Pro Payne: From 1 to 50 in M.A. (suggest arcs!)

Thanks for the feedback Coulomb. Even though it hurts to read that my effort to make a little fun arc makes your head hurt!

Perhaps some things can clear this up. I had struggled with the plot, it started out as a one shot (the first mission) and then I tried to make it into a full arc. But to me the joke lost its momentum so I tried to tie things up in the last mission (that should have been mission 5 btw). It is obvious that the story fails to explain things properly now. I had to take to many shortcuts here. Perhaps, it might have been better if I had left it as a short arc with one mission.

About the garish mobs. That was just the idea, to make those proud Gangsters into a travesty of themselves. It was her revenge for them ruining her own evil plans. They were supposed to be hurtful to the eye.

I am sad to read about the proofreading part. I did have a lot of help trying to make it as error free as possible, including someone proofreading it. I have spend hours on end trying to get them all but everyone who plays them comments about it. Bad penmanship shows I guess, my grasp about the subtleties of English grammar falls short badly and writing this and my other arc has shown me that I am not a proper writer. At least not in the English language.

I can't believe I didn't check this thread sooner.

I don't have any arcs in your level range at the moment so I'll just leave these IDs here and hope you feel the urge to take a stroll down memory lane to a time when you had no enhancements and not a bit of inf to your name.

All of these arcs are designed to be played as a Soldier or Widow of Arachnos, working for Arachnos and following orders in a chain of command. You might want to keep that in mind when you play them to get in the right mindset.

First we have "The Tangled Weave", a level 1-10 beginner's arc showing how Arachnos keeps Mercy Island under control and guides the participants in 'Project Destiny' from behind the scenes.
ID # 338575.

Second: "A Taste For Evil". Level 10-20. You have been assigned to Cap Au Diable where your *** is grass and Marshal Brass is the lawnmower. He's got a cushy job for you testing the new NutriPaste™ flavor before it is released on the open market. Don't worry, it's been thoroughly tested on prisoners and university students already.
ID # 349034.

Finally, for now, "Fear And Loathing On Striga". Villains have been deprived of this pleasant zone for far too long and here is my attempt to simulate the experience. Level 20-29. The Council is losing its grip on Striga after their plan to launch a giant robot at Paragon City was thwarted by a group of meddling heroes. You must make sure that the sudden power vacuum is filled in a manner which pleases Arachnos.
ID # 350522.


Thanks in advance for playing any or all of these, and for the potential reviews.

Pro Payne’s still due for some time away: end of semester work, Dr. Aeon’s Challenge, and Christmas shopping have eaten away at just about all of his free time. Honestly, not only have I not had time to attend to this thread over the past two weeks, I haven’t even had time to even really play Pro Payne much over the past two weeks. However, with the “Holiday prep” trailing off a bit, I’m hoping to have more free time soon. We’ll see if that really happens or not. But it is certainly time for a major update: I hope the very, very few people who follow this thread enjoy! I’ll post Pro Payne’s current queue immediately following the reviews.

Pro Payne is open for submissions.

First, a few more “mini-reviews” from all of the arcs Pro Payne played for the player’s choice awards.

Astoria in D Minor (Arc ID#41565, Score: 5.08, 5 stars)
When the fog rolled in, many who were trapped in Astoria fell victim to dark fates. Pro Payne ‘experienced’ one such tale in the story of Haley and her mother Irene, two doomed souls whose fates were tied up with that of a one-time hero turned deranged madman. Everything about this arc struck me as well done; more than a month after I played it, I may have forgotten a lot of the nitty-gritty details of the story, but I certainly remember that this was a very solid arc where the author did a good job of maintaining the creepy theme through excellently written mission briefings, and very solid use of the MA tools.

The Tongue Twister (Arc ID#1444, Score: 4.825, 5 stars)
In this very entertaining adventure Pro Payne ended up helping out a beleaguered English professor who was lamenting the sudden proliferation of Freakshow-esque “leet-speak” in his term papers. Pro Payne found himself needing to defeat a fiendish device designed to force all under its influence to speak in l337. Particularly amusing was the fact the device make l337 sound like masterful prose (or, in some cases, dialog) to those affected, while, perversely, normal speech and writing became as incomprehensible as l337 normally seems to the uninitiated. Excellent story with great writing.

Blight (Arc ID#140423, Score: 6.25, 5 stars)
Ah, Blight. The source of one of the most lamentable fights I’ve seen on this forum, and where I found out that evidently Venture does not consider me to have any taste. Well, let me say for the record that I am without taste as I thought this was a great arc.

Kharmic Exchange (Arc ID#47550, Score: 3.62, 4 stars)
Pro Payne had to stop a shape-shifter’s plot to restore life to his (the shape shifter’s) wife by taking the life of her murderer. In this case, it isn’t that I thought there was anything terribly wrong with the arc – it had a decent story, and (except for one thing: there were a lot of mission objective details that needed to be fleshed out rather than left to default) everything worked right. In this case I just thought this was an arc that is good – but needs more to be great. Standard “polish” stuff: some color and a bit of editing on the briefings, and perhaps somewhat more fleshing out of the clues.

Only a few more of the Player’s Choice arcs to comment on here. I’ll save those for next time.

Of course, Pro Payne also plays random arcs in between arcs submitted as suggestions. Here are all of the random arcs up to the main review for today (which is Splintered Shields):

Enter the Wildfire (Arc ID#10665, 2 stars)
Pro Payne’s “normal day of interrupting muggings and the like” gets a lot more exciting when he is contacted by Jonathan St. John Smythe and asked to investigate a dimensional anomaly. In the process he is introduced to a hero from another dimension (Black Wildfire – hence the arc’s name), and foils a plot by that dimension’s most powerful villain, a ‘Walter Stone.’ The verdict? It’s an origin story, it seems, and Pro Payne’s inclusion was largely secondary. The arc has the beginnings of an interesting story (I did like the ‘super black hole’ idea), but just makes too many other mistakes: most notably, it needs a lot of proofreading, but the other major problem is that the player isn’t even remotely central to the story.
Score: 1.965

Dreamweaver (Arc ID#181972, 3 stars, 4 stars given in game)
Pro Payne’s help was needed to foil a plot by Coma, a powerful supervillain with equally powerful abilities to dominate the minds of others. Coma had managed to acquire a veritable army of followers, including several of Pro Payne’s would-be allies in this little adventure. But, ultimately, he defeated Coma and saved the city – perhaps the world – from complete mental domination. This arc was off to a good start, and, frankly, I found it to be a good example of an arc whose good elements were in close balance with the not-so-good stuff. The custom mobs were pretty good, even if there were some unrealistic aspects to them (I find it hard to believe *all* of the male office workers are handsome with great wives, and all of the female security guards posed for playboy … and that’s not a reference to what they look like. It was part of their descriptions.) – I think the author needs to make them considerably more ‘generic.’ The clues had a kind of interesting ‘song title’ theme, and the overall story line certainly had potential – it may not be the most original around, but there certainly wasn’t anything terrible about it either. But the allies in the arc were overpowered, which is probably because the bosses tended to be overpowered (which would not necessarily prompt me to deduct as many points as I did, except for the fact the arc claimed to be soloable). Also, the ‘defeat all’ in the first mission didn’t seem necessary at all. My opinion was that this was an arc that isn’t so great right now (but, again, I didn’t think it was bad either, but with some effort (lots of proofreading, make the allies lieutenants, and tone down the bosses, among other things), it could actually be pretty good.
Score: 3.375

Mangini’s Carnival (Part One) (Arc ID#160373, 3 stars)
Pro Payne squared off against a mad carnival barker and his evil killer clowns. Obviously, this is an arc that features a bunch of custom mobs unified by a theme. Overall, they had an interesting design, although their descriptions could have been better. The story, on the other hand, didn’t make much sense at all. I could kind of follow what was going on, and why I was involved, but it really could have been clearer. While you might be tempted to blame the inclusion of a custom group taking up valuable arc space, I’ve worked a fair amount in mission architect (shameless plug of the arcs in my sig…) and I’ve got a pretty good idea of how much ‘custom mob inclusion’ you need to see before it’s pretty obvious the arc’s going to run into severe space constraints, and this group just wasn’t it. The bottom line: there needed to be more background and exposition – more story, quite literally. That said, the arc was an entertaining diversion.
Score: 2.83


Pro Payne versus the evil clowns of Mangini’s Carnival

Mangini’s Carnival (Part Two) (Arc ID#160477, 3 stars, 4 stars given in game)
Obviously the continuation of the previous arc, this one culminates in the final showdown with Mangini and the ultimate defeat of his evil carnival. The arc’s got exactly the same issues as the first one did, although the custom mobs are even more varied (and, frankly, I found the designs a bit more interesting – and I did appreciate the fact that there were more actual mob descriptions instead of the defaults) the presence of ‘closure’ does help the arc. Again, the arc was put together well enough to make it an interesting diversion.
Score: 3.275

Archetect Mission (Arc ID#108614, 4 stars)
Pro Payne stops a Nemesis plot to gum up MA with lots of lousy missions. This arc was a satire on all of the bad missions out there, and does the job reasonably well (I particularly liked the toons that represented ‘farm arcs’ – although I do predict anyone else who tries this arc out won’t really be surprised by them, but still, it was a cute idea). What we’ve got here is actually a pretty good story with pretty good basic mission design (and a decent custom group) that is only missing a few things (and has a few things that even a satire about bad MA missions shouldn’t have – although that very statement is just my opinion). So what would make this arc better? More clues, a warning about the timed mission (I did get the distinct impression the lack of a warning wasn’t deliberately poking fun at that particular mistake), and a warning about the surprise (if optional) AV… yeah, that’s also something that makes MA missions bad, but, again if the author intended for that to be a jab at ‘surprise AVs’ I didn’t see that – it just came off as an example of the kind of bad arc writing the arc was trying to poke fun at… which is ironic.

