Arc 4384 - The Double-Edged Sword
Rating: **
[ QUOTE ]
Crey's latest experiments unleash a powerful force on Paragon City. I won't say much more, but there's at least one plot twist.
[/ QUOTE ]
So, okay, let me be honest, I'm not holding my breath. The outline doesn't look great, it's about Crey, which isn't a super-duper inspiring group in the 40+ game - for what it's worth, guys, there's already an arc in the 40-44 range where Crey is shut down. I honestly feel that Crey are a bit played out as a villain group. Am I gunna judge harshly? Oh, I dunno. But I do find Crey's turning into a one-enemy group in the 40+ game is tedious.
As I sit up and get ready for this review, it's with a new reviewing tool - Snowblasted, a level 41 Ice/Energy blaster. He's freshly respecced and freshly dolled up with common IOs. No - well, almost no - set IOs, no clear plan on a set. He's got maybe a bit of bonus accuracy and no bonus recharge. Part of why I'm doing this arc - I want him to get three sets of Entropic Chaoses and four Crushing Impacts. Fun fun fun, eh kids?
Presentation - the arc uses title text decently, and the contact is Mynx. Now, this is a lucky one. Mynx hasn't said a single word to me in my entier time in this game. So she has no clear sense of character or character voice, and since I haven't read the comic with her in it. Therefore, there's no character voice to play against. There's something I appreciate there - I'd like it more if the contact was someone who was established in the game, and written well and someone I'd like to deal with. Since the level of writing the Mission Architect produces tends to go towards the 'amateur' in the rather unpleasant sense of the word, I'd rather a non-obnoxious cardboard cutout than yet a bad fanfic rendition of a character I actually liked.
This, incidentally, is a bad, bad thing, MA. My standards are low enough that I'll accept 'bad' writing, or 'uninspiring' writing, because the apparent alternative is 'worse' writing. This is a bad false dichotomy to set up in one's own mind, but it's one MA has me seeing. Mynx has a voice that seems... unremarkable. She could have been one of the Detective contacts, and given the level range of this arc seems prety high, it's kinda odd that a member of the Vindicators herself is asking me to do something inspecting-based.
Mynx wavers between a military sort to a lighthearted discoverer... I got no clear feeling of herself from it. It not only failed to tap an existing character voice, it also failed to render her as any kind of character at all. If she pulled her face off at the end of the mask and proclaimed she was actually Zordon all along I'd probably believe her, because there's so little here to feel out as a character. It's all technically correct writing that carries no character within that technical correctness.
"Cut the crap," and "Abandon your loquacity," are both technically correct ways to say the same thing and yet they both come out of two very different mouths. As it stands, Mission Architect more and more makes me feel like I'm watching a Joss Whedon show where character voice is a matter of whose turn it is to play the badass.
The intro/outro text for the mission was quite nice to start with but rapidly felt like it was being filled in like homework - as if the author was reluctant to simply not have any text of that ilk. There's some lore issues, but I fear they might be my memory of the lore, so skip them if you don't care:
[ QUOTE ]
This is just my memory of the game lore speaking, and I'll happily take contradiction here. The lore as I remember it is that Countess Crey is locked up as of around level 44, meaning that all their operations after that point are either based in the Rogue Isles, and therefore illegal in the United States, or rapidly shutting down hidden labs in the United States.
In either case, there is no need to be stealthy. You are dealing with wanted criminals and monsters. Slam them, shut them down and send in the longbow troopers. Seize the records. The tone of such interactions with Crey should be exactly that. You are not dealing with a legitimate business front any more. You haven't been for ten levels.
I therefore found the flavour of the affair somewhat in asking. Sneaking around, checking for contraband... the mere fact it's a Crey vessel at all should get the ship seized. This is work for the police. If I'm being assigned this work by Mynx, it should have some rationale for it... I have no idea why Mynx would be telling me to do this beyond the very simple argument that Crey are bad and we are good.
