Arc Reviews 3: The Final Dimension
By
Alexander81793,
Posted on: 2009-04-13 21:28 in Mission Architect
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Arc Name: Second Generation Hero
Arc ID: 41429
Global ID: @Rampager
Synopsis: You must help Rampager get his Mace and Armor back
Difficulty Level: 50 Boss, EB, AV, AV Allies
Faction: 5th column + custom
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0 stars
Run on my 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Had to do a search on the name for this, as the ID has changed.
Anyway, Rampager tells me the 5th Column are back and I have to save Marcus from them. I have no idea who Rampager or Marcus are.
Oh, wait. Marcus is Statesman (really, you guys are on a first name basis?) Apparently, he's in the Axis Amerika dimension and we have to save him before the Reichman learns he's there. But Reichman is frozen under Boomtown in the old Freedom Phalanx base. And why is States in the Axis Amerika dimension in the first place?
Anyway, the enemies are mostly 5th Column enemies, not the Axis Amerika ones for some reason. There are also some custom enemies in the Protean group. None have any descriptions and their costume designs are fairly random and have no unifying theme. Besides freeing States, you have to defeat "Frostwolfe" another member of the Proteans, who talks with a terrible faux German accent. He is an Ice Melee/Something I Didn't See Boss. He spawns an ambush of Axis Amerika troops and 5th Column, both of whom also talk with the terrible accents.
When you get back, Rampager says Statesman says you have to go retrieve Rampager's grandfather's book in order to resolve some situation. Huh?
Apparently the Council has it and if they break its code, they might become unstoppable. Apparently, Manticore will be along to help since they might be behind the death of his parents (Protean was a person, not a villain group, but OK...) The mission is timed for 45 minutes, despite not warning me it would be.
Not only do you have to find the book, you have to kill an EB named Gargoyle as well. He's a Mace/Stone Melee EB. He hit build up and two shotted me. I really wish they'd remove/tone down the self-buffs for MA critters.
The mission also has Arachnos wandering around inside for some reason.
Now I need to go get the arms and armor of Rampager's grandfather back from the Circle of Thorns. You go into one of the longer Oranbega maps with no Circle to be found, just the All Custom Enemies group. You need to find 4 mace parts and 1 armor.
Finding the Mace spawns Baphomet as an objective. Getting the armor spawns an ambush.
Rampager says that Arachnos has been controlling both the 5th Column and Circle of Thorns via the Protean network. He wonders if Manticore knows. But before you can go see if he does, he's captured. And now I MUST rescue him.
Aside from Manticore (listed as Justin Sinclair in the nav bar) I have to defeat a custom SS/Elec Blast AV named Funnelweb. When you beat him, the objective "Mission Mainframe" appears. Oh, and when you free Manticore the objective "Manticore" appears. The second Manticore is once more Manticore, who you have to free.
The return text to the contact comically mentions defeating Gargoyle, which happened numerous missions ago. Rampager tells us the leadership behind everything has been cornered, but they apparently have a secret weapon, so you need to go stop them.
Inside, you have to 1) Disarm a bomb, 2) Rescue Manticore, 3) Rescue Captain Combustion (the contact's grandfather, I think), 4) Defeat Funnelweaver again 5) Defeat Requiem, 6) Clear the map.
I was going to slog through it all until A) Requiem, despite being Italian, started talking in the stupid German accent and B) I realized it was more than one floor. I quit upon realizing B. There's no way the ending of this is going to resolve the quagmire of a "plot" the arc has anyway.
This arc is quite frankly utterly awful. I don't really want to be mean, but it was just pure bad. Spelling and grammar errors were rife throughout the arc. Everything from no punctuation in entire paragraphs to missing apostrophes to random typos. The story, if there was one, was utterly incomprehensible. It seemed like someone pulled random pieces of paper out of a hat with names of villains on them and plot points in order to come up with it. I know the author said he has a backstory for it, but he says it's not needed for the arc. I don't know if it would have even mattered, the arc was so poorly written.
Add in long maps with nested mission objectives... Well, it was just a pain to get through.
I don't even feel like I can offer any advice other than to trash the arc completely then take a basic class in writing from someone.
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Sigh! My apologies. I meant to tell you that I had pulled it for drastic rewrite because A: I feel like you do about spelling and grammar ( and when I realized it was rife with errors I went back and unpublished it). The reason you had a very limited idea of what was going on was because the intro text refused to load correctly (I had it maxed on all available lines to help with story integration and it caused issues) There are myriad other corrections to be made and I apologize for subjecting you to this before I got them fixed (I really did think that I had unpublished this thing). I am fixing it. Thanks for pointing out some things that I had missed even after my rewriting efforts. Like I said criticism does not bother me as long as it is constructive and yours was. Thanks again and I will send you a link when this is far maore ready for public consumption.
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Arc ID: 48942
Name: Too Drunk Too Be Alcoholic
Global: @DLancer
Level Range: 30-45
Missions: 5 on small/medium maps.
Enemies: Crey, Freaks, Custom Group; 2 AVs (missions 3 and 5, both of which give allied EBs)
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4 out of 5 stars
Run on the 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Dark Lancer's friend Jack has been kidnapped by some Freaks who live in a liquor store in Skyway City. You're asked to go save him. It's one of the small tech store maps. You have to defeat the Freak Boss and find the hostage. However, there is no hostage, just some glowies that give you Crey Brand Alcoholic Beverage and an inventory sheet that showed you where they got it.
