I'll try yours if you'll try mine

Looks like that short queue didn't last, but if you should get into the mood for a total screwball comedy, I've been doing some major revisions to "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of DOOM!" - #335926 - in response to some other feedback, and I'm always looking for more. I just started up Papers and Paychecks - I'm using Molly Monochrome, my 47 Blaster, but there's nobody who can't enjoy a good inexplicable heel turn.

The Descender review
Arc ID: 339222
Keywords: Non-Canon, Rule the World, Magic
Morality: Villainous
Level range: 25-31 (for 4 missions), 45-54 (last mission)
Warnings: AVs, EBs, extreme EBs, custom enemies.

The premise from the description sounds like you play messiah to some sort of lost civilization. I played a 28 elec/elec brute. The contact is Captain Mako.

Mission 1
Briefing: "Descent" looks like it is meant to be a heading; should be in larger type or bolded for emphasis. I like that Mako explains why he contacted the player and gives a little background info about Leviathan -- though I don't think it's established that Leviathan is a "massive shark" (perhaps Mako would like to think this, though, being a shark). "Sharkhead isle" should be "Sharkhead Isle" (note capitalization) and "slip away" should be "slipped away".

It sounds like this is a follow-up to the Sharkhead SF and/or Mako's patron arc. I'm not sure I fully believe that the Leviathan's power "is now drained" as stated here; Leviathan seems like such a massive creature.

In any case, Mako wants me to check on a strike team he sent in to destroy the Leviathan. It's not quite clear why I should help Mako though; maybe he should offer some incentive (or threat, perhaps). The send-off part of the briefing is very short; he is a little insulting here, which is fine considering who he is, but further makes me question why I'm working for him.

Inside the mission I ran into a lot of "Virtea" mobs, that seem to be some sort of shark people. Virtea Torpedo's bio is actually rather educational, I didn't know about electric torpedo rays. I have to wonder, is there a reason for using custom Virtea instead of standard (or perhaps recolored) Coralax? After all, Coralax are already-existing fish people who normally live in this cave. Maybe this will become more clear later. [Note: later on, I found that "Virtea" are actually a race that is mentioned in the official CoV lore! I had no idea.]

In some of their lines:

[NPC] Virtea Mako: They mean to kill the sleeper!
[NPC] Virtea Mako: In the name of the descender! And all the Virtea!!!

...I wonder if you should capitalize "the Sleeper" and "the Descender", who sounds like a special, unique critter (maybe Leviathan itself?) based on the way they talk about it. Also, this same dialog is repeated about 4 times (presumably 4 instances of battles); you may want to add some variations to mix it up.

In Virtea Manta's bio, the sentence fragment "Not unlike squid ink." probably should be merged with either the sentence before or the sentence after. The ink explanation for their dark powers IS kinda cool.

I found and rescued Tsunami Force Leader Eberlein.

[NPC] Tsunami Force Leader Eberlein: Oh thank the lord, Blackout Girl! Over here!

...is a rather strange thing for him to say; maybe he's referring to Lord Recluse, but this phrase sounds especially Christian. Eberlein has the generic Crab spider description, but being a named character, perhaps deserves more description.

I had to lead Eberlein back to the door; this seems reasonable, but bear in mind that a large cave is kind of an annoying map to lead a hostage out of. There's no ambushes or triggered spawns on the way back, so I'm not sure the mission gains a lot by having to lead him out. I'd suggest you either make the mission end as soon as you free him, OR you add some enemies that either ambush you or spawn behind you, so you have to fight your way out.

At the end of the mission, I've run across several Virtea/Arachnos battles and fought a lot of Virtea, and rescued the Arachnos leader, but still don't have much clue what is happening. Would be nice to have gotten some clues by now, to help establish what's going on; perhaps by rescuing either some generic Arachnos hostages or from Eberlain, or perhaps by finding glowies along the way. Maybe the dialog could be shaped to hint at what is going on, too.

Debriefing: the contact says "Only the strike force leader survived?" but, in fact, a lot of the generic Arachnos troops lived through their battles with the Virtea (sometimes with help from me) so this doesn't quite match what I saw in the mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact wants me to find out more about the Virtea; apparently he thinks the CoT should know something about them, so I should go ransack one of their libraries. This seems basically reasonable, though it occurs to me that, especially for Captain Mako, asking Barracuda (who has a Coralax-ish origin) might be a good approach too.

Inside the mission I have "9 more bookshelves to search". The first bookshelf I find is named "Red Herrings" which is ... a bit of a giveaway as to what they are. You might want to name it just "Bookshelf". The message for searching it should probably mention "You don't find anything about Virtea", just to be clear.

After fighting past some CoT I eventually find a bookshelf labeled "Tome of the Depths.", which should probably also be simply named "Bookshelf" to avoid being a giveaway. Clicking it gives me the "Tome of the Depths" clue and completes the mission. The clue DOES mention the Coralax, so helps explain why the Virtea are different from them. I got "The Prophecy of the Descender" clue at exactly the same time (probably the mission complete clue); it makes the "Tome of the Depths" clue a bit redundant (maybe consider merging them). In this clue, there should probably be a period or a colon after the second paragraph. I'd suggest that you italicize the third paragraph or make it a different color, to emphasize that it's a quotation; also, use some Strategic Capitalization of Key Words to make the text seem more portentious. For example "Hound of the Spider King" instead of "hound of the spider king". Also "marking him as The Descender" should perhaps be "marking $himher as The Descender" (it says "him" for me, and I'm playing a female character).

It strikes me as odd for shark people to be the slaves of fish people, considering sharks eat fish.

This mission seemed a little too simple in terms of gameplay? Could use more stuff to do or see (unless I just didn't see it). Perhaps some CoT with lines of dialog, some additional clues or interesting text attached to the various red herring books, or something. Right now it's just click the right glowy and you're done.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. Also it implies that I lied to the contact and said nothing about what I found; while this seems like a fine idea, I'd suggest you make this fact much clearer; perhaps put some text either in the mission exit popup window or the debriefing itself, saying something to the effect of "You decide not to tell Mako of your findings."

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, here we get some internal monologue about what "my" plans are. I apparently have a theory about an "Inadvertant Messiah" - this is the first mention of this theory. It makes sense, but you may want to insert some text earlier on emphasizing that I now realize I am the "inadvertant messiah" and what I plan to do about it.

The briefing says I need to "confirm my theory" but doesn't give any detail on how I hope to do this; since it is "my" idea, I should really, umm, "tell myself" more about my plan.

"This could quite possibly be, the most lucky thing" - I think you should delete the comma.

Mission entry popup: "Looks like you aren't the only one interested" doesn't quite make sense as I don't see anyone else where I zoned in; maybe it should say "You see/smell/hear Xxxx. Looks like you aren't.." or maybe be different entirely.

Why does confirming my theory involve "3 Chieftans to save" and "Defeat Calystix"? Needs some explanation. Also, "Chieftans" should be "Chieftains".

I overhear in the cave:

[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: A stubborn one arent you? Let see how stubborn you are after calystix finishes with you...

"calystix" should be "Calystix" (note capitalization). The cave seems full of Coralax, who I end up fighting; I think this is part of "my" plan, to rescue the oppressed Virtea from the Coralax. (If so, this should be made clearer.)

I rescue Redjaw, a loyal Virtea member of my new cult. I get a better look at him now that Virtea are friendly to me; the costume isn't bad, but you might consider playing with the head and body sliders to make the Virtea look more inhumanly sharklike. Also Redjaw says:

[NPC] Redjaw: I never gave out hope Descender!

"gave out" should perhaps be "gave up".

Rescued Whitefang and Blackfin as well.

[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Your rebellion ends here slave!

... should be "ends here, slave!"

[NPC] Blackfin: The descender has come! The age of the Virtea is reborn!!!
[NPC] Coralax Green Hybrid: Kill the descender!!!

"descender" should be "Descender" based on previous usage.

[NPC] Blackfin: You have my undying loyalty Descender....

...should be "undying loyalty, Descender...."

The three chieftains join up with me; it's actually a bit of a pain steering allies through this limestone cavern, I find that I lose them repeatedly and have to go back for them. Though maybe not much that can be done about that; this DOES seem an appropriate map.

I like the "Redjaw speaks" "Blackfin speaks" and "Whitefang speaks" clues, they help fill in a lot of the back story. (Minor nitpick) Each of these clues ends in an ellipsis, but probably should just end in a period. Maybe "ascenders" should be "Ascenders" to mirror "the Descender". In "Whitefang speaks", "prophesized" should be "prophesied". "60 million years" seems an implausibly long time for them to keep history, but it's just comic book history, so maybe this is okay.

Deep in the caverns I find Calystix (an EB for me) who I manage to defeat with the help of my loyal minions. The "Calystix Speaks" clue should perhaps be reordered to be after "Blackfin/Redjaw/Whitefang speaks", since hopefully the player fights Calystix AFTER rescuing the other chieftains. In "Calystix speaks", "more powerful then" should be "more powerful than", and "Levithan" should be "Leviathan" (in two places).

After being Calystix, Barracuda suddenly came out of nowhere and I had to fight her. I'm not sure it makes sense for Barracuda to be in the same place as Calystix (they are NOT allies), but her dialog is terrific; I love the idea of having "stolen" her destiny as the Virtea's Chosen One.


Your destiny is MINE now, Barracuda!

Beating up Barracuda finished the mission and gave me "The Chieftans speak" clue. "Chieftans" should be "Chieftains" both in the clue title and the text.

Debriefing: I am actually not sure why I would return to Captain Mako at this point, since the last mission was "on my own" and I just killed his lackey Barracuda. He does exposition that the Leviathan has awoken and destroyed Sharkhead isle (note: should be "Sharkhead Isle") and part of St Martial, which is...impressive. Fortunately I'm in the Cap au Diable AE building.

Mission 4
Briefing: Mako as contact seems decreasingly relevant as this briefing isn't from him at all, instead describing a big Coralax/Virtea battle in St Martial. I apparently decide to go help my loyal minions wipe out the Coralax.

Map selection: I'm a little surprised that Bile's ruined city map was used instead of one of the St Martial outdoor maps, since this is stated to take place in St Martial.

I can understand the 3 Coralax Exarchs to defeat (with "Exterminate the Coralax" as mission name, I'm glad it's not actually a Defeat All on an outdoor map) but am puzzled as to why I should "Find the Virtea Khan" -- needs explanation.

I see lots of Virtea/Coralax battles and even mix it up with a few of them; maybe they should have some dialog, though, as currently they are completely silent. Though I see there are a LOT of battles; it might take some doing to make their dialog not all the same.


Me helping the Virtea commit genocide against the Coralax. What? Don't look at me like that! They needed killing!

Found and defeated Exarch Lotryz; he seems to have a generic Coralax Black description, maybe should have a special one considering he has a special name. He does have some decent dialog. One of the things he says:

[NPC] Exarch Lotryz: There is no prophecy. The Virtea have some magical talent but not the capability to prophecise.

"prophecise" isn't a word; should perhaps be "prophesy" or "know the future".

I found and rescued the Virtea Khan; in his description, "heirarchy" should be "hierarchy". He becomes an elite boss ally, which seems a little overly powerful considering the biggest enemy seems to only be a boss. He hasn't been mentioned before this mission; I wonder if it would be better to re-use one or several of the Chieftains from mission 3 as allies instead? Either that, or perhaps those guys should tell you that they will carry the message of the Descender to the Khan, to give his existence some foreshadowing.

After briefly leaving the Khan behind and coming back, the Khan says:

[NPC] The Virtea Khan: Come, let us paint our blades red with the blood of the Coralax

Nitpick: Coralax probably don't have red blood. Also, needs a period at the end of that line.

The map is pretty huge, so rather than drag the Khan around clearing the whole place, I ended up leaving him behind in order to look for the last Exarchs. I like Exarch Ferrix's angry dialog, though Ferrix and some of the earlier clues seem to imply that the Coralax are aliens from another planet. I'm not sure this is consistent with the official lore; ParagonWiki says that Coralax were "conjured from the coral" by Merulina. I could be wrong, though (I didn't even know Virtea were in-canon until I looked up Coralax).

Finally found Exarch Nautyll; I like his dialog and how deeply in denial he is. In this line:

[NPC] Exarch Nautyll: You dont exist! You are just a dream!

"dont" should be "don't".

Defeating the last Exarch finished the mission and gave me the "Blood of the Leviathan" clue. "The Khan kneels before" should be "The Khan kneels before you", and "crystaline" should be "crystalline". I kinda like that this clue indicates you are now fully joining the Virtea cause by transforming into a crazy fish goddess, but some players may object to being railroaded into this change in their character.

Debriefing: "our bothers swarm" should be "our brothers swarm". "If there is anything we could do to repay you ... we are in your eternal debt" rings a little false; aren't I their crazy fish goddess now? What is this talk of "debt" and "repayment"?? They should already serve me!

At the end of the mission, although I liked the battle scenes I have to say it did not *feel* very much like a ruined version of St Martial. Perhaps consider using the "St Martial" outdoor map (though admittedly, this doesn't have as much water on it as the map you used); also, I think there should be battered Arachnos and Family survivors here, either as hostages or hapless victims being slaughtered by the Virtea and Coralax, with dialog screaming "WHY? WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US, OH CRAZY FISH GODDESS?" or something similar. None of them would need to be required objectives, but I think it would add some ambience.

Mission 5
Briefing: needs a period or colon after "plan". The idea of "abyss wells" that can magically summon Arachnos leaders seems a bit hard to believe. I do like the "Destroy Arachnos" mission title though.

Suddenly the level of the mission jumps to level 45 for me, which seems like a big jump; I suppose it makes sense if we're about to fight the Arachnos AVs though. "The Virtea Khan" as objective should be something like "Rescue the Virtea Khan" or "Link up to the Virtea Khan".

I almost immediately run into the Virtea Khan; somehow he's been captured by Arachnos minions (how did this happen?). Neither the Khan nor his guards have any dialog as I rescue him though.

Found the "Ghost Widow Abyss Well" which clicking apparently summons Ghost Widow ... though, she doesn't appear near me, just somewhere on the map somewhere. I know you can't make her appear right in front of me, but this still seems like a rather awkward mechanic to bring the AVs to the player.

A bit later I ran into Whitefang again, which was cool (nice to see recurring characters) and clicked the Lord Recluse well. It occurs to me that "proper" magic naming rituals require the True Name of the subject; shouldn't I be yelling "STEFAN RICHTER" into the well, not "LORD RECLUSE"? I found and clicked more wells for Scirocco and Captain Mako, as well as linking up with Blackfin and Redjaw. None of the allies (or the Arachnos guarding them, for that matter) seem to have any lines in this mission; would be nice to give them some dialog.

Near the submarine pens I found Scirocco and narrowly defeated him with the help of my 4 pets and heavy inspiration use. While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Scirocco: You! You are the one they call the descender!

"descender" should be capitalized here.

As soon as I beat Scirocco, though, my allies promptly aggroed onto both Captain Mako and Lord Recluse, who had spawned within line of sight. (The Virtea allies seem to have a huge aggro radius - may want to tinker with their powersets to reduce this some.) I was already a bit weakened from Scirocco and my real level is only 28, so I promptly got defeated by Lord Recluse. In hindsight maybe I should've activated the wells one at a time, defeating each AV before activating the next one.

Second try, tried to fight Lord Recluse but he was too close to Mako and I ended up having to fight both at once. Almost got LR but my allies had their damage split between the two AVs, ended up getting Lord Recluse to about 20% life and Mako to about 40% before dying.

Third try, I loaded up on purple inspirations and managed to beat Lord Recluse (still weakened from my second try), then Captain Mako. I did like their dialog during the fight and as they went down, and I like that it seems to have spawned more Virtea as I defeated them.

Climbing onto the catwalks, I discover that the Virtea Khan can fly. Not sure that makes sense for a fish person? Found and fought Ghost Widow up there. Her dialog as she is being destroyed is rather cool and a little haunting. The last abyss well was on the catwalk as well, which summoned Black Scorpion.

