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

Okay, time for a real update (or at least as much of one as I can manage in the thirty minutes before it's time to head in to work).

Pro Payne is currently level 38, and (evidently) is once again playing others' arcs, having finished his play through of my own arcs (before the I16 XP nerf).

I do want to mention that in selecting and playing arcs, I will not be avoiding arcs simply because they use custom mobs with (now nerfed) XP values - so please don't hesitate to recommend arcs with customs. As much as I loathe the decision to make custom mobs worth below average XP, part of this experiment is about getting Pro Payne to level 50 in MA through the play of legitimate arcs. When the time comes to write up my final review of the experience, that is when I will express my opinion as to whether or not my 1 to 50 MA experience led me to feel that this was truly viable way to get a character to 50 - by 'viable' I really mean 'at a rate that is at least somewhat similar to legitimate outside play.' (Granted, at the moment my experience has been 'borderline', so we'll see if the nerfs push it over to 'not recommended').

Okay, on to the reviews (they'll have to be on the short side, and I may not get all of them in today).

The Bestest Radio Mission Ever (ID#1526, 4 stars)
Pretty cute little 'metagame' idea - that all of the random items you recover over and over again in the police scanner missions are really result from the efforts of a smuggling ring led by the Arch Villain 'MacGuffin.' The mission design is (ironically) more engaging than the standard radio mission, and the custom mobs are well balanced and well done. A perfect example of why ratings (or at least my ratings) are so subjective: it's certainly better than average and well deserving of *at least* 4 stars, but it just didn't feel '5 starry' to me when I played through it, although I'm at a loss to explain what exactly made it fall slightly short. This is definitely one that I'll probably play again, and might upgrade the rating if it turns out to have 'grown' on me. (Although I can't update the rating 'in game': I gave it 5 stars there as per my 'one higher than the real rating' policy).

Of Mentors and Legacy (ID#1589, 4 stars)
In this arc, Pro Payne's normal AE play was interrupted by an Oroborous Mender using the system to send him into a dark and terrible future. It is a future ruled by the Circle of Thorns, and the Mender has identified a hero that potentially could prevent this future, if only he had the proper role model (you), and the proper motivation (in effect, shifting backward the date his parents got slaughtered by the Circle so that he is consumed with a vendetta against them). Unfortunately, the destruction of the Circle left an opening that allowed Nemesis to conquer the Earth. Pro Payne ended up setting up the stage (I think) for a third, brighter future by saving both the hero and his parents.

There was a lot I really liked about the arc - a very good story overall, and I really liked the use of the Circle of Thorns (it was really quite a lot of fun to 'see' a future where they had taken over the world, and I liked the author's ideas of just what that future might be like). I also (at least in principle) liked the 'Nemesis plot that wasn't *really* a Nemesis plot' angle too. Frankly, the *only* thing keeping me from giving this a 5 star rating (on the forums, in game, of course, it got 5 stars) was some loose ends that really did kind of bother me, from a story perspective.

It was never all that clear to me exactly how the Circle rose to power - which isn't a fatal flaw in the plot - but it did leave me wondering 'if Philip was no longer driven by his parent's death, then does that mean once again Circle rise to power and take over the future?' Perhaps my 'mentoring' of Philip was just as inspiring and led to Philip preventing the Circle's rise in some other way, but it isn't clear whether or not I really saved the future. It also not clear exactly how the destruction of the Circle in the alternate future leads to Nemesis' rise - was it that the Circle, in rising to power, so badly weakened all the other villain groups that the path was clear for Nemesis (who, presumably, avoided conflict with the Circle) once the Circle fell at Philip's hands? Again, it isn't really spelled out in the story... you're kind of left to speculate. In short, the author has created a rather interesting alternate future (two, really), and the whats of that future are very clear, but the hows of how the future got that way are much less clear. Still, I do honestly think this would be a five star arc for sure with just a little bit more about how this future came to pass.

Okay, that's all I have time for right now - the reviews for Whack A Mole and A Show of Hands will have to wait for next time!

Yo Coulomb! Thanks for the review! Let's see if I can clarify a bit the vagueness at the end of the arc (btw, did you read the souvenir? I'm guessing you did ). Or rather, explain what I wanted to do with not having full closure.

