Well..Given your criteria my first two sound decidedly unsafe..so I'm humbly submit my third arc.
Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force
arcID 58363
The mysterious disappearance of multiple members of the nuclear 90 propels Fusionette into sending some new heroes out to investigate a string of Hellion linked crimes
lvl 1-14, should be pretty easy to solo .
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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You suckers are lining up for Talen to insult you, while I get it for free.
Suckers.
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I'd rather someone tell me the truth bluntly than lie to me sweetly. 
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This. The blunt truth you can work with, sweet lies or "Eh, it's okay." is useless.
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My thoughts exactly. That is precisely the reason I submitted my arc both here and in Venture's thread. I'd LOVE it if someone played my arc, thought it was total crap, one-starred it, and then gave me a half page list of ways to improve.
Because that is way better, and will help me make a far better story, than the single, no comment, four star rating it currently has.
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Amen to that.
Of course, all the [censored] had to say about my arc was "it's not even a story".
[/ QUOTE ]It's hard to speak with my mouth full.
I actually intend to review Eis' submission as an object lesson to people. Don't worry, I'm rough.
And then there's the 'sleeping, eating, bathing, shopping' stuff I have to do as well, don't forget.
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Arc 1579 - Council's Long Con
Rating: ****
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Thanks for the review, and your private comments. They really helped me go back through and tighten the mission. So far, the major comments I've gotten are "It's good" and "I liked it" which, while they might be nice for a small ego boost, aren't something I need. I know I'm a good writer (heck, I've been paid to write missions for MMOs before), so being told it was "good" is a rather empty comment to me. I'd much rather be told what sucked about it and try to fix it.
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Onward through the arc, I found the next mission to be quite dense on its priorities...
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It was actually much longer originally... until I ran it with a team and realized it was waaaaaay too long and annoying. So I cut the number of objectives to about 1/3rd.
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Also? There's lots of dialogue from the various enemy groups around, and I found it... well, remarkably charming. It wasn't the edgy, gritty comic book seriousness I've been hankering for - it makes them come across as kinda personable and makes you feel a bit mean to beat them up (though, you know, we're talking about a villain arc here). So overall, a net plus.
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Personally, to me, a little humor is never a bad thing. Variety is the spice, as they say. So I'm glad you appreciated the little jokey asides in the arc.
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So with all this, I feel hard-pressed to complain about a smidgen of the dialogue. I've PM'd the author about it, but unfortunately, as it is, your contact says something that is, well, blitheringly stupid.
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I believe I have fixed that. Part of the issue was I did not express what was occurring well enough. But your point also stands. I think I've made it more believable of a statement, while still keeping the flow of the arc in tact.
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The very end of the arc is the weakest point. It's a mission type that's annoying to do, and due to the semi-random way the mission type executes, it can be quite short. After facing down a big bad boss (who I solo'd very quickly through the use of inspirations), it felt a bit of an anticlimax to get the fourth mission I did.
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I believe I've made it a bit better, though originally I didn't view that mission as a climax and rather a denouement. But I agree that can be a bit... uninteresting for a player to go through. So hopefully, the alterations I've made have helped some.
Thank you for the review Talen.
I took what you pointed out to heart. I just spent the last 5 hours working on cutting out some of the things that didn't fit right.
I took the NPC allies out as well. They were just made up on the fly for the arc but you were right, they really didn't seem involved at all. They weren't any of my real toons so no attachment issues to deal with there.
I tried to make the NPC enemies slightly more creepy to help out the vibe as well. I played around with auras and such to try and make them easier to deal with by Controllers and Dominators but in doing so they lost much of the "look" I thought fairly important to them. I decided to keep them as is.
Now if only they could get the spawn location issue ironed out, that one is causing me fits. (pick front and the mob spawns in middle or back, etc...)
Again, thanks for the review. I have been playing the arc to test it and to me it seems to be much cleaner and tighter to what I was going for.
No Honour Among Thieves
ID: 4336
Villainous
Hit me Talen! At least you won't tell me honour's not spelt with a 'u'.
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Here's one for you to chew on:
36861
Heroes No More?
Level range: 1*-50 (*:later missions cap at 45-50, but mweh)
Thing is, it has everything you despise (Hero-lopsided, Arachnos, Ritki, Mary-sues, and a defeat-all final mission), but I'm hoping the story will be decent enough to warrant a balanced review.
or not, *shrug*
[/ QUOTE ]Hey, being fair, if I say I didn't like it and it sucks, that doesn't mean my review was unbalanced.
