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

This posts's not a review (although I've got one for a random arc on the way - this one ends up getting a bit more effort than many of the other "one random" arcs I've done). Instead, I'm listing my current, updated queue, along with a few notes (and responses).

Pro Payne is currently level 47. His difficulty is set to +1/x2, although I try very hard to be reasonable about difficulty issues - basically, I only grade down on difficulty if I suspect I still would have had problems even set to +0/x1: e.g. it was a *singular* opponent that was giving me fits; or you've got a dangerous custom group on a map where spawns tend to be tightly packed, and you made use of lots of ambushes, etc., etc. He's got two slots remaining in his review queue. Please be aware that to be as fair as possible, if you've already got an arc on my review list and you request something for my last two slots, you *might* get pre-empted by a new author. If that happens, and you'd like for me to play/review a different arc for you (to replace the one on the queue), just let me know!

Here's the queue. My plan is to take a crack at "Breaking the Barrier" tomorrow (and it is now time for Pro Payne's very last "Safeguard" to get the very last temporary power - he will be in his 'alternate' mode for this: read the very first post if you're curious what that really means, and set to +0/x1.)

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
302196 Waddle's Revenge

(If you've made a request and you are not on this list as of the date of this post, please let me know!)

To Tubbius: No worries! Waddle's Revenge is on the list! And welcome to the MA Arc Finder channel!

To Turg: Please do let me know - I do plan on breaking out Pro Payne from time to time even after he hits 50, and there's a good chance I might actually make a second go at the level 1 through 50 thing in M.A.; no way I'm going to do reviews if I do that (since my primary interest would be to see how much faster things go if I'm not devoting so much time to writing reviews), but there's a good chance not only Pro Payne would give the arc another try (if you want me to check out any fire related tweaks on your end boss), but that a non-fire character would give it a try...

As a work around, you can always give the character a fiery aura in the costume editor for now.

Pro Payne is open to submissions, but only has room for two more arcs. See yesterday's post - should be about three posts back - for more details and my current queue.

Yesterday Pro Payne did his customary random search, and actually came across a two parter (which I played both parts of).

Forging an Empire, pt. 1 (Arc ID#297471, 2 stars)

For this one I had to break out the goatee and become evil Pro Payne. Evidently, in spite of being a level 46 villain, I am, in fact, the lackey and sniveling subordinate of my contact, the Iron Cancelor (spelling error in the arc). He orders me to scour a Council base looking for parts; I don’t find any because the base has already been hit by a group of heroes. So I.C. decides I need to hit Vandal’s personal lab. But he doesn’t know where it is, so he sends me into a random Council base to get the access code from the base commander. The base commander is an Ascendant Archon who promptly enters hibernate, summons in two ambushes, heals back up to about 75% life, then flees like a little wuss. Pro Payne comes up empty (i.e. the mission fails). I.C. threatens me, obviously displeased that I have failed him. Then he states “he had a backup plan” (no further details) and the arc proceeds with the next mission as though I’d never failed. Next I am to invade Vandal’s base using the access code I stole (wait … didn’t I fail to steal the access code?!), defeat all Council I encounter, and subdue Vandal.

Vandal certainly put up a pretty good fight (actually, he managed to beat me down about three or four times – that “Overload” field of his lasts longer than I thought it did; but, for the record, the repeated defeats here did not affect the score I gave this arc – the author certainly gave me ample warning an AV/EB was going to be the goal of this mission), but I did defeat him, and found several bits of Citadel’s technology. Apparently, that’s what I.C. was looking for – however, he told me “this was just the beginning.” I was now to examine an abandoned weapons facility. He didn’t seem to know what was there, but did know that Malta and Nemesis were looking for whatever it was, and wanted me to get it for him. I was thinking “can’t we just stay focused on the task at hand, whatever your grand master plan is?!” – but (evidently) I.C.’s the boss here and I have to do whatever he says. So into the base I went (after a short diversion to level up).

Inside the base, I had to steal a weapon schematic, a large number of weapon parts, and defeat every single Nemesis and Malta soldier in the base (Boo!). I then returned to I.C. He wanted me to raid a Rikti portal base for technology (after he took all of the weapon-building equipment I had just gotten for him). So into the Rikti base I went.

I collected all of the components, and all of the Rikti portal coordinates they had in their central computer and then studiously delivered them to the Iron Cancelor. At this point the arc abruptly ended (well, really I think I’m supposed to start up the second part, but at least the mission briefing doesn’t point to the next arc or anything…)

This arc is actually a pretty good example of the bare minimum I’d be looking for to award something 3 stars. The mission briefings are the minimum that I would still consider an average effort, as is the mission design and the clues. No additions to the score – no deductions. Until you consider the story. Here I am, a level 46 (47 by the end) “villain” – and I’m basically acting as a gofer for some other villain. And I mean that in the most literal sense: I’m just hitting one enemy base after the other stealing technology and delivering it to my “master.” And just because he tells me so – no payment, no mercenary opportunities, no reason for me to do this.

So here, specifically are the issues. This would be an “average” arc, except for the fact that there’s no real story development (the story just kind of derails after the 3rd mission, when all of a sudden it seems like I’m just being sent on random collection tasks with no information on what exactly it is that I’m collecting), there’s a gratuitous defeat-all (it’s vaguely justified, but it’s also on a pretty big map too), the “motivation” is totally level inappropriate (sure the goal is supposed to be “world domination”, but I’m just the lackey here. At level 45+ I should be the one seeking world domination), and the author has made no real attempt to give a reasonable “salvage” of the story should you fail the 2nd mission (which there’s really no reason for that mission to be failable in the first place).

Score: 1.92


Forging (somebody else’s) Empire, pt. 1: A typical mission. Pro Payne is looking for data in this Rikti Base.

And on to...

Forging an Empire, pt. 2 (Arc ID#297472, 2 stars, 3 given in game – just barely)

Wow … this one quite literally starts up *right* where the first part left off. The author is just treating the new M.A. slot as five extra mission slots to finish up his or her arc. Which is actually not something I have a problem with – my problem is with the sheer abruptness of it. There not even an attempt at closure or to make the first arc at least even partially stand on its own. We just launch right into arc #2.

Okay, anyway, apparently all of that technology I stole originates on Praetorian Earth, so now Iron Chancelor is sending me to a world that has been taken over by Nightstar so see what I can find. (I want to just say that as villain Pro Payne, I better get the chance to beat the ever-loving **** out of this presumptuous little *** by the time this maxi-arc is over. If this ends with me literally helping I.C. take over the world, and I get nothing, it’ll be -100 on the score. Okay, not really.)

I found myself in the midst of the city, battling Nightstar’s androids. I defeated a whole host of her android servants, and even Nightstar herself (no clue as to exactly why she was there – I guess just doing an inspection or something…). I continued to fight Nightstar’s android servants, looking for a damanged Class III android. Eventually, I got kind of bored, realizing that this feeble world must be packed to the gills with nothing but Nightstar’s Spectra class ‘droids, so I activated my (amazing) Ninja-Run and rapidly… um … sorta “swished” through the place look for that damaged android I (apparently) needed to find. I found her, finally, and she promised to give me all of her secrets. I don’t know why she caved so quick … I mean, I didn’t even threaten her or anything … but she did. And I delivered them (the secrets) to I.C., like the dutiful level 47 lackey that I am. Argh.

Hmm. I.C. seemed almost appreciative this time. Almost. In any case he sent me into Neuron’s domain, since Neutron is the one who has the “final” schematics for the weapon. Dangit, I thought I’d had those since that Council raid two missions ago. Okay. Okay. I’m going to just do this.

For the Iron Chancelor!

Wait. What am I saying?!

