Yet Another I'll Play Yours If You Play Mine
By
Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2009-05-08 15:04 in Mission Architect
My arc: 1589, of Mentors and Legacy. Heroic, 35+ (recommended 40+), shouldn't need a team if you use the help available on the hairy spots (there's 2 AVs at the end, but you have help 
)
So, playing Fog of War, making notes as I go along.
Mission 1:
- Description for the dwarves = win
- All patrols have the same dialog? Not sure how you're doing filesize-wise, but think you could separate them? Patrols tend to take very little space in the files.
- Little else to add, it serves as an introduction to the system, has some humorous quips, just as one would expect
Mission 2:
- Heh, it's not easy being green ^_^
- WALL OF BLUE TEXT! Erm... No, really, all the patrols popped out their text at the same time, ouch! Don't think it's even necessary, maybe you could have one separate patrol (or two) with their own flavour text, and the rest be silent?
- I like the "meta" part here of the visible data nodes.
- Tee hee, boss' description
Mission 3:
- More investigation. I think you've played the story well enough that more "go. hunt. kill gnomes." feels perfectly fine and not like a drag.
- Bwahahaha! A lousy boss indeed
- I finally came across some Lts! (playing this solo on Invincible, so far I had only seen minions - maybe throw a boss encounter or two with custom Lts. as bosses to showcase them in case someone's soloing?)
- Found the boss early - luck of the draw with outdoors maps
Mission 4:
- So, we're closing in! I almost expected a mission to infiltrate THEIR servers instead of this one
- Hm, more exposure to random Lts. It almost feels as if you picked whcich characters would be in which map.
- Dun DUN DUN! So we know who the traitor is! Nice twist, I suspect the reason at this point, let's see if I'm right
Mission 5:
- Ok, while I understand the thematic reason for the Plant/ mobs, I just spent one minute stuck in a "pit" of the map because I couldn't jump out (untill the debuff faded), and the vines tend to distract the allies (so you keep losing them).
- Oh the humanity of the minotaur! 
- Aha, I was right about the traitor!
Overall:
Really enjoyable, it's a 5 in my book (then again, maybe I'm easily amused ). The fact that it's long doesn't make it feel dragged out because of the good writting, and the humor is good.
Minor quibbles would be the patrols all with the same text. It's not like it's bad per se (heck, when you play my arc you'll see I did the same in two missions with named bosses), but when the dialog is long suck as that one, having everyone say the same it's a bit disconcerting - maybe have 1 patrol with the text set to 1, then the rest have no text, o rhave multiple patrols with their own flavour text. It's my opinion that when setting an encounter to be repeated N times, it's best not to have dialog, or just to keep it to very generic minimum one )"Kill them!" "Sound the alarm!" that kind of thing). Just my opinion of course
As far as difficulty goes, to quote TVTropes, I went for a "let's get dangerous" approach and took my best scrapper on invincible. Didn't have much trouble.
Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!
It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...
The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013
Aliana_Blue, thanks for your detailed review of "Fog of War." I'll address some of your comments in a separate post.
In the meantime, however, I shall immediately provide the review that I promised in exchange for yours...
Review of Arc 1589, "Of Mentors And Legacy"
Mission 1:
This is a nice use of a bait-and-switch to set the story hook. The contact sets the "expected" storyline, which is then switched to something different, thus piquing my interest for the developing story.
I did groan a bit when I saw that this first mission relied on finding a glowing object on an Oranbega map. Past experience has had me spending long periods of time searching every nook and cranny on such maps for glowing objects. Ultimately, I fell victim to my own assumptions. The glowing object spawned on a wide open room in the middle of the map, and wasn't too hard to find. I had erroneously assumed that it would appear near the end room, and deliberately superjumped ahead in search of it. On the other hand, this allowed me to fight the optional boss that you had included, which was a nice touch.
Mission 2:
At the start of this mission, I've made sure to review the clues that you left for me from Mission 1. You've put a fine amount of attention into crafting those clues, and using them to help the story. This is the sort of effort that I greatly appreciate in arcs.
I see that you opted to create multiple instances of the same Boss enemy throughout this particular map. It's a fairly nice implementation of this tool, although I found the boss dialogue a bit repetitive after the third or fourth iteration, and started skipping past the bosses after that.
The fight with the boss also involved summoning an ambush in the middle of the fight, which I always find tricky to implement well. Like many other instances, the ambush ultimately arrived after I had disposed of the boss and his starting minions. You might consider moving the spawning condition to earlier in the boss fight.
Mission Three:
Nice use of cascading objectives on this map, and the map is well-chosen to your purpose. One of the objectives involves saving six captives, and since every captive is guarded by a group that is different from the regular enemy spawns, this makes them easier to find. This is a huge plus, in my opinion. Of course, the six captives and their captors all seemed to share the same dialogue, so this also began to run a bit on the repetitive side.
