I'm back and I'm going to kick it off with an unsolicited review while I get back into the groove. I present to you:
Arc ID: 13214
Arc Title: Clash of Thunder
Author: @Rudra
Description: A Vanguard operative has contracted you to perform an investigation on Rikti activities. Strange portal readings have lead Vanguard intelligence to presume the Rikti are working on new portal technology, but the strikes are against abnormal targets.
Rating: ****
================================
Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Teammate: Liz Nasty, Level 50 Sonic Attack/Sonic Resonance Corruptor
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
Sergeant Rutgers informs me that some strange portal readings have been picked up lately and that it has been tracked down to an odd location: a warehouse holding museum exhibits. He asks me to check it out, assuming that it's the Rikti testing new portal technology and to find out why they are doing it there.
The first surprise is the utter absence of Rikti, instead the warehouse is filled with creatures called the "Rift Oni" who are apparently looking for some ancient club weapon. Interesting.
The visual designs for these creatures are rather nice and each has a custom description, however some of their powers could take a look at. This arc was published before the 5/5/09 patch, so I don't think the author intended for some of these minions to be able to spam Darkest Night. There is also a Lieutenant who is Gravity/Cold Dom, which can be an annoyance to squishies. On a small team this group is not bad, but I can see some big issues for a large team going up against them. Such is the pain of balancing a custom faction.
During my search of the warehouse I found a computer and located the inventory log. According to it, a large iron club, over five feet in length and weighing several hundred pounds, was stored here but recently moved on Longbow orders.
Next we found the raid leader, Garash, who was significantly larger and beastlier than the rest of the Rift Oni. His design clashed a bit with the rest of them in my opinion. According to him, this is only the beginning of the return of the Rift Oni to our world.
We informed Rutgers of what had happened and he was just as surprised as we were. He decided that this was a Longbow problem and went to contact them.
Mission 2:
To Rutger's surprise The Dark Watcher informed him that this is certainly our problem now and I'm being sent to find out more about the Rift Oni by raiding a Circle of Thorns library.
The map was a medium Oranbegan one, pretty linear and full of CoT. There book was at the end in the last room. No clue upon getting the book though and I was rather expecting a librarian boss as usual.
Mission 3:
Annoyingly, Rutger didn't tell me what was in the book either until now. According to the book, the Rift Oni were sealed away from our world in an ancient war. They can slip back into our world in small numbers, but require an artifact to break the seal enough to come through en masse. Apparently the club belonged to their leader and was one such artifact.
Problem is that the book mentions a second artifact, a medallion that also belonged to their leader and that is being used in our world as an decorative antique in an office building. Rutger sends me off with a warrant to secure that medallion before the Rift Oni find it.
Of course the office is already overrun with Rift Oni and we have to find the raid leader and prevent him/her from escaping with the medallion. After trekking through a rather large office building we found her and fortunately she was far from any elevators.
The raid leader is a Oni female named Tamarin and she turns out to be a Necromancy Mastermind. I think she may have been Willpower as well as she noticed us from quite a distance away. Interestingly she didn't try to run on us.
Anyhow, the medallion was secured.
Mission 4:
Well the artifacts are secured, so the Oni are moving to plan C and enacting a ritual that could potentially break the seal. The ritual has begun and the full strike team is taking too long to to assemble so we're going on ahead alone to stop it.
Right at the start we get a surprise, a group of Rift Oni holding a Mountain Oni named Malak captive. Turns out that Malak is friendly to us and doesn't want the Rift Oni returning to Earth either. With his help we defeated Taburis Goro, the Master of the Gate. The Warders are getting rather annoying due to their ability to grant Ice Shields, Taburis Goro here didn't need the help. Soon after we lost Malak due to a stretch of rampant server lagging. Maybe he could be a Boss instead of a LT?
Anyhow, the ritual was stopped but Taburis Goro told us that the Ancient of Thunder had already been awakened. We still had this "Pureborn" and a "Caller" to defeat for reasons that were not apparent as the objective to "Stop the Ritual" was already completed.
I see from the appearance of the Pureborn that is what Garash from mission 1 was. As I assumed, the Caller was what Tamarin in mission 3 was as well.
The two big complaints about this mission were that the map was way too big (we only covered a third of it before completing the mission and that the Pureborn and Caller objectives were totally unnecessary and dragged the mission out since the ritual was effectively over once we defeated Taburis Goro.
Mission 5:
So now the bad news, this Ancient of Thunder that had been awakened is apparently the Rift Oni deity and could break the seal with his own power. Of course all Vanguard teams are tied up with the Rikti so we have to deal with him on our own.
We enter the mission and see two objectives: Defeat the Ancient of Thunder and the dreaded DEFEAT ALL ENEMIES. Urge to kill rising...
The only thing that redeems that is that the map is VERY linear with pretty much no places for spawns to hide in.
Midway through we meet another Mountain Oni named Mar'i, a friendly if reckless Electric/Storm Oni who rather quickly showed us how dying is done when we got to the Ancient soon afterward. Her love of the power Gale was not helpful and her LT rank led to her being squished rather quickly. I think the Voltaic Sentinel was also a problem as it's long range caused her to start fight after fight before we were ready for the next spawn.
Fortunately the Ancient was weaker than he'd normally be as he was without that mystic medallion that we had secured earlier. With the Ancient of Thunder defeated the Rift Oni invasion had come to an end.
Sadly there was no souvenir for this arc.
================================
The Verdict:
The story is refreshingly original and the custom group is nice as well, but it has it's issues.
The balancing of the critters needs work and was probably screwed up signifigantly by the recent patch and how it changed the Standard/Hard/Extreme settings for all powersets. Right now there is an overabundance of Negative Energy powers and their To-hit debuff effects. I strongly recommend chosing a different secondary than Dark Miasma for Minions, even if temporary. The Warders are not so annoying for their Gravity powers as for their Ice Shields, which can make the Boss and EB fights frustrating as they tend to ice up the toughest member of their spawn first every time.
The two allies really should be Bosses if they're to help again EBs. As LTs they die much too easily and would be even less helpful for a team without a Tank/Scrapper/Brute on hand.
The map in mission 4 was too large and branching, meaning lots of backtracking. The Caller and Pureborn objectives should not have been required as they simply drag out the mission if you're already found and stopped the ritual by defeating Taburis Goro.
Overall the story does suffer from what my friend and I are going to call "Story Inflation". Each mission has us stop the Rift Oni in some way only to be told "but there is ANOTHER way that they can still win" and have to run off and stop that, only to have it happen again. I'm not sure what can be done to minimize that really in this story as it does work, but the presentation just makes it a bit annoying by the 4th mission.
Also the second mission is rather superfluous, especially as no Rift Oni appear in it. That mission could be cut out entirely the Rutger could get the info on Rift Oni some other way without affecting the story one bit. Personally I'd either cut it out entirely or add some Rift Oni there to spice it up and make it more worth the trip down to Oranbega.
For now I give it 4-stars, would have been 5 if not for the issues listed above.
Alright, one more unsolicited review before I get back to the big list. This one was a lot of fun so I wanted to share it right away.
Arc ID: 4178
Arc Title: Wholesale Soul Sale
Author: @Wonderslug
Description: Don't care to part with your soul? UniStyxHellCorp understands. As a special introductory offer we'll accept someone else's-at a slight discount, of course. And in return, we'll help you help us help you be as bad as you want.
Rating: *****
================================
Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Teammate: Keri the Fallen, Level 50 Dark Melee/Dark Armor Stalker
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
Well it sounded like a good idea at the time so I went to talk to Amon of Sales and Marketing. He gave me a good spiel and got me started on the Total Domination package for self-starters. The bad news is that a soul is still required for payment, but the good news is that it doesn't have to be mine. After being given a CoT Soul Crystal I went off to look for three souls to stuff into it.
I headed down into Oranbega and found some poor saps who were being used by the CoT to be new vessels. The first was a Council Galaxy (who was missing his captors but was held in a green spell field), the second was a Longbow Sonic Warden, and the third was a custom Legacy Chain made to fit in with the high level range of this arc.
All in all it was a short mission with a lot of amusing dialog.
Mission 2:
Now for the next part after putting in my downpayment of souls. It seems that my case overlaps with another and that makes things a bit easier. Recently the Center has come into possession of a Oroborous time crystal and Requiem wants it for himself but has to maintain plausible deniability. Amon informs me that there are actually two of these crystals in the Center's possession and that I should obtain one for Requiem and keep the other for myself. Sounds good to me.
Inside the Council warehouse are the two crystals, guarded by an Ascendant, and Requiem's mole who is friendly to us and will convey one of the crystals to him. Actually there were a lot of Ascendants but only one actually counts. We also found the crystals packed into straw-filled urns for some reason. Must have been small ones that we don't normally see.
The warehouse being loaded with Ascendants did get a bit tiring with that shield trick of theirs. I hope the author considers throwing in some more regular Council to dilute them a bit.
Archon Vril was a helpful ally, but something was really weird as he was a Vampry but had Galaxy powers. Huh?
Then there was Archon Vizzini. For some reason the author decided that this mission needed an EB, which it didn't, and made a custom Ascendant EB who, quite honestly, looked rather silly and out of place. Also the obvious Princess Bride dialog was a bit too silly.
Mission 3:
Amon has a plan. He's been making friends with a Longbow Commander that he hopes to corrupt someday and decides to set up a situation where I can save the day when he fails. This will serve to have him in my debt and also further his corruption. That's the gist I got of it and sounds like a plan for sure. Also he mentions abducting a Midnight Squad mage who is also at this dig.
We head to an archeological dig being performed by the Legacy Chain in some ruins. The author did a pretty good job on these high-level Legacy Chain. At the end of the caves we find Amon's alter-ego for this plan, Seraph Palladio. Right on cue, he goes insane from "an unsealed evil that possessed him" and attacks us. Upon defeating him the Midnight Squad mage spawns nearby and attacks us as well but is defeated and taken away by us.
I thought Agent Masters was supposed to be present at this dig, but there was a Captain James instead. Oversight?
Regardless, Amon tells me that Masters will now be inclined to see me as misunderstood after my good deed today in stopping the possessed Seraph and Midnight Mage from hurting anyone at the dig site and turn a blind eye on my exploits in the future.
Mission 4:
Now Amon gives me the idea to gain the alliance of the Arachnoids through their leader Biff. He has been recieving medical supplies through the Freakshow that were reformed by Miss Francine. Anyways, Amon is going to tip off Arachnos to the location of this trade and give me a chance to take them out and make it look like I'm Biff's friend.
Unfortunately the Freakshow don't know that I'm coming, so I had to bust their skulls on my way to taking out the Arachnos raiding party. Along the way I collected some medical supplies and saved a piece of lab equipment (that was damaged but none of the Freaks or Arachnos standing around it were attacking).
Once again top notch dialog in this mission.
Mission 5:
Amon now informs me that Requiem is making his move and it traveling back in time to eliminate the Center and prevent the Council takeover of the 5th Column. By preventing this I will have the Center forever in my debt.
I travel back to 1924, apparently before the Council as we know it exists and face both the 5th Column and some of Mussolini's private army of Blackshirts. Along the way I find the new allies that Amon said that he'd send back, Arachnoids.
On the third floor we found the raid leader, Oberst Rugen, and upon defeating him were informed that the Center was somewhere on the third floor. The Center was found at the end of the office map, wearing a blindfold and with his feet in a bucket. Upon freeing him we led him out of the mission while fighting Oroborous Menders along the way who had come to see who was messing with the timeline.
Well, one Mender. The rest of the party waiting at the door was Legacy Chain for some reason. Maybe the author was running out of space and didn't have room to make more Menders? She was a bit annoying as well, the Rise of the Pheonix she pulled made it apparent she was using Extreme Fire Aura. The objective said you could elude her but her placement would have made that impossible with stealth or just running like hell to the door and getting the Center out. I guess the optional nature of the fight makes the self-rezzing boss forgivable.