THERE BE SPOILERS! (Duh!)

About whether you succeeded at preventing the rise to power of the Circle. Consider that the Circle's takeover happened *before* the events you witnessed; as per the timeline, when you first rescued Phillip's parents, he was a mere kid, and the Circle seemed quite entrenched in power already (I didn't explicitly say that, but tried to strongly imply it: "show, don't tell" and all that ).

Thus, Phillip (and his parents) may be able take the Circle down, not so much prevent their rise in power; I tried to present a scenario where the heroes are fighting a losing, desperate battle against a powerful, ruling Circle of thorns, but the arrival of this new hero you mentor can change the tide of battle.

However, as the letter from Mender Paelin said, he was interested merely in making Phillip stronger, as Mender Silos had ordered. He was not interested in the consequences of that just yet - it is something he'd try to tackle later. What use Paelin (or rather Silos) had for Phillip I didn't expand on; we know next to nothing about the "Coming Storm" for one thing, and there are other things he could be useful for (perhaps travel back in time to prevent the rise of the Circle in the first place).

You see, in-game the Ouroboros menders aren't the most popular chaps. Quite a few people have expressed mistrust of their motives and objectives, and they tend to work in narrow problems and a limited scope and really don't disclose much of what they're doing. I tried to keep in-line with the character of the existing Ouroboros faction when Paelin is handling the information he's giving you. That's why I don't give full closure to everything, I'm giving you exactly what objectives Paelin had and how you threw an egg to his face.

Did Phillip become strong enough to challenge the Circle without his lust for vengeance? According to Paelin, he became even stronger than the version he had created by shifting the death of his parents forward, and the three of them were alive last time you saw them. There's every reason for your character to believe they will manage. Again, I didn't want to explicitly spell it out, but I gave a strong hint that it may be the case; I wanted to stay in-character with the Mender, while still giving the player enough closure.

There's the second part, about Nemesis rise to power. According to the information you found in the 4th mission, Phillip destroyed himself and the best part of the Circle (the most powerful ones, including Zoria and all that) in a crazy, gigantic battle. If one considers that other heroes were, for the most part, either gone or weak enough not to be a threat for anyone (which is the conclusion if one considers Phillip had to do everything alone), the destruction of the ruling Circle and lack of heroes is the ideal situation for some other villain group to take over control of the world. There are a few good possibilities here:

- Nemesis: He's a very fitting one for someone who may have laid low and bid his time to wait for a chance. With the oppressive conditions of the Circle's rule, it's a perfect breeding ground for a man such as him to gain popularity and rise to power, and recruit young hot blooded men to his army. Chaos and Anarchy = Breeding grounds for dictators.
- Devouring Earth: On the other hand, with no effective opposition, the Devouring Earth may have a good chance at taking over a decimated world in chaos. We know they're still around, because the Circle have used them. And if they're no longer under their control, well... But it wouldn't be a good choice if I want the player to be able to find clues about what happened in the past, Nemesis is more likely to keep that information around.
- Council: Having alien reinforcements could work wonders as to why this faction would still be around, alive, and kicking. It would work when it comes to give the players clues too.
- Arachnos: Perhaps, it didn't feel right without Lord Recluse kicking about though.
- Ghosts: Scorched earth future with everyone dead and haunting the world. Tempting, I have to admit, but getting clues in that future may have been hard, I'd need a good map where one would explore some ruins of a library or something.

I ended up choosing Nemesis. I couldn't resist having a 4th wall pun about a Nemesis plot, then turning out it wasn't really a Nemesis plot

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Would Phillip and his parents be able to prevent the rise of Nemesis after the destruction of the Circle (if they managed to destroy the Circle, which your character has good reason to think they will)? Maybe. Your character has done the best he or she could to give the heroes of the future a fighting chance - that was my objective with this arc, what I wanted the player to think and feel. Will that be enough? Well, in this case I would want you to wonder, and think about the heroes you've left in the future; if you actually are doing that, I'd consider I made a good job at painting those characters And of course, going back to the Menders, they always work in discrete time frames, don't try to fix everything at once!

