I'll try yours if you'll try mine

Thanks for the review. Apologies for the late reply.

I've posted a more detailed reply in the arc's own thread.

Hi Police Woman

I played 1379 Axis and Allies.

I enjoyed myself

I would like you to play The Most Important Thing (266877)

Inhuman Resources - Inevitable Evolution at Work review
Arc ID: 298132
Keywords: Easy, Canon Related, Drama
Morality: Neutral
Level range: unclear? goes 1-54, 1-40, 40-54.

The premise is that you're a villain applying to join a villain group that is opposed to Arachnos. I played a 29 db/ninj stalker. The contact is a custom figure in a semi-formal looking suit.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted. The contact does a good job of introducing himself; it turns out he's the lawyer for the VG. Since he's a lawyer, I'm a little surprised he doesn't have me sign some kind of contract or waiver before he hands me the probationary VG items.

Second part of briefing: "resistence" should be "resistance".

I like that he says I can talk to him more about Inevitable Evolution, and then he actually does give me extra information if I do; I had just been thinking "Who is Inevitable Evolution and why do they oppose Arachnos?"

Mission objectives: "4 Fuel Exchanges" should perhaps be "4 Fuel Exchanges to sabotage". I'm not quite sure why the progress bar refers to Johnny Cash.

I found "Alert Squad Commander" and defeated him. His dialog was okay but didn't seem to have any special meaning. Defeating the Squad Commander didn't satisfy the "Cripple the Squad's Leadership" objective, which seemed strange to me. I ended up searching the map and found one Arachnos drone hidden behind a flyer that completed the mission when I killed it. This drone also gave me the "Souvenir from The Commander" clue; guessing that maybe it was part of the commander's group. You might consider making only the boss required to satisfy that objective.

In "Souvenir from The Commander", "iterinary" should be "itinerary".

Debriefing: The contact talks about "Operating as part of a larger team" but I didn't actually see anyone from IE during the mission. (Perhaps this makes more sense if this arc is run with a member of this SG, but you can't really assume that's always the case.) His comment on the lack of paperwork when dealing with Arachnos is kind of weird? Wouldn't Arachnos want him and the other IE members dead, regardless of paperwork?

Mission 2
Briefing: I think some time must've elapsed between mission 1 and mission 2 as now the contact says "I know you were working with the security detail on the Scrapyarder negotiations"; this was a little jarring, I assume this was meant to have happened off-camera at some point. So now we're helping to work out some kind of agreement between the Scrapyarders and the Cage Consortium, and something has gone wrong, so I need to go help.

Second part of briefing: "Its our first directive" should be "It's our first directive".

I like the "Locate the Negotiators. Roughing Up Cage is a Bonus" title. The objective of "3 Punish Cage's Strike Breakers" should maybe be "3 Strikebreakers to punish".

I found and rescued an IE hero named Strange Attractor; I liked his pedantic dialog:

[NPC] Arachnobot: Alright old man, tell us how you got here.
[NPC] Strange Attractor: Opinions vary on the exact process, but essentially a supermassive event at the beginning of time--


Kashira rescuing Strange Attractor

After rescuing him I got a new objective to find his wife, who is apparently held captive here. We end up teaming up against the mix of Arachnos and Cage Consortium inhabiting this warehouse.

I found a couple "Cage Negotiators?" body bags that I clicked, but it didn't update the "5 Negotiators to find" objective, which seemed confusing to me. Maybe I'm only supposed to find the live ones? Not sure.

Later I found some steel drums labeled "Negotiators" apparently containing messily dead scrapyarders which DID update the "5 Negotiators to find". Clicking the drum gives me some description in the Global chat box, but maybe should give me a descriptive clue as well, since it's easy to miss messages in the spammy chat box, and other team members won't be able to see the message that you got. I also think maybe the objective should either be to find all the negotiators (whether body bag or steel drum), or else it could be revised to be "5 Scrapyarders to find" so it would be understandable that the body bags don't update the objective.

Found a wooden barrel containing some gruesome remains, that satisfied the "Find Strange Attractor's wife" objective. You definitely should get a clue for clicking this.

Something I did apparently spawned a Security Chief objective that I had to backtrack over most of the map to find. Defeating him ended the mission, though. It also gave me an "Arachnos Hit List" clue which suggested Arachnos was wiping out both Scrapyarders and Cage Consortium, for some reason. This seems kind of odd because the mission had both Cage Consortium and Arachnos in it, and they didn't seem hostile towards each other.

Debriefing: Although nicely formatted, I felt the debriefing underplays the impact of the murdered negotiators, and especially Strange Attractor's wife. I sort of expected the contact and/or Strange Attractor himself to be shocked by this development. It's mentioned that Strange Attractor wants to join IE now; while this makes sense, I would've expected more reaction from him resulting from his wife's murder.

Mission 3
Briefing: a lot of nice detail here. I think it assumes I've joined IE now; perhaps this should've been made clearer earlier on. A newbie member apparently is out for revenge against the people who killed the Scrapyarders. I'm told that I should "look into this further"; seems reasonable. "foriegn" should be "foreign" here.

I'm apparently to bring him back while minimizing collateral damage.

Once I arrive it turns out there's more IE members to rescue than just Pulsar Force; perhaps this should've been mentioned in the briefing? Found and rescued Filha de Inhansa, a stormy ally.


Kashira rescuing Filha de Inhansa, who nearly kicked the bucket

At this point I got joined by a friend playing a dark/wp brute, so I had to pick up the pace a bit, and the rest of my notes are a little more sketchy.

We seemed to get hit by both Longbow AND Arachnos ambushes, which was a little strange but I guess IE is hated by both.

We found and rescued Pulsar Force; now my objective is 3 fragments to obtain. I thought I started with the objectives to rescue Pulsar Force and 2 other IE members? I've rescued Pulsar Force and Filha de Inhansa, what happened to the other member to rescue?

We found several computers that gave clues but didn't count towards the "3 fragments of code" to find, which was a little confusing. I think they were triggered by rescuing Pulsar Force, who I encountered in the middle of the mission, and some ended up spawning near the front of the mission in the area I had already cleared. This meant we had to backtrack a lot; once we got the last segment near the front of the mission, we had to backtrack again to click the secured mainframe, which spawned in the back of the mission. This seemed like a lot of backtracking; the Cage Consortium patrols (I think maybe were triggered?) helped keep it somewhat interesting, but rearranging the objectives to cut down on the backtracking would be nice.

Mission 4
From the clues found previously, we determine a ship of press-ganged workers is bringing slave labor to the Rogue Isles to add to the Cage Consortium's work force. We're sent to liberate this ship.

Cryopulse is mentioned in the briefing as someone who went ahead of us and we lost contact to her; I kind of think finding her should be one of our initial objectives? Since we know she's here. Instead the initial objectives seem to be to link up with Strange Attractor and Pulsar Force. Why don't we have an objective to rescue the slaves? That is the ultimate goal of this mission, after all.

We found Strange Attractor and he had some decent lines:

[NPC] Strange Attractor: My repriocity has no perceivable frontiers, reprobate! Annihilation rewards your cruelty to my wife!

I like his manner of speech, but "repriocity" isn't a word. Maybe this is a mispelled "reciprocity", but that doesn't quite make sense in this context. I suggest one of: acrimony, animosity, antagonism.

[NPC] Strange Attractor: Astonishingly paragon punctuality! Such serendipity is your hallmark, Kitten Puncher

Paragon is a noun, but you're using it as an adjective here. (I picture Strange Attractor using long words, but using them correctly.) Perhaps something like "Your fortuitous ingress is astonishingly opportune." Also needs a period at the end of the line.

Rescuing Strange Attractor triggers a new objective of saving Inhansa. I'm not quite clear on why finding her is triggered by finding him; is there a reason I wouldn't know that I need to save Inhansa at the very beginning of the mission? I think she was part of our strike team, no?

Likewise rescuing Pulsar Force triggers Cryopulse as an objective. Why isn't finding Cryopulse an initial objective?

Inhansa actually got beat up by a Cage patrol in mission 3 and my brute teammate commented that she was "back from the dead". I told him she probably used an Awaken.

One of Cryopulse's guards says:

[NPC] Tarantula: Anyone got a screwdriver? These armored leggings are locked down, & I want a taste of his "hero".

I think "his" should be "this" here.

Rescuing Cryopulse triggered the final objective, which was to defeat Captain Mako and "rescue the slaves". Mako spawned as an EB for us and I thought he had great dialog, and was a pretty fun fight. Ironically he placated me during the fight, which I was somewhat indignant about (though, to be fair, I was playing a stalker too).


Kashira fighting Mako as allies watch with awe (or maybe slow-to-aggro AI...let's say it's awe)

No actual slaves were present during this mission that I could see. Consider adding some "slave worker" hostages that the player rescues during the mission; this would help add to the impression that you're really rescuing a ship full of captives. As presented, the only people I rescue are the 4 IE allies.

Debriefing was nicely written and left me with a good feeling of accomplishment.

Overall
I thought this arc was a good "recruitment" orientation for the IE villain group, which I understand was the arc's main design goal. The briefings were well-written and I liked the various IE allies and particularly how Strange Attractor and Pulsar Force were both connected to the story.

I did think it was odd that IE is a villain group, but everything they are presented as doing (sabotaging Arachnos, helping the labor union against the Cage Consortium, and stopping the slave shipment) seems pretty heroic. Why does Longbow consider them a terrorist group that they attack on sight? Perhaps IE should be shown doing some shady activities in order to more clearly place them in the "grey" area. As presented, I have to wonder why they aren't considered a hero group.

I felt that mission 1 seemed rather disconnected from the rest of the arc; it doesn't tie in with the labor issues that missions 2 through 4 deal with, and doesn't have any clues or NPCs that are relevant to the rest of the arc. It also seems like there's something of a "time jump" between missions 1 and 2, which makes it feel even further disconnected. I understand mission 1 is meant to be somewhat introductory, but I think the arc would be stronger if this mission tied in a little better. Alternatively, you could cut this mission; but, I do think it helps to have a mission where the player is "recruited" to IE, so I'd lean towards keeping it in some form. Perhaps you could meet one of the minor IE characters that you run into later (maybe Cryopulse? she has the least screen time currently) and/or you could find some clue that leads into the Cage vs Scrapyarder labor standoff.

The gameplay in general was mostly good; possibly a bit excessive on the use of triggered objectives, but not too bad. I did think the use of glowies in missions 2 and 3 was a little awkward (multiple kinds of barrels/computers, not all of which count towards the objectives).

I liked the arc overall, especially the later missions. I wanted to rate this arc around a 4.5; the nice final mission caused me to err on the generous side. I ended up giving it 5 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Gypsy Rose - In Pursuit of Liberty 221702 (re-review)
@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352
Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)

Hey PW, I just ran through Teen Phalanx Forever! (As I told you, I couldn't stop laughing!) Definately 5 Stars, and you really should put this arc in for the AE awards.

I don't suppose you could take a stab at my newer arc when you have the time, #334016 The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web. I really could use an some (or any) input on how to make this arc even better (or if you feel it's a bad arc, just a good job ripping it to shreds).

Thanks in advance,
@Aoide Muse

Thanks for taking a look at the arc, you were extremely generous in your rating, so I'll do what I can to make sure that the arc is brought up to deserve it. I find it hard to believe I left as many typos in the text as I did, but I'll be changing those ASAP.

As for your comments:

Mission One:

I'll be changing this around, including changing the crawl bar text (no one else has ever found it funny) and the boss encounter (a few tests reproduced your problem; which means it should be changed).

The contact talks about "Operating as part of a larger team" but I didn't actually see anyone from IE during the mission. .... His comment on the lack of paperwork when dealing with Arachnos is kind of weird? Wouldn't Arachnos want him and the other IE members dead, regardless of paperwork?

The "larger team" references the reason you're at the landing pad, that you're covering the escape of other IE members (offscreen) by sabotaging the flyers. As for paperwork, the contact means legal jurisprudence that would probably be required in Paragon City when a hero would have been fighting Arachnos. "Dealing with..." in this case meaning "thwarting the schemes of..." Probably should be clearer and I was sort of aware of the clunkiness of the statement. I just couldn't think of a intelligent way of saying, "Boy it's great that we can be fighting Arachnos without the court system and legal oversight! Wheeee!!"

Mission Two:

Good points on the objective titles, I'll tailor those. I thought that I had during one of the testing builds, but I noticed that other several changes had reverted when I ran the Arc when it was still a few slots down on your list. Some of these might be left-over uncorrected reversions that I missed.

I'm fairly certain I have a good amount of room on this arc, so I will try to put in some short clues to repeat the chatbox information on the collection of each of the Scrapyarders. And yes, you're absolutely right about SA's wife, that should give a clue - even if a narration of his reaction.

...so it would be understandable that the body bags don't update the objective.

This is a naughty trick I'm pulling on the player, causing you to expect that the body bags are the real objectives - while the actual objectives are different items. After all, Cage doesn't treat the Scrapyarders like humans when they are alive, why should they dispose of their bodies any differently? Only the Cage employees get anything like a proper burial.

...the mission had both Cage Consortium and Arachnos in it, and they didn't seem hostile towards each other.

Well, considering how reprehensible Cage is in canon, and how much they live on a Laissez-Faire attitude and keeping their heads down, I sort of figured that the remaining Cage guards would keep their mouths shut so as not to draw attention from their Arachnos overseers. Maybe a quick patrol text could insert something to explain this. Also, the clues in the next mission are supposed to suggest that only very particular Cage employees were targeted.

It's mentioned that Strange Attractor wants to join IE now; while this makes sense, I would've expected more reaction from him resulting from his wife's murder.

This was a conservation of space issue. There was only so much room in the debriefing to render information. Also, the contact is relaying this information to you second hand. You can imagine that SA's discussion with Mr. Perkins was a little more emotional.

Mission Three:

Once I arrive it turns out there's more IE members to rescue than just Pulsar Force; perhaps this should've been mentioned in the briefing?

It should have been, the briefing mentioned that TWO people used the transportor (i.e. Pulsar Force and Inhansa) when Pulsar Force hijacked Andrew Perkins' authorization codes.

As for the rest of the comments: yes, yes, yes. I know. This mission was the hardest one to keep the interest of the player as it is just a linked series of Fetches. Yet, I was trying to stuff in a lot of clues in order to bring the plot forward without resorting to an infodump. Everything in the mission and all the chatbox info is generally relevant. Unfortunately, yeah, the issue of backtracking has annoyed everyone (even if I thought it was clever that you didn't know the computers you passed would later be relevant). So, I might have to suck it up and jostle around the spawning points for the sake of convenience.

During the testing phase of the arc, I found that this mission ran out of steam pretty fast - which meant padding the action with more patrols and two Longbow ambushes. This was intended to reinforce that IE's actions ("heroic" they might be in intent) are not condoned by the authorities in Paragon City - which is less of a plot issue and more something related to the VG's RP Lore, which means that I might be able to dump it since it doesn't contribute to the plot (although I think it's a good atmospheric detail).