So now I have an favor from the Center I can call in anytime but only once, Amon reminds me. He also invites me to attend the "Uses and Abuses of Power" seminar and consider upgrading to the next Total Domination package. He gives me his card, which turns out to be the souvenier as well.
================================
The Verdict:
Aside from that annoying second mission, this arc was a lot of fun and the writing that carried it was very solid. Since I cannot give it a 4.5 I'll just round to 5, that second mission is not annoying enough to drop an entire star, but it should be looked at and reconsidered. The EB was wholly unnecessary and there were way too many Ascendants around. The shield trick was a mere annoyance to a duo heavy in burst damage, but I can see that being very frustrating for more DPS oriented characters.
Arc ID: 14910
Arc Title: Rave Against the Dying of the Light
Author: @Inazuma
Description: Help the Carnival of Light survive against the onslaught of the Praetorians! Don't let hope die on Praetorian Earth!
Rating: ****
================================
Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
Now personally I utterly hate the Carnies, so going off to another dimension to save their good-girl alternates isn't my idea of a good time anyway, but Vanessa DeVore was alerting me to a plot that Tyrant was forming. Plus I was somewhat interested in seeing some "Good" Arachnos for a change.
I cross the dimensions and arrive inside a dingy office building that some Carnies had gone to for a meeting but had failed to report back from. Right away I ran into Battle Maiden's Warriors. I also found some bodies of dead Carnie women.
At the end of the map I fought Waraxe and dispatched her easily enough. She mentioned something about dealing with the Carnies and the Archanos agent, then dropped a Arachnos flash drive. I was rather expecting to find the Arachnos guy or at least his body but didn't.
Mission 2:
After delivering the flash drive to Vanessa she had it decrypted and found that it was information on an operation against the Carnival that Tyrant was planning. In the meantime, Vanessa asks me to repay Arachnos by defending one of their bases as the Praetorians have traced the agent back to it.
So I arrive at the warehouse and see that my objectives are to meet up with Ghost Widow and defeat Dominatrix. Huh, what? An unannounced EB fight?
I tear through Dominatrix's army of gimps and find Ghost Widow very quickly. Annoyingly, she likes aggro everything and use Black Hole, which makes fights last much longer than they need to.
Even with Ghost Widow's help the fight with Dominatrix took a long time. I had forgotten how ridiculously tough she is for a Gravity Controller.
Mission 3:
Vanessa tells me that not only is Tryant after her mask, the one that granted her considerable powers, but that she is not actually Vanessa DeVore at all. She is Sydney, one of Vanessa's decoys, and Tyrant is trying to capture all of them at once now. I need to head to the location of the real Vanessa DeVore and get her to safety.
The setting is Lou's Garage and it's overrun with Bobcat's minions. Fortunately Bobcat herself is not her, I have to fight someone named Jaguar as well.
Along the way I rescued three Carnies but Vanessa was not among them. Jaguar informed me that Bobcat was already taking her to Tyrant and that I was too late.
Mission 4:
Fortunately, Vanessa was able to contact the rest of the Carnies and let them know that Bobcat had been ambushed by Mother Mayhem, who wanted the mask for herself.
I entered another abandoned office to rescue Vanessa, although for some reason the objective said "Psychic Sidney" instead. No mention of Mother Mayhem either.
Ok, turns out that Sidney was here as a Ring Mistress to help me. After freeing her then the objective changed to "Free Vanessa DeVore". Not quite sure why the author made it so that the objective did not spawn until the ally was freed. Kinda of makes her a required thing. Sidney is also lacking in dialog.
A few floors up we find Vanessa drugged and being guarded by some of Mother Mayhem's minions. After waking her up Vanessa insists on fighting her and then Mother Mayhem is spawned on the next floor up. With the help of Vanessa, Sidney, and Elusive Mind I defeated Mother Mayhem. With that the Carnival of Light is safe for another day.
================================
The Verdict:
This arc was not bad but it was not particularly great either. There really wasn't much motivation for me to help the Carnival of Light other than just being a hero and I couldn't get that engaged in the plot personally. The two EB fights that didn't have any explicit warning, one of which was an EB who only spawned after the hostage was freed, are things that need to be revised. You really do need to have a warning about such things, preferably highlighted in red so it doesn't get missed. Even Posi said that such an omission disqualifies a lot of potential Dev Choice picks and it really annoys a lot of players. Add a warning to the description about EBs being present as well.
The most I can give this is 4-stars, it was a nice attempt but just lacks anything special that'd grab that 5th star.
[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 14910
Arc Title: Rave Against the Dying of the Light
Author: @Inazuma
Description: Help the Carnival of Light survive against the onslaught of the Praetorians! Don't let hope die on Praetorian Earth!
Rating: ****
================================
Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
Now personally I utterly hate the Carnies, so going off to another dimension to save their good-girl alternates isn't my idea of a good time anyway, but Vanessa DeVore was alerting me to a plot that Tyrant was forming. Plus I was somewhat interested in seeing some "Good" Arachnos for a change.
I cross the dimensions and arrive inside a dingy office building that some Carnies had gone to for a meeting but had failed to report back from. Right away I ran into Battle Maiden's Warriors. I also found some bodies of dead Carnie women.
At the end of the map I fought Waraxe and dispatched her easily enough. She mentioned something about dealing with the Carnies and the Archanos agent, then dropped a Arachnos flash drive. I was rather expecting to find the Arachnos guy or at least his body but didn't.
Mission 2:
After delivering the flash drive to Vanessa she had it decrypted and found that it was information on an operation against the Carnival that Tyrant was planning. In the meantime, Vanessa asks me to repay Arachnos by defending one of their bases as the Praetorians have traced the agent back to it.
So I arrive at the warehouse and see that my objectives are to meet up with Ghost Widow and defeat Dominatrix. Huh, what? An unannounced EB fight?
I tear through Dominatrix's army of gimps and find Ghost Widow very quickly. Annoyingly, she likes aggro everything and use Black Hole, which makes fights last much longer than they need to.
Even with Ghost Widow's help the fight with Dominatrix took a long time. I had forgotten how ridiculously tough she is for a Gravity Controller.
Mission 3:
Vanessa tells me that not only is Tryant after her mask, the one that granted her considerable powers, but that she is not actually Vanessa DeVore at all. She is Sydney, one of Vanessa's decoys, and Tyrant is trying to capture all of them at once now. I need to head to the location of the real Vanessa DeVore and get her to safety.
The setting is Lou's Garage and it's overrun with Bobcat's minions. Fortunately Bobcat herself is not her, I have to fight someone named Jaguar as well.
Along the way I rescued three Carnies but Vanessa was not among them. Jaguar informed me that Bobcat was already taking her to Tyrant and that I was too late.
Mission 4:
Fortunately, Vanessa was able to contact the rest of the Carnies and let them know that Bobcat had been ambushed by Mother Mayhem, who wanted the mask for herself.
I entered another abandoned office to rescue Vanessa, although for some reason the objective said "Psychic Sidney" instead. No mention of Mother Mayhem either.
Ok, turns out that Sidney was here as a Ring Mistress to help me. After freeing her then the objective changed to "Free Vanessa DeVore". Not quite sure why the author made it so that the objective did not spawn until the ally was freed. Kinda of makes her a required thing. Sidney is also lacking in dialog.
A few floors up we find Vanessa drugged and being guarded by some of Mother Mayhem's minions. After waking her up Vanessa insists on fighting her and then Mother Mayhem is spawned on the next floor up. With the help of Vanessa, Sidney, and Elusive Mind I defeated Mother Mayhem. With that the Carnival of Light is safe for another day.
================================
The Verdict:
This arc was not bad but it was not particularly great either. There really wasn't much motivation for me to help the Carnival of Light other than just being a hero and I couldn't get that engaged in the plot personally. The two EB fights that didn't have any explicit warning, one of which was an EB who only spawned after the hostage was freed, are things that need to be revised. You really do need to have a warning about such things, preferably highlighted in red so it doesn't get missed. Even Posi said that such an omission disqualifies a lot of potential Dev Choice picks and it really annoys a lot of players. Add a warning to the description about EBs being present as well.
The most I can give this is 4-stars, it was a nice attempt but just lacks anything special that'd grab that 5th star.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hm, well, adding allies for the EB fights is supposed to make them easier to swallow, but I can add warnings easily enough.
I dunno what's wrong with Sidney's dialogue. It's supposed to be there but it isn't going off like it should she she's rescued.
Arc Name: The Lost Choir: Chapter One: The Old Testament.
Arc ID: 123675
Factions: Tuatha, Rikti, Rularuu, Custom group.
Creator Global/Forum Name: @MrSquid
Difficulty Level: Moderate. Contains 2 AV's, but a fair amount of help for them too
Synopsis: This is essentially a combination of Christian Mythos and the classic "cosmic horror" story. The first part is probably the most slow paced, with a lot of unanswered questions.
Level Range: Intended for 45+, but you could get away with 30 plus
Arc Name: The Lost Choir: Part Two: The New Testament.
Arc ID: 136959
Factions: Ritki, Custom Group.
Creator Global/Forum Name: @MrSquid
Difficulty Level: Moderate-easy. Only one AV this time around, and once again, I give you help with him.
Synopsis: Part two is much faster paced then part one, and most of the questions brought up in part one are answered.
Level Range: Intended for 45+, but you could get away with 30 plus
Arc Name: The Lost Choir: Chapter Three: Apocrypha.
Arc ID: 141011
Factions: A bunch, mostly customs.
Creator Global/Forum Name: @MrSquid
Difficulty Level: Hard. One AV, but its a doozy. I still give you plenty of help though.
Synopsis: Part 3 is only one mission long, mainly being the climactic final boss fight.
Level Range: Intended for 45+, but you could get away with 30 plus
Seeing as how I already played through one of your arcs, I guess I'll go ahead and play through the other two.
[ QUOTE ]
Hm, well, adding allies for the EB fights is supposed to make them easier to swallow, but I can add warnings easily enough.
[/ QUOTE ]
Always give a warning, even if there are allies. There is always a chance that something can happen that takes the ally out and leaves the player alone, plus even with an ally some EBs might still be to tough for the player to handle. With as un-useful Ghost Widow was being I know that I wouldn't have beaten Dominatrix without a Scrapper or Brute and even with Vanessa and Sidney I would have been dead in seconds against Mother Mayhem if I hadn't been packing Psionic Res/Def.
Arc ID: 1153
Arc Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Author: @Electroanagesia
Description: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! (EB in 3rd mission, but ally to help with it.)
Rating: *****
================================
Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
I've been contacted by Maestro and he is offering to pay me handsomely to stop the feud going on between the World's great chocolatiers as fine chocolate is one of the few pleasures that he has left. Well his money is as good as anyone else's so off I go!
Maestro sends me to the Fruit Infusion wing of the World Chocolate Exhibition, where the Goldbrickers are trying to kidnap some of the chocolatiers and force them to work for King Midas. Since this is a level 50 arc, the author has made some custom Elite Goldbrickers and they do look pretty good, despite lacking the jetpacks and sonic weapons. Still, I wonder why people insist on trying to remake existing groups for a new level range rather than just fitting their arc into the range of the existing groups.
The map is a warehouse, I'm a bit unsure if this is part of the exhibit hall or if this is where the Goldbrickers took them too. Amusingly the German, French, and Dutch chocolatiers speak in their native languages and the Goldbrickers are just as confused as I am. I free all of the chocolatiers and score some rather interesting chocolate samples. Strangely, there was a cart for Pumpkin infused chocolate in the Fruit Infusion wing. Pumpkin isn't a fruit!
Mission 2:
Meanwhile Maestro has saved the chocolatiers in the Nut Infusion wing but something happened, Crey agents have appeared and stolen the Praline Crafting Machine prototype that was on display there. Maestro doesn't want that somewhere hidden and being reverse engineered for months, he wants his new Praline Chocolates NOW! He also wonders why a new wing has been added to this years Exhibition.
I track the machine down to another warehouse where I find some regular Crey units mixed in with the new Crey Conchers and Crey Chocolatiers. Oddly, the author made them both Dark Melee, which seems redundant.