That, and that's how sequels are made, if I ever get an extra slot, that is How it happened exactly? I didn't think it'd be too important to go into detail if I left clues about Phillip's last battle and the state of the world I tried to convey in the first three missions.

Hm, that was long. Congratulations if you made it this far!

It may have been long, but it actually answered a lot of my questions (and, as I indicated, questions I was genuinely curious about at the end of the arc).

Actually, not realizing the Circle were already in power when Philip's parents die clears up a lot - I think it's safe to say that's a fulcrum in the plot: if you *get* that, then there appear to be far fewer loose ends in the story than if you don't (and, as is obvious, I didn't catch on to that: possibly a consequence of actually playing the arc over more than one day for RL reasons). After all "the world already sucks, but your actions will, hopefully, make it better" plays out a lot differently than "something terrible happens to make the world suck, and you're job is to keep that terrible thing from happening."

It was actually really interesting to see your reasoning for which villain group would be able to rise to power in the vacuum left by the fall of the Circle - although mentioning it did bring up a kind of minor issue I had when trying to piece together why Nemesis was now in charge. Unfortunately the game canon, when put in the hands of an outside author (especially one who is obviously familiar with the game's canon), cause certain 'pairings' to be suspicious: supposedly Mender Silos *is* Nemesis (even though that's only a rumor even in the context of game canon), so any time a Mender plot directed by Silos (and I did get he was directing Paelin) leads to a future where Nemesis rises to power, I start to wonder if that's the angle the author was going for, even though I don't see that angle as very good writing for the Menders (it may not be totally clear what exactly the Menders are *really* up to, but the vague clues that Mender Silos is a "reformed" Lord Nemesis from 1 million years into the future really would conflict with him hatching plots to put the "misguided" version of himself from the distant past into power). Don't worry - by the end of the mission I was almost positive that wasn't the angle you were going for: Nemesis conquering the world was pretty clearly a side effect of the Circle's fall, rather than the result the Menders wanted "all along." But locking onto the possibility that you intended for the rise of Nemesis to be the Mender's goal, and then being releaved that, apparently, that wasn't the case, still then left the obvious question of 'How did Nemesis rise to power?', and made the need for a clear answer to that question more pressing.

For what it's worth, I think you perfectly captured the feel of the Menders, too.

If you do ever write up a sequal or sequals that explore in more detail how the Circle rises to power (and more of what the world under them is like), you'll certainly have at least one player interested in seeing that story unfold.

Thanks for your review of Bestest. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I'll request another arc when you hit level 40

Dude, the Daybreak Patrol Needs Help! (#321834) You're not just going to leave them hanging out to dry, are you??


Errr, that's kind of my way of asking you give my arc a try when you get to level 40 or so. It's a long arc - 5 missions, 1 small map, 3 mediums and one unique (but not huge... I hate huge maps just for the sake of hugeness.) The last mission may contain an Archvillian.... o.0

The premise is that the Daybreak Patrol, a powered armor wearing superhero group attached to the PPD had their armors hacked and stolen... With them inside of them! Someone needs to rescue them and Meg Mason is calling upon you!


I love the reviews you give in this thread and once I finish my current project I am seriously considering following in your footsteps. Well, trying to level in AE wise, not review wise. I tend to be much too rambly to be a good reviewer. Anyway, my point is that I would welcome any and all comments/criticism you may have for my arc if/when you get to it. It's my first arc and I just sort of stumbled in and did it... Heck, didn't know til reading your thread that you could do some stuff that you can apparently do. Still, story wise and play wise I think it's pretty decent and would very much love to have you give it a try...

(The fact that it's languishing in obscurity with just one rating so far is really kind of pathetic... Help me out here! Double my number of ratings!!! Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope!!)

No problem! I've added The Daybreak Patrol Needs Help! to my queue. Unless you object, I'll probably be 39 when I play it; Pro Payne is almost 39 right now, but I don't think there's enough left in my queue to get me to 40.

No objection... I'd be interested to see how it reacts at the lower end since I basically only tested on 50's... Sides, first couple mission start lower anyway, I think just last 2 are 40-54?