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Fair enough!
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
Arc 1044 - The Empire - One Alliance
Rating: **
As I understand it, the numbering of the arcs started at one thousand, meaning this arc was the forty-fourth to be uploaded. That makes its 15 reviews somewhat disheartening and giving me more reason to believe that a large number of views and rates is as much a function of how hard and how aggressively you pimp your arc (like, say, 29262, Hopeless, be the villain you always wanted to be and delve into the mindset of the truly mercenary monsters that plague the Rogue Isles, rate me 5 and I'll rate you 5*), rather than how good it is or how long it's had a chance to penetrate the market. Because discerning users like, say, me, will hold things up to careful scrutiny and high standards, it means arcs with problems will find themselves drowned out by 5-star farmers and the opinions of complete and utter clods. People wonder why I hate them and this is more or less the reason why: They have such potential to be good, such a scope for wonderful and brilliant art, and yet most of them will be happy as hell if you draw a pair of [censored] on the back of an outhouse door. And then fart. Not because they're stupid, but because they let themselves think they are. At this point I think I've gone past 'introductory paragraph' and well into the realm of 'ridiculous manifesto,' so I'll stop before I start talking about my plan to set up lemon zesters on people's foreheads so I can let them know when I don't approve.
The level spread of this little outing, cited by the forums' own Strato 'Fire Control Is Overpowered' Nexus, has the hallmark of being created by someone who I have yelled at, which constitutes roughly 99% of the planet, and I therefore owed it in the tradition established on my high school reunion to yell at all his metaphorical children in turn until they cried. Reaching for something large and compensatory to beat the arc with, I loaded it up, on D-38, my level 46 ss/fire brute. He's heavily IO'd - lots of Crushing Impact, Knockback Protection, bonus HP, and Tough.
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An Aside: Hey, just as a note, people, when you use the title and chapter functions on your arcs, I recommend making that title-chapter text a different colour. It then feels more separated from the narrative itself.
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The contact didn't appear for me. Was it supposed to be the contact hologram? That's a bit weird... The scope of the first mission seems a bit off for the rest of the arc. The arc is 40-50, but the opening of the arc is a simple break-in. Either the arc itself should lurk in the low-level ranges due to its humble beginnings, or there needs a better motivateur to start the first arc. Perhaps make it a bit more unsubtle, reveal hidden evidence - or indeed, if the contact has some reason to believe the player's high-level capabilities are required for a 'mere' break-in, have him explicitly mention 'I know this seems beneath you, but...' or maybe suggesting that there's the connection to higher-level Council stuff. Or maybe he could be honest with you up front and tell you the guy in question isn't 'just' an auto tech, and that's why they're asking someone of your calibre to go in, discretely.
Yes, I know, I'm spoilering, but here we go: THIS ARC HAS COUNCIL MOBS IN IT! And you're going to get to see them because you're going to spend the whole first mission searching for a large number of glowies, and then, killing all the council on the map! Because we lead out with a defeat all! And I have to ask myself: Why? This is a routine break-in scene, council computers are around - is it to encourage people to hear patrol dialogue? Surely there's a better way to force that behaviour than making me hunt down every last butthead on a map full of buttheads I've butted heads against before. Why? Why why why why why why WHYYYYYYYYYYYY? Police lockdowns, key cell leaders, retrieval of information - give me some reason why my character needs to do a defeat all, don't assume it's du jour. Hell, if I'm searching for information, surely it's worse to do a defeat-all, since that will very clearly tell people what I'd done and they'd be sifting through their manifests to try and work out what information and the like has been exposed to the public. Cue whatever it is I'm looking for being moved! Grrrr.
Okay, okay, first impressions. Deep breaths, moving on. But I will say, due to level range of the arc coupled with the in-continuity weirdness of a defeat-all that's supposedly about retrieving information from ... a robbery site? Why did they set up computers on the site of the robbery? It seems very odd to me, really, since surely the police would have turned up at the site... anyway.
