission?

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to kidnap a celebutante bimbo and then lure the Outcasts into a trap where I'll beat some info out of them. Seems pretty reasonable to me! "going after young, hot, trendy, beautiful celebrity girl" should be "going after a young, hot, trendy, beautiful celebrity girl". (Unless dropping words like "a" and "an" is meant to be an intentional speech mannerism; this being the second instance, I'm not sure.)

Second part of briefing: pretty funny! I liked the explanation of who the "celebrity" is.

Inside the mission: Why are there Longbow inside Desdemona's "penthouse apartment"? Maybe private security guards or Cage consortium guards would make more sense.

Getting closer to my "kidnap target", Desdemona's dialog seems to reveal that our trap has mistakenly lured in Longbow instead of the Outcasts we were looking for. Darn meddling heroes! I had to get pretty deep into the mission before finding this out, though. Consider adding a patrol or static boss spawn near the front with a little dialog explaining Longbow's presence earlier?

Rescuing Desdemona triggered a "Find the Outcast hero" objective; I had to backtrack all the way to the front of the mission to find him, which was a little annoying, but the map wasn't too big, so maybe it's okay. Firezone's description, "one of the supposedly heroic Outcast" ... Outcast should be Outcasts. His dialog does explain why he appeared at the very entrance, which does make some sense.

Defeating Firezone gave a very informative "Firezone Begs for Mercy" clue. "us Outcast" should be "us Outcasts".

Debriefing: A missing "the" in this debriefing makes me wonder if this is intentional to depict Desdemona having an accent?

Mission 3
Briefing: Seems a bit short compared to the others. "everyone are heading" should be "everyone is heading" (English is weird). We just found out about the diamonds being in Bloody Bay in the last mission, though, who is this "everyone" going after them and how did they find out? "with Arachnos flyer" should be "with the Arachnos flyer". It's possible that these are intentional to give Desdemona a particular manner of speaking, but I am not absolutely sure because she isn't that consistent about it (some bits of text she uses "a/an/the" just fine) and some of the clues (not spoken by Desdemona) have minor mistakes of this type too.

Second part of briefing: "everyone are fighting" should be "everyone is fighting".

Mission entry popup: tries to explain away the usage of the St Martial "Flush" map as Bloody Bay, and the fact that you can see the Golden Giza from it. I almost would prefer to omit this, because it actually draws the player's attention to the Golden Giza; I'd just ignore that the Giza is visible. The actual architecture of the buildings in the playable area IS a decent match for (parts of) Bloody Bay.

Found and defeated Teremex, who had pretty nice "evil wizard" dialog, and helped fill in who the diamonds were stolen from originally. The "so decrees Teremex!" was classic. "Now you made me lose my concentration" should perhaps be "Now you have made me lose my concentration". Teremex was actually pretty hard for me (with his ambush and control powers) but a big part of this was that my character was below the correct level range (at 8 I didn't have any mez protection, for example). I did manage to defeat him through heavy use of inspirations, though.

Defeating Teremex triggered a new spawn, and I found and defeated "The Cthonic", as part of a "deal" with Teremex to get more information. The clues provided by defeating Cthonic and completing the mission ("Discussing Business With Teremex") were pretty good.

Mission 4
Briefing: Seems awfully short; maybe justified by the fact that really you're doing a mission for Teremex now, not Desdemona. You could perhaps have Desdemona go over the details again; namely that you're going down the secret tunnel to the Outcast base to recover the crystals. Also "(shiny, sparkling, etc)" is not something someone would normally say, you may as well spell it out the way it has been before.

Second part of briefing: Ahh, much more detail here as "Teremex" gives you the rest of the briefing.

Mission entry popup: "cemetary" should be "cemetery".

Seems to be a defeat all of a medium-big map; is this really necessary for the story? Both Desdemona and Teremex really just want the crystals (in order to get the diamonds). Though a case could be made for a Defeat All if one of them was feeling particularly annoyed at the Outcasts and wanted them utterly destroyed; one of them should mention it during the briefings in that case, though. Teremex comes close to saying this with his comment about "swift retribution and vengeance".