I have an arc to recommend you, but I suggest you do it at least in a duo (lv. 40+ Ballistas are brutal, thanks, Detention Field!), and be at least the mission's minimum level (Malta are annoying... seriously). It's in my sig, the Glory of Moment (328789).

There's nothing wrong with trying it solo, I'm just saying you may fail one mission, since you have a Ballista that runs and will likely Detention Field you. If you want to try it solo, go ahead. In fact, it might make the Malta easier.

I've been watching this thread for a while and considered submitting one of my own arcs. As Pro Payne approaches level 40, I believe it's time to submit my newest 40 to 50 arc: The Rikti Accession. It should be fairly easy for a person to complete solo, with only one AV that is completely optional. I hope you enjoy it!

My first two arcs listed in my sig might interest you. They're open-ended on the required level, but higher levels are best for them, and since you're near 40, sounds like this would be the right time. They're both pretty solo-able as well.

Alright, time for yet another update for Pro Payne (and Pro Payne's accessories. Ugh. That was a *terrible* joke).

Pro Payne is now level 39, and about four bubbles away from hitting level 40. He has also almost reached a (to me) fairly major landmark - he is almost completely IO'ed out! Granted, they are common IOs, but the fact that from this point on he will be sporting better than what +3 SOs would offer was (to me) an important test of the AE system: nearly all of my newer characters have been able to deck themselves out with a combination of common and set IO's by 40. The fact Pro Payne has been able to as well tells me that, roughly speaking, the "tangible" rewards are at least vaguely on par with a non-AE character - although it is worth mentioning most of my non-AE characters would have earned FAR more influence by this point. But there is something to be said for Pro Payne having never been 'wanting' for enhancements that provide the maximum benefit.

Of course, a non-AE character would have been at least in the mid 40s by now ... but that's more a subject for my upcoming "the end of the project and final conclusions post." Which is still a rather long way off.

Now for an important announcement: Pro Payne will be temporarily suspending accepting new arc suggestions as of Tuesday of next week (September 29th)! So if you've got an arc you want Pro Payne to play, let me know before then (especially those of you who are waiting for me to hit 40 - go ahead and suggest your arc, so that I can put it in my queue). There are two reasons for this - one, it'll give me some time to play "catch up" for posting "mini-reviews" of the arcs I've already played (since I do want to get to all of them). And two, it'll give me a chance to do something I've mentioned before, and been meaning to do, but, thanks to all of the wonderful suggestions, just haven't gotten around to: messing around with the search features to see what I can (or can't) find with it.

So without further ado - now to the mini-reviews! But first, a note regarding them. As I have done so many times before, let me remind those reading this that your in game rating was one higher than what I list here. And please do not take the amount of feedback I offer as an indication of my opinion of the "quality" of your arc! The simple truth is for some arcs I can think of several things quite quickly that would have made the arc more fun for me, but for others, human nature being what it is, I just come up blank: for some I think the arc is just great, and I can't come up with any suggestions. For others, for lack of a better way of explaining it, the arc just doesn't "sit right" with me - although I can't come up with any suggestions for improving it (hey, if I could do that for every arc, I'd be the best arc author *ever* - something that is clearly not true).

A Show Of Hands (ID#296884, 4 stars - just barely below the threshold for 5)
I'm going by memory here, but I think this was [i]@Lazarus[i]/s work... thank goodness for the Edit function if I'm wrong about that. In any case, this is clearly the same universe as "The MacGuffin Deliver Service." As I'd expect, it was a solid, well-done arc with good mission design and pacing, and certainly worth a play by any fan of the MA system (that is, for something other than farming) - Lazarus has again shown skill at using the system to design complex, yet interesting missions that are well paced and very playable. Here's the thing: the mechanics of the arc were very solid, but the story itself, while certainly humorous in places, just didn't reach out and grab me. I do honestly think part of the disconnect was that the arc had a kind of 'generic' quality to it - specifically the item you are trying to recover (along with the mysterious 'buyer') is left totally to the player's imagination. Let me be clear: there's nothing wrong with that, at least theoretically, but (and let me be very clear that this is nothing more than my opinion) if you happen to play the arc when you are not in a particularly imaginative mood (as I wasn't at the time), that tactic can detract from really getting into the arc. In other words, in this case, I just plain wanted the author to tell me exactly what it was I was trying to fence (and re-acquire) - it's as simple as that.