[/ QUOTE ]
There's a lot of space-filling. Return dialgoue is the worst - it's a place where the writer can put a lot of text for those people who want to read it, and yet it's all hastily done, click-to-get-to-the-bit-I-actually-wrote text. The collections were not, fortunately, arduous. There are lots of space-filling glowies, but while they fail to add anything to the tone or atmosphere, they do so in a way that at least doesn't detract. There are chances for symmetry, for development, and the author simply chooses not to take them.
When you have this kind of writing, what really stands out are nice touches. Things that make you smile. There's an NPC who's a physics joke in the third mission, and silly as it was, it made me smile. That's good. It broke me out of the somewhat unimpressed malaise. There's an NPC assistant, who when you leave him behind, reassures you that he can take care of himself so you don't need to worry. That is, yes, a nice touch.
So, with a build-up that would make a bran supplement seem striking, what of our conclusion? Unfortunately, it falls prey to the problem where the writer introduces a big threat, and provides the tools to dispose of that threat, without the protaganist being involved. I just led around the three av-class characters and let them mop up for me. I simply did not care enough, not even about the tickets, at that point. I was in this for the final briefing, hoping that maybe something will change and maybe I'd finish one of these bloody arcs for once and not quit out of boredom or disgust halfway through. So in the end, this arc wasn't bad enough to quit, but not exciting enough to finish. And when you do, and see the denoument, it's nothing special. There's an attempt to do pathos but it's like having a message crammed in the last two minutes of a cartoon.
So, to run down some things that I think are worth mentioning, the map choice is sensible, the custom NPCs non-irritating, the mission objectives reasonably clear and the level range consistant. That is to say, this arc at least turned up to class with its sports clothes and a full lunchbox, so even if I didn't particularly like playing with it, I can't dob it in to teacher and get it in trouble.
Am I too grouchy? Eh, who knows. This is a good arc for people to start with, and it's certainly a good arc for an author. As it is, it's simple, it's direct, and if I'd stumbled on this arc levelling through the game I'd chalk the writing errors up to a missing continuity editor, and just trundle through it. It's not bad, it's just unremarkable. And unlike many other unremarkable things, it is wise enough to not trumpet itself as the second bloody coming. We're not talking about Halo 2 here.
In one word: Unspectacular.
Naturally, I'm disappointed that you didn't like "The Double-Edged Sword". But as more and more feedback is coming in, it's becoming clear that I need to do a major overhaul of this arc. While it seemed okay to me at first, I'm definitely noticing some problematic story issues and an uneven pacing. Hopefully it's nothing a determined re-write can't fix. 
As for the "Crey are monsters" angle, the arc used to make it clear that the player was breaking into the Crey office and using force to get the information. But that prompted several negative comments, stating that under no circumstances should a Hero be doing illegal search and seizures, even against Crey. While I can understand your standpoint, I'm torn between the two options.
Thanks for taking the time to post a review, and I'm sorry that it didn't strike your fancy. Maybe next time! 
Rise of the Copper Legion (#60280; with soundtrack)
The Fractured Dreamer (#498588; with musical theme)
"Now Leaving: Paragon City": original composition for the end of CoH
Well, if no hero should ever be doing something illegal, someone had best tell the developers that. Crey in the existing game exist for that kind of hero to pursue, and it's not like people are forced to do the arc.
Might I suggest, if that's your aim, though, that you put Manticore as the contact, and have him make it clear that he knows he's asking you to walk in the shadow of the law, but that sometimes someone has toe wear that burden of guilt?
I don't know if I should wait until issue 15 comes out with the new AE changes, or if I should go ahead and ask for your feedback. What the heck. I don't have any ratings on it anyway. The major difference between the live version and the i15 test version is the fact that I took out a specific mob that I only put in to set the level range to 10-14. Now that you can choose your own level range in i15, I didn't need to use that mob in every mission anymore. The plot is the same either way.
So without further ado ...