Oh you can’t be serious. The mission is a defeat all! Really? REALLY? Ugh. Apparently I’ve got to get Neuron’s weapon designs, and all of the supporting research that goes with them. And then I’ve got to wipe out every last thing in this place. I don’t know why. Just cause, I guess – no problem. Pro Payne’s a supervillain. He’ll give it a shot. While in Neuron’s base, Pro Payne does find some information: I’m not entirely sure about this, but it seems like the “weapon schematics” I’ve been looking for are Siege’s technical readouts. Either that, or Seige is building the weapon on his factory world, and Neuron’s been monitoring his progress. Either way, after clearing out a rather large lab map of all of its robotic inhabitants, I return to the Iron Cancelor.


Forging an Empire, Pt. 2: Oh, hi there Neuron! I’m here to st… OUCH! OUCH!

I.C. now informs me that he will put aside his hunt for Anti-Matter (huh? When did he say anything about hunting Anti-Matter?), and instead have me capture Seige’s factory. Once he has control over the factory, he’ll be able to churn out his army of robots and conquer the world. Once again, I agree to do his bidding.

I.C. gives me a virus that will allow him to take control of the factory, and I then head to Seige’s world. Oh for Pete’s sake. I have to defeat every foe in the giant outdoor factory map! Why?! I have the freaking virus? Can’t I just take defeat Seige and take over the factory, and leave I.C.’s newly produced armies to clean up?

As I move through the factory, destroying RAM Series robots, I am treated to a rather pleasant surprise – apparently there are three terminals where I need to upload the virus, and each successful upload summons in (“constructs”?) three patrol sets of Iron Infantry – so I *do* actually get some aid in clearing the factory after all (metagame: not to mention the fact that all those patrols are taking up plenty of spots that would be used for enemy spawns, which does make the defeat all somewhat more tolerable). A second nice surprise comes as I defeat Siege: a bunch of Longbow arrive, led by Citadel and Luminary. I start clearing out Longbow, and defeat Citadel. It’s then that I notice that the Iron Chancelor is actually here as well, and will act as my ally. At first I’m a bit miffed to be dealing with an Elite Boss ally, but then I notice that for some reason Luminary has spawned in as a Hero (in spite of my settings). And I don’t mean “says Hero but it’s really got the stats of a boss” – she’s got 28,000 hit points and 800 end, and hits like a truck.

Although I made a fairly heroic effort to defeat Luminary anyway (with the aid of inspirations, and Iron Chancelor’s help), in the end I had to give up, after I.C. was defeated in combat. The heroes carried the day, and I quit out of the arc. In this case, I was willing to rate it since I did nearly manage to complete it.

The continuation has the same issues as the first part, although I’d say the mission briefings are even more terse (to the point where I considered them slightly below average, although only slightly). The issue with the story is the same: it doesn’t make much sense, actually seems to contract itself in places, and there’s still the issue with why such a high level villain would be acting like a lackey or subordinate. The clues also seemed to have had a little less effort put into them two. On the up side, this arc was only three missions long (I don’t intend for this to be sarcastic: if it hadn’t been for the defeat alls, it actually would have felt a very good length for an arc like this), and didn’t have a mission that you could just pointlessly fail and then simply ignore the failure. Also, while not terribly original, I did like the visual design of a few of the customs – and the major characters really did have decent descriptions. Frankly, I found that the “extra good” in this part was worth just a bit more than the “extra bad.” (And that’s ignoring the fact that I totally failed the arc because Luminary was a Hero-class bad guy – but until I’m sure that’s not just a bug, I’m not going to count off for that.)

Score: 2.045

Next, I'll be playing Lazarus' "Breaking the Barrier" arc. I'll play as much of it as I can today, and try to get the review up by tomorrow or Thursday.

Pro Payne is open to submissions, and has two slots left.

By the end of today’s arc, he was just shy of level 48, and was sitting on about 8,500 tickets, and about 24 million influence. Right after Breaking the Barrier, I switched to his alternate “just a regular guy with no real superpowers mode,” updated that mode’s enhancements (cost about 3 million inf, but since I’d waited to level 47 to do it, I was able to slot in 50s – the last set of enhancements that mode will ever need). He’s playing through the police radio missions that will give him access to the last Safeguard (along with its temporary power, and that “do nothing” accolade you get for collecting all of the exploration badges) – of course his difficulty is back down to +0/x1 (+1/x2 is much too challenging for a build that doesn’t use any of my overtly fire-like primary or secondary powers).

He’s still got four missions to go to unlock the Safeguard, but just leveled up to 48. So only two levels to go before the end of the project! (And yes, I absolutely will finish playing through the arcs in my queue – heck, the last few are an excuse to actually enjoy his full build at level 50 before his “semi-retirement”!) If you’re considering requesting a review, don’t delay – if I do hit level 50, and I’ve still got open slots left (and I’m not yet out of arcs to play, and I probably won’t be), I do intend to close submissions anyway.

One final note – the holiday vacation is over for me, so updates will likely be less frequent than they have been over the past two weeks. My goal is to try to do one review per week, but I’m sure there are going to be busy weeks where I just won’t have time to devote to getting a review out (just to give you an idea, playing a five mission arc while writing the playthrough notes, and then figuring out the score and adding the Pros and Cons typically takes a total of 4-5 hours, and some weeks I just don’t have that kind of time).

Here’s the current queue, and then on to today’s review:

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
302196 Waddle's Revenge

Breaking The Barrier (And Putting It Back Together) (Arc ID#347029, 5 stars)

My contact here was the Iron Samurai, but we didn’t have much time for chit-chat. He had wanted to see me because of recent Nagan activity (and I had a fair amount of experience dealing with them), but we were quickly interrupted when a nearby office building was attacked by strange monsters. I quickly went to investigate.

For whatever reason, the instant I heard “strange monsters” I just had this feeling it was going to be the Rularuu. I was right – and was glad for Iron Samuri’s help (I found him just inside the entrance), although we did get separated very early in the mission. This was one of the rare times where I wasn’t deliberately trying to ditch an ally, but I didn’t feel a strong need to go back for him (I was holding my own just fine), so I pressed on. I found three captives: one told me about some strange lizard people (Huh? I guess that’ll be clearer a little bit later…). A second clued me in to the fact that a Storm Elemental was probably propping open whatever gate the Rularuu had come through. Well, to be honest, I actually had figured it out because I’d already found and defeated the Storm Elemental, and closed the rift. The third captive wasn’t in the hands of the Rularuu, though – they were captured by the Nagans. The Nagans also had some stolen, and modified, portal technology, and seemed oddly surprised to even be here – like this had not been the expected result of activating their portal device… perhaps multiple gates to multiple worlds had been opened (which might explain a bunch of lizard people, although I didn’t find any in the office). I managed to capture all of the Nagans but one: a Tech Suziku managed to teleport out once I defeated her.

(Aside: This arc’s definitely off to a good start! We’ll have to see how it plays out, of course, but I was impressed with the use of mission objectives, by the humor displayed by the Nagans, and I thought the “bring you up to speed” clue you get right after accepting the mission was a very nice touch. If the Nagans are the lizard people, you might want to add that to the clue – but they may not be. I’ll need to wait and see.)

Iron Samurai informed me that portals dumping Rularuu were opening up all over the city – whatever the Nagans had done, it had weakened the “barrier” between here and the Shadow Shard. While Samurai headed out to deal Rularuu sightings, I headed into the Nagan hideout where Tech Suziku had fled: I needed to try to get her to tell me what was going on.

Incidentally, one of the first things I did once I was in the hideout was to zoom in really far – a lot of the Nagan’s faces are obscured, but once I was zoomed in it was clear that the Nagans are lizard-like, confirming that they are the lizard people referred to earlier. In retrospect it makes sense: a Naga is a kind of snake demon or spirit, after all.