Mission Four:

Cryopulse is mentioned in the briefing as someone who went ahead of us and we lost contact to her; I kind of think finding her should be one of our initial objectives? Since we know she's here. Instead the initial objectives seem to be to link up with Strange Attractor and Pulsar Force. Why don't we have an objective to rescue the slaves? That is the ultimate goal of this mission, after all.

This was a judgment call. If you make Cryopulse the first objective, wouldn't that mean that the mission is over now? The contact didn't truly know if she was onboard or not, so he logically could not have asked you to find her. From a metaplot standpoint, of course the player knows that she's on the ship (otherwise why mention her?), but there's no way for the contact to have definitively known it. Also, I needed a way to justify that you didn't start off at the door with your allies and had to rescue them (fog of war & battle confusion being the reason).

I'll be changing SA's text (again), bowing to your better ear for language. "Acrimony" works much better, as does your alternate rescue text.

Okay, here's the issue with the allies and objectives:

1. Each of the allies has a job. Strange Attractor is Control and Defense buffing. Pulsar Force is some Ranged Damage with some Off-Tank potential. Filha De Inhansa is some Ranged Damage/Debuffing, Buff/Heal, and light Control. Cryopulse is straight melee damage and your tank.

2. There was a lot of testing on this mission, it was the second one I designed because it was the easiest. No clues were necessary to write and it's a rail shooter to the boss. Still, I couldn't control where the allies spawned in specific. I would have liked it to have spawned reliably where you get Ally #1, Ally #2, Ally #3, then Ally #4 all in a tidy chain with no backtracking in order to make sure you got them all.

When I did it like that, it never worked right. Someone always spawned behind you and most people would just keep plowing "forward" through the mish and come to the EB/AV without one of the allies and be at a disadvantage.

So, I decided to break up the allies into Ally A1, Ally B1, Ally A2, Ally B2. SA would tell you that he (in the battle confusion) saw Filha and knows where she is, and Pulsar would tell you that he saw Cryopulse further along (thusly confirming that she's actually there, also that he's a noob and can't remember to use people's codenames). And Cryopulse is last because I figured that it was best to have the Tank being as fresh as possible before the EB/AV

Aside: Lord, people loved to hate on Pulsar Force in the testing teams. I thought he had a cute Silver Agey/Bronze Agey origin story, but man the testers thought he was The Scrappy of the arc. Anyway.

So, the succinct answer is: MA mechanics. It was the most reliable way to make sure that a solo player would manage to get all the allies and have them with as much health as possible by the time to got to the end.

Kashira fighting Mako as allies watch with awe (or maybe slow-to-aggro AI...let's say it's awe)

Actually, it is slow-to-Aggro AI. Those Inhansa and Attractor (OTP!) are your support allies, so I have them set to Defensive so they don't run all over the map and get their butts fragged. Pulsar Force (in the background) and Cryopulse (whom I assume is just offscreen to upper right) are set to aggressive and operating as intended.

No actual slaves were present during this mission that I could see.

Correct! I believe the intro pop-up text says that you can hear them pounding to get out from inside the cargo containers. Those empty containers you saw? They used to have slaves in them, which is why Mako is talking about cannibalism in his pre-aggro text.

Overview:

I did think it was odd that IE is a villain group...seems pretty heroic.

This is a metagame issue. IE was founded back when CoV & CoH were still separate games from each other, and the players who founded it wanted to have an anti-heroic, terrorism-for-justice SG for their characters - but were all pretty much redside. So from an morality standpoint, they are sort of heroes, but with very non-heroic methods. It's not really seen here and is something that would be established with a PC who would be recruited into the VG from an RP standpoint (e.g. the RP team would be narrating that the enemy critters were vindictively murdered rather that "defeated" or "arrested").

I felt that mission 1 seemed rather disconnected from the rest of the arc...

Yeah, I know. It was important to me during the design stage to have a "first job" mish where the PC is given a basic task before they are entrusted with more important goals (unlike other Arcs where your PC is suddenly and automatically well respected enough to join the Freedom Phalanx or something). Because I knew that the plot was going to develop considerably after that first mission, it was also important to just get it overwith fast (thus the tiny, tiny map). One of the other changes while this arc was on your shortlist for review was to insert the "Souvenir from The Commander" clue - which mentions that the Commander was having a "Meeting with Cage Goons", sort of foreshadowing the rest of the plot.

I could drop the mish and replace it with something that better establishes IE's outlaw status with respect to the heroic community and such (maybe a mini bank mish to resupply the IE coffers), but that would be a pretty major overhaul in the MA editor (since we can't "overwrite" local files to the published live arc). Otherwise I could unpublish the whole arc and republish it (it has less than ten rated plays), but I'd feel like a cad asking you to rerate it.

Actually, I'd like your opinion. As far as that first mish: Should I:

1. Tailor the existing mish on the same map and somehow shoehorn in some dialogue about Cage?

2. Redesign the mish to be something that highlight's IE's outlaw status in Paragon and reinforce that they are pretty harsh "Robin Hood" meets modern terrorist organization?

3. Redesign the mish to start something out with Cage and the worker strike entirely? This would be more difficult because I'd have to find a good, short map that wouldn't be repetitive or troublesome. I wish the very small Sharkhead Scrapyarder Camp map was available, but I can't find it.

4. Leave things as they are?


As always, thank you so much for the detailed and extraordinarily helpful review and criticism.

You are invited to enjoy "An Arachnos Slumber Party". Arc # 335317 by @Zamuel

Word of warning, the first mission will have substandard XP

In Pursuit of Liberty re-review
Arc ID: 221702
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Canon Related
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 45-54
Warnings: EBs, Extreme EBs, Extreme Bosses, Extreme Lieutenants, Enemies with custom powers

The premise is to help a child turn into a hero. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on difficulty +0 x0. The contact is Ms Liberty. This is my second run through of this arc, so I may refer back to some of my earlier comments.

Mission 1
Briefing: Seems to be the same briefing as my previous run through, so my same comments apply (see previous review). Needs editing; she still rambles, she still inexplicably says "there's not much time!" when you're about to travel back in time. I still wonder why Ms. Liberty doesn't save the girl herself, since she IS a hero after all?

I like the change in the objective names. I also like that the bad guy's name has changed, but I do still think there are way too many people named "Liberty" in the story; I'd really suggest changing some of them to reduce confusion, if you can.

I rescued Agent Liberty and with her help rescued Little Liberty and beat Vito Marcone, the mission's boss. Vito's description could use some work, currently it says "Vito is the most evil of all the Family leaders. He was once sent to prison by Statesman. So, he hates him and all he represents." These lines don't quite work together; "the most evil" and "sent to prison" are kinda different in tone. I imagine Statesman sends a lot of bad guys to prison, so that wouldn't be something that proves Vito is especially evil. Perhaps just drop the "most evil" part and say "Vito was once sent to prison by Statesman. Ever since, he's hated Statesman and all he represents."


Police Woman and Agent Liberty saving Little Liberty from the Anti-Liberty League


Still not quite sure why the Family has a "Family Tree" in the safe; it still contradicts the "Note to Vito" which has MAL say that Vito doesn't need to know why the child is important.

Debriefing: It's kind of immersion breaking for Ms Liberty to remind you to read your clues; I'd suggest cutting that line. This debriefing is pretty short and could use some more writing, too; maybe Ms Liberty could explain a little more about the significance of saving little Liberty.


Mission 2
Briefing: This mission is still basically the same as the first one, go back in time to rescue little Liberty. Since it is established by the "Family Tree" that the little girl is actually the grand daughter of Miss Liberty, I have to ask, why didn't Miss Liberty or Maiden Justice or Statesman himself save little Liberty?

I still don't think "Find the Treasure" is a good title for this mission. As I wrote before, the hero's main motivation should be to save the girl.

The mission basically plays identically to my first run through it, so my same comments apply. It still needs a bit more to do in it, and I still don't think stealing a costume would really prevent someone from becoming a hero.

Mission 3
Briefing: Seems identical to my first run through.

I still think the mission title of "Find the Book" is odd; the main goal should be to rescue the girl. Maybe the contact should explain why the book is important. But in the actual briefing, Ms Liberty basically implies the book isn't important, so it seems weird that finding the book should be a required objective.

On this run through, the Evil Garden Dwellers spawned kind of weirdly ... there were a lot of grey-con level 45 Devouring Earth, and just a few level 49s. This may be a bug in how MA is spawning mobs, not sure. On the bright side there were no Devouring Pyriss spawns.

I rescued the girl, beat up Fern Fatale, and found the book. I still think "display case" is the wrong choice of glowy for the book, it should be a bookcase graphic.

The journal says that Liberty Rose is "destined one day to defeat MAL"; where is this prophecy from, anyway? The journal is just supposed to be Miss Liberty's diary, and she doesn't have precognition or anything.

Mission 4
Briefing: Into the future to find Liberty Rose's swords. Since Liberty Rose is grown up now and becoming a hero, why doesn't she get her swords herself, instead of having her aunt send someone to get them? That would be more dramatically appropriate for a vision quest to find and fulfill your destiny.

Inside the mission, there were a bunch of Rogue Fortunata mobs that spawned at 42 instead of 50 for some reason.

I found the swords in a coffin by the city hall; I'm still puzzled as to why you used a coffin graphic for the swords. Wouldn't a weapon rack be more appropriate?

I rescued Statesman after finding the swords. But when I free him, he says:

[NPC] Statesman: Thanks! Take this note and the swords to Liberty Rose. They are hidden near the ruins of City Hall.

...which doesn't make sense considering I found the swords first. Maybe should be rewritten so it makes sense either way.

I still think it is weird that Statesman (a) is being held captive by 2 minions that would never really be able to capture him, and (b) does not seem worried that all of Paragon City has been destroyed around him and occupied by evil villains.

Mission 5
Briefing: I still think it is kind of weird that Liberty Rose, despite having her costume AND her swords now, still needs me to rescue her, and needs me to beat MAL. This really undermines her "destined one" status. I mean, if she is "destined" to defeat MAL, shouldn't she beat MAL on her own? As it is, it seems more like I am defeating MAL.

I see some back story was added for MAL's motivations, which is nice. It's all presented in the form of Ms Liberty's briefing, though; would be nicer to learn it along the way during the arc (maybe via clues or something), rather than having it all simply told to us near the end.

I freed Liberty Rose (I skipped Agent Liberty and Liberty Storm) and fought MAL. Liberty Rose was an EB and MAL was only a Boss, so this was actually a pretty easy fight; I think maybe MAL should be at least the same rank as the allies.


Police Woman and Liberty Rose against MAL and his robots


Overall
Although I did see some changes you made in response to my feedback, it seemed like there were a lot more things that I had problems with that were basically the same between both runs. So I'm a little puzzled as to why you asked me to look at it again; I still have a lot of the same concerns.

I still believe the use of time travel in this plot was confusing. It's still confusing to have 6 characters named Liberty in this arc. I still don't understand why Ms Liberty doesn't go help Liberty Rose herself.

My biggest problem with the arc right now are plot problems. The initial premise of missions 1 and 2 (where you go back in time) doesn't make sense to me; I don't find it believable that Ms Liberty, Miss Liberty and Statesman would all forget about their niece/granddaughter/great-granddaughter and neglect to rescue her for 7 years (until I go back in time to help). I'm still kind of unclear on what Liberty Rose's "real" origin was, before MAL started messing with it? I kind of think the idea is that Liberty Rose would've become a real hero if it weren't for MAL, and I'm intervening only to counteract whatever MAL is doing to mess up her origin ... or is this the idea? As it stands, having me find all of Liberty Rose's stuff for her, rescue Liberty Rose, then killing MAL for her, doesn't seem to fit with the prophecy that she (not me) is destined to defeat MAL.

To fix these problems would require changing the plot quite a bit, so I'm not sure you would be OK with that. For example you could avoid the question of why Ms Liberty (and friends) don't go back in time to help by making the contact someone else; or maybe Liberty Rose is a "long lost" relation that none of the heroes knew about, or maybe MAL somehow erased all memory of Liberty Rose from her relatives' minds. Or you could cut the "back in time" missions entirely and start the first mission in the present. Something like that; as it's currently presented, it just doesn't seem to make sense that one of the many heroes that Liberty Rose is related to, hasn't saved her in the intervening 7 years.

I do think some of the background details have improved since my last run, but I still think the plotting needs work, and a lot of things were still unchanged, so many of the comments I made in my previous review still apply. So I felt I still should rate this arc the same, 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

---

My queue is currently:

@The Cheshire Cat - Astoria in D Minor #41565
@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352
Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Astoria in D Minor review
Arc ID: 41565
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Horror
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 20-29

The premise is a horror arc based in Dark Astoria. I played a 23 storm/psy defender on difficulty +0 x0. The contact is a boombox-type radio.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted and good introductory text that helps set the mood. "Irine" seems a strange name though; did you maybe mean "Irene" or "Irina"? "She stops suddenly" should perhaps have a period (or other punctuation) after it. "Romero street" should perhaps be "Romero Street" (note capitalization).

Apparently Irine is in trouble and I go off to rescue her.

I like the mission objectives, they sound neat.

Inside the mission, there's a mix of "Unusually Small Zombies" and "Banished Pantheon" zombies. Perhaps they should all be Banished Pantheon, just some of them happen to be unusually small? I kind of wonder why the custom zombies are necessary; I imagine there is something ominous about the Unusually Small Zombies that has yet to be revealed. The description of the "Small Zombie" mobs seems very terse, perhaps could use more text.

Found Irine Benson pretty quickly; she was in the WSPDR News faction (probably left over from renaming Amanda Vines) but probably shouldn't be. I like the "Haley's Photograph" clue that she gave me.

Irine promptly left after being rescued, but the mission didn't end, despite the mission being titled "Find Irine" (which I've now done). You might consider giving the mission a title that is more general that still is valid even after rescuing Irine. Like "Investigate 121 Romero Street" or something.

The computer was nearby and checking it triggered "Find the other hero" as a clue.

Deeper in the mission I found Event Horizon, a hero being guarded by Council. Hmm, what are Council doing here? Weird. Fighting the zombies guarding him, I suddenly remembered that Banished Pantheon are horribly psy resistant. Doh. It takes me about 8 blasts to kill a minion. This was a poor choice on my part (for bringing psy damage into a Banished Pantheon arc).

I eventually sawed through the zombies with my psy attacks and rescue Event Horizon, who has no idea where Irine's daughter is, but "knows a guy" if I help him out. I end up leading Event Horizon out and he gives me "Schism's Photograph". This strikes me as a little odd; he has photos of his contacts? Maybe a business card would make more sense. Event Horizon says Schism is eccentric but does not explain why he thinks Schism can help find a girl that neither of them has ever heard of. I suggest maybe he should say a little about why Schism can help here?