Rescuing the captives resulted in the spawning of a boss, who I found without too much difficulty. Fighting him also prompted an ambush, which arrived well before the fight was over. In fact, since the boss happened to spawn in the chasm part of the map, and the ambushers were fliers with ranged attacks, this actually made for a nifty dynamic as the fight progressed. This may have been mostly due to chance, since it's an outdoor map. Nevertheless, I enjoyed how the fight worked out.
Mission Four:
So - having jumped through the hoops that the Ouroboros Mender has asked of me, it's time to see the results of my handiwork... And it's full of Nemesis troops! I will confess, my natural reaction to this was, "Ye Gods. It must be Yet Another Nemesis Plot." Of course, it later becomes clear that it's not really a Nemesis plot - merely an instance of Nemesis naturally filling a void that was left open.
This mission is a nice example of using separate instances of single patrols with different bits of dialogue to set the mood. It's a tool that I would have liked to use in my own "Fog of War" arc, and in fact originally had started off implementing... but I had to cut the separate dialogue patrols because I ran out of space.
You choose a nice, linear progression of maps in which to hunt for the clues, which I appreciated. Maps with multiple elevator branches in which to hunt down clues can get frustrating.
Mission Five:
So - by this point, I've discovered that mucking with the timestream purely at the promptings of notes from an alleged Ouroboros Mender rarely have the effect that I would hope for. I really shouldn't be surprised.
The first two allies in this mission seem fairly well-balanced. Both of them are Boss-caliber, and they both seem to hold their own against enemies without me just sitting back and watching them do all the heavy lifting. It was harder to make that judgment with respect to the third ally, however. He showed up as an Elite Boss, but because one of the other allies relies on Storm Control powers, it became hard for me to even [u]see[u] my latest ally.
I'll take a moment to note that I was playing this mission solo on Difficulty level 2, which meant that any Archvillains showed up as Elite Bosses. Ultimately, this suited me just fine, and I felt that the flow of the battles was quite reasonable.
I don't know if this was due to chance, or the nature of the map that was chosen, but the last two Named Bosses both ended up spawning in the same room. And since defeating one was a condition for spawning the other, this suited me just fine.
Epilogue:
This mission arc included a souvenir, which also really helps in wrapping up the story in a satisfying manner. The arc as a whole was interesting in that more of the story was told through the clues and dialogue bubbles than through the mission briefings and debriefings.
Ultimately, I rated the arc with five stars. You paid a lot of attention into making sure that all of the descriptive text was polished and free of errors, and made sure that things shouldn't get too frustrating. There were a few instances were progressing through the arc got a little bit repetitive, but nothing major.
Addressing Aliana_Blue's comment about filesize for my mission, "Fog of War":
Fog of War, like both of my other arcs, uses all of the alotted filesize. Adding anything further could only be accomplished at the expense of cutting out something else.
Of course, I recognize that having lots of patrols with the same text can get quite repetitive. As such, I welcome recommendations on whether I should cut down on the number of patrols, or cut out the dialogue entirely in certain instances.
Thanks for the feedback! It's really funny, I read through it and saw you picked the same thing I did, the repeptitive patrols/encounters/whatnot. I went to write a note that, in the third mission, the hostages are all identical and the dialog the same because it's the only way to properly have cascading objectives... And then I realized that on mission 2, the boss encounters weren't triggering anything anymore. They used to during one of the iterations, but I changed it, and I didn't realize I could make individual bosses. That's been corrected
Object placement, except for the outdoors map (where I can't control anything) was indeed carefully chosen so that it would flow well - I handpicked the maps after a lot of testing Mission 1's objective spawns in that middle room almost 100% of the time (and when not, it's in the open back room, still easy to spot), the chained AV fights at the end all spawn in that room by choice too, I wanted to have the last AV be an ambush but since it can't be done, I had to choose a map where it'd spawn where I wanted him.
Going back to patrols and flavour, I figured you'd be running short on file space, it's what usually happens with custom mobs (heck, mine is at 92% and doesn't have that many customs!).
A single, no-text patrol eats 0.37% of the file space. Maybe you could split the patrols so that you have one patrol objective with the amount set to 1 or 2 patrols and having the dialog, and a second objective with the amount set to 6 or 7 and with no dialog at all (that way you keep the variety of mobs in the missions without flooding the chat window with identical lines)? You'd be looking at 1.5%-ish increase if it's done in all 5 missions, if you can scavenge that much space. 1% for 3 missions. May be doable
Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!
It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...
The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013
Aliana_Blue, you certainly raise an interesting point, though .37% quickly rises to a significant amount of text. One of the challenges I always face when writing an arc is deciding on what text isn't really necessary, and can be cut to make for a few more hundreths or tenths of file space. Still, I'll take a look at my arc, and see what is tweakable.