Alone, that would be a nit that was not enough to bring a solid arc from a low five stars to a high four, but there was one other thing. Those dang Nagans. Man they're hard - they are quite literally built as a 40+ group (at least): a wide variety of damage types coupled with some pretty vicious debuffs means that if you are solo you do have a weakness they can and will exploit! I didn't quite have Rise of the Pheonix yet, and Pro Payne's firey aura defenses just weren't quite up to the task of surviving the onslaught.

My final verdict: a good solid arc that fell just slightly shy of capturing my interest (and that criticism is very much subjective on my part), where the custom mobs were a little over that fine line between 'an interesting challenge' and 'I'm getting a little tired of face planting.' The only feedback I can offer: is it possible to tone back the Nagans a bit? I suspect that wouldn't be easy - the issue is more variety than individual difficulty.

Two Great Tastes (ID#314798, 3 stars - really just barely under what I'd give four, but this arc hadn't yet been played and I refused to relegate it to the purgatory of a four-star rated arc with 1 play, so I gave it 5 stars in game: like it or not, I want MA arcs to be played ... and knowingly making something 4 stars doesn't fit that goal)
In this arc, Pro Payne comes across a Nemesis plot to combine the Freakshow's cybernetic technology with their own steam technology.
I liked the story - it was told well, and the pacing was just fine. But there were a few things that I think needed work, or at least some re-thinking. Here was the biggie - there was both a minion and (I believe) a lt. that were decked out with electricity powers. The problem was not the electric blasts - it was the fact that even the minions had both short circuit and power sink. Eep! I can see if you were playing a defense-based toon (which will tend to avoid those attacks), or a toon with heavy end-drain resistance, it wouldn't make you want to pull your hair out. But if you're a melee, resistance-based toon with no real ability to resist an endurance drain effect minions who can suck out 70 endurance points get to be annoying... I would really recommend removing one or both powers.
The other issue I had was story-wise: I just plain didn't buy that Nemesis himself would be there in that last mission, and that he would be helping me (which just compounded my annoyance at having the 'help' of an elite boss that, with one swing of the staff, could suck half the XP off of something in addition to knocking it back out of melee range) - perhaps a Fake Nemesis sent to oversee the operation to shut down the "Nemeshow" project would be a better fit. I can't really explain it any better except to say that it just "feels" more like what Nemesis would do in that situation. But, as always, that's just my opinion.

That's all of the reviews I have time for this week! Of course more are on the way, as time permits!

The problem with fighting a group designed to exploit whatever hole you have in your defenses with fire armor is that you have quite a few holes for them to exploit.

So it is with some trepidation that I suggest my arc "Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black" (161629). One custom boss and he's not particularly tough, a sprinkling of fairly easy custom minions because the all-tank Crey you get at 45+ are tedious and un-fun, the rest is all standard enemies, but it does contain two missions full of Malta. If you're ok with fighting Malta, I suggest this arc.

I'd like to put in a request for "The Sleeping Star" (53951)

Once you've reached Level 40, I'd like to request that you try my "Galactic Protectorate" story arcs (listed in my signature).

There are currently 5 (hopefully 6 by the end of this week) arcs, each 3 missions long, and all designed with the enemies set to Level 40-54. The arcs follow a linear storyline, so if you're interested in trying them all out, I'd suggest playing them in order to get the best "feel" of the overall story.

The enemies in the arcs are quite challenging, so you might want to lower your difficulty settings a bit before trying my arcs. I'd also suggest "spacing out" my arcs if you're going to play them all; maybe just one or two a day, so you don't get "burned out" trying to play them all at once. Though, that's just a suggestion

Okay, as mentioned last week, I am temporarily closing down suggestions to give me a chance to catch up on posting my mini-reviews of arcs Pro Payne has played (without posting reviews coming at the exclusion of actually playing Pro Payne, which was the whole point of the project). Pro Payne's current queue is:

322480, 161629, 53951, 47143*, 11728, 174352, 269714, 304290.