Debriefing: Irine talks to me over the radio and suggests I ask Event Horizon for help. But I already talked to Event Horizon and he just passed me off to another contact, so not sure that her suggestion is really helpful.

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, apparently Irine is more persuasive than my character, as apparently she has talked Event Horizon into helping. (Seems a little inconsistent with his behavior in mission 1 where he just wanted to pass me on to another contact.) She also suggests that I follow up with Schism, but I still don't know why anyone thinks Schism can help with this.

Inside the mission: apparently the address that Event Horizon gave me is that of an abandoned hospital, which seems a little weird. In my objectives I have "7 Survivors to Find" but I'm not sure why; survivors of what?

I almost immediately found Schism, who is in a faction called "Ally Heroes"; not sure if this is meant to be his supergroup or what. Perhaps he should be in "Astoria Heroes" or something similar. In his description, "tendancies" should be "tendencies". His costume makes him look rather villainous, like maybe a Hellion; not sure if that's your intent.

Schism does mention "Sometimes I find survivors" and asks me to rescue some people, which makes more sense for why I need to find 7 survivors now. Maybe "7 Survivors to Find" should be triggered from rescuing Schism?

I've also successfully met Schism (the mission title is "Meet Schism") but the mission has not ended; perhaps the mission title should be rephrased to something more general that will still apply even after rescuing Schism.

I found several glowy body bags labeled "Find Survivors" that, when clicked, satisfies a "Survivor to Find" objective. This doesn't quite make sense; I think the body should perhaps be labeled "Body" instead, and the fact that it gives me the clue "Dead Civilian" makes it clear that this unfortunate fellow is not, in fact, a "survivor". Perhaps "7 Survivors to Find" should be "7 Refugees to Find" or something similar.

I found a live survivor and freed him; Schism is a big help with my DPS problem while doing so. The hostage gives me the "I saw a little girl..." clue.

Rescued a man in a brown suit who was in the "Diplomat" faction; probably because he uses the American Diplomat model. He should probably be just a Civilian.

A bit later I found a guy in a blue uniform named "Civilian" but in the "Soldier" faction, which is contradictory. He should perhaps be in the Civilian group and use a less militant model. After rescuing him I suddenly have "Find Haley!" as objective; I think this was triggered by rescuing the soldier but I'm not sure. I didn't get a clue at the time; maybe I should, though -- currently I'm wondering why has this objective suddenly appeared?

On the final floor of the map I find Haley and rescue her. I'm actually rather relieved, I half expected her to be another body bag, or, worse, an Unusually Small Zombie.


Helen and Schism rescue Haley


For some reason I need to lead Haley out, even though I didn't have to lead any of the other hostages out. Schism and I fight our way through an ambush to get Haley out.

Debriefing: Haley "runs off" into the mist after her mother, and I lose her, but her mother (or the radio pretending to be her) seems to think she wasn't there.

Mission 3
Briefing: Irine wants me to chase after Haley. She mentions strange things she saw in the fog.

Although the mission is titled "Rescue Haley" I soon find a body bag labeled "Haley" that gives me the "Haley's Body" clue. It seems a bit of a leap to immediately assume Schism is responsible, but I guess it works since I lost sight of both of them at the same time and he's known to be unstable.

I find and defeat Schism, which completes the mission (despite the mission being titled "Rescue Haley"). He has some pretty nice insane dialog.

This map seemed huge considering there's really only 2 things to do on it, but the map fits the Astoria theme. The various static mask spawns help give it some color; though, they don't really seem to be connected to the plot with Haley (unless I missed it). I would've thought maybe Haley's death should've fed them energy, or woken them up or something?

Debriefing: pretty nice writing of Irine's response. I'd suggest changing "wanders off into the fog" to "wanders away from the fallen radio" though, since talking over the radio, I wouldn't see her wandering into the fog.

Mission 4
Briefing: So I'm looking for Irine in the fog, and "somehow" I decide to search the graveyard and find a crack in the side of a mausoleum, which leads me to go into it. This seems like a bit of a stretch to get me into the next mission, but we'll see where it goes.

Second part of briefing: the text here (just "Go down") seems very abrupt and terse compared to the rest of the writing. Perhaps it should be a little more descriptive.

For some reason the mission title, "Search the Mausoleum", is in bright red. Not sure what the significance of that is, yet.

Mission entry popup: Full of weird symbols. What does this mean? Is it just supposed to be weird? Likewise, the first objective in the nav tool is just weird symbols. "Find me" is an intelligible objective, but "It's your fault" is not.

This map is very foggy with poor visibility making it painful to explore, but it fits the setting.

I did find "The Great Herald" who I defeated, satisfying "Find me". It said:

[NPC] The Great Herald: When the great feast comes we will all become angels

This line should have a period at the end of it. I don't really understand much of his dialog and how it connects to the story thus far. He either had a Tuatha de Danaan (in the "Heralds" faction; different than the "Great Herald" faction, but maybe should be the same) ambush or with him (hard to say due to poor visibility). The Tuatha had the normal Tuatha description, may want to change it if it's meant to represent something else.

Found and fought "The Great Clown". The Clown's dialog was very cool and very creepy:

[NPC] The Great Clown: Helen Highwater, a psycho, and a little girl walk into a graveyard...
[NPC] The Great Clown: Ten minutes later, Helen Highwater walks out alone.
[NPC] The Great Clown: Because she murdered them. Get it?

For some reason defeating him satisfied "It's your fault" and gave me the "It's your fault they're dead, Helen Highwater" clue. I like the crazy font changes in the body of the clue. I'm not quite sure why I'm supposed to think I murdered the others, other than crazy Clown says I did. It IS kind of freaky though.

A little later I hear (paraphrased)

[NPC] Rotting Husk: ҸҦЂҨЋҜЏЮѾ҂ҖҒҸҦЂҨЋѾ҂ҖҒҸЉѪѺ ѺЉЉ??
[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Î*νακείμενοχωρίςνόημαγιατ

So the zombie and the Coralax are speaking the same language? That's weird. Exploring the mission further, I never do find the Coralax.

But I find a telephone. And it's ringing. This is very weird.


A surreal discovery

The phone isn't clicky, but it has some interesting dialog, and destroying it satisfies the garbled mission objective and gave me the "Phone Conversation" clue where Event Horizon expositions about the dead god Mot buried beneath Dark Astoria.

This mission left me confused and creeped out, but I think that was the intent. The mission exit popup sums it up perfectly:




Mission 5
Briefing: On the radio with Event Horizon, he blames himself for what happened to Haley (with some justification considering he sent us to Schism). He wants to show me something, but won't explain what. My danger sense is tingling at this point but I have to see it through. After I accept the mission, the second part of the briefing is even MORE ominous.

Mission title: "Meet Event Horizon" doesn't seem like a good name for this mission, considering I've already met him before. Though it occurs to me that perhaps it has some kind of double meaning, and I'm about to find out I actually did murder everyone and have crossed a moral event horizon without realizing it.

Mission objective is also "Meet Event Horizon". I'd suggest you reword either the mission title or the objective in order to avoid repetition.

Just inside the building I find Event Horizon. He's being guarded by two civilians who appear to be hostile. It occurs to me that perhaps killing the two civilians is intended to cause me to immediately cross the moral event horizon.

Looking back at the morality of this arc, it's labeled "Heroic". As a hero, should I attack the civilians? Probably not. But...there is no mechanical way to not do so other than quit the story arc.

I have a bad feeling about continuing here, but decide to see it through. As I'm attacking one of the civilians, he says:

[NPC] Civilian Mace: Why are you attacking us?

...reinforcing the idea that doing this is wrong. Meanwhile, Event Horizon says:

[NPC] Event Horizon : Ah, Helen Highwater, right on time. Have you seen what's happening here?

There is an extraneous space at the end of Event Horizon's name. But freeing him gives me a "Find Event Horizon again" objective, so perhaps this extra space is some sort of trickery to allow Event Horizon to appear multiple times in this mission. After I rescue him, he also says:

[NPC] Event Horizon : A question we should always ask ourselves: Is what I'm doing right? Whose side am I on?

This is a question I already had. At this point I'm regretting freeing him. I'm pretty concerned about what the next objective will entail.

While exploring I heard some people and zombies say:

[NPC] Dry Chamber: Urrrrr......
[NPC] Civilian Mace: Get ready! They're coming!
[NPC] Dry Chamber: Hold the barricades! Don't let them get to the children!
[NPC] Civilian Mace: Barhah!

I *think* the third and fourth lines are mixed up and the zombie should say "Barhah!" and the civilian should say "Hold the barricades". Though what's happening here is sufficiently surreal that I could be wrong.

Thankfully, the next encounter with Event Horizon, I find him guarded by some zombies, that I don't mind beating up. Event Horizon's dialog goes on about philosophy, but his monologue about predestination and the illusion of free will is ultimately only a justification for amoral behavior. Ominously, he says that Schism understands this.

I find Event Horizon for a third time and now he's a Nictus in dwarf form, and we fight.


Helen reaches the final Event Horizon


His dialog tries to mess with my mind, saying:

[NPC] Event Horizon: You see monsters as people... people as monsters...

Now I'm even less sure about whether that transposed dialog catch was right or wrong.

Debriefing: insane babbling from .. Haley? possessed Haley? Not sure. "inacosmbliss" maybe should be "inacosmicbliss". There are three spaces in between various words in the insane rant that doesn't match the formatting of the rest of the text, which is devoid of spaces; not sure if this is deliberate or a typo.

Souvenir: I love the souvenir. Good choice for the item to use and it's really well written.

Overall
I had a lot of trouble deciding what I thought about this arc. I felt it didn't make sense and parts of it confused the heck out of me, but at the same time I thought parts of it were compellingly evocative and disturbing.

I don't like that we never really succeed at rescuing Haley, but this isn't an unreasonable outcome by the conventions of a horror story.

I really liked the creepy atmosphere that the story set up, the constant references to the obscuring fog that blankets everything, and the generally downbeat tone that all the writing does a good job of conveying (EVERYTHING is negative except "Haley is smiling", which is repeated twice and ends up seeming even more disturbing by comparison).

Several elements of missions 4 and 5 made me really wonder: did I really murder Haley? Is it really my fault? Am I about to do something completely unredeemable? I started thinking about whether Event Horizon's name had some kind of symbolism, and his philosophical diatribes made me think further about what was going on. I was a bit disappointed that these themes were not really explored more deeply, actually. The clown accuses me of murder, and Event Horizon gets me to attack the innocent civilians, but there's really no follow-up to either action that either vindicates me or damn me for what I did.

Mission 4 was quite confusing to me; I didn't get the significance of the hieroglyphics in the speech, and the dialog from the NPCs seemed calculated to be confusing but didn't seem to have much deeper meaning. I'm guessing the Great Herald and lesser Heralds were meant to be minions of Mot or something, but I'm not sure what all the other stuff meant. Escaping via the telephone sort of didn't make sense at all either, but also seemed pretty cool; I lean a little more towards the "cool" side for that element. It was a really surreal and confusing mission and the arc seems somewhat self-aware of this fact. It's pretty neat, but I think it needs to have more significance. Is this the dream of the sleeping dead god? Is this some kind of acid trip in my own subconscious due to my guilty feelings over failing Haley? What's the significance of the Coralax and the Tuatha and the weird symbol-speech? As presented, it's confusing and surreal and it felt like weird stuff was added mostly to make it more confusing and surreal. There is definitely some coolness factor to that, but I think it needs more meaning and/or symbolism.

The three encounters with Event Horizon in mission 5 were interesting, but really the first one was the best, and the later ones had trouble living up to that. This might be because I had worked myself up into a frenzy thinking that killing the civilians (to rescue Event Horizon #1) was the point where my hero finally crosses the line, and I truly "meet" the moral Event Horizon. I half expected to discover that all the zombies I killed were actually normal humans, or that I really did murder Haley and Schism, or some equally horrifying revelation. This scared the crap out of me, but what actually happened after that didn't seem nearly as scary as what I had been afraid of, so was a little bit of a let-down. (Stupid overactive imagination.) Event Horizon's final fight is okay, but I feel like it could maybe be better if it brought more closure to some of the loose threads. Among these are: what really happened to Haley, what it means to be killing the "civilians" in mission 5, and maybe what is motivating Event Horizon to do this anyway?

Also, what was the deal with the unusually small zombies in mission 1 anyway? I never saw them again and I had totally expected to find out that someone was reanimating small children or something equally awful.

Anyway, the arc was a thought-provoking experience. After much indecision, I ended up rating it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Baron von Doffen - A Surprise Fit for a Baron #318352
Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Thanks for the review! A few points I'd like to respond to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Mission 1 Briefing: Nicely formatted and good introductory text that helps set the mood. "Irine" seems a strange name though; did you maybe mean "Irene" or "Irina"? "She stops suddenly" should perhaps have a period (or other punctuation) after it. "Romero street" should perhaps be "Romero Street" (note capitalization).

...No matter how many people run this they always find more typos. I swear they multiply like bacteria when I'm not looking. Also, "Irine" is how I thought the name is actually spelled, so that's stupid on my part. "Irene" is probably what I was going for. I think I'm probably going to leave that as-is just because it's used so many times through the arc that I'd rather not miss one and have it flip back and forth. I guess think of it as some weird esoteric spelling, like "Geoff".

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Found Irine Benson pretty quickly; she was in the WSPDR News faction (probably left over from renaming Amanda Vines) but probably shouldn't be. I like the "Haley's Photograph" clue that she gave me.

You mentioned this a few times and I'm glad you did; this is actually a relic from pre-I16 when you couldn't change faction titles without designing a whole new custom faction, which I didn't want to do since I would have had like, 8 by the end of it. I'd totally forgotten you can just change their factions in the objective text now, so I've gone through and fixed all those.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Irine promptly left after being rescued, but the mission didn't end, despite the mission being titled "Find Irine" (which I've now done).

Basically the way I was going with mission titles is they're the reason while you're in the building in the first place; you don't really know what's going to happen while you're in there and I don't want the titles to give away that anything else WILL happen, so I left them tied to the first objective.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Deeper in the mission I found Event Horizon, a hero being guarded by Council. Hmm, what are Council doing here? Weird. Fighting the zombies guarding him, I suddenly remembered that Banished Pantheon are horribly psy resistant. Doh. It takes me about 8 blasts to kill a minion. This was a poor choice on my part (for bringing psy damage into a Banished Pantheon arc).

The Council are kind of there as a MacGuffin to explain why Event Horizon and Schism are there (It's not well explained really, but they're meant to be partners). However, I kind of got an idea based on a later comment you made in mission 4 on a good place to re-use them.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Maybe a business card would make more sense. Event Horizon says Schism is eccentric but does not explain why he thinks Schism can help find a girl that neither of them has ever heard of. I suggest maybe he should say a little about why Schism can help here?