Naturally, Dark Lancer was talking about Jack Daniels. The contact decides that you should investigate the warehouse where the Crey Alcohol came from, since Crey doesn't make alcohol.
You have to gather information and defeat the warehouse manager. The information is a file cabinet that spawns an ambush upon clicking (the ambush has some grammar errors in its spawn dialogue). You find documents on Crey's research into subliminal advertisement.
The manager tells you Crey planned to distribute the beverage in the Rogue Isles to the villains, but he doesn't know why. Masquerading is also misspelled there.
Lancer sends you to talk to a friend of him, Markus DeLorean. Markus is apparently investigating a Crey lab and you're warned a Crey operative is trailing him. Markus tells you the drink likely just has subliminal primers in it instead of booze. The agent is a Rad/Rad EB, so he was annoying, but died quick enough.
Lancer tells him the TV told him Crey is starting up their operation out of Brickstown. Inside, you find some random gang bangers and some wandering Arachnos, Carnies, Freaks, and Longbow who don't seem to know why they're there. But they all attack you.
When you fight the Overseer (who has some funny lines) you're told that it was all a trap set up to get you. You also find a computer that has the location of the warehouse the drink is being stored at. When you check it, the Council ambushes you. "Get XXX... for some reason!"
Lancer tells you Countess Crey is inspecting the warehouse now and he's going in to stop her. You're invited along. You have to go in, free Lancer from Crey, destroy four production pods, and defeat Countess Crey.
With everything done, Lancer invites you out for a drink.
Now, this arc might not be for everyone. It's pretty much a humor arc through and through. And it takes a little while to get going. The first couple of missions didn't do much for me humor wise, but the last three had a lot of good stuff.
It needs to clean up some grammar and spelling issues. But aside from that, I enjoyed it a lot. And even if it did clean up the grammar, I doubt it'd be bumped to a 5 stars. But it's still good.
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Arc Name: The Knights of Rularuu
Arc ID: 75386
Faction: Malta Group, Custom Rularuu
Length: 4 missions
Morality: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Vanden
Difficulty Level: Hard
Synopsis: Who would've thought that one of those endless Malta missions would turn up something like this? (1 AV, not recommended for weak soloists)
Estimated Time to Play: 1 hour
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4 out of 5 stars
Run with the same old 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Justice-Guy, who talks a lot like a surfer dude, is working for Crimson investigating the Malta and he wants some help with it. You have to clear out a Malta base and search for any clues there.
You meet up with one of his friends there, who senses he's in trouble and runs off. She tells you she'll send you some help. The help ends up to be a Ring Mistress, who has apparently left the Carnies (against canon, I believe, as all Carnies are supposed to be under the mental domination of Vanessa deVoere). The computer files you find are all encrypted and the base commander gives you no clue.
Now you're sent to another base with Justice-Guy to get into a door that JG couldn't get into before. You find Rularuu attacking the Malta, who seem just as happy to let you take over the base than deal with them.
One computer tells you that Malta was experimenting with portal tech. The other clue is fighting some really cool looking custom Rularuu mobs.
Apparently, Malta had created a portal to a part of the Shadow Shard that can only be accessed directly from our dimension, thanks to the warped space-time in the Shard. You're sent in to help evacuate 5 of the humans there. Each one gives you a portion of a legend, much like in the Shadow Shard TFs.
In a nutshell, there's an aspect of Rularuu known as the Bane who controls the new Rularuu. And JG seems to think the Bane has come to Paragon to wreak havoc. You go back to the Malta base, hook up with JG and Serras, save two technicians, reactivate a dimensional stabilizer, and defeat the Bane.
Bane appears to be a simple Axe/Fire Armor EB, not an AV (I never saw the triangles, at least. And even if he was an AV, he was really weak and didn't do much damage or tank much. And he ran at 50% health). After finishing up everything, you are thanked by JG.
I liked the arc a lot. The writing was very good, the plot was pretty good, and I think the custom enemies were very well done. The one thing that marked it down from 4 to 5 stars was how... well, unepic the final mission was. The Bane, for supposedly being a badass, was a real pushover. I was expecting something like Lanaruu or Ruladak. Instead, I got a pretty wimpy Axe/Fire EB who ran like a girl at 50% health.
Still, it was fun and well done and I'd recommend it.
So you think the Bane is too EASY? Sheesh. 
I wanted to use the destroyed lab map from the mission where you fight Baphomet villainside for the finale, but it's apparently not available in the MA. You should imagine that you're in that map while you run the last mission.
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
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Arc Name: Bugs and Robots, ma'am, bugs and robots
Arc ID:53433
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Nod
Difficulty Level: Above average (custom enemy faction, custom AV)
Synopsis: A new villain group infests Paragon City. It's up to you to find out why and stop them!
Estimated Time to Play: 30-60 minutes
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3 out of 5 stars
Blah blah, 50 BS/SR Scrap.
Max Nodick, aka To The Max, says locals are going missing, but it's not the Vahz or Lost. So he asks you to go check out some local caves. Inside, you find some weird bug people who go on about something they call Her. You find some cocoons, destroy it, and find a bunch of egg sacs.