And now, on to the main review for this post…

Splintered Shields (Arc ID#253991, 5 stars)

The contact was W.M. Deitrich; she was not happy to be requesting my aid, but (if memory serves) she was having an issue with an Arachnos raid, and I was the only hero close enough to do something about it (at least before the Arachnos got away). That she wanted me to counter the raid and fight off Arachnos wasn’t a surprise – but what did come as a surprise was the fact the Longbow already present were very keen on making sure Pro Payne got taken down ‘accidentally’ by ‘friendly fire.’ While fending off attacks from his Longbow “allies”, Pro Payne located the Arachnos leader – an Operative Kobushi – and engaged him in combat. Pro Payne prevailed, but Kobushi’s accusations were very odd: He seemed to think Pro Payne was up to something nefarious, and was quite sure he was in cahoots with Longbow – those very same Longbow that were trying to shoot Pro Payne dead “on accident.” The fact that Pro Payne found some drug shipments that looked like they’d been smashed by Longbow before Arachnos arrived was even worse. The drugs were not the “performance enhancers” that fueled some of the lower threat villain groups – they were just recreational drugs. Something in Pro Payne’s gut was telling him that Longbow hadn’t destroyed these drugs to keep Arachnos from getting them…

W.M.D. didn’t like what she was hearing at all, and wanted Pro Payne to investigate further. The Warden in charge of the suspicious Longbow was a man named Livingston, and W.M.D. wanted to get the story from Livingston himself, who was busy hitting a bunch of smugglers. Pro Payne interrupted the operation, making contact with Livingston, who was convinced some of his Longbow were “dirty” and had taken to selling some of their seized drugs to the inhabitants of the Rogue Isles. Livingston seemed committed to quelling the corruption in his ranks, and was convinced that Kobushi was causing trouble because the area where the Longbow were re-selling the drugs was his turf, and he was irritated he wasn’t getting his cut. But Kobushi made an appearance on the freighter, and didn’t seem at all interested in any sort of cut – in fact, Pro Payne got the impression Kobushi and his agents had raided the vessel to ensure the drugs wouldn’t reach the Isles. The fact that he remained convinced Pro Payne was up to something “bad” was doing a good job of giving Pro Payne pause… it just didn’t seem like a good thing that the Arachnos Executioner was sounding more credible than a Longbow Warden.


It’s never a good thing when the Longbow and the Family are both trying to kill our hero.


Kobushi only thought he’d defeated Pro Payne. Little did he know it was just an excuse to let Pro Payne transform a tiny fraction of his never used blue bar of patrol XP into about 15 seconds of untouchable beat down. You ever wanted to be able to use your self-rez debt free? Do an MA-only character!

W.M.D. was just as troubled. Like it or not, her intelligence had that Kobushi was rather unusual for a Bane Spider: he was considered a hero by the people of the Rogue Isles. He even seemed to deserve the distinction: he’d been fighting tireless to keep drugs and other harmful things out of the lives of those citizens of the Isles Arachnos had put under his charge. As much as she, or Pro Payne, wanted to admit, it actually seemed more likely that Livingston was the real villain here. Thankfully, there was a way to find out – by checking the logged evidence at a PPD warehouse, Pro Payne would be able to determine if Livingston had indeed made an effort to “smuggle out” what he thought of as less dangerous drugs (which meant it was less likely their disappearance would be noticed) confiscated by Longbow, with the intent to sell them to the people of the Rogue Isles.

Finding the evidence he was looking for would have been enough – Livingston had replaced the “softer” confiscated drugs with fakes. The fact that the mercenary Knives of Artemis showed up on the scene to make sure Pro Payne would never report the evidence he found just drove the point home: Livingston was crooked, and needed to be stopped before his despicable predations on the people he’d been assigned to protect could continue.

At this point, Livingston had decided that Kobushi needed to be taken down once and for all; provided he somehow erased all evidence of Pro Payne’s and W.M.D.’s investigation (which would likely require killing both of us), he certainly wasn’t going to let Kobushi continue to interfere with his operation. W.M.D. knew of two bases where Kobushi might be found, and knew Livingston would be attacking whichever base Kobushi was at. Pro Payne took one of the bases, W.M.D. the other. Neither found either Kobushi or Livingston, although Pro Payne did manage to download several hundred gigabytes of encrypted data from the base’s central computer.

From those files, Pro Payne learned that the hero was the villain and the villain the hero: Kobushi really was trying to protect the peoples of the Rogue Isles – and was taking this charge seriously enough to run him afoul of his higher-ups in Arachnos: Arbiter Daos himself had ordered Kobushi terminated. To make matters worse, W.M.D. informed Pro Payne that Livingston had subjected himself to an accelerated version of the process that transforms Wardens into Ballistae – it upped his power considerably, but would ultimately kill him. Still, he’d certainly gained enough power to make himself a major threat to both Pro Payne and Kobushi – Pro Payne’s final task was to take down Livingston, and, if possible, save Kobushi from both Longbow and his Arachnos Fellows.


Why oh why do Bane Spider Executioners always do this to me?!

I’m sad to say he failed at the former – Kobushi had already been executed by Arachnos before Pro Payne arrived on the scene. But he did face Livingston in combat, narrowly managing to defeat the would-be Ballista. While normally defeat would be the precursor to a prison term, the unstable energies Livingston had subjected himself to consumed him almost the moment he fell – Livingston died long before he could be brought to trial for his crimes.


He doesn’t look like a Ballista, but he sure does hit like one.

W.M.D. wasn’t exactly happy with the resolution, but certainly was happy with Pro Payne’s help; for his part, Pro Payne at least felt he’d accomplished something. He may not have been able to save who turned out to be a true champion of the peoples of the Rogue Isles, but at least he eliminated a villain who was making their lives much worse, all for a little bit of material gain.

Pros: This was an excellent arc. The writing in the mission briefings was top notch, as was the mission design. But most important, the story flowed very well: it was complex enough to maintain interest, but simple enough to follow without going to a lot of extra effort.

Cons: The most prevalent error in this arc were auto-completing mission objectives tied to unguarded allies – it was noticeable, although it didn’t cause any major problems. The most jarring consequence was when the ‘Meet Livingston’ objective in mission two completed long before you got to him – the objective was accompanied by a clue that just doesn’t make any sense while Livingston is still halfway across the room from you. I’m aware that it’s a limitation of the system (a bug in the way ally objectives are currently set up), but that doesn’t keep it from being a little jarring. One other minor nitpick: Kobushi seemed awfully independent for a Bane Spider. It seemed a bit odd to me that someone plugged into the thoughts of a huge network of other Arachnos agents would maintain such an (apparent) sense of individuality – I’m not saying Bane Spiders cannot have any independent thought, just that the degree afforded Kobushi in the story seemed a bit off base, especially given that he could have been a Crab Spider Webmaster instead (unless they’re just not available as bosses at the arc’s level, but I don’t think that’s the case).

Score: 5.375

After playing through the previous arc, Pro Payne returned playing a few random arcs before starting the next one in his queue. It didn’t go well.

The arc Pumpkins Fight Back (Arc ID#287432 and 287353, both unrated and reported as possible farms) had no story, and seemed to be a defunct farm arc (no minions, which, ironically, resulted in an XP hit – Pro Payne suspected these arcs had been mostly abandoned after the Issue 16 XP changes).

While Rage Within the Machine (Arc ID was, unfortunately, unrecorded, the arc was unrated) seemed a legit arc, it suffered from being populated by minions who didn’t give out any XP. I can respect making that sacrifice to give your mobs the powers that you really want them to have, but when your goal is to get to level 50 using M.A. missions, a mission that starts off not giving any XP when you defeat the mobs that are populating a large outdoor map is just not something I want to risk seeing if there will be improvement later.