I added a line to the end of mission clue Event Horizon gives you explaining that Schism is looking for survivors, so he might have seen Haley.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman His costume makes him look rather villainous, like maybe a Hellion; not sure if that's your intent. Schism does mention "Sometimes I find survivors" and asks me to rescue some people, which makes more sense for why I need to find 7 survivors now. Maybe "7 Survivors to Find" should be triggered from rescuing Schism?

He's meant to be the kind of "Grr, Grimdark eeeeevil antihero" type people seem enamoured with. My goal with him was basically to take that concept and run it to the logical conclusion (Sure, he's good at slicing up monsters, but sometimes he gets monsters and people confused...). Also, the objective is another relic of pre-I16 when you couldn't link collections in a mission chain (Actually that might even be I15... I don't change objectives a lot). I've fixed it so they trigger after rescuing Schism rather than being present from the beginning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman I found several glowy body bags labeled "Find Survivors" that, when clicked, satisfies a "Survivor to Find" objective. This doesn't quite make sense; I think the body should perhaps be labeled "Body" instead, and the fact that it gives me the clue "Dead Civilian" makes it clear that this unfortunate fellow is not, in fact, a "survivor". Perhaps "7 Survivors to Find" should be "7 Refugees to Find" or something similar.

A lot of people comment on this, my reasoning is basically, they WERE survivors, you just got to them too late. It's meant to kind of tie in to Schism's dialogue about how he sometimes finds survivors after the Pantheon, and so much blood... it's subtle, but that's not a mis-phrasing on his part. It's meant to imply what he does to them. The body bags are meant to be an indication of that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman I found a live survivor and freed him; Schism is a big help with my DPS problem while doing so. The hostage gives me the "I saw a little girl..." clue. Rescued a man in a brown suit who was in the "Diplomat" faction; probably because he uses the American Diplomat model. He should probably be just a Civilian. A bit later I found a guy in a blue uniform named "Civilian" but in the "Soldier" faction, which is contradictory. He should perhaps be in the Civilian group and use a less militant model. After rescuing him I suddenly have "Find Haley!" as objective; I think this was triggered by rescuing the soldier but I'm not sure. I didn't get a clue at the time; maybe I should, though -- currently I'm wondering why has this objective suddenly appeared?

A quick explanation of this: The survivors are picked at random from the "Civilians" default group, the trouble is the game uses that as a catchall for every random NPC you ever meet in a mission, so they've got stuff in there like Tsoo tattoo artists, General Z, Big McLargeHuge from the TV missions, etc. Sometimes it can be a little mood-spoiling but I didn't want to have the player rescue 3 identical NPCs, and likewise I didn't want the player to get the "Rescue Haley" objective until they'd rescued the last of the NPCs (So separate objectives with different models is also out).

That's also why you got the objective after rescuing the soldier - the trouble is the way the game works with multiples of the same objective is it gives out the clue after completing the FIRST one, but chains objectives off the LAST one. I'd really like it if the clue came after rescuing the last guy, but I can't seem to get it to do that at the moment.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Although the mission is titled "Rescue Haley" I soon find a body bag labeled "Haley" that gives me the "Haley's Body" clue. It seems a bit of a leap to immediately assume Schism is responsible, but I guess it works since I lost sight of both of them at the same time and he's known to be unstable.

Some people have mentioned it's a leap, but actually originally that line wasn't there until I got a lot of complaints saying "How did I know it was Schism?" when the objective pops up. It's not my favorite solution but I ran out of room in the clue to go into more detail.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman This map seemed huge considering there's really only 2 things to do on it, but the map fits the Astoria theme. The various static mask spawns help give it some color; though, they don't really seem to be connected to the plot with Haley (unless I missed it). I would've thought maybe Haley's death should've fed them energy, or woken them up or something?

I wanted to use that map SOMEWHERE in this arc because the graveyard is such a big part of Astoria, and also because of the next mission where you go down inside the graveyard where Mot is buried. Originally most of those flavour mobs weren't there but I added them in because the map seemed WAY too boring with just the two objectives. There's actually quite a bit of detail in the "optional" objectives - they give you more dialog if you attack them. Basically, they don't much care about Haley or Schism, they're mostly there doing their own thing and only really care about you if you get in their way. I'll add more to this later - I want to get through my responses first before I go into detail about the plot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Debriefing: pretty nice writing of Irine's response. I'd suggest changing "wanders off into the fog" to "wanders away from the fallen radio" though, since talking over the radio, I wouldn't see her wandering into the fog.

I've gotten this response before, and to be honest, it is more accurate that way, but I felt like the line "wanders off into the fog" is more evocative of what's actually happening. Again, more on this later.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Second part of briefing: the text here (just "Go down") seems very abrupt and terse compared to the rest of the writing. Perhaps it should be a little more descriptive.

I'm guessing you write these stream-of-consciousness style, as later you seem to resign to the fact that this mission is not the type of thing to really explain anything :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman I don't really understand much of his dialog and how it connects to the story thus far. He either had a Tuatha de Danaan (in the "Heralds" faction; different than the "Great Herald" faction, but maybe should be the same) ambush or with him (hard to say due to poor visibility). The Tuatha had the normal Tuatha description, may want to change it if it's meant to represent something else.

To be honest, the Tuatha were kind of thrown in as I wanted something "Monster-ish". I got an idea from your comments though and replaced them with something that ties better into the arc. I am somewhat annoyed that "Worship" is not an option for enemy group starting animations, but oh well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman A little later I hear (paraphrased) [NPC] Rotting Husk: ҸҦЂҨЋҜЏЮѾ҂ҖҒҸҦЂҨЋѾ҂ҖҒҸЉѪѺ ѺЉЉ?? [NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Î*νακείμενοχωρίςνόημαγιατ So the zombie and the Coralax are speaking the same language? That's weird. Exploring the mission further, I never do find the Coralax.

They spawn off in a side room as a battle and it usually finishes before anyone ever finds it. I've also found it odd how the text never copies/pastes from CoH correctly, I guess it's just a weirdness of the font they use. As a note though - they actually AREN'T speaking the same language. It's gibberish either way when you translate it, but the Coralax are speaking with Greek characters, and the Pantheon and mission intro are... I think it's Cyrillic. I'm not 100% sure though.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman The phone isn't clicky, but it has some interesting dialog, and destroying it satisfies the garbled mission objective and gave me the "Phone Conversation" clue where Event Horizon expositions about the dead god Mot buried beneath Dark Astoria.

There's actually no phone clicky option, but the destructable version works too in my opinion, since I can have it spit out dialogue while you destroy it.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Mission objective is also "Meet Event Horizon". I'd suggest you reword either the mission title or the objective in order to avoid repetition.

Done. And I also changed the other two objectives because your comments gave me a great idea about a pun on "You've crossed Event Horizon".

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Looking back at the morality of this arc, it's labeled "Heroic". As a hero, should I attack the civilians? Probably not. But...there is no mechanical way to not do so other than quit the story arc.

This is intentional. Originally this mission was very different, and it was actually possible to avoid fighting the civilians entirely. At first I thought people were being very clever about that, but after a while I realized it kind of defeated the point of this mission if you don't HAVE to take any of them out. Event Horizon's line about being "Puppets" is meant to indicate the fact that despite the illusion of free will, the game constraints prevent you from doing or not doing anything the author of the arc doesn't want - short of just quitting and not finishing the story, anyway.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman There is an extraneous space at the end of Event Horizon's name. But freeing him gives me a "Find Event Horizon again" objective, so perhaps this extra space is some sort of trickery to allow Event Horizon to appear multiple times in this mission.

That's why it's like that, yeah. Old MA trick. It's not noticeable on the model but it shows up in the chatlogs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman While exploring I heard some people and zombies say: [NPC] Dry Chamber: Urrrrr...... [NPC] Civilian Mace: Get ready! They're coming! [NPC] Dry Chamber: Hold the barricades! Don't let them get to the children! [NPC] Civilian Mace: Barhah! I *think* the third and fourth lines are mixed up and the zombie should say "Barhah!" and the civilian should say "Hold the barricades". Though what's happening here is sufficiently surreal that I could be wrong.

It's intentional :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Debriefing: insane babbling from .. Haley? possessed Haley? Not sure. "inacosmbliss" maybe should be "inacosmicbliss". There are three spaces in between various words in the insane rant that doesn't match the formatting of the rest of the text, which is devoid of spaces; not sure if this is deliberate or a typo.

It's a typo. Most people don't even TRY to read that so I'm not surprised it took this long for anyone to spot it. However the text is currently sitting at 1001/1000 so I can't actually fix it. We'll call it she's just talking really really fast.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Event Horizon's final fight is okay, but I feel like it could maybe be better if it brought more closure to some of the loose threads. Among these are: what really happened to Haley, what it means to be killing the "civilians" in mission 5, and maybe what is motivating Event Horizon to do this anyway? Also, what was the deal with the unusually small zombies in mission 1 anyway? I never saw them again and I had totally expected to find out that someone was reanimating small children or something equally awful.

A lot of people seem to miss this, and I don't really blame them but it is kind of subtle, but the Great Herald is Haley reincarnated (Likewise the Great Clown is Schism, but most people seem to catch that). So technically you did kill her, but she got better. Also, mission 5 is meant to be filled with "Civilians", not just the ones guarding Event Horizon... if they weren't there then I'm going to need to go back and try to bug fix that. But essentially, the implication of Event Horizon's final dialogue is maybe you WERE killing civilians the whole time you were mowing down BP... or maybe you weren't. It's meant to be open to interpretation - I think the horror lies in the uncertainty; that people end up coming away thinking they MIGHT have done something horrible, but they just aren't sure.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Anyway, the arc was a thought-provoking experience. After much indecision, I ended up rating it 4 stars.

I'm actually very happy with the "I couldn't tell how I felt about it, but I ended up liking it" response (You aren't the only person to have said it). I think if people were too sure about this arc I'd have to change it until they weren't - it's meant to be as far from straightforward as possible, and I completely expected mixed reactions from the moment I published it.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick summary of the lesser emphasized elements of the plot, and maybe get some advice about how to work these in better, or if I should just leave them as-is (Since they're more setting elements than plot elements).

Okay, the very, very general plot is you're wandering around Dark Astoria for... whatever reason (Maybe you're farming magic salvage!) and you find the radio, which leads you to Irine and Event Horizon and gets you embroiled in a plot which is pretty simple "Rescue the survivors" until it all goes nuts in mission 4 and 5. That's basically the driving force behind the story, but I added in a lot of optional and somewhat hidden elements to reward people with more insight into the setting if they take the time to look around (Or if they stumble on it by accident - which I admit is far more likely).

Here's what's going on in Astoria (According to my story, obviously non-canon): The fog came first and trapped a lot of people inside Astoria. At first there were no BP, the fog rolled in and that was it. People then started disappearing in the fog, but still no BP. Later, the BP came in and started digging up the graveyard, raising the dead and clearly looking for something - they believe that their gods are buried in Astoria. Once the BP took over, that's when the hazard gates went up, trapping anyone who hadn't already left inside - this includes the Council, who when you meet them are in the process of trying to evacuate a base - Event Horizon was sent into Astoria with Schism to investigate the Council and try to figure out what they're doing there, but upon meeting survivors, he decides to assign Schism to finding them while he continues looking into the Council. The Council find him, and realizing they can use his hero ID to get through the hazard gates, try to kill him and take it.

This is the point where the player arrives on the scene, and I'm going to skip over the basic plot elements since they're pretty obvious and instead focus on the tertiary elements like the BP and Mot.

Essentially, what's going on is that the fog is Mot. Mot, being a cannibal god, covers the area in the fog and pretty much starts "Digesting" it all. Given that he's still buried however, he can only extend his influence as far as Astoria - so he brings in the BP, deceiving them into thinking that it's THEIR gods that are buried there, to free him from his prison. In mission 3 there are several lines of dialogue that allude to this, including a captive ranting BP shaman yelling that they're all being deceived, and the masks which yell "Rambetu, Lughebu!" (Two of the BP gods) when they aggro you say "No... Mot..." when they die. I tried to imply that the BP are terrified of Mot and would leave him buried if they realized that he was there, but most of them don't realize it, and those that do go insane (Well... MORE insane). They're afraid of him because Mot, being a cannibal god, is pretty keen on eating THEIR gods as well as everything else (The original biblical source for Mot has Mot threatening to devour Ba'al and also devouring his brothers).

So... that brings us to mission 4. I went with a kind of "Too deep" concept here, going with the Lovecraftian idea that exposure to an ancient god is too much for a human mind to withstand, so it drives them insane. This is basically what happens to the player in mission 4 - the mobs start speaking gibberish, objects which clearly don't belong there start appearing, and the UI in general just goes "Screw this, you're on your own buddy" and leaves you to Mot's whims. Mission 4 is designed to be crazy and confusing because it's the point when the player character goes insane, whether or not they realize it.

Mission 5 is an extension of that - You aren't as close to Mot as in the mausoleum so you regain some of your facilities, but things are still just... off. Civilians replace the BP, lines of dialogue are shared between both (Suggesting that what you're fighting could be civilians that look like BP, or BP that look like civilians, or maybe a little of both). It's meant to make you start to question the things you did prior to mission 4, which I see it did, so that's good :P. A pretty recurring theme in fiction when someone goes insane is that they claim they've "seen the truth", and I wanted the player to start feeling that in mission 5 maybe they've figured out what's REALLY been going on - except they haven't, because they're insane.

By the time you get the souvenir, the "Insanity" bit has essentially worn off, but you still get left with this whole uncertainty about what's actually happened.

At least, that's my interpretation of it. I left the conclusion of the arc very open and vague because I wanted to let people draw their own conclusions about what they'd experienced.

Anyway, I'm terrified of how long this post is going to be now, so in summary:
Thanks for the review! I really appreciate your feedback and already I've made a bunch of changes in response to some of the issues you had in the arc.

Your massive post reminds me: Did I mention I edited Speeding Through Time based on your review? I think I did, but either way I have now.

Thanks for helping me identify some places I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I didn't tone down Red Blur in the slightest since that's my favorite part of the whole thing and I won't ruin my own fun so nyah butI did change the way it works so that more of the objectives spawn as you complete others. You find the first one before all the others spawn and you find the bomb before you spawn Aeon. Though there's still the problem of being able to exit before his ambushes can show up.

Hmm. More tweaking may be needed, but you were a big help and I wanted to thank you again for that.

More on Astoria in D Minor

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Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat A quick explanation of this: The survivors are picked at random from the "Civilians" default group, the trouble is the game uses that as a catchall for every random NPC you ever meet in a mission, so they've got stuff in there like Tsoo tattoo artists, General Z, Big McLargeHuge from the TV missions, etc. Sometimes it can be a little mood-spoiling but I didn't want to have the player rescue 3 identical NPCs, and likewise I didn't want the player to get the "Rescue Haley" objective until they'd rescued the last of the NPCs (So separate objectives with different models is also out). That's also why you got the objective after rescuing the soldier - the trouble is the way the game works with multiples of the same objective is it gives out the clue after completing the FIRST one, but chains objectives off the LAST one. I'd really like it if the clue came after rescuing the last guy, but I can't seem to get it to do that at the moment.