Author: @Citizen Razor 2
Level Range: 10-14
Arc # 195149 - The Horsemen Chronicles (Part I)
In this arc, you have to prevent a villain from opening a portal to Praetoria and allowing Tyrant to invade Paragon City. It's designed for Lv10-14 heroes and is the first part of an ongoing meta-story arc (I haven't created the next parts yet, though).
I hope you like it. I tried to use pre-existing CoH lore and put in several Easter eggs.
Play my MA arcs!
Tracking Down Jack Ketch - ArcID #2701
Cat War! - ArcID #2788
If you think about it, very few comic book heroes don't do illegal searches, at least occasionally. That's kinda the point of becoming a superhero instead of a supercop.
At this point, my heap is 28 arcs. I'll get onto some - some of them I've played through at least once, significantly Kitsune9Tails' Kiss Hello Goodbye, which I recommend lots and lots of people try, - but today is my wedding anniversary, and oh, yeah, my internet connection still sucks. D: Contract has only a little while yet to go.
Power supply blew up on my computer. Posting from our pseudo-TV. D: No arc reviews for a little while, which is annoying. Before I gallavant onwards, though, I wanted to offer up something I've noticed from the arcs I've been reviewing lately.
The best arcs, the best written arcs, are the ones who grip the neck of the character and actually assume on them. The arcs that presume a player has some character, presumes on them a little, are the ones where the author has a handle to work with. Some arcs - like Small Fears - try to be as player-agnostic as possible. This is doable, but if you remember, 90% of CoV presumes agnosticism on the part of the player and contact: "Do this to further my ends and I will give you rewards." is a very simple approach and doesn't paint much there.
While I don't like the Noir style, Kiss Hello Goodbye makes an assumption, effectively hijacking the player's internal narrative. While I think KHG might have gone too far (might, and it has some other problems, review forthcoming when I can double-check the arc on someone who doesn't exist to deal smashing damage), its willingness to do that gives the author a space they can paint the player. Trying to make an arc completely appropriate for all characters seems to be a guaranteed pitfall.
Don't be afraid, authors, to put something on the player. It's not unreasonable to make a few assumptions. If they don't work for some characters, that's honestly, a more forgiveable thing in my mind than the way the game already presumes.
Be bold!
Sad to hear your computer exploded. Get Well Soon 
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Seems the computer problem wasn't as simple as a [censored] power supply. How vexing. Bumping this thread - though I find it quite fun to see this thread in the villain colours for once.
Grats, and welcome back!
Rise of the Copper Legion (#60280; with soundtrack)
The Fractured Dreamer (#498588; with musical theme)
"Now Leaving: Paragon City": original composition for the end of CoH
Welcome back, Talen... and, as an aside to a comment from a while back- Small Fears being 'player agnostic' wasn't actually a conscious decision- the story just turned out that way.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
I'm really glad to know that I'm not the only person who when a review thread he likes bumps to the top, he goes through and rereads reviews.
And hey, agnosticism - in writing - is a matter of choic and style.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm really glad to know that I'm not the only person who when a review thread he likes bumps to the top, he goes through and rereads reviews.
And hey, agnosticism - in writing - is a matter of choice and style.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh aye- just you said that I 'tried to be as player agnostic as possible', and I was pointing out that wasn't really what I was shooting for when I was writing it- it's just that the story lent itself to that particular stylistic decision, so I ran with it.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Arc ? - The Origin Of Power
Rating: No rating, reported as a farm
I lost the arc ID somewhere along the line, but quite frankly it's for the best - this arc will hopefully be being pulled down soon and the ashes scattered to the wind. I'm only going to review it for the simple fact of highlighting just how terrible the entire MA system has been for writing and farming. Come with me, noble readers, and learn of just how pathetic people can be in the pursuit of the reward.