Finally, Pro Payne played through The Search for Bad Hat (again, he forgot to write down the ID number, although the arc was given 2 stars). The arc is exactly what it sounds like – over the course of three missions populated by a custom group working for this ‘Bad Hat’ character, Pro Payne is made to track down and defeat the archvillain Bad Hat. There was no real story beyond that at all. The customs were balanced, but the mission briefings were utterly average – what you’d expect from newspaper missions or the countless ‘filler’ missions in the “real” game. When coupled with a completely unnecessary defeat all in the first mission, and the lack of much in the way of in mission clues or dialog, Pro Payne found this little excursion to be a below average experience.
Score: 2.17


It’s Pro Payne! Versus Bad Hat! Yeah! BAD HAT! He’s got a bad … hat.

Remember Pro Payne is open to submissions - I'll only close this thread to submissions when I suspect I've got enough arcs in the queue to reach level 50. But any arc in the queue will get played an will get a review. (And check out my sig. if you're interested in playing my arcs - included the new one submitted for Dr. Aeon's contest. Yeah, it didn't win, but hey, it was fun to make and hopefully fun to play...)

Anyway, here's Pro Payne's current queue:

12647 Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 1
292389 Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 2
344596 The Golden Age Secret of Paragon Society
4643 Blowback (technically a replay, although the first time with Pro Payne)
257226 Tis Nobler in the Mind (No spoilers will be posted for this arc.)
347029 Breaking the Barrier (And Putting It Back Together)
340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell
3369 Matchstick Women (replay)
338575 A Tangled Weave
349034 A Taste for Evil (one arc can be submitted before this one if from an author not already on this list.)
350522 Fear And Loathing On Striga (one arc can be submitted before this one if from an author not already on this list.)

Well, if you're open to submissions, I'll throw one of mine in:

"The Hero of Kings Row" ID #230187.

It's gonna toss you back a few levels, but now that you get XP regardless, it shouldn't matter.

Thanks for the review!

It's OK to say that Kobushi lived. Everyone else who reviewed the arc did, and it's mentioned in the arc's thread. As for him being a Bane Spider, I don't feel constrained by "Bane of the Heart"...as far as I'm concerned, the devs rendered that Canon Discontinuity with the introduction of the VEATs.

I know Livingston annoyingly tends to spawn too far from the door. It just doesn't seem worth editing the arc over.

I would love for you to try the arc I submitted for Dr. Aeon's challenge:

The Greater Good - ID 350877

But remember the way Pro Payne behaves in this arc is in no way a reflecton on you or the actual Pro Payne.


Hope you enjoy.

Time for another update from the world of Pro Payne’s quest to reach level 50 in M.A. He’s getting closer to the ultimate goal – Pro Payne has made it to level 46.

Pro Payne is open for submissions. Listed below is his current queue: If you’ve put in a request for your arc to be played, and don’t see it here (and you don’t see a review for it), let me know.

4643 Blowback (technically a replay, although the first time with Pro Payne)
257226 Tis Nobler in the Mind (No spoilers will be posted for this arc.)
347029 Breaking the Barrier (And Putting It Back Together)
340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell
3369 Matchstick Women (replay)
338575 A Tangled Weave
230187 The Hero of King’s Row
349034 A Taste for Evil
350877 The Greater Good
350522 Fear And Loathing On Striga

Pro Payne actually started by remembering a few of the adventures he had during the Player’s Choice contest a while back. A few mini-reviews:

Sabrina’s Tale (ID#1237, Score: 4.42, 5 stars)
Certainly a good story and a well done arc … Pro Payne followed the sad tale of Sabrina, a person who “was never meant to be” but was given her chance at an existence anyway. My only specific complaint is that the defeat all, while not obnoxious or unpleasant (it was on a pretty reasonable map, if memory serves), didn’t seem strictly necessary. But the truth is any additional critique of this arc is a bit pointless since it is now a Dev’s Choice arc.

I honestly don’t remember if the next arc was part of the contest, or just one that I’d intended to revisit once I was “post 40.”

Ghost In The Machine, Act II (ID#174557, Score: 4.125, 4 stars, 5 stars given in game)
Pro Payne and Dani work together again, this time to uncover a magical plot and a sinister conspiracy run by an ancient, secretive group. Story wise I liked this arc every bit as much as the 1st one, and I’m looking forward to playing the sequel, when I get a chance. There is, however, one thing I really didn’t enjoy, and that truly does seriously take away from the fun of the arc: the very last villain is a Fiery Aura elite boss with 90% fire resistance, and healing flames. I’d fought him before when I played the arc the first time – I’d quit out and not rated it as I was totally unable to beat him. It almost happened again, but I just narrowly managed to eek out a victory. Like I said, I was a big fan of the first arc, and really wanted to play this one – but if you are using a character whose primary method of dealing damage is fire, I really would either recruit a teammate or just don’t play this arc with that character – pick one who doesn’t focus on fire damage; defeating the big bad with a fire character was an absolutely miserable experience.

And finally, Pro Payne is now truly “caught up.” So no onto his recently played arcs:

Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 1: Of Feathers and Fur (Arc ID#12647, 4 stars, 5 stars given in game)

Daedalus – master inventor of ancient Cimorera – need Pro Payne’s help. Daedalus had a plan that he hoped would help secure his homeland against tyrants and traitors, like Romulus and his evil minions. His apprentice, Servius, had an important role to play in this plan, but had been kidnapped by Romulus’ traitorous warriors, and was in need of rescue.

Pro Payne fought his way through the cave where Servius was trapped. When rescued, Servius told Pro Payne that he was a master mapmaker, and Romulus and been interested in his maps – in fact, Romulus’ troops and managed to steal most of them, although Servius wasn’t quite sure which one or ones he was interested in. Pro Payne led Servius safely out of the cave, facing and defeating Melleus, who was leading the legions that had kidnapped Servius in the first place.

With Servius safe, Daedalus wanted Pro Payne to go confer with Sister Solaris. Solaris and some of her Sybils were traveling through a forested area outside of town when contact with them was lost. Although Solaris could probably take care of herself, the Sybils most likely needed rescuing from the Cimoreran traitors that were holding them – Pro Payne scoured the countryside, freeing three of Solaris’ Sybils from captivity. What was somewhat disconcerting is the fact that the guards holding each Sybil were talking about offering the Sybils to “their beastly friends.” Pro Payne didn’t know exactly what they were referring to, but the last Sybil he rescued – Lepida – told him the Romans were being led by a Satyr named Lurco.


Pro Payne takes a moment to admire the fact that Sister Solaris’ Sybils are not hard on the eyes.

Pro Payne sought out and defeated Lurco, learning from the Satyr that he had been sent by the “Satyr-Lord” specifically to capture in Sybils, and the Satyr were in league with Romulus. Ironically, Pro Payne actually found Sister Solaris last, although, as he suspected, she certainly didn’t really need his help.

Daedalus was not happy to hear about a potential alliance between the Satyr and Romulus, and could only think of one way to put an end to that particular threat: Pro Payne would need to enter the Satyr-Lord’s realm, confront him, and defeat him in combat. Daedalus would be present to help, and warned Pro Payne that the Satyr-Lord was a demigod, and would therefore be a very powerful foe.

As planned, Pro Payne met up with Daedalus in the Satyr Lord’s forest, then faced the Satyr-Lord himself in combat. While Pro Payne did emerge victorious, the Satyr-Lord had an interesting trick up his sleeve: he called on the aid of a large flight of Harpies once the battle seemed to turn against him. The Satyr-Lord confirmed that there was effectively an alliance forming between the Satyr, the Harpies, and Romulus – the former would provide physical and mystical support and be provided with slaves, seeresses, and nymphs in return (which explained why Romulus’ forces had tried to kidnap the Sybils and deliver them to the Satyr).
That meant the next step would be to confront the Harpy Queen, Kalthyn. At this point Daeldalus thought it wise to bring Pro Payne completely up to speed, before he traveled to the Harpies’ realm. They were seeking a powerful magical artifact that could be used to protect Cimorera from magical fiends: ironically, such a thing would prevent Romulus from getting any use out of any deals he opted to make with beings like Satyr and Harpies. Of course, Romulus wanted to find the artifact too – to destroy it. And Servius had been gathering maps that he hoped would unlock the secret of where the artifact could be found. So Pro Payne only had until Romulus figured out which of the stolen maps led him to where the artifact could be found – not only would defeating Kalthyn deny Romulus the aid of her Harpies, she might also have information that could get Pro Payne to the artifact first: if Romulus had located the artifact’s resting place, Kalthyn would probably know where he was headed.