You could perhaps hand-pick 4 (or however many) distinct "civilian" models to use, and attach the clue and the "Rescue Haley" trigger to the exact one you want. This would screen out undesirable random models and give you more control over the clue and trigger, but it's possible a player may find your "key" civilian before freeing all the others; not sure how much of a problem that is, though. You can try to place the important civilian in the "back" of the mission to mitigate that some.

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Some people have mentioned it's a leap, but actually originally that line wasn't there until I got a lot of complaints saying "How did I know it was Schism?" when the objective pops up. It's not my favorite solution but I ran out of room in the clue to go into more detail.

You lose sight of Haley and Schism at roughly the same time in mission 2's debriefing, so arguably even if you don't immediately suspect Schism, finding him to see if he saw anything would be reasonable. Perhaps you could phrase "Haley's Body" that way. Then if/when you find Schism, he can incriminate himself with his crazy dialog. Maybe defeating Schism would give you a clue saying he has blood on his hands. Only ... now the blood's on you! And it won't come off! Wait, did Schism kill her or did I? Aiiigh!

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I wanted to use that map SOMEWHERE in this arc because the graveyard is such a big part of Astoria, and also because of the next mission where you go down inside the graveyard where Mot is buried. Originally most of those flavour mobs weren't there but I added them in because the map seemed WAY too boring with just the two objectives. There's actually quite a bit of detail in the "optional" objectives - they give you more dialog if you attack them. Basically, they don't much care about Haley or Schism, they're mostly there doing their own thing and only really care about you if you get in their way.

That's cool. I noticed their dialog but I confess I didn't try to fight any of them; the BP were resistant to my defender's psy damage, causing me to stealth (with steamy mist) a lot to avoid unnecessary fighting.

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They spawn off in a side room as a battle and it usually finishes before anyone ever finds it. ... It's gibberish either way when you translate it

During gameplay I found it rather worrisome that I heard Coralax and never actually saw them. If you've a mind to, I think you could amp up this feeling even more by making a custom faction with repurposed low-level Coralax. But name the modified Coralax "Haley" (or maybe "Schism") and give the Coralax lines like:

Haley: Help! Help! They're right after me!

But then the Coralax get murdered by the Banished Pantheon or something, so the player thinks Haley is here (since you can HEAR her) but can never find her. (This might have the drawback of frustrating your players, though.) Perhaps change the mission entry popup to something like "You think you hear Haley's voice echoing somewhere in the catacombs...but...she's dead? You saw her body! HER BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!" I think this would be even more disturbing than the gibberish symbols.

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Originally this mission was very different, and it was actually possible to avoid fighting the civilians entirely. At first I thought people were being very clever about that, but after a while I realized it kind of defeated the point of this mission if you don't HAVE to take any of them out. Event Horizon's line about being "Puppets" is meant to indicate the fact that despite the illusion of free will, the game constraints prevent you from doing or not doing anything the author of the arc doesn't want - short of just quitting and not finishing the story, anyway.

I seriously considered quitting the arc when it looked like I was going to be forced to kill the civilians. I'm not sure why I no longer was thinking that we were "arresting" things; probably influenced by the mood. I ultimately decided to try it to see what would happen, but made up my mind that if Event Horizon #2 made me do something even worse, I would quit at that point.

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A lot of people seem to miss this, and I don't really blame them but it is kind of subtle, but the Great Herald is Haley reincarnated (Likewise the Great Clown is Schism, but most people seem to catch that). So technically you did kill her, but she got better.

I actually missed this. Can you make it a little more clear? Knowing the appearances of the Great Herald and Great Clown had more meaning would've made a big difference to me. I regret not getting a better look at their costumes. Are they undead versions of the Haley and Schism costumes? If not, maybe they should be?

Consider having the Great Herald's dying line (after the other routine ranting) be something like "*small voice* Why did you kill me?" or something similar - a moment of clarity from Haley before she is again submerged beneath the Will of Mot. Or perhaps after Great Herald dies, you get a clue like "Child's Shoe" or something that helps link the Great Herald to Haley.

With Haley cast as Great Herald and Schism as Great Clown, perhaps the player character should be given a cultist code name, too? "Great Harbinger" or something, then the bizarre entities in this mission might occasionally call you by this code name.

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Also, mission 5 is meant to be filled with "Civilians", not just the ones guarding Event Horizon... if they weren't there then I'm going to need to go back and try to bug fix that.

It actually WAS full of civilians; I tried to avoid killing them when possible, stealthing to each objective.

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But essentially, the implication of Event Horizon's final dialogue is maybe you WERE killing civilians the whole time you were mowing down BP... or maybe you weren't. It's meant to be open to interpretation - I think the horror lies in the uncertainty; that people end up coming away thinking they MIGHT have done something horrible, but they just aren't sure.

I did get this impression from what he was saying. I would've liked some closure to this plot thread, to know what really happened. This is perhaps a pet peeve of mine; I like to know what is happening, why I'm doing what I'm doing, why the bad guy is doing what he's doing, etc. It sounds like maybe your vision is that these should remain open questions, so the player never really knows for sure.

I did like the plot synopsis you gave in your reply; it helped improve my understanding of what happened. I do think it would be better if you could get more of that from the story itself; perhaps I missed some of this by not killing the optional bosses, and/or perhaps you could add some clues to optional glowies to expose the player to more of the back story. (In general while stealthing I'll skip fights that aren't needed, but probably will nab glowies even if they aren't needed.)

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So... that brings us to mission 4. I went with a kind of "Too deep" concept here, going with the Lovecraftian idea that exposure to an ancient god is too much for a human mind to withstand, so it drives them insane. This is basically what happens to the player in mission 4 - the mobs start speaking gibberish, objects which clearly don't belong there start appearing, and the UI in general just goes "Screw this, you're on your own buddy" and leaves you to Mot's whims. Mission 4 is designed to be crazy and confusing because it's the point when the player character goes insane, whether or not they realize it.

I think this is a cool idea; I'd lean towards using writing, dialog and clues to convey the notion that "You've gone insane" rather than fill text boxes with gibberish or mess with the UI. I'd include the player "in" on the idea she is insane, rather than present the player with random symbols and hope the player draws this conclusion. Your mileage may vary, though.


Anyway, it was a very interesting experience. Hope this all helps.

A Surprise Fit for a Baron review
Arc ID: 318352
Keywords: Challenging, Canon Related, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 32-54
Warnings: EBs, custom power selections

The premise is to help a supergroup provide security for some kind of global diplomatic summit. I played a 38 elec/SR scrapper with some IO bonuses. The contact is the City Representative.

Mission 1
Briefing: the text is nicely formatted and well-written. But the idea seems strange? The contact wants me to kidnap one of the representatives at the Global Summit? That seems contrary to the goal of providing security for the summit.

The contact rationalizes violating diplomatic immunity as avoiding "red tape". She further warns me that Representative Vann has police protection, so I'll have to fight PPD to actually capture him.

The whole idea of this mission seems decidedly unheroic.

Mission entry popup: "Pargon Police" should be "Paragon Police".

I got "The Two Global Powers" clue on mission start, that describes Global Heroics Supergroup, but I haven't actually interacted with any Global Heroics characters so far, so I'm not sure how this is relevant. The League of Rogue Nations info is a little more pertinent. "disatisfied" should be "dissatisfied".

I like the casual dialog that some of the PPD officers have though.

Found Representative Vann, but he's in a "captured" pose, which probably isn't right if the PPD are providing him police protection. The PPD does have some good dialog for when I attack them.


Representative Vann and his security detail


After I kidnap Vann from the police, an ambush of "League of Rogue Nations" occurs; they're fairly decent looking stormtrooper types. Strangely, they want to kill Vann too; but Vann is supposedly a representative from the League of Rogue Nations, so I wonder why?

Militia Engineer's description, "maintence" should be "maintenance".

In Vann's description, "Representative Vann, sees super-powered beings as threats", delete the comma.

Consider using a smaller map, since there's really only one thing to do in this mission (rescue/kidnap Vann). I ended up having to lead Vann through 3 sets of elevators to get back to the entrance. Not a huge dealbreaker, but I don't know that the mission NEEDS to be so big.

Debriefing: pretty decent, recapping the mission and some of the clues found. "There hasn't been any attacks" should be "There haven't been any attacks".

Mission 2
Briefing: I'm asked to stop a terrorist attack that Vann gave us some info about. "They wont be constructing" should be "They won't be constructing".

Inside the mission, I found and defeated Le Souverain, but despite the mission being titled "Defeat Le Souverain", the mission doesn't end because I still need to destroy the Bomb materials. You might consider giving the mission a title that is a little more general, so it still makes sense after defeating Le Souverain. Something like "Save Peru" or "Stop the bombing plot".

I like the extra dialog provided by the roaming patrol; it's not plot related but adds some local color.

I found the Bomb and destroyed it by hitting it repeatedly. This seems a rather unsafe way to get rid of a bomb, but I guess the Rikti bombs work the same way.

A clue dropped by Le Souverain hits at the location of more League of Rogue Nations villains, though it's phrased to make it sound a little too convenient that I got this clue. (Betrayal seems likely somewhere in this arc...)

Mission 3
Briefing: I'm sent to go after the villain base and beat the AVs there. The contact keeps telling me about things Mr. Sweden told her to pass on; I kinda wonder why Mr. Sweden isn't the contact instead of the city rep. (Treachery? OK, getting paranoid.)

Inside the mission, I found and hacked the System Access Point, giving me "The League's base of Operations: 46~12'N 6~" clue; this clue's name, while cool, is actually too long to fit inside the width of the clue that I'm given. May want to shorten it to fit.

Also in this clue, "League of Rogue Nation's" should be "League of Rogue Nations'". "Its underground, at the listed coordinates" should be "It's underground at the listed coordinates".

I wonder if "Militia Fearmonger" should be named "Militia Terrorist"? For the double meaning.

I found and fought Harvester, who had some interesting dialog about someone "setting him up". In his description, "sacrified" should be "sacrificed".

Found and fought Nachtbandenkampfer in the same room. For someone with such a very Germanic name, her dialog seems very American:

[NPC] Nachtbandenkampfer: Woah! Heroes attacking! Gents you know what to do!
[NPC] Nachtbandenkampfer: Hey, ouch! Somebody cover me!

...wondering if her dialog should be more formal or use German words or something? Anyway, defeating her completed the mission.

Mission 4
Briefing: The contact wants me to go assault the League of Rogue Nations base, but in the briefing "I" realize the Global Summit is in danger, so instead, I rush to defend the Global Summit. I think the intent here is that I realize all the clues thus far are meant to lure Global Heroics (and me) to attack the Rogue base, drawing security away from the Global Summit; but I think you may want to make this a little more clear in case the player doesn't get it right away.

I like the mission title, "Stop the Real Threat".

The mission entry popup mentions "The meeting room for W.O.S."; I think this previously was called the "Global Summit". Also "It" should be "it" in the second sentence.

"Defeat Le Souverain" is in the objectives, but I didn't know Le Souverain would be here (as far as I know, he should be in jail), so this is something of a spoiler. You might change this to "Defeat Rogue Nations leader" or something generic like that, so as not to give away that you fight Le Souverain again.


Thunder Girl vs Le Souverain


Surprisingly, Le Souverain is encountered pretty near the front of the mission; he has some dialog mentioning that hostages are in the sewer level. I was a little surprised defeating Le Souverain didn't trigger an objective (to find the hostages, or find the Baron he was talking to).

Down in the sewers I rescue Secretary-General Ban Ki-Suun, who is in the World Organizational Summit. Wasn't this called the Global Summit before this? I'd suggest standardizing on one name and using the same one everywhere through the arc.

Rescuing Ki-Suun down in the sewers gives me "A Paragon Sewer Map" as a clue, and he has a line of dialog thanking me. But it also changes my objective to "Defeat Baron Von Doffen". Neither Ki-Suun's dialog nor his clue refer to this Baron; so I'm not sure why Defeat the Baron should be triggered from rescuing Ki-Suun. I could understand triggering Defeat the Baron from defeating Le Souverain, since Le Souverain is actually talking to the Baron.

I had to backtrack all the way to the office part of the map to find Baron von Doffen. If you can set him to spawn closer to the objective that triggers him, that would be great.


Thunder Girl vs Baron von Doffen


His name is currently "Baron Von Doffen" but I believe would be more correct as "Baron von Doffen" (note capitalization). The Baron does have a terrific costume. In the Baron's description, "After a successful coup with Doctor Velocity the Leader of the League of Rogue Nations, the Baron became the accepted leader" ... this seems awkwardly phrased. I'd suggest reprhasing to something like "Baron von Doffen became the leader of the League of Rogue Nations after overthrowing the former leader, Doctor Velocity."

Also "One of Nosferatu's finest vampyr" should be "One of Nosferatu's finest vampyrs".

I beat up Baron von Doffen after a fairly decent fight, which completed the arc.

Debriefing: a decent wrap-up and the contact is suitably grateful that I "saw through" the plan. It seems that some other diplomats were kidnapped and spirited away before I got there, though.

Souvenir: a nicely written souvenir that summarizes the events of the arc.

Overall
I thought this was a good investigative story with well written briefings and good use of clues. It's nice that player sees through the elaborate plot instead of being scripted to be tricked by it. The dialog was okay; not great, but not bad.

Some problems I had: having the hero start the arc by fighting police and kidnapping a diplomat felt wrong to me. There is never any follow-up to the player's actions in beating up the police; I'd expect the police to issue a warrant for the player's arrest, or at least someone would need to do some damage control to explain why the hero was attacking the PPD. You might consider changing Vann's security detail to more Rogue Nation Militia, or Private Security Guards; and avoiding having the player fight police altogether.

There's a certain moral equivalency between the hero kidnapping Vann in mission 1 and van Doffen kidnapping the diplomats in mission 4; why is the former "Good" but the latter "Evil"? I could buy that the hero might be an "above the law" type who feels like she can ignore diplomatic immunity to arrest bad guys, but I think it's a big stretch for the group in charge of security for the summit to actually encourage you to kidnap someone from it. I'd feel a bit better about this premise if the player starts with a warrant (from Interpol or someone) to arrest Vann, instead of simply kidnapping him for interrogation.

The name of the summit was rather inconsistently portrayed; at various times it was called "Global Summit", "World Organization Summit", "World Organizational Summit", and "W.O.S." I'd recommend you pick the name you like best of these, and standardize all references to use the same expression.