I still had no contact after zoning, so I figure that's probably a clientside issue, and I'm probably just not getting something, so moving on to the rest of the arc, I think the contact's dialogue, is, so far, the strongest thing; I like the feel of the Malta group (Knights Templar) facing off against the Council (connected to the Italian fascist movement, and therefore, the Catholic church). There's something in there, and the addition of titles like 'The Grey Knight' make me more interested and inspired. I'm hoping this strong start will lead somewhere interesting, despite the fact the mission itself was tedious. The problem is, these elements are thrown together in a box, without any feeling of connection or drive. I understand that someone - nobody, in this case, remember, the contact isn't appearing - wants me to investigate something, and that the Council and Malta are dealing with a 'third side' introducing itself, and then it's also including extradimensional explanations. Fortunately, the author resists - the third side is one we've seen before in game (if you're paying attention), rather than dragging together 'LOOK AT MY NEW FACTION' and then using the 'Tell, Don't Show' method to make them seem intimidating.
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An Aside: This is the problem that plagues a lot of condensed writing. It's tricky to depict something as having the right tone in a compressed environment, but 'tricky' just means there's a trick to it. Once you develop a few tricks for showing people what things are and how they work, rather than simply telling them, you'll be able to use those tricks again and again and not have people complain much.
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Mission 2 rounds out with a simple fact-finding mission that mercifully restrains itself from simply being 'go here and kill stuff,' but it also synthesises together Malta, Knives and Council, which is to say, three groups that pay host to really, really annoying mobs and are tedious to deal with. Caltrop swarms slow down the rescue of the prisoner, and the waves of ambushes slow down killing the boss. All told, it's nothing special. I suppose the idea of dragging together an all-women independent mercenary group, a secret coalition of antisupers who want to purge the world of metahumans, and an all-male organisation of fascist supersoldiers seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I just doesn't work for me, so I'm viewing this whole thing as mind-control or cynically perceiving it as someone who doesn't actually understand the enemy groups trying to write for them. I'm hoping the former rather than the latter.
Mission 3's briefing has that dread phrase 'I'll meet you there.' This especially worries me because it means the contact that I haven't got a face for is going to turn up in the mission. Holding my breath, I plunged in, expecting a repeat of the Powerstrike nonsense. She's only a boss, though, she's not terribly overpowered-seeming, and, most importantly, I can ditch her. Though I did find myself wondering if her costume glitched - she has a bare 'fire stripe' line that goes up to a hood-like headgear, effectively meaning she glued on shoulders, gloves, and a hood then left everything from her neck to her navel completely stark bare. A bit odd, that.
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An Aside: One reason multiple-dimension plots tend to fail for me is because the nature of the infinite-branches world means that any change I've made is meaningless, because there's a guarantee that there's a universe where the change didn't happen. This means that any cross-dimensional empire has both automatically succeeded, and automatically failed, and is infinitely large and infinitely small. This kind of quantum nonsense is just ignored, and the 'other dimensions' are just treated as being a different apartment complex.
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Due to the nature of interdimensionality, you succeed and you fail and you don't get to quit either. The last mission has fully 13 things to do, and they spawn ambushes, which is good if you want to give a fever pitch, and was fine enough for a brute, but I can't imagine it'd be fun for a team unless they're really steamrolling. And it fails to cover the worst thing about conclusions in that it doesn't feel like a conclusion! I have seven bosses to hunt out? Well, five bosses down, I've covered the map - Hell with it. I quit the arc and give my rating, and quietly sigh to myself about how much a jerk it must make me look.
The arc has some minor formatting errors, things like a singular crate just being listed by 'a portal crate' rather than something like 'get the last crate,' and the missions are dense with necessary achievments that don't feel like they really achieve much. It calls together enemy groups who are pretty much diametrically opposed and only linked in that they annoy players or use technology, and it kinda 'squishes' them all together without some amazing, idealistic leader to draw things together. And in the end, there's not really much of a conclusion. I didn't read the final mission text, either.
So now I actually feel quite bad because I was actually expecting a decent to fair arc, hence my bombastic opening. I was hoping I could come out of it with 'and I was pleasantly surprised,' but I wasn't. I was unpleasantly surprised. Contrary to what one might expect, I don't actually like bellowing at people over the internet and I certainly don't like having arguments with people where there's no clear way to convey my meaning without it being muddied under my words. That meant all the pomp and bombast of my opening was supposed to be the lead-in for a laughable joke as I point out that StratoNexus is a good guy who's made a good arc... but he hasn't. He's made a tedious arc, and he's used enemy groups badly, and he's done it all in an arc that even seems buggy. There's no sense of cohesion, no sense of accomplishment, and there's a very clear distaste in my mind for the style of story being told. That it's time-consuming as well just makes it worse. And the thing that drops a cherry on top is that it's not bad mission text! The actual weakest part of the arc is the mechanics and the mission itself! The flavour text, the writing, the tone of the NPCs, the wonderfully ironic statement made by an NPC pet in the later part of the story? They were great! Which is why I feel so disappointed.