Pro Payne entered the Harpies’ realm, rescuing some of their slaves – including a powerful Minotaur named Kretoros. Kretoros told Pro Payne that Romulus had sold him as a slave to the Harpies. As payment, Romulus had wanted the Harpies to “open a portal” for him. Uh oh – apparently Romulus did know where the artifact was and was now on his way to collect is. Pro Payne quickly interrogated Kalthyn, who told him Romulus’ destination: the dark realm of Tartarus.


You might hear a slight ringing in your ears. Fortunately you’ll be nowhere near them.

Although invading the underworld would be dangerous, Pro Payne didn’t have much choice. Thanks to Kalthyn, he knew exactly where in Tartarus Romulus was – so he journeyed there, hoping to get to the artifact first. Luck was with him, for he did find the artifact – the Helmet of Achilles – before Romulus did. Then, for good measure, he hunted own and defeated Romulus himself – fighting with the aid of a rather surprising ally: the shade of Icarus, Daedalus’ deceased son.

With Romulus’ latest plan foiled, Cimorera was safe, at least for the time being.

Pros: Both the mission briefings and the technical design of the missions were excellent, and I really enjoyed the story. The arc had a wide variety of custom mobs that were, visually, very well done. I did consider the maps very well chosen too; still, the thing that this arc does best (beyond the design of the customs) is tell a fun “mythology” story, so to speak. It did a great job of expanding on Cimorera (which even still seems largely underutilized in the game), and addressed something that seemed oddly lacking in the “canon” stuff for Cimorera – the monsters and other beasts of ancient myth.

Cons: The most glaring issue in this arc is one that many players will certainly find to be a big deal: many of the custom mobs either only give out 50% XP because a “class” is missing from their faction, or they just flat out do not give any XP at all (presumably because a “required” power has been removed from them in the custom power choices menu). The former is annoying enough – but the latter is a pretty big black mark that just doesn’t need to be there. Of course, it’s understandable that the wide variety of customs has resulted in some space problems, but one thing the author may want to consider is using “filler” from the other factions (after all, they have an alliance) – for example, even though there’s just not enough space to give the Harpies all three ranks, it might work well to downgrade the Harpy bosses to lt’s, and put a Cimoreran traitor or Satyr boss into the Harpy group. They’d only be (relatively) rare spawns – except perhaps in very large groups – but it would bring the Harpies up to normal XP levels. The “shades” from the last mission are no doubt trickier – but since it *is* Tartarus, maybe the demonic bosses from the Circle of Thorns might work? But, as I mentioned, what really adds insult to injury is that some mobs just flat out aren’t worth XP at all – including the Satyr bosses (called Sorcerors), and even Kalthyn herself. On the up side, it doesn’t happen that often in this arc. On the down side, the fact that it happens with some of the most challenging fights in the arc is probably just not a good idea. Combined, the XP issues here are definitely worth taking stopgap measures to fix: I have little down that there are many players out there who will flat out 1 or 2 star an arc for XP issues. Of course, once the space limits are expanded, the stopgap measures can be “updated” and the extra space used to fill out the “incomplete” factions. The only other “con” is really just a nitpick – there are a few very minor writing mistakes in the arc – mostly in the mission briefings. The author has overall done a very good job (in my opinion) of making Daedalus talk in an “old fashioned” way – but there are a few places where the phrasing doesn’t come off quite right. If it hasn’t been done already, having a friend (or significant other) proofread the dialog (and reading through it out loud yourself) can be very helpful here.

Score: 4.34

Next, Pro Payne indulged in his typical bit of “random arc” fun between player requested arcs. The first to come up was:

Tough Stuff (Arc ID#266131, 1 star)
Oh dear. My recommendation: just avoid this arc. The (nearly) non-existent mission briefings manage to somehow be truly awful, as is the mission design and the custom group. I’d label this atrocity as a farm, but the faction is missing bosses and so isn’t even worth normal XP. Oddly, although the arc is labeled as ‘challenging’ the customs are actually not too terribly hard – they weren’t exactly easy (and their powers made absolutely no sense; the same could be said of their names), but I’ve certainly fought customs that were much harder.

Score: 0.25

The next one to come up was:

An Error In Architect Entertainment (Arc ID#242127, 4 stars, 5 given in game)

This arc ended up being a pleasant surprise. Pro Payne is contacted by some of A.E.’s programmers and tasked with putting an end to a virus infestation that has invaded the system. While the plot itself isn’t original, it’s done well enough, and the mission briefings taking the form of e-mail exchanges was a nice touch (although there was at least one place when the “e-mails” were reading more like a real time, if one-sided, conversation). Plus, this has got to be one of the few times I’ve played an arc where there were custom mobs using powers from the Ninjitsu set where I didn’t have the urge to strangle the author by the end of the arc. A well done arc, overall!

Score: 4.055

At this point Pro Payne opted to fire up Vol. 2 of Tales of Cimorera.

Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 2: From Tartarus with Love (Arc ID#292389, Unrated – see below)
This arc started out with Imperious contacting Pro Payne and directing him to investigate the ruins of an ancient temple of Vulcan. Romulus’ troops were gathering there, and Imperious wanted to figure out what was going on.

While there, Pro Payne found several things that looked like they might not be all that great for Romulus to get his hands on – a schematic for a “clockwork wolf”, a recipe for a special alloy, and an intricately constructed bronze clockwork ‘eye.’ He also found an underground vault that appeared to have been emptied of whatever it was holding.

While in the temple ruin, Pro Payne battled Romulus’ Envoy, and found that the traitors had been sent here on the orders of a powerful general named Aulins Rutilius Lapithus – they were spearheading some sort of secret project.

It didn’t take long for Pro Payne to get an idea of what that project might be: Romulus’ troops attacked the home town of Servius (Daedalus’ assistant from the first volume of the arc), and their forces appeared to be bolstered by a large number of mechanical automatons.

Pro Payne rescued Servius and helped fend off the attack. From Servius he learned that the name of the alloy the attackers were seeking (whose formula was found in the temple) is Triton’s moss. But, after defeating the general leading the attack, Pro Payne learned that Triton’s moss was only used for a certain, very specific automaton – one that had not yet been brought into the fray.

Seeking a large supply of the alloy, Romulus’ forces, bolstered by the automatons, assaulted the Temple of Neptune; Pro Payne was sent to defeat the attackers and drive them from the temple.

It was at this point that the XP issues with the arc prompted Pro Payne to exit out and cancel – at this point the hit to the score of an arc I otherwise thought was good would have been too much. (See below) If the issues with XP in this arc are corrected, though, I’ll be happy to play through it again and finish the review.

Pros: If anything, I actually thought the story for this arc was off to an even better start than the previous arc. It’s definitely got potential – and all of the things that were positive aspects of the first arc are here as well.

Cons: You guessed it. XP issues. This time is was bad enough to just not make it worthwhile to finish the arc. The specific problem is this: the arc features a rather complex (and actually pretty challenging) custom group with two minion types, two lt. types, and at least one type of boss. One of the minion types (the Bronze Automatoi), one of the lt. types (the Toxotes), and the boss type I encountered (the Silver Colossus) are not worth any XP – again probably because a “required” power has been removed; unfortunately, in my opinion this custom faction is just too challenging in a fight for half of the mobs that spawn to not give any XP. My strong recommendation is to add back in whatever the missing required powers are – it’s not a space issue in this case, so either it’s an honest mistake, or the author removed powers that he or she thought didn’t “fit” well. If it’s the latter, while I can understand the desire to make a custom mob’s powers fit, as a player I’d much rather be facing mobs that have a few powers that don’t quite fit their theme (as it were) than not getting any XP at all from them.

Score: Not scored at this time.

Pro Payne immediately moved on to:

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society (Arc ID#344596, 5 stars)

Pro Payne’s contact was the ironically named Firecracker Kid (really “The Firecracker Kid”) – in this case the irony stemmed from the fact he was, in reality, a rather old man. And pretty crotchety to boot.

The Firecracker Kid was the sidekick to a hero named Red White and Boom, and part of the Paragon Society – a golden age supergroup whose membership mostly retired in the 70s. Kid wanted Pro Payne to stop a break-in at what looked to be an old bunker where the Paragon Society kept some of their stuff. He also wanted me to bring him back a locked case, and was very specific about not opening said case. Pro Payne quickly found that the 5th Column were responsible. While he prevented them from destroying a statue that had been stored in the bunker, the case had already been found by the Nazi goons and its contents taken. What was a bit odd was that the case contained some microfilm that the villains had looked at, then burned.

The Firecracker Kid was not happy at all. He was sure the 5th Column had stolen something sensitive; something that could be used to sully the good name of the Paragon Society. He was quite intent on Pro Payne getting it back (presumably the 5th Column had a copy of the microfilm, or at least had stored the information somewhere, and Pro Payne needed to get it out of their hands).