I found the Praline Extruder at the end of the map (might want to make the names consistent) as well as some Elite Goldbrickers. The Goldbricker boss is obnoxious with the current Standard settings as he has Knockout Blow and the presence of Footstomp indicates that he is set to Hard.
Mission 3:
Maestro has discovered that Crey sponsored the new wing and that it's for chocolate made entirely of artificial ingredients. Even worse, he has discovered that they are adding ingredients to make the Crey chocolate addictive and all other chocolate taste bland in comparison. They have gone way to far this time.
I head in to destroy Crey's chocolate operation, smashing their machinery, freeingtheir test subjects and defeating the lead researcher. Just now I noticed that the Crey Conchers are Dark Melee/Dual Blades, they've been sticking to Dark Melee so much that I never saw the swords before. I wonder what the Crey Chocolatiers are now. Using two melee sets doesn't work well, especially is one is weapons and the other unarmed as the AI will tend to prefer the unarmed one.
Before long I found Maestro inside as I had expected to from the briefing. He's one of the most useful allies I've had yet in a MA mission to tell the truth.
There were two test subjects to free and unfortunately they had already been exposed to the Crey chocolate. Never again will they know the joy of real chocolate.
We reached the back of the warehouse and confronted the mad Doctor Hershey. With him defeated the Crey chocolate operation was destroyed and the world of fine chocolate was safe again.
================================
The Verdict:
I can see that the author was certainly having fun with this arc from the writing and the dialog. The missions were well designed within the limits of the tileset and what the author was attempting to portray, plus the setpeices and dialog made them quite memorable. I can see that the custom Goldbrickers were necessary due to the problems of overlapping level ranges between all of the NPCs involved, but they might need some rebalancing, especially that boss. The Crey Conchers and Chocolatiers could use some tweaking, as they are not using their powers very effectively and are rather redundant when using the same powersets for both Lieutenants and Minions. There were also some issues of redundantly repeating dialog in mission 3. All in all I give it 5-stars for being fun and memorable.
Arc ID: 59147
Arc Title: Shades of Betrayal, Acts of Salvation
Author: @Dr. Spoon
Description: Discovery of the Well of Evermore leads the Circle of Thorns to tap into another source of magic, but at the price of destroying the Unseele world & our own.
Rating: ***
================================
Character used: Amanita Infernis, Level 36 Plant Control/Fire Assault Dominator
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 33-36
================================
I noticed something that is sure to be very annoying right from the start, this arc has level ranges bouncing all over the place. As I said at the start of this thread, lack of level ranges is a big pet peeve of mine and a reason to avoid even playing arcs. As this one jumps everywhere from level 5 to 54 with three of the five missions in the mid-30s, I'm going to have to use my level 36 character to avoid most of these insane level jumps. Hopefully she can still defeat the EB in mission 5 that the description warns me about. Anyhow, this is a star deducted already.
Mission 1:
The contact is a man I have never seen before named Aaron Kinkay. He tells me that I've been summoned to investigate a series of abnormally high magical readings that have been going on for several months but have been impossible to track. Surely I have felt them as they cause power fluctations in those with superpowers.
Umm, no. My mutant powers have been working very nice and steady for the last several months. Apparently I'm supposed to just roll with this though.
Anyhow, Aaron (who apparently works for the Midnight Squad) is sending me off to investigate the Grim Vale in Croatoa and look for whatever the Circle of Thorns is up to as Aaron assumes that it is them.
I show up in the Grim Vale with the objective to defeat Sicarius, who happens to be just in sight of the portal I arrived through. He's currently surrounded by some Fir Bolg. I wonder if I just got lucky with the spawn placement because afer I dispatched him with some help from his confused pumpkinhead buddies the mission ended. He said something about casting a curse for Eochai to activate. I ran around the map a bit but found no other clues about.
Anyhow, Aaron tells me how powerful Sicarius is and how I was lucky to come away unscathed (considering that I curbstomped him) and that this is all bad news that the CoT and Fir Bolg are working together on something. Something about Sicarius cursing Hawks.
Mission 2:
So Aaron tells me that he has has the coin analyzed (Wait, did I miss something? What coin? There is no clue about a coin being found.) and that is has the symbol of the Well of Evermore on it. Then he tells me some stuff about the Unseelie that doesn't tell me anything except that their world lies parallel to our own. Their's and everyone else's bub. The Well is the source of all of the Unseelie's magic.
Anyhow, another spike of magical energy has occured under Founder's Falls and it has the same signature as that in the Grim Vale. Some large pillars have suddenly materialized and I need to go and destroy them as they are magical rifts that need sealing.
I wonder who noticed these pillars show up in some cave under Founder's Falls to begin with. I also wonder why the entry pop-up tells me that my powers flucuate even more down here when a glace and my trays show me that I have the exact same powers as in the previous mission.
I find the first pillar (the same kind from the Hive mission Vernon von Grun gives) and see it's being guarded by hostile Midnighters. Huh?
Next I find an unguarded prisoner named Derek (group name Battle Hawks) who is friendly and apparently an Unseelie as his description says. Apparently this Garik mentioned in the objectives that I have to defeat is his brother. I couldn't see far into this tunnel so I don't know if he was there before I broke the pillar or not, although there is a clue about something escaping from the pillar when it broke so I guess he just spawned now.
Derek doesn't bother to introduce himself but does inform me that the Midnighters are really CoT in disguise. Thanks for clearing that up, of course he could simply be lying. Not like I haven't fought hostile Midnighters for the third time week with little justification. I'm going to bet that he's lying.
This map could have been smaller for sure, 9 pillars to destroy was a bit excessive. Also Derek, who kept getting lost and was not being very useful, was annoying me so I eventually just left him behind where ever he got stuck that last time.
Things got even more annoying when I got to Garik. He starts shouting at Derek, who is not even with me anymore, and talks about how he is a traitor and using me and to get out of his way. Hey buddy, I left your brother some hundred feet back that way, I'm the one here kicking your [censored] right now.
Anyhow, Garik was not nearly as tough as his description built him up to be. Without Indominatable Will on he was just as vulernable to my mezzing with Domination up as anyone else. Then the clue that I get on his defeat has Garik telling me his thanks for defeating Garik before he sends his body away. More speech from someone not even in the same part of the map as me. The author makes a few too many assumptions during this arc.
I went and cleared the rest of the map to get rid of the remaining 6 pillars I had still at that point and ended the mission.
So I get back and things are getting weirder when Aaron tells me that the infirmary is full of injured Midnighters and such and that he doesn't know who Garik and Derek are and what is going on. Big surprise there.
Mission 3:
So of course I've been played with a nice big idiot ball and have triggered the end of the world by fulfilling a prophecy where a mortal (why do you assume that I am mortal?) from Earth and an Unseelie have to work together to destroy the pillars, which actually were there to keep our worlds apart.
Also, the Unseelie world is being destroyed by this somehow and Derek has defected to the CoT (told you he was a liar) and both her and Sicarius have the Kalthor Keys that are needed to re-establish the dimensional barriers.
So Aaron and some Unseelie guy I've never seen or heard of named Javasha are off to get some of the keys from Sicarius (cause he's too tough for me, remember?) while I have to go beat up Derek and rescue Garik.
There is some tiny warning about bringing friend, but it is not highlighted at all. That better not be some sort of EB warning that can be easily missed.
Apparently this mission is one of the level range jumps as suddenly everyone is 37 and I have my Sniper power back. I charged through Oranbega and found Derek along with a few more Battle Hawks. The poor saps never stood a chance.
Derek had changed his appearance as well as description, which fills in a few details on his betrayal. However, his combat dialog made little sense. What the heck is he talking about saying "Sicarious would not dare betray me!" and "I will resist you Eochai!" The he gives me the keys upon his defeat and tell me to make Sicarius pay for his treachery. WHAT?
The clue about the keys don't explain anything about all that. Is this a case of poor map choice and objective placement? Was I supposed to know something before fighting him?
After searching the entire map over for Garik and finding no trace of him I found a glowy hidden in a corner back past where I ran into Derek. It's a message, carved into a stone for some reason, saying that Garik is free and coming to kill Derek. Okay...
So now Aaron informs me that Derek and his men are suddenly enslaved by Eochai, how did that happen?
Mission 4:
So now with the keys I have to rebuild the barriers, which involves me working with an Unseelie to activate a bunch of glowies. For some reason this mission is timed, did the crisis suddenly get worse after I had all the time in the world to fetch the keys? And what about the keys that Aaron was getting from Sicarius?
I see that the author has arranged for a CoT ambush at the door. Simple trick and good thing I am quick on the Seeds of Confusion but had I been a Mastermind I'd be pissed right about now.
I find Elara, who is Earth Control/Empathy shortly down the tunnel, just sitting on the ground unguarded with hordes of CoT in every direction. There are also 9 pillars scattered throughout these caves and I have only 45 minutes to hit them all. Of course it didn't take long to lose her somewhere around a bend. I didn't bother going back for her as I always found Earth Controllers to be really annoying anyway with their humongous screen-blocking graphics.
Anyhow, I activated all of the pillars and left the mission with 37 minutes left on the clock. I didn't bother to wait and chat with the CoT ambush that showed up after the clicking the last one.
I get back to Aaron and he tells me that not all of the teams were succesful in activating their barriers and that the CoT are still tapping into the Well of Evermore (Not quite sure exactly when that happened? Was it that brief reference to a new source of power back in mission 1's dialog?) Now my presence is required at the Midnight Club for an emergency meeting.
Mission 5:
The meeting happened off-screen, so it's back to Oranbega to break the CoT's link to the Well. I'm to fight some CoT mystic named Kilcarsadur who is reputed to be as bad as Baron Zoria and I've been given some magic diadem to protect me from illusions. There was however no highlighted text in the EB warning. I'm also back to level 36 for this mission.
As I enter I hear someone named Javasha shouting in the distance. I guess I will have an ally after all for this mission, one with a fight I'll likely need one in unlike the previous missions. According to her description she quit her post during that meeting that I didn't see and is really an accomplished swordswoman. Being DB/WP and having enhanced perception, it took mere seconds for her to run off and leeroy everything within sight.
I don't see any mention of this Kilcarsadur, just Defeat Sicarius and dispel some shields and channelers. I ran into some custom CoT, some sort of Behemoth/Hellfrost hybrid the description claims but they were nothing to worry about long as I locked them down immediately. The little Daggerwings were little more than an annoyance.
I left her to go play and clicked on those three Shield things (which were Arachnos safes) and suddenly spawned Garik somewhere nearby. I have no idea where he spawned as I went all the way around the map and killed Sicarius in the meantime.
Finally found him way at the back of the map standing there idly in a room with the 4 Channelers and some CoT monsters around him. I killed the monsters, freed him and clicked the Channelers.
Which spawned Kilcarsadur...somewhere. Apparently all the way back at the beginning of the map. Good thing it's a rather small one. Not that it didn't prevent me losing Javasha several times along the way. Meanwhile my Domination bar is dropping...
Eventually found Kilcarsadur (who is using the Baron Zoria model) in some random corridor and both Javasha and Garik charged right up to him... and then did nothing. Yep, for the entire fight they did nothing but act as targets for his Twilight Grasp heal. Audrey the Giant Flytrap and I did all of the work of defeating that EB. I don't know what caused my allies to go idle like that two feet away from him after charging past me and getting right up in his face.
So the CoT's link to the Well of Evermore is broken and unfortunately both Javasha and Garik are stuck in our world. Sucks to be them.
================================
The Verdict:
While the author did an otherwise fine job of trying to tell a story, this arc has a lot of flaws that annoy me. First there is the lack of an attempt to normalize the level ranges throughout the arc. This is really annoying as it is quite easy to work around really and is going to be frustrating for players who are not inside the intended level range of the arc. I know my 50's would be really annoyed to be 32, then 50, then 37, etc. This is an annoyance that a lot of players share.