If you've requested an arc, and don't see it on the queue, check below - these are the arcs that I've played, but haven't yet posted a review (I get two, maybe three, per week: usually on Wednesday and/or Friday)

(Arcs with reviews on the way, in order): 299972, 190069, 221702, 2711, 321834, 278757, 328789, 262739, 101165, and 148476.

While I'm playing 'catch up' I'll be mostly playing random arcs found by messing with the search feature (stay tuned for updates on how well that works) - those will get "super-mini reviews" (literally one or two sentences of my impressions). Once I've got the reviews out of the way, I'll open it up to suggestions.

*This arc, and the ones after, are the Galactic Protectorate series - as per the authors suggestion, I'll be only playing those at level 40 and higher, and I will almost certainly be playing a single random arc between each GP arc (again as per the author's suggestion).

Also, there are two arcs that I tried before and failed to complete (typically because the arc contained a boss that I simply could not beat - most frequently due to a combination of healing abilities and massive fire resistance) - I do intend to play those as well, and post reviews here. They are Act II of Ghost in the Machine, and The Portal Bandits (the irony to Lazarus' statement is that I *have* attempted Portal Bandits, and couldn't get through it - I did want to try it again after hitting level 40+, although if Lazarus would prefer I didn't, I'll respect his wishes... so do let me know)!

Stay tuned: I hope to have the next review or two posted tomorrow, with more on Friday.

And now, for Pro Payne's next update, along with two or three new reviews - whatever I end up having time for. I'll post some new reviews on Friday as well.

The update on Pro Payne's progress is very short: he's still level 39, inching his way to level 40. Not much more to say there, so on to today's reviews:

The Coldest of Wars (Arc ID#299972, 5 stars)
Pro Payne was sent by Agent Janet Kellum to investigate some activity at a nearby Crey facility (related to the fact that Crey agents were spotted at nearby graveyards; it was hinted that the 'gravedigging' might have something to do with what the player doing the developer arcs would eventually come to know as the Paragon Protector project, but it seemed pretty clear to me that this arc was set before you were supposed to know about that). What Pro Payne found were clues that Crey had found something very interesting, and was in the process of researching it in the hopes it would really boost progress on their 'artifical hero' projects. Kellum needed to find out more, but Crey was alerted to the threat, so she arranged to have the power cut to the Crey lab where it was suspected the new 'find' had been taken. It turned out doing so was not a great idea: the find was a group of 60s Cold War-era Soviet supervillains (of course, they saw themselves as heroes) that had been in suspended animation. The power was out long enough for them to go free, and they immediately began to implement their original plan against Paragon City to activate a series of ice cream machines in a plot to freeze the city solid - in the 60s, ice cream vendors were at every street corner, and most of them were of a particular brand that had been modified (unknown to their owners) a powerful 'cold field.' Fortunately, there were far fewer of these ice cream machines in the 21st century as in the 60s, so Pro Payne was able to shut enough of them down to foil the Soviet's plan. In desperation, the agents then planned to detonate a nuclear bomb from a hidden bunker - but Pro Payne was able to track them down and stop them in time to prevent a nuclear catastrophe!

Pros: This arc made very good use of a lot of things that make arcs fun and interesting to play: there was a wide variety of foes (Crey, Freakshow, and the custom foes in the Soviet factions, although with a large number of unique bosses - there were even 'cameos' of the winter horde near the ice machines). The customs themselves were well done and well balanced. The story line was a perfect combination of fun, interesting, and, well, 'cute.' I actually did sort of feel like I was in a (rather light hearted) 60s era made for TV spy show. The mission pacing was very good as well: the arc kept my interest quite readily the whole time, and none of the missions seemed to drag.

Cons: Not many to speak of - missions two, three, and four were timed, and originally the arc didn't do a very good job of warning you they were going to be timed. It lead to a case where I actually failed a mission because I wanted to see what the next mission was going to be before leaving for work, and didn't realize it was going to be timed. But that is a problem the author has since fixed - I mention it here as an opportunity to remind MA authors of the importance of warning players when an upcoming mission is going to be timed. I did notice that an information dossier Janet Kellum gave me prior to the last mission seemed to mention a 'class' of Soviet assassins (along with intel on most of the bosses you'd be facing, and the robotic servants and defenders designed by 'The Engineer') - I remember spotting everything in the dossier except for those assassins. Either I didn't notice them, or they don't appear in the arc at all - but if they're *supposed* to be there, I figured the author would want to know.