Kid’s godson, a hero named Sherman, had already headed into the 5th Column base where the stolen information had been taken. Oddly, Kid was very adamant that Sherman be “kept out of the loop.” It didn’t take Pro Payne long to find Sherman – a hulking tank of a man. Get it? Sherman tank? Yeah, kind of corny, but Pro Payne likes corny, if it’s done well. Anyway, Pro Payne and Sherman tracked down the base commander, Commandant Hecker, and proceeded to very forcibly arrest and detain him. Pro Payne also found some microfilm on Hecker which he dutifully neglected to tell Sherman about.

The Firecracker Kid, however, was characteristically hard to please. He told Pro Payne that everything we’d found out so far indicated the 5th Column was planning on reviving a project the Paragon Society shut down at the end of World War II – they had returned to an abandoned lab the Society had all but destroyed back then, and Sherman had already run off to stop them. That last part was what Firecracker Kid was really miffed about – even going so far as to accuse Pro Payne of “telling Sherman too much” (something Pro Payne adamantly denied, not that the denials made any difference to F.K.).

Since the 5th Column were starting up some sort of experiment in the lab, it fell to Pro Payne to destroy all of their equipment and defeat the Oberst commanding the operation. Pro Payne destroyed a cloning tube and a control console – apparently the project involved some sort of cloning program. Furthermore, the control console had a link to some other base – apparently taking out whatever the Column were doing here was not going to be enough to stop the project completely. The project commander was directing the repair of some old equipment (more cloning tubes, it seemed) and, oddly, referred to Pro Payne as more “volunteer labor.” Once defeated, the commander hinted that Sherman had already been captured or killed (he didn’t specify) – a fact that was confirmed by something Pro Payne had found earlier in a crate: Sherman’s costume and cape.

The Firecracker Kid decided it was time to finally come clean and fill in the gaps. Back during WW II, the Column had been working on a cloning program designed to create a race of Aryan “supermen” – and Sherman was the result of their research, although he was only an infant at the time the Paragon Society shut down the project. Sherman had never been told about his heritage, and had been raised instead as an American hero. But Firecracker Kid had now realized that he could not hide the details of Sherman’s heritage any more. Although he had told Sherman, he didn’t take it very well at all, and had run off to the second base. (Note: This part of the story did confuse me a bit, and made me wonder if I’d missed something earlier. If Sherman had been captured by the 5th Column, how did F.K. tell him about his heritage? Or did all of that happen before the third mission, and Sherman ran off to the first base, got ‘captured’ and taken to the second base? )

In any case, Pro Payne went to the second base (the one the control computer from the first base was linked to) to rescue Sherman and shut down the 5th Column’s operations there. The base proved to be far more modern than the first one (i.e. it used the normal tech lab map rather than the abandoned one), and while exploring it Pro Payne found a photo showing the old Paragon Society. The photo had been riddled with darts – Pro Payne had a bad feeling that the darts were the result of Sherman being upset at being lied to for all these years. Pro Payne found Sherman, but the former hero was now dressed in black and red, and calling himself “Panzer.” Panzer claimed to have been the victim of some sort of mind control device – he was just barely managing to keep himself under control and not attack. He needed Pro Payne to help him find the device; hopefully once they had it in their possession they’d have a chance to reverse the process.

Once Pro Payne had found Panzer, the two of them tracked down the base commander (Blitzkreig). During the battle, Blitz uttered a “command word” that triggered Panzer’s brainwashing, turning him against me. Pro Payne had to fight off and defeat both Blitz and Panzer, and he still needed to find something to reverse the mind control and restore Panzer to normal (i.e. Sherman). He found and cracked open a safe which contained the mind control device, and used it to reverse the effect on Panzer – he was once again Sherman, and now on the side of the good old U.S. of A. again.


I liked you better as Sherman. Stupid Mind Control ray…

But there was more: Blitz had been carrying a clipboard indicating a large amount of material from this base had been sent to another base called “The Wolves’ Den.” Apparently, the 5th Column’s revived plan to create a super-race had not yet been shut down, but Pro Payne didn’t have anything to go on regarding where the Wolves’ Den might be.

Surprisingly, it would be a few more months before he got a lead. Sherman had spent the intervening time tracking down the Wolves’ Den, and had finally found it. He (and F.K.) wanted Pro Payne’s help to destroy it. Pro Payne readily agreed.

The Wolves’ Den was populated by the completed prototype clones of the “supermen” project. In order to ensure the project ended here once and for all, Pro Payne needed to defeat all of the clones and destroy all of the base equipment, which he did. With every aspect of the old 5th Column project destroyed, the world would now be safe from their race of evil supermen! Needless to say, The Firecracker Kid was very pleased with Pro Payne.


Nazis. I hate these guys. (Yes, that was referenced in the arc – a very nice touch, I might add.)

Pros: With the exception of (what seemed like) a few loopholes in the plot, I found everything about this arc well done. The writing was top notch (both in the mission briefings and the clues – and this was the first time I’d seen text color used to track which mission the clue belonged to), the missions were fun to play through, the story was very good, and the custom group in the last mission was very well designed. The arc had a kind of corny humor to it that, frankly, worked quite well. A very good job.

Cons: The “Cons” section always seems long, doesn’t it? Actually, most of the time that’s a good sign – it often means the “flaws” I’m focusing on are so nitpicky that I feel compelled to justify why I’d even complain about something so minor. So here goes. Oddly, although I liked the principle behind the “colored” clues – in practice I found clues written in non-white text to be just a bit garish. It’s a very minor nitpick, but I do think that perhaps limiting the color coding to the clue title and leaving the clue text white might be a little “easier on the eyes” but still be a very effective way to match clues to missions (which is not to say the colors hurt my eyes or anything – it really was just a case of me not liking full clues written in colored text). What I think was the biggest loophole in the story was the one mentioned in my writeup: mission three leads me to think Sherman had been captured (or gone with the 5th Column) before I got there – yet the mission debriefing makes it seem more like he just left the base and went to talk to the Firecracker Kid. As always, it’s possible I missed something (as this arc was coming at the end of a marathon playing session). I didn’t like the “months passing” setup to the final mission. While I did understand the fundamental reason for it (the 5th Column presumably needs time to grow the clones), I’m just not a very big fan of the “a lot of time has passed” shtick (saying that it’s the next morning or even a few days have passed is, for the record, just fine by me – but very long stretches tend to disrupt my suspension of disbelief, in part because I always find myself wondering why my character would have just “taken a break” for so long – since obviously he hasn’t done any missions during that time). The tactic might be slightly more effective outside M.A. where an arc’s author might, at least in principle, be able to insert a large number of other random missions before offering the final mission of the arc – OR at least tell you to go do other things if you with to RP the passing time and thereby leave it up to the whim of the player – but that’s just not an option in M.A. since you have to finish the arc you’re on before you can do anything else. I know it sounds rather stupid, but I’d almost suggest adding a note to the mission briefing mentioning that if you’d like to roleplay your character being idle for a long time, you can log on with a different character and play him or her for a while: I’d go so far as to say that the break caused by playing even one mission on a different character makes the idea that a few months has passed on the character playing the arc more palatable (assuming, of course, the player even has any sort of potential issue with this). Of course, the simplest solution is just to omit the reference to months passing – honestly, if there’d been no reference to a lot of time passing (thereby making me question why so much time had to pass), I probably wouldn’t have even keyed into the fact that the clones would take time to grow. In other words, I think you’d be surprised how many players won’t even question the fact that the clones seemed to have been “instantly grown” if you remove a reference to a lot of time passing between the fourth and fifth missions. Of course, I might be wrong about that…

Score: 5.42

Whew. Is it just me, or are these updates getting longer?

Pro Payne is in the level range to play "The Union of the Mask" - my entry into Dr. Aeon's contest.

#352400

Thanks a ton for the great review! I like the ideal of maybe limiting the clue coloring to the title and think that I will change that the next time I update the arc. I matched the clue colors with the title of each mission's briefing because I often have found myself trying to figure out what clue just had dropped.

So far no one else has mentioned any confusion over Sherman's movements in mission 3 and 4, but I will check it out again with a critical eye.

You are correct. I felt that is I had mission 5 happen right after mission 4 people might question the clones being fully grown. PW had an issue with a few months passing, so I will take a look at that too.

Again thanks for playing the arc and for the feedback. I have to tell you that your in game feedback made my day when I got it.


WN

Pro Payne is currently open to submissions.

Here is my current, updated, queue. I almost certainly won't have a chance to play any of these arcs until next Monday (too much Christmas stuff going on), but this puts it in a short post instead of needing to wade through one of my review posts for it.