Found a "locked chest" which requires me to find a key. Seems like a wooden chest wouldn't strictly need a key (the clue says you shouldn't break it open, but arguably you could pick the lock, disintegrate the wood, etc) but let's go along with this for sake of the story.

Found "Jiggles", an EB with the "key around its neck" in his description. Managed to defeat him by using a handful of purples; my elec aura and attacks drained him of END, which helped, too.

I found two "Spectral Knight" allies who didn't say anything when I picked them up. Scrolling back in my chat log, I think they may have said:

[NPC] Spectral Knight: I serve the one who wears the amulet of Bal-Thoom.

...near the beginning of the mission, possibly because each of them has no guards and thus was "freed" instantly upon entering. May want to have them guarded by Outcasts, or else move the "I've been rescued" message to the "I've been stranded but you found me again" text.

Debriefing: The debriefing is from Teremex, which sort of makes sense (but visually is weird because the contact is still Desdemona). He promises to meet up with me to swap the crystals for the diamonds. My danger sense is tingling at this remark. "cemetary" should be "cemetery" here.

Mission 5
Briefing: Desdemona is suspicious of this meet-up too, but for her, diamonds > all, so off we go. This briefing is a little short, could maybe use some more writing here. "cemetary" should be "cemetery" here.

Mission title: "Cemetary" should be "Cemetery".

Mission entry popup: I thought this would be a CoT trap, but it looks like the Outcasts have shown up to mess up the deal. "cemetary" should be "cemetery". "screaming for your blood and head" sounds very awkward ... I think either "screaming for your blood" or "screaming for your head" would work, but "blood and head" sounds very weird.

Found and defeated Tunguska, who had good duakig (if a little depressing, since he's pretty upset that I've messed up all his plans to be a hero and kicked his puppy besides). He was an interesting looking custom Outcast.

Found Teremex, who was held captive by Outcasts. He said:

[NPC] Teremex: There you are. Did you bring the crystals? Your diamonds are hidden nearby. Lead the way, please.

...before I actually rescued him. He shouldn't say "Your diamonds are hidden nearby. Lead the way, please." until I successfully free him from the Outcast guards.

Leading Teremex to the door completed the mission. I am impressed that he didn't actually double cross me; who would've thought! The exit for this outdoor map is a little awkward in that it is tricky to find a spot that counts for completing the Teremex objective without actually zoning yourself out; there's not really a good way to solve that other than changing maps or making the "diamonds" objective something else.

Debriefing: The contact's response to finally getting the diamonds is pretty funny.

Souvenir: nicely written. Minor nitpick: souvenir calls your arc "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friends", but the arc's actual title is "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" (no S at end). "travelled" is usually spelled "traveled" in USA; acceptable spelling in UK though. "headquarter" should be "headquarters".

Overall
I thought this was a pretty well done arc. I like the way Desdemona is portrayed throughout the arc (though, either fix her grammar errors or make it clearer that this is an affectation of speech from very early on). I liked the way Outcasts are used; you don't see them very often in AE story arcs, and I feel their attempting to redeem themselves by being heroic is consistent with Frostfire's back story. I thought the dialog throughout the arc was well written and entertaining. Causing angst for the final Big Bad guy by killing his housepet was a nice touch.

I do feel that some of the briefings could've used a little more writing, and there were a number of minor typos/minor grammar errors. Gameplay-wise, I liked how most of the missions had several things to do, to keep them interesting. I did find it a little awkward to backtrack to find Firezone in mission 2 and to have to Defeat all in mission 4.

Overall it was a good arc, and the issues I found were relatively minor. I gave this arc 5 stars.


----

My queue is currently:

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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)

Thank you very much for your review.

Most of the typos and grammar errors are intentional, since they were supposed to be Desdemona's accent. In my mind she's actually putting up an act of being even more foreign and exotic than she really is.

I wish I had your eye for details and typos. I'll put your work to good use cleaning up this arc when I inevitably have to fix it after i16 messes it up.

Thanks again for the review.