Then there is the missing details. Sometimes they are filled in after the fact, but it really doesn't the initial HUH when dialog like that Derek had in mission 3 occurs. There was no explanation at all, no mention beforehand of Sicarius betraying him to Eochai or anything that I can see or remember. There is too much telling rather than showing going on in here.
The allies were also rather useless in most cases, and the dialog in mission 2 makes me feel like a bystander in a feud between the Boss and the Ally, which I didn't even have with me. I know someone is going to call me a hypocrite and claim I did that in "The Portal Bandits", except that never do my bosses act like they're ignoring the player. In fact in both cases they don't even mention the ally for that specific reason.
I also didn't like the mention at the beginning of these magical fluctuations affecting the powers of my non-magical character, which is a case of the author trying to write some of my motivations for me. The author needs to rethink some of the assumptions they are making about the player when writing the dialog for this arc.
The author also needs to work on their spawn placements and some other aspects of level design. Was it really necessary to have 9 pillars in both missions 2 and 4? If so, why is the map in mission 2 so much bigger? Why does Garik spawn in a room you have to run all the way around the map to get to once you trigger him? Why does Sicarius and Kilcarsadur spawn in random hallways instead of proper rooms? If you need to select a different map to make your spawnings work, by all means do so.
Total score: 3 stars
[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 4178
Arc Title: Wholesale Soul Sale
Author: @Wonderslug
Description: Don't care to part with your soul? UniStyxHellCorp understands. As a special introductory offer we'll accept someone else's-at a slight discount, of course. And in return, we'll help you help us help you be as bad as you want.
Rating: *****
[/ QUOTE ]
Good heavens, someone played it.
I've been entirely swamped for the past two weeks and tonight was the first time I've even logged in since the patch that rearranged all the custom critter powers, so I will definitely be giving this another pass or two if only to fix what's been broken. Just for starters, I note that Ashfield has acquired Build Up, which is not something I like to give critters with Seismic Smash.
Mission 2 is longer than I would like, but I haven't had time yet to scour the MA for shorter maps that still meet all my requirements. I'll likely axe the minion Ascendants entirely, since they're basically worthless as threats *and* annoying if you lack mez, though one of my major beefs with the Council is that Ascendants as the Center's personal goons seriously aren't used *enough*. The EB can probably be cut, especially since file bloat from test to live already forced me to cut the Blackshirts down to minions only. (Sadly, they still almost always slaughter the Column handily--or did last time I checked.)
[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 1153
Arc Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Author: @Electroanagesia
Description: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! (EB in 3rd mission, but ally to help with it.)
Rating: *****
================================
Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
I've been contacted by Maestro and he is offering to pay me handsomely to stop the feud going on between the World's great chocolatiers as fine chocolate is one of the few pleasures that he has left. Well his money is as good as anyone else's so off I go!
Maestro sends me to the Fruit Infusion wing of the World Chocolate Exhibition, where the Goldbrickers are trying to kidnap some of the chocolatiers and force them to work for King Midas. Since this is a level 50 arc, the author has made some custom Elite Goldbrickers and they do look pretty good, despite lacking the jetpacks and sonic weapons. Still, I wonder why people insist on trying to remake existing groups for a new level range rather than just fitting their arc into the range of the existing groups.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, I've found that if I kept the first mission as 8-20, the span of the Goldbricker faction, there is a surprisingly high percentage of people who will either quit it then and there (fire controllers who really don't like life without fire imps, etc) or they will one-star the arc because I didn't put in the effort to expand the Goldbricker faction upwards with custom creations added to the mix. I really wanted both the Goldbricker faction and Crey faction, though, for story purposes, even though their levels are quite far apart.
[ QUOTE ]
The map is a warehouse, I'm a bit unsure if this is part of the exhibit hall or if this is where the Goldbrickers took them too. Amusingly the German, French, and Dutch chocolatiers speak in their native languages and the Goldbrickers are just as confused as I am. I free all of the chocolatiers and score some rather interesting chocolate samples. Strangely, there was a cart for Pumpkin infused chocolate in the Fruit Infusion wing. Pumpkin isn't a fruit!
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, the carts are for the Chocolatiers, the Pumpkin-based chocolate is a lead-in clue that non-fruit categories are getting pushed into the Fruit Infusion Wing, to make room for something new that year.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 2:
Meanwhile Maestro has saved the chocolatiers in the Nut Infusion wing but something happened, Crey agents have appeared and stolen the Praline Crafting Machine prototype that was on display there. Maestro doesn't want that somewhere hidden and being reverse engineered for months, he wants his new Praline Chocolates NOW! He also wonders why a new wing has been added to this years Exhibition.
I track the machine down to another warehouse where I find some regular Crey units mixed in with the new Crey Conchers and Crey Chocolatiers. Oddly, the author made them both Dark Melee, which seems redundant.
[/ QUOTE ]
I hadn't realized that non-weapon melee powers were preferred by the AI over weapon-based melee powers. Thank you very much for that insight, I've changed the Conchers to dual blades/regen, and leaving the Chocolatiers as dark melee/regen. (I had used Dark Miasma instead of regen a long time ago, but got complaints about overlapping minus acc at lower levels, and people having to stand around waiting for the hostages to count as rescued, until the tar patch disappeared.)
[ QUOTE ]
I found the Praline Extruder at the end of the map (might want to make the names consistent)
[/ QUOTE ]
Good point, I'll use the praline crafting machine prototype as the explanation of what the item is, before dropping the big Praline Extruder in yellow. You would be surprised how many people don't know what an Extruder is.
[ QUOTE ]
as well as some Elite Goldbrickers. The Goldbricker boss is obnoxious with the current Standard settings as he has Knockout Blow and the presence of Footstomp indicates that he is set to Hard.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was just told by @Femfury (my sg leader), that what makes Hard level Superstrength nasty is the combo of Knockout blow from Standard, Footstomp from Hard, both boosted out of proportion by Rage from Hard. I hadn't realized that Rage would be quite that effective especially against certain AT/power combinations, thank you for pointing it out! I now have the Midas-Touched bosses set to Standard Superstrength, and the Extreme Sonics I'd always kept them at. (No one seems to point out Extreme Sonics, it can greatly reduce resistances, but lowering the damage output should balance things out, and visually it's neat to have the big golden sonic field for a Goldbricker.)
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 3:
Maestro has discovered that Crey sponsored the new wing and that it's for chocolate made entirely of artificial ingredients. Even worse, he has discovered that they are adding ingredients to make the Crey chocolate addictive and all other chocolate taste bland in comparison. They have gone way to far this time.
I head in to destroy Crey's chocolate operation, smashing their machinery, freeingtheir test subjects and defeating the lead researcher. Just now I noticed that the Crey Conchers are Dark Melee/Dual Blades, they've been sticking to Dark Melee so much that I never saw the swords before. I wonder what the Crey Chocolatiers are now. Using two melee sets doesn't work well, especially is one is weapons and the other unarmed as the AI will tend to prefer the unarmed one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Very cool to learn, thanks!
[ QUOTE ]
Before long I found Maestro inside as I had expected to from the briefing. He's one of the most useful allies I've had yet in a MA mission to tell the truth.
[/ QUOTE ]
I like him a lot; his sonic powers really help reduce resistances of your opponents if the character you are playing is a good damage dealer, and if you are a buffer or debuffer you can take his damage to a whole new level. What's interesting about Maestro, is that some of his sonic effects are still the old grey-colored, pre-golden visuals.
[ QUOTE ]
There were two test subjects to free and unfortunately they had already been exposed to the Crey chocolate. Never again will they know the joy of real chocolate.
We reached the back of the warehouse and confronted the mad Doctor Hershey. With him defeated the Crey chocolate operation was destroyed and the world of fine chocolate was safe again.
================================
The Verdict:
I can see that the author was certainly having fun with this arc from the writing and the dialog. The missions were well designed within the limits of the tileset and what the author was attempting to portray, plus the setpeices and dialog made them quite memorable. I can see that the custom Goldbrickers were necessary due to the problems of overlapping level ranges between all of the NPCs involved, but they might need some rebalancing, especially that boss. The Crey Conchers and Chocolatiers could use some tweaking, as they are not using their powers very effectively and are rather redundant when using the same powersets for both Lieutenants and Minions. There were also some issues of redundantly repeating dialog in mission 3.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly, I'm told that for destructible objects guarded by a custom faction at higher than heroic difficulty, the guards will have multiple repeats of the same statement for the same object, sigh.
[ QUOTE ]
All in all I give it 5-stars for being fun and memorable.
[/ QUOTE ]
Thank you very much for trying out my arc! I've made a few changes with your insights, always trying to make it better.
[ QUOTE ]
I was just told by @Femfury (my sg leader), that what makes Hard level Superstrength nasty is the combo of Knockout blow from Standard, Footstomp from Hard, both boosted out of proportion by Rage from Hard. I hadn't realized that Rage would be quite that effective especially against certain AT/power combinations, thank you for pointing it out! I now have the Midas-Touched bosses set to Standard Superstrength, and the Extreme Sonics I'd always kept them at. (No one seems to point out Extreme Sonics, it can greatly reduce resistances, but lowering the damage output should balance things out, and visually it's neat to have the big golden sonic field for a Goldbricker.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Sonic Debuffs + Rage + Knockout Blow = Very Dead Brute
[ QUOTE ]
What's interesting about Maestro, is that some of his sonic effects are still the old grey-colored, pre-golden visuals.
[/ QUOTE ]
Maestro had sonics long before anyone else had them. It appears that for a lot of NPCs their animations are hard-coded into them. You'll also notice this with Behemoths still using the old Flares animation from years back and Claws Scrappers like Mynx, Bobcat, and her minions still using the old Strike and Slash animations. Then there's Requiem and how his 5th Column version is still Dark Melee/Dark Armor instead of Warshade powers like this Council version, despite both being called a Nictus in their descriptions.
I have two story-intensive arcs I'm always looking to have people check out and give feedback on. Although story-intensive, there are some plot-justified challenging bits. Reccomended for capable soloists or teams.
Arc: Amazon-Avatars
Arc ID: 5909
Author: @FemFury
Number of Missions: 5
Description: An ancient artifact falls into the wrong hands, unleashing ancient powers.
Above average to hard difficulty (uses some tough factions, has 3 custom Bosses, 1 custom EB/AV, ambushes)
Lots of text throughout.
Arc: Escalation
Arc ID: 6143
Author: @FemFury
Number of Missions: 5
Description: Story that starts with a confrontation with a minor supervillainess. A bit of a study in developing a character.
Although 5 misisons long can play pretty fast (1st misison has some running around, after that, misisons can be quite quick)
Final fight has an EB/AV which may not be soloable with all ATs or powersets.
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!)
Alright Laz, I hereby submitt 140129, "Fate & Destiny" 
<crosses fingers>
-C.A.
Arc ID: 119228
Arc Title: Hero Therapy! (TM)
Author: @Ridiculous Girl
Description: Do you have nightmares about the Vahzilok? Can't sleep because you failed to defeat that boss over and over again? Do you let your teammates down because you run away from Malta Sappers? Do clowns make you have an anxiety attack? Try Hero Therapy (TM)! Start today!
Rating: *****
================================
Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 20, 29, 40, 50
================================
Mission 1:
Normally I really hate it when the level rangs change during an arc, but it appears that this one will have good reasons for it. The Therapist here informs me that he will be subjecting me to some dream therapy to help me cope with the stress from a long career as a hero. While he won't name names, he tells me that I am far from the first of his clients to try this and that I'd be surprised at who some of the other clients are. We begin the treatment by having The Therapist hypnotize me so that I may confront my inner fear.
I find myself inside the Midnight Club and have been reduced to level 20. First things first, I go to find the Therapist inside the dream as he told me to. Inside the main room of the club I find some odd things, like Trolls arguing with Vazhilok Abominations and some Little Dream People. Searching around I find the Therapist being held captive by some Circle of Thorns.
Upon freeing the Therapist he informs me that my task is to confront my grade school librarian. He also tells me not to ask him why, it's my dream after all. He accompanies me as a passive observer and along the way to find the Librarian I came across a knight in shining armor who was being detained by Outcasts. The silent yet friendly knight joins me and assists me in defeating the Librarian, who oddly was only a Lieutenant.