I was doing this arc with my stalker - though I hear the author did a blueside version of the same arc - and first, let me outlay the most important thing to me: The writing is terrible. The writer writes each NPC who speaks to you to speak to you as if you are retarded - and forces responses that confirm that view. Then, to compound it, he has those same NPCs (who are, let me remind you, smarter than your character) say things that are utterly retarded.
The premise of the plot seems to be at its core that the arc wants to talk to you about how origins work, which is an okay enough idea I suppose for giant gobbing slabs of text to get crammed down a player's throat but a slightly more nuanced idea would be better. There's no 'arc' per se. Instead, you travel from randomly-selected but supposedly-appropriate NPCs selected from the Cap Au Diable map (which makes sense since they vaguely have the edges of personality, and even the most fumble-fingered writer such as this one can feign a moment or two of character voice), who will then churn out a massive screed that treats you like you're stupid and highlights how stupid the person you need to learn from happens to be.
The arc contains at least one massive clanger for me. Dmitri Krylov is the guy who you talk to about mutants. This makes sense because, despite his basically being a mad scientist without any mutation at all who sends you out to collect bodies for his mad science experiments, wants transformative chemicals for his science experiments and talks about his scientific research, there really isn't anyone else to talk to about mutants in Cap Au Diable, or indeed, anywhere in the whole of the [censored] Rogue Isles. Mutation has to deal with being kicked to the kerb all the time in blueside, breaking the trend redside would be too much to ask, especially from some half-[censored] farm-padding writing.
I keep mentioning that word, yes, I know.
See, once you have the five whole talk-to-npc-padding [censored] done with, there's an actual mission to do. Now, just as a note, you know that technology they use in the oroborous arcs, where you don't need to go back to the contact when you're dealing with a chain of conversations? "Go talk to X," and then the mission just makes them your next talk-to-person, without needing to go back to the original contact? This is the kind of mission that thing would be great for. Since this is just an AE farm's barely-scribbled soft-padding, I can understand however, why it doesn't. If an actual developer had done this arc, though, I'm sure they, with barely five seconds of thinking, would realise what a great idea this is, especially since the actual construction around the missions is so wafer thin as it is. Would be nice to see the character taking some initiative, but since we're all being written as if we walk around with a government handler making sure we don't drown in our own drool I can understand why we need to jog back to the contact and derf merrily while she sends us the next basic bit of research that insists on enforcing the writer's one-eyed and quite frankly embarassingly prescriptive view of the game lore onto us. Apparently, there aren't any albino people in the Rogue Isles, or anywhere else in the world, at least before 1938. Thank you Stefan Richter, for making sure the world was so genetically diverse. Maybe that headed off the whole World War 2 thing, since everyone was all from the exact same genetic stock.
Anyway, once we're done with the pile of so-called writing, we get to the 'mission.' I'll spare you the details, but let me just outline the basics:<ul type="square">[*]Annoying map.[*]Both enemy factions involved offer bonus XP.[*]It spawns bosses very easily, with even small teams.[*]There are an excessive number of glowies.[/list]As a bonus, this is, apparently, because the faction in question are somehow mystically tapping into 'the origin of power', which means not only is the writer telling me that my character is quite stupid, but he's also telling me how my powers work, and that any mid-level pack of dinguses can with the right magical whatchmacallits make it not work. I can imagine how, in the case of my natural origin stalker, this makes any sense at all. The writer just doesn't seem to think through the writing he's put in front of his mission.
So why did I report it as a farm? Because once I was done, I blinked and I checked - I had gained something like two and a half bars from that one mission. I wasn't even trying - it was like I'd gained an utterly outrageous slab of mission bonus XP, for an arc that was about as thick as wet tissue paper, and did not feature any real challenge except the growing despair for the playerbase that could produce a writer who would produce an arc like this.