PW, I notice I'm getting up there in the queue. I was hoping to have you take a look at a new arc for me, but I've been out of circulation lately and haven't had a chance to write it up. Therefore, unless I post otherwise between now and the time you do your review, why don't you take a look at #193451, "The Key and the Chain." I *have* soloed it with various characters of level 25 and up, but I don't recommend soloing it with a low-damage character below level 35. You'll see a better mix of enemies if you're around 30; above that, you'll see only customs in the final mission. Finally, please note that I've repeatedly made a couple of changes to the arc that just won't stick: I've added a description to the contact and made the optional rescue objective in the final mission required. Thus, I'd appreciate it if you could hunt up that last objective, even if I still haven't gotten that change to stick yet.

Also, if you could post a link to your review of my arc #30242, "The Love Talker," I'd appreciate it. The arc was getting near-constant play a couple of weeks ago but now seems near-forgotten.

The Amazing Rat Race review
Arc ID: 1144
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Origin Story, Drama
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-29
Warnings: EBs, high level enemies forced to a lower level

The premise seems to be helping a "Crey cleaner", whatever that is (a janitor?). The contact is a custom character in a uniform I don't recognize. I played a 28 archery/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact introduces himself, and tells me he's worked with Statesman, so I should trust him. This actually seems rather suspicious; the fact that he TELLS me that he can be trusted immediately makes me question whether he can be trusted.

The contact wants me to beat up one of his employees and bring him back. This is heroic? The "I'll use my judgement" mission accept message was a good response, though.

Inside the mission, I ran into some Crey janitors, who I think were nicely repainted normal Crey.

There was a "lever" object (actually, a parking meter) that I left alone, then an "Employee Records" computer that I couldn't click, getting "You can't complete this objective yet".

I went back and destroyed the lever to see if anything would happen, and it generated a new objective of "Defeat ratters".

Black Ratter's description, "mating a lab rat with a Flaming Bat'Zul. It is assumed the Bat'Zul was female"...this is funny, but I'm pretty sure Bat'Zul is the name of a specific demon, not a generic demon type, so "a Bat'Zul" doesn't quite make sense. Maybe use the name of a generic CoT behemoth or something.

The description of Fairgo's power is quite funny. He fled after I rescued him from the ratters, though.

After rescuing Fairgo, the Employee Records glowy became active, and I could click it. This gave be "Fairgo's employee record" clue, and simultaneously completed the mission, which gave me the "Fairgo explains" clue. It might make more sense for "Fairgo explains" to be awarded when you rescue Fairgo (since he leaves immediately after that).

The sequence of triggered objectives in this mission is neat, and the small map size makes it so there isn't too much running around required; however, I think there needs to be better motivation for why the player should destroy the lever, and why you can't access the computer records (which are visible, but not clickable) until the very end. Right now it doesn't seem obvious why you are forced to do things in this particular order; needs some explanation.

Debriefing: So I end up explaining that Fairgo "escaped". It looks like the idea behind this arc is that you are now subtly sabotaging the contact's evil plans. A potentially interesting spin.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to go capture Fairgo at an orphanage.

Inside the mission: apparently this orphanage is run by the Family! The mobs make some sympathetic noises about helping Fairgo out. This being the case, I'm not quite sure why they are hostile to me.

Found and fought Matron Holicapo, whose dialog and clue were all pretty funny.

I like all the fun extra objects in this map, representing toys and baby cribs and such.

Found the Orphan Records which gave a clue pointing to where Fairgo came from.

I like the mission exit popup that helps reiterate what's going on and why you bother to keep talking to the contact.

Debriefing: Seems too short, really. The "Unless.." at the end seems a bit disjointed; I guess it is meant to lead into the next briefing.

Mission 3
Briefing: Hmm, the contact wants to hire me to clean rat cages. This seems very weird, considering at the end of the last mission he wanted to "fire" me from .. whatever I was doing for him. Why would he hire me for a different job? Also, he recognizes that I'm a superhero; why would he believe that a hero would be interested in cleaning rat cages? Even for giant, mutant rats.

Second part of briefing: The story seems to let me refuse the rat cage cleaning job. The contact continues to try and talk me into doing it. But I now have a mission that seems unrelated to anything the contact wants.

Inside the mission: So I'm looking for Fairgo at this veterans hospital. But weirdly, it's a veterans hospital that caters to Void Hunters and Quantums... that's kind of weirdly surreal.