Hence the rating. I feel that with spit and polish, this arc won't just graduate up to three stars, but potentially up to four. But right now, it's a bad arc.
* You'd best know this is a joke, so I'm underlining that fact for all the thickies.
Thank you very much for the look and review. I think you got the tone and flavor of the arc down perfectly. Most all of your comments are dead on and while some of the things you dislike I did on purpose and like myself, I am glad to hear them all pointed out, it means I conveyed the idea at least, even if you feel it is a lame idea. 
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have him explicitly mention 'I know this seems beneath you, but...
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Good advice. I thought I hinted at that enough in the intro and then explained it better after misison 1, but I like your suggestion to make it more blatant ahead of time.
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give me some reason why my character needs to do a defeat all
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I don't hate defeat all missions unless they are overused. I guess to me, clearing out all Council invaders in a city business is something a Hero would do, since it is so close to residences and such. I know, in theory, the local PPD/Longbow could take care of it and I could let the player choose how they want to roleplay it. Maybe I will alter it, but I am inclined to leave it as is.
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But I will say, due to level range of the arc coupled with the in-continuity weirdness of a defeat-all that's supposedly about retrieving information from ... a robbery site? Why did they set up computers on the site of the robbery? It seems very odd to me, really, since surely the police would have turned up at the site... anyway.
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Agreed. It was supposed to be odd. I am glad you got that feeling, it means I succeeded.
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I suppose the idea of dragging together an all-women independent mercenary group, a secret coalition of antisupers who want to purge the world of metahumans, and an all-male organisation of fascist supersoldiers seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I just doesn't work for me
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I am not entirely happy with how the battles function works in MA. While it was an interesting idea to allow the game to have enemies actually fight each other, I think I preferred the old way, where they just appeared to be fighting each other. That way the player could see the battles (many battles are over before the player even gets to see them, in my experience). The fact that the groups are not working together well and that only some members of each organization have betrayed their standard values was supposed to be evident from the battles and the dialogue in this mission. I also wanted the Gray Knight to speak more, but his rescue dialogue and clue text were very limited in space. Perhaps, I will add some more commentary from him in the form of a letter as part of the return to contact text after mission 2.
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It calls together enemy groups who are pretty much diametrically opposed and only linked in that they annoy players or use technology, and it kinda 'squishes' them all together without some amazing, idealistic leader to draw things together. And in the end, there's not really much of a conclusion.
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This commentary is so familiar to me. This is a terrible flaw I have in creation of a story, not letting the players in on all the information, because they likely would not have it all. While it makes sense and is realistic, people would like that information in a fiction environment. I will indeed look for ways to give the player a better feeling for why these events are shaping up as they do, starting with that extra information from the Gray Knight and I think I can introduce some more information from "our" world Council. Did you read the clues? I have a feeling most people ignore them, and I put a fair amount of information there, but still probably not enough, and I should consider that people ignore the Clues tab often.
As far as conclusion... well, I like the last mission as is. I considered the big-bad route. An EB or AV, that charismatic leader to draw them together (a Council Empire Center seemed the obvious choice) that you must defeat. I decided to go with a fight against an army of men, their generals, and their technology instead. The mission text and clues up to this point do indeed hint that the Alliance is not well formed and lacks cohesion. Perhaps that was a bad choice, but at the time of writing, I was sick of the big-bad, so that influenced my decision to steer away from it.
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I quit the arc and give my rating, and quietly sigh to myself about how much a jerk it must make me look.
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Bah. If you're not having fun quitting is the smart thing to do.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
I would like to toss in Brass Reaver part 1 and 2 (16952 & 59456) for review. I needs feedback badly.
Well, anyone who wants to review my arcs:
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Author: @FemFury
Level Range: 40+ (with a brief lower level in first mission)
Subject: A mystic artifact threatens to return ancient goddesses to the world.
5909 - Amazon-Avatars
Notes: This is the one I most hope for hearing feedback on. Very story oriented. I typed a lot of text for this one, and I'd love to have more people read it.
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Author: @FemFury
Level Range: 1 to 50
Subject: An encounter with a minor discounted supervillainess brings greater danger than expected.