The Therapist informs me that after conquering the Librarian she will be serving me in my dreams for henceforth and to expect the Knight to show up in every dream.
Mission 2:
We begin our second session and the Therapist tells me that we will be going deeper this time and I will be encountering tougher foes.
This time I am level 29 and inside the Abandoned Hospital. I come across a battle between Warriors, Banished Pantheon, and Little Dream People as I search for the Therapist, as well as a number of bodybags and piles of bones on the ground which apparently represent broken promises and ruined friendships.
I found the Therapist being detained by the Tsoo, although it appeared that he was tormenting them with stories. He informs me that this time I am to face my own Vanity. Along the way I freed the Knight from some Warriors and saw some Tsoo fighting Freakshow. Somehow I triggered an ambush of Little Nightmares, these were really annoying as they all had Kinetics. Having Siphon Power and Siphon Speed stacked on you 5 times is not fun.
Finally at the end of the map I found Vanity, who appeared to take the form of some sort of Greek goddess. She was a boss who used Archery/Trick Arrow and put up much more of a fight than the Librarian did.
I was told by the Therapist that the Librarian was supposed to be in this dream too but I never found her.
Mission 3:
It is time for the third session and the Therapist informs me that it will be the toughest yet. I am to confront a painful memory and once again the Knight will be there to help me, along with my conquered Vanity.
I enter a dream of a burning building and see the Therapist straight ahead, being detained by Council troops. This time everything is level 40 and there are Crey guarding people representing repressed memories. I free the Therapist and he tells me to go forth and defeat my Secret Shame.
I found the Knight again and ran into a common issue in a cramped map like this, the tendency for allies to aggro other spawns and run amok. This was made worse by the annoying Little Nightmares, who are triggered off of something (not sure if it's hostages or particular Dream People spawns or what) and them running around at high speed was causing the Knight to go wild.
I found Vanity right before the room containing the Secret Shame. This floor has problematic placement I know as she could very easily have spawned in the other room with the Secret Shame blocking your path to her.
The Secret Shame was a little girl with fire powers, an elite boss backed up by Red Caps. She spoke in some cryptic statements throughout the battle until her end.
Mission 4:
It is time for the fourth session and the Therapist tells me that it will be the toughest but I will have access to the Knight and Secret Shame for it. Figures that it ends up being in the sewers. Good thing I can change clothes at will in a dream.
I came across a parking meter and decided to smash it. This summoned a horded of Little Nightmares. After that I decided to leave destructible objects alone for the rest of the mission. It's a shame as there are a lot of glowies and destructibles in this mission but those Little Nightmares are so damn annoying that I'm discouraged from interacting with them.
I found the Therapist and he informs me that my last obstacle is a door that I must go through. I set off to find it. Just before the last room I found the Knight and Secret Shame. In the last room, which revealed that this was the Vahzilok Lab map, was The Door.
I had to collect myself a bit as the last room SUCKS! Right upon opening the door into the room we had aggroed a dozen foes who were all collected right behind it, this included Dream People bosses, which are Gravity Control and can stack a large number of slows on you. Then there is The Door, an Illusion AV who I assume is also Willpower judging from how little damage he takes and how he spotted us from halfway across the room and made things worse by summoning Phantasms and Spectral Terrors on top of us at the doorway. The Knight died fast and then I died, rezzed using Soul Transfer, and died again.
I came back from the hospital and stealthed into the room. The only reason I could clear out all of the other spawns in the room was because of a bug that allows The Door to keep aggroed on and attacking the now idle Secret Shame, who is happily being beaten to death. With the room cleared out I re-engaged The Door and killed him while he muttered on about this being experimental and the Therapist lying to me.
The Therapist congratulates me on completing the program.
================================
The Verdict:
For the most part this arc was well designed and engaging but had some glaring issues. This is the first one that gave a good reason for the level range changing over the course of the arc. I have seen that First there are the Little Nightmares, which should be toned down as they are really aggravating with having so many Kinetics powers on a minion and showing up in such large numbers. Secondly there is the final room with The Door, that encounter needs serious rebalancing as in its current state it is almost certain death the moment you open the door to that room for you and your allies, which makes it even more annoying when you have to come back from the hospital and have to face him alone now.
I still award 5-stars because I'm confident that the author will adjust these issues, so it'd be unfair to knock off an entire star for a single bad battle.
Arc ID: 83920
Arc Title: Two Chicks at Once
Author: @Interface
Description: Working for Lord Recluse, you discovery Longbow has launched a cunning and titillating plot to undermine the Rogue Isles. With your help, Lord Recluse will strike back in kind.
Rating: *****
================================
Character usead: Vikki Vandale, Level 50 War Mace/Willpower Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
The contact is none other than Lord Recluse himself and I can tell already from the tone of the briefing that there is little to be taken seriously in this arc. Especially from the part where they admitted that torturing a Longbow Operative consisted of locking him in a room with Becky the Tarantula Mistress for a few hours. I'm tasked with infiltrating a Longbow base and finding out who their new financier is.
I enter a Longbow base, of which I am informed is sparkingly new and very tastefully decorated. The Longbow are much more tasteful as well, and all female now I see. What is funny is that despite having annoying secondaries such as Devices and Ninjitsu, they're actually weaker than regular Longbow as far as I can see.
Still annoying though to have Web Grenade triple-stacked on me.
After searching the base over I found a crate and opened it to find, stacks and stacks of calenders featuring "well-equipped" female Longbow soldiers wearing...well...
I think I have an idea what their new source of funding is.
Mission 2:
After examining the calendars closely, Lord Recluse has decided on a course of action as this not only provides Longbow with greater funds but also a major Public Relations boost.
He decides to release his own "Babes of Arachnos" calendar and beat them at their own game. My next order of business is to infiltrate a Crey lab where they are reported to be working on several new, highly advanced products for enhancing the female appearance.
The mission entry pop-up was worth a laugh, but the author needs to pay a little more attention to their objectives. Single/Plural Nav Text is your friend!
The Crey lab was rather uneventful aside from the three items I picked up: a Jar of nanotech lotion, a book on increasing charisma, and a chest slider. The computer objective was oddly an Arachnos computer instead of a Tech one, so it looked really out of place. The mission could use some dialog and setpiece events to make it more interesting.
Mission 3:
Lord Recluse informs me that there has been no shortage of volunteers and he didn't even need to convince them. However he needs a few more big names for the photoshoot and has run into some problems with Ghost Widow not showing up on film (or so she claims but nobody wants to press the issue) and the marketability of Barracuda, so it's up to me to convince Ice Mystral and Silver Mantis to participate.
First up is Ice Mystral and since Lord Recluse knows that she has a huge gambling debt from hanging out at the Golden Giza so much, sends me to get her debt marker and leverage it against her.
I arrive at a small casino where Johnny Sonata is hanging out and "talk" the old man into handing over the marker. He put up a fight but sure enough I got it, and boy what a debt it was.
Mission 4:
Black Scorpion informs me that the only way I'll get Silver Mantis to agree to the photo shoot is to beat her in a duel, so he told her that some punk hero called her out for a brawl. I go off to meet Silver Mantis and assume the role of said hero.
The venue is the Pocket D arena and the map chosen is the burning Arachnos base map. It's filled with Infernal's Demons for some reason and along the way I find Ice Mystral as an ally. Oddly she was guarded by Arachnos and once freed tells me that she looks forward to helping me beat up Silver Mantis, whom we met just down the hall.
I don't know why the author went with the Pocket D arena idea, really no special explanation was needed for fight as it's not like we haven't fought Silver Mantis for real several times already as a villain.
Mission 5:
The photo shoot is complete and soon the calendar will be on its way to stores all over Paragon. Lord Recluse even arranged for some late night cable ads.
Then he gets a call that Longbow is raiding the printing plant and sends me to make sure that they don't sabotage all our efforts. I quickly meet up with Ice Mystral at the entrance and head in to find Silver Mantis and then save all of the crates of calendars only to get ambushed by Miss Liberty herself! She wasn't too much of a bother with both Ice Mystral and Silver Mantis backing me up and with her defeated the "Babes of Arachnos" calendar ships and is a major success. I even got to keep one as a souvenir.
================================
The Verdict:
While the humor is mostly juvenile I still found it to be a very amusing arc. Your mileage will definitely vary. The only things I can suggest is to tone down some of the Devices usage on the Longbow (I don't think it's only the Nullifiers throwing all those Web Grenades at me) and to add some dialog events in mission 2 to liven it up. The author might also want to keep in mind that assuming that the player character is female may lead to some awkward moments, especially in the souvenir.
5-stars for the sheer fun and memorability.
[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 119228
Arc Title: Hero Therapy! (TM)
Author: @Ridiculous Girl
Description: Do you have nightmares about the Vahzilok? Can't sleep because you failed to defeat that boss over and over again? Do you let your teammates down because you run away from Malta Sappers? Do clowns make you have an anxiety attack? Try Hero Therapy (TM)! Start today!
Rating: *****
================================
Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 20, 29, 40, 50
[/ QUOTE ]
thank you lazarus, i was thinking of whining to you that i was still waiting for a review... thank you for such a glowing and thorough review.
i have just a couple of clarifications...
the hospital map has some serious spawning issues. for a long time the therapist would appear in the last room, with the allies in the front and the bad guy in the back room too. i have tried to solve this.
the librarian is meant to be an LT. the bosses ramp up; LT, boss, EB, AV.
the little nightmares are much better with more than one person on a team. they tend to focus their siphon on one person. once the get that boost they are a sight to see... if i could remove that heal from their set i would. the part with the knight running pell mell is both funny and not. there is not much i could do about that except maybe making him defensive. not sure if i want to do that...
the nightmare ambushes are triggered off of a battle in one mission, a battle and a captive, and a one destructible object and one recover object. i am fair with the ambushes. it is too bad you got one of the triggers the first time off. i kind of like destroying the unhappy memories... 
SS has always spawned in that last room, so i have never had problems with reaching allies in that mission.
i thought i fixed that final room. they are patrols in that mission and one or two would spawn in that room which would make it crowded, to say the least. i thought i shifted the patrols to middle, rather than any where they would be trapped. now that i think about it there might be a battle that gets mixed in too. i will look at that.
i will look into those changes. your play and review are greatly appreciated. thank you.
RG
global: ridiculous girl
Hero Therapy! (TM) - 119228
welcome to donut world - 1233
[ QUOTE ]
the hospital map has some serious spawning issues. for a long time the therapist would appear in the last room, with the allies in the front and the bad guy in the back room too. i have tried to solve this.
[/ QUOTE ]
Take a look at how many details you have an how many the map allows (ie. having 6 bosses in a map that allows 5 total.) MA sometimes lets you publish even if you've gone over the limit and doing so will cause your spawns to randomize no matter what locations they are set to. Sometimes details will fail to spawn as well due to this. You'll also get the randomization if you set a detail to a spot that doesn't exist, like Front on a map that only allows Middle/Back.
[ QUOTE ]
the little nightmares are much better with more than one person on a team. they tend to focus their siphon on one person. once the get that boost they are a sight to see... if i could remove that heal from their set i would.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't recall them healing at all. It's the stacking Siphon Power and Siphon Speed that makes the almost aggravating enough to quit the arc. Being sent to the slow cap repeatedly and seeing my Damage Bonus plunging into double-digit negative numbers is not fun and makes those little minions a drag to fight off.
[ QUOTE ]
the part with the knight running pell mell is both funny and not. there is not much i could do about that except maybe making him defensive. not sure if i want to do that...
[/ QUOTE ]
Never put allies on Aggressive. Fight Defensively already lets them aggro quite a bit, Aggressive makes their aggro radius much larger.
[ QUOTE ]
i am fair with the ambushes. it is too bad you got one of the triggers the first time off. i kind of like destroying the unhappy memories...
[/ QUOTE ]
Like I said, the Little Nightmares are so aggravating that I didn't want to risk summoning any more of them at all.