4643 Blowback (technically a replay, although the first time with Pro Payne)
257226 Tis Nobler in the Mind (No spoilers will be posted for this arc.)
347029 Breaking the Barrier (And Putting It Back Together)
340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell
3369 Matchstick Women (replay)
338575 A Tangled Weave
230187 The Hero of King’s Row
349034 A Taste for Evil
350877 The Greater Good
350522 Fear And Loathing On Striga
352400 The Union of the Mask

Depending on the exact length of these arcs, and that Pro Payne is currently set to a difficulty level of +1/x2, I seem to get through about 3 to 4 review arcs per level (taking into account playing random arcs, and the fact that I don't hesitate to sometimes use Pro Payne to play test changes/modifications/improvements to my own arcs). So my best guess is I've got room for about five more arcs before I'll close submissions until I've played through most of the queue - that may, at long last, be the end of the Pro Payne project as I have tentative plans for a "finale" to the project that may get him the rest of the way to 50.

Wow, thank you very much for the review of the tales of Cimerora!

I would like to apologize for the XP issue you ran into. Had I been aware of them, I wouldn't have asked you to review my arcs in a "from 1 to 50" thread.

To be honest with you, I had no idea that removing some of the "required" powers would simply cancel the xp rewards of that particular mob. I thought the amount would just be lowered. I knew the xp for my arc couldn't be great since some ranks were missing from the custom groups (and you're right in saying that this will be fixed with the doubled size coming with GR) but I thought it was still acceptable. And it clearly isn't.

The AE being very slow since I16 didn't really help me since nobody was playing the arcs so I couldn't get any complaints (which would have helped me actually see the issue).

Anyway, thanks again. I will go and fix the arcs.

Pro Payne is open for submissions. I’ve got five “empty” slots left before I close submissions – that will probably give me enough “review” arcs to finish out this project.

Pro Payne is currently level 46, and is playing at a difficulty of +1/x2 (with bosses allowed to spawn but AVs “downgrade” to EBs). Please keep in mind that I will not “grade down” for difficulty if your arc would be “more playable” if I reset to +0/x1 (regardless of whether or not I actually do set it to that level to play the arc). The only exception (and it isn’t really an exception) is if there are one or more “placed” foes (e.g. bosses) that I simply cannot beat, since they’d be there even if the difficulty were lower. Keep in mind that Pro Payne is a Fire/Fire scrapper, so it may be risky to suggest an arc that utilizes a high-rank (Elite Boss) foe with 90% fire resistance.

Pro Payne is “decked out” with IO sets (just about every power I want an IO set in, he’s got one in at the moment), is currently sitting on about 1,300 tickets, and somewhere between ten and twenty million inf. Incidentally, he certainly could have had much more inf. If I’d wanted him to, but I’ve been perfectly content to keep him in the 10-20 million range: if used the money to get the IO sets, and the tickets mostly to buy uncommon and rare salvage needed to make the sets (and to buy high priced rares to sell on the market). Yes, it would be more cost effective to just buy the uncommons on the market, but, as I mentioned before in earlier posts, one interesting conclusion from this project is that an MA-only character is just never wanting for “resources” – even being rather cost in-effective, I’ve had no trouble keeping him totally up to date enhancement-wise (through all stages) with tickets and money to spare.

For this “final run” to 50 for Pro Payne, I’ll be conducting the major reviews just a bit differently than before. I will mostly be writing them in character. What that really means is that I’ll be writing them more in first-person, as Pro Payne is playing through the arc: which literally does mean that if I seem to have missed something in the runthrough of the arc, that probably reflects the fact that I really did miss it (or got confused) while I was actually playing the arc: knowing that might be helpful to some authors.

And now, for Pro Payne’s most recent adventures…

Roundup In Paragon (Arc ID#333593, 2 stars)
An arc with a very simple, if somewhat amusing premise – a bunch of undead cowboys have invaded an office building, and need to be stopped. The arc simply exists as an excuse to fight a custom group. That’s a pity, because with some effort to give the arc more of a story, this one could be a rather fun little one-mission romp. There were technical issues as well: no real mission objectives, a major typo in the text of the one clue in the mission (in essence the clue title was the clue text), and the (seemingly pervasive) “the custom group is missing one of its ranks so everything is worth 50% XP” error. It does make me wonder if this arc was actually once a farm, and the author simply abandoned it after the changes hit. A pity because with a bit of work, it could be a lot of fun (without being a farm). As it stands now, though:

Score: 1.955

Pro Payne is thankful to find that Undead Cowboys are just as flammable as living ones.


Blowback (Arc ID#4643, 5 stars)

Crimson, terse as ever, sent me to investigate a Malta base that had received a shipment of “strange materials.” He told me there was no need to clear the place out, but he wouldn’t actually mind if I did. Within the lab I found a cryptic e-mail to a Malta Officer named Enigma-Silver 6-3 (something about a delivery and guests needing to RSVP in 24 hours), and four Dimensional Flux Generators – devices capable of creating wormholes suitable for dimensional travel. The things actually looked like they’d been used recently.

Even more alarming were the new soldiers in Malta’s arsenal – including new classes of human-sized titans (among them Enigma Silver 0-0-1, a boss-class version of the fire-flinging Perseus class titans I’d encountered elsewhere in the base.


How can something so thin and gangly-looking be a “Titan”? (This one was a boss-class version, by the way… and I was very happy to finally face something that flings fire, but isn’t horribly resistant to it.)

Crimson had found the same stuff in the base he investigated, but we had very little time to act on it – the Rikti had launched an attack on Steel Canyon, and it was pretty clear they were using the same Dimensional Flux Generators Malta had to bypass the War Walls and facilitate the assault. We weren’t clear on why the Malta would be helping the Rikti, but I rushed to Steel Canyon to try to find out (and, of course, put down the assault).

The Malta had fielded a “coerced” hero agent, Blackhawk Avenger, whom I defeated after a protracted fight. She wasn’t much on words, but she did hint at displeasure that Malta was helping the Rikti. For their part, the Rikti war commander also indicated that whatever the terms of this alliance, the Malta had lived up to their end of the bargain – and that the Rikti considered them no more than allies of convenience. I defeated most of the Rikti invaders, and rescued several citizen that had gotten trapped in the crossfire – but hadn’t learned that much yet about what exactly was going on between the Rikti and the Malta.


Hey?! What did I ever do to you?!

It ended up being Crimson who filled in more of the “big picture.” The Rikti attack had been focused on three buildings (one owned by a venture capital group, one by an environmental group, and one by a law firm). All three were previously known to be of interest to the Malta: each had given Malta trouble in the past, and they had evidently cut a deal with the Rikti to focus their attacks there (presumably in return for the War Wall bypassing technology the Malta had lent them).

There wasn’t enough time to really get into specifics, though: Bluehawk Avenger had recovered from her injuries, and had been sent to the Rikti base where the attack had originated from – alone. It looked very much like the Malta were trying to ensure someone who had the inside scoop on their dealing with the Rikti would “die in the line of duty.” I went to the base to “rescue” her from that fate…

I intercepted Bluehawk shortly after the start of her attack on the Rikti base. Apparently, our speculation had been off. She told me that her control implant had actually been removed by her superior, Enigma-Silver 6-3, who had basically set her free and told her to run. It had been her choice to attack the Rikti base in the hope that she could rescue some of the people they had captured (which we subsequently did). When we were finished with the rescues, she told me that it was 6-3’s superior, Enigma-Silver 2-0, who had ordered the deal be made: the Malta needed to teach some lawyers and bankers who wouldn’t play ball a lesson, but a direct attack would be too obvious. So they cut a deal with the Rikti to spearhead the attack instead (for their part, the Rikti got captives, and a chance to launch an assault deep into Paragon City). But 6-3 had then started acting strange, including having the Malta med techs remove Bluehawk’s implant and setting her free. It seemed to me that 6-3 was having a major attack of conscience triggered by how abhorrent he found the deal with the Rikti to be, and had decided to do what he could to sabotage the Enigma-Silver cells’ operations.

Crimson had some news that increased my confidence in my assessment. He knew of three other supers (non-combat telepaths) that were being held in a Malta base that had been in 6-3’s charge. He’d also received reports that the Malta within the base had started firing on each other. I wasn’t sure if this was 6-3’s attempt to further damage the operations of the Enigma-Silver cell, or 2-0’s attempt to shut down a part of his cell that had gone rogue, but my duty was clear – head to the base and try to rescue the telepaths from the crossfire. Crimson agreed.

The base was guarded by two Zeus-class Titans (oddly, it actually felt good to see them even as they were busy sending me to the hospital, something about ‘familiarity’), but was awash in battle between the “advanced” Malta of Enigma Silver cell, and the more traditional variety. I found it worth noting that apparently the advancements were not really giving them an edge – the “old-school” Malta they were pitted against pretty much wiped the floor with them, leaving me mostly on clean up duty.