While Max and his SG test the eggs, he sends you to another cave to clear it out. You have to search 5 webbed bundles. Inside one, you find a huge shell.
Apparently, the bugs also mentioned some kind of attack, but I missed that in the NPC dialogue. An alarm goes off in a robotics factory, and your contact thinks the two things are related for some reason.
Inside, you find some robots that are a mix of custom mobs, Neuron robots, and Council robots. You find many of the insects too. You have to search 5 containers, one of which contains a chitinous plate with wires fused to it.
Just then, you contact gets a message from another robot factory, with a witness who apparently saw Her. You need to go save the witness, then escort him out.
The witness tells you that Her is in a cave about a mile away. You go in and fight Her, who is actually called Ma'am, a Sonic/WP AV. She was quite easy to take down for me. She mentions before the fight that she's just the first wave of an alien invasion. After she dies, you have to take down her cocoon, else she'll just reemerge.
And with that, the arc is complete.
The arc isn't bad, it's just not great either. It's just pretty average. The story is kinda weak, I feel, and ends with a lot of loose ends. Why were the insects attacking the robot factories? No idea. Never resolved.
There just isn't a lot of meat here to the story. It's kind of dull and simplistic. It's got some potential, but just isn't terribly interesting. The clues and contact text are fairly sparse as well.
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So you think the Bane is too EASY? Sheesh. I wanted to use the destroyed lab map from the mission where you fight Baphomet villainside for the finale, but it's apparently not available in the MA. You should imagine that you're in that map while you run the last mission.
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I think he only hit me with one attack the entire time. The most challenging part was chasing him across the map to kill him once he ran. If other people are complaining about his difficulty, then perhaps I just got lucky. But between myself and two boss allies, I had no difficulty at all.
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Arc ID: 48942
Name: Too Drunk Too Be Alcoholic
Global: @DLancer
Level Range: 30-45
Missions: 5 on small/medium maps.
Enemies: Crey, Freaks, Custom Group; 2 AVs (missions 3 and 5, both of which give allied EBs)
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4 out of 5 stars
Run on the 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Dark Lancer's friend Jack has been kidnapped by some Freaks who live in a liquor store in Skyway City. You're asked to go save him. It's one of the small tech store maps. You have to defeat the Freak Boss and find the hostage. However, there is no hostage, just some glowies that give you Crey Brand Alcoholic Beverage and an inventory sheet that showed you where they got it.
Naturally, Dark Lancer was talking about Jack Daniels. The contact decides that you should investigate the warehouse where the Crey Alcohol came from, since Crey doesn't make alcohol.
You have to gather information and defeat the warehouse manager. The information is a file cabinet that spawns an ambush upon clicking (the ambush has some grammar errors in its spawn dialogue). You find documents on Crey's research into subliminal advertisement.
The manager tells you Crey planned to distribute the beverage in the Rogue Isles to the villains, but he doesn't know why. Masquerading is also misspelled there.
Lancer sends you to talk to a friend of him, Markus DeLorean. Markus is apparently investigating a Crey lab and you're warned a Crey operative is trailing him. Markus tells you the drink likely just has subliminal primers in it instead of booze. The agent is a Rad/Rad EB, so he was annoying, but died quick enough.
Lancer tells him the TV told him Crey is starting up their operation out of Brickstown. Inside, you find some random gang bangers and some wandering Arachnos, Carnies, Freaks, and Longbow who don't seem to know why they're there. But they all attack you.
When you fight the Overseer (who has some funny lines) you're told that it was all a trap set up to get you. You also find a computer that has the location of the warehouse the drink is being stored at. When you check it, the Council ambushes you. "Get XXX... for some reason!"
Lancer tells you Countess Crey is inspecting the warehouse now and he's going in to stop her. You're invited along. You have to go in, free Lancer from Crey, destroy four production pods, and defeat Countess Crey.
With everything done, Lancer invites you out for a drink.
Now, this arc might not be for everyone. It's pretty much a humor arc through and through. And it takes a little while to get going. The first couple of missions didn't do much for me humor wise, but the last three had a lot of good stuff.
It needs to clean up some grammar and spelling issues. But aside from that, I enjoyed it a lot. And even if it did clean up the grammar, I doubt it'd be bumped to a 5 stars. But it's still good.
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Clearly I need to run through the dialogue again, but I'm glad you enjoyed the arc! I'll go about cleaning it up some when I'm on next. I just really wish that the Architect had a spell checker. <.<
Current Published Arcs
#1 "Too Drunk to be Alcoholic" Arc #48942
#2 "To Slay Sleeping Dragons" Arc #111486
#3 "Stop Calling Me"
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Eclipse Over Paragon (64609)
30-50 range
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4 out of 5 stars
Run with the 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Colleen Nelson tells us that she thinks a warehouse in Striga houses a new Shadow Seed, which is used to turn soldiers into Warwolves. You're asked to go in and stop it. You're also told other heroes might be hitting it as well.
Inside, you find custom "Stunted Nightwolf" mobs. You have to free a hostage, collect 3 crates full of strange liquid, and find an ally. The hostage tells you the warehouse was only a hub and there are other warehouses with the liquid in it.
The ally seems like he's supposed to be a joke character, but he wasn't funny. When you free him, a "Defeat Archon" objective appears. The Archon says he would have abandoned the warehouse if not for the Center's orders.