[ QUOTE ]
SS has always spawned in that last room, so i have never had problems with reaching allies in that mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
Run that mission enough times and she'll eventually spawn on the floor instead of the top of the staircase instead. I've used that map and the non-burning version a lot and I know that it's a coin-flip as to where the boss will spawn in that room. I don't know if allies are coded specially to have priority in the lower spawn point, but I have seen other maps where the ally accidentally spawned back behind the EB and was unreachable for the battle.
[ QUOTE ]
i thought i fixed that final room. they are patrols in that mission and one or two would spawn in that room which would make it crowded, to say the least. i thought i shifted the patrols to middle, rather than any where they would be trapped. now that i think about it there might be a battle that gets mixed in too. i will look at that.
[/ QUOTE ]
So that's why there were Shadow Shard Reflections in that room as well.
What is the secondary set on The Door? He is very, very resistant to Lethal Damage and took ages to kill. With all his illusions and aura effects I couldn't tell for sure but I suspect Willpower. Illusions on a AV is just nasty enough as it is.
And now for the first installment of Lazarus Quick Reviews! I was playing through the list of Medium-length [SFMA] arcs and figured that I might as well post my thoughts on some of the ones that I found.
Arc ID: 13107
Arc Title: Of Sound Body and Mind
Author: @Mr. Mud
Morality: Villainous
Length: 3 Missions
Description: The lawyer of the late Frank LaRusso, better know to every supervillain in America as the mob boss 'Knuckles', wants you to help execute the late mobster's will, to make sure that all the right beneficiaries recieve what they deserve.
Quicky Review: This was a fun romp for a high-level villain that features some fun dialog and custom mobsters, like the zombie mob boss who's arm I kept as proof that I had taken him out. It did have some power-balancing issues with the bosses (which the author is already aware of and fixing) but otherwise it was nothing that couldn't be soloed by all villains. The ending was easy to see coming but then again it'd have been just as obvious if the twist had not occured, so it all works out.
Rating: *****
================================================== ====================================
Arc ID: 60197
Arc Title: Becky's Revenge
Author: @New Age Ronin
Morality: Villainous
Length: 2 Missions
Description: Becky the Tarantula Mistress needs a little bit of villainy to help take down a rival. That rival's name? Fusionette!
Quicky Review: The scary thing is how well the author got the character of Becky. Expect walls of text in their briefings and debriefings, along with a lot of funny moments and dialog from Faultline and Fusionette.
Rating: *****
================================================== ====================================
Arc ID: 37636
Arc Title: The Missing
Author: @Shadow-Rush
Morality: Heroic
Length: 3 Missions
Description: What starts out as a missing person case turns into something more sinister.
Quicky Review: I've seen a lot of "slice of backstory" type arcs, but this one is more notable for having a sad ending and advancing the character in the present. The author does insert himself as an ally in the final mission but doesn't steal the spotlight from the player. He could be a bit tougher though, Leiutenant-rank allies tend to die easily and aren't much help in Elite Boss battles.
Rating: *****
================================================== ====================================
Arc ID: 4983
Arc Title: Suffer the Children
Author: @Angerdog
Morality: Heroic
Length: 2 Missions
Description: A group of orphans has vanished en route from Westin Phipps Haven House to St. Laurie's school for orphans in Nerva Archipelago. Investigate the disappearance. (Note: Enemies are challenging. Not Recommended for Solo Play.)
Quicky Review: This mini-arc has promise but needs a lot of polish. The author has a custom group with some nice visual designs (and a healthy dose of body horror in mission 2) but nearly all of them lack descriptions and they need some serious rebalancing. The first mission was all minions and a EB (no warning on that and no real reason for one instead of a Boss). The second mission had minions and LTs but there was a serious overabundance of electricity and endurance drain. The ending answers no questions and is quite clear that it doesn't intend to. Well, sometimes the mystery is more interesting than any answer could be anyway.
Rating: ***
Arc ID: 12774
Arc Title: That Mysterious Buzzing Sound
Author: @Red Zero
Description: Three days ago, The Magent Network spotted a small asteroid that was projected to intercept the Earth. what has the Network concerned is that, while the asteroid did not break upon hitting Earth's atmosphere, no trace of where it landed has been located yet.
Rating: ****
================================
Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50
================================
Mission 1:
Scarlet Seven informs me of the asteroid that approached the Earth more like a spacecraft on a course for atmospheric braking and how they never found the impact site after three days of searching by air. There are also a number of locals in the area complaining about hearing a constant buzzing sound in their ears. We can all see where this is going.
Scarlet Seven's briefing is very...dry. The dialog could use a bit livening up there, or is she supposed to be a robot?
I arrived at a farmstead outside Croatoa and immediately heard some people talking nearby in the barn who turned out to be insectoid aliens. The Crick'cK have landed.
I rather like the design of the group and they do have a theme that is reflected in their appearance, powers and descriptions. However, the Tar Beetles just don't look like they belong at all to me. They're much too big and brutish compared to the other small, graceful looking creatures. The boss that I defeated was a bit overly large as well.
After rescuing three civilians and defeating the boss I heard about a Colony and was informed through clues that I found an interesting cave in this area. Very interesting as it's obviously artificial.
Mission 2:
After informing Scarlet Seven of the invaders she has it declared a priority to determine their origin and intent. She makes some references to Omega Class Clearance (which I already have, BTW. Who doesn't know what the Rikti really are by now?) as well.
I went down into the caves and rescued Maggie Hayes at the entrance, who both needs her dialog looked over and has no explanation for being down there to begin with. Se seems to exist to only give me a clue about hearing the Bugs talk about how "there hairless apes were of no concern during the last survey."
The author has commandeered a Rikti cave to serve as the Bug lair and I'm starting to notice that these critters could be very annoying for a squishy to fight. In a single battle I noticed the following stacked on me: 2 Impales, 2 Rings of Fire, and 1 Char hold.
I cleaned out the caves of Bugs and found a communications device, which ended the mission. My only complaints here are: this map is rather annoying to a defeat all as there are a lot of hidden places for the Bugs to spawn in and how did I know to look for a communications device to begin with? It'd be better if the objective was more vague about the alien tech that I'm supposed to collect as I'm supposed to be coming in with no knowledge of what I might find.
Mission 3:
Scarlet Seven has confirmed my Omega Level clearance and filled me in on a bunch of stuff I had figured out already on my own. The Bugs plan to take the Earth and the Magent Network has detected a large ship orbiting Jupiter. I'm taking a ride up there in a spaceship (We got flights to Jupiter now? Cool!) and have 45 minutes to investigate it. That Red Alpha guy that Scarlet has mentioned a few times is accompanying me.
There are a lot of objectives on this ship for 45 minutes, I hope that this Arachnos Base map that the author used is not very large. I rescued Red Alpha, who turns out to be a Bots/SS Mastermind but only summoned the Battle Drones. Then I rescued the first of two Assault Bots. Apparently I'm going to have a total of 6 Allies for this mission. It makes me wonder why the author didn't simply make Red Alpha Extreme Bots, then we'd have Protector Bots and their bubbles and Seeker Drones, which would be a bit more useful in my opinion. I also don't know why he needs Super Strength, like a Robotics Mastermind needs Knockout Blow.
The author also made the glowies take a LOOONNNGG time to click. There is no reason to be making this take more than four seconds unless it's simply to annoy the player.
With the ship secured and under my control I learned from the computer archives that this slower-than-light cryocolony ship has been on it's way for 20,000 years now (geez, how far away was that planet they started from and how slow were they going?) and that the warships escorting it were lagging behind by a couple years.
Mission 4:
The Magent Network is figuring out what to do about the colony ship and incoming warships when the original scouting party that I captured earlier has broken out. I need to stop them from getting word out to the incoming warships.
I was wondering when somebody would finally use one of the police station maps. I quickly defeated all of the detainies, though I didn't recognize this boss at all. It'd help continuity more if she was the same one from the first mission.
Mission 5:
The battlecruisers have been determined to be 1.5 light years out and I'm being asked to take a ride out there in our own spaceship again and get aboard to place and arm a Nuke. Wait, there are two ships, so how does boarding one and blowing it up take out them both? Anyhow, I have 15 minutes to do it. Here we go.
Kudos to the author for knowing that a nuke detonating in vacuum won't do much of anything. Apparently Red Zero is going to plant the nuke on the other ship. Red Alpha is here to help me again along with the two random Assault Bots.
So wait, I have the defeat the Captain as well? What about having to escape after setting the bomb? Shouldn't security be waiting for me at the airlock as I try to escape?
I'm informed that Red Alpha didn't make it (wait, he was right there with me) out of the ship in time and was lost in the explosion. I guess the author wanted to have some sense of tragedy for the heroes.
================================
The Verdict:
Not bad, not bad at all. I'd like to see the Tar Beetles redesigned as they don't fit in very well. I'd also wonder why Red Alpha doesn't summon all of his robots and instead having two random Assault Bots to find. The final mission could be a bit more climatic, aside from the really short time limit I never felt like I was in any danger. The rest of my comments can be seen above. 4-stars.
Thank You, Lazarus.
I appreciate your time and effort in reviewing the Mission Arc.
Looks like the Story came through very solidly. There are some oversights that I will need to edit in or out. No big surprises which is good. I appreciate your insight on reviewing the Mission Arc. This is stuff I just can't get back from an in-game tell.
In Mission 1:
*Scarlet's dry breifing was suppose to come off as "this is just a run of the mill procedural task" formality. It sounds though like that was overachieved.
[ QUOTE ]
However, the Tar Beetles just don't look like they belong at all to me. They're much too big and brutish compared to the other small, graceful looking creatures. The boss that I defeated was a bit overly large as well.
[/ QUOTE ]
*Point Taken.
*I originally had 2 versions: Tar Beetles and Tar Flies. I had to save file space so I took out the Tar Flies because even as standard minions, their debuffs were too much when combined with the rest of the Custom Group. Sounds like I took out the wrong one. Easy fix to just swap out the costume.
*The bosses are suppose to be visibly a bit bigger ("they're bigger and that's why they're in charge"-type logic). While colony insects do often have various members who vary in size fairly greatly with in the same species, it sounds like they are just too much visibly bigger. (causes a fracture in the suspension of disbelief needed in any good story)
In Mission 2:
*The Omega Class stuff is just a formality flavor text. Even though any hero would have it by now, proper procedure in handling classified info is always to verify.
*Maggie Hayes is suppose to be the one person the Crick'cK that was successfully captured for study. All others potential captives where freed in the first mission. This looks like this needs more foreshadowing.
*Yes, If you're a "squishy" (like I am) it is rather challenging. (have thought about changing the Golden Bugs Fire Control out, which would solve a lot of it.) I have been taken down a few times on test runs when I am not being particularly careful >_<
*Comm Device. Point Taken. It will be changed to "Seize Any Alien Tech"
In Mission 3:
*Red Alpha is a Robotics mastermind who has robotic strength augmentation in his body armor. This fact is missing from his description because I didn't think it important at this time. It would be relevant in later Mission Arcs. Easy enough to add in.
*Red Alpha only summons drones because I did not want him to overshadow the Player(s). This is one of the reasons why the Assault Bots are separate.
*The second reason the Assault Bots are separate is to highlight the Player as a Tactical Leader during the mission. These are your robots putting you in charge.
*Yes, the glowies do have a loonnngg click time. This was to "simulate" the incredible amount of data that was suppose to downloaded. It is not intended that it be annoying, but I can definitely see how that can appear. I'll take another look at it.
In Mission 4:
*Mission 4 was added as an afterthought to fill in a plot hole, which it appears to have done so nicely.
*The scouting party that is breaking out is suppose to be another scouting group. I like your idea of it being the original scouting group, as that takes out added baggage and would add to continuity.
*Police station maps rock. Good, small, to the point, solid.
In Mission 5:
*You have to defeat the boss in order to get her "Dragonfly Tags". This is never mentioned in the mission briefing and it should be, as it is important. The Tags represent physical proof that you were aboard the ship. I thought it was handled with a Clue drop, but that clearly isn't sufficient as it is After-the-Fact.