Oh Hey! They really are kinda lizard-like! Granted, I really should have know that by now (keep reading…)

And then I found that clue from Cobalt Stinger. Given how long it is (and the fact that I have it before the mission was completed) makes me think I must have gotten it when I first accepted the mission, and just had a complete brain fart and didn’t notice it. Well, back to the story…

I found Tech Suziku, who was willing to make a deal. She told us that several Nagans had been captured in a raid on Aeon’s lab, and she had actually tried to use the portal technology to teleport them out of captivity (and that’s when all hell started to break loose). She’d offer to help us repair the damage provided I’d head over to the Rogue Isles and rescue her colleagues. Naturally, I agreed.

While in the lab I rescued four Nagans (who proved to be very handy allies in battle), and then confronted Dr. Aeon directly. I managed to defeat him, although he did show some rather unexpected combat abilities (he was basically like a claw pattern Paragon Protector). After his defeat (which he claimed didn’t matter because he wasn’t the real Dr. Aeon anyway, which was consistent with his very odd powers), I acquired the codes to his research data, which I downloaded.

The notes were interesting: Aeon had been working on both Portal and Time Displacement technology, and complaining of raids by the Nagans. Even more intriguing was mention of ‘taunting’ by Tech Suziku – it implied she and Aeon were having something of a back-and-forth.

We didn’t really have time to explore that angle, though – Suziku had come up with a way to repair the dimensional fabric: we would set up a number of field emitters to stabilize everything and then let the rifts “heal.” But first the Rularuu had to be contained (so that they couldn’t continue to damage the dimensional fabric while we were trying to repair it). To do so, I traveled to the Shadow Shard to set up a force field that would cut the Rularuu off from their portals, preventing more reinforcements from arriving in Paragon City.

With access cut off (as much as possible), it was now time to do what needed to be done to fix the damage. It should have been simple: head over to the Portal Corp lab and activate the stabilizer – but the lab was now under massive Arachnos attack! Fortunately, I had plenty of help, both from the Iron Samauri, and also from the Nagans. Together, we rescued all the scientists that had been taken hostage, we defeated the real Dr. Aeon (who was leading the attack with several of his clones), and activated the stabilizer!


If you look really carefully, you can actually see the Aeon clone who took me down flying to the left and off the screen as I hit Rise of the Pheonix.

Pros: This arc does all of the “standard” stuff very well – great mission briefings, excellent mission design (incorporating some very complex goals, and yet the pacing of the missions is very good: at no point did I feel like a mission was getting overly long), and good use of clues. The custom faction is well designed, and has a good backstory. While the faction is very challenging (a wide variety of powers and plenty of mobs with hefty debuffs), to be fair (1) I found them about equal in challenge to the Rularuu and the Arachnos, so they don’t seem out of place in the arc at all, and (2) You really only face them in the first two missions, and only in a limited capacity in the first mission. But the two things I think this arc did best was the characterization of the enemy factions and the main storyline. The Nagans were both interesting and, through the use of humor, the Nagan characters (especially Suziku) were actually endearing at times. And the main story kept my interest at all times – I’ve played through literally hundreds of story arcs, and I have very frequently come across stories that I thought were technically good and fairly creative, but for whatever reason I was only moderately interested to see how the story played out: with this arc I was genuinely enjoying being a part of the story and very curious to see where it was going. Very well done!

Cons: The most obvious downside is exactly what the arc author warns you about – the arc is clearly labeled as challenging, and with good reason. As I mentioned before, the Nagans are quite the challenge thanks to their varied attacks and debuffing abilities (never mind the fact that they agro on you from a long way off). Frankly, that’s exactly what makes Arachnos one of the more challenging factions as well (although they’re a bit easier to “pull” in bite-sized chunks). And the Rularuu are just plain hard as well. So just about every enemy choice is a challenging faction. Then, many of the placed bosses are quite challenging as well: the Storm Elemental bosses are no pushovers, and, ironically, Dr. Aeon’s clones are actually (IMO) considerably more challenging than the “standard” Dr. Aeon (imagine an elite boss version of a Paragon Protector…). To aid you, you are given access to multiple allies – many of them boss class. Normally I’d complain about “overpowered” allies, but for this arc they were very helpful, and I was glad to have them (and I’d argue having some boss class was necessary, as any allies that were lt. ranks or lower very frequently died within a few fights – especially in rooms where multiple spawns would agro onto me)! The lab maps were appropriate choices story-wise, but were especially brutal, frequently containing moderate to small rooms with multiple spawns. Obviously my difficulty settings exasperate this – but a squishier character would probably have some problems even set to +0/x1. However, in this particular case I’m not really inclined to complain overly much on the difficulty: you are warned it’s a challenging arc, much of the challenge is coming from standard factions that are perfectly appropriate for the advertised level range of the arc, and, to be honest, I can’t think of many ways the challenge could be reduced and the arc still work – I suppose it’s possible there are lab maps available that might not have quite as many of those “rooms of death,” but I also understand that they still have to be large enough to accommodate all of those complex mechanics that are a real highlight of this arc. Honestly, my final opinion on this would be the arc would benefit a bit from a rather mild decrease in the challenge – but I certainly wouldn’t call the arc too challenging considering the circumstances.

The only other “con” were a few threads in the story that didn’t seem quite developed enough – or didn’t seem to really go anywhere. The main storyline struck me as just fine, and amply explained. However, I did find myself wondering “what’s up with these Aeon clones”? I think I was wanting more of a “story” reason for them to be there – but if there was, I missed it – to me they just seemed to be there as a sort of “misdirection”, an excuse to fight Aeon over and over again without defeating the real one until the very end. Also, related to this was the bit about research into Time Displacement – that never seemed to be developed or made part of the main story. I gathered that it was meant as a hero-side tie in to Project Destiny, or possibly even Recluse’s Victory – or maybe foreshadowing a future story arc? And finally, the arc made (literally) a passing reference to some sort of dialog that had been going on between Aeon and Suziku, but that never seemed to be developed (and I was kind of curious to know more).

Finally, the “lizard people” thing. As you can tell from the “playthrough notes,” I was evidently being exceptionally dense in not figuring out that the Nagans were the lizard people until half a mission after the clue telling you exactly that was given to me. Ignoring that little bit of stupidity on my part, though, I do think that at least until the beginning of the second mission it might not be clear to the player that the Nagans are the lizard people referred to (and I can’t really think of a specific reason it would be important to withhold that info specifically until the first mission is totally over – after all, the mission objectives make it very clear in the first mission that there are Nagans present). That would be an exceptionally easy fix, though: in the briefing for the first mission (or in that “bring you up to date” clue you get once you accept the first mission – which, by the way, was a great idea) even one reference to your past dealings with “those reptile-like” or “scaly-skinned” Nagans would make that connection a bit clearer (the reference to the fact you’ve dealt with the Nagans before is already there – I’m suggesting nothing more than just adding an adjective.)

Overall, an excellent arc!

Score: 4.795

If you could give a run-thru of my latest thread I'd greatly appreciate it.

Against the WickerWork Khan! #346904

Seeing as how you're high level the AV shouldn't bother you as I've been able to solo him on a 25th level stalker (set low of course). He is an AV mind you, but not a silly-hard one. Here's my thread abut it if you're interested: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=203192

Thanks for your consideration!

Oh, and to be fair, there was another little nice touch Lazarus put in this arc:

Warning, astronomy jargon follows!

The Nagans hail from Beta Hydri - this is a very well thought out choice, as this star is not only real (a fact I missed until I talked to Lazarus online), it's a G2 IV type star. This means it is a star only a bit more massive than our own sun that is just beginning to evolve off the main sequence, and would likely be on the order of about 7 billion years old. A very good choice for a technologically advanced alien species.

I, however, mistook the star for Beta Hydrae, which is B8 III, and would be a very inappropriate choice for a star harboring an intelligent civilization. Beta Hydrae is part of the constellation Hydra, while Beta Hydri is part of Hydrus (a southern hemisphere constellation I didn't even know existed until last night when Lazarus pointed out the fictional home of the Nagans was not in Hydra.)