But the telepaths were a lost cause; I arrived too late to save even one. I did, at least, confirm one part of my suspicions: Enigma-Silver 6-3 had been so disgusted by 2-0’s “pragmatic” deals with the Rikti that he’d, well, given his “two weeks” – in the most violent method possible. Still, by the time I finished clearing out the base, I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d stumbled into the middle of a cleanup operation or 6-3’s attempt at vengeance. (For the record, I didn’t overhear any conversations from any battles.) I returned to Crimson, hoping he could shed some light on things, above and beyond what I’d already figured out. Which was ironic, because he’s not really known for that sort of thing…

Oh wait. I’d downloaded an e-mail while raiding 6-3’s base, but hadn’t had time to read it. Ah. It did look like 6-3 was having an attack of conscience - Enigma Silver 2-0’s plan to use the Rikti to cut down some civilians who wouldn’t play ball was just the last blow in one too many instances of “do something against your ideals to support your ideals” than 6-3 was willing to handle. There looked to be a civil war of sorts in Malta’s Enigma Silver cell. I still didn’t know what the attack on 6-3’s base was about (specifically whose “cleanup” it was since both sides had reason to want to “clean house”, so to speak), but it didn’t matter at this point. It was time to talk to Crimson and see what he’d fill in.

Crimson didn’t want to talk about the base, because there were bigger things brewing. Apparently 6-3 and the Malta who still thought they had orders to follow his lead had been on the run, trying to evade 2-0 and the rest of Enigma Silver, while I was busy raiding their base. But just about the time I finished with the base, 2-0’s forces and caught up to 6-3’s. In Steel Canyon, no less. If that weren’t bad enough, the Rikti (led by the very same war leader, Jo’Dar, that I’d defeated earlier) were convinced that Bluehawk’s attack had been a direct result of Malta attempting to betray their arrangement. So a large contingent of the Rikti had boiled up out of the sewers to engage both factions of Malta.

Left to their own devices, they’d probably take each other out, but I needed to minimize collateral damage – so I headed in to defeat the three leaders. I mostly avoided the battles sprawled across Steel Canyon in favor of the omnipresent Rikti patrols, and the leaders of each of the three factions. First came 6-3, who really did apparently lead the more “advanced” Malta faction (so at least that question was settled): he seemed more … confused … than anything – a man torn too many ways between the inflexible ideals that led him to become part of the Malta group, and the reality of how Malta feels it must conduct its business to reach those goals. Ja’Dar appeared to be little more than a bio-engineered maniac – the Rikti had given him a kind of organic “supercharge” (yes, he was a recolored Hro’Dotz) to help him exact his vengeance. And, for his part, Enigma-Silver 2-0 was the consummate professional: my presence there was just a distraction from the real task of putting down 6-3 and whatever rebel Malta were taking orders from him. Too bad he underestimated me. Whoever he was, and whatever he knew, though, were lost – an incendiary “suicide” device made sure nothing was left after his defeat.


Pro Payne versus the enigmatic Enigma Silver 6-3

With Steel Canyon secured, I returned to Crimson. My reward for all my hard work: 6-3’s real name. Richard DiStefano. The sad conclusion of the career of a lifelong covert ops agent ruled by his fears: he became a spy for the U.S. out of a fear of the communists. He became a member of Malta when his fear of the communists was replaced by a fear of the power wielded by supers. And, in the end, he came to fear the monster he’d become furthering Malta’s objectives. I suppose by trying to get out he thought he could escape all of the crimes he’d committed.

He was wrong. I saw to that. His fate would be decided by his willingness to cooperate with government officials interested in Malta’s inner workings. None of that mattered to me; I was done with the whole affair.

Pros: Little needs to be said here – in all of the major categories I usually look at for an arc, this arc is solid. The writing’s good for both the mission briefings and the clues. Solid mission design and a well balanced custom group. Difficulty is very appropriate to the advertised level range. And the overall story is good too: has the twists and turns and intrigue you’d expect from an arc involving the Malta, yet isn’t too terribly hard to follow. In the realm of pure “gut-instinct” opinion I found this to be the least interesting storyline of this particular author’s arcs (where gut-instinct really boils down to I can’t explain exactly why), but I still thought it was a nice, solid tale. One thing that I did notice is the degree to which this arc can be made “variable length” – several of the missions could be played through relatively quickly if you just hunt the objectives, yet will take a fair amount of time if you take a more completest approach (which I tended to do).

Cons: I’m going to use the “Cons” section mostly for little suggestions on things that I think would improve the arc. Obviously, they’re just my opinion (I say that a lot, eh?) – things that I think would have increased by enjoyment of the arc and that I hope would apply to others playing it, but, as always, that’s up to the discretion of the author.
First and foremost, I saw the choice of rank for some of the big bads to be a bit off. The best way I can explain it is while there weren’t any technical problems with Bluehawk Avenger being an Elite Boss and Ja’Dor (or Jo’Dar?) and Enigma-Silver 6-3 being AVs (who downgraded to EBs for me) – beyond Avenger being rather overpowered in the mission where she’s an ally – their rank did conflict a bit with my “does it seem natural for them to be this high a rank”-o-meter. Sometimes when you run across a foe that’s EB or higher, it “feels right” (makes perfect sense the foe would be significantly stronger than the faction’s bosses) – but sometimes it just feels more like the only reason they are that powerful is because the author wanted to increase the challenge level, and that’s what it feels like in this arc. I honestly don’t remember if 2-0 was an AV or not (I don’t even know if that Malta AV is available in M.A.), but I do remember thinking that 6-3 would work perfectly well as just a regular boss (and would feel more, well “Malta” – a group that often seems practically defined by its lack of central, key figures with AV levels of power). And, related to that, the “upgrade” to Ja’Dor almost seems “forced” just to ensure that the Rikti have an AV in play to match the AV (or two?) the Malta have in play. I honestly think it would “feel more right” (for lack of a better way of explaining it) if Avenger, and 6-3 were just regular bosses, and Ja’Dor was his original Chief Soldier boss form (likely recolored, but I didn’t know for sure), rather than a recolored version of Hro’Dotz (although I did notice and like the fact that his Hro’Dotz color scheme matched his Chief Soldier one). I do think the author has done a very good job of designing “upgraded” Malta, but I found myself thinking they didn’t quite match the visual feel of the normal Malta units. Frankly, I thought they seemed a little too thin, trim, and athletic for Malta: I know that’s very nitpicky, but it was surprisingly noticeable when you see them side by side with the “regular” Malta soldiers. I also thought the upgraded titans needed to be considerably larger and bulkier looking – I definitely get that the whole point of the upgrade is to make them much more “covert” and mobile (and therefore small) than the normal Titans, but, wow, there just seemed something really incongruous with calling something man-sized a Titan, not to mention that I did honestly find it a bit hard to believe that the Malta would go all the way from lumbering hulks of mecha to sleek, slender androids in one upgrade.
Although this arc does explain exactly why the Rikti were working with the Malta (e.g. explaining what both sides were getting out of the deal, which then justifies why it was made in the first place), the truth is that, when playing through the arc the feelings of “why the heck are these two factions working together?” are strongest in the second mission. While that very same mission does drop two hints as to why the Rikti and Malta are working together (with Crimson filling in more information in the debriefing), those hints are delivered by in-mission dialog, which can be very easy to miss (and likely lead to players getting through the mission without having a good handle on what exactly is going on). I can’t speak to the level at which someone who didn’t catch these dialog clues would be frustrated by that “what’s going on here”? feeling, but I can honestly say I would have been if I hadn’t caught the dialog clues (which didn’t fill in all the blanks, but at least made it clearer to me that the blanks would be filled in, if only I’d be patient). Perhaps a clue or two to expound a bit on Avenger’s and Ja’Dor’s in-combat dialog?
Related to that – the new Malta units did seem a bit “out of the blue” (no pun intended). I certainly readily bought the concept behind why they were there in that first mission, but I did find myself thinking that maybe a bit of foreshadowing in the mission set up would help to “introduce” them a bit better.

Score: 4.66

Pro Payne’s current queue will be listed shortly. The next arc will be Tis Nobler in Mind – although since the author requested that I avoid spoilers (well, if memory serves, left it to my discretion, but it wouldn’t have been mentioned if no-spoilers wasn’t important to the author on some level, so I opted to go with no spoilers), it will not include a written runthrough of the arc (or screenshots), and the Pros and Cons sections will be carefully edited to avoid anything I’d consider a spoiler.

Thanks for the review! I've posted replies to the arc's thread.

Pro Payne is still open for suggestions. There are three open slots left!

He’s currently one bubble shy of level 47. His current queue is:

347029 Breaking the Barrier (And Putting It Back Together)
340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell
3369 Matchstick Women (replay)
338575 A Tangled Weave
230187 The Hero of King’s Row
349034 A Taste for Evil
350877 The Greater Good
350522 Fear And Loathing On Striga
352400 The Union of the Mask
349298 The Better Part of Valor
355068 The Galactic Protectorate - 06
1044 The Empire – One Alliance

And now, on to my last set of reviews for 2009.