The Global Heroics SG and their member Mr. Sweden are mentioned a lot by the contact, but their actual presence in the missions is zero. This made the Global Heroics references seem rather distracting without adding much, and getting a badge from Global Heroics at the end of the arc rang a little false for me, because I never even saw any Global Heroics characters, much less worked with them. I think you could actually edit them out of your story entirely, and use Longbow instead of Global Heroics where appropriate; this would make the story a little tighter. Even in the arc as presented, Longbow is the group that acts as backup for the player in mission 3 (not the Global Heroics SG). I suspect Global Heroics may be an actual SG that you are referencing, though, so you may be reluctant to cut them from the story. Alternatively you could increase their presence (maybe make the contact Mr. Sweden, or add some Global Heroics allies to some missions) so that they seem more relevant to the story.

Also, Baron von Doffen was never mentioned in the story until the last mission. If I remember correctly, the first reference to the Baron is by Le Souverain in the last mission. Considering the Baron is the Big Bad Guy of the story arc, I'd suggest mentioning von Doffen earlier in the story, perhaps in casual dialog or embedded in some of the clues. Basically give some foreshadowing / build up to the Baron being the Big Bad Guy of the arc, to make defeating him seem more of an accomplishment. As currently presented, Le Souverain is mentioned a lot more in the story than Baron von Doffen, which I don't think is your intent.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I gave this arc 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

Gryfyn - Trick or Treat #320225
SkarmoryThePG - Sky Kings' Ransom #232308
@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Thank you for the thorough and helpful review.

To be honest I haven't checked that Arc in a long while, and I realized it's not even telling the story I wanted to tell, which is obvious from your comments and corrections. I'm very grateful for the help with any spelling and I've already addressed many corrections you made, as well as rewriting the arc a little since I noticed that there were lots of plot holes.

You are right though, Global Heroics and The League are both a real Super Group and real Villain Group on Triumph, of which I am a member. Originally I would have had them introduced as a side part of the story, but I did not wish to steal the spotlight away from the player, so I cut them out except for in the background plot. Now that I've edited it, it should become clear as to why they are mentioned in name only.

I'll set myself up to play another one of yours and give it a thorough review in return as thanks.

My review queue is getting rather smaller, so I spent some time working on a new story arc, which I published last night:

Talos Vice
Arc ID: 338380
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-20
Description: An 80s instrumental blares as the camera pans over scenes of Talos Island: windsurfers on the water, the Talos statue, shoppers in Wentworth's, bikini babes, sports cars racing down the Argo Highway, a speedboat bouncing on the waves. A title card appears over the waters racing below: TALOS VICE

It's essentially a Miami Vice homage. Originally I wanted to write a story about street-level crime, and seeing Detective Croquette and thinking about the ability to recolor standard PvE mobs, it all kind of clicked. I made it a shorter arc (3 missions) because I wanted it to be quicker paced and accessible, and I also experimented with a different style of storytelling for the writing, which I hope works for this theme. The arc is quite new and could use player feedback. I'd particularly like input on:

* Is the final fight too hard? Too easy?
* It's meant to be a Miami Vice homage, but are parts of it over the line and into infringement?
* Does the writing style I used work? Or is it too weird?
* I place words in the mouth of the player in a few places; is this too much powerposing, or is it OK?
* Is the ending (final debriefing) satisfying? I found this hard to write, because I like the protagonist to "win", but the heroes "winning" is not in the spirit of Miami Vice.

Of course I'll count any plays through this new arc for the whole QPQ thing, too.

Thanks all! More reviews soon.

If I had time to run another one of yours, I'd hold you to our chat and ask for a re-play of CoW Part 1. Guess you're lucky it'll be awhile before I have time to do much more than check the boards a few times a day.

Could not find arc 320225 or anything with "Gryfyn" as author, so went on to:


Sky King's Ransom
Arc ID: 232308
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 20-24
Warnings: High level villains at low levels (but author's notes say these are non-combat)

The premise is to bring a criminal to justice, and Sky Raiders are involved somehow. I played a 26 rad/psy defender on +1 x0 difficulty. The contact is Justin Greene (an IP contact).

Mission 1
Briefing: Decently written; essentially a mission to defeat a Sky Raider boss by the name of Major Ransom. They're raiding some kind of warehouse but it's not explained what they're after there.

I like the "Maj. Ransom's dossier" clue that I'm given at the start, it gives some nice background info.

Inside the mission: I found a couple Sky Raiders taunting an Injured Warrior they had captured. He didn't seem required but I rescued him to see what would happen. The Warrior threatened to kick my butt, but was too weak to do it; he didn't seem to do anything more.

Found a couple glowy crates that I clicked, but they didn't seem to do anything (no clue, no objectives updated). My spam text box did mention it looked like they had been searched.

I found a Stolen Relic destructible object that had some Sky Raiders trying to break it, so I stopped them. I guess they were trying to steal the relic, but I'm not sure why; inspecting the Stolen Relic doesn't give any clues. Maybe it should have a more detailed description (currently just "This case holds an unusual item" which may be the default). It does look like the Sky Raiders are up to something, but it's still rather mysterious as to what.

Deep inside the mission I find another captured warrior, Aristodemus. He has pretty good dialog. After rescuing him, he offers to tell me what's going on if I help him escape the mission. My "Defeat Maj Ransom" objective is now replaced with "Escort Aristodemus out". Aristodemus becomes a lieutenant level ally; he hits pretty hard, though.


Yay, someone to tank for my defender!


We fight past an ambush and clear some of the Sky Raiders I had skipped over.

I quite like the "Aristodemus' words" clue that I get at the end of the mission, and the way Aristodemus is characterized here as an "honorable Warrior".

One inconsistency was that in "Aristodemus' words" he says "I can tell you where he was taken", but in Justin Greene's debriefing, he says "I think I can figure out where Ransom was taken. Speak with me soon." I should already know from Aristodemus's confession, though, shouldn't I? So what is Justin trying to figure out?

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, here Justin does say that Aristodemus gave up info about Major Ransom's whereabouts, so maybe the last debriefing was just worded oddly. Apparently Ransom is at a Lockhart Aerotech office, which neatly dovetails with the canon. I have to wonder, though, how does Aristodemus know that Ransom was taken there? Since Aristodemus was clearly stuck in the warehouse since the fight with Ransom. Perhaps mention that Aristodemus overheard some of the Sky Raiders say they were taking him there.

The briefing is decent, but it still seems to boil down to "Defeat Sky Raider boss and guards".

I found and rescued "Perfectly Normal Office Worker", who wasn't required, but his dialog was quite amusing. (I imagine he's what triggered the "high level enemies brought down in level" warning.) "Perfectly Innocent Office Worker" was fun too. Her dialog is substantially identical to Perfectly Normal's dialog, but this actually makes sense in this context.

Found a glowy body bag that gave me "Ransom's body" as a clue. I would think this would end the mission, but instead I have "Seek clues" as a new objective. Not sure why at this juncture, wouldn't finding his body normally close the case? I think there needs to be more explanation for why the player should still be looking for evidence, maybe some text in the "Ransom's body" clue that encourages the player to find out more.

Soon after I find the robotic Maj. Ransom (now a jump bot) and fight him; he was a bit troublesome for my defender, but defeating him (and his group) completed the mission. You might consider making him "Only boss required for objective", since it's a PITA to run down fleeing Porters.

I noticed a glowy crate labeled "spare parts" near where I fought Maj. Ransom, which I thought was a nice touch.

The popup message on mission exit is pretty funny.

Debriefing is well-written and I like that it asks some questions about the Sky Raiders uploading minds of dying soldiers into Jump Bots.

No souvenir? Could use one.

Overall
Good writing in the clues and dialog, and I like the many little side objectives and extra glowies/hostages that aren't required but add some color to the missions. I like the idea of telling the story of Ransom's transformation into a Jump Bot. I liked the characterization of the Warriors and the Perfectly Normal Office Workers. I liked that the arc was just long enough to tell the story it wanted to tell, and no more.

A few things I didn't like: each mission briefing, while decently written, basically boils down to "Defeat Sky Raider boss and guards" without a lot of reason other than, hey, it's a Sky Raider boss. This made the mission seem radio-mission-esque, at least until I got inside the mission and some of the nice extras were apparent. Some more definite motivation for why we need to go after Maj. Ransom (and not, say, Col. Burkholder or Lt. Blechley some other boss) would be nice.

I think you could perhaps provide more explanation in the first mission of what the Sky Raiders were after and why. From what I saw, they were trying to steal artifacts from the Warriors, but Sky Raiders usually aren't interested in magical stuff so it's not clear why they would want to. I know that plot-wise it's just to set up the duel, but some supporting detail would be nice. Also, those glowy boxes in mission 1 could use some fleshing out; they didn't seem to do much.

I think I would've liked a little more supporting clues or dialog foreshadowing Major Ransom's transformation, also. I'm surprised they could download him into a Jump Bot on such short notice; I'd think there should be special equipment or technicians involved. The box of spare parts did help with this. I thought the fact that they went to Lockhart Aerotech would've been significant somehow (maybe they specialize in uploading memories into Jump Bots) but I don't think the fact that they were at Lockhart came up during the mission itself. (Except perhaps as a reason for the Perfectly Normal Office Workers.)

Anyway, it was a good story overall, and with all that in mind, I gave it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@GlaziusF - Backwards Day 329000
Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Backwards Day
Arc ID: 329000
Keywords: Complex Mechanics, Canon Related, Magic
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 25-30
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise appears to be to help Diviner Maros escape some kind of mystical/temporal prison. I played a 29 db/ninj stalker. The contact is Diviner Maros.

Mission 1
Briefing: Nicely formatted, and in an interesting spin, it starts with "Part Five". I imagine it must count down. The contact monologues about a lot of things; something failing, wishing he hadn't sent me to steal a pendant. He says I can keep the pendant, and then he says goodbye, like he'll never see me again.

I'm guessing that due to the vagaries of time travel, he's talking about stuff that I haven't done yet, but are in his subjective past. For some reason I decide I'll go after the pendant that he's ranting about.

There is a big author's note in green text recommending that I always look at the contacts "busy" message to get extra info. This seems like an awkward mechanic, but I give it a try, and it gives me yet more briefing info. This extra briefing gives some explanation for why I want this pendant.

Inside the mission: it's a cave full of Slag Golems. As a stalker, I just sneak by them, looking for the "6 piles to search" in my objectives.

While sneaking around I see some Freakshow welding a tech device of some sort. Not quite sure what they're up to; they mention something about another relay.

Slipping by the Freaks, I find my second rubble pile and search it; it apparently is the right one, as it awards me a clue and completes the mission. Initially I thought I got "A bronze pendant" clue and "A bronze hourglass pendant" at the same time (clicking the glowy) but now I suspect I got the first one when I started the mission and the second one at the end.

I quit the mission and restarted the arc to try and definitely confirm this.


Mission 1 (second attempt)
Yep, he does give me "A bronze pendant" as soon as I accept the mission. This makes actually doing the mission make less sense; if I already have the pendant in my possession, why would I go on a mission to "Recover the pendant"? I realize that time travel is involved, but I think the reasoning behind this needs to be made clearer.

Debriefing: This appears to be a briefing for a different mission, with the contact mentioning I've lost a "Loupe" that I've not found yet, and he asks me to Enter the Vaults of Time and retrieve the core, and fight the Timekeeper. My guess is that this is the briefing for mission 5, and he'll give me the briefings and debriefings in reverse order throughout the arc? Although this is an interesting idea, it is also quite confusing.

Mission 2
Briefing: it's now "Part Four" and is written like the debriefing for a mission. A mission where I apparently failed to get the Loupe, and saw holes in reality that the contact explains as being shards of "shattered time". He wishes we hadn't done that ritual in the scrying cave.

So naturally my character decides it would be a good idea to go to the scrying cave. This doesn't quite make sense to me since Maros actually regrets having done the ritual there; why does my character think it would be smart to do this?

In the accept message, "Come to Maros' scrying cave" should probably be "Go to Maros' scrying cave".

Second part of briefing has more puzzling commentary about things I haven't done yet. Someone named "Foresight" is mentioned, a time traveler who apparently I'm to take the Loupe from.

In the "mission busy" message, Maros finally explains who Foresight is, one of his associates who apparently stole this Loupe. I have the feeling none of this is relevant for mission 2, and it's all the briefing or maybe the debriefing for mission 4.

Mission entry popup is cute explaining why we're not in Oranbega.

Inside the mission, I overhear:

[NPC] Nerva Spectral Daemon: What?! For the sake of our bribes, they must be stopped!

Someone is bribing CoT ghosts to stop me? That's...weird.

While in the cave I click some glowies labeled "Scattered Journals", which give me the "M2) Maros' journals" clue, which isn't very informative, but is fun.

Strangely there are some Family...err, "Marcones", in here, I guess trying to steal stuff. Also some Freakshow trying to steal stuff.

Deep in the mission I find Diviner Maros himself, who seems to be an enemy, along with some CoT and a glowy altar. Sneaking to the altar, I find it's labeled "Maros' Well" and clicking it gives me the "M2) Visions in the well" clue, which is kind of interesting but not sure if I learned anything from it.

Despite having looked at the well and the books, I'm still somewhat in the dark as to how to "perform the ritual". For lack of a better idea, I go over to Diviner Maros and stab him. He has some dialog which seems to actually encourage me to kill him, and it does turn out that killing him completes the ritual; clearing the room completes the mission.

I get the "M2) Maros' final words" where it says "Maros was apparently expecting you to kill him." With his dying words, he tells me to find him (another Maros? I guess the contact?) and tell him to search his sleeve for something. Then he dies in a creative way.

Good mission exit popup which kind of summarizes the confusion of this backwards story so far.

Debriefing: I guess this is really the briefing for mission 4? He thanks me for retrieving him from someplace and tasks me to steal the Loupe from the Legacy Chain. Though, in the earlier briefing he said that Forethought was stealing the Loupe. Not quite sure how that adds up.

Mission 3
Briefing: I have high hopes for this one because even in the backwards format, this briefing should be applicable to mission 3! Though, maybe it's the debriefing for mission 3.

I think in this briefing he's thanking me for rescuing a piece of him from the Vaults of Time (and from this, the script has "me" surmise that I need to rescue him from the Vaults of Time), and he's giving me foreshadowing for Forethought stealing the Loupe in the previous mission. Or maybe the previous briefing. I'm not quite sure, it's quite confusing. But anyway, I'm supposed to rescue him.

Second part of briefing has Maros acting a bit more uncertain and inexperienced and the subtitles tell me that this is the newbie Maros that the Maros I killed wanted me to talk to.

"Busy" message is quite confusing, he casts some kind of spell and divines the name "Garibaldi Electronics", which doesn't mean anything to me yet. Wasn't I supposed to tell him to check his sleeves? Not sure that actually occurred here.

Inside the mission: I immediately encounter a rather surreal sight:


Look out! He's got a gun!

Yes, that IS a Devouring Earth with a sniper rifle. I'm not quite sure why. These are members of a custom group called "Undone Futures" which fill this map, and seem to be an assortment of standard mobs; I can't quite understand the theme of the mob choices yet though.