Next was...

Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face (Arc ID#190069, 5 stars)
Pro Payne is 'trying out' for the role of Captain Dynamic in his very own MA arcs (which CD can't be bothered to play test or even check out for himself). What Pro Payne quickly finds out is that the arcs have been hacked, and basically 'trashed' by hackers at the behest of a European villain who (if memory serves) wanted to get back at Captain Dynamic and the Great Face for 'getting' the Captain Dynamic identity first (the truth is I don't really recall why the arc was hacked - but the results of the hacking are very amusing). Pro Payne finds himself heroically rescuing a cat from a box, stopping some Rikti badness, beating up multiple 'hacked in' copies of Captain Dynamic that have taken the place of Council goods, and 'thwarting' the Great Face (while collecting some very amusing personal e-mails between him and C.D.) - or, really, thwarting the hacker who messed up the arc in the first place.

Pros: Honestly, this isn't the funniest arc I've played - but what it does, it does extremely well. The author has done an extremely good job of portraying a 'broken' (or really a 'hacked') arc, yet, in reality, keeping the arc's missions extremely playable. In spite of the fact nothing is working right, and the mission objectives are basically (in many cases) nonsensical, it is somehow always pretty clear what you're supposed to do next (which, amusingly, often results in a mission objective updating to another rather uselessly worded objective). It's worth playing the arc just to see some very creative use of mission objectives.

Cons: Of course, when things aren't *supposed* to work right in an arc, it does make you wonder if a 'bug' in the arc is intentional or not. The only one that really had me wondering was that giant truck that spawned in in the first map - it was clear (from the dialog) something had spawned in behind it, but I wasn't able to get past it, or attack or destroy the truck (in spite of it being a destructible object). The mission was already complete - if there was a 'bonus' objective near the mission entrance, it was clearly optional, but I honestly didn't know if not being able to get to whomever was speaking was intentional or a real bug with the arc.

After dealing with C.D.'s horribly mangled MA arc, Pro Payne was contacted by Ms. Liberty for a very important mission.

In Pursuit of Liberty (Arc ID#221702, 3 stars)
A relative of Ms. Liberty - Liberty Rose - (her niece?; the exact relationship was a detail that I don't remember) is 'destined' to become a great hero, and, in the process, also stop a very dangerous threat that could spell doom for the future of Paragon City. But she needs a mentor of sorts to help her at very key points in her career. It started with Pro Payne being sent back in time to rescue her after she'd been kidnapped by the Family. In doing so, Pro Payne is introduced to the 'Liberty League' (a supergroup dedicated to fighting for liberty) and the 'Anti-Liberty League' - a villainous organization lead by the mysterious 'MAL', and dedicated to opposing the Liberty League. MAL is very intent on destroying all that is good and just, and will ultimately usher in a very dark future for Paragon City if he is not stopped. But to stop MAL, Pro Payne must first acquire a costume for Liberty Rose (from the aforementioned dark future), the Swords Liberty Rose will use as her signature weapon, and then actually help Liberty Rose in her ultimate confrontation with MAL and his Anti-Liberty league. Thankfully, with Pro Payne's help, MAL is beaten, the future saved, and Liberty Rose goes on to great things.

Pros: The story is billed as a 'light hearted fairy tale', and the author does a very good job of presenting it as such. Much like the first arc of today's reviews, the story is 'cute' and, in my opinion, did a good job of hitting the kind of campy, over-the-top story telling I typically associate with fairy tales. The plot isn't overly complex (not bad given it's a time travel story), and the custom faction is very, very well done. In fact, I think they deserve special mention: I was impressed with nearly all aspects of them: visually they were very well designed, had good descriptions that fit the overall theme of the arc, and, in spite of having a fairly wide variety of powers, were still well balanced...