In the end, this arc is a fine example to me of exactly what's wrong with player-driven content. There's this school of thought amongst those who create the tools for player-driven content, and as a veteran of Total Annihilation, Quake 1's heavy patching and TC scene, Baldur's Gate 2 and of Dark Reign and other moddable games that made it tricky but not hard to expand the content, that every player out there has some amazing ideas, inspired by the game, appropriate for the game, and can be brought out with just a breath of fresh air and the slightest encouragement, beautiful peonies that burst into light under the crabgrass of the day to day and ignite your world with unforgettable experience. The problem is that they're only right if you lower your standards to the point where you'd be happy with this kind of simpering nonsense. I hold the much more cynical view that a certain barrier for entry is good on game modding content because for the most part the kind of people who would do something because it's easy are exactly the same kind of people who will exploit systems and produce self-serving infantile crap because they just plain out want to, and the idea of writing well or producing good content for other people to enjoy, for its own sake, is a lost art. This arc has the dubious honour of at least trying a little to hide its farm effect.
In the end, a total embarassment for the writing community of Mission Architect and I personally feel like I need to write something clever, funny, or witty to rebalance it. Note that that's not this review, but it's a start. Still, it could be worse - could you imagine the kind of editorial staff that would pay someone to write crap like this?
Most detailed review for a farm I've seen. Usually people wouldn't even bother. :P
MA Arc:
Red Typhoon 4912
Akhdar Blood Arc: 247198
[ QUOTE ]
Most detailed review for a farm I've seen. Usually people wouldn't even bother. :P
[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, I know. I don't know why this one felt different from all the other AE farms I saw, but dammit, it really felt like something needed to be said to keep this kind of terrible writing from crapping up the AE.
Er, so what you're saying is someone copied the villainside "Origin of Power" badge mission and changed the last mission to be a farm?
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
heh. While your here, can you put my arc in the Q.
Red Typhoon
Arc: 4912
Heroic
lvl 41-50
Enemies: Malta, (Customs that make Malta look fun :P)
MA Arc:
Red Typhoon 4912
Akhdar Blood Arc: 247198
[ QUOTE ]
Er, so what you're saying is someone copied the villainside "Origin of Power" badge mission and changed the last mission to be a farm?
[/ QUOTE ]The punchline is a little more oblique than that, Eva.
[ QUOTE ]
Er, so what you're saying is someone copied the villainside "Origin of Power" badge mission and changed the last mission to be a farm?
[/ QUOTE ]
No, he's doing a review of the actual Dev-created Origin of Power arc to, I guess, "make a point."
I wonder how this author managed to get this arc to award not only a badge, but also reward merits? HAX!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Er, so what you're saying is someone copied the villainside "Origin of Power" badge mission and changed the last mission to be a farm?
[/ QUOTE ]
No, he's doing a review of the actual Dev-created Origin of Power arc to, I guess, "make a point."
[/ QUOTE ]
Er, isn't the final mission just CoT though? It's been a while, but I thought it was, and if they give bonus xp that's news to me. And it's not like there's any advantage to having excessive glowies in a dev-created mission, aside from the laughably small inf bonus they give.
So, yeah. As a review of horrid writing, yes. As a comparison of dev-created content to MA farms....fail.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
[ QUOTE ]
As a comparison of dev-created content to MA farms....fail.
[/ QUOTE ]The arc is terribly written, with a terrible premise and terrible execution. The only reason I run it on every character I have is because it gives a grotesquely inflated XP reward.
Same basic premise as a farm, from where I sit.
Talen, I like your review style, so I'm going to throw my first (and only) arc on the pile for your harsh dismemberment (or consideration).
The Liquefactionist Manifesto
Arc ID: 190129
I made this arc for two reasons:
1) I wanted something to help level my and my friends lowbies
2) I had a conversation with my friends about most mission text (not just MA but cannon stuff too) being boring, and how we wished it could be more provocative or at least even foul and distastful.
So yeah, it's designed for lowbie villains, and I know it's probably got a fault in the sense of assuming some naiveté, but at least it should get you some XP. Also, I really tried hard not to make it too time consuming, so the majority of the maps are small. At least there's that, even if it turns out that you hate it...