Needless to say, I was very impressed. Why? Because I'm a professional astronomer, and I don't normally get so soundly "trounced" (so to speak) in my own field. Well done!

Pro Payne is open to submissions – but has only one slot left (and is nearing the end of his quest to reach level 50). Even after he becomes level 50, he will still play through, and review, the remaining arcs in his queue.

Pro Payne’s current queue:

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
302196 Waddle's Revenge
346904 Against the WickerWork Khan!
292389 Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 2 (replay – this arc was modified to deal with some XP issues that kept me from completing it; to be as fair as possible I will allow this arc to jump the queue the moment I pass three bubbles into level 49 since it seems grossly unfair to whine about XP, have the author fix it, then refuse to play the arc until after I’m at the level cap).

With the new semester started, I will almost certainly only have enough time to post a review about once a week (and certainly there will be weeks where I just won’t have the time). And now, on to this week’s review!

Pro Payne had completed the last of the Safeguard missions, and was eager to return to the fictional world of Architect Entertainment, where he would again have access to the fire based powers afforded him by the computer simulations.

It was now time for him to return to the world of Drakule, in an adventure called:

Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell (Arc ID#340316, 5 stars)

Once again I found myself talking to Dr. Von Hecksung. He’d been cast out from the Order of Drakule Hunters, and returned to his monster-killing roots. He was interested in recruiting me to help fend off a recent wave of Werewolf Bikers who had taken to invading Paragon City.

Always up to a nice round of monster killing, I agreed.

Shockingly, the monsters were attacking dance clubs (it’s just kind of a given that monsters will either hang out in or attack dance clubs). Even more shocking, I not only found werewolves, I also found drakule spawn, led by an evil (if hot) vampire countess (the “hotness” is actually part of the satire, explained in their description – if fact, much of the satire in these arcs are in the descriptions of the custom mobs). I defeated both the countess, and the leader of the werewolves, and then found the most unholy abomination of them all: a flat out ripoff of the end of Underworld (ironic since that movie is itself sort of a ripoff) – well, I can’t really call it a ripoff as it was clearly deliberate satire (again, read the mob’s description). I defeated the deadly hybrid vampire werewolf, and left the club to see what Von Hecksung had found.


Oh no! It’s a werewolf-vampire hybrid! And it’s blue! Just like in the movies! (…course, if memory serves that whole movie was tinged blue)

I also noted that this arc certainly deserves its “challenging” warning – this is not one to be soloed by the faint of heart (or someone who gets frustrated by dying), but I still made it through the mission okay.

Anyway, Von Hecksung speculated that the werewolves had obtained a supply of hemoblood (probably forcibly) from the vampires. He wanted me to hit a garage where the werewolf bikers were hanging out and interrogate them for information. Eager to prove my monster killing skills yet again, I entered the warehouse.

Within, I found a whole pack of those biker werewolves complaining about having to take orders from a “retard.” Oh man, I hope this is a sign I’m going to get to beat the crap out of yet another incarnation of Ashton. There was one of the vampire leaders here too: apparently another high-ranking vampire had been kidnapped by the werewolves (I didn’t know if she’d be here – although I had a feeling she was being held by Grendel, leader of the werewolves, himself).

The finding and beating of Ashton made my day. Out of pity, I simply beat him to within an inch of his life, trading him that final inch in return for some info. I found out this whole thing was really his fault. He was so annoying, Dethe kicked him out of the underworld. He then hooked up with a werewolf biker gang and told their leader (the aforementioned Grendel) all about Drakule and hemoblood. Naturally, Grendel was interested, and was sending out werewolf bikers to attack nightclubs looking for a supply of the stuff.


Yo Ashton! I’m here to (nearly) kill you, again!

(Aside: This actually seems, at least right now, to be a minor plot issue. If werewolves and vampires were mortal enemies, then how exactly does Grendel not already know about hemoblood? Granted, I can just barely accept that they’ve been killing vampires for ages and never knew where they came from, but that does seem like kind of a leap – something about the way Ashton explains what happens leads me to think this is the first Grendel had ever heard of vampires, which contradicts Von Hecksung’s earlier statements.)

In any case, Ashton promised to tell me where to find Grendel’s lair. Given that they had just kidnapped a major member of the Cult of Drakule, it was a given they were about to have a fresh supply of hemoblood. I headed to the lair, expecting some very difficult fights.

The lair turned out to be a lab (actually the lab from the ARCH-A mission). It was under attack by the werewolves, which I found confusing because I thought this was supposed to be their lair. It didn’t take me long to figure out this was actually the vampire’s lair (and where their supply of hemoblood was kept), and the werewolves were raiding it trying to get the hemoblood.

Aside: Hmm … it almost seems like the story for this arc was originally supposed to go one way (werewolves and vampires are “old” enemies, and the werewolves have kidnapped a ranking vampire, possibly as a source of hemoblood, although that last part is just speculation), and got re-written before it was published (Grendel used Ashton to figure out where the vampires were getting hemoblood and attacked their lair – the vampire leader was never in any danger).

Or maybe I’m getting story from a whole set of different sources that this arc is satirizing mixed up with what’s actually in the arc. Still, I would recommend the author go back very carefully and check to make sure (especially check the dialog of that vampire leader in the second mission). And you may want to consider looking for lines of mission briefing text that could keep the player from getting confused and highlight them. Again, it may not be the author’s fault so much as the tendency of a player whose seen the Underworld movies, played the Vampire RPG, read a bunch of vampire novels, etc. to read in things that aren’t there – but there are likely other players like me who might do the same thing. Heck, I could even argue that those players might be the ones attracted to this arc, and therefore might be a disproportionately high percentage of those who actually play it.


Behold, as the mighty Father Grendel runs from me like a scared puppy!

In any case, I found and killed both Father Grendel, the werewolf leader, and Duchess Raven…something (can’t remember while I’m writing this). As with the rest of the arc, all challenging fights, but fun overall!


Duchess Ravenharte! Her name was Duchess Ravenharte! She wasn’t too pleased to see me.

And, of course, I found the source of the hemoblood – the broken body of Elukard, barely kept alive by being suspended in his own blood (well, more hemoblood anyway) and being harvested for whatever his half living body could produce – that’s what I assumed they were doing, it doesn’t actually say that in the arc (I assume that because Elukard is not fully undead – at least I don’t think he is – that he can naturally produce blood just like a living person can, and unlike a vampire. But, unlike a living person, his ‘blood’ is actually hemoblood).

Pros: Like the others in the series, I found this arc to be a very well done “dark comedy” – it was a good mix of serious and silly. The plot is actually somewhat serious, with the satire mixed in quite liberally in the monster descriptions and Von Hecksung’s almost comical level of bloodlust. Like the other Drakule arcs, this one is not terribly long and it’s quite easy to stay engaged with the story. Furthermore, there are two separate well-designed custom factions (composed entirely of custom mobs) – and (as near as I can tell) they’re all new designs. Put simply, it’s a fun arc!

Cons: The biggest one is difficulty. To its credit, the arc comes marked as “best for team play” and “challenging.” The author means it. In my estimation, if you had the difficulty setting at minimum (+0/x1/no bosses – and yes, I’m well aware of the fact that you can actually set it to -1, but I figure the lowest most players will go is +0), a combat oriented character in the hands of a competent player would have very few issues – some of the fights with the bosses (i.e. downgraded elite bosses) might catch you off guard and result in an untimely defeat, but overall you’d probably be just fine. On the other hand if your character is not terribly combat oriented, and you are soloing, I don’t think this arc is for you – in other words, you’d be well advised to take the author’s warnings seriously. But, keep in mind that most combat oriented solo characters play above +0/x1, and if you’re one of those be advised that you’re in for a challenge (again, exactly as the author warns). So why the heck would I consider a challenging arc that flat out warns you it’s challenging a “con”? It’s simple: I honestly think so many aspects of this arc (and even this series of arcs) almost strike me as tailor-made to players who like to solo to the point where I think the difficulty level of the arc (even if it is intended) could potentially alienate what could be some of this arc’s biggest fans. That’s just speculation on my part, but hey, this whole review is just an opinion piece anyway.