The contact says the scientist said the liquid is water, irradiated with Nictus energy. The Council apparently deems the experiment a failure, because the nightwolves they make aren't very strong. You're sent to one of the warehouses, while other heroes are sent to the rest.
The warehouse is the tiniest one available. The only crate has a note that says "Eat lead" on it, which spawns an ambush and a boss mob. Once you beat the boss mob, you get a mission complete.
Apparently, the ambush was just a distraction, and the Council has launched an attack of Mech Men on Steel Canyon. Apparently, they're spraying the Nictus water all over the place. The scientist was a liar.
You have to defeat 3 Emitter Droids (the names should really more closely reflect Council naming schemes) who are custom mobs who look a little like robotic Vandals and find a "suspect". You also have to deal with numerous people who have turned into weakened Warwolves, including some PPD and Longbow.
You have to fight another Archon who seems to have a cold and is unaffected by the spray. The robots also have commands to restock at stockpiles across the city, so you're sent to eliminate one of those. You're warned to not let anything distract you. It even says so in the nav bar.
The ally from the first mission is the only enemy there, transformed into a Warwolf. He's a Claws/Regen Boss. You don't have to fight him, just click on 12 crates, which are all very close together since the map is very small.
Apparently, the Council and nightwolves are converging on a single base in Striga. You're sent there, figuring it's the base the scientist is in. Inside, you find numerous patrols of Council and transformed people. You also find transformed versions of a few well-known heroes, which was a nice touch.
The scientist appears as a AR/Dark Miasma EB, which is a slightly odd combo. He wasn't too tough. You also find a computer with all his research on it.
With that, SERAPH can create an antidote to cure people. However, the comedy character seems to have been overexposed and can't be cured so easily.
I liked the arc, it was a relatively smart plan by the Council and the custom group was quite well done. The writing was strong as well and the missions weren't too long or tedious.
I do think the "comedy" character is misplaced (and he's definitely a joke character. His bio is pretty obviously meant to be a joke) and he adds nothing to the arc. I suppose you're supposed to feel sorry for him, but as he's not legitimately funny, he doesn't.
Still, a good strong arc.
Arc Name: Facing Chaos
Arc ID: 105163
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Aracade
Difficulty Level: Easy/Moderate
Synopsis: An old king that has seen his world end learns the cause of its destruction is being drawn to this world. Unwilling to see another world fall he calls for the help of the heroes that protect it. (Level 40+)
Estimated Time to Play: 45 to 90 minutes
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Arc Name: Super Science Invasion
ID:9691
Global:@Device
Range: 30s-40s (plenty of EBs, not really meant for solo, but many have)
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2 out of 5 stars
Ran this with my 32 Ninja Blade/Energy Aura stalker.
Retired Arbiter Kirby has gotten word that a "Dr. Wasp" has invented a cube that creates inventions without salvage. This is a bit of an odd quasi-OOC thing, because I'm not really sure how you can talk about "invention enhancement" in character.
But you're asked to go after him. The lab is guarded by Longbow. Dr. Wasp is a Sonic/Thorns EB. He spawns an ambush of custom AR mobs. When you defeat him, he does not have the cube.
Apparently, a hero name Insecta-girl breaks Dr. Wasp out of the Arachnos jail. She's tracked back to a lab. You go after her, figuring that the cube will be there or you'll be able to use her as a bargaining chip.
Once again, you have Longbow, the most boring group in the entire game. She's a Energy Blast/SR EB. She runs at 25% health, and since she's SR she's nearly impossible to catch, so she got away.
Luckily, Dr. Wasp doesn't want to see his friends hurt, so he agrees to hand over the cube anyway. You're to make the exchange in a warehouse. Naturally, it's a "trap", and you have to fight Minerva, a Archery/WP EB and Battle Armor an Energy Blast/?? EB.
Now you're sent to steal all their equipment from their superbase. Finally, no Longbow, just custom mobs. You have to steal 3 pieces of equipment. Early in, you discover a scientist who drops a feather that you take after she runs away. There's also another EB, Grey Gargantua, who looks like a Gray Hulk ripoff. I didn't fight him because I didn't need to.
Apparently, the group are researchers for the military, which constitutes an invasion in Lord Recluse's eyes. They've apparently all gathered in a warehouse and you are sent in to take them out. All 5 EBs. This isn't challenging, because none of them are particularly strong. It's just tedious.
Anyway, you get a good job from the Arbiter and that's that.
This arc doesn't have much story to it. In the first three missions, you're trying to get this magical cube. In the second two, you're just fighting the EBs for the hell of it. In fact, the entire arc seems to be "Fight EBs for the hell of it." I can't say they're author inserts, because they use powerset mixes you can't actually create, so it seems unlikely. In the end, it's just a bunch of fights against EBs with no personality and for no good reason.
It also suffers extensively from run on sentences in the contact dialogue.
It's not terrible, it's just not interesting or that good.
Arc Name: The devs must die!
Arc ID: 113956
Humor arc with most of the humor in the clues.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
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Jenkins's Guide to Super-Villainy
Arc ID: 84008
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Circuit Boy
Difficulty Level: Missions #1-3 1-50, Mission #4 20-29; easy to medium difficulty
Synopsis: Tired of Kalinda prattling on about searching for the "Destined One"? More than just a mercenary gun for hire? Tired of exterminating snakes for Mongoose? Not thrilled to be Doctor Creed's lab assistant? Want to know how to become a real super-villain? Jenkins has just the guide for you!