6143 - Escalation
Notes: My goal with this arc was to create a memorable opponent.
First mission has some running around, every other map is a small, quick one.
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I'm a published amateur comic book author: www.ericjohnsoncomics.com
******MA Arcs****
Arc 5909: "Amazon-Avatars"
Arc 6143: "Escalation" (Nominee: Architect Awards, Nominee: Player Awards, and Dev's Choice!)
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I needs feedback badly.
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Ominous words indeed.
This thread provides some great feedback, even for those not being reviewed. I now have a new set of tweaks to make to my own arc before I put it on this chopping block.
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An Aside: For those struggling to keep their arc's level range consistent from mission to mission (specifically, if your mission' level range is too wide): you can always have a Captive whose Enemy Group Difficulty is set to Single (so he'll be alone). Then create a Enemy Group for him (that won't appear, he's single) with that group having the subrange you want.
You could put anything you like in it to define the range, but best keep it simple as it does take up some space. Find an existing group or make a group from as few random minions as possible.
If you don't have need of a captive in the first place, perhaps someone from the Civilians (1-54) set might not be out of place standing around. Or an enemy minion with a reason not to fight. Or something better, that fits with your story.
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Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!
Wellp... eh, why not.
Should you happen to have time, Talen (or anyone else who's offering reviews in this thread, the more the merrier, after all), feel free to take a stab at my arcs.
First off is "Small Fears" (#12285), a horror-flavoured arc. I've gotten some good feedback on it already, and consider it... reasonably polished. Still, any improvements that can be made, should be made. I want it as good as it can be, after all.
Secondly comes "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" (#12669). This one is fresh off a fairly heavy round of rewrites and tweakings. One warning- I consider AI allies to be a legitimate form of mitigating difficulty, so if you're against that sort of thing like Venture is, well... :/
Still, I (tentatively) think it's ready to go, or at least ready for another round of criticism.
Oh... hmm. One thing to keep in mind when suggesting things- both have less than a third of a percentage point of space left, so adding things in probably won't be an option without first removing things.
"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'll toss one onto the barbie here:
Arc ID: 40062
Name: The World's Worst PUG
Difficulty: Two AVs, but on Heroic, it's easily done with two people. Maybe even solo.
Level range: 40-50
Time: About 1 hour. Maybe less.
C'mon. You know you need the XP, and who's gonna know you joined this awful pick-up group anyway?
[This "arc" (it's really just one mission) is both "meta" and "comedy". If you're looking for serious arcs only, move on.]
40062: The World's Worst PUG
84008: Jenkins's Guide to Super-Villainy
230187: The Hero of Kings Row
No H8 - 08.04.10
@Circuit Boy - Moderator - Pride global chat channel
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Arc 1472 - Hearts on Fire
Rating: *****
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I'm about halfway through this arc right now, and was taking it pretty seriously. Until the point at which I realized it was in fact about LESBIAN HELLIONS. Hopefully it can take this tired meme and give it some impact.
[/ QUOTE ]You know, I've known the character Salamander for about... what, three years and I only just got that joke. In my defence though I didn't find Salamander's sexuality particularly noteworthy, and more served as a solid indicator of the futility of Epitaph's aims... and he's the idiot, not you.
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I just finished the arc...and it is indeed a real tear-jerker. God, Epitaph is such an IDIOT!. I five starred the arc BTW.
DELETED DUE TO OVERPROMOTION
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Savage War
Arc ID: 59152
"Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting"
arc#2517
short & fun 1 mish
ARC # 2517 "Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting"
ARC# 102898 "The Great Sewer Rescue"
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Wellp... eh, why not.
[/ QUOTE ]That's the kind of attitude I want out of someone who wants me to spend time and effort on their work!
More seriously, if you actually want my opinion on your work, my opinion, then please, submit away to this thread. I'm happy to do so and will want to do so. But if you're just doing it to get any attention, probably pimp it elsewhere. It's not like it's bad to 'just want hits,' but I really don't think I'm going to give you the attention you want. Anyway, I'm taking this statement in good faith, which is to say, you want to hear what I have to say, but you're not sure how to approach that.
Part of my attempt to spread around my advice - yes, advice - and hopefully improve the idea of story arcs in general has been to maintain communication with the arc authors as well as posting a review. I also try to avoid spoiling too greivously. With that in mind, I'm thinking that any advice I offer for an arc is advice that the author can turn on the rest of their work... and if they don't, well, honestly, I don't care enough to fix them. I figure most of you people who are genuinely interested in improvement can consider what I've had to say in light of other arcs (and can just as much go 'hell with what Talen has to say').