The second issue were the (possible) plot discrepancies I mentioned before. I have no idea if they’re real (in which case hopefully pointing them out would have helped the author out) or (as I suspect) me reading things into the plot that aren’t there because I’m drawing on what the arc is satirizing. But if the latter is the case, I can see other players (especially the ones reasonably familiar with what the arc is satirizing) doing the same – and the arc could therefore benefit from highlighting or otherwise drawing attention to parts of the mission briefings that could make the actual plot clearer.

One last note – I honestly can’t decide whether or not I liked the fact the dance club appeared yet again (it really is almost getting to be a running joke, but I can’t decide if I’m feeling like the joke is getting old). I can certainly tell you though which joke I’m not tired of: beating up Ashton. I was glad to see he made an appearance: I just don’t think this installment would have been the same without him.

Overall this was a well done, humorous arc that was a lot of fun to play – provided you are not put off too much by higher than average difficulty.

Score: 4.66

Glad you enjoyed it!

The whole vampires and werewolves hating each other thing is mainly another satire on the whole vampire "genre". Seriously, the vampire versus werewolves thing is practically ubiquitous at this point. The World of Darkness games, Underworld, Twilight; it's freakin' everywhere and it doesn't make sense. So in the contact dialogue when told by Von Heksung that vampires and werewolves hate each other he doesn't give a reason. Instead, he just says "Of course they hate each other. Don't be silly." Just another bit of satire.

Part of the comedy style in Drakule is absurd humor, and that's another example of it. It doesn't make sense, you know it, Von Heksung should know that as a veteran monster hunter, but he apparently doesn't realize it. He's pretty nuts, anyhow. Psychopathic, really. Your character is taking orders from what by all rights is a psycho serial killer who just happens to only kill monsters.

In short: I am aware of the plot hole, and it's intentional. It's part satire, part absurd, and like all humor, it's entirely subjective.

And yes, the Abberance is a total parody of Nightcra- I mean, the Abomination from Underworld. WHY WAS HE BLUE? Makes no sense.

The main thing that you bring up that seems like an important issue to me is that you thought that Ashton told you where Grendel's lair is. What he's really supposed to be saying is that Grendel learned where the Clan of Drakule's lair is, and is heading there to take their hemoblood by force. The werewolves were drinking the blood of the Drakule spawn they kidnapped, but since he can't make hemoblood as a spawn, they were just drinking blood.

It's entirely possible that you didn't find all the random side objectives in the second mission that I threw in as set dressing. It's pretty hard to miss the kidnapped vampire, since he shows up pretty much right at the front, but off the top of my head there should also be a car being worked on by non-werewolf members of the gang (they haven't earned their claws yet) and a group of vampire infiltrators trying to rescue the kidnapped vampire, plus one or two other random objectives.

I bring up the car specifically because destroying it gives you a clue that's not essential to the plot, but is another joke. An obscure and self-referential joke, but a joke nonetheless.

And yes, the dance clubs are gratuitous. Blame Blade and World of Darkness for making me associate vampires and dance clubs.

At long last, Pro Payne's final queue is now full! Pro Payne is no longer open to suggestions. A special thanks to everyone who has submitted arc suggestions. I hope that anyone who is still following this thread enjoys this last set of reviews as Pro Payne, at long last, completes his climb to level 50!

Here’s my current queue:

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
302196 Waddle's Revenge
346904 Against the WickerWork Khan!
292389 Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 2 (will jump queue at level 49.3)
254599 Of Futures Past

Pro Payne is currently level 48, about four or five bubbles in.

The next arc Pro Payne played was Matchstick Women – actually a replay, but I approached this arc as if this was the first time before going back and looking at what I’d thought of it previously. That turns out to have been a good idea, since my first play of this arc was quite a while ago, back when I was totally burned out on posting reviews, and wasn’t even doing mini-reviews of most of the arcs I was playing. Apparently, I gave it 5 stars back then too – and I do remember it being a good arc even then. But it was long enough ago that the replay almost does feel like the first time… so without further ado:

Matchstick Women (Arc ID#3369, 5 stars)

The story begins when I see a mysterious flame out of the side of my eye. Intrigued, I look closer, and the flame seems to take on almost humanlike (and feminine) qualities. Then, I literally start to see things: I think I see a vision of a group of women in the expanding flame – and an Arachnos base that has been set on fire. Much to my surprise, I suddenly find myself in the burning Arachnos base – somehow drawn or teleported there by the flame I’m been staring into.

Inside the burning base I find a large bomb, and a mysterious woman with a large collection of firefighting equipment. I destroy the bomb, but it does no good since the sprinkler system doesn’t appear to be operational. The mysterious woman attacks me, accusing me of starting the fire – I defeat her, although I’m still confused as to what exactly is going on. In any case, there are four sprinkler control valves that I need to activate in order to get the sprinkler system working again. Each is guarded by members of a strange cult of scarred, fire-wielding women – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out they probably have something to do with this fire. (I know they’re scarred both from hints in their individual descriptions, and also from the mission debriefing). Thankfully, since the women primarily use fire to attack, they prove not to be terribly difficult opponents.

Aside: My character’s confusion (evidenced in the preceding two paragraphs) certainly seems to be part of the developing story – I’m supposed to not yet know what’s going on or why; it isn’t a case of me having missed an important clue or me just not following a clear story. The technique has caught my interest and made me want to keep playing through the arc (and there’s something creepily compelling about the cult of fire-obsessed women too).

Next, the mysterious flame shows me a vision of a building. I seem to be surrounded by the strange women, but they aren’t threatening me. They’re inviting me in.

The mission that follows turns out to be both interesting, and genuinely creepy. I find myself in a compound where these strange fire-wielding women are being trained (the trainers appear to be others of their own kind who have already mastered the skills being taught, which certainly makes sense). It doesn’t take long before I get the distinct feeling that I’m … well … being recruited. Actually, not really recruited so much as “evaluated for the potential for recruitment.” I find a journal, but save it to read later. I then find what I take to be a recruiter for this strange cult (called The Matchstick Collector) who has summoned up some fire demons, but would like for me to eliminate them for her, since they are too weak to be of use. I do so, and she is then very eager to escort me out – which I do, and she thanks me for visiting. (I get the distinct impression this was supposed to be the very end of the mission – I wonder if a clue here having her say that I should go talk to Emily and then she will escort me out would work better here, although getting her to spawn in the final room might work too, assuming having her ‘escort me out’ really is supposed to be the last thing that happens.)

Ignoring the Matchstick collector’s eagerness to get rid of me I proceed up the elevators to the second floor of the compound, where I find Emily, who is very obviously the leader of these women – but after having seen me doesn’t seem to want to have any dealings with me: evidently I was judged unworthy to either join her cult or help her in whatever she’s got planned (probably the latter, since I’m male, and the whole cult is female).


Pro Payne is judged by Emily and found wanting. You can also see the Collector, who, by this point, had escorted me out of the base. It didn’t take.

Most interesting of all is what she’s got planned. I find on a bulletin board references to “the cleansing” and a map of Steel Canyon with four buildings circled ([b]I almost sense a hint that the Hellions are not behind all of the fires in Steel Canyon – or at least they soon won’t be). I also find some medical supplies intended to treat burns. There doesn’t seem to be anything else for me to do here, so I exit the mission. Once out, I read the journal that I found – it’s the tale of a girl who had been a potential recruit of this cult, but had a change of heart when she realized that they used torture through burning not only to insure loyalty (the torture disfigures the recruit to the point that she feels she will only be accepted by others in the cult), but also to unlock a recruits potential insofar as fire abilities go (something this girl certainly benefited from, even if she deeply resented the method). Hmm … I wonder if this girl seeking my help is the Mysterious Flame who is acting as the arc’s contact?