Ghosts Gone Bad (Arc ID#304263, 2 stars)
I was contacted by some old woman called “Segway” who told me the tale of one “Baxter Figgins.” Baxter was an expert in the occult who’d lost his wife to a car accident. He wanted to bring her back, and in the process was allowing spirits to spill over into our world. I “invaded” the decrepit warehouse where he’s set up shop and captured him, but an associate of his was working to open up another mystical portal. I closed down the portal (I found it in an abandoned office building), but couldn’t find the associate. The ‘associate’ turned out to be Baxter’s wife, Lydia, returned from the dead as some sort of hot, orange-skinned necromancer elf woman. Okay. This arc’s got a foundation, but it is just plain incomplete – the story is more like an outline than a real story, and everything else is just not there: no clues, most mission objectives aren’t filled in, the final big bad doesn’t have an actual faction, just to list a few.


Apparently, if you die and are then brought back to life by your necromancer husband, you don’t come back as you. You come back as an orange skilled elf-lady.

Score: 1.715

Cliff Em All (Arc ID#257335, 2 stars)
Hmm. James Hetfeild (lead singer for Metallica, and yes, the name was misspelled in the arc…) has tasked me with getting some CDs “he’s not proud of.” I’m thinking this could be interesting/amusing or really bad. (I do note before entering the mission that it’s not looking good at all: ‘ol James is not particularly articulate or coherent.) Once in the abandoned office building, I find myself “stealing back” five boxes of St. Anger CD’s from a bunch of evil fans, groupies, managers, and record companies. Okay, I have to admit it was rather amusing, which is why it is such a disappointment the author didn’t actually put more effort into the arc: the custom group was fun to fight but there’s just nothing here! Granted, I also probably should have reported this one, but I didn’t think to do it.


I’m not sure why an entire evil record company bares more than a passing resemblance to a very tall Westin Phipps, but I can tell you a large number of evil record companies went down in flames this day.

Score: 1.67

The main review for today (albeit a short one) is:

Tis Nobler in the Mind (Arc ID#257226, 4 stars, 5 stars given in game)

In order to avoid posting spoilers for this arc, I’m omitting my customary narrative. I did write up a short version of it anyway though. If the arc’s author would like it PM’ed to him, I’m happy to do it. (It isn’t terribly long, and there’s not much to it – just my normal recounting of playing through the arc.)

Keep in mind that while I’m trying to avoid any undue spoilers, it’s very possible some slipped in in the Pros and Cons section below, so if you would like to play this arc (and I do think it’s worth a play for sure) and don’t want to risk anything being spoiled, stop reading now!

Here’s Pro Payne’s honest attempt at a screenshot from the arc that is as spoiler free as a screen shot can be (other than the obvious fact that I’ve revealed that in one of the missions you are in an office building and you fight at least one group of Arachnos).

Pros: The arc’s missions are built well, use a wide variety of maps, and were able keep my interest. The arc’s story line was not terribly difficult to follow (which is good!), and it made very, very good use of clues to help advance the story. The mission briefings were a bit on the short side, but were well done overall – and their length was consistent with what I perceived to be the personality of the contact. It was a solid, fun-to-play arc.

Of course, as is usually the case, the Cons section is much longer since it’s here that I prefer to put suggestions that I think might improve the arc, so bear with me.

Cons: This is probably the most “spoiler-risky” part of the review, so, seriously, if you don’t want to risk any spoilers before playing the arc, stop reading. One issue I had was the dichotomy between what I as the player and figured out about the story very early on (I was suspicious at the very beginning of the second mission, and I had a pretty good idea as to exactly what was going on by the end of it), and the fact that my character (in the context of the arc) clearly had no idea what was happening. This may have been the author’s intent, but I do think the story would work better if the player was kept completely in the dark longer. Honestly, I think the second mission should have even fewer “clues as to what’s going on” in it. In particular, I would recommend making the “mission intro pop-up” text for mission two seem completely normal – like absolutely nothing is wrong at all. The author may even want to consider replacing the “recolored” foe at the end of that mission with a normal Arachnos boss, but keep his dialog the same (since battle dialog is easy to miss, the cute part about this is the player might not even notice there’s something “off” about what the boss is saying). Then, optionally, you can actually have the mission exit pop-up say something to the effect of: “That’s odd. You know you were just in a warehouse, but you can’t remember exactly what you did.” That would possibly delay the player from figuring out what exactly was wrong. Although thing that might be interesting to try is to actually make the custom bosses in mission three (and four?) actually seem (look) more villainous (but again, keep their dialog the same). You might even consider actually using some Arachnos or Praetorian AVs (such as Ghost Widow and perhaps Chimera) as “visual stand ins” for the AV-class bosses in missions three and four. All of this might help “sell” the story more to the player.

The second thing I’d suggest is a bit of juggling around the powers in your custom enemy faction. Here is specifically the issue I was having, game-play wise: several of the lt’s and bosses are masterminds, and someone (I thought it was the minions, but it might have been one of the lt’s) was spamming web grenades. Now one or the other I wouldn’t necessarily have an issue with. And even combining the two isn’t necessarily bad per se. But when you also give some of the baddies perception boosting powers, then all of a sudden, you are routinely aggroing multiple spawns across the room (since lab maps are kind of notorious for having fairly small rooms where two or three different sets of mobs can spawn in – normally they’re just far apart that you might be able to effectively pull and not fight them all at once, but these guys’ perception was making that much harder). So in very short order you’re facing walls of summoned minions that you actually have trouble maneuvering around to get to the masterminds that summoned them because you’ve also got six or seven web grenades on you.

Just for your amusement, here was the most pronounced example of that. The ally in the final mission spawned in right next to the first “big bad” in the mission, and said “big bad” then ran to the far elevators, aggroing at least two other groups (I didn’t run through them, but thanks to the boosted perception, they saw me the instant I rounded the corner). To make matters worse, there were ambushes tied to either the big bad, the ally, or both. By the time I died (and it was by no means instant – I really did last quite a while in this fight, which is one of the reasons I wasn’t terribly upset by the set up), the entire corridor was flat-out wall to wall with mobs attacking me. On the up side, that did have to be one of the most spectacular castings of Rise of the Pheonix I’ve ever seen.

Finally, although I do absolutely see why he had the power, you might still want to consider removing Confuse from that second big bad in the last mission. While it’s not unusual for me to have one break free for situations like that, he managed to actually confuse my ally (I don’t know if he does that a lot in your play-throughs, or if I just got really unlucky), which turned my ally from “something to help a soloer to complete the mission without having to assemble a team” to a pretty big liability. Plus, as I recall, there is actually a pretty good “in-story” reason you could call on to explain why that particular big bad wouldn’t be able to confuse you any more (much less your ally).

So again, a good solid arc, but definitely one where I think some tweaks could be made to make it even better.

Score: 4.41

Thanks for the review. Just a few notes.

The main goal of the narrative for me is to not keep the player, or necessarily even the character in the dark. Figuring out some of what's going on near the second or third mission is exactly how I had intended, considering the end of the third mission lays it all out on the line for you. That's the main reason for the number and detail of the clues.

Second, as for replacing them with recolored Praetorians, that's not a possibility. The enemies you fight are actually the boss-rank allies instead of the AVs, since this is designed for a high level solo character.

The custom group can use some tweaking, and the initial encounter is incredibly hard to balance after I16's new difficulty settings. I'm curious as to what difficulty you played this arc at. On lower difficulty settings, in the range of x1-3, it's practically all minions that show up in the fight, who are some pretty weaksauce AR/Regen minions set to standard by design specifically for that reason.

The mastermind LTs are the only ones with web grenade, so to get spammed with so many seems like you were playing on a high difficulty. If I could remove web grenade and keep the later devices powers I would do it in a heartbeat, but that would drop their XP to nothing.

Again, thanks for the review, and if you want to PM me what you typed up about the story I'd be happy to read it.

Hey, Coulomb2, glad to hear you're almost at the end of your project!

If you there's still a slot open, I'd love it if you took Pro Payne through one final "Galactic Protectorate" arc, "The Galactic Protectorate - 06"! Arc ID#355068

Hi there, Coulomb2! I just now saw your thread, and I was pleased to see you had reviewed Polar Emergence Neutral Government User Interface Network (PENGUIN) earlier; thank you for your feedback on that. If you have any slots open, would you consider reviewing its sequel, Waddle's Revenge (302196)? It's level range 30-40 first mission, 30-54 missions two through four. If you don't, that's perfectly fine, but I'd love to hear what you think of the rest of Waddle's story.

Thanks for your consideration!