Had a lot of trouble finding Black Scorpion; I searched the whole complex four times over and couldn't find him. The map seems very linear, so I ought to be able to find him, but he doesn't seem to be findable; I guess he spawned somewhere inaccessible? Running around I left some of the allies behind; none of them seem to have "I'm lost" or "You found me" lines in this mission.

I decide to reset the mission to try and complete it. This is kind of a pain because I have to re-do 4 AV fights, but I feel I've come too far to simply quit. On my second try, with my new knowledge of how this mission works, I click only one Abyss Well at a time, killing each AV before spawning the next. This requires a lot of backtracking (most of the wells spawn in the front caves part of the mission, while all the AVs spawn in the submarine base in the back) but goes much more smoothly. Even solo, though, Lord Recluse does manage to defeat my 28 brute four more times, even bringing all the allies. A big part of this is because of his Summon Army power that he uses at low life; the extra banes tend to distract the allies and also do enough damage to kill me, and after a few tries all my allies were dead but his summoned banes still seemed to stick around, so I was in something of a downward spiral. Finally managed to drop him on the fifth try, though it was a close thing.


What do you mean, you can't swim?

I'm a little surprised there wasn't an end-of-mission clue for this mission, describing some scene with the Virtea, like the last two missions had. This mission seemed a little light on description in general; there wasn't much to it except the fighting, though the fighting was indeed epic.

Souvenir: nice scene described here, though the way it is written, I almost think this text belongs in the final debriefing instead of the souvenir.

Overall
I thought this was a pretty cool "conquer the world" plot; there just aren't enough story arcs where you get to conquer the world. Discovering that I'm the messiah to a warrior race who will help me destroy all my enemies was quite cool. I liked how the story tied in with the existing lore about Leviathan, Captain Mako and Sharkhead Isle. I initially thought the Virtea were a made-up species and was pleasantly surprised to find they're actually in-canon (albeit very obscure); I learned something from that!

Problems I had: the ramp-up in difficulty in the last mission was much, much too sharp. Although I like the idea of fighting the Arachnos AVs to conquer the Rogue Isles, while my level 50 brute could probably have handled that mission, my level 28 brute really couldn't. The fact that the first four missions are level 25-31 kind of lulls the player into thinking someone level 25-31 should be able to do this arc, but I think most characters that level will run into a brick wall against the final AVs. I don't believe most level 31s (even if malefactored up to 45) reasonably will be able to defeat Lord Recluse, even with the four allies that were provided. You may want to think about what you can do about that. Perhaps you could make the earlier missions higher level, but I'm not sure Coralax go that high. At the very least provide a suggested character level in the arc description, and/or add the "Challenging" keyword.

Although I like the idea of defeating the leading Arachnos AVs in order to conquer the Rogue Isles, the mechanism for summoning them (the abyss wells) felt very contrived. A magic well who can summon anyone if you say their name? Why haven't the Coralax used those to destroy ALL their enemies long before this? I think it would be more believable for the mission briefing to just say that your minions saw the Arachnos leaders retreating to a secret submarine base, which would explain why they're here.

The way the abyss wells are set up, it's very likely that a player will click all the abyss wells before finding any of the AVs, resulting in the player fighting multiple AVs at once, which will be bad for most players. Additionally, I think it would be more dramatic if Lord Recluse was the last AV that you fight. To make this happen, you might consider daisy-chaining the AVs together as triggered objectives, instead of having them trigger off of the abyss wells; and make Lord Recluse the very last AV that is spawned.

It seemed to me that some of the earlier missions (particularly the CoT mission and the St Martial mission) needed more stuff to do in them, other than just fight stuff; or else should be on smaller maps. (On the other hand, mission 3 was very good about providing clues and details.) Also, the motivation for why you're working with Mako at the beginning seemed a little weak to me, and by the end of the arc, the fact that Mako is your contact is actually distracting and meaningless since you're basically on your own starting with mission 3. You even kill him in mission 5. I almost wonder if a Virtea would make more sense as a contact.

I wanted to give this around a 3.5 rating; the educational use of Coralax/Virtea/Mako back story was a big plus, but the huge increase in difficulty in the last mission was a big minus. I did really like being anointed the crazy fish goddess though.

I think I have to go with 3 stars for now (though I waffled between 3 and 4 several times); that last mission, though I like the idea of crushing all the Arachnos AVs, just seems too much of a player killer for most people in the 25-31 range. I'd definitely recommend straightening out the difficulty of the final mission compared to the earlier ones (either by making the last mission easier or by increasing the recommended level of the arc) and perhaps adding some more detail to some of the earlier missions. I hope you think that's fair.

---

My queue is currently:

Zaphir - The Coldest of Wars #299972
The_Cheshire_Cat - Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today #337333
@Djinniman - arc to be named later
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
Eraserdog - Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of DOOM! #335926 (assuming he plays/played P&P)

Thanks for the review PW! Always happy to see people playing my work. (I also love the pictures. Seeing someone else running around in my little world makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside ). Couple of things.

Quote:

[NPC] Tsunami Force Leader Eberlein: Oh thank the lord, Blackout Girl! Over here! ...is a rather strange thing for him to say; maybe he's referring to Lord Recluse, but this phrase sounds especially Christian. Eberlein has the generic Crab spider description, but being a named character, perhaps deserves more description.

Okay, I'm cheating a bit here. I actually have a character named Webmaster Eberlein whose bio just states he is me (from real life) who decided on a whim to join Arachnos. "Thank the Lord" is a phrase I say a lot in real life, so I decided to have in-game me say it too. I came from a Christan upbringing after all, even though I am no longer Christian.

I also think I will have the mission auto complete upon his release on second thought, nobody really likes escorts anyways.

Quote:

Debriefing: the contact says "Only the strike force leader survived?" but, in fact, a lot of the generic Arachnos troops lived through their battles with the Virtea (sometimes with help from me) so this doesn't quite match what I saw in the mission.

This is a weird problem. When I first published the arc the Virtea won every battle they were in, but ever since I republished it, the Arachnos seem to win. Must be something brought on by the new difficulty settings. Either way, i'll have to tweak the end mission dialouge.

Quote:

Briefing: OK, here we get some internal monologue about what "my" plans are. I apparently have a theory about an "Inadvertant Messiah" - this is the first mention of this theory. It makes sense, but you may want to insert some text earlier on emphasizing that I now realize I am the "inadvertant messiah" and what I plan to do about it.

This is something I waffled about when I was first writing the arc. On the one hand, I didn't just want to come out and say "HAY U ARE THE DESCENDER K THNX BYE", and rather have the player make the logical connection. On the other hand, if players couldn't figure that out then they would be baffled about the next mission. Any suggestions as to how I could make this work better?

Quote:

Briefing: Mako as contact seems decreasingly relevant as this briefing isn't from him at all, instead describing a big Coralax/Virtea battle in St Martial. I apparently decide to go help my loyal minions wipe out the Coralax.

This is a complaint I get about every single one of my arcs. I almost always start with one contact, then veer off at some point and describe the player's actions, or have some other party step in to give the briefing. This doesen't bug me personally, since I can always imagine the player or a third party stepping in, but a lot of other people have been bugged by it.

Thing is, I have no idea how to fix this problem. It would be really nice if I could just swap contacts mid arc, but unfortunatley we can't do that yet. I have considered half making the contact be a journal or a laptop or something and have the entire arc just be you remeniscing on past events, but since I do have a lot of contact types in my arcs, I'm not sure how well that would work.

Quote:

Map selection: I'm a little surprised that Bile's ruined city map was used instead of one of the St Martial outdoor maps, since this is stated to take place in St Martial.

Short answer: I really wanted to find a good use for that map.

Longer answer: My justification for using that map was the fact that the entire island had just been essentially eaten by a giant shark (granted, you pointed out that it isn't necessarily a shark in-canon, but there are enough anatomical similarities and in-canon hints that that is indeed the case), and as such the city would likely be both destroyed and flooded.

Quote:

Found and defeated Exarch Lotryz; he seems to have a generic Coralax Black description, maybe should have a special one considering he has a special name. He does have some decent dialog. One of the things he says:

You might not be too familiar with the Coralax then, since there are no Coralax Black hybrids, only blue, green, and reds. They're a custom mob.

Quote:

though Ferrix and some of the earlier clues seem to imply that the Coralax are aliens from another planet. I'm not sure this is consistent with the official lore

Well it's never overtly stated, but there is this bit from the Coralax bio on the CoH site that sounds pretty definitive to me:

Quote:

For millennia, a godlike being as old as the cosmos itself floated free across the universe. As the fetid swamps of the Earth’s Cretaceous Period began to recede, this god Merulina crashed into the turbid waters of the expanding Atlantic.

That's where I got both the "From another planet" and "60 million years" things.

Quote:

also, I think there should be battered Arachnos and Family survivors here, either as hostages or hapless victims being slaughtered by the Virtea and Coralax, with dialog screaming "WHY? WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US, OH CRAZY FISH GODDESS?" or something similar.

Ooooh, that's a good idea!

Quote:

On my second try, with my new knowledge of how this mission works, I click only one Abyss Well at a time, killing each AV before spawning the next. This requires a lot of backtracking (most of the wells spawn in the front caves part of the mission, while all the AVs spawn in the submarine base in the back) but goes much more smoothly.

The whole Abyss Wells thingy came about because I really wanted to use that Arachnos Submarine map, since it has a connection to the sea, and thus allows the Virtea to get in. I was kind of worried since all the AV's would end up spawning in the last room that players would end up aggroing more then one at once, so I came up with the Abyss wells as a way to spawn them one at a time. In retrospect they are a bit of a pain though.

HOLY CRAP, I just realized I could use the Grandville beach map! That would be perfect! It would have a great setting and allow players plenty of room to maneuver!

So thanks for the review once again!

One more thing I would like to touch on. I am HORRIBLE about capitalization. Utterly, utterly horrible. It's not uncommon for me to just randomly capitalize words mid sentance and half to fix it later. I have no idea why I do this. In fact, I seem to get a new grammatical quirk every few years. Like three years ago it was not uncommon for me to drop commas every three words or so.

But otherwise, great review, thanks for the input, and I will definetley be making some changes!

The Coldest of Wars review
Arc ID: 299972
Keywords: Canon Related, Save the World, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 40-45
Warnings: EBs, custom powers

The premise seems to be something about Crey awakening some sleeping horror. I played a 33 MA/ninj stalker (admittedly not the right level or morality; I played an espionage character for thematic reasons). The contact is Janet Kellum.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption should be in larger font, bold face or otherwise different type from the rest of the briefing, to make it stand out more. Good introduction of the contact and the organization she works for. "Crey Corporation" maybe should be "Crey Industries". I like the reference to Invisible Falcon. Janet wants me to rescue one of her undercover agents and get some evidence on Crey. Pretty well-written briefing overall. In the "send-off" part, there is a place where it says "lab terminals --, then extract him"; should probably drop the comma, it looks weird next to the dashes.

I like the mission name, "Infiltrate the Crey compound"; the list of objectives sounds interesting. I see Security Chief Arel pretty close to the front, but sneak by her since she's optional and the contact suggested keeping a low profile.

Found a couple glowy computers that I clicked; they generate some fun messages in the spam message window, but the first three don't reveal anything special. The fourth gives me "A cryptic hint" as a clue, which is a pretty nicely written clue suggesting Crey has found something unusual in Independence Port. Erikson is nearby and rescuing him completes the mission (thankfully... I was half-afraid I'd need to escort him out of this massive complex). Erikson simultaneously gives me "The Insider" clue (I assume for rescuing him) and "A possible lead?" (for completing the mission).

Considering I found the lab computer before I rescued Erikson, having Erikson tell me to search the computers doesn't quite make logical sense; consider rewording the clues so that they make sense regardless of the order you find them in. Alternatively, you could make the computers trigger off of rescuing Erikson, but I think that would end up forcing the player to do a lot of backtracking.

"A possible lead?" is missing paragraph breaks after "the chase" and "dastardly plots". Also, "artificially engineering superheroes" is in larger font; not sure if this is intentional (it's unclear to me that this phrase needs emphasis, but maybe it is intentional).

Debriefing: the contact talks about my "guns-blazing approach" and how I "didn't have a choice"; but, actually, I stealthed the mission, fighting only the 3 mobs guarding Erikson, so this seems a little out of place. May want to rewrite that text to not assume that the player defeated everything.

Mission 2
Briefing: pretty nicely written. The contact plans to cut off power to a Crey lab, then have me sneak in and steal stuff. It does seem likely that Crey would have backup generators though; the contact mentions this possibility but kind of handwaves it away with "that won't be enough". Not sure I buy that though; it seems likely that a backup generator would, well, be enough to act as backup power. (Maybe needs more handwaving, like another imaginary FBSA agent cutting the backup power.) Still, sounds like a fun spy op. One thing that is missing from the briefing, though, is which lab I'm actually infiltrating; I would guess the one that was mentioned in earlier clues, but it's never clearly said. (This is admittedly nitpicky.)

Mission entry popup: very nicely written. It does address the backup generator problem, having it come on-line after some delay. Perhaps the briefing could mention something like "You'll have no more than 1 minute to get in before backup power comes on line".

Nice list of interesting sounding objectives in this mission. Near the door I see Security Chief Ranagol; I like his "unaware" line and how suspicious he is about the power outage.

Clicking a glowy computer gives me "[M2] Research log enry #42: 'The Breakthrough"; possibly the clue's name is actually longer than that, but the right part of the clue's name is cut off due to being too long. May want to make the clue name a little shorter, to fit in a standard clue dialog box. Also, "enry" should be "entry". This clue also seems to be TWO entries, not just one; is the part starting with "Intriguing" meant to be another clue? Should maybe have a paragraph break between the two entries. Also, neither sentence of the clue really seems to be a "breakthrough" as described in the clue title; at best, the second sentence is an observation.

I discover "Soviet Infiltrators" (a custom faction) in the Crey lab; I'm not sure how they got here, but I hope to find out. They look and are described as retro 1960s Soviets; my character is basically a retro 1960s spy girl, though, so this actually works perfectly. Fighting "The Engineer", it sounds like the Soviets were being held by Crey, but escaped when the power was cut.


Spy Girl surveils "the Engineer"

Another computer gives me "Research log entry #12: 'The Discovery'". Should have a paragraph break (basically a <br><br>) after "map!".

I'm a little surprised Crey security hasn't had more of a response to the Soviet Infiltrators breakout; it seems like Ranagol was aware of the risk. Perhaps there should be a Crey patrol or ambush responding to the Soviet escape attempt?

Found "Ruined Equipment" glowy which gave me the "Strange items" clue, which seems consistent with 1960s Soviets in frozen sleep waking up in a Crey facility. Wondering if the blueprints of an ice cream machine will become significant; it seems oddly out of place among the other items.

Final computer gives me "Research log entry #27: 'Those Russians'" that confirms that the discovery was Soviets in cryosleep. This also completes the mission and gives me the "A threat from the past?" clue. His lunatic ravings definitely make the ice cream machine more significant.

Debriefing seems pretty good.

Mission 3
I LOL'd at the mission title ("In Soviet Russia, ice cream licks you"); perhaps capitalize and add an exclamation point to "YOU!" to reflect the way this kind of joke is normally said (ice cream licks YOU!).

Briefing is well written; the plot is silly but totally appropriate for the 1960s spy genre.

Inside the mission, fighting the Ice Cream machines with their Winter Horde guards seems just right. The Freakshow seem a little out of place to me in Atlas Park, though the briefing and dialog do try to explain them as being looters. I wonder if it would make more sense for the map to be filled with Winter Horde, and Soviet Infiltrators be guarding the devices? The Freaks DO have some fun dialog though.


Spy Girl destroying a runaway ice cream maker

I destroy the six ice cream machines and successfully save Atlas Park. Destroying each machine seemed a little on the easy side, but maybe this is okay.