Aside: The fact that I’m actually a fire character really enhances the feeling that these matchstick women at least see me as a potential ally – more so than if I had different power choices, although the references to what I’m doing here really are vague enough that a character without fire abilities would at least feel like they were being evaluated as a potential ally for this cult. The two possible bugs I noticed: the Matchstick Collector would seem to be more effectively placed in the final room, rather than where she spawned in. Although I can see the logic behind Emily also showing up in the final room, I’m of the opinion that what she says wouldn’t be too terribly jarring even if I encountered her in the middle of the mission if it isn’t possible to have both her and the Collector always spawn in that final room. But that whole thing could easily just be a compromise the author had to make due the proper details not being available for the back room. The second one had to do with finding the two clues. The first of the two that I found was the painting – and then the mission objective updated to “find the painting” (even though it was the bulletin board I was looking for). In any case, so far I’m finding myself getting very caught up in the story!

Once again I stare into the mysterious flame, which seems to show me an image of these Matchstick Women “mobilizing” on some sort of recruiting drive – they have kidnapped some potential new recruits, and it’s going to fall to me to rescue them. The “roundup” is happening in Steel Canyon. Apparently the map with those locations marked were actually the places they were going to find and pick up the recruits – not the location of the Cleansing as I’d previously thought. In fact, the Burnt Match that I fought at the very end of the mission made it clear that this Cleansing was going to be the next step after they’d collected this crop of “potentials” – Emily, the leader of the Matchstick Women, was now convinced that these fire powers originated from a parallel demon dimension, and only by cleansing her cult’s members in a huge fire could they cross over into that dimension. (I get the sickening impression that the fires of the Cleansing are meant to completely burn away the mortal flesh of the cult’s members, which would, at the very least, remove them from this dimension, as they’d be quite dead…)

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself in recanting the tale. After my arrival in Steel Canyon, I set out to rescue the potentials – I found a scared girl (I think that’s what she was), a quiet girl, the mysterious girl back from that first burning Arachnos base (who is apparently their strongest candidate), and, ultimately a frightened girl. The first three have clearly unlocked potential fire powers: even though the mission text states that the first two quickly run off after their rescue, they actually followed me around and attacked several of my foes; their tendency to follow me seemed very weak though – they would randomly then stop following me and I’d quickly lose them. The mysterious girl (I think she was actually called “the peculiar girl” in the mission) looked like she was intended to follow me around, which she did. The frightened girl didn’t follow me around, and I never saw whether or not she actually had fire abilities (I presume she did, though). I also fought the Matchstick Collector (whom I remembered was one of the main recruiters of the cult) – I defeated her and then found the Burnt Match I mentioned earlier.

The Matchbook Collector’s boasts seem very appropriate, considering how I am (rather ineffectually) using fire to injure her. As she’s mostly using fire on me (and is, thankfully, just a boss), it’s a long, but winnable, fight.

Note that even though the Collector was the first leader I found, after her defeat, the mission objective said to find her, even though it was actually the Burnt Match I was supposed to be looking for.

It was the Burnt Match whose journal I’d found in the compound – although she had to put on a good show, she actually wanted me to help stop Emily’s plans. I had a feeling that was going to be my next task.


You *might* be able to just barely make out the “mistake” in the mission objective text here. Maybe.

Aside: At this point in the story, I am again a bit confused by what the mysterious flame is all about – I had been wondering if it had something to do with that Burnt Match that wanted to “rebel” against the cult and see them stopped; but at the moment it doesn’t look like that’s the case.

Now the mysterious flame leads me back to the compound, where the Cleansing is in the process of being performed. What I find there is fairly straightforward: the Matchstick women there attempt to stop me as I fight my way to Emily. On the way, I find Emily’s journal, where I learn that she was trapped in her home as a young girl as it burned down. Although she was saved (meaning somehow she survived, although it is never clear exactly how – it could be anything as mundane as she found shelter in the collapsing, burning house just long enough for rescue workers to get to her, to the fire triggered her own latent fire manipulation abilities allowing her to ‘will’ the worst of the fire away from her, to beings of fire coming to her granting her powers and bidding her to teach others ‘the ways of the flame’ or something similar…), Emily Metzer was horribly scarred both mentally and physically by the flames.

Aside: The story seems to leave what really happened to the player’s interpretation, although personally I suspect what really happened was the second scenario I mentioned (the fires awakened latent, possibly mutant, powers in Emily), while Emily’s fractured and insane mind believes it is the third scenario that happened.

In any case, by this time, Emily’s mind is almost totally gone. I think she believes being consumed in the flames will either transport them to the demon dimension she thinks their powers originate from, turning them into beings of pure, fiery power, OR she just thinks being consumed in flames will do the very same to their cult on this plane of existence – turn them into beings of pure fire. Either way, she’s wrong, and it’s up to me to stop her, and save whatever of the Matchstick Women haven’t already been killed. I face Emily in combat (and am near-ecstatic to see she doesn’t have firey aura powers, meaning that I can actually injure her, making for a fun, challenging fight), and ultimately defeat her – but she’s already so badly injured by the fires closing in (and, sadly, likely the fact that I burnt her to a crisp given that I’m a fire-based character) that she dies almost immediately after.


A pause for a moment to reflect how badly Emily hitting me with Incenerate would have felt if I didn’t have 74% fire resistance. Eight ticks of 73 would have sucked.

After escaping the building, it seems clear that the mysterious flame was some aspect of Emily’s tortured soul made manifest in an attempt to stop her plans – my take on it is deep down whatever good was left in Emily knew that all the cleansing would really accomplish is to kill everyone, and wanted it stopped. Thankfully, she got her wish…

Pros: Obviously, work has gone into the writing for the mission briefings, and I found them good overall. The mission design was very good (with one minor caveat mentioned in the Cons section). The clues were great, and it goes without saying that the custom group was extremely well done: excellent backstory, great design (it’s kind of freaky how much they actually resemble walking matches), and very good power selections overall (the author did a very good job of putting together a “varied” faction that is nevertheless primarily based on fire powers). The story was good overall too (again, with some minor nitpicks I mention in the cons sections) – and this is one of the few arcs where I felt compelled to add some points for “theme.” It seemed to me like the author was going for a combination of creepy and tragic, and that’s exactly how it came off to me.

Cons: As with nearly every good arc that I’ve really enjoyed, just about all of my “Cons” are nitpicks that really can just be traced back to personal tastes. So I basically present them in the sense that if others have given similar feedback, or something I mention has also been bothering the author too, then perhaps the feedback will be useful. Otherwise, rest assured I thought it was an excellent arc.

First, like I said, the briefings are good overall, although the style in which they are presented can make them a bit hard to follow – not so much in the sense that I don’t understand what I’m reading, but that I’m confused as to what exactly is going on. There’s a definite feel that you’ve been thrown in the middle of the plot with only minimal effort to bring you up to speed. Some players are a big fan of that, some aren’t. I think of myself as kind of in the middle, but this was just a bit too much of that for my tastes.

I only had one minor nitpick with the mission design – mission one, two, and four are short, tightly designed, and fairly fast paced. Mission three (the only outdoor mission) therefore really stands out as being considerably longer, and less focused in driving the story forward. Keep in mind I didn’t actually dislike the mission, I just noticed that it felt a bit out of place compared to the others.