With that in mind, I'm going to start trying to limit myself to authors I haven't done arcs for, for a while. With that in mind, I've got a handful queued up, blatantly favouring people I know. Today has been a bad day for playing - I was trying to help friends, we've lost a pet in the family and it's really been an upsetting few weeks. So, I apologise for the minimal output today as I try to work on other stuff as well.
On the other hand, I will ask - do people think they're getting too long, too sprawling? I'm letting my article-writer's habits kick in, and that kind of thing can be entertaining to read, but also might not have that crucial factor of offering entertainment alongside advice.
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Thank you very much for the look and review. I think you got the tone and flavor of the arc down perfectly. Most all of your comments are dead on and while some of the things you dislike I did on purpose and like myself, I am glad to hear them all pointed out, it means I conveyed the idea at least, even if you feel it is a lame idea.
[/ QUOTE ]That's a good, and possibly undervalued point, and hopefully one I'm able to treat fairly. When you do something I don't like or send a message I don't like, I'm going to rate it accordingly, but knowing that you communicated that instead of communicating something else that I disliked is very important. As long as the arc satisfies your criteria, then it's doing its job.
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give me some reason why my character needs to do a defeat all
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I don't hate defeat all missions unless they are overused. I guess to me, clearing out all Council invaders in a city business is something a Hero would do, since it is so close to residences and such. I know, in theory, the local PPD/Longbow could take care of it and I could let the player choose how they want to roleplay it. Maybe I will alter it, but I am inclined to leave it as is.
[/ QUOTE ]Well, isn't it a crime scene? If there are still council troops there, shouldn't there be a bunch of barricaded up PPD troops on the outside, possibly armed with hardsuits and whatnot? If it's a crime scene where the cops have had enough time to work and get out, then why the computers? Are the council sneaking back? Why isn't the evidence you seek in police custody?
I'm trying to get a clear image of what that first mission is supposed to be. I was assuming it was a place that had been broken into fairly recently, and this was already investigated by the police and then discarded, which called for a hero to ask you to pursue further study. The troops weren't sneaking around, they didn't speak of things as though they had just returned, and I was getting info from mounted computer terminals with a sense of permanence to them. Perhaps I should be rummaging through the owner's property and work to try and work out what the council troops were looking for?
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I suppose the idea of dragging together an all-women independent mercenary group, a secret coalition of antisupers who want to purge the world of metahumans, and an all-male organisation of fascist supersoldiers seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I just doesn't work for me
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I am not entirely happy with how the battles function works in MA. While it was an interesting idea to allow the game to have enemies actually fight each other, I think I preferred the old way, where they just appeared to be fighting each other. That way the player could see the battles (many battles are over before the player even gets to see them, in my experience). The fact that the groups are not working together well and that only some members of each organization have betrayed their standard values was supposed to be evident from the battles and the dialogue in this mission. I also wanted the Gray Knight to speak more, but his rescue dialogue and clue text were very limited in space. Perhaps, I will add some more commentary from him in the form of a letter as part of the return to contact text after mission 2.
[/ QUOTE ]Getting three major groups to turn on their ideals and subjugate themselves to someone who explicitly flies against those ideals is very very odd to me, straining belief to the point of snapping it. Simply put, it doesn't sound like it could be done. I suppose the battles might have made it clear, but I really, really can't see how. You are dealing with hard-bitten, military men, people who have indoctrinated themselves to an ideal and a concept with such ironclad ferocity that they are willing to kill and willing to die for it... to turn on that and pick up another one easily would require something breathtaking, and you've presented nothing that really feels like it has that scope.
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It calls together enemy groups who are pretty much diametrically opposed and only linked in that they annoy players or use technology, and it kinda 'squishes' them all together without some amazing, idealistic leader to draw things together. And in the end, there's not really much of a conclusion.
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This commentary is so familiar to me. This is a terrible flaw I have in creation of a story, not letting the players in on all the information, because they likely would not have it all.
[/ QUOTE ]That vice is quite terrible because it doesn't just look like you didn't explain something, it makes it look like you can't. It makes it look like you're wallpaper over a problem area of the story and hoping nobody will notice it.