Atlas Park being the heart of the city, it would be nice to have some civilian hostages that you rescue here, but I remember this map doesn't allow for hostage rescues.

I picked up a "Note about the machines" clue, not quite sure when; possibly at mission start. It's quite nicely written giving a lot of good background info about, well, ice cream machine history.

I also like "the Coldest of Wars" as a double entendre for both the Soviet connection and the ice cream plot.

Mission 4
Briefing: first paragraph talks mostly about the previous mission; wonder if it more properly goes in mission 3's debriefing? Also "July 1963" seems strangely specific; 1963 makes sense in context of the "Strange items" clue, but I'm not sure why July is significant. (Perhaps I missed the reason?) Nicely written briefing otherwise, with appropriate warnings.

I like the mission send-off message and it has some interesting historical background, but with a 45 minute timer starting upon accepting the mission, I fear most players will skip over it due to time pressure.

Inside the mission, there's a lot of interesting objectives. I'm a little puzzled over "Defeat the Doktor" and "Defeat Igor" until I get a chance to read the "Intel on the Soviets" clue. This is quite a nice clue with a lot of good detail.

Found and freed Security Chief Arel, who had good dialog and a good clue. (Though the clue should have a paragraph break in the middle.)

Found Marxman Igor; in his dialog, I kinda think "tovaris" should be "tovarish" or "tovarisch", or at least have an umlaut over the s. (Very nitpicky.) Also he says "I pretended to fight with you for many years" but maybe should say "I pretended to fight on your side for many years" (unless this is intentionally phrased confusingly, which is possible).


Spy Girl versus the Marxman

In his description it says "This agent known only as 'the Marxman'" which isn't consistent with the fact that we know his name is Igor.

Found Doktor Molotov, whose description says "He holds a box of explosives in one hand", but his animation shows him holding a body bag. Maybe he should be holding a crate.

Found Agent Aurora; I like how Marxman's dialog referenced the speech that she starts making as soon as I get near. Her description mentions she is a "KGB operative-turned-superhero", isn't she more properly a "-turned-supervillain"? (Perhaps it's a matter of perspective.) I battle her; she nearly gets me while I'm taking screenshots, but I get serious when I realize I'm low on life and beat her. Her dialog DOES explain she thinks she's a hero (albeit of the USSR). I don't get credit for "defeat leader of the Soviets" until I clear her whole group, though; you might consider making this objective "Only boss required".


The final showdown against Agent Aurora (and some Communist robots)

I eventually find a "Makeshift Nuclear Device", which uses the crate of robot parts as a graphic; you might consider using a more impressive looking graphic for the nuclear bomb. Though it IS makeshift, I suppose. Clicking it completes the mission and gives me the "Message from Agent Kellum regarding the" (right hand side of clue name cut off due to space limits). Probably should make the name of the clue shorter, to fit in the standard window.

A nice debriefing and souvenir. Though in the souvenir you have the arc named "Coldest of Wars" but the actual arc title is "The Coldest of Wars" (nitpicky).

Overall
I liked the retro-Soviet spy plot of this arc (which admittedly was a perfect fit for the concept of the character I played). The evil plan involving ice cream machines was terrific (I actually thought this was more cool than the nuclear bomb backup plan, but the nuke thing wasn't bad). Good use of clues and foreshadowing. Excellent background info in the briefings and various mission begin/end clues.

For things I didn't like, I thought the Freakshow in mission 3 were a little out of place, and the lab map in mission 2 was a bit too large. I found some formatting issues, but mostly minor stuff.

Overall I thought it was quite well done. I gave it 5 stars.


---

My queue is currently:

The_Cheshire_Cat - Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today #337333
@Djinniman - arc to be named later
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
Eraserdog - Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of DOOM! #335926 (assuming he plays/played P&P)

Wow, thanks! I'm glad to hear you liked it. I'll go ahead and fix those typos / formatting errors you listed (I'm my own worst editor ). The Freaks are indeed kind of shoehorned (they made a bit more sense when I still used the Steel Canyon map), but I couldn't think of anything better at the time.

Just a minor note regarding "July": it isn't really significant per se, but it was chosen as the original date of the mission because more ice cream machines would be in use in the middle of the summer (plus any Independence Day festivities), maximizing the impact of the Delightfully Sweet Plan Of Evil Freezy Death™.


Thanks again,


-- Z.

Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today!
Arc ID: 337333
Keywords: Challenging, Non-Canon, Sci-Fi
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 30-34
Warnings: AVs, extreme AVs, high level villains brought down to low levels.

The concept seems to be a retro sci-fi adventure. I made a few early attempts on this arc earlier but hadn't finished it before; but this gave me enough info to make me decide to play a 48 fire/thermal controller (some IO set slotting but not a lot), mostly because her patriotic costume and red white & blue fire imps are the best match for the Tomorrownaut uniforms. The contact is Captain Skylark Shadowfancy, a heroic looking custom character.

Mission 1
Briefing: very fun looking briefing which helps establish the setting. It goes a bit crazy on the color coding of text, but it makes sense for the "COLOUR 3D-O-VISION" bit. Consider a different color for the splash title "Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts" than bright red, though; this color usually indicates danger. Perhaps "legion of Doomsday Droids" should be "Legion of Doomsday Droids" (Significant Capitalization). This is all rather nitpicky though.

After accepting the mission, there's quite a large part of the briefing in the "Send Off" message, but at the same time a 60 minute mission timer is started, which will make a lot of players skip over the info and get started on the mission. Not sure how best to address this, though; the info here is very nice and I don't suggest removing it.

In the send-off message, it says "Twelve hours ago, Baron Otto Von Doomsday broadcast .... he said he would begin in one hour!" I think the intent is that the deadline is one hour from the mission briefing, but this is a little awkwardly phrased; it makes me think his deadline was actually 11 hours ago.

Love the mission title of "Shut Down Baron Doomsday's Droid Factory on the Moon!" Has a great retro sci-fi vibe to it.

Inside the mission, the Doom Droids are terrific. The actual mobs are named "Worker Doom Droid" and "Soldier Droom Droid", but in Worker Doom Droid's and Soldier Doom Droid's descriptions it refers to "Doomdroids" (no space) and in the mission objectives and the Generator's description, they are referred to as "Doomsday Droid". Seems inconsistent; I suggest you pick one of "Doom Droid" "Doomdroid" or "Doomsday Droid" and standardize all references to use that terminology. (Admittedly nitpicky.)

I like the stilted dialog from the Doom Droids, like:

[NPC] Worker Doom Droid: FOOL-ISH HU-MAN. YOU WILL NE-VER STOP BA-RON DOOMS-DAY. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.

...which again sounds very retro sci-fi.

I rescue a giant eyeball (a repurposed Rularuu) which is making queer sounds. Not quite sure what its story is yet, but it does kinda fit in with the sci-fi ambience.

I destroyed a generator which gave me the "Wrecked Generator Inspection" clue. Love the references to UNIVAC and vacuum tubes. The generator's graphic (currently a mainframe computer) maybe should use the turbine-looking generator used in the Hess TF and "Get the News Out!" missions; though, thinking about it, not sure if that object is available in MA.

Found and fought Baron Doomsday, who spawned as a lieutenant for me (seemed a little easy; but then I'm on the default +0 x0 no boss no AV difficulty). Didn't get credit for defeating him until I defeated a robot that spawned with him; you may want to change him to "Only boss required". Also he says:

[NPC] Baron Doomsday: Curse you Tomorrownauts... You won't be laughing when you've tasted the effects of my FEAR RAY!

....but forgot to use the (R) registered trademark symbol while referring to the FEAR RAY. (You might think I'm kidding, but the (R) symbol is used in all 3 other FEAR RAY references in this mission.)

Beating him gives the "Baron Doomsday Defeated!" clue; I think "noble effort" should perhaps be "noble efforts".

Searching the rest of the base, I find Kelly Grace, a Tomorrownaut lieutenant. She has a good description. She does say:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Whew, that was a close one! Let's go get Baron Doomsday before it's too late!

...but I found her after defeating Baron Doomsday, so this dialog doesn't quite fit. Kelly wasn't really on the path to Baron Doomsday; the map layout is kind of a grid pattern with multiple connectivity, which would make it a matter of chance whether the player encounters the Baron first or Kelly first. In my current run, both Kelly and Johnny "Wildcat" Wormwood spawned in obscure corners of the map, so I found them later. You may want to either make the map (or objective sequence) a little more linear, or adjust her dialog to make sense even if she is found after Doomsday is defeated. (I think it would be a little more dramatic if defeating Baron Doomsday was the final objective of the mission, but there's a lot going on here so I'm not sure how feasible that is.)

After some more searching I eventually found the Doomsday Droid Coordination Computer, which completed the mission. The "Doomsday Droid Computer Printout" is really fun.

Debriefing: nicely written and in-character. I think the multiple colors overdoes it a bit, but it's not a big deal. You might consider using Significant Capitalization for "doomsday device" and "legion of Doomsday Droids".

Mission 2
Briefing: first paragraph is one super-long sentence connected by dashes; should probably be broken into a couple sentences. (Nitpicky.) The "memory tape" reference should perhaps be magnetic tape or paper tape?

I do like the objective to "Secure the UNIVAC", it sounds so retro.

I pretty quickly find Captain Skylark Shadowfancy, an unguarded ally, near the front of the mission.

The base is suspiciously empty for the most part, though we did find a couple doom droids floating around that we made short work of. Deeper in, the Captain and I find some battles between Tomorrownaut Cadets and Doom Droids. I end up healing up the surviving Cadets; it just seems like the right thing to do.

A couple weird eyeballs are watching us as we go past them; they don't seem to be hostile or guarded by hostiles and they claim they won't interfere. We'll see.

At the very back of the mission I discover Baron Doomsday, who apparently has escaped. Defeating him gives me a new objective to find a terminal; and a wall of dialog scrolls by that suggests a bunch of Void Seekers and Galaxy mobs have suddenly been spawned. This doesn't sound too bad for my controller, but I think a kheldian would suffer a heart attack at this point.

Considering a Nictus invasion spawned at the same time, I'm not sure there is enough sense of urgency to the "Find a high-clearance diagnostic terminal" objective; I mean, wouldn't any normal hero prioritize fighting the bad guys first? I do have a "Baron Doomsday Defeated... Again!" clue which suggests that I should check the various computer terminals, but the motivation feels a little weak to me. As presented, it kinda feels like "Oh, the Baron said something about the UNIVAC .. we should probably check that out" which does not seem urgent enough compared to a Nictus invasion. Consider either making the next objective to deal with the Nictus somehow, or else adding some writing that gives more urgency to checking the terminals.

Backtracking, I start clicking the various computer terminals. The terminals actually all seem to be printers. Consider calling them "teletypes" for extra retro terminology.

Ran by an Observer again, who said:

[NPC] Observer: Your persistance is admirable, but I cannot assist you. Trust that my intentions are noble.

"persistance" should be "persistence".

OK, I eventually find the UNIVAC Interface which gives me the "UNIVAC Status Printout" which reveals that the UNIVAC device summoned all the Nictus invaders, and triggers the "Defeat the Alien Overlord" objective. This seems cool; but the ordering seems a little off because I've already run into some of these alien invaders before I found this clue. The "INCURSION ALERT: FRONT ENTRANCE" in the objectives is a nice touch.

The eyeballs have started following me around, which is a little unsettling.

Went back to the front door looking for the Alien Overlord; took a little searching but I eventually found it on a catwalk.


Captain Skylark Shadowfancy (and some helpers) against the Evil Overlord!

The Captain and I beat him up handily, though, completing the mission. In Alien Overlord's description, "chanelling" should be "channeling" and "compusing" should be "composing". Maybe "all Nictus" should be "all Nicti", too, but less sure of that; not certain what the proper plural of Nictus is.

I think I got the Nictus Fragment clue from the Alien Overlord; perhaps this should be re-ordered to be after the "UNIVAC Status Printout" clue.

Debriefing: Pretty nicely written. I kinda like how Skylark keeps saying "Ha HA!" as a catch phrase, and that he follows-up on the Fear Ray (R) that we never did find any trace of.

Mission 3
Briefing: "Before he was captured" should perhaps be "Before he was recaptured". This briefing reminds us that Baron Doomsday hinted that he created the UNIVAC; I do remember seeing him say this in dialog, but since it appears to be relevant to the plot, consider adding this also to the "Baron Doomsday Defeated... Again!" clue, or thereabouts, so that a player who missed seeing the dialog in-game can still see it in the clue journal.

Send-off message: "full compliment of staff" should be "full complement of staff". "set sail, Tomorrownauts!" is rather out-of-place sounding and doesn't sound sci-fi enough. Suggest you reword to "blast off, Tomorrownauts" or something similar.

Love the footnote referring to other imaginary adventures. I think "The Tomorrowsphere as first mentioned" should be "The Tomorrowsphere was first mentioned".

Mission entry popup: again, "staff compliment" should be "staff complement".

The computer building is full of spiders! Ack! I like Giant-er Spider's description, though.

I found a UNIVAC Bio-Neural Interface that I clicked. On the progress bar is "Fluugtaag", which I'm afraid I don't understand. Got the "Bio-Neural Interface Readout" clue; while I do think "Level up! You gained: +1 STR" etc is funny, it really does not fit with the retro sci-fi atmosphere this arc has been portraying so far. The clue does go on to mention that Baron Doomsday did, in fact, construct the UNIVAC. "open a wormhole to Earth" does not quite make sense though; I mean, we're on Earth. Or at least in Earth orbit. Perhaps it should be "open a wormhole to the horrible black void" or something similar.

I now have an objective of "Defort Brown Dawnsday ounce agape" which seems to be garbled. I'm guessing this should be "Defeat Baron Doomsday once again" but maybe is intentionally messed up due to interfacing with the bio-neural interface.

Ran into another weird eyeball; this one is in "The Watchers" faction, while the previous missions I think they were in "Bizarre Creatures". Not sure if this difference is deliberate or not.

Overheard someone say:

[NPC] Galaxy: Mr. These chitonous creatures have no essence.

The "Mr" at the start doesn't quite make sense (unless he is talking to someone named "Mr. These"). "chitonous" should be "chitinous".

I also overheard some Tomorrownauts; is it Tomorrownauts that staff the UNIVAC facility? The previous text made me think it was independently run (since it is not in the Tomorrownaut base).

Ran into a REALLY Big Spider who had a little dialog and gave me the "Giant Spider Carapace" clue; but really all the spiders are considered Giant Spiders, so you may want to give it a more specific name.

Found a dead technician. In "UNIVAC Technician Body", "dessicated" should be "desiccated" and "permenant" should be "permanent". Managed to find and rescue a live technician after that.

In the last room I found Baron Doomsday who is in the process of monologing about his evil plan; I beat him up and get the "Baron Doomsday Defeated Again! ...Again" clue. The clue kinda lampshades how easy it is for him to escape (presumably because of his knowledge of the UNIVAC). This clue perhaps should be sorted to be the last for this mission.

Debriefing: nicely written with some exposition as to the significance of the info we learned.


Mission 4
Briefing: at first the contact wants me to destroy the UNIVAC, but then he changes his tune suddenly and says we should go to Deimos to confront some sort of cult. This change of direction between paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 seems rather jarring; consider dropping the text about destroying the UNIVAC, since we clearly aren't doing that (at least in this mission) and consequently it's rather distracting.

Also, "invders" should be "invaders" in paragraph 1.

Send-off message expositions about the Flesh Temple of Plith'naair and why the contact believes it's important. You might consider rephrasing "lead spider" to "spider leader", the first two times I read this expression I was thinking, "What? The spider was made of lead??" (Minor nitpick, maybe just the way I read it.)

I like the reference to another Captain Skylark Shadowfancy adventure here; I wonder if it might be more effective for the player to "remember" this other adventure (due to reading it in the space bookstore or whatever), perhaps in the "Giant Spider Carapace" clue, rather than have the Captain exposition about it here? Having the player "remember" past adventures might help support the idea that Captain Skylark's adventures have lots of fans. (Just an idea.)