The story, while I found it very good, struck me as leaving a lot of loose ends for the player to puzzle out (heck, you can even see me trying to do this – it’s up to the author to determine how successful I was – in the mission writeup above). Again, I don’t mind that technique, but there was a bit too much of it for my taste. Which makes my next nitpick rather ironic:

One place where something was spelled out, where I actually didn’t think it needed to be is Emily’s delusion. As written, although I think I see exactly where the author is going with it, the delusion behind Emily’s insanity (the demon dimension thing) seems “tacked on” (again, as presented); It almost seems like there’s no real ‘lead up’ to it, but rather it’s a response to someone complaining that there wasn’t any real motivation behind why Emily is doing what she’s doing or that we need more evidence she’s insane. IMO, it isn’t necessary – it’s already pretty clear that she’s gone nuts…

And finally, let me present a few technical things I noticed that probably should be fixed, since I do think fixing them will make the arc seem just a tad more polished (although, again, it already seems very polished). They were (1) mislabeled mission objectives (particularly in cases were two separate objectives were melded into one while both were still active), (2) a minor issue with mission 2 where it seems I’m escorted out before I even finish the mission, and (3) some of the allies don’t behave the way their “rescue” text implies – still have a tendency to follow me around rather than run away immediately. All stuff that can probably be fixed with another editing run through the arc.

Score: 5.08

Overall, an excellent arc that really sucked me into the story!

Done! Editing my queue to include it as I type this...

Another arc if you have room still it's a relatively short one.

Attack of the 50 Foot Villain (arc id 363366)

If I might suggest, MA 101857, "A Ghost Story....."

Suggested level range is 45 - 50.

It is VERY storycentric.

Engaging from start to finish!

And tightly woven into the established COH cannon!

It has both established villan groups and some customer critters for people that like that sort of thing!

Please give it a try and tell me what you think!

With Real Life getting in the way (and not likely to let up soon), Pro Payne isn’t able to play as much as during the Winter Break, but he’s still around, and still slowly working toward level 50 (he’s at 48.6 right now, I think). Pro Payne is currently closed to suggestions, as I believe I now have enough arcs in my queue to make it to level 50.

My current queue:

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
302196 Waddle's Revenge
346904 Against the WickerWork Khan!
292389 Tales of Cimorera, Vol. 2 (will jump queue at level 49.3)
254599 Of Futures Past

I did see Police Woman’s request for Attack of the 50 Foot Villain, and Joe Black’s for A Ghost Story. While they’re not part of Pro Payne’s queue, once this project is over, I have no intention of abandoning MA, so they will get played. For the record, I am planning on doing yet another 1 through 50 in MA character – although the setup for that one will be very different from Pro Payne, and I’ll certainly be taking a break from focusing on an all MA character after Pro Payne. I think I’d burn out if I tried to do two of these back to back, so for a while after Pro Payne is finished, I’ll just be playing MA with other characters as a supplement to the canon missions. Although they probably won’t be frequent, I do still intend to keep doing these reviews (since at the very least the author of the arc that gets reviewed seems to enjoy them…) – heck, from time to time it may even be Pro Payne doing the review. So worry not, Police Woman’s and Joe Black’s arcs will get played!

Oh, and apologies if at any point my lack of response to posts here has offended – I do read all of the posts in this thread, but frequently real life prevents me from having the time to respond.

And now, on to Pro Payne’s most recent adventure:

A Tangled Weave (Arc ID#338575, 3 stars, 4 stars given in game)

Pro Payne’s latest adventure started with Kalinda rather curtly ordering me to investigate a spy within the ranks of Arachnos. My mission was simple: upload some false data to the network – data that would be a tempting target for whomever is selling secrets to Longbow (or any other ‘terrorist’ organizations) – and then wait to see who accesses it. Doing so was straightforward enough, and evidently it flagged a “Private Jenkins,” whom Arachnos promptly attempted to take into custody.

I think I’m supposed to have realized that it couldn’t possibly really be Jenkins – for some reason the Arachnos agents responding to the leak are hostile to me, and I actually free Jenkins from their custody. I’m a little confused – maybe Kalinda will help clear up what just happened.

Ah, and she did. Apparently another Arachnos team got a little overzealous, and didn’t know the data were a plant – so they thought I was one of the traitors. (I’m thinking maybe an in mission ambush might be useful to explain that a bit better – although it’s possible there was one, and it just got ‘hung up’ on some of the friendlies.)

But, much to my surprise, Kalinda didn’t have any interest in having me pursue the real spy (Operative Burch) – instead she wanted me to save a few snakes from a Legacy Chain ambush (this particular snake clan had a tenuous ‘truce’ with Arachnos.) I headed into the snake cave and, in spite of a few setbacks requiring hospital trips, ultimately rescued the threatened snakes and defeated the leader of the raid.


This is what happens when you are exemplared down to level 9, but refuse to lower your difficulty settings to what they were at level 9. This was a common sight during this arc – although I kept the challenge ‘as is’ because (1) I was too lazy to change it, and (2) it was kinda fun to have the challenge a bit over the top. Obviously, I didn’t penalize the arc for this, since it was more my own choice to make things this hard, rather than the arc’s design.

Kalinda’s next task is for me to clear some infected out of the sewers. I’m definitely getting the impression that as a “beginning” Arachnos soldier, I’m just being given some odd jobs that are, in essence, introducing me to the various groups of the Rogue Isles. (Which I can’t really complain about, because that’s the basic premise of one of my hero side arcs…)

(NOTE: At this point I had to take a break to head off to work. A day later something had dawned on me as I was about to pick the arc back up: the reason Operative Burch sounded strangely familiar is because that’s the guy you are sent to ‘take in for making deals with Longbow’ in Kalinda’s canon missions. And, later, you are sent to clear out some Snakes that have invaded an Arachnos Lab – possibly the very same lab Kalinda mentions your rescued Snakes were going to for safekeeping? A nice touch – I liked the tie-ins, and hope the author keeps it up in this arc. We’ll see…)

In any case, the sewers are indeed filled with Infected. There are three advanced specimens for me to capture, and three maintenance workers who went down there ahead of me, and now need to be rescued. Turns out one of them is Dr. Creed, whose research into the Infected might prove valuable to Arachnos. After a Blighted managed to take him down, he teleported back to the lab – but at least now Arachnos is more aware of him and his plans. The mission is otherwise straightforward – and Kalinda is apparently pleased with my progress thus far. She tells me that she is now ready to offer me a more prestigious assignment: defeat a hero who has tried to infiltrate Project: Destiny by posing as a Destined One and being “freed” from the Zig and transported to the Rogue Isles. Apparently the heroes of Paragon attempt this sort of infiltration on a regular basis, and Kalinda wishes to make an example of one of them. My job is simple: rig the hero’s safehouse to explode, and take her down for good measure just to make sure the explosion kills her. (That suggests I’m going to have to somehow disable her medicom teleporter as well, so she doesn’t just transport out the moment I defeat her.)

I enter an abandoned warehouse inhabited by Longbow, carrying a rather large amount of explosive to be placed in strategic locations throughout the place. Near the back of the base I locate the “villain” – a “Lady Darkdoom” – boasting that once she gets in good with Kalinda she’ll easily be able to funnel intelligence back to Longbow. I beat the tar out of the Lady, finish setting the bombs, and run out of the building. Actually, according to the exit text, I slowly walk from the building, punctuated by the massive explosion in the background. No doubt anyone watching would be impressed by my utter coolness.


Lady Darkdoom gets in a rather nice parting shot just before her defeat. Ah, knockback protection – how I miss thee.

(Note: If there was some indication that Darkdoom’s medicom was disabled, I didn’t see it. I’ve noticed how this series of missions doesn’t make much use of clues – but I think this’d be a great place for one that explains why the defeated Darkdoom doesn’t just teleport to the hospital before the explosion: I reached down and deactivated her medicom; I make a mental note of the fact that she didn’t have one because she had been masquerading as a Zig prisoner and hadn’t gotten her Arachnos model yet – you know, the one that transports you to those ratty Rogue Isle hospitals; something to explain that, especially if it’s in one of those little blurbs that get played in the chat window and you miss it.)

Kalinda had one final task for me. She mentioned that Dr. Creed, whom I had (sort-of) rescued in mission three, was still conducting research into the Infected, and might be a valuable addition to Arachnos’ growing stable of mad scientists. My mission: recruit Creed and any assistants I see fit.