Cons: ...which is why it was such a pity that they were barely worth any experience - the XP hit was so large (37.5% normal) that they just didn't feel worth fighting. That was, for me, actually one of the largest technical flaws in the arc, and one of the rare times I've rated something down for the amount of 'reward' it gives: and the only reason I did so is because it is a problem that can be fairly easily fixed by the author. The issue is that the bosses in the anti-liberty league are intended as unique characters, so they are set to not spawn 'normally' - which leaves the faction without anything that could serve as a 'default' boss, setting the already "nerfed" XP for custom mobs (which I *can't* fault the author for, and wouldn't grade down for) to half what it would normally be. Combine this with the fact that the first mission is against level 40+ family (which are themselves only worth about one-third the normal amount of XP), and the appearance of several boss-class allies that do a very good job of sucking up the already meager rewards, and what you've got is an arc where the rewards are so low that it gets pretty hard to ignore. That alone might have been enough to give the arc an 'official' 4-star rating (i.e. 5 stars online), but there were a few aspects to the story itself that also took just enough away that I felt the arc needed some work, and ended up with me giving it 3 stars (4 in game). First, I really wanted to see MAL developed more in the arc - there's more of a story there than is actually in the arc - until you get to the very end, where you just get nearly all of MAL's origin and back story all at once (in his description). Given that Liberty's story is developed through the arc step-by-step, I think perhaps developing MAL's story in a more step-by-step fashion throughout the arc would improve the story. Also, MAL's appearance and defeat in the last mission raised an issue for me: I actually stumbled across MAL and beat him long before finding Liberty - or the other two Liberty League allies. In effect, it felt like I robbed Liberty of her destiny - I defeated MAL for her, without her having any chance to help at all!

Feedback: For this arc, I do actually have some specific suggestions that I hope will help the author out. One, you may want to actually consider treating the first mission like an Oroborous flashback, complete with Ms. Liberty even warning you that because you are going nine years into the past, you might experience some temporal scaling. You can then cap that particular mission at level 29, and use the level 20-29 Family, which are worth full XP, rather than the dismal amount the 40+ Family are. Yeah, the whole XP thing is the dev's fault (well, really, the farmers' fault) - but at least there's a workaround, for now! Also, the Anti-Liberty leave really needs a boss that is set to spawn in: either a 'generic' version of one of the unique bosses, OR, you might consider making one of the minions or lieutenants in the existing group a boss (in particular, the Fatal Followers, or the Dark Followers - or whatever those dark guys were called - seem like good canditates, but any will do). To a lesser extent, you might want to consider making the allies lieutenants as well: a lieutenant is still reasonably hard to actually defeat when facing enemy minions, but doesn't have the overwhelming combat presence of a boss (which even from a story standpoint gets troublesome - if the members of the Liberty league are so powerful they can likely clear the map on their own, then why exactly is my help so important?) Finally, I think the story would be served much better if you set MAL to spawn after rescuing Liberty Rose in the last mission - at least that way it's much more likely that she'll be there to participate in that fight, which makes more sense, story-wise.

A few other tidbits to help too: I did find myself wondering why MAL and his forces were in that big graveyard? Adding some mission objectives giving them a climactic master plan that needs foiling would also give the arc a stronger ending! (Imagine it: MAL and his forces have littered the graveyard with machines and crates of chemicals and nanites that, when released, will "infect" the dead, causing them to rise as an army of bio-mechanical zombies under MAL's control, that will spread through Paragon City! Or something like that - something to make that moment in time the 'fulcrum point' where Liberty Rose saves the city from disaster.)

Alright, that's all the time I've got for today. For Friday, I intend to post reviews of "Whack A Mole" and "The Daybreak Patrol Needs Help" (and, time permitting, "The Superadyne Revolution").

Until then!

'Ey there,

Thanks for the review! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the arc after the initial 'issues' with the timed missions were worked out (I messed up on that one, but it's my first arc... live and learn ).

A minor note about the assassins -- they (Ubijtsa) are set as normal bosses and should show up as part of regular spawn groups; I think you need to have a group size of 2+ (3+?) to make sure you see 'em. They used to have a ninjutsu secondary, but when my test group ran through the arc for the first time, I figured that it might not be such a good idea (crane kick from stealth for 3/4 of the tank's hp, followed up by a restealth a few seconds later... ow), so they're boring MA/SR scrappers now.


thanks again,

-- Z.