*If getting back to the mission exit was an available triggerable Mission Objective Option, I would add it to the mission. If you can tell me how, I am all ears.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm informed that Red Alpha didn't make it (wait, he was right there with me) out of the ship in time and was lost in the explosion. I guess the author wanted to have some sense of tragedy for the heroes.
[/ QUOTE ]
*That is the gist of it. Not entirely accurate though. I can't tell if your intentionally obscuring what really happened at the end for the purpose of drama or if you just misread that very last detail. It IS meant as being a tragedy in any case.
Once again, Thank You.
[ QUOTE ]
*The bosses are suppose to be visibly a bit bigger ("they're bigger and that's why they're in charge"-type logic). While colony insects do often have various members who vary in size fairly greatly with in the same species, it sounds like they are just too much visibly bigger. (causes a fracture in the suspension of disbelief needed in any good story)
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, she was much too big. She's a queen so already I'm basically beating up her babies but the size difference makes it look a bit silly.
[ QUOTE ]
*You have to defeat the boss in order to get her "Dragonfly Tags". This is never mentioned in the mission briefing and it should be, as it is important. The Tags represent physical proof that you were aboard the ship. I thought it was handled with a Clue drop, but that clearly isn't sufficient as it is After-the-Fact.
[/ QUOTE ]
Proof for what reason? Magent Network certainly knows that I was there. Was it proof for all the other Crick'cK?
[ QUOTE ]
*If getting back to the mission exit was an available triggerable Mission Objective Option, I would add it to the mission. If you can tell me how, I am all ears.
[/ QUOTE ]
Simplest way is a Boss Detail set to appear at the front of the map, set to be required, and set to appear after another objective is completed. That way you face them on the way to the entrance (which you would tell the player in the objective). Maybe move the Queen boss there and have her spawn after you plant the bomb with the message that she's going to personally see that you don't get off of the ship?
*GAH!* I just took a look at the height slider on the bosses and it was maxed out. It wasn't suppose to be maxed out.
[ QUOTE ]
Proof for what reason? Magent Network certainly knows that I was there. Was it proof for all the other Crick'cK?
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes. It is for proof to the Crick'cK that the warships were dealt with.
[ QUOTE ]
Simplest way is a Boss Detail set to appear at the front of the map, set to be required, and set to appear after another objective is completed. That way you face them on the way to the entrance (which you would tell the player in the objective). Maybe move the Queen boss there and have her spawn after you plant the bomb with the message that she's going to personally see that you don't get off of the ship?
[/ QUOTE ]
That might work, I will have to test that to see how well it plays out.
[ QUOTE ]
*GAH!* I just took a look at the height slider on the bosses and it was maxed out. It wasn't suppose to be maxed out.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, it's doing that again. I also noticed that when I used "Load Self" it reset the slider to the minimum when the character I was loading was much taller than 4 feet.
Mrs. Spoon here.
Note: Changes made May 15 in some areas of agreement with Lazarus's Review. Discussion and questions also follow.
[ QUOTE ]
Arc ID: 59147
Arc Title: Shades of Betrayal, Acts of Salvation
Author: @Dr. Spoon
Description: Discovery of the Well of Evermore leads the Circle of Thorns to tap into another source of magic, but at the price of destroying the Unseele world & our own.
Rating: ***
As I said at the start of this thread, lack of level ranges is a big pet peeve of mine and a reason to avoid even playing arcs. As this one jumps everywhere from level 5 to 54 with three of the five missions in the mid-30s, I'm going to have to use my level 36 character to avoid most of these insane level jumps.
[/ QUOTE ]
That you did and I walked into the lion's den thinking I had my bases covered. Low level and High Level player characters yes. But the hole the size of an ocean liner was I forgot the middle ground - the ones that will fall into the center of the scale. Thus the explanation below would just not work. I did revisit this problem and found an amicable solution without adding too much to my file size. Mission # 3 and Mission #4 now have a lvl cap. The arc is now geared to Lvl 20-37 play.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 1:
Surely I have felt them as they cause power fluctations in those with superpowers......
Umm, no. My mutant powers have been working very nice and steady for the last several months. Apparently I'm supposed to just roll with this though.
[/ QUOTE ]
It was my intention that this would be one motivating factor for the character to work with Aaron. But it just doesn't cover all the bases and all possible combinations. Done. That portion of the dialogue has been deleted.
[ QUOTE ]
I show up in the Grim Vale with the objective to defeat Sicarius, who happens to be just in sight of the portal I arrived through. He's currently surrounded by some Fir Bolg. I wonder if I just got lucky with the spawn placement because afer I dispatched him with some help from his confused pumpkinhead buddies the mission ended. He said something about casting a curse for Eochai to activate. I ran around the map a bit but found no other clues about.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, you did get lucky on the spawn location. From what the dev's say the instance/outdoor missions are just one big room with no 'front, back, middle' locations. I wish there was greater level of control in where we as authors can place our bosses/ encounters. I.E. Mark a specific spot on the map where you want them to appear.
[ QUOTE ]
Anyhow, Aaron tells me how powerful Sicarius is and how I was lucky to come away unscathed (considering that I curbstomped him) and that this is all bad news that the CoT and Fir Bolg are working together on something. Something about Sicarius cursing Hawks.
[/ QUOTE ]
Done. Dialogue changed so it no longer speaks about "lucky to come away unscathed". Dialogue now speaks more about Sicarius being 'a weed' that has yet again reared his head and that he surely cannot be the mastermind in this plot.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 2:
So Aaron tells me that he has has the coin analyzed (Wait, did I miss something? What coin? There is no clue about a coin being found.) and that is has the symbol of the Well of Evermore on it. Then he tells me some stuff about the Unseelie that doesn't tell me anything except that their world lies parallel to our own. The Well is the source of all of the Unseelie's magic.
[/ QUOTE ]
Indeed there is a clue about the coin and it appears right after you defeat Sicarius. In fact, there are two clues posted. One is the boss defeat clue and the other the mission complete clue. The only thing I can think of is that you read the first one, but did not scroll down to read the second.
The coin information is akin to a building block. In mission 1 Sicarius's boss unaware dialogue & battle dialogue mention something about a magic source and the Hawks removing the barriers. The 'history lesson' Aaron gives about the coin tells you:
1) It is one piece of information that now helps both Aaron and the player identify the magic source Sicarius was talking about.
2) sets up the stage for the Un'se'lie appearing later so that people would not complain about them appearing from nowhere.
3) The description of the snake & sun symbol on the coin is an additional identifying feature that the player can use to tell that Derek is an Un'se'lie (the chest emblem on his costume). Admitingly, some will miss that, but that is also explained in the right click box info on Derek. So in all, there are two ways presented that the player has as their fingertips to identify who/what Derek is.
4) provides as one source for further flavoring of the story - one small way is the mini 'history lesson' on the coin where it sets the stage for the meaning differences of Un'Se'lie and Unseele. At the end of Mission 3 there is an explanation to that dialect meaning and change that directly relates to what Derek and his mutineers have now become. Therefore tying into the COH cannon of a possible explanation to the Unseele Court that players see around Eochai during the Halloween event.
[ QUOTE ]
I wonder who noticed these pillars show up in some cave under Founder's Falls to begin with. I also wonder why the entry pop-up tells me that my powers flucuate even more down here when a glace and my trays show me that I have the exact same powers as in the previous mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
A Midnighter Patrol has some dialogue that leads you to believe that they were/had been in contact with 'the base'. It might have been that you missed the Patrol or might have missed that dialogue while in battle. Mayhap I should put back the second Patrol that basically illustrates the same thing, but I thought it was overkill especially since Aaron's dialogue for setting up the third mission basically states that 'the onsite Midnighter's were blocked from reporting back to the Base"
As to the issue of pop-up window showing powers fluctuating.... With capping level of arc to 20-37 this 'motivation' has been removed.
[ QUOTE ]
I find the first pillar (the same kind from the Hive mission Vernon von Grun gives) and see it's being guarded by hostile Midnighters. Huh?
[/ QUOTE ]
A right click on the Pillar will tell you that there is Un'se'lie writing etched in this giant DECAYING stone column. I was not about to have yet another CoT column or Cimeroran stone tablets appear here considering they are used heavily in the following missions. Variety is called for. Given that I cannot choose a large pillar like what one can have in Base building this is the closest analog I could get. An added bonus is that when you begin to and finally destroy the pillars they make a very satisfying 'explosion'.
[ QUOTE ]
Apparently this Garik mentioned in the objectives that I have to defeat is his brother. I couldn't see far into this tunnel so I don't know if he was there before I broke the pillar or not, although there is a clue about something escaping from the pillar when it broke so I guess he just spawned now.
[/ QUOTE ]
Garik shows as an objective right after you enter mission door.
[ QUOTE ]
Derek doesn't bother to introduce himself but does inform me that the Midnighters are really CoT in disguise. Thanks for clearing that up, of course he could simply be lying. Not like I haven't fought hostile Midnighters for the third time week with little justification. I'm going to bet that he's lying.
[/ QUOTE ]
Derek does have dialogue in the beginning "I have been expecting you" That speech is supposed to happen when you get in sight of him, but it occurs right when you enter the mission door. This is a bug. But I read what you said about you feeling he was lying from the start - so that opening dialogue was changed to hopefully give you more reason to trust him.
[ QUOTE ]
This map could have been smaller for sure, 9 pillars to destroy was a bit excessive. Also Derek, who kept getting lost and was not being very useful, was annoying me so I eventually just left him behind where ever he got stuck that last time.
[/ QUOTE ]
Revisiting this issue because of the importance of Ally placement. You are correct in that the player MUST encounter Derek first before any other encounter. That helps to establish trust more readily. I am looking to see if there is a map that accomplishes that but so far, I have not found one - although there are several more that I have to test on a Test Run File.
As to 9 pillars being excessive - given what you learn what these pillars really are, do you think it is a wise decision for a world to put all their eggs in one basket? Still I will concede to your plaint a bit for it can then be turned to a bit for world creation of the Un'se'lie. The number is now 7 . Seven being a number with magical symbology attached to it PLUS it so happens to be the exact number of letters in the word Un'se'lie:-)
As to Derek getting lost - that has rarely happened on numerous test runs including with other people. When he has got caught up, most have been inclined to wait.
[ QUOTE ]
Things got even more annoying when I got to Garik. He starts shouting at Derek, who is not even with me anymore, and talks about how he is a traitor and using me and to get out of his way. Hey buddy, I left your brother some hundred feet back that way, I'm the one here kicking your [censored] right now.
[/ QUOTE ]
Point taken, there is the camp that will not need Derek's assistance to take Garik on, the camp that does not like to work with Allies and/or the occasions that an Ally gets 'stuck' causing the player to leave them behind. Dialogue has been changed to cover those situations without compromising the story.
[ QUOTE ]
Anyhow, Garik was not nearly as tough as his description built him up to be. Without Indominatable Will on he was just as vulernable to my mezzing with Domination up as anyone else. Then the clue that I get on his defeat has Garik telling me his thanks for defeating Garik before he sends his body away. More speech from someone not even in the same part of the map as me. The author makes a few too many assumptions during this arc.
[/ QUOTE ]
Garik is set so he has all the Mace Melee powers one can have. Indominable Will to minimize the effects of Psi would be great but one can only get that on Extreme Setting. The problem I have with that is then that enables Resurgence - it is NOT in the character conception that he should resurect nor is it an ability of any of the Un'se'lie race...save one. Garik does have most of the other Willpower set including Heightened Senses so he is not a total pushover. I15 seems to say that one may have the ability to just check off the powers you want - if so then Indominatable Will will definately be there.
As to that clue that pops up after you defeat Garik. You pointed out there are situations that will arise in which Derek is not with the player. Done. Information has been modified to cover that base without compromising the story.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 3:
So of course I've been played with a nice big idiot ball and have triggered the end of the world by fulfilling a prophecy where a mortal (why do you assume that I am mortal?) from Earth and an Unseelie have to work together to destroy the pillars, which actually were there to keep our worlds apart.