Also, I actually picture Captain Skylark Shadowfancy's adventures not being books; instead, they would be serialized in pulp sci-fi magazines or short movie clips like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon serials. (Totally tangential comment..)

Mission entry popup: "stentch" should be "stench". Also, this dialog box talks about the "Flesh Palace" but the briefing spoke of the "Flesh Temple" (inconsistent). Also, this dialog box claims the very walls are made of human skin, but the map is an Oranbega cave that is pretty clearly made of stone blocks. Perhaps Johnny's Hell would be fleshy-er?

The mission objectives of "Find another Tomorrownaut" and "Defeat Mr. Boggs" don't really make sense based on the briefing; I did find reference to them in the "still busy" message but I don't think you can assume everyone will read that. Perhaps move mention of the Tomorrownaut ally to the briefing, and change the second objective to something more generic like "Defeat Cult leader" or "Interrogate cultists"?

The temple seems full of Nictus. Are these the cultists? If so, shouldn't the Captain have instantly recognized the Nictus when they invaded his base (since he fought the cultists in "Blood and the Body")? (Possible continuity error.)

Fighting the Nictus, I had a Galaxy suddenly turn into a Werewolf. This makes sense for the Council Galaxies, but I am not sure whether it makes sense for the Nictus in this story.

Found and rescued Aerodynamic, who says:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Well darn it. Captured again? This is just embarassing.

"embarassing" should be "embarrassing". She also gave me "An Unexpected Ally" as a clue. But considering "Find another Tomorrownaut" was in my objective list, and the Captain mentions her in the Still Busy dialog, I am not sure she is really "Unexpected" in this context. "She said this to you when you rescued her:" sounds a little awkward to me. I'd suggest renaming the clue "Aero's Story" (or similar) and having the dialog in orange be the body of the clue (and cut all the white text).

Nearby I found Mr. Boggs and some "Meat" who were enacting a rather disturbing scene.


Is that...meat? OMG IT MOVED!!


Great job on the animation and the recoloring (I think it was recolored? the lighting is very red here) and description of the Meat. In Mr. Boggs' description, "Univac" should perhaps be "UNIVAC" (note caps) to be consistent with previous usage. He gave me the "Mr. Boggs "Suit"" clue, which should maybe be "Mr. Boggs' "Suit"". It mentions the writing on the "Spider Queen", but I haven't run into a Spider Queen. I assume this really refers to the Giant-er Spider, aka Spider Leader or Lead Spider. May want to call it a Spider Leader here, too, or call it a Spider Queen everywhere earlier.

Defeating Boggs triggered a new objective of "Destroy the Meat Golem".

This map has a stone bridge over a chasm with gaps you have to jump or fly over; this bridge is nearly impossible for my ally Aero to cross intelligently. It probably didn't help that some crystal emanators spawned on the bridge, too. I end up having to leave her behind, stuck in this pit. She makes me feel totally guilty for ditching her by saying:

[NPC] Kelly "Aerodynamic" Grace: Er... right... I'll just... be alone here... in this... flesh... room. Ew....

If we stick with this map, any chance you could make her a Longbow Eagle with a fly pack instead? Retro sci-fi Tomorrownauts should totally have jetpacks anyway. Strangely, my fire imps have no problems crossing this bridge.

In the back of the map I find The Great Angel of Constant Torment, who spawned as an EB for me. Good choice of model for the meat golem. My fire imps tore it down with some help from me. While fighting me he says something about my allies betraying me (and way back in the pit, Aero has some dialog about betraying me) and cries out in terror of "the Watchers". He also gives me "Another Nictus Fragment" as a clue, which also suggests I should find the Watchers; this makes the new triggered objective, "Get some answers from the Watchers", make total sense. But I also have the triggered objective of "Defeat Baron Doomsday" ... but I have had no clues or dialog or anything leading me to believe Baron Doomsday is even here, so I am not sure why this should be an objective. The mission needs some foreshadowing of the Baron's presence here, to make this objective make sense.

Backtracking a bit, I find "Big Boss Watcher" who expositions about damage control and killing me. He says:

[NPC] Big Boss Watcher: Still you fight! If I wasn't trying to kill you, I'd be impressed.

"wasn't" should be "weren't" here. He also says:

[NPC] Big Boss Watcher: My EYE! You hit me right in the EYE! What kind of hero ARE you?

...which I found totally hilarious coming from a giant eyeball. The Big Boss Watcher also spawned with a Rularuu Wisp as a sidekick; I'm not sure whether this was intentional (so far we've ONLY seen giant eyeballs from this faction).

Defeating him gives me "The Whole Story" as a clue where much is revealed about what the Nictus are up to. "anomoly" should be "anomaly" here. "galaxy, its life force" should perhaps be "galaxy. Its life force" (break into two sentences). Consider using Significant Capitalization for both "ultimate force of death" and "ultimate force of life" (e.g. Ultimate Force of Death).

The mission is complete now but I haven't found Baron Doomsday (who appears to be optional here). I'm curious as to what he'll say, so I go looking for him; I run into a regular Watcher guarded by Nictus, who I rescue and he says some dialog about the story so far, and starts following me.

I don't find Baron Doomsday until I backtrack very nearly to the entrance. He has some fun dialog. One of the things he says is:

[NPC] Baron Doomsday: BAH! I am sick of being played off as a joke. I will not let you defeat me AGAIN. I will PERSEVERE. I will CONQUOR. I am BARON DOOMSDAY, DOOMSDAY LORD OF THE MOON.

...in this line, "CONQUOR" should be "CONQUER".

Debriefing: Pretty good debriefing. "Tommoronaut holding cells" should be "Tomorrownaut holding cells".

This was actually quite a good mission. It had a lot of triggered objectives that actually seemed to work well together. Some backtracking was required but the map was linear enough that it wasn't too bad to search.

Mission 5
Briefing: Aha, the Fear Ray (R) finally becomes relevant! Nice. In paragraph 5, "speficically" should be "specifically". So now we need to specifically go after Baron Doomsday instead of accidentally beating him up whiel doing other mission objectives. I have mixed feelings about this; the Baron IS the arch-nemesis of the Tomorrownauts, so makes sense as the final boss, but he's also been something of a pushover to date, who easily escapes each time we catch him; so not sure how this time will be any different.

I love this dialog from a roaming patrol:

[NPC] Void Seeker: You know, being enslaved to Baron Doomsday's will really isn't so bad.
[NPC] Galaxy: Yeah, I mean I was never really going anywhere before but now I've got a purpose, you know?

I pretty quickly find the Captain and free him.


Skylark, I love you! But we have only 14 hours to Save the Earth!

Unfortunately he gets stuck in the geometry of a cave wall. I guess that's a risk of making the ally a flyer. I manage to get him unstuck after running back and forth a bit.

Found the Fear Ray (R) and destroyed it, fighting off an ambush of Nictus. I'm struck by how cool the quantum guns look when they're firing them at us; really just right for the ambience. (Kheldians probably would perish horribly, but, who cares about those squid beings anyway...)


Dodging quantum bolts


Nearby we find Baron Doomsday - this time no mere lieutenant, but an actual Elite Boss! And promoted to "Lord and Master of the Known Galaxy", very nice. In his description, possibly "thousand Nictus" should be "thousand Nicti" (but still not sure what the plural of Nictus is).

My fire control, fire imps and Captain Skylark manage to tear Baron Doomsday down. I like that he utters the traditional lines:


[NPC] Baron Doomsday: I am BARON DOOMSDAY, Lord of the Nictus and of the Great Black Void. I am UNSTOPPABLE!
[NPC] Baron Doomsday: This.... Cannot.... BE!


This finishes the mission and the arc. In my clue journal I have "Doomsday for Doomsday" and "Fear Ray(R) Fragment" among my clues; I'd suggest "Doomsday for Doomsday" should be moved to be the very last clue, as it is written with an air of finality. (I still wonder why Doomsday can't just use UNIVAC to escape, AGAIN, though.)

Debriefing: nicely written parting words.

Souvenir: the Fear Ray(R) Fragment is pretty cool, but wouldn't it be unwise to keep a "Nictus fragment" (as this is described) considering what happened to poor Aerodynamic? And there are a lot of Nictus, so it would be easy for Doomsday to get another Nictus fragment. Perhaps the Fear Ray(R) Fragment should be some kind of more techy gizmo that can't be easily reproduced.

Overall
This arc did a great job setting up a retro sci-fi sense of ambience; the language used in dialog and clues, the names of objectives, the enemies chosen to appear in missions, etc., all helped give this arc a great look & feel. Each of the missions was pretty filled with interesting details; the sequences of triggered objectives worked pretty well, required a little backtracking but not a lot. The dialog was well done and I liked seeing some of the recurring characters. I hope Aerodynamic got better in the end. (I half expected Captain Skylark to betray me like Aerodynamic did, due to Nictus mind control.) There were some great bits of humor in some of the clues and dialog that added to the fun.

Things I didn't like: a couple times I felt there wasn't enough motivation (in the form of briefing/dialog/clues) for some of the objectives in the nav tool. Some terminology specific to the arc is used inconsistently (Doomdroids/Doomsday Droids/Doom Droids? Flesh Palace/Flesh Temple?).

The arc felt on the longish side; I twice made an earlier start on this arc that I had to abandon due to time constraints. This time I finished the arc, split over 4 play sessions. This is not necessarily a bad thing; actually, each mission is very densely packed with stuff to do, which I really like. But it does mean it takes awhile; something to be aware of. Splitting the arc over a few sessions reminded me even more of the old serialized sci-fi shorts, actually.

I really enjoyed the "world setting" of this story arc and I felt the problems I found weren't that major. I gave this story arc 5 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Djinniman - arc to be named later (will do the Thanksgiving Parade arc unless he suggests another)
Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403

Thanks for the review! Man I made a lot of typos, but I guess there's a lot of text in this arc and I'm a horrible proofreader even with shorter stuff so it was bound to happen.

About the inconsistent naming, I'll try to clean some of that up, Flesh Palace/Temple is mostly due to me not having settled on a name and then forgetting which one I was using while writing the mission. The proper name for the droids is in fact "Doomsday Droids", but the mob names use the abridged version because the full name didn't fit in the name field - I'll see if I can fix all the other references to them to use the proper name.

In mission 2 originally the nictus and overlord both didn't spawn until you got the UNIVAC printout, but someone made the comment that backtracking through an empty map was pretty dull, and they had a point, so I had the generic spawns pop in as soon as you defeat Doomsday and then the boss come in after finding the UNIVAC terminal - I'll see if I can rewrite to make it more clear that the boss doesn't actually show up until you've done that.

Some of the oddities in mission 4 is because of a re-write I did not too long ago - originally Captain Shadowfancy was the ally instead of Kelly, but I changed it around since his contact dialogue kind of broke character (He was possessed, but still, it made the tone of the arc too uneven). Likewise the "Mr. Boggs" encounter was more expected in the original dialogue but I like "Defeat the Cult Leader" better. I actually would love if Kelly could have a jetpack, but unfortunately the eagles only come in minion variety, and she would be too squishy to be an ally as a minion (All the generic Tomorrownauts do use the eagle model).

As for the Nictus turning into a werewolf, I actually anticipated that ;P. See, you can't actually turn that power OFF, but I wanted mob variety in the "Nictus" custom group so I used all 3 ranks of both galaxies and voids - but they all have custom descriptions as well, and the LT+ rank galaxies have comments about how they retain the Nictus shapeshifting ability - okay so it would make more sense if they turned into a dwarf or nova, but I had to work with what I had!

*edit* Oh also, there's a comment about the Bio-Neural Interface in the green text explaining the oddness, but most people seem to be missing that joke so I think I'm going to just make the text more standard. The green text line, in case you're curious: "Hmm, what's this big needle for? Ow! Apparently it goes in my brain."

The Wentworth's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Arc ID: 347683
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Comedy
Morality: Heroic:
Level range: 30-54
Warnings: Enemies with custom powers

The premise is to save the Wentworth's Thanksgiving Parade ("a beloved Paragon City tradition") from an unspecified threat. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on +0 x0 difficulty with no bosses or AVs. The contact is a Wentworth's employee who is identified as the parade coordinator.

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

The briefing is well-written and does a great job of explaining a pretty funny (and unusual) emergency situation. Consider changing "grand marshal" to "Grand Marshal" (note capitalization; for consistency with the way it's capitalized in the mission accept message; two instances in the briefing, one in send-off message) and perhaps breaking paragraph 2 into two paragraphs (the first being Dori's introduction and description of the parade, the second being her explanation of the Statesman situation).

Send-off message is well-written and fun sounding; I like that it ends with a traditional "What could possibly go wrong?" line that invariably foreshadows disaster.

There's a lot of mission objectives, all of which sound quite fun, though it does put an awful lot of text in the nav tool.

I quickly locate the Security Chief, a fellow PPD officer, and rescue him from....Nemesis! He gives me "The Security Chief's Story" as a clue, which does a nice job of explaining that Nemesis has stolen the Thanksgiving Day Parade. So it's a Nemesis plot! Who would've guessed?

Map selection: I think it's a little weird that the parade would be assembling indoors; a giant Back Alley Brawler balloon wouldn't even be able to get out the door, would it?

Love the "Monica Richter High School Marching Band Member" hostages and their bad relations with Nemesis; very funny concept and I like the idea that Paragon City high schools would be named after Golden Age heroes.


Are you with the band?

Found and rescued the Float Character; liked the dialog between it and its guards. He gives me "The Fir Bolg explains" as a clue, hinting at more nefarious Nemesis plotting.

In the dialog for Joe the Balloon Guy and his captors, they say:

[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: Lord Nemesis will destroy this pathetic city!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: heheheh! Sorry . . . I told you not to inhale that helium.
[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: Stop laughing!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: Police Woman! Whew! I thought I'd have to listen to their squeaky voices all day!

...consider adding some descriptive modifiers to the guard's dialog, something like:

[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: *tiny voice* Lord Nemesis will destroy this pathetic city!
[NPC] Joe the Balloon Guy: heheheh! Sorry . . . I told you not to inhale that helium.
[NPC] Werfer Jaeger: *tiny voice* Stop laughing!

...to reinforce the helium joke. (Granted, a Werfer Jaeger probably doesn't have real vocal chords...) Joe also gives me the "Terror Inflated!" clue; I wonder if this should be "Inflated Threat!" or "A Ballooning Crisis!"

I thought the Freakshow rapper as Musical Number was quite funny too. Freeing him and the last band member completes the mission.

Debriefing: the contact is very apologetic about sending me into a fight with Nemesis, which is nice. She seems very concerned for the danger posed by Nemesis stealing the Thanksgiving Parade (should this maybe be in the next briefing?). This seems very selfless compared to her earlier briefing; based on her earlier characterization, I actually thought she would be panicking about losing her job.

Mission 2
Briefing: Great briefing, I like the explanation of the situation. It seems Nemesis has completely infiltrated the parade and filled the giant balloons with poison gas. This is a campy but fun evil plan.

The first thing I encounter when entering the mission are .. Pilgrim themed Nemesis Automata. LOL!


This town isn't big enough for the both of us, pilgrim.

I like the pumpkin-headed Nemesis Automata too. The phrase "monstrous, legume-like machines" in its description is very evocative.

Some of the patrols say:

[NPC] Jaeger: You really think they'll believe we're a marching band? What about the Jaeger?
[NPC] Jaeger: Just march around and pretend to play an instrument.

....which is a nice line, but made a little nonsensical since it's a Jaeger saying it.

I bust up some canisters of gas and get both "Deadly Gas Dispersed" and "Helium dispersed" as clues; you might rename the latter to "Helium Dispersed" (note capitalization) for consistency.

I found the Nemesis Grand Marshal and beat him up. I like his description and its "fever dream of commanding a horde of killer Pilgrims". While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Nemesis Grand Marshal: Police Woman! You are not fit to be grand marshal!