Estimated Time to Play: 4 missions, 60-90 minutes
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1 out of 5 stars
Run with my 32 Nin/EA stalker.
Jenkins asks you if I want to know how to be a real super villain. I apparently think he will know how, despite him being Arachnos's whipping boy, but I say yes anyway. Despite him promising that you're not going to be an errand boy for someone else, he immediately sends you to do something for him: steal some sharks from Captain Mako.
Considering he just talked about lasers and "cranial mounts", he's quite obviously trying to make "sharks with frikin' laser beams". Yay, an Austin Powers reference. That's... topical.
You're sent to the Chum Bucket mission map, which is tiny. It seems like the map is supposed to be empty, but there is one enemy here. The sharks are somehow in crates. When you get the last one, it spawns a Boss. The boss spawns an ambush at about 50% health.
When you beat the boss, it says Mako will "chum" him, which makes no sense. I think he means "Captain Mako will turn me into chum".
Since the sharks end up being too small, Jenkins declares this plan a failure. His next plan is to grab the Malleus Mundi from the Circle of Thorns. You need to get it before Ghost Widow does.
There are several obvious Scooby Doo take off characters who are allies in the mission. Their costumes are pretty well done (at least the fake Daphne, Velma, and Fred). Their names are stupid for the most part (Tiffne? Raggy? Thooby Boo?) They talk about solving a mystery.
There's also an "Old Man Johnson" custom Mace/Shields boss who is given the shovel and manhole cover costume parts. He killed me in two shots and I couldn't hit him, even with a large Insight. As you fight him, he talks about all the things he was behind, none of which are relevant.
You eventually find the book, but it's not the Malleus Mundi. It's the Malleus Burundi, which apparently lets you take control of the country Burundi.
The contact text here is now a reference to Pinky and the Brain. But Jenkins sends you off to take control of Burkholder's giant robot under Striga. All you need to do is click on a computer to upload a virus.
However, it turns out that Jenkins accidentally wrote down an extra 0 in the command codes, so they don't work.
You decide you've had enough of Jenkins and go to fight him. When you engage, in case you never realized who Jenkins was a reference to, he hammers it over your head by screaming it at you. He also summons his sharks, which are custom Rad mobs, and the giant Mech Man, which turns out to be some regular Mech Men.
With Jenkins beaten up, you leave him off to be incompetent on his own.
Have you ever been unfortunate enough to watch one of those awful movies like Epic Movie or Disaster Movie? The movies that purport to be comedies, but actually are just filled with references to other things?
That's what this arc was like. Instead of a plot, it tried to be funny, but more or less failed. There were no jokes, just references. It's not even like it had jokes that weren't my style. They just weren't jokes.
And if that's not bad enough, the arc pretty much invalidates its own premise. You're offered the chance to not be another villain's lackey, but that's what all the arc is. Doing things for Jenkins.
Pretty much the only thing to recommend is the costume designs on the fake Fred, Daphne, and Velma. Which is probably against the MA rules anyway, now that I think about it.
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Eclipse Over Paragon (64609)
30-50 range
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4 out of 5 stars
I do think the "comedy" character is misplaced (and he's definitely a joke character. His bio is pretty obviously meant to be a joke) and he adds nothing to the arc. I suppose you're supposed to feel sorry for him, but as he's not legitimately funny, he doesn't.
Still, a good strong arc.
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Bladeskrieg was supposed to be part character cameo, part placeholder and part comedy relief.
But he's gone now. Praise the lawd. I finally figured out a replacement and got someone much more appropriate to take his place.
Thanks for the feedback and good word!
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Arc Name: The Ideality - Part 1: A New Foe
Arc ID: 42436
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @parhaius
Level Range: 1-54
Synopsis: A mysterious and hostile new group is seizing territory all over Paragon City - but for what purpose?
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3 out of 5 stars.
Run with my 50 BS/SR scrapper.
Apparently, a bunch of villain bases have been raided or taken over by some unknown force and you need to go and find out who's behind it. Apparently tip says a Council base will be hit next, so you go there.
Inside, you find the Ideality attacking the Council. The Ideality appear robotic in nature and call the Council "fleshbags". You have to defeat the Raid Leader, a BS/Shields boss. Unfortunately, no one knows about the Ideality, so you need to infiltrate one of their bases to find out about them.
Inside, you have to collect some of their parts, get some files, and take a hard drive (those last two seem fairly redundant). The evidence is sent out for testing, and it turns out that the Ideality wants to turn people into machines so as to perfect them. Apparently, they're planning to raid a bionics conference full of Paragon's best and brightest, so you need to go stop them.
You have to rescue 6 hostages. One tells you about an Ideality base near by, so you're sent there to take care of that. All you need to do here is defeat one boss. You find a chip on him that leads you to a robot factory.
You have to take out two prototypes and destroy 3 assemblers. At least one of the prototypes is an EB, but he wasn't very tough. In fact, I can't even remember what his primary was. Probably Energy Blast...
Anyway, the arc is alright. It's obviously written as an introduction to this villain group. The main problem is there isn't much of a coherent story. It's just a couple of random plots by this group you stop.