[/ QUOTE ]
There are various levels of the "Idiot Ball". The one that annoys most players is when the contact is the one who has played them and they are then 'forced' to continue to work with them. This is not the case in this Arc. Aaron is just as fooled as the player was. Aaron however continues to trust you even though you took part in sending Midnighters to the infirmary. Why, should he trust you? Well that is established in the opening dialogue in Mish 1. Also, Aaron is giving you a chance to redeem yourself as well as his reputation of trusting you in the first place by sending you on this mission. This 'betrayal' of trust (Derek playing the Midnighter's and you.....and what you later learn Garik and the Un'se'lie too) is just another layer that relates directly to the story title....and each act after ACT 2 the player is 'saving' the world(s)
As to the 'mortal' needed. Granted it is not going to be a perfect fit for all combinations....oh say like a robot player. Some authors are going to encounter that their story conception is not going to be a perfect fit for all possible combinations without it compromising the story. Still, what would you suggest?
[ QUOTE ]
So Aaron and some Unseelie guy I've never seen or heard of named Javasha are off to get some of the keys from Sicarius (cause he's too tough for me, remember?) while I have to go beat up Derek and rescue Garik.
[/ QUOTE ]
I am a firm believer in the camp of "If you are going to shoot someone in Act 4, you had better have a gun on the wall in Act 1." This again is foreshadowing of what or who is yet to come...and introduction of another character in this cast of characters.
As for you not going against Sicarius, you learn one unspoken motive why Aaron sent you after Derek at the end dialogue of Mission 3.
[ QUOTE ]
There is some tiny warning about bringing friend, but it is not highlighted at all. That better not be some sort of EB warning that can be easily missed.
[/ QUOTE ]
I went back in and checked the code. The text IS highlighted in orange...don't know why it did not show.
[ QUOTE ]
I charged through Oranbega and found Derek along with a few more Battle Hawks. The poor saps never stood a chance.
[/ QUOTE ]
Glad you did not have too much trouble with them...but was a tad surprised that Derek was not much trouble...until I went in to look at the code. I could of sworn Derek had Dull Pain. It was set that way before...must have mistakenly changed it with earlier adjustments. He has it now:-)
[ QUOTE ]
Derek had changed his appearance as well as description, which fills in a few details on his betrayal. However, his combat dialog made little sense. What the heck is he talking about saying "Sicarious would not dare betray me!" and "I will resist you Eochai!" The he gives me the keys upon his defeat and tell me to make Sicarius pay for his treachery. WHAT?
The clue about the keys don't explain anything about all that. Is this a case of poor map choice and objective placement? Was I supposed to know something before fighting him?....
So now Aaron informs me that Derek and his men are suddenly enslaved by Eochai, how did that happen?
[/ QUOTE ]
Taking a page from your book, "Show don't tell" I have laid the foundations in each mission before.
1) Quoting what you said in the beginning of your review, " He said something about casting a curse for Eochai to activate. I ran around the map a bit but found no other clues about." So you got that.
2)Mission 1 Sicarius boss unaware dialogue states that CoT has laid a curse, and all Eochai needs to do is speak the final word. This summoning word is not to be spoken until the 'Hawks" remove the barriers.
3)In case players miss that vital information it is provided in the clue write-up after you defeat Sicarius in mission 1
4)When you return to Aaron after Mission 1, his dialogue also stresses "I wonder who Sicarius has cursed and who are these Hawks he speaks of"
5) Derek and Garik both have mention of them belonging to the Battle Hawks, an elite fighting force, in their right click bio. Not only that, the label under their name cons, Battle Hawks.
6) You learn at the end of Mission 2 that the Pillars you helped destroy are magical 'barriers'. Here in mission 3, Eochai has decided to speak the binding word - so now not only is Derek fighting you, he is fighting the curse summoning him to Eochai. Note: If the game mechanics would allow me to put a smoking aura around him when he shouts, "I will resist you Eochai!" I would for it would make it that much more clearer. Unfortunely not available:-(
As to your complaint that Derek says" Sicarius would not dare betray me!" I am guilty of making the assumption that the player character is 'warning/taunting' him of this betrayal. Am I putting words into the players mouth? Yes, but this small occasion it will remain to help flavor the story.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 4:
So now with the keys I have to rebuild the barriers, which involves me working with an Unseelie to activate a bunch of glowies. For some reason this mission is timed, did the crisis suddenly get worse after I had all the time in the world to fetch the keys? And what about the keys that Aaron was getting from Sicarius?
[/ QUOTE ]
Done, I have added a sentence that explains the crisis is approaching a critical junction.
Aaron states in the return mission dialogue at the End of Mission 3 "Well met, my friend. We now have all the Kalthor Keys" and his need to get the keys to the Un'se'lie Council.
[ QUOTE ]
I see that the author has arranged for a CoT ambush at the door. Simple trick and good thing I am quick on the Seeds of Confusion but had I been a Mastermind I'd be pissed right about now.
[/ QUOTE ]
Aaron warns the player in the opening dialogue of this mission that the CoT will try to stop the both of you. It ties into the enemy motivations -they are not going to lie down and let the heroes truimph without a fight....at least that ambush is not set on Hard;-) Player ignores warning at their own peril.
[ QUOTE ]
I find Elara, who is Earth Control/Empathy shortly down the tunnel, just sitting on the ground unguarded with hordes of CoT in every direction...I didn't bother going back for her as I always found Earth Controllers to be really annoying anyway with their humongous screen-blocking graphics.
[/ QUOTE ]
Players who choose not to utilize Elara can do so. But some classes who solo or teams without healers would most likely welcome her healing powers. Hmmm, that is not in her bio. Done. Will 'notify' others about her healing powers.
Elara is sitting in a mediative state with a glow around her. That is the nearest I could set the visual conception of her being there 'invisible' watching that the CoT do not destroy the pillars before you arrive.
[ QUOTE ]
Anyhow, I activated all of the pillars and left the mission with 37 minutes left on the clock. I didn't bother to wait and chat with the CoT ambush that showed up after the clicking the last one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmm, might have to bump the time down to 30 minutes. However it may the mission less team friendly - depending on the make-up of the team and size of spawns it may be quite a challenge to finish in 30 minutes. Will think upon this more before I make that decision.
[ QUOTE ]
I get back to Aaron and he tells me that not all of the teams were succesful in activating their barriers and that the CoT are still tapping into the Well of Evermore (Not quite sure exactly when that happened?
[/ QUOTE ]
Again it goes back to the information with the two clues you learn about at the end of mission 1. As to why the rebuilding the barriers did not close off the link....Aaron tells you in the end dialogue of Mission 4 mission debriefing the barriers stop the collision of worlds happening but did not sever the CoT link.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission 5:
The meeting happened off-screen, so it's back to Oranbega to break the CoT's link to the Well. I'm to fight some CoT mystic named Kilcarsadur who is reputed to be as bad as Baron Zoria and I've been given some magic diadem to protect me from illusions. There was however no highlighted text in the EB warning.
[/ QUOTE ]
Missed that one. Thanks. Done. Highlighted.
[ QUOTE ]
As I enter I hear someone named Javasha shouting in the distance. I guess I will have an ally after all for this mission, one with a fight I'll likely need one in unlike the previous missions. According to her description she quit her post during that meeting that I didn't see and is really an accomplished swordswoman.
[/ QUOTE ]
In mission 5 opening dialogue, Aaron mentions you will be working with Javasha. So it should have been no surprise that you have an Ally in this mission. Aaron's mission debriefing states that you will have to dispel shields and channelers . This map was specifically chosen because those channelors can be set to always appear in that room with the giant crystal hanging above the alter- which is a better analog for the open portal/connection than anything one can select as a wall/floor item. Sicarius is not mentioned but given what he said to you upon his first defeat it should be no real surprise you meet him again
Also because I agree with your opinion about Sicarius being a pushover for some I have changed some Mish 1 dialogue regarding Sicarius that further cements the idea you will meet him again... i.e. the weed that keeps coming back)
[ QUOTE ]
I don't see any mention of this Kilcarsadur,
[/ QUOTE ]
Like all top villains, Kilcarsadur relies on his "underlings" to take care of things....especially when he has other things to attend to. It is not until you prove to be a worthy threat that he spawns.
So I am guilty of stereotyping him here:-)
Question: I have toyed with the thought of having Kilcarsadur spawn in the very room you dispel the channelors. Too much of a nasty surprise or to be expected since you just destroyed all his plans?
[ QUOTE ]
Not that it didn't prevent me losing Javasha several times along the way. Meanwhile my Domination bar is dropping...
Eventually found Kilcarsadur (who is using the Baron Zoria model) in some random corridor and both Javasha and Garik charged right up to him... and then did nothing. Yep, for the entire fight they did nothing but act as targets for his Twilight Grasp heal. Audrey the Giant Flytrap and I did all of the work of defeating that EB. I don't know what caused my allies to go idle like that two feet away from him after charging past me and getting right up in his face.
[/ QUOTE ]
What?!?Pardon me while I go into another room to vent ((aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggg hhhhhhhh!!!!!!)) I am truly flustered with the AI. Through numerous play testing Javasha and Garik act the way they are supposed too 80% of the time. Javasha is set on Defensive and Garik is set on Aggressive. In that 20% of the time Javasha acts like she is set on Aggressive and runs off or she will 'lock up' and fail to attack. I have not seen Garik 'lock' up like that. Murphy's Law it would figure you would get the crappy 20% of the time for both of them. NOTE: this behavior ONLY seems to happen with the Melee class as that I have seen this lock-up occur in several other MA story arcs that even Statesman is not immune. I have not seen this behavior in Range character allies.
Sigh, in the rare times that lock happens the only way to get them out of lock is to move out of sight of the battle (fall back) so that the allies move. Most times they then start fighting. Highly annoying one should have to do this, yes, but if you really, really need them then this works in a pinch.
Question: I know you were highly annoyed but if you can recall: Was Javasha and/or Garik 'looking around' when they 'locked' up? If so that would be the Heighted Senses power going off and I have noticed that she has locked when this happens.
I have begun to notice that on the rare occasions a Melee Ally will act wonky and run away when their Stamina bar gets at or below 1/4.
I know you were in the heat of battle, but any chance do you remember if the Ally's stamina bar was below 1/4?
My husband tells me that AI is very hard to get right so if I can pinpoint where the problems are occurring I give the Dev's more information to work with into correcting the problem. It would not only save me a lot of aggravation, but others as well.
[ QUOTE ]
So the CoT's link to the Well of Evermore is broken and unfortunately both Javasha and Garik are stuck in our world. Sucks to be them.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yup, heroes curse to always do good at the sacrifice of self ...a curse villains gleefully escape. I mention that they are in the infirmary because I had assumed that either the helped FIGHT in the battle or got seriously injured.......aaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhh, that AI is REALLY starting to bug me.
Thank you very much for the review Lazarus:-) You greatly helped. A good number of peeves/holes in the story have been addressed. The story is now that much more polished for others play/enjoy if they so choose
My Arc: The Power From Out Of Space, ID# 64800
Mrs. Spoon's Arc: Shades of Betrayal, Acts of Salvation, ID# 59147
I think you might enjoy this one
Two Chicks at Once
Arc ID: 83920
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global/Forum Name: Interface
Difficulty Level: moderate
Synopsis: Working for Lord Recluse, you discover that Longbow has launched a cunning and titillating plot to overthrow the Rogue Isles. With your help, Arachnos will strike back in kind...
This one is intended for players level 40+. The dialog assumes you are a villain. It has some challenge, one custom boss and two EBs, (AVs at the top difficulty level), however, you will have allies for them. It has a bit of naughty dialog, but nothing you wouldn't see on TV.
Despite being 5 missions, you should be able to finish in 15-20 minutes. No kill-alls, huge maps, or 'collect 20 glowies'.
Starting on 'Portal Bandits' now, hopefully will have a review up today. [UPDATE] Played, it, review up.