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While it makes sense and is realistic,
[/ QUOTE ]You overvalue purist realism in a world with psychic policemen.
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Did you read the clues? I have a feeling most people ignore them, and I put a fair amount of information there, but still probably not enough, and I should consider that people ignore the Clues tab often.
[/ QUOTE ]I Possibly. I make a point to read clues when I can, but for the life of me, I can't remember any from your arc. I remember reading Gray Knight's and knowing 'what' was going on, but I never felt the 'why.'
Hope this has been useful.
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do people think they're getting too long, too sprawling?
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I do not, but then again I appreciate all the ideas and critiques you offered me.
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That vice is quite terrible because it doesn't just look like you didn't explain something, it makes it look like you can't.
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I can, but I have to struggle mightily and I still fall back into the bad habit far too often.
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You overvalue purist realism in a world with psychic policemen.
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Agreed. While I have been beaten on this point before, my brain is still comfortable there, sadly.
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Hope this has been useful.
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Extremely. Once again, thank you for your time, I wish it would have been more enjoyable for you. 
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
I'll toss my arc in here. Rave Against the Dying of the Light, ID 14910.
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Wellp... eh, why not.
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That's the kind of attitude I want out of someone who wants me to spend time and effort on their work!
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Argh, sorry, Talen, that wasn't the impression I wanted to give . I was just hesitant to put my arcs out for review here, as Venture has already run through the both, (he thought that Small Fears passed muster with some caveats, and that How to Survive a Robot Uprising needed a lot of work... which I have since done, thus my desire for a renewed review).
I do honestly want to polish my arcs and get them as tightly written as possible, so I would appreciate a review if it's possible.
And sorry to hear that you've been having a rough time of 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 43636 - Find Jack's Hair
Rating: *
There are times as a reviewer I get this occasionally inflated ego that lets me think that by reviewing something that's good, I'm bringing it up from the mire of obscurity. I dialled this arc up and saw immediately, a comical opening. Ho boy, this is going to be rough, I think. With Operative Gallows this time, I drew his knobbly phallic object and started the arc. Then, I read the opening dialogue... this isn't really a story, no. This is it seems, much more about the author fiddling with things. Part of me thinks it might merit no stars, but I just as much suspect it's just another humour arc that I'm not going to find funny.
There are some basic formatting errors - the first mission objective has a period at the end, and the boss name sits in the bar like a squat frog as the author failed to realise what that entry actually does if left blank. The dialogue is brief, the writing sparse - in general, this arc is, well, barely there. I don't want to write a ranting tirade against it because it's not like it's bad, but it's also very much not good, either. At hest, it can be seen as inoffensive, or unpresent. Like an atom or our solar system, it's mostly composed of nothing, but nobody's going to [censored] that either of those two things aren't still relatively effective at their job of giving astrophysicists something to do.
I give the arc one star, not because it's a 'bad arc', but because there's not really much of an arc here at all. I very much got the feeling this is an arc Clouded created to get to grips with what the mission architect could do, and, failing a better reason, just made a brief joke and stretched it out for five pages. It's not high art, and I wouldn't recommend any one emulate it, but the failings of this arc feel like those of ambivalence. The author made a joke, made an arc to fulfill that joke, and it does its job (and I did laugh at points).
This arc is a Bugs-Bunny, 4-minutes-before-the-movie style joke which is polite enough to not overload itself with 'because I can' objectives. I'd love to spend pages ripping it apart, but it doesn't actually have many in the way of failings. Maps are different from point to point, missions are structured in a not-too-annoying fashion, and there's a bit of metahumour I found funny without it being annoying. The arc didn't try to do much, and my god, did it succeed at reaching those goals.
In the end, complaining that this arc is badly written and simplistic would be like [censored] that a twinkie isn't a balanced, substantial meal.
Alright, throw my two arcs onto this pyre if you get a chance:
When Trouble Blows In
arc 26095
4 mission arc designed for paramilitary and superspy types, but hopefully accessible to a variety of hero back stories.
Oh, The Bad Things You've Done!
arc 54308
3 mission arc designed for lowbie villains, levels 8-15 (caps at 15) as a generic "prequel" to you starting in the Zig and tracking you through a range of bad behaviours in Paragon at the start of your career.
Both have some tongue in cheek humor and are intended for contextual run and gun roleplay with enough breathing room for your own characters to emerge, or in the case of the latter, to find some footing for new characters.
Enjoying the reviews I've read thus far in the thread.