"grand marshal" should be "Grand Marshal" here. "The Grand Marshal talks" clue kind of lampshades Nemesis plots in general; this is a little amusing but not *very* funny (IMHO).

Exploring the Steel Canyon map a little, the custom characters look great, but I think this mission needs a little more to help convey the idea of a parade. Perhaps forcing a bunch of the Nemesis mobs into the "marching" animation, or creating some kind of giant floating balloons ... perhaps Hamidon Mitos or DE Quartz giant monsters that are actually hostages, then "float away" after you rescue them. (Not sure if GMs can be used as hostages, thinking about it...never tried it.)

Perhaps you could make an actual "Marching Band" of Nemesis troops? A Drum Majorette as a boss spawn, with a sizeable escort of generic Nemesis soldiers (no Jaegers), perhaps repainted in the Monica Richter HS colors, all forced into a marching animation?

Found the "Command Automaton" who was ... a turkey Nemesis Automaton.

[NPC] Command Automaton: Gobble! Bzzt! Gobble!
[NPC] Command Automaton: For Lord- gobble gobble!- Nemesis!
[NPC] Command Automaton: Steam-powered turkey is naturally -- gobble! -- low in fat! And meat, too . . .
[NPC] Command Automaton: Gobble! Gob . . . <clunk!>

I liked his lines. LOL.

Took some searching to find the last spectator hidden behind one of the buildings in the northwest corner of the map, but freeing him completed the mission. All the spectators in this mission had essentially identical dialog; this made them a little less fun than the hostages in the first mission, where there was a lot of individuality (sure, the band members were all the same, but that sorta made sense). Making a few more individual spectators (perhaps archetypes like The Mayor, The Impressionable Kid, the Old Lady, etc) would be nice.

The "Another set-up?" clue at the end continues the Grand Marshal's plotline suggesting that this was all part of Nemesis's plot to test my skill; the clue realizes this seems rather ridiculous though. I think this is meant to be funny but fell a bit flat for me. "marshal" should be "Grand Marshal" here.

Debriefing: it's a little disappointing that after all this effort the Thanksgiving Day Parade is still ruined. I think I would've liked it a bit more if we actually DID save the Parade and it got to proceed with the player as Grand Marshal (even if this only occurred in exposition). "catalog of some our upcoming holiday products" should be "catalog of our upcoming holiday products"; also, I would think that a mail order catalog for Christmas would actually be generally released long before Thanksgiving, so this wouldn't be much of a preview.

I like that she revisits her "I got to keep my job!" plot thread and the holiday ad campaign involving placing boxes all over town is a great final joke.

The final souvenir is the Holiday Catalog and is decently written. I'm not that excited about the catalog as a souvenir; I might suggest something parade themed (like a Grand Marshal's Baton), or something Thanksgiving-themed, instead.

Overall
Saving the Thanksgiving Day parade was a terrific concept; ridiculous and campy, but lots of fun. I liked the interesting hostages in the first mission and their fun dialog and clues. The custom Nemesis Automata in the second mission looked very good.

The second mission overall felt a bit weaker than the first mission, which I thought was very strong. The Pilgrim Automata made a positive initial impression on me, but I don't think the custom characters were quite enough to carry the mission. There were a lot of objectives in both missions, but the poison canisters and hostages were not as "fun" in the second mission (IMHO), and I thought the second mission needed a little something more to make it "feel" more like a parade.

Although I initially liked the idea of the Nemesis plot to take over the Thanksgiving Parade to spread poison gas around, I thought trying to spin it as "Oh we meant for you to stop us, just to see your skill" fell a bit flat for me. I'd suggest leaving it at "We were trying to poison gas everyone in Steel Canyon, and would've gotten away with it if it weren't for you!"

This being a "fun" story, I think it would be much nicer if it had a "happy" ending, i.e., you rescue the parade and it goes on with great success with you as the Grand Marshal.

Had a lot of fun though. I gave it 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

Bubbawheat - Matchstick Women #3369 re-review
Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review

MA n00b here. I've only just found this thread and LOVE what you're doing here. Actual feedback is 100% what I need, as I'm still new enough to be making plenty of mistakes. I'd really appreciate a review of my Dr. Aeon's Challenge arc:

CLAN DESTINY
Arc ID: 349053
Level: 30+
Length: Long
Keywords: [open to suggestions here]
Enemies: Rikti, Freakshow, Devoured Earth, Longbow, Custom
Description: Heroes are always supposed to do the right thing, but what happens when "the right thing" is a choice between two evils? When the line between what is the greater good and the necessary evil become blurred, morality is put to the ultimate test. What will you decide?

Be as blunt as you need to be. I want to make this better!

Let me know if you'd like me to review one of yours in return.

Ms. PW, if at all possible could you go ahead and run through "Task Force Mutternacht" (Arc #349522)? It is in a very shaky "looking for feedback" status but I'd like to try to get a "pro" review on it before I submit it for the Doc Aeon contest.

Matchstick Women re-review
Arc ID: 3369
Keywords: custom characters, drama, mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-54
Warnings: EBs, enemies with custom powers.

The premise is to investigate a female arson cult. In the arc description there are some keywords added by the author: "fire, clues, bios". "fire" makes sense as a keyword, but "clues" and "bios" are words that are too generic to be good search keywords, IMHO. A cursory search of arcs matching "clues" produces 10 pages of arcs with very little in common; searching on "bios" only turns up two pages of arcs, mostly matching on words containing the substring "bios".

Having reviewed this arc once before on a lower level character, I decided to play a heavily IO'd 50 elec/SR scrapper with soft capped positional defense and +67% recharge, on +0 x6 difficulty (with bosses), just to see what would happen.

The contact is again "A Mysterious Flame", but the graphic has been changed to a humanoid figure wreathed in a fiery aura. I like this change (had to suspend some disbelief for the old graphic of a Rikti computer).

Mission 1
Briefing: I think it's the same text, but this time my mind is in the gutter or something when I read "a woman, still licked by flame at the edges of her body"... maybe rephrase slightly to reduce the (presumably unintended) sexual connotations. Or maybe it's just me.

Mission entry popup: "You also hear a woman's voice in the distance, she sounds troubled." The building is on fire, though; would I really be able to hear anyone unless they were screaming?

The mission has no enemies in it, which I think was a change from my last run (though I remember asking "Why am I attacking the firefighters?" so perhaps this was to address that comment).

I quickly locate the bomb and disarm it by punching it, a lot. This seems to have spawned some enemies guarding sprinkler valves. I start fighting them; this time I'm high enough level to spawn Fire Dancers. They do look really good. On x6 they are a pretty good challenge; enough hit me to keep me worried, I take auto-hit damage from burn patches, and I end up needing to make a macro to target the healers.


Thunder Girl vs the Fire Dancers

My scrapper has Blaze Mastery as an epic power pool and uses fire blast and fireball in her attack chain, and I notice how "The Perfect Match" is very nearly immune to fire damage. This does make sense logically, but may pose game balance problems for any fire blast or fire melee character who tries this arc; and I think fire-themed characters are more likely to try and play this arc due to the premise. On the other hand, a fiery aura character probably would be largely immune to the damage these mobs are doing. This all makes logical sense from a thematic standpoint, so I don't know that it needs to be changed, but perhaps should be something to think about. Perhaps the fiery aura mobs could have powers selected to be resistant to, but not resist-capped to, fire damage.

Love the animation of the water mains when they get destroyed; the waterspout is very satisfying.

Ran into "A Peculiar Woman" who initially looked friendly, but when I get in range she accuses me of starting the fire and attacks. She is in a group called "Residents", but would an Arachnos base really have residents? Consider changing this to "Civilians" to match the "Search for civilians" objective. Her background story says she's "curious" which seems an odd way to describe her. I don't remember seeing her in my first run through; I think she's here as foreshadowing for later events. If her appearance is important to the plot, consider adding a clue for defeating her?

I still really like this mission; fighting the fire by breaking open the water hydrants feels just right. I think the changes to this mission since my last run were improvements.

Debriefing: "And what is the connection to this simple flame, flickering on this pedestal?" This text made sense with the Rikti computer, but doesn't make as much sense with the new graphic for the contact.

Mission 2
Briefing: Hmm, this looks new. "She is surrounded" .. by what? Last sentence should be broken into two sentences, I think, between "ominous dark red" and "maybe". I might suggest rephrasing slightly to "the flames burn an ominous red, as if warning of danger. You are drawn towards the flame; drawn to look closer." Or something like that. Up to you.

Send-off message seems to imply the arson cultists are friendly this time? Hmm.

Inside the mission: it seems quiet, too quiet. A Burnt Match greets me and tells me Emily is "around back". Am I being inducted into the cult somehow? Burnt Match is in "Matchstick Women Bosses" which none of the other Matchstick Women (even the bosses) are in.

Right next to the Burnt Match is a locker that I click that gives me "A Burnt Match's Journal" and completes the mission. That seemed too quick of a mission; I didn't click any of the other glowies yet or see Emily or anything. Consider making more of the glowies required?

In "A Burnt Match's Journal", should "She was an outcast" perhaps be "She was an Outcast"? Or if you don't mean for her to be a former Outcast gang member, may want to rephrase it a little. This journal (which I think may be the end-of-mission clue) is a pretty big info dump all at once; consider splitting it into a several clues that are gradually found as you investigate the Matchstick Women home.

I decided to stick around in the mission to see what else was in here. Clicked the "Medical Workstation" which gave me "Medical Burn Station" as a clue. "used to treat primarily burns from what it looks like" is rather awkward sounding. What makes the player think it is used to treat primarily burns? Suggest you reword to something like "There's more X, Y and Z here than you'd normally expect to see in a first aid kit; items that are typically used to treat burn victims."

"with as much supplies crammed into it, it looks like it is used a lot" also seems awkward to me, and not necessarily logical; if it's full of supplies, wouldn't that imply they aren't using that much? I'd think a box of 100 gauzy bandages (but only 12 are left) would more strongly imply such a thing.

An orange waypoint spawned on the mission exit at some point; I'm not really sure why. It didn't seem like Burnt Match would follow me there.

Going deeper into the mission, there's a LOT of stuff in here that I wouldn't have seen if I just exited after finding the glowy. Found Instructor Fiona who looked like she was lecturing, but didn't have any lines that I saw.


Matchstick Women trainees planning a bake sale

Found Matchbook Collector. She seems weirdly interested in "showing me out"; perhaps the orange waypoint is hers. In her description, "Is shy trying" should be "Is she trying". I'm not quite sure what her story is.

Found a "Greenfire Instructor" who did have some lines about how to heal using fire. She's surrounded by Matchstick Women doing ritualistic animations. A lot of the Matchstick Women that spawn with Greenfire Instructor don't have the right powers to actually do Thermal heals though; for example "Fire Dancer" even says in her bio that "The Fire Dancers don't have fire powers of their own", but she's here. (Somewhat nitpicky.)

Way in the back I find Emily Metzer. I like the costume you gave her, the scarred face idea is conveyed well. In her description, "her scarred face forever reminder her of the past" should be "her scarred face forever a reminder of her past." She says:

[NPC] Emily Metzer: I hope you enjoyed your little visit here. As you see, nothing out of the ordinary is going on here.

This seems like a pretty weird thing to say. I don't think it quite works for me, Emily playing the gracious hostess here. I had pictured the Matchstick Women, especially the higher ranking ones, as being somewhat more fanatical. And "nothing out of the ordinary" certainly seems untrue.

What exactly was my role in this mission anyway? I think I was supposed to be a new recruit? I was a bit confused on that.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. Also, where do I get the idea they are planning something? I didn't find any clues to that effect and the journal doesn't speak to it. "you get the feeling that this time they won't be quite so friendly" ... maybe should be "next time". And why do I get this feeling? Truthfully, I'm not quire sure why they were friendly in this mission.

Mission 3
Send-off message: I think "You blink your eyes and suddenly it's right in front of you, it's time to save these women" is awkwardly phrased. Maybe rephase to something like, "You blink your eyes and suddenly you're there! The women are in trouble. You need to save them!"

Frightened Girl's description says "You don't know what these women would want with her." I think this is a description from before mission 2 was introduced; with the player seeing the Matchstick Women recruiting and training people in mission 2, though, this doesn't make as much sense.

Scared Girl gives me the "What she told you" clue; should perhaps be "Scared Girl's story" or something similar; "she" is a little too ambiguous. Also this clue says "Before running off, this scared girl told you" .... but actually, Scared girl is following me now, as an ally. Sadly, as a minion using fire blast, against x6 mob spawns, she is actually not much help and gets almost instantly killed. I wonder if she should either be a lieutenant (to be less squishy) or just run away when rescued. Or maybe give her fire armor as a secondary? That would make her survive the fire AoEs a lot better.

Found Burnt Match and she says:

[NPC] Burnt Match: I have some important information for you. I can't just give it to you or they will know. Fight me!

This is a decent line but I think it would work better if Burnt Match has a line before that, recognizing the player (either as a hero or as the person she tried to recruit in mission 2). Something like:

[NPC] Burnt Match: Thunder Girl! You're a hero, aren't you?
[NPC] Burnt Match: I have some important information for you. I can't just give it to you or they will know. Fight me!

Found and rescued A Peculiar Woman. Nitpick: should she just be "Peculiar Woman" to match "Scared girl"? Or perhaps Scared girl should be "A Scared Girl" to be consistent with "A Peculiar Woman". Peculiar Woman might be a good hero codename, thinking about it.

Fought Matchbook Collector; should she be "The Matchbook Collector"? Her bio seems unclear on whether there is just one Matchbook Collector (as in first paragraph) or several (as in second paragraph).

Quiet Girl has a very grown-up looking costume for a "girl"; the shape of her glasses, the dark colors and length of her coat and skirt all seem very adult.


Quiet Girl waits

"The Matchbook" clue emphasizes the phrase "Perfect Match", but the significance of this term seems diminished by the fact that there are dozens of Perfect Match bosses on the map already. Was Perfect Match supposed to be a specific named boss near the end, and not generically appearing throughout the arc? In that case, it perhaps should be flagged Do Not Spawn.

Debriefing: I think it is the same as on my previous run, and while I liked it before, the detailed inside look at the cult in mission 2 kinda spoils some of the questions that are asked in this debriefing.

Mission 4
Briefing: nice imagery. "leading them to a bright blaze you think no one could come back from" seems awkward to me; perhaps "leading them towards a raging inferno that blazes so hot that no one could survive"? (Very nitpicky.)

Send-off message: "in front of you is the Matchstick Compound, only it's on fire, and there's writing all over the walls." Seems a bit dry; I'd suggest rewording it to be more evocative. The phrase "Matchstick Compound" seems awkward too, but that may just be me. Last sentence, the comma should be a semicolon, or break the sentence into two sentences. (Very nitpicky.)

Mission title in the nav tool "Reveal the mystery of the flame." has an extraneous period at the end, and perhaps should use Significant Capitalization, e.g., "Reveal the Mystery of the Flame".

Inside the mission, I click on "a writing desk" to get "Emily's Journal." (extraneous period in clue title). I like this clue but mission 2 now makes it rather redundant. After all, in mission 2, we ALSO found a journal, and also found out a lot about Emily's back story there (especially if I looked at her bio while in that mission).


The cultists prepare for the end

I think I'd like a little more dialog from the Matchstick cultists in this mission; I did see Lit Matchstick had a line, but could use a little more. This blazing armageddon is clearly significant for them; should they be joyous and exalting? Afraid? Relieved? And what started the fires here in the Matchstick base? They were already practicing fire powers before, what's different now? I would guess that Emily has commanded her followers to torch their own base, so they can all die in a blaze of glory. If this is the case, I'd like to see some clues supporting this idea (more firebombs perhaps?).

Emily's defeat dialog is now:

[NPC] Emily Metzer: You have quenched my flame, at last perhaps I can rest. The others may go, I must stay behind.