On the plus side, the villain group is fairly well designed. They look decent, they provide a moderate challenge without being overwhelming, and they have a good concept that doesn't retread on any current CoH stuff.
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Arc ID: 1152
Title: The Doctor Returns
Global: @FredrikSvanberg
Recommended Level: Missions range from 35-50.
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3 out of 5 stars
Run with my 37 Spines/DA Scrapper.
The Doctor from the Crey Arc sends me an e-mail, telling me she's discovered something terrible about the MA. Apparently, Crey wants to take the digitized copies of people, make copies, reprogram the copies, and then rematerialize the copies.
In order to prove this, she sends you into a certain mission in the MA to check it out. Inside, you have to find the original user and defeat the 4 copies. The original user turns out to be Fusionette.
This makes dealing with the copies somewhat problematic for me, as DA is not strong against the Energy damage (or Smashing, for that matter...) and Knockback they throw around. But with the help of the other Fusionette, I don't have too many issues.
The Doctor tells you some stuff about Crey's operation, then sends you into a mission she put a backdoor into so you can gain administrator status. You go into an office full of Arachnoids. Almost immediately, you gain an ally, Executable #6 taking the form of a Paragon Protector.
With the administrative rights granted, you're sent in to look at some of the older files that exist to back before AE opened. You have to decompress 3 files, which end up being Fusionette, Jim Tremblor, and Ghost Widow as hostages. Then you have to defeat the Sys Admin, which spawns another file, Positron.
The Doctor says this proves that Crey made a copy of Positron and it was that copy who approved AE Tech. You're sent in to upload a file to their systems that'll let the Doctor wreak havoc, but you only have 60 minutes to do it. There are a bunch of bad nodes that spawn ambushes, but you can avoid them by clicking on them from a distance and seeing that they say "Bad Node".
With the Doctor now inside the system, she sends you in one last time to erase all trace of what you've done. That way, she can stay in and keep hindering Crey's plans. You go in, get two passcodes from custom Crey bosses, and then blow up two mainframes to simulate deleting files.
With the mission complete, you step out. Apparently, the person running all those missions was a "rogue copy" of you and now the real you has been released. Which is kinda a weird ending that took a lot away from me. It seemed to be a twist simply for the sake of being a twist. I certainly don't know what the ending adds to the story.
Thus, while I liked the story and it held up pretty well and the missions are interesting enough, I can't give it a higher grade than I did.
[ QUOTE ]
With the mission complete, you step out. Apparently, the person running all those missions was a "rogue copy" of you and now the real you has been released. Which is kinda a weird ending that took a lot away from me. It seemed to be a twist simply for the sake of being a twist. I certainly don't know what the ending adds to the story.
[/ QUOTE ]
A twist somply for the sake of being a twist would have been to reveal that the player was in fact not the player but a member of a shapeshifting alien race sent to Earth to investigate virtual reality technology, but the spaceship crashed and the player forgot about being an alien. Having been digitized and rematerialized fixed the amnesia so now you remember that you're an alien and that you have to make your report. That would not have added anything to the story.
The twist I used seems however to be perfectly thematic, since the story begins by talking about creating copies of people, the first mission shows us that copies can go rogue and resist the reprogramming, and the entire arc is about stopping Crey from using said copies (and turning the MA into the benevolent or at least neutral tool that it was supposed to be from the beginning).
By having the protagonist as one of the rogue copies pushes the story from "block standard" into "relevant" or even "moving". The rogue copy sacrifices itself for the benefit of everyone.
Of course this is me overanalyzing myself, since I really didn't have this planned out from the beginning. I discovered as I was building the arc that, hey, I could easily add this twist and make the story many times more interesting - let's do it!
An earlier version of the arc had Exe #6 show up with a message from The Doc revealing the copy's true nature once it had entered the last mission and passed the point of no return but I removed it. It makes the copy's sacrifice all the more heroic once it knew the truth and that it would be deleted when it turned off the MA, but revealing the truth at that point had other problems, the least of which was not that the entire surprise of the twist end was ruined prematurely.
Instead I have the AE security patrols talk about having detected a rogue copy and investigating. If the players don't realize that they are talking about the character at that point I guess they weren't paying attention, or that the patrol dialogue had fired off too soon as usual.
Everyone doesn't like twist endings for some reason. Personally I love them. My only regret is that I haven't been able to figure out a way to drop more hints about what is really going on without revealing the twist too soon.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
By having the protagonist as one of the rogue copies pushes the story from "block standard" into "relevant" or even "moving". The rogue copy sacrifices itself for the benefit of everyone.
It pushes it into "Give Me A Break" because it's a borderline Butt Pull and into "Who Cares?" since the copy was never real to begin with.
Of course this is me overanalyzing myself, since I really didn't have this planned out from the beginning. I discovered as I was building the arc that, hey, I could easily add this twist and make the story many times more interesting - let's do it!
This is why it's a twist just for the sake of a twist.
Instead I have the AE security patrols talk about having detected a rogue copy and investigating. If the players don't realize that they are talking about the character at that point I guess they weren't paying attention, or that the patrol dialogue had fired off too soon as usual.
With all the rogue copies running around there is no reason the player would assume his character is the one they are talking about. Players tend to be reasonably certain that a character they created is, in fact, who and what they created it to be. This is another reason why the Tomato In The Mirror thing doesn't work well in RPGs. (N.B. there is a canon arc that attempts the same thing, though it chickens out at the end, and it tends to evoke much the same reaction.)