Wing Quantum Raider's description, "efectiveness" should be "effectiveness". (I *think* this was custom text on a renamed PVE mob, but not sure.)

I like the medical equipment and the shadow cysts you have placed in the mission to help it seem more hospital like. You might consider using Mother Mayhem's sanitarium map for the hospital? Though the tech lab isn't bad. I suggest you also give some dialog to the various mobs guarding the objects, or to the many patrols roaming this map. Maybe have them complaining about unique ailments that only quantum gunners would ever have; like getting beat up by kheldians, or how they almost nabbed a kheldian but some tanker got in the way. Stuff like that. As it is, the mission seems very silent.

I clicked a couple computers that generated ambushes that I fought off, then rescued a nurse who gave me a clue as to Fairgo's origin. The nurse also gave me her phone number in the clue, which is a nice touch; but it's too short to be a real phone number. Should add a digit.

I found Fairgo and proceeded to rescue him. One of his guards said:

[NPC] Void Seeker: Hi intruder! How are you doing?

....which is a very weird thing for an enemy to say. What is Fairgo doing here anyway? Trying to investigate his parentage? He should probably say (maybe in a clue after rescue). Fairgo runs off after rescue, which seems odd; seems like he should want to stay and learn more. Rescuing him completed the mission, and I got a "555-318-008" clue, apparently from calling the nurse. (Again, this phone number is one digit too short.) In this clue, "fighting & war" should be "fighting a war".

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact is willing to talk to me again, only now he no longer wants to hire me as a cage cleaner. He wants me to go after Fairgo again, only Fairgo has traveled to Laos to find his origin. This makes me wonder, why exactly is Fairgo so important to Rat Race? I thought he was just an employee that the contact disliked. This doesn't seem like it would be enough reason for Rat Race to hire people to go after him in another country. Also, Rat Race's attitude towards the player after mission 2 was sufficiently negative that I don't see why he'd try and re-hire me to look for Fairgo again.

I also have to ask, why does Fairgo travel to Laos? I just found out he's from Laos from the nurse in the last mission, and it's never said that I shared this info with Fairgo, and Fairgo didn't seem like he penetrated the quantum hospital deeply enough to find out on his own. I suppose he could remember Laos from when he was really little, but in that case, he would've had no reason to even visit the quantum hospital -- he could've directly gone to Laos. I think this may be a plot hole. Could be fixed with some explanation of how he gets the idea that he needs to go to Laos.

Inside the mission: So I arrive in Laos (an outdoor forest map) and start looking for Fairgo and his parents. There's a lot of the mutant rats around, sent by the contact to, umm... I guess eat Fairgo?

There are lots of "jar" glowies which are kind of neat looking but don't seem to be functional. The "crate" glowies are labeled "Crey Rat Labs" (in the window text; may want to also give a clue) and make sense for how the mutant rats got here.

Clicking the jars seemed pretty unrewarding; nothing happened after each click, until the third one (a marble jar) which gave me the "Jars on a Plain" clue, which still wasn't terribly informative.

I rescued a couple "Friendly Ratter" mobs that seemed to be allies; they had dark blast (which I don't understand) and claws (which makes sense). The mobs guarding the friendly ratters should have some dialog; if the friendly ones can talk, no reason the others can't talk too.

I found and rescued Fairgo, who explained the white rats were his friends, and warned against "nesting ratters", whatever those are. My objectives updated to include "Defeat the nesting ratters". I'm not sure why they need to be defeated in particular; is nesting somehow causing problems?

I found and rescued Mr Bahn. Weirdly, though Mr Bahn says his wife was eaten by rats, he also gives me a clue called "Mrs Bahn's tale" which says "Mrs Bahn immediately recognized Fairgo". But Mrs Bahn should be dead based on Mr Bahn's story? Seems a continuity error.

Rescuing Mr Bahn triggered a new objective of "Defeat Pha Xiong", which I think I am supposed to defeat because he's oppressing Mr Bahn somehow.

I heard a few Proximity Mines saying "CLICK" which was nice and ominous, but I never did see them.