I think this is a new addition, and is intended to indicate why Emily stays behind as the burning base collapses, but this particular line doesn't quite work for me; it feels stilted, and a big mouthful to utter while dying/being defeated. Suggest you reword to be shorter and more panicky ("No! *gasp* The fire... the fire will cleanse me!"); or perhaps it's your intent that she accepts death with utter calmness ("Peace at last... *gack*").

Souvenir: doesn't appear to have been updated to reflect the addition of mission 2.

Overall
I liked the improvements made to mission 1, which I feel is the strongest mission of the arc. Getting rid of the Council worked better, and I thought the introduction of Peculiar Woman was handled better in this run.

The insertion of mission 2, to fill in some of the background for the Matchstick Women cult, didn't quite work for me. I think I preferred having the Matchstick Women be a mysterious cult that you slowly piece together a picture of, based on the testimony of defeated/captured/turncoat members. I felt that going inside their base and watching them training new recruits removed much of the mystery. Also, the later missions didn't seem fully updated to integrate with the new mission (clues made redundant, characters that would've seen the player before but don't recognize this, missed references to events in mission 2).

I was more picky about some of the text this time; you can either take or leave my suggestions on rewording, though. I do think I'd like a few more details in the last mission; some authored spawns of Matchstick Women with dialog about the upcoming fiery armageddon, clues indicating that the cult has torched their own base (or whatever really happened to set the base on fire), maybe some cultists reacting to the betrayal of Burnt Match.

Anyway, I still like the story overall, but mission 2 didn't quite fit into the story for me; I'd suggest working on that a bit. I gave the arc 4 stars on this play-through.


---

My queue is currently:

Wrong Number - Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596
@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522

Thanks for the new review, it helps a lot with giving me some extra direction on the new mission 2. I still need to think on how best to integrate it into the plot. I think I like the idea of turning it into a case of mistaken identity recruitment mission - where the women think you were at the first base for reasons other than stopping the fire, and I can shift the clues and dialog towards that angle possibly.

PW, I'd like to see what you think of my arc after the revisions and so forth. You don't have a baseline to compare it with. because I don't think you've been through it before, but I'd like to see if your impressions are similar to others who have played it.

The Long Road Back
ID: 340454

Thanks for the Thanksgiving arc review. Good comments, and I'm impressed that I could come away with 4 stars on an arc I essentially threw together at the last minute when I couldn't find a team to do anything with. Too bad you didn't get to see more Gobblers (those turkey boss things), but one can't have everything. Thanks especially for suggestions on how to highlight the various helium jokes.

I, too, am troubled by the lack of an actual parade in an arc about a parade. The MA forum's own FredrikVanSanberg made a useful suggestion in his comments: Mitos could be used as balloons. I wonder what a Mito does when it runs for an entrance. Oh, and for all you MA technicians listening in, in answer to PW's question, yes, you can use DE monsters as hostages. I'll have to try this.

Thanks again!

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society
Arc ID: 344596
Keywords: Ideal for Teams, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 25-54
Warnings: EBs, enemies with custom powers

The premise is to help the last surviving member of a Golden Age supergroup investigate some kind of 5th Column related problem. Although it says "Ideal for Teams" I tried to solo it with a 48 fire/thermal controller, on default (+0 x0) difficulty; she of the red white and blue fire imps, and the most Golden Age looking costume of my crew.

I kind of wonder if the arc title should be "The Secret of the Golden Age Paragon Society"; the current word order seems a little weird to me.

The contact is a custom character in a red, white and blue costume. Love the irony in naming him "The Firecracker Kid" and giving him a really old looking face; it makes sense in the context, of course.

Mission 1
Briefing: Wow, he sounds crotchety! This does match his appearance, so works well. The coloring of "Red White Boom" looks weird to my eyes (I'd rather it all be one color) but I can see how it fits; just the tri-color makes it initially seem like three unrelated words instead of a single name.

I think it is a little weird that the contact says "it falls upon me to pass on to your generation a secret" ... then he doesn't ACTUALLY tell me the secret. Instead he just says some punks are trying to steal something. I wonder if it would flow more naturally to have him only ask the player to get the lockbox and not mention the secret at all until later, when he's really ready to reveal it.

The contact says "an old friend on the force" told him that a break-in is currently in progress. So the police knows about this break-in, and the Paragon Society (in the form of Firecracker Kid) knows about this break-in. Why aren't either of them responding to this break-in directly? Having Firecracker Kid request I come visit him, THEN send me to go deal with the break-in, seems implausible. Maybe Firecracker Kid could just send me to get the lockbox, and not mention either the secret or the break-in. Then while I'm on the premises, I discover the bad guys breaking in, and decide to stop them on my own.

Inside the mission, I have the objective to "Defeat Anderson", but I have no idea who Anderson is, so I am not sure why I need to do this. Perhaps "Stop Burglars" would be a more natural objective.

As I move into the mission, the "Defeat Anderson" objective mysteriously vanishes, though I don't think I've encountered Anderson yet. I did find a statue that some 5th Column were trying to destroy, but I stopped them; this might've cleared the "Defeat Anderson" objective, but I can't understand why.

The 5th Column by the statue said:

[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: Destroy this propoganda!
[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: For the fatherland!

"propoganda" should be "propaganda". "fatherland" should be "Fatherland" (note capitalization).

A little deeper into the mission I *do* encounter Commander Anderson, even though the "Defeat Anderson" objective is gone; something weird going on there. He is very talkative, with a full 7 lines of dialog; not quite sure he needs THAT much, most of the lines are just posturing anyway. He does say:

[NPC] Commander Anderson: You are nothing to the 5th column!

"column" should be "Column" here (note capitalization). Also, Commander is a naval rank and would be atypical for the 5th Column (as far as I know). Might be more appropriate to give him the rank of Colonel, Oberst, Commandant or Captain. (Super nitpicky.)

I find the safe, which is named "DO NOT OPEN UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH", but according to the briefing, it should be the lockbox inside the safe that has this label. Having the safe itself be named that makes me feel like I shouldn't open it, even though Firecracker Kid said to open the safe (but NOT the lockbox). Maybe name this glowy "Safe" instead.

I get two clues at the same time when I click "DO NOT OPEN UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH". In "Smartphone and Burnt Item" it says I found "a small pile of ashes" that "must have been some type of film". I don't think burned microfilm (if that's what this is intended to be) would leave ashes, it would be more like melted plastic or something. "can not determine" should be "cannot determine", and there needs to be a period after "some type of film".

Mission exit popup, "That is unless you want" should be "That is, unless you want" (note punctuation).

Debriefing: much too short. Is "bligity" intentionally spelled that way? Wasn't sure if it was meant to be a nonsense word or not. I really would've expected the contact to have some commentary on what just happened; especially the fact that the "DO NOT OPEN" lockbox was found already opened.

Mission 2
Briefing: The "Part 2: Putting the genie back" sub-caption should perhaps be in bold, italics, or another color; something to make it stand out.

Here the contact says stuff that normally would be in the debriefing for mission 1. It seems a bit unfair that he blames me for tardiness when he could've stopped this burglary himself, rather than calling me, having me come to him, then having me go to his base to stop it. I mean, he IS a hero himself; or was once, at any rate. It fits with his crotchety persona, though.

I think "grandee" should be "grande" also.

The contact wants me to "get back" the microfilm, but I have physical evidence that it's already been destroyed (though...probably posted to the internet already via Anderson's cell phone). Why does he think the info on the microfilm will smear the name of the Paragon Society? (Note: "The Paragon Society" should probably be "the Paragon Society".)

Send-off message: "traced information" should perhaps be "traced the information". I'm a bit surprised that they could trace it to "a device that belongs to the base leader"; how would they know who owns what inside a 5th Column base?

Just how did Sherman (another hero) find out about this so quickly, that he's already on the way before Firecracker Kid and I have any clue where to go? It seems suspicious that Firecracker Kid doesn't want his own godson involved in this investigation; no doubt this implication is intentional, though.

Mission entry popup is a little on the terse side. Maybe OK though.

Inside the mission my only initial objective is "Meet Sherman"; I'm a little puzzled that I don't also have an objective to actually get back the stolen info.

This mission seems awfully quiet; I run into some 5th Column but they don't say anything. Maybe add a patrol with some dialog?

The map was kind of a circular map with a room in the middle and I circled all the way around the outer circle before I found Sherman in the center room (and he does have some dialog). Finding Sherman then triggered the Defeat Hecker objective, causing me to backtrack about halfway around the outer circle in order to find him in a place I had already explored.


A patriotic team-up!

I like Hecker's ranting about bringing back the 5th Column; I also like the guys (an ambush?) who say:

[NPC] Raserei Ubermenschen Force: Attack maneuver dreiunddreizig!

....though maybe that should be capitalized. Hecker's another Commander (nitpicky). We end up defeating him, which completes the mission. It's a little unclear how this secured the info until I notice the "Memory Stick" clue; considering how important this information purportedly is, it seems a little sloppy of me to simply assume this Memory Stick is the one containing the right info; shouldn't I get some confirmation before I go back and get yelled at by the Kid again? Also, who is to say that someone hasn't made a million copies of this data, or posted it to alt.nazi.plots on the Internet?

Is there some reason I need to take the "Memory Stick" back to the Firecracker Kid to decode, instead of just knowing what's on the memory stick now? It would involve the player a little more to learn this info herself, instead of having the contact tell you what's on it. The clue does say we should take it back to Firecracker Kid to "have techs check it out", but considering how sensitive the Kid was about the Paragon Society secret, would he REALLY allow a third party to decipher this?

In "Sherman's Story", "discrete" should be "discreet". I have mixed feelings about having the clues be all different colors; it's a little distracting. But probably OK.

Debriefing: Seems much too short. I'm thinking maybe you are skimping on debriefings because teams can't see them, but I do think it is worth putting text here.

Mission 3
Briefing: Some of this info probably belongs in the debriefing of mission 2. It seems this memory stick coincidentally also includes the 5th Column secret plan to reactive some experiment; I guess this sort of coincidence happens all the time in comics. I'd find it a little more believable that both these pieces of info were on a laptop or a PDA or something, but it's a minor point.

The contact is pretty vague as to what this "experiment" actually is, though.

Send off message: Hmm, the contact blames me for Sherman continuing on this case? Considering the clues for mission 2 emphasize that I didn't say anything, this seems unfair. It's particularly curious that he would prefer that I, a total stranger, investigate this case, over having his own godchild and the leader of the "New" Paragon Society check it out. This seems pretty unreasonable, but perhaps it is foreshadowing for the Kid eventually turning on me.

Also, why does he call me "Nancy"? Is that some kind of archaic expression?

Mission objectives: while "Seek Clues" and "Defeat Base Commander" seem pretty reasonable, I'm not sure why I need to "Destroy Cloning Tube" or "Destroy Control Console" since these were never mentioned before. I'd suggest you either have the Kid mention them specifically in the briefing, or perhaps say something like "You should bust up any scientific equipment you see" and then accumulate these into a more generic sonding "2 pieces of equipment to destroy".

I find a Cloning Tube almost immediately; destroying it gives me the "DNA Sample" clue. It says I find the DNA of whomever was to be cloned inside; but the Cloning Tube's guard actually says:

[NPC] Darkwolf: Hurry! The sooner these are repaired the sooner we can begin production.

...implying the Cloning Tube is nonfunctional. So why would they put the DNA sample in the Cloning Tube if the machine isn't operational? (Logic problem.)

Found and defeated General Vogt, who spawned as an EB for me; I actually thought he was just a normal 5th Column guy (since he has a typical 5th uniform) until he started beating me up. In his dialog he says:

[NPC] General Vogt: You are even more outclassed then the "hero" Sherman was.

"then" should be "than" here. I guess he is implying that Sherman was already here and got defeated.

Found an ordinary wooden crate that gave me the "Costume" clue ... huh, I wonder if this glowy should be a coffin or a body bag instead?

Finally I found the control console, which gives me the "Hard Drive" clue and completes the mission. I'm not sure blasting this console to pieces, then taking the hard drive, makes the most sense for trying to trace the communications coming from the console; perhaps hacking the computer and tracing the network would be a little more logical?

Shouldn't I have questioned Vogt or some of the other 5th Column regarding what happened to Sherman? Vogt clearly knew, since he mentioned Sherman.

Debriefing: again much too short. What happened with the hard drive I found, and the link to the next 5th Column base?

Mission 4
Briefing: the contact finally reveals the secret of the Paragon Society. I rather like Sherman's secret origin; after all the nihilistic "Aeon's Challenge" arcs we've been churning out, it's nice to see some heroes choose to do what's right, even though it creates a greater long-term danger; I really think this is more heroic.

"and as I feared those Nutsi bastards" should be "and as I feared, those Nutsi bastards". I think it's also worth mentioning that they probably learned the secret from the info they stole earlier.

Send-off message: whoa, the contact actually admits that Sherman getting involved in this was his fault! I think this is a very grown-up thing to do; if this keeps up, someday, he may grow up to be a Firecracker MAN. However, if Firecracker Kid really DID tell Sherman this secret before mission 3, as he expositions here, it's really rotten of him to blame me for not getting Sherman off the case in mission 3's briefing. You might want the contact to not blame the player in mission 3's briefing, unless it's your intent that the Kid be this crotchety and mean (which is possible, actually, based on his characterization so far).

I think I would've liked to see some foreshadowing of this reveal in mission 3, also; since the Nutsis clearly know Sherman's secret (since they were trying to clone him), they could drop some hints in their dialog. Perhaps they could mention that this time, the clones would be trained to be good little fascists, or something. Also, Vogt talking down Sherman's abilities in his dialog seems a little inconsistent with the idea that they view him as prime cloning material. And if Vogt could beat Sherman, why don't they clone Vogt?

Map selection: should this be a 5th Column style base instead of a tech lab?

I almost immediately find "Panzer", an ally who apparently was formerly Sherman. Should Panzer be blond? (Admittedly an Aryan stereotype.) He says stuff like:

[NPC] Panzer: MUST...FOCUS....4th of July....Statue of Liberty....Iron Star...
[NPC] Vampyr Mesmerist: No interuptions!

Huh, what's an Iron Star? Nothing turns up on wikipedia. I don't get the reference. Also, being the son of Red White and Boom, a patriotic hero, he should totally think of his dad (and perhaps his teammates) when trying to focus on American things. Also, "interuptions" should be "interruptions".

Panzer gives me the clue "Sherman's Story". (This is the second clue named this, though they are distinguished by the mission number.) For consistency, this should be "Panzer's Story" or perhaps the ally should still be named Sherman. I lean a little towards having him still be Sherman, because he is still loyal to America and helping the hero. When in combat he says "Verraeter!" which I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Wikipedia search reveals only that it's an album title for a metal band. Finally, I kinda think the eagle on his chest should be black, not red. (Nitpicky.)

Panzer's clue and dialog both want me to take him to the "mind device", which sounds like I should lead him to an object, but there's really no mechanism for that currently, is there?

Found the picture, which has a nice description, though it's odd that the 5th Column would keep something like that around. The darts sorta explain it though.

At some point I got "Defeat Base Leader" in my mission objectives, probably when I rescued Sherman. Exploring the base, Sherman and I find Blitzkrieg in the deepest part. Blitzkrieg only spawned as a lieutenant for me, which meant he died almost instantly, but he did say "Verraeter!" which caused Sherman to betray me. So now it makes more sense to keep him named Panzer and in the 5th Column.


Turns out it was a bad idea to buff Panzer to be immune to my damage type.

I eventually overcome Panzer despite his high fire resist.

While fighting him, he says:

[NPC] Panzer: Ha! You are about as tough as a weinerschnitzel!

Love this line, but it should be "wiener schnitzel".

After defeating Panzer I now have a new objective of "Aquire Device to Restore Sherman". "Aquire" should be "Acquire" here. Since I fought Blitzkrieg in the deepest part of the base, I'm forced to backtrack looking for the device.

One floor down I find a safe labeled "Mind Control Device" (should maybe just be "Safe" and then you find the device inside) which completes the mission. Having this spawn behind me is a little weird because Sherman and I totally walked right by this objective (but were unable to complete it) and in principle we should've been able to recover the device right then and there, to free Sherman from mind control. Not sure there is a good way to work around this; you can hope to make the device spawn behind the boss, but it's hard to make sure of it.