Everyone doesn't like twist endings for some reason. Personally I love them.
It's not that people don't like twist endings. The arc I'm working on now has one. It's that people don't like bad, manipulative twist endings.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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This is why it's a twist just for the sake of a twist.
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I noticed the potential for a twist while working on the story. Then I changed the story as needed to make the twist work. It wasn't just added because I could, it was added because I thought it made the story better.
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(N.B. there is a canon arc that attempts the same thing, though it chickens out at the end, and it tends to evoke much the same reaction.)
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It's one of my favourite missions in the game but I was disappointed that it didn't go all the way.
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Everyone doesn't like twist endings for some reason. Personally I love them.
It's not that people don't like twist endings. The arc I'm working on now has one. It's that people don't like bad, manipulative twist endings.
[/ QUOTE ]
I will be looking forward to finding out what you think a good, non-manipulative twist ending looks like.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I will be looking forward to finding out what you think a good, non-manipulative twist ending looks like.
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Take the Sixth Sense, compare it to The Happening.
There you go.
Current Published Arcs
#1 "Too Drunk to be Alcoholic" Arc #48942
#2 "To Slay Sleeping Dragons" Arc #111486
#3 "Stop Calling Me"
Having not seen The Happening I don't really know which of these is supposed to be the good one. I like The Sixth Sense though. I figured it out before the end. Either way, as interesting as your comparison might be, I'm interested in finding out how Venture will make his twist end work.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
Well, The Happening does not even have a twist ending.
With the legions of bad twist endings out there you'd think it would be easy to name one, but I'm drawing a blank...check the Shoot The Shaggy Dog entry on TVTropes, that should have a few.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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!
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2 out of 5 stars
Ran this with my 32 Ninja Blade/Energy Aura stalker.
Retired Arbiter Kirby has gotten word that a "Dr. Wasp" has invented a cube that creates inventions without salvage. This is a bit of an odd quasi-OOC thing, because I'm not really sure how you can talk about "invention enhancement" in character.
[/ QUOTE ]I never talk about invention enhancements. I talk about a cube. It's too bad you're not a comic book buff as it seems you missed the entirety of the parody. Not your fault, of course, just unfortunate.
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Once again, you have Longbow, the most boring group in the entire game. She's a Energy Blast/SR EB. She runs at 25% health, and since she's SR she's nearly impossible to catch, so she got away.
[/ QUOTE ]Not sure what other group I could have used in their place, the hero side is a little limited for heroic groups, and story-wise I didn't want to use the custom group for all the missions. As far as failing the mission, I haven't had much complaints on that end. Obviously, in a group I don't think she ever gets away, but solo stalkers I can see having a problem.
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Apparently, the group are researchers for the military, which constitutes an invasion in Lord Recluse's eyes. They've apparently all gathered in a warehouse and you are sent in to take them out. All 5 EBs. This isn't challenging, because none of them are particularly strong. It's just tedious.
[/ QUOTE ]I've found difficulty to be one of the most subjective things in the game. I've had a few who couldn't get past the first mission and others who don't have a problem. I'm just sorry that the story wasn't compelling for you.
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Anyway, you get a good job from the Arbiter and that's that.
This arc doesn't have much story to it. In the first three missions, you're trying to get this magical cube. In the second two, you're just fighting the EBs for the hell of it. In fact, the entire arc seems to be "Fight EBs for the hell of it." I can't say they're author inserts, because they use powerset mixes you can't actually create, so it seems unlikely. In the end, it's just a bunch of fights against EBs with no personality and for no good reason.
[/ QUOTE ]Ouch! No story and no personality. I guess those hours of tweaking dialogue and making sure each EB had their own voice failed me miserably. Maybe the clues and souvenir weren't as fleshed out as I'd hoped. As this is all subjective, I can't really take much issue with anything except for calling it a "magical cube"; they're scientists, so no magic.
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It also suffers extensively from run on sentences in the contact dialogue.
[/ QUOTE ]I wished you had provided an example as I try to keep the grammar as clean as possible; especially since my proof-reader friend apparently missed them.
Thanks for the review though. If you get a chance maybe you can look at ID:2902 (Architect Entertainment O-o-o-o-n-n...Line...). It's only one mission, and no run ons promise.
-Galth
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By having the protagonist as one of the rogue copies pushes the story from "block standard" into "relevant" or even "moving". The rogue copy sacrifices itself for the benefit of everyone.
[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is the player never knows it was a rogue copy. There's no indication that the rogue copy knows it's a rogue copy. There's nothing moving about it. The player never becomes attached to the rogue copy because the player never knows it exists until after its supposed sacrifice.
Plus, there's no apparent reason it would need to sacrifice itself, it just happens. What's to stop it from just rematerializing too? There's no indication that's not possible. So it's a meaningless sacrifice at that.
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Instead I have the AE security patrols talk about having detected a rogue copy and investigating. If the players don't realize that they are talking about the character at that point I guess they weren't paying attention, or that the patrol dialogue had fired off too soon as usual.
[/ QUOTE ]
Or we noticed it and didn't realize it was supposed to imply that the character was actually a copy. At this point in the arc, the player and the Doctor are going around mucking around in the AE mainframe. You're a rogue element or a rogue program or a rogue administrator or whatever.
