Arc Reviews 2: The Knockoff

I'd love to know what you think about my arc Might Makes Right (5213). It's a Malta themed arc though, so if you rather not do it then I'd also like Mercytown (6017) looked at too.

Funnily enough, I don't find Malta that bad. They seem only really to break out the 'wtf' power level when you're on a big team, and everyone can watch you die embarassingly.

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Arc 6017 - Mercytown
Level Range: 5-10

Low level arcs are a rough gig. The enemy groups can't be very tough, and custom factions don't have a lot of leeway to introduce interesting powers. Furthermore, everyone's kinda seen the stuff at that level range before, so it can make the task of making doing something in the level range where you lack powers and the 'deeper' enemy factions a challenge.

Mercytown is a 5-mission comic arc which revolves around a somewhat comic-heavy interpretation of an existant CoV contact, Dmitry Krylov. Without going into too much detail about the content of the plot, it's a fairly lighthearted exploration into light horror themes, and delves into the way 'normal' or 'low super' people might see and deal with the Coralax and Hellions, groups that really should be considered quite scary to 'normal' people. Normal people don't deal with Knives or Malta or even the high-level Arachnos - these street-level criminals are a much more tangible horror to them.

The arc uses a few narrative tools that I think are worth learning from, other arc writers; the contact is someone you communicate with about the plan, not someone you directly take individualised orders from. One of the missions is effectively autonomous - you chase up a clue from an earlier mission on your own, then bring your findings to the contact because of what he can tell you.

If you're a real stickler for a more serious take on the contacts, uh, let's just say you might find Dmitry's dialogue a biiiit too camp or comical. In a 'comedy horror' scenario, this arc falls to me very squarely on the 'comedy' half of things, but that's okay. It's not the ham-fisted, 'cake is a lie,' 'look, monkey cheese!' kinda comedy, and it's just exaggerating a trait of Krylov that's mostly there already.

I can't really comment about the difficulty; I was doing it on a freshly-minted scrapper, who started at level 5 and left at level 11. At the same time, I was running on 6*/-1.

Solid arc, and a good way to fill in that level range where you're not sure where to take your characters. A real die-hard linguist and typographical wonk might find just enough errors to bug you, but really, it's the kind of thing that will almost certainly be refined out in time, so just point out the text errors and move on.

Rating: ****
Tags: Solo Friendly, Comedy, Magic

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Whoah, trippy! I picked Mercytown out of a hat to review - I didn't realise it was the last requested review in the thread when I did it.

Huh!

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Hey, thanks for reviewing Mercytown.

I found out that the arc has gone a bit wonky with the GR update, so I'm glad that you didn't encounter any weird errors because of that.

Also, I am actually winnowing through my heap. There's practically nothing in it, if anyone wants to submit to the axe - I have two weeks to work with and dammit if I'm not going to get some of this done.

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'Eya,

Actually, now that I'm making an arc for the 3rd challenge, I'd really like a good evisceration of my 2nd challenge arc: "To Dream of Nothing" (#374644) to see where I can improve.

Since the arc was made for the challenge, its level range is 5-10. As you mentioned earlier in this thread, that level is kind of tricky to write an arc for [and I do use some enemy groups that are potentially problematic]. Don't be put off by the EB alert, he is kind of weak and you have two LT-level allies to help you.

edit: I tried to proofread the heck out of the arc (and I had the help of a SGmate who is a professional editor/proofreader), but errors are still inevitable 'cos English is not my native language. However, don't be any more lenient because of me not being a native speaker!


Thanks in advance,

-- Z.

If you feel like playing with a lowbie character, you can tell me off about the arc in my sig. Its designed to be started at 1st or 2nd level.

Rereading this, I wanted to just say: Thanks to everyone who submitted. Even in the most frustrating moments, this was still fun to do, and it made me feel like I was contributing.

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