Debriefing: finally a debriefing with some text in it, and the contact is forced to admit that I'm actually helping a lot, which is a good feeling. Strangely, he mentions that "Blitzkrieg wasn't making an idle boast. The 5th Column has a lab somewhere" .... I think this should be "has another lab somewhere". Also, looking back at Blitzkrieg's dialog, he never mentions another lab, just that the 5th Column won't be stopped by Blitzkrieg's defeat. I would suggest adding a clue somewhere (on Blitzkrieg's defeat or the end of mission, or somewhere) to help point the player to the next lab.

Besides which, it seems a little unheroic for the player to wait for the authorities to locate the next lab; really, I should be out there looking for it, or else have found some clue in this mission that leads to it.

Mission 5
Briefing: It's a little surprising that several months pass between mission 4 and this one; what happened to the backup 5th Column lab? Well, apparently Sherman has finally located it (I guess he was looking for it, but I was not) and wants my help. (We arrested Blitzkrieg and many other 5th Column soldiers; none of them would give up the location?) This is nice of him, but his description says he's the leader of a whole SG (the new Paragon Society); this makes it a little strange that, after months apart, he would ask me and not one of his SGmates. Also, considering he attacked me on our last outing, I'm a little wary about another team-up.

In this briefing, "Blitzkieg" should be "Blitzkrieg".

Send-off message: glad that Firecracker Kid mentions that he'd like to help, but is too weak; I had been wondering why he (as a hero) wasn't helping more directly.

Mission objectives: I have "Defeat Uber Alles" as an objective, but this name hasn't been mentioned before now (though it IS a cool name for a villain).

Early on I ran into a "Werwolf" (I think a custom minion) singing the Nutsi national anthem (I think?).

Then I find Sherman battling some more custom 5th Column. It seems the custom characters are all described as clones; since "months" have passed, maybe this cloning facility has made more progress than the last.

Sherman says the line:

[NPC] Sherman: I don't care what you say Fritz.! My heritage is as American as Mom's apple pie!

...which has an extra period after "Fritz".

We find and destroy the Mind Probe, but it's not really clear what the 5th Column was doing with it. We also destroy some Cloning Tubes. None of them give any clues though. I assume these don't have DNA loaded into them already? Or where did these clones come from? Should we maybe have an objective to steal back the DNA samples they are using? What are they really doing here, I wonder?

Tragically, after defeating a 5th Column minion on a catwalk, Sherman gets stuck in geometry up there and I have to leave him behind.

After fighting the custom 5th Column for awhile, I notice that Werwolf is not worth any exp. May want to look at that, most players will want to get exp for every kill.

Also, it seems like this mission is entirely custom 5th Column mobs; you may want to mix in a few standard 5th Column mobs into this faction, for more variety and to make them look like part of the 5th Column. Or alternatively you could rename this villain group "Fascist Clones" or something, to distinguish them from the 5th Column.

Regarding the specific custom mobs, the "Werwolf" seems a little generic. He seems like just another soldier, why make a custom character specifically for him instead of using one of the existing 5th Column troopers? Also, "Werwolf" may be easy to confuse with the war wolf and werewolf mobs, but I don't think he's intended to be like them.

The Hunter mobs look cool; I think they may be an homage to the Nazi archaeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark? However, what is their purpose here? Their description mentions hunting artifacts, but that isn't referenced anywhere else in the plot; are they

I like the look of the Goot Mater (sp? forgot to write down their exact name) mobs, I think they fit in well with the theme. Their description mentions they are expected to give birth to 4 Aryan babies to perpetuate the master race; but this seems a little inconsistent with the plot so far, which seems to involve cloning the master race using the Clone Tubes, not breeding them the normal way.

Speaking of, since this is a cloning facility, I think it would be fun to have some younger (not fully grown) clones here; a nursery full of clone babies being tended by the Nazi mothers, or a classroom of "Boys from Brazil" type Hitler youth being indoctrinated by teachers or something.

Also, considering there's so many 5th Column clones running around, isn't the goal of destroying Cloning Tubes a little too late?

Deep in the base I do find Uber Alles, who spawned as a boss to me. He seemed a little easy for the final boss, but this may be the fault of my difficulty settings. (General Vogt was actually tougher, having spawned as an EB while Uber Alles is only a Boss.) Love his costume though, it's very evocative.


Have a taste of the red white and blue, Nutsi!

He doesn't look like a clone of anyone else though (certainly not Sherman). So I guess he is the only non-clone 5th Column here? Not sure. Also, it would've been nice to have some foreshadowing of Uber Alles, since he IS the Big Bad guy of the arc; as it is, the final mission is the first time you hear of his existence. Would be nice if one of the earlier bosses said something like, "You may defeat me, but Uber Alles will get you!" for the sake of building the Big Bad guy up as a threat.

Defeating Uber Alles gives me the "Aftermath" clue. This clue summarizes the end of the mission; I kinda think the text here really belongs in the mission exit popup and/or the mission debriefing. The mission exit popup doesn't currently have a lot of info in it; maybe it could go there.

It would be nice to have a few more clues in mission 5, though. I never really got a feel for what the 5th Column was doing in this base, other than plotting to take over the world via unspecified means. I think the mission could be improved by giving the 5th Column some crazy plan to take over the world, that you and Sherman manage to foil just in time (right now I think we find out where their base is, then just head there to beat them up).

Not a bad debriefing.

Souvenir seems a little on the short side; would be nice to have a recap of the arc. Also the first paragraph is written like a description while the second paragraph is written like dialog; this is a little jarring, may want to make them consistent or put them in a different type face to make it clear that they're different. Also, is a recommendation letter to the New Paragon Society from Firecracker Kid actually helpful? After all, I've just saved Sherman's butt, and Sherman is the SG leader, after all -- I wouldn't think I would need any more recommendation than that.

Overall
I liked the reveal of the secret of the Paragon Society and Sherman/Panzer's back story. I liked how Firecracker Kid was characterized; both the irony of being an octogenarian "Kid" and how crotchety he started out, and then how he warmed up to the player as the arc progressed. His disdain for Faceyspace and other modern artifacts was very fun, too.

Some of the plotting felt a bit awkward to me; Firecracker Kid gets a tip from the police that his base is being robbed, but instead of the police dealing with it, the Kid dealing with it, or the New Paragon Society dealing with it, he summons a random hero to go check it out? Kid also drops a lot of hints about this deep dark secret long before actually revealing it; if it were really a secret, wouldn't he not mention it until he had to? Also he mentioned early on that he needed to pass this secret on to the next generation; considering the nature of the secret (Sherman's secret origin), wouldn't it be better for everyone if it were forgotten?

The 5th Column plot to clone Sherman to make super soldiers made some sense, but they seem to lose direction after you rescue Sherman in mission 4. In mission 5 it seems like they've dropped the idea of cloning Sherman and instead are churning out clones of Werwolves, Hunters and Goot Maters, but it's not clear why; all of these custom mobs, while neat, are not really super soldiers (none are even close to as dangerous as Panzer was) and so I don't know what they are accomplishing.

Currently I feel like mission 4 is the strongest of the arc, with Blitzkrieg's evil plan, the mind control device, and saving Sherman. I might suggest either making mission 4 the finale (cutting mission 5 and moving some of the cool stuff in there into a previous mission) or else adding more material to mission 5: at the very least, a new mad plan to replace the "Clone Sherman" plan, maybe some supporting clues/dialog to explain why they are churning out Hunters and Goot Maters instead of super soldiers, and some flavor stuff. I think generally adding more details to the missions would help each mission be more fun; there's a certain sameness to fighting 5th Column and defeating their boss in each mission (though Sherman's plotline does help mix things up some).

Here's a random crazy idea (you can use it or completely disregard it): in the final mission, you could put a refrigerator glowy containing Hitler's Brain-in-a-Jar. There would be a recolored Baby-New-Year hostage as "Baby Hitler" or "Hitler Youth" being read Mein Kampf as a bedtime story by a Goot Mater. Then when you win the mission, maybe Sherman could adopt the Aryan baby and raise him; I think that would have a certain symmetric elegance.

Anyway, it's always a fun time beating up Nazis. I gave this arc 4 stars.

---

My queue is currently:

@Darkfang - Patriot Palace Massacre #342403
@Lazarus - Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)" (Arc# 347029)
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454

Thanks for the review. I was going to do a blow by blow, but remembered that the way you review is to write things as you go that stand out, but you don't go back and revisit them at the end. This leads to a lot of " Why would X happen?" which is clearly explained in the next briefing section or clue. So instead let me just comment on the Overal section.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman Overall I liked the reveal of the secret of the Paragon Society and Sherman/Panzer's back story. I liked how Firecracker Kid was characterized; both the irony of being an octogenarian "Kid" and how crotchety he started out, and then how he warmed up to the player as the arc progressed. His disdain for Faceyspace and other modern artifacts was very fun, too.

Glad you enjoyed all that stuff. BTW, Firecracker is loosely based on an Uncle of mine and a rant he went on about "kids toys today" and how in his day a broomstick and a ball made from rubber bands taken from neighborhood newspapers was all they needed.

Quote:

Some of the plotting felt a bit awkward to me; Firecracker Kid gets a tip from the police that his base is being robbed, but instead of the police dealing with it, the Kid dealing with it, or the New Paragon Society dealing with it, he summons a random hero to go check it out?

I guess you missed the fact that the information about the break-in comes in the second briefing and has the phrase “I just got wind of a break-in….” Also, The Firecracker Kid is too old to be fighting crime as he clearly says later.

Quote:

Kid also drops a lot of hints about this deep dark secret long before actually revealing it; if it were really a secret, wouldn't he not mention it until he had to? Also he mentioned early on that he needed to pass this secret on to the next generation; considering the nature of the secret (Sherman's secret origin), wouldn't it be better for everyone if it were forgotten?

It seems clear that he is testing you (as you noted, his change in attitude toward you as the arc progresses). As for it being forgotten, I don't know, there are many reasons to pass this on like medical history should Sherman ever have issues.

Quote:

The 5th Column plot to clone Sherman to make super soldiers made some sense, but they seem to lose direction after you rescue Sherman in mission 4. In mission 5 it seems like they've dropped the idea of cloning Sherman and instead are churning out clones of Werwolves, Hunters and Goot Maters, but it's not clear why; all of these custom mobs, while neat, are not really super soldiers (none are even close to as dangerous as Panzer was) and so I don't know what they are accomplishing.

No change in direction, DNA can be altered and these clones are a result of this happening. Should they all should be Bosses??? I need to work within the game, so how about this to easy your mind: they are varying degrees of success in altering Sherman's DNA. Or maybe something else you can "fill in the gap" with in your mind. It is a golden age comic book story tribute.

Quote:

Currently I feel like mission 4 is the strongest of the arc, with Blitzkrieg's evil plan, the mind control device, and saving Sherman. I might suggest either making mission 4 the finale (cutting mission 5 and moving some of the cool stuff in there into a previous mission) or else adding more material to mission 5: at the very least, a new mad plan to replace the "Clone Sherman" plan, maybe some supporting clues/dialog to explain why they are churning out Hunters and Goot Maters instead of super soldiers, and some flavor stuff. I think generally adding more details to the missions would help each mission be more fun; there's a certain sameness to fighting 5th Column and defeating their boss in each mission (though Sherman's plotline does help mix things up some).

I could not disagree more. Every mission has several clues and additional goals other than defeating the boss (and btw the last boss is an EB, so it was your settings). Also, the last mission takes place months later (as spelled out in the briefing)

Quote:

Here's a random crazy idea (you can use it or completely disregard it): in the final mission, you could put a refrigerator glowy containing Hitler's Brain-in-a-Jar. There would be a recolored Baby-New-Year hostage as "Baby Hitler" or "Hitler Youth" being read Mein Kampf as a bedtime story by a Goot Mater. Then when you win the mission, maybe Sherman could adopt the Aryan baby and raise him; I think that would have a certain symmetric elegance.

This cliche suggestion would work if the arc was a comedy or parody This makes me feel that you missed what the arc was about. Maybe it is because I have only written comedies before you were expecting more of that.

Again thanks for the review, you did find some stuff I will fix and gave some suggestions for me to think over.

WN

I'm trying to increase my pace to get to some of the "Dr Aeon's Challenge" arcs before the deadline, but at the current rate I'm not sure I'll make it to them.... I thought about skipping directly to them, but I was afraid that would be unfair to the people who got skipped over.

So... I'll try to do more, but I'm not definitely sure if I'll get to them in time.

It is funny you mention the silent alarm since I add that this morning (great minds )

I also added a patrol to the last mission with dialog to make it clear about the source of the clones.

I made a few other changes which I will be posting to my thread as soon as I test them all out and am happy with them.


WN

Woohoo, I'm next on the list! I should probably point out that, per some player feedback, I made some changes to Patriot Palace Massacre tonight. If you've already played it and are writing the review, I'll be interesting to see how my changes match up to your critique. If not, then it has been fine tuned just in time! Either way, I hope you find it enjoyable, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Well, I know people are busy, and there might not be time to review my arc for the Challenge in time for the deadline, but I have been unable to get any feedback for it in the time it has been out, and I would very much like to have any constructive feedback at all. The arc is about as tested as I can do alone, and it seems to be what I want, but no author can see all the holes in their own work.

Arc Name: Diversionary Tactics
Arc ID: # 347791
Levels: Any (1-50)
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: 5th Column, Arachnos, Longbow, Custom Group
Length: Very Long ( 5 missions, medium maps)

Summary:

The word 'Hero' carries a burden of responsibility and trust, and these will be tested when the ghost of an old Villian comes to you and asks for your help in recovering a device that once belonged to him, help that may force you to cross the line between Hero and Villian.


Notes:

I've seen some editing errors with corrections not taking after I save them. These should be all ironed out now, but please let me know if you see any glaring problems with spelling or double text. While I believe it is quite soloable, let me know if you find any problems with that (too easy, too hard, ect.).

Thanks for any assistance with this!

The Patriot Palace Massacre review
Arc ID: 342403
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 50-54
Warnings: AVs, EBs, custom power selections

The premise is investigating the deaths of a local supergroup. Though flagged "Solo Friendly", the fact that it is min level 50 and has AVs made me play a 50 bs/shield scrapper (heavily IO'd with soft capped defense) on +2 x8 difficulty, bosses OK, no AVs. The contact is a police chief.

Mission 1
Briefing: the caption at the top of the briefing should perhaps be in larger font, bold face or another color to help it stand out. Nicely written briefing that does an excellent job of describing the situation and explaining why the player has been brought in (rather than the police handling it themselves). A local SG has been completely killed off under mysterious circumstances and the Chief would like me to help investigate the situation.

Mission objectives: "Speak with Leiutenant Hodge." should be spelled "Lieutenant" and remove the period at the end of it (looks weird with a comma after it). Hodge was mentioned by the contact, but Rita Lennox was not, so it's not clear why "Speak to Rita Lennox" should be an objective.

I pretty quickly find Lieutenant Hodge who is being guarded by level 21 Clockwork; but I'm a level 50 hero and the arc is min level 50, so these are very very grey. I free Hodge from the very very grey clockwork and get a clue called "Leiutenant Hodge's Report". "Leiutenant" should be "Lieutenant" here. This clue does mention Rita Lennox as being the SG's attorney; perhaps "Speak to Rita Lennox" should be an objective triggered off of talking to Lieutenant Hodge.

Found a bunch of body bags labeled "Murder Victim" that were flagged "You Can't Complete This Objective Yet" which felt a little awkward as dead bodies seem like something I should immediately be interested in looking at.

I found Rita Lennox, the lawyer; her background story is really fun. When she sees me, she says:

[NPC] Rita Lennox: Do I represent you?