I found and defeated "Chief Nesting Ratter", who gave me the clue "Fairgo's real mummy?" This describes a mummy who recognizes Fairgo somehow and then falls down and dies. But I never saw a mummy at all - just more rats. So where did this come from? I wonder if maybe this clue is connected to the wrong objective. Perhaps there should be either a body bag glowy or a custom mob that looks like a mummified corpse. Also, "dessicated" should be "desiccated".

Found Pha Xiong, who spawned as a Tsoo boss for me. His description says it's just the astral form of Pha Xiong; this seems unnecessarily complicated? I'm in Laos as it is, no reason we couldn't have a physically present Tsoo boss.

Pha Xiong's dialog is actually pretty fun though, and he says things that actually make it work for him to only be here astrally.

Mission exit popup: Nice summary of the mission, but it says I "solved an ancient mystery" (I guess what are the jars for?) but I don't believe I ever got a clue that explained the jars. Maybe they had something to do with the missing mummy.

Debriefing: apparently as a result of my investigations, somehow the contact has been demoted to rat cage cleaner (the job he previously offered me) and has the Tsoo, Family and Nictus all after him. Kind of funny; though, I'm not quite sure why they're all after the contact. Would it make more sense if they were after me, since I'm the one who busted up the Family orphanage, the Nictus hospital and the Tsoo thing in Laos? Maybe needs some explanation saying how they somehow figured out that I was "working" for Rat Race.

This is a neat mission, but seems messed up somehow, with the inconsistent dialog and clues (was Mrs Bahn eaten by rats or did she see Fairgo? where was this mummy? what was the secret of the jars?). I wondered if this was a result of some editing mishap where some plot elements got incompletely changed.

Mission 5
Briefing: Seems very short. Could use some more text. It looks like the idea is that we go dig Rat Race out of the Crey Rat Lab.

Inside the mission: I like the variety of options that the mission gives you, to "lure Rat Race outside OR feed him to the ratters OR just abandon him".

I found Rat Race; his description and biographical story were pretty fun. I beat up 2 or 3 ratters and clicked the computer and this seemed to complete the mission. The glowy didn't give me a clue or anything. The text box says I looked up Rat Race's employment record, and saw that he was scheduled to clean rat cages for a very long time; I'm not quite sure what my finding this information out accomplished.

This seemed a little anticlimactic; I almost wonder if it would be better to cut this mission and have mission 4 be the finale, and in mission 4's debriefing, elaborate on the fact that Rat Race got demoted to rat cage cleaner, making that the point where Rat Race gets his "just desserts".

Debriefing: Rat Race says "You win! But someday you'll see!" I like winning, but not quite sure what I did. I'm guessing that I got him in trouble so he has to clean rat cages? Maybe explain this a little more clearly. Also, whatever happened to Fairgo? Did he stay in Laos?

Overall
I thought it was neat to track Fairgo's background story to the various scenes at the rat lab, the orphanage, the quantum VA hospital and Laos. Each of those locations was creative and fun and had interesting custom mobs staffing them.

I'm a bit baffled at Rat Race's motivation. It's not really well explained why Rat Race has such a huge grudge against Fairgo; I can believe that he might want to have someone beat up a troublesome employee while Fairgo's in the Crey rat lab, and even have thugs chase Fairgo around the city a bit....but to have someone follow Fairgo to Laos? I think Rat Race needs to have a stronger reason to hate Fairgo to do that.

It's also weird that Rat Race would hire a hero to rough up Fairgo (does not seem very heroic); and after Rat Race "fires" you after mission 2 (for failing to rough up Fairgo), it doesn't seem consistent for Rat Race to keep employing you in missions 3 and 4. Needs more explanation, I think.

I actually liked looking into Fairgo's background story; but with plot continuity problems and the finale being rather anticlimactic, I felt I could only give this 3 stars. I hope you think that's fair.

I do think there are some pretty easy steps you could do to improve - clearing up the inconsistencies in mission 4, and giving a better explanation of Rat Race's interactions with the player, would help a lot IMHO. Hope that helps.