Checking the info of the various named officers (Operative Brass, then Cpt. Steamer) I can piece together a story that seems to suggest I'm in some alternate universe where President Marchand repulsed Lord Recluse's coup, but the Rogue Isles ended up becoming a client state of the US instead. So this explains why there are lots of police here working with Wolf Spiders; the DE and Coralax they hang out with still aren't explained.

I found some DE and Coralax digging? I have no idea what that was about. The Devoured bosses did have some interesting (alternate universe) background in their info. This sorta explains why there are DE around, but I still don't get why they are working with the police; based on the story it sounds like they ought to be enemies.

I'm a little confused as to what I should be doing here (no sign of Maros yet), so on general principles, I decide to stab the digging DE, because he had a weird name and dialog, so might be relevant. He rewards me with a little more dialog, but his death doesn't count towards the objective. I kill Digging Claw, too, just in case; still nothing.

On the next floor up I found Riverjumper and Reefwalker, a couple of Coralax leading some kind of prayer session (with a cop and a DE in attendance). They have some neat info about Coralax in the alternate universe I'm in.

Up another floor to discover that I'm actually in President Marchand's office. On the roof, I find D-PHI-NR Maros being guarded by a cop, a DE and a Coralax, who are cooperating in some weird magical ritual. I'm not quite sure what D-PHI-NR Maros is supposed to be; some sort of steampunk scientist version of Maros?


Steampunk Maros surrounded by weird mobs on the President's roof


I rescue D-PHI-NR Maros and he gives me the "M3) Maros' tale" clue. This seems to be some mystical explanation for this super weird alternate dimension, as being part of the Vaults of Time.

Mission exit popup: I like that it now hints that I should have some ability to change the "future" now that I've gotten this far. Although it's been interesting so far, it's also pretty confusing and weird, and it'd be nice to straighten it out somehow. We'll see what happens though.

Debriefing almost made sense. Maybe I have enough puzzle pieces to start to understand what's going on. Apparently Maros's soul (or something) got split into a million pieces as part of the ritual he regrets having done.

Mission 4
Briefing: Aha, here I finally tell Maros about the thing he has hidden in his sleeve, which he ends up translating for me in the debriefing of mission 3. This seems to be the newbie version of Maros who doesn't know much. But "I" remember from the briefings way back in mission 2 that I should be looking for this Loupe in the Legacy Chain base.

Second part of briefing: Maros explains I'm supposed to kill him, which I already did in mission 2. Despite being really confusing, this does have a certain elegant symmetry.

I quickly locate 4syte and rescue him. He tells me

[NPC] 4syte: Awright, let's bail. I got that thing for Maros. And don't smash NOTHIN', that's how they got me.

...but my mission objectives say to destroy 3 temporal distorters, so I can't do that without conflicting with what he's asking. But I do notice 4syte's info says that I look through the pendant and recognize him as an imposter. Most people don't look at mob info, so maybe this should've been a Clue on rescuing him? Unless it's your intent that only people who check info will notice (to simulate that you have to really look at him).

Despite identifying him as an imposter, I can't attack him (since he's an ally). I decide to try and pull him to the mission door, in case he betrays. Nope, nothing at the door.

Led him back into the mission and he helped fight some stuff. We destroyed a Distortion Anchor - Age of Technology. I have an objective to "Find the real Foresight" now; not sure if that was from the anchor or saving 4syte.

There's lots of Coralax and SWAT officers around, mixed in with Splintered Instants, all members of a "Snarls of Time" group. This doesn't make much sense to me, but maybe they're just meant to be random people/monsters snatched into this weird place.

I found Blood-stone Jimmy, the Family guy who was in the earlier (later?) mission; he had interesting dialog.

Found and destroyed a Distortion Anchor - Age of Magic, which triggered a "Find the artifact" objective. Why is "Find the artifact" triggered at this moment, instead of being an objective from the start? Since I did enter the mission already knowing I was looking for the Loupe.

4syte got upset at my destroying this anchor (nice line of dialog) and betrayed (now an enemy according to my target reticule) but he didn't actually attack me. Not sure if this is intentional; possibly he can't see me due to stalker stealth. I decide to help him out by attacking him; he died quickly.

Searching a bit more I found Foresight, who counts as the real Foresight, and the Reliquary containing the Loupe. It seems in Maros's past, I didn't do these things (instead getting fooled by 4syte).

I thought destroying the Anchor - Age of Timelessness would end the mission (being my last objective), but instead it triggered a "Defeat the guard at the entrance" objective. I don't know why I suddenly need to do this, though? Perhaps there should be some clue that explains why this is necessary.

Near the entrance, I find The Lock of Distortion; and Foresight earlier spoke of breaking locks, so this sort of makes sense now that I see him.

Debriefing: Maros talks about the ritual that was back in mission 2. The subtitles tell me that I should be able to break this paradox now that I have all the tools.

Mission 5
Briefing: Maros gives me the debriefing from mission 1, I think. He says the pendant is the last thing he needs to perform the ritual. "I" ignore his babble and resolve to enter the Vaults of Time to rescue Maros.

Second part of briefing: I find it rather foreboding that Maros talks about the pendant as his "old master's pendant" and that it was dropped in lava, when I'm about to go to a foundry carrying a pendant. Am I going to end up being Maros's "old master"? Or perhaps a different version of Maros is his own master?

Nice map choice for the "Vaults of Time". It's very visually dramatic. The SWAT officers look kind of out of place here though.

I found a crate labeled "Technological OPARTS" which maybe should've been "Technological Parts" (not sure, OPARTS being all caps maybe was significant). It gives me the "A PDA" clue which I thought maybe was a reference to Bricked Electronics, but turns out to have some kind of world conquest plans on it.

I found a Diviner Maros? who asked me for help, but he was flagged as an enemy (and his description suggested I should kill him too). So I kilt him. He apparently was another imposter.


Diviner Maros?


Ran into a couple more Diviner Maros? hostages with the same dialog, but I figure they don't seem to be needed, so I passed them by.

In the very deepest cave I find the real Diviner Maros, who still has the same dialog as the hostages, but at least he's visibly friendly: blue reticule, no question mark, and his description (using the "pendant" artifact - a nice touch) identifies him as the real one, so I go ahead and rescue him. This gives me the "Maros' instructions" clue and triggers "2 summoned allies to find" and "Confront the Timekeeper" as objectives.

Backtracking a bit, I found "A coffin" glowy which gave me the "Death Notices" clue, which didn't seem to be required, but I got to read my own obituary, which was kind of neat. I also found "D-PHI-NR Maros" as a captive.

Having a heck of a time getting the two Maroses to follow me; not sure if it's the crystal emitters or my stalker stealth. Ended up leaving them behind because dragging them along was too much trouble.

Ended up having to backtrack to very near the beginning of the map before I found the Timekeeper. He spawned as a boss for me, and I beat him up, though he generated a LOT of ambushes. The mission didn't finish until I killed off the rest of his group; I wonder if he should be set "only boss needed for objective"?

Interestingly a whole horde of "Diviner Maros?" friendlies spawned nearby right after I killed the Timekeeper, saying:

[NPC] Diviner Maros?: Please! There is something you must hear!


Me griefing the horde of Maroses by aggroing an ambush onto them


I griefed them by training the ambush onto them, and they actually fought the time critters. They also gave me the "A chorus of Maros" clue which was pretty cool. The chorus of Maros warns me about dabbling with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

Debriefing: Whoa, it's Part Five now instead of Part One! I've broken the cycle. I actually like this ending, where he promises you ultimate knowledge. Or rather he will give you ultimate knowledge at some indefinite time in the future, in his messed up time distorted way.

Souvenir: Very well written, helps explain a lot of the confusion that was going on.

Overall
The plot of this arc, with Diviner Maros on the backwards timeline and me on the forwards timeline, was a very clever idea, but also gave me a headache.

I liked the symmetry of mission 1's briefing being the debriefing for mission 5, and so on, but this also made the first two missions utterly confusing (since I was getting briefings about stuff that hadn't happened yet); however, I believe this was intentional due to the way the plot is set up.

I also found it hard to remember "Ohh I was told this in mission 2's debriefing" for mission 4, etc; the yellow "subtitle" text in the later missions helped a lot for this. I confess I was quite relieved to cross the midpoint of the arc, and then start getting briefings about stuff I already knew about.

Most of these complaints are intrinsic to the nature of the "backwards" plot, and I cannot think of a good way to dispel this confusion that wouldn't fundamentally alter the story. I would normally mark off points for having such a confusing plot, but after reflecting on this for a little while, I believe anyone who actually would play an arc called "Backwards Day" with the description presented, has already bought into the inverted timeline concept and the resulting paradoxes.

If you accept the basic concept of the plot, Maros's backward timeline and the player's forward timeline fit together like precision clockwork. I liked the way the pendant was used all throughout the arc, both the initial paradox of finding the pendant when I already had the pendant, and the way you could use it as an item of "true seeing" to examine mobs; that was quite cool. There were a lot of interesting side objectives that were pretty neat.

I found the use of the "Busy" dialog for additional briefing materials to be quite awkward; that "third part of briefing" did give a lot of good extra information, but I felt it was something of a work-around to extend the amount of text in the briefing, and as a result I found it rather distracting. I'd recommend trying to edit the material into fitting the normal briefing/send off fields if possible.

I also thought the initial motivation for the player getting involved in (my) mission 1 (Maros's mission 5) to be rather weak; I think you need a little better "hook" than is currently presented. The motivation for the player getting involved in Maros's mission 1 (my mission 5) worked quite well, though.

I don't think this story arc will work for people who don't like time travel or time paradoxes. For people who do, it's quite well-crafted. I started off rather lukewarm to the arc in the early (confusing) missions, but I liked it more as i got into the later missions. I found the final mission, final debriefing and the souvenir particularly satisfying; they completely explain what "really" happened, which went a long way towards dispelling my earlier confusion.

With all that in mind, I wanted to rate it around 4.5; the strong ending pushed me over the fence to give it 5 stars. The plot still gives me a headache, but the arc is quite good at executing the story it's trying to tell.


---

My queue is currently:

Aisynia - The Most Important Thing (266877)
@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

I started "Talos Vice" this morning before work, but my machine crashed out before finishing the first mish. Looks really great so far. Since I've got a toon whose background includes being a hero in the late 80s, I think this arc will demand a totally 80s costume makeover before I start it again.

The Most Important Thing
Arc ID: 266877
Keywords: Challenging, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 46-54 (but author's note says it should be 30+)

The description says the story is "a tale of the bonds of family" with tragic/mature themes. I played a 39 elec/SR scrapper with a moderate amount of IO sets, on difficulty +1 x1 no AV. The contact is a custom model, a young girl with blue hair.

Mission 1
Briefing: Amy, the contact, is a young mutant who someone named Albright has been blackmailing (via threats to her family) into using her powers to steal stuff for him. She's had enough and wants me to bust Albright; she will have to help defend him for the safety of her family.

She gives me "A family portrait" as a starting clue. In this clue, "There is dark haired woman" should be "There is a dark haired woman".

Inside the mission, I almost immediately run into Amy, who has some nice dialog where she's "pretending" to fight me. Beating her gives me the "Amy Defeated" clue, which is nicely written, and triggers a new objective of "Seek clues to the Callahans' location".


Amy: Make it look good!
Me: Umm... okay... this may sting a little...


There's a bunch of custom stormtroopers in a faction called "Dr. Albright's Mercenaries" populating the map; there are a lot of standard PvE mercenary or soldier groups already, do you think it's necessary to have a custom group of mercenaries? If so, decide what makes them different than Malta, Sky Raiders, Council, KoA etc and try to display it.

I soon find a "Bio-Containment Unit" that gives me "The Callahans" clue, which reveals the fate of the Callahans - a literal example of Women in Refrigerators. "refridgerator" should be "refrigerator" here. This then changes my objective to "Bring Dr. Albright to justice".

Found a "Portable Lab" glowy and a "Sealed Container" glowy - neither of which did anything a all when clicked (spam box does say "You search..but find nothing"). I think these glowies should be made a little more interesting (perhaps giving another clue, albeit a nonessential one).

Found and fought Dr. Albright, who had fairly psychopathic dialog. I'm not sure his reasoning for vivisecting Amy's family quite makes sense; wouldn't it make more sense to just vivisect one of the hostages, then keep one in reserve, to ensure Amy falls in line? Killing both hostages leaves Amy with nothing left to lose.

I do get the "Dr. Albright Defeated" clue at the end of the mission, though, which appears to reveal that Amy is a special project of his, and he's been trying to make Amy's life horrible in order to ... what? Shape her into some sort of villain? Not sure yet. This does seem to be consistent with his killing Amy's whole family though.

Debriefing: It's sad, but could be written to be a little more moving. As it is currently, seems a little short. "Bearing a black eye that you gave her" doesn't quite scan ... I'd suggest something like, "You wince as you notice the black eye that you gave her, and feel even more uncomfortable as you relate the story of what you found." Then go on with her crying and needing to be held. I think you should consider giving Amy some lines here, too; either something deeply regretful ("I only wanted to protect them!") or perhaps accusatory ("You were supposed to save them, $name!").

Mission 2
Briefing: Amy wants me to search Albright's lab again for clues. This seems like a strange response to having your whole family killed; wouldn't it make more sense for her to want to find Albright and make him pay?

Second part of briefing: OK, this explains a little more of what Amy is thinking. I guess checking out the lab is supposed to give clues as to what Albright is up to. She gives me a PDA type device that she'll send me instant messages on; this rings a little false to me, if she's really a hero who is made stronger by tragedy (as the arc has presented her so far), wouldn't she take up this search herself? Or perhaps with my help. Having me do it with her texting me about it doesn't feel quite right.

Inside the mission: "Disable the Self Destruct" is my first objective. I wish you could add a timer to give this objective some more dramatic urgency, but there's not a way to turn off the timer when it's found, so probably that wouldn't work. When was this self destruct sequence activated anyway? I assume when Albright was defeated in mission 1? If so, though, that would be a very slow acting self destruct sequence, if it still hasn't gone off by mission 2. And mission 2 is a whole day later than mission 1 (according to mission 2's briefing). So I'm not sure this self destruct objective makes sense as currently presented.

Finding the self destruct and disabling it, I get "Transmission 1", a text message from the contact asking me to find a device in a wall safe. Finding the safe, I get "Transmission 2" which says I didn't find the device.

Transmission 2 also says that Amy is able to stop data from being deleted (deleted from what? maybe mention a mainframe computer earlier as foreshadowing) which is a little surprising, is Amy a computer hacker in addition to being an 18 year old superhero? Maybe needs some foreshadowing if so.

I now have an objective of "Stop Operative Watkins"; not sure why I know the name Watkins; Amy asked me to stop someone, but didn't give a name. I searched the later part of the mission for Watkins without success, and ended up backtracking to find her at the start of the mission. Defeating Watkins gives me "Transmission 3" which doesn't seem to have much meaning, but my objective has suddenly changed to "Seek Answers". I'm not quite sure why this is triggered by defeating Watkins; I guess the idea is that Watkins would've deleted them otherwise?