...which seems a little odd to say when I'm rescuing her, but I guess it works. I almost think she should ask me if I'd like legal representation after that line; or threaten to sue if I fail to save her. Heheh, she actually does offer her services in the "Rita's Statement" clue, in which "insensative" should be "insensitive". Should "media-friendly scandals" just be "media scandals"?

For some reason, talking to Rita triggers to "Search the Bodies for Evidence" objective. I'm not sure why these objectives are connected; Rita doesn't ask me to do it, and it's not clear why it's necessary to save Rita first.

Clicking a body a message appears in my spambox of

"This victim's condition is consistant with the police report."

"consistant" should be "consistent". Not much else happens when I click the body. Maybe worth giving a clue with some description, even for the non-plot-related bodies? These are supposed to be the bodies of fellow superheroes, so might have more impact to the player character than a typical dead body? As presented, the large numbers of body bags feel terribly impersonal.

One of the bodies does give me the "Twelve Corpses" clue and triggers "Return to Lt. Hodge". Why do I need to return to Lt Hodge at this point? Maybe the clue should suggest that I talk to him.

Lt Hodge respawns near me surrounded by more grey clockwork. He merely notes what I've found and changes the subject, giving me the "Encoded Storage Chamber" clue suggesting I should unlock a vault. With the linear sequence of objectives you have set up here, you may want to sort the clues so that "Encoded Storage Chamber" is after "Twelve Corpses" in the clue journal.

The vault turns out to be a small cylinder that I initially thought was a wastebasket. (I would've expected it to be a wall safe, actually.) This gives me the "Inside the Vault" clue and spawns a very large number of "Patriotoid" robots, which are actually at my level (large groups of 52s). Weirdly, the Patriotoids begin fighting each other as a patrol roams in and starts fighting a static spawn that appeared near me. The Patriotoids are described as automatic defenses of the Patriot base, but I find their presence rather puzzling because:

1. Why did they spawn after I entered my code into the Vault? If the Vault actually opens to my ID, it shouldn't call security. If it does call security, it shouldn't open.
2. Why are they fighting each other? (maybe set up as Rogue faction?)
3. Twelve or 13 people are killed in the Patriot base, then police and lawyers show up and start putting the Patriot SG members into body bags, then Clockwork start attacking .... none of these actions cause the security robots to appear, but I come in and open the vault and NOW security robots show up?


Someone forgot to program the security robots to not treat other security robots as intruders


I also get a "Rescue Rita Lennox" objective, but I've received no information that she's in danger, so it's not clear why I need to do this. I start looking for Rita, but before I actually find her, the Patriotoid robots that are fighting other Patriotoid robots manage to free her. This triggers an "Override the Security Protocol" objective. I find a computer that completes this objective and the mission, also giving the "Security System Log" clue that hints that one particular member of the SG actually conveniently avoided being present for the massacre.

I have to wonder why there is a "blue and white robot" in a body bag in the Twelve Corpses clue? If there's some kind of coverup to conceal Starstripe's survival, that would imply someone on the police evidence team would have to be in on it....and a blue and white robot would certainly not fool the coroner.

Debriefing: I like the debriefing, has a great in-character summary of the evidence gathered so far.

Mission 2
Briefing: The missing Starstripe turns up and attacks some Longbow, making him look pretty guilty. The contact asks me to stop him.

Inside the mission: The base is full of Patriotoid robots and the Patriotoids are actually too hard for my scrapper at +2 x8 difficulty, defeating me in short order. +2 x8 is admittedly pretty high difficulty, but I actually can do just fine against most PvE content at this difficulty setting, so this was a bit of a surprise. Reviewing my combat log it seems like they got me with a combination of sonic blast (-res debuff), stacked chilblain/electric fences (slow/immob), shiver (slow), ice blasts (slow) and build up (a lot of them use this) (after watching for a bit I think just the Patriotoid Stunner uses this, but this mob seems quite common; maybe it is the only lieutenant rank mob in the group). The cumulative effect of all these debuffs plus build up makes this enemy group quite dangerous; may be a bit too hard for most players. I think you should consider dropping build up from their powersets and reducing the amount of stacking debuff they have. Why do these robots have such varied powersets anyway? I think they would seem more natural if they had a more common theme.

I decide to turn down my difficulty settings and retry the mission. Changed to +0 x1, bosses OK, no AVs. Much easier now.

Found a pile of bones labeled Domino Dicer, but the spam box message is:

"The body was slashed to pieces, much like the Patrioteers. It's hard to identify without reference."

....seems to imply I can't identify it, but it IS clearly labeled Domino Dicer (inconsistent). This body seems likely to be an important plot element, should maybe have a Clue attached to it. It triggers a "Search Longbow Criminal Database" objective. I find a nearby computer that completes this objective and gives me "Positive Identification" as a clue, identifying the body as Domino Dicer.

In the last room of the base I find Starstripe. He's in a SG called "the Patrioteers", should maybe be "The Patrioteers" (note caps). His origin describes "experimental gene therapy to gain supernatural abilities", but supernatural usually implies magic, so may not be the word you want to use. (Very nitpicky.)


I hate when heroes go bad. Oh well, case closed.


Starstripe has some dialog about a mysterious female person who "got to them" and "She killed them!" and so on, hinting that there's more to the story. Defeating Starstripe completed the mission, and I got the "Starstripe Arrested!" clue from him (should maybe be after "Positive Identification" in the clue journal); perhaps Starstripe's story should be mentioned as part of this clue?

Considering this is a Longbow base, why aren't there any Longbow here? Perhaps have a few Longbow as optional hostages, being nonlethally contained by the robots or something?

Debriefing: Aha, Domino Dicer is a female assassin (gender wasn't clear from the pile of bones or the positive ID; maybe the positive ID should specify) which might explain Starstripe's curious dialog. The contact presents a reasonably believable explanation for Starstripe's actions; though I get the vibe that it's not "the real story".

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact wants me to find out why Starstripe went off the deep end, which seems kinda reasonable; he wants me to do this by talking to Rita, his lawyer, though. For some reason Starstripe won't talk to Rita, though, so I don't see what motivation I have for talking to her. How could she know anything if she hasn't been in contact with Starstripe? Also, wouldn't anything Starstripe have told her be protected due to lawyer/client privilege? (Though it does start building a circumstantial case that Rita is up to no good...)

Inside the law firm, there's still more Patriotoids...what are they doing here?? I thought they worked for the Patriots, who are all dead or in prison now.

I find and rescue Chet Parson, who says:

[NPC] Chet Parson: You're a witness! I'm going to make a furtune off this!

"furtune" should be "fortune". Consider adding "Esq." as an ostentatious title ("Chet Parson, Esq.") to be more lawyerly.

Found a corkboard that satisfies "Find Rita", with "Note from Rita" as a clue, hinting she had a conference 3 days ago. Though if this note is from 3 days ago, we actually have seen Rita more recently than that; so I'm not sure this actually finds Rita.

Found a file cabinet labeled "Files"; when I click on it, I get a progress bar with no message on it (suggest you add one). It does seem to satisfy the "Find Starstripe's motive" objective, and gives me "The Starstripe murder file". Is this supposed to be a file about Starstripe's crimes? If so, how is it that the law firm has a file about this when, according to the chief, Starstripe has refused to talk to them? It also says that Domino Dicer killed Starstripe's parents, but I think we knew that (it's in his bio even).

This also triggers a new objective to "Find Source of Invasion", but it is unclear why this is triggered by finding the files; the robot invasion was here as soon as I entered, after all, and the files don't refer to it.

I found Ross being held captive by more robots. One of them says:

[NPC] Patriotoid Silencer: Remain Stationary. You are not the targetted interloper.


If it's a Silencer, why is it yelling at me?

"targetted" should be "targeted". Ross trying to claim I gave him whiplash, with appropriate animation even, was a funny touch. (Wish I had gotten a screenshot of that now.)

Found a "Starstripe Hologram" which was issuing orders to the robots and satisfied the "Source of Invasion" objective. Interesting that the Starstripe Hologram was looking for Rita. But the real Starstripe could've seen Rita even while in jail, since she works for the law firm his SG is retaining. Hmmm.

At "Rita's Desk" I get the final clue, "Rita's Novel" about Starstripe's parents; neat idea. At the same time I get the mission completion clue, "Starstripe's Next Target". In this clue, "blame's" should be "blames", and it suggests that Starstripe set all these robots in motion to go after Rita even before he was arrested.

Mission 4
Briefing: Since we think Starstripe is going after Rita, the contact wants me to go to her apartment and protect her. I like that the contact says they'll be working on finding out how the robots are being controlled. It occurs to me that Starstripe is in custody and could be questioned about this.

Map selection: I thought the plan was that I'd go to Rita's apartment, but this mission is set in Steel Canyon on an outdoor map; seems inconsistent.

The outdoor map is filled with more Patriotoid robots. It seems like there are an awful lot of these Patriotoid robots; considering they are originally the security drones for the Patriot base, how is it that there are enough to fill up Steel Canyon? And what happened to the people who normally live in Steel Canyon?

At this point 2 teammates joined me (a dark defender and a rad blaster); with a team following me around I needed to pick up the pace a bit, so my notes are a little more sketchy. I was still on +0 x1 but a bigger team meant bigger spawns; the Patriotoids were very mean against the squishies on my team, and the blaster died at least 3 times.

The outdoor map was just too big to make it practical to clear all the mobs, so we skipped around searching for Rita, eventually finding her behind one of the buildings along the northern edge. After freeing her she ran off with some dialog about needing some notes (I think) and I have "Rescue Rita again" as an objective.

We searched the whole map again and couldn't find Rita (this was frustrating) but we did find "Leiutenant Hodge" (should be "Lieutenant Hodge"). Freeing Hodge satisfied the "Rescue Rita again" objective; Hodge had dialog and a clue explaining why he was here (warning against "Rita") but my defender teammate still said "This man isn't Rita!" Also, in "Hodge's Bad News" clue, "coronor" should be "coroner".

This triggered two more objectives: to defeat the Domino Dicer and to shut down the Patriotoids. This caused us to search the whole map again. We were able to find a device to destroy that satisfied the "shut down the Patriotoids" (though, of course it didn't really shut down the Patriotoids). We couldn't find anything named Domino or Dicer, though; this was frustrating. Finally after extensive searching we found "Rita?" who satisfied the Domino Dicer objective. In Rita's description, "leiutenant" should be "lieutenant".


Okay, Domino Dicer, you're going down! Wait, ugh, what's this horrible green stuff? Another trick, I suppose? Oh, sorry about that, defender teammate...the debuff is, uhh, really a very attractive shade of green.

While this mission had an interesting structure, there was way too much backtracking. Multiple triggered objectives on an outdoor map tend to force backtracking, and it was particularly frustrating that two objectives didn't match the name of what actually satisfied the objective (we had set up macros to try and target the objective as named in the nav tool).


Mission 5
Briefing: so Starstripe is exonerated. The police chief says he's giving Starstripe a pardon, but a police chief really doesn't have this authority; I think you'd need the governor or the president to issue a pardon, or perhaps a judge can simply order Starstripe released (since maybe he hasn't been convicted yet).

Another scrapper joined my team during this mission.

This mission is mostly full of Arachnos, which is a nice change from the Patriotoids. They talk a lot about a "Chosen One" (presumably Domino Dicer), in the following lines of dialog:

[NPC] Crab Spider Slicer: Fan out. The new Chosen One wants Starstripe bad!
[NPC] Fire Tarantula: Who cares? Its not like Chosen Ones are *actually* important.
[NPC] Fortunata: Hold on to this one. The 'Chosen One' we came for wants him for some reason.

Actually, "Chosen One" should be "Destined One" throughout (to match the terminology used in CoV).

There are some extra optional spawns of Freaks and Family which I thought were fun. I wonder what happened to all the prison guards, though? Perhaps some should be present as optional hostages.

One of my team members wasn't familiar with tbe Breakout map and was quite confused by the grates that connect the interior and exterior parts of the map. You might consider adding mention of these grates to the mission briefing or mission objectives.

We rescued Starstripe (he spawned inside a cell) and triggered Domino Dicer as an objective (she spawned in the exterior area). Domino Dicer was an AV in this mission, which seemed like a big upgrade from the last mission; possibly it's because we added that fourth person, though. I found the AV first and was momentarily puzzled that my teammates couldn't see her, until we realized she was a ninjitsu AV. That seems quite dangerous; I could easily picture a low perception player stumbling across her and getting 1-shotted (or nearly so) by the AV attacking from hide. However, based on Domino Dicer's background and modus operandi so far, making her a db/ninj enemy actually makes a lot of sense. Just be aware this is dangerous.

Our team was moving too fast for Starstripe to keep up; he got left behind in the jail area, which made some of Domino Dicer's taunts (which address Starstripe) not quite make sense. Example:

[NPC] Domino Dicer: Why so determined, Starstripe? Its not like I could kill everyone you love AGAIN.

Nice line; but maybe consider rewording the lines so they'll make sense even if Starstripe isn't present.

Domino Dicer seemed to Placate me a lot, but we eventually dropped her. There's a pretty cool ending to the story with some Starstripe/Domino Dicer drama in the final clue and debriefing.

Debriefing: "Anyone but the $name and Starstripe" should perhaps be "Anyone but $name and Starstripe".

No souvenir? Write one if you can.

Overall
I liked the storyline quite a bit, with Starstripe initially being falsely accused and eventually exonerated, and the way Domino Dicer escaped and began impersonating Rita. I liked the characterization of Rita and all the lawyers, and the police chief. Some pretty good clues and well written briefings. I liked the extra criminal spawns placed in the jailbreak mission. I liked how the story ended, with Starstripe taking the moral high ground.

Things I didn't like: the Patriotoid robots. We were fighting Patriotoids for most of the arc (they were the primary enemy for 4 missions; would've liked this mixed up some), and they aren't really strongly connected with the real villain of the story, so they were actually somewhat distracting. The powers they have add up to a lot of stacking debuffs, making them (IMHO) too powerful, especially against teams. The way the Patriotoids were used seemed inconsistent to me; in mission 1, they are triggered by opening the vault (but why weren't they triggered when Domino Dicer stole her swords? and how did Domino Dicer open the vault, the Chief said only a hero ID could open it and Rita is just a lawyer). In missions 2 and 3, the Patriotoids are working for Starstripe. In mission 4, the Patriotoids are working for Domino Dicer. Neither Starstripe nor Domino Dicer seem to have a Technology background that would justify them being able to reprogram the security robots into a robot army. I kind of had the impression that the Patriotoids were present in most missions just for the sake of giving the player something to fight. I think I'd recommend toning down the Patriotoid power sets a bit and perhaps more definitely decide whether they're working for Starstripe or Domino Dicer, and give the other person a different set of minions that is helping them.

The triggered objectives were neat but I thought they caused much too much backtracking and searching; this wasn't too bad in the indoor missions, but was especially frustrating in mission 4. I'd recommend reworking the way your triggered objectives are structured to make it easier for the player to find everything without having to constantly backtrack and/or search large maps. It was also a bit weird to be fighting grey Clockwork in mission 1. I am guessing they were present in order to make the triggered objectives occur in order, as you rescue hostages from the Clockwork, but the presence of Clockwork (unrelated to the actual plot) seemed rather distracting.

I have to wonder, did Starstripe realize that Domino Dicer was impersonating Rita early on? I kind of think he did, since he was targeting Rita in mission 3. If this is the case, why did he not try to tell the police (or me, for that matter)? Also, if I understand the plot correctly, Rita is killed by Domino Dicer 3 days before the events of the story arc; how is it that the body found in mission 2 is relatively fresh, and is "positively identified" as Domino Dicer? Some possible plot problems.

Anyway, I did like the writing and the story overall; I felt the gameplay had some problems though. I ended up giving the story 3 stars, hope you think that is fair!

---

My queue is currently:

@Lazarus - Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)" (Arc# 347029)
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #227331 re-review
Supafunkadunka - CLAN DESTINY #349053
twelfth - Task Force Mutternacht #349522
Sister_Twelve - The Long Road Back #340454