---

My queue is currently:

@Djinniman - The Key and the Chain 193451
@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
@Venture - Splintered Shields 253991
Zamuel - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967 (re-review)
EvaDestruction - Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black #161629
twelfth - Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)

Thanks Policewoman for the review! The arc's been out there for a really long time (since I14 beta) but this is only the second review with detail it's ever had (total of 32 plays). Your focus on detail is great and found some problems, but you also need to look at misisons not in isolation, if you're going to enjoy the plot development. I'll start with the very useful parts of this review:

• M1: A cleaner is a janitor. I'll remove references to 'cleaner' for Uncle Sam.
• M1: The objectives were recently reordered in missions 1 (and 3) to be linear / less backtracking. That caused the two issues you found: I'll give you a reason to destroy the lever early, and I'll move Fairgo's clue to himself.
• M1: Bat'Zul is also the name of a Villain Group. But I'll make it a "flaming imp" to reduce complexity.
• M3: I'll add more dialog to the hospital. I've never seen dialog from Voids or Quantums before, and was going for "silent assassins". They'll say things like "Shhh".
• M3: I can fix the Quantum typo since I had to recreate all the Quantum critters as customs (I16 removes all the Quantum possibilities).
• M3: I'll extend the phone number by one digit, to 555-531-8008.
• M4: I already fixed "Mrs" to "Mr" following ArrowRose's review.
• M3/M4: I'll clarify why Fairgo went to Laos, it might have been lost when I linearized the objectives on the M3 map.
• M4: "dessicated" should be "desiccated" A typo! I'll fix it.
• why exactly is Fairgo so important to Rat Race?
  A good question! I had no reason, the person Rat Race is modelled on never seemed to have a reason. But there had to be one (before he got fired, woohoo). I will add it to the Employee Record Clue in the 5th mission. In case you don't play this again: "The Crey psychologist determined that Rat Race actually hated running the company's rat labs. He resents Fairgo because Fairgo actually seems to enjoy what he does. At least, everyone tells him so. He never actually met Fairgo face to face! It would seem fitting punishment to have Rat Race clean cages until he has the company's best interests at heart."

• M3: I won't use the Mayhem hospital. This is a clean, well-run hospital.
• M4: There's a lot of the mutant rats around, sent by the contact to, umm... I guess eat Fairgo?
  From mission intro: I sent a shipment of our 'pets' after Fairgo to track him down. So eat, track, whatever big evil rats might do.
• M4: Clicking the jars seemed pretty unrewarding
  The jars on the real Plain of Jars in Laos are just as unrewarding. One clue to explain these is enough. More would detract from other much more important clues.
• M1: You find the contact suspicious, but you're fine with the terms of the Accept text. I assume then there is no issue here.
  
• M4: I heard a few Proximity Mines saying "CLICK" which was nice and ominous, but I never did see them.
  You're lucky, they're really nasty. Better if it's just ominous. No doubt some ratters encountered them first.
• M4: Perhaps there should be either a body bag glowy or a custom mob that looks like a mummified corpse.
  You can't control objective placement on an outdoor map.
• M4: Found Pha Xiong, who spawned as a Tsoo boss for me. His description says it's just the astral form of Pha Xiong; this seems unnecessarily complicated? I'm in Laos as it is, no reason we couldn't have a physically present Tsoo boss.
• Pha Xiong's dialog is actually pretty fun though, and he says things that actually make it work for him to only be here astrally.
  Pha Xiong, Tub Ci's mentor, has perhaps the strongest reason for remaining tied to Laos. Yet, in canon, and in his dialog, he is clearly in the Zig. An astral avatar is the simplest way to have him present.
• M5: This seemed a little anticlimactic
  Some players want to face Rat Race at the end. Others like the going-full-circle. If you just leave him there, that's your decision (and you said you liked having 3 choices).
• Debriefing: apparently as a result of my investigations, somehow the contact ... has the Tsoo, Family and Nictus all after him. Kind of funny; though, I'm not quite sure why they're all after the contact. Would it make more sense if they were after me, since I'm the one who busted up the Family orphanage, the Nictus hospital and the Tsoo thing in Laos? Maybe needs some explanation saying how they somehow figured out that I was "working" for Rat Race.
  The Tsoo were in Laos. The ratter crates in Laos (all four of them) are labelled "Crey rat labs". But you were fighting ratters in Laos. I don't think it's much to expect these villain groups to figure it out, from this, or from any other means (Crey Quantum agents, Family investigations, whatever). I'll ponder how how this can be more blatant, but really: how can one person Rat Race be expected to know how the villains knew?