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Everyone doesn't like twist endings for some reason. Personally I love them. My only regret is that I haven't been able to figure out a way to drop more hints about what is really going on without revealing the twist too soon.
[/ QUOTE ]
Twist endings are fine. See the Sixth Sense for one that I enjoyed. Planet of the Apes was a good one. Fight Club was another one. I'm sure I could go on.
However, yours lacked the emotional impact needed to be a good one. Yours was essentially "Your character remembers nothing", because as Venture said, the copy was never real. And it was just a copy. The only thing deleted is the experiences, not the personality or life or anything like that.
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Arc Name: Hunting the Dark Dragon
Arc ID: 2922
Morality: Heroic
Faction: Circle of Thorns, Malta Operatives, Space Pirates, Spearhead Division
Creator: @Acid Zero
Difficulty Level: Hard (1 AV(EB) with no allies, end boss very tough)
Synopsis: I created this in response to the many dragon invasion themed arcs I found on test, and decided to give it my own (slightly chaotic) spin by employing dragon concepts from people I know. I like to think this arc takes several things in new directions, and not just with the dragons - it's also up to the player to choose which way this arc ends.
Estimated Time to Play: 1/2 - 1 1/2 hours
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1 out of 5 stars
Run with my 50 BS/SR Scrapper.
Peter Stemitz's shaman-in-the-brain tells him the Circle are trying to summon dragons. You must stop this, of course. He warns that some have already been summoned, so watch out.
Inside, I have to defeat the summoner and find 4 dragons. The first one comes quickly. She is a Elec Blast/Elec Armor Boss. She wears pants and a belly tee. She talks like she's a regular person.
Really, this is a dragon? I'm suddenly not at all worried.
She tells me she was attending a rock concert (REALLY?) and was whisked up by a purple tornado. So she'll help me now.
The other three look like lizards with wings dressed in normal person clothes. And they act like it too. They are apparently in a rock band. I didn't see what their powers were, because I ditched them as soon as I possibly could because of their silly costumes and characters.
I thought this was supposed to be about dragons, not people in dragon masks.
But I forge ahead and confront the summoner, an Arch-Mage of Agony. Annoying to fight because of the resists, but he goes down, and on the way he says the "dragons" must help them or else the Dark Dragon will destroy them all.
Peter sends you to Thorn Isle, because that's where the Circle usually does stuff it doesn't want people knowing about, like summoning powerful monsters. Inside, you find the Malta, and you save a Thorns survivor who tells you they summoned the Dark Dragon, but he escaped and sent Malta in. You have to go take out Malta's leader to learn where he is.
I do so and he tells me that the Dark Dragon comes from a world that even has spaceships (REALLY?!?!) and that he offered them the Thorn Tree in return for their help. How thoughtful of him, offering to let the Malta go fight the Circle of Thorns with no help as long as the Malta do something for him!
You're sent to the Warburg Malta base and have to defeat the Base Leader (a KoA) and find some other clues. Beating her gives you a security code to a safe that's guarded by custom "Space Pirate" mobs that seem to have multiple FF Lts, making them near impossible to hit and who look less like space pirates and more like demons.
The contact says "Not again! I swear, if thi...did you just say 'space pirates'? You're kidding me. Please say you're kidding me." Even the author appears to realize he's writing nonsensical dreck.
But you press on anyways, and head to the Arachnos base you learned from the info in the safe. It's the Submarine base and Malta is trying to take it over. You have to free the Base Commander and locate Dark Dragon.
You don't actually find Dark Dragon, just a computer, which tells you that the base commander was actually Dark Dragon. Mako then spawns and attacks you. You kill him, mission end.
You're then sent to the Faultline Dam, where Dark Dragon apparently is. You're told to capture him or not, your choice. Longbow is swarming the place. You have to defeat 2 Guards and Dark Dragon.
The guards and Dark Dragon all spawned on top of each other in the final room, which meant hellacious overlap of spawns. These spawns are all Robot MMs, so more forcefields meaning I can't hit anything while roughly 30 enemies shoot at me. They killed me and I hadn't even gotten one of them to 1/2 life because of the stacked FF.
Anyway, by burning a full tray of Sturdies, Respites, and Insights and burning into Stephanie Peeble's Ring I was finally able to take the room down.
Anyway, yay, you've captured Dark Dragon. I barely paid attention to the closing text from the contact.
I found little to like about this arc. Malta and Arachnos both behave like total idiots and let themselves get played by Dark Dragon, who doesn't exactly display any great smarts. The maps were ALL long Unique maps (except the Warburg one, which is Unique but not all that long), making them annoying to play through for often only 1 or 2 objectives.
The custom enemies are ridiculous to fight with their MM spawns and stacked FFs. The story is dumb and the "dragons" add absolutely nothing to it. I can't even understand why dragons were selected: nothing about any of them reminded me of a dragon aside from their visuals. You could have called them Lizardmen or Zornax or Blurglefluffers and there'd be no difference to the characters. They are dragons in name only and people in dragon masks the rest of the time.
The faults of this arc aren't quite as egregious as those of the story I reviewed before, but they fall along pretty much the same line. A random series of events with only the thinnest thread connecting them occur with a nonsensical story and brain-cramping characters. At least there were no characters acting out of character or spelling/grammar errors that I could see.