Going back deeper into the mission I found "Information Terminal" which satisfied "Seek Answers", giving me "Transmission 4" and triggering the objective "3 pieces of data to retrieve.." (note: has an extra period at the end of it).

The first encrypted terminal gives me "Transmission 5", which says the lead mercenary should've appeared - but I think you meant to say that after the last encrypted terminal is clicked. This is a fairly long standing bug/misfeature with multiples of clickies and clues; two ways you could work around this is to have only one Encrypted Terminal (not sure you get a lot more value out of having 3) or have one specific terminal that triggers both clue and boss spawn, and the other two are generic terminals that count towards the total of 3 pieces of data, but don't trigger anything.

Also, for all the encrypted terminals, my spam message box reports to me "You begin retieving the encrypted data" ... "retieving" should be "retrieving". There are also extra periods after both the "You begin retieving" and "You have retrieved" messages; maybe those are intentional ellipses though.

The third encrypted terminal does indeed spawn a boss. I beat up Operative Westen, who talks big, but only spawned as a lieutenant for me, so was pretty easy. Both Westen and Watkins had the generic mercenary description; if you have space, you might consider writing some individual background info for the named bosses.

Defeating Westen completed the mission and gave me the "Decrypted Info and a Time Device" clue. This turns out to be Amy's origin story clue relates a bit more about Amy's origin story -- apparently as Albright's evil little science project.

I thought this mission went a bit overboard on the triggered glowies; each one is a nice opportunity for a new clue, but some of the "Transmission" clues were really just "Oh, you didn't find it there? Look over here instead!" which felt a little like it was making me jump through hoops to get to the actual material. You might consider reducing the number of links in your triggered objective chain a little bit, to just the ones that are essential for the plot.

Debriefing: Amy reveals a bit more of her tragic back story. I actually find this somewhat less moving than was probably intended; I think it might be more effective for the player herself to find out what happened to Amy's dad, rather than have Amy tearfully reveal it at this moment; since her dad isn't really mentioned in the dossier at all, to have Amy bring it up here is a little odd. Also, there is a pretty big difference in tone between Amy's "Transmission" clues and the debriefing; feels a bit inconsistent.

Mission 3
Briefing: Amy finds "hidden files" in the dossier that reveal more than before; but the way mission 2 currently reads, we've decrypted the dossier and read through it in "gruesome detail", so this doesn't quite fit. Maybe adjust the clues or debriefing in mission 2 to hint that there's still more to be learned from the files, to foreshadow this revelation in mission 3.

Apparently the dossier reveals that there's a hidden device inside Amy that is stealing her powers and feeding a time machine in Albright's possession. And Albright going back in time is Bad. But why can't Amy (who has time travel powers) go back in time to stop him? Because this device is stealing her powers and keeping her weak. Considering Amy and I know about this device implanted in her, why can't we go to the hospital and have it surgically removed?

Second part of briefing: it turns out she has just enough power left to send me back in time to intercept Albright. And bring me back. But that's all, she can't go herself. This feels rather contrived to me.

Mission entry popup: apparently Amy can still send me text messages, even when I'm 11 years in the past (via her weakened time travel powers)? I don't find this believable.

The mission title is "Capture Dr. Albright" and one of the two goals is also "Capture Dr. Albright". Consider changing the mission title to be different, to avoid repetition; also to be inclusive of the "Seek Clues" objective.

I find myself on the university map and pretty quickly locate and defeat Dr Albright. He has pretty good dialog, but he again "phases and teleports away" upon defeat. The "Capture Dr. Albright" mission title no longer seems valid (since he's gone), but I now have "2 clues to seek".

I also get a new "Transmission 1" from Amy, which reveals my CLUE PDA managed to hack Dr. Albright's tech while I was fighting him. I found this a little far-fetched; perhaps have the PDA or Amy somehow trace his teleport instead? Or you could have the player plant a tracking device on Dr. Albright with the idea of tracking him through time and space.

Found a metal crate and clicked it, which spawned a new "Dr. Albright?" and a Test Subject, who attacked me. Test Subject's description, "excrutiating" should be "excruciating". Are these actually re-purposed Crazed minions? Nice choice if so, they look right for this purpose.


Me: Uhh...I'm just looking for the bathroom?
Crazy test subject: Die!


I also got "Transmission 2" from Amy during this time, in which she spends the whole time narrating what I just found in the box. I think you would be better off writing a clue that simply said what I found in the box; Amy describing it (from a remote location 11 years in the future) feels less natural.

I also found a cardboard box, which, strangely enough, has Dr. Albright's old family photos in it. I'm a little puzzled as to why this would be found in the university basement? It would make more sense if it were in his lab or his house or something.

I beat up Dr. Albright? who seemed to be a younger version of the other Dr. Albright, which was a nice touch. This gave me the "a young Albright" clue, which includes more exposition from Amy that is suddenly cut off as someone captures Amy during the transmission. This is kind of weird because Amy's actually in the future, so I'm not quite sure how this works out in terms of timeline. Also, maybe it would make more sense to have young Albright carrying a wallet photo of his family, rather than finding it in a box in the university basement.

Finally I found "An old crate" that contained "A strange device" as a clue, one of three such devices, apparently.

Debriefing: despite being mugged while transmitting to me during mission 3, Amy is still strong enough to time travel me back to her location, where she also was able to beat back her attacker (a misguided hero??). Considering the briefing depicted Amy as greatly weakened, barely able to function, the idea that she fought off another hero who came to arrest her is not believable.

Mission 4
Briefing: "a couple day" should be "a couple days".

Amy says "I'm so tempted to just go back in time and save my mom and sis, but I'm afraid of like, a paradox or something." I don't think it's consistent for her to say this, considering she just sent me back in time to poke around, and while there, I beat up two different versions of Dr. Albright and took at least 3 items from the past.

In the first part of the briefing, Amy is all, "We've got to stop this time traveling butcher!" but in the second part (after accepting the mission), she says something like "But wait, we have to understand why he's doing this!" I'm afraid this also seems inconsistent to me.

Again Amy is "too weak" to do anything but send me back in time. (Wait, what happened to her reservations about creating a paradox?) Meanwhile she is going to look for public information about Dr. Albright. Considering Amy has been working for Dr. Albright for some time now, and we also hacked all his computer systems and stole all his data, I am not sure why we think public info on Albright would be helpful.

Also, considering Amy just got attacked by another hero and has told me that every hero in the city thinks she's a murderer and is out to get her, shouldn't we be taking some sort of precautions about that? Like moving Amy someplace safer, or explaining to the heroes that Amy didn't do it?

Anyway, into the mission. Back in time again, though not quite as far back; Amy can still contact my PDA through time (I still find this unbelievable, I'm afraid).

Found and rescued Emily Sano, which was cool. Then I ran into "A younger Dr. Albright?" ... though, "younger" is a little awkward in this context; he's younger than the present day Dr. Albright, clearly, but I think he's older than "Dr. Albright?" from the last mission, who was described as "A young Dr. Albright". Defeating him gives me the "A younger Dr. Albright" clue; in this clue, "Dr. Albright form the present" should be "Dr. Albright from the present". It also says (present day) Dr. Albright has moved on and I should look for clues to his destination; but considering the CLUE device already hacked Dr. Albright's time machine, shouldn't I already know where his destination is?

A "Looted Workstation" glowy gives me the "Transmission: Venom X-27" clue. In this clue, "C.LU.E." should be "C.L.U.E." and "manufature" s hould be "manufacture". Also "Dr. Albright must have come here retrieve it" should be "Dr. Albright must have come here to retrieve it". Why does the green device fitting into the workstation mean that Dr. Albright came to retrieve it? Not sure I follow the reasoning. This transmission also says "Let's hope he's still here!" but due to the order I encountered the objectives, I already know (present day) Albright has moved on.

Found and fought an Adv. Test Subject who gave me "A test subject" as a clue, bemoaning the fate of her baby. This clue also says that she dies, which I think some players won't like, since it implies that the player killed her. The reference to "prior wounds" softens this a little.

Searching "A cluttered desk" gave me the "Transmission: Misplaced data pad" clue; again, I think it would be more effective to simply give a clue saying the player found a data pad with Albright's next destination, rather than have Amy narrate (from the future) what you found.

A variety of different glowies gave me the five pieces of "Albright's Log". I think it's a bit weird that the five pieces of the same document would be split between a computer, two laptops, a floppy disk and a hard drive, but I guess you need to have it split up somehow for the sake of the story.

In "Albright's Log: Entry 1", "My demands...has been met with threats on my family" should be "My demands...have been met with threats against my family".

In "Entry 2", "Genine" is a rather odd name, perhaps you mean "Jeanine"?

Next I found "A large filing cabinet" which gave me "Albright's Log: Entry 5". "with enough tests" should be "With enough testing".

"Albright's Log: Entry 4" actually does make me feel bad for Albright.

After finding all the log entries, I still had one hostage to find; searching the hospital again, I finally found the last hostage, Veronica Callahan. Huh. She gave me the "Veronica Callahan" clue, which is a pretty neat clue. One thing, though, "she was so pretty back then" is a weird thing for Amy to say -- as of 1990, Amy has not yet been born, so she really shouldn't know what Veronica Callahan looked like at this point in time. I guess she might know from photographs, it would still be a weird thing to say.

Considering I'm with Veronica Callahan in 1990 there seems like there should be something I could do or say that would prevent her grisly demise in the "present" day. Like "Don't let your daughter work for mad scientists."

Debriefing: This debriefing is pretty good, with Amy agonizing over Albright's life choices.

Mission 5
Briefing: "recepticle" should be "receptacle". The revelation Amy gives you here, that all the bad stuff that has happened so far is due to a faulty container, is a cool twist, but also kinda comes out of nowhere. You should consider adding some foreshadowing that hints that the poison cannister was bad. For example in "Albright's Log: Entry 3" you could have Albright write that the cannister ruptured unexpectedly, rather than just say he lost control. Even better would be if you could get the player to discover the info that the cannister was faulty (in one of the earlier missions), and have the player tell Amy (then Amy could go into hysterics about the irony of it all).

The premise of this mission (to save Albright's family, and consequently save Amy's family) is pretty cool, though. I very much like the mission title, "Break the Causality Loop".

Inside the mission: why is this Arachnos base on fire? Also, there's a mix of Dr. Albright's Mercenaries and Arachnos. Based on the story so far, shouldn't these two factions be enemies? They seem to cooperate to attack me, though.

I'm a little surprised that there isn't an objective somewhere in here to weld a faulty cannister so it won't break at the wrong time.

I pretty quickly run into young Dr. Albright and rescue him, then old Dr. Albright and defeat him, then rescued Genine from some Arachnos.


Me: End of the line, Albright! There's no way I'm letting you kill your wife in order to avenge her!


I had defeated Operative Faulks somewhere along the way, but didn't get credit for defeating the Base Commander until I backtracked and defeated a stray Tarantula; you might want to make Faulks "only boss required for objective". Though I'm not totally clear on why defeating Faulks is necessary, shouldn't just rescuing the Albrights be enough to prevent Dr Albright from going evil?

Mission exit popup: I like that Amy can't be found after returning, implying a change in the timeline.

The final souvenir is actually really well written, and I thought it was pretty touching. I think some of the things that are revealed here in the souvenir should have at least a little foreshadowing. There should be SOME hint of Amy's "true origin" (though not the complete story) earlier in the investigation; just enough so that the player, when reading the souvenir, can go, "Ahhh, that fits with the clue I got back in mission 2". I also think this souvenir has too many ellipses in it (nitpicky, admittedly).


Overall
I like the strong "family" theme where the major characters would do anything to safeguard their families. I really liked the final souvenir, and I thought the "Break the Causality Loop" mission was cleverly conceived to tie up the loose threads of the arc. I enjoyed Albright's characterization and his obsession with Darwinian survival, and liked his journal entries. I liked rescuing the various hostages from Albright's hospital in mission 4.

Things I didn't like: the use of time travel was extremely inconsistent. Amy alternately sends you back in time and bemoans the possibility of temporal paradoxes if she changes anything. Then sends you right back to change something else. I'm also not sure any model of time travel could actually produce the "Causality Loop" that we are sent in to break. It seems like the "first" iteration of the loop, young Albright's family should live (or at least die by a different method) and consequently never produce the vengeful Albright who comes back in time to accidentally kill his own family. So I'm not quite sure how the timeline can get to the state where young Albright sees his family killed by old Albright. This could perhaps be overlooked for sake of the story, though, as the ultimate solution is pretty neat.

I felt that Amy was inconsistently characterized; there's the weepy Amy you see in the briefings/debriefings, the chipper Amy you hear in the "transmission" clues, and the determined but tragic Amy that you read about in the final souvenir. It felt to me like Amy was portrayed differently in each of those cases. Personally, I'd like to see more of the determined but tragic Amy from the final souvenir. I felt the way she behaved there was much more moving than the Amy described as crying most of the time -- who I know I'm supposed to feel sympathy for, but the writing in the briefings describing this just didn't grab me as strongly.

It felt to me like a few too many plot elements suddenly materialized out of nowhere, or Amy suddenly discovers and reveals them (self destruct device in mission 2, "hidden files" in mission 3's briefing, the discovery of the flawed container in mission 5); I think it would improve the story if you could have some foreshadowing of these plot elements so they aren't a complete surprise, or have the player herself discover these clues, rather than have Amy just tell you.

The way Amy is just weak enough that she can't do anything, but just strong enough to send you back in time, and pull you back, and communicate across time, and fight off other superheroes, felt rather contrived. I know you want her to be like this to make the missions fit, but that seems like a very precise level of weakness. The idea of a device inside her siphoning off her powers (and feeding Albright's time travel device) was hard to believe too; couldn't we surgically remove such a device? Also, if I erased Amy from existence during mission 5, won't stealing Albright's time travel device not work, since his time travel device depends on Amy's powers? I wonder if you could adjust the story to not depend on a device siphoning Amy's powers away.

I didn't like the C.L.U.E. device in general; it was way too deus ex machina, being able to both communicate across time and hack all computers I ever run into. I'm afraid I felt that having Amy talking you through all the clues didn't work well for me; I think I would've preferred the clue to just tell me what I found, instead of having Amy tell me what I just found.

I'm sorry to list so many issues that I had with the story. I did really like the end of the story, and am sentimental enough that I was tempted to raise my rating just based on the writing in the souvenir. But with the other things I had problems with, I felt like I could only give this 3 stars. Hope you think that's fair!

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My queue is currently:

@Aoide Muse - The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web #334016
@Zamuel - An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317

Re: Trick or Treat? - this arc was created by @Werpan, forum name Gryfyn. Arc number changed due to accidental unpublish at least once - current number appears to be 323332. I wonder why Gryfyn isn't watching your thread though. He was very responsive when I was helping him, a week or so ago.

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
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