• M1: "The description of Fairgo's power is quite funny."
  
  
  M2: "The mobs make some sympathetic noises about helping Fairgo out. This being the case, I'm not quite sure why they are hostile to me."
  You saw (but forgot) Fairgo has the power of "nice". You do not have that power. And you're a hero, and they're organized crime. Why would they not be hostile?
• M2: I have "Unless...", "You want to be a rat cage cleaner" linking mission 2-return and mission 3-intro. What is the problem here?
• M3: I assume the player recognizes that a 'rat cage janitor' job is a demotion compared with 'hero'. Would it explain why Rat Race still offers you a job, or why you decline?
• M1: It looks like the idea behind this arc is that you are now subtly sabotaging the contact's evil plans. A potentially interesting spin.
  M3: But I now have a mission that seems unrelated to anything the contact wants.
  So, what is the problem here?
• M3: [NPC] Void Seeker: Hi intruder! How are you doing? ....which is a very weird thing for an enemy to say.
  You saw (but forgot) Fairgo has the power of "nice". Weird is exactly how it should sound.
• M3: What is Fairgo doing here anyway?
  I explained that in dialog, clue and pop-up in mission 2, is that how you guessed it in any case?
• M1: Black Ratter's description, "mating a lab rat with a Flaming Bat'Zul. [now a flaming imp]
  M4: I rescued a couple "Friendly Ratter" mobs that seemed to be allies; they had dark blast (which I don't understand) and claws (which makes sense).
  What would explain, for you, the dark blast power?
• M4: The mobs guarding the friendly ratters should have some dialog; if the friendly ones can talk, no reason the others can't talk too.
  Only the ones that were friends with Fairgo learned to talk. How would the other ones learn to talk?
• M4: My objectives updated to include "Defeat the nesting ratters". I'm not sure why they need to be defeated in particular; is nesting somehow causing problems?
  Why do creatures build a nest?
• M4: Rescuing Mr Bahn triggered a new objective of "Defeat Pha Xiong", which I think I am supposed to defeat because he's oppressing Mr Bahn somehow.
  I presume you met Mr Bahn, since you rescued him (although it's feasible the mines messed this up). Did you read to his dialog?
• I found and defeated "Chief Nesting Ratter", who gave me the clue "Fairgo's real mummy?" This describes a mummy who recognizes Fairgo somehow and then falls down and dies. But I never saw a mummy at all - just more rats. So where did this come from?
  This is a neat mission, but seems messed up somehow, with the inconsistent dialog and clues (was Mrs Bahn eaten by rats or did she see Fairgo? where was this mummy? what was the secret of the jars?
  This: The ratters dug up a sealed jar - with a living mummy inside! It speaks to Fairgo, then dies. One typo (Mrs->Mr) in Clue that was fixed after ArrowRose review. In addition, the explanation is repeated (and further elaborated with some translation) in the souvenir. Did you read the souvenir?
• M5: Briefing: Seems very short. Could use some more text. It looks like the idea is that we go dig Rat Race out of the Crey Rat Lab.
  The villain is identified, he taunts you, you go after him. What still needs to be said?
• M5: what happened to Fairgo? Did he stay in Laos?
  Did you read the souvenir?

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
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More on 'The Amazing Rat Race'

OK, I'm gonna seem like a total suck up, but I am so overwhelmingly impressed by the level of professionalism and detail in your mission reviews. Thank you for doing this service, I can't even imagine the amount of time it takes to make such detailed notes as you play each arc. I still find typos and wording issues in my own arcs after all this time. And the way you word your opinions in such a professional way, even when certain qualities of some arcs may seem greatly sub-par, is a great lesson in being a true professional.

I'd venture to say that if a red-name ever got to see your level of work, you could be doing editing work for the them some day. I salute your abilities and accomplishments and look forward to your future reviews, and playing said arcs after your reviews and suggestions are given.

You rock!