The mission is an interesting one – apparently the Infected Dr. Creed was experimenting on have been let out of their cells by Dr. Geist (or his agents), and Creed’s students and assistants are attempting to re-capture them. The assistants are actually repainted Vahzilok with new descriptions: a rather well done and believable “re-use” of this group (although I do have a few notes about this). The extensive battles make the mission somewhat slow going, since even set to +1/x2 every single battle spawns a mad scientist “boss” (a recolored eidolon, naturally). I have no idea if that is a consequence of the battles being set to “medium” (or higher) or the Vahzilok’s natural tendency to spawn in in larger than average groups (coupled with my boosted difficulty), but if it isn’t already, I’d highly recommend setting the battles to easy – Arachnos soldiers (the arc’s target audience) can be rather squishy at low levels, and I’d have second thoughts about anything being set to anything other than easy.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that the arc displayed what, in my opinion, is a very serious design flaw. I found Dr. Creed at the top of the building. Of course, he had a rather large number of minions around him – so I figured I’d make the fight a bit easier by clearing a few away. It was a bad pull, and I got Creed and all his minions. I retreated toward the stairwell, popping inspirations like mad to keep myself alive while picking off the minions one by one, so that I could focus on Creed. I was quite glad I had saved several of my valuable tier 3’s for what was going to prove to be a very climactic battle at the end of this arc.

And then, the moment I slew the last minion, Creed (who is currently not even hurt), bolts. I’m already near the elevators – and (at least in MA), Creed doesn’t have to escape the whole building, he just has to make it to the elevator. Which is does with barely any injuries. And the mission fails. I won’t lie – this, to me, is a huge design flaw in the arc. There are few things that will piss off a player more than getting to the very last mission in a fairly long arc, and then actually fail that mission when they didn’t even know it *could* be failed. Kalinda gives no hint that Creed might try to flee (I checked her text) – nothing in the mission gives me any indication of that either. At the very least Kalinda should give some sort of warning to the effect of “those mad scientist types can be real cowards without a few convenient assistants to throw in harm’s way, so be wary of taking out Creed’s staff before you’ve ‘convinced’ him to join up.”


Pro Payne naively finishes off the last minion in a rather bad pull, and is now ready (and inspiration buffed) to take on the unhurt Dr. Creed. Sadly, seconds later, Dr. Creed runs like a little @#$!%.

To compound matters, the “failability” of the mission made Kalinda’s parting words make no sense. To the author’s credit, she actually doesn’t berate you, or make you feel bad for the sudden failure – which is a good move on the author’s part. But she makes reference to Creed’s data (which I never got) – I assume I would have had time to scour the building afterwards and collect it, but the immediate response is still (“What data? I didn’t get any data?”) – and she makes a reference to Geist being in the hospital. Wait, why is Geist in the hospital? I don’t remember fighting him, and I don’t remember Kalinda mentioning that some Destined One beat him up either (which, if memory serves, is what would have happened in Dr. Creed’s canon arc.)

Pros: There are a lot of really neat little details in this arc – it’s well worth paying attention to chat text and what is displayed as you are working on the mission objectives. Since this is set as an “introductory” arc, I didn’t have a problem with the fact that the “arc” is actually five fairly unrelated missions (similar to what the canon intro arcs are like) – I certainly wouldn’t give extra points for that (especially because if you’re really playing an Arachnos soldier, you’ve already been introduced, as a player, to the game and its factions), but I wouldn’t deduct anything either. The fact that some of the missions run ‘parallel’ to the canon ‘Destined One’ missions is a nice touch, and I did like the fact that (intentionally or no) they’re not so tightly tied into the canon missions that it would feel overly weird to actually then go and play Kalinda’s “normal” missions (which you can do as a VEAT) – in fact, just about the only one of Kalinda’s missions that would strike me as a bit “off” after playing this arc is the one where you go bring in Burch (since she at least seems to strongly imply that it wouldn’t be you going to do that). I also liked the use of the Infected in this arc – a very underrepresented group. I was curious to know if Creed’s research notes would have provided any additional backstory on them – but I never got to find out since I failed the mission before I could find them. Finally, I liked the premise (and design – again with the strong exception of the surprise, you failed! effect) behind the last two missions – neat ideas.

Cons: First, a couple of minor nitpicks (and I try to note the difference between ones that I thought were worth a small deduction, and ones that aren’t – although in most cases a “deduction” is less an actual reduction in score as me not giving the maximum increase). The difficulty struck me as such that, even without the settings ramped up, this arc would be just hard enough to be frustrating, especially given the audience (low level VEATs) – but since I wasn’t a VEAT, and I wasn’t interested in lowering my difficulty to what it was when I was level 9, I can’t really be sure of this, and didn’t deduct anything for it. In the first mission, Arachnos seems a bit “off” – almost like they’re a little more ‘humorous’ than I’d buy – but again, that wasn’t something I felt compelled to deduct points for, just an observation. In the same vein (and again without any deduction), Kalinda’s voice seemed just a bit off, but it’d be hard to put my finger on exactly what the issue was there. Finally (among the things I didn’t deduct for), more of a unifying theme among the missions would be nice (again, I want to make it clear that I don’t have any issue whatsoever with intro arcs having more unrelated missions than is normal – but my argument here is VEAT arcs are not technically intro arcs since you’ve already played thorough the game to have access to them). A few things that were very minor for me (read: didn’t hurt the arc’s score much), but I do think would be definitely worth working on as a way to really improve the arc: although I was intrigued by the use of the MA mechanics as the sole way to tell the story, I did think this arc really would have benefited from at least some clues, just to add a bit of flavor. Theoretically, these clues could also have dealt with a few of the technical issues (like explaining why Darkdoom can’t teleport away) as well. Also, as much as I loved the idea of actually using re-painted Vahzilok as Creed’s evil minions (and I noticed and appreciated the fact that the “living corpses” walk just like the infected), the fact that basically the entire faction was reproduced made it harder to “buy” that these were Creed’s minions, and not Vahzilok working with Creed. A few customs (even just two) – room permitting, of course – worked into the group could really help to give the Mad Scientists a distinct feel from their parent group. If you want my advice, I’d go with custom models to replace the Vivisectors and the Eidolons (I forget what they were called at the moment) – make the former look a bit more clean than the lowly orderlies, and give them some wicked blades, and a custom model to make the bosses seem a bit more like Infected trapped in environment suits (rather than green leather) wouldn’t hurt.

And, of course, the (IMO) biggest technical flaw in the whole arc is in dire need of a change – at the very least the player needs to be made aware that mission can be failed. My official rating was 3 stars, with 4 given in game, but I’d imagine a typical player running across this surprise fail would be considerably harsher in their response… (especially if they don’t yet realize that you get pretty much the full reward earned thus far even when you fail a MA mission).

Overall, it’s a good arc, with some really neat ideas. With a few minor improvements, and a fix for a major problem, I think this one could be really great.

Score: 3.13

And now, on to the next adventure...

Huh.

First, thanks for the review, it's been quite enlightening.

I won't go into much detail since you seem to have got the gist of what I was trying to do.

Just wanted to say that this was not what I had intended for the final mission. I guess I will have to do something about it. I didn't think anyone could get to Creed without finding and saving Geist first - he's always showed up in the very first room on all my test runs. I didn't remember Creed being a required objective but I suppose he must be. I think the failure debriefing talks about Geist going to hospital because it was the debriefing you were supposed to get if Geist got killed. Creed gets away no matter what, thanks to an emergency teleporter. I'm sorry that you got a "bad run" on that mission but like I said, it's never happened to me.

I haven't tested it on a higher difficulty setting. That might have messed up the spawns. I've done most of my testing with a level-appropriate VEAT just to make sure that the arc is fine for the intended audience.

Thanks again for the review, I will make sure to fix this problem soon.