And for those people hungering for reviews - my queue is open! Sure, I'm relatively late to the party, with so many other reviewers out there, but I'll definitely give you an honest, thoughtful, and detailed review in exchange for a play and review by you.
Hi there, I hope the offer is still good, cause I played yours and I'd like you to play mine. Either
The Second Coming of the Mega Mech (#122274) Heroic, 25-32, strong soloer or team recommended, as there are two AVs.
or
Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black (#161629) Heroic, 41-54, designed to be soloable if you can handle Malta.
Now on to the I'll play yours part.
I chose to play Cutthroat Competition. I used a level 20 DM/Shield Scrapper (pretending to be a villain since it's a villainous arc)
What is wrong with this arc: well nothing, really. There is nothing majorly wrong with this arc. There are some minor things, but overall it's a well-written, solid arc. The Facemaker dialogue is spot-on as far as I can tell, it lives up to the "villainous" tag (that's important to me, I like villainous arcs that are actually evil), and the scope of the story is appropriate to the level range.
The Facemaker's opening dialogue is gross, it's nasty, it's fabulous. Love it. I get into the first mission, and right away I'm being a jerk. I cringe a bit when I see three rescues, but two of them are right by the door so it's not too bad. And the captives themselves are well-done. Especially Maemae's daughter. Minor quibble: I'm not sure about having the boss's name in the nav bar. It sort of implies that I know who I'm going to fight, when in fact my character doesn't.
Mission two, again only some minor issues. The wording "take retribution on the circle" doesn't ring right. Picking up the allies is a nice touch, but the one ally's dialogue, stating that the spectral minions are "not worth breaking down" doesn't make sense, since they don't have a corporeal form to even try to break down. Also, this mission suffers from a loooooong lead-out. Leroy himself was clever, but he would have worked equally well as an ally, IMO (since you had to put him at the back for his dialogue to be funny).
Mission 3: The custom enemies fit right in, my only quibble with this one is that I saw the boss hit build-up and had an "eeek" moment. This might be too much for the level range in question, especially if you're not on heroic and he's actually a boss.
Mission 4: Ok, now we're at war. This mission had the biggest problems of the whole arc, in that one ally was ridiculously overpowered. I'm not a fan of EB-level allies in general. Also, the explanation you gave for using that model just sounded like a flimsy excuse to use that model. And the fourth-wall breaking just fell flat. The rest of the allies were nicely done though, with some cute dialogue. The EB was a tough fight, even scaled down to boss (I ditched the EB-level ally as soon as I found him), but I was warned, so that's ok.
So overall...yeah, it's good. I enjoyed it, for the most part.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Ooops, just noticed that you were one of the guys who reviewed my arc in that critique thread. So run the other one if you feel like it, or just take the above post as a freebie.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Alright, diving straight into the high fantasy pool. Live feedback from a level 40 spine/regen scrapper.
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Meta-AE is funnier than it should be given this thing's only had a month for there to be meta for it.
Anyway, here we are... ouch, dude, typo in your excessively long faction name. "Stereotypes" is how it should go.
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Hmm. Second mission, and I'm wondering about something. These guys' descriptions are presumably being transmitted over the AE. Wouldn't they be ones they wrote themselves, rather than parody descriptions?
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The third mission boss doesn't talk at all as I whittle him down. I guess you're kissing the file-size limit here with all the customs.
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Dr. Forrester is concerned about people from Aeon Corp? Dude, you're a certified mad scientist, you got no room to talk about 9-to-5ers.
The patrols in missions 3 and 4 all saying the same thing kinda get old rather fast. You can't just tell a joke over and over again and expect it to keep being funny. You can put in a second patrol group with no dialogue... if there's room for it.
...
Um, why is the dude trying to sabotage his own little pride and joy? He sunk how much time into this with Crey?
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Seriously. AE is Aeon's company. Unless this is Professor Echo trying to sabotage him or something it doesn't make sense for him to be slaughtering his own cash cow.
Carrion creepers are currently bugged and will go on spawning for a very long while. This can be a problem when a patch gets dropped in the same room as a glowie.
...unless he just got addicted and started doing stupid things. Yeah, that's our Dr. Aeon.
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Okay, overall impressions - the visual design on the customs was very nice. Repetitive dialogue from the patrols got old fast and if you have room you can add silent patrols to make up for them.
The plot - well, it's a humor arc, the plot just has to not be too ridiculous, and that's accomplished.
But the custom characters' descriptions really bug me. I mean, I know I'm not supposed to take them seriously, but a jokey description from metagaming enemies gives me the feeling that THEY don't take themselves seriously either. Which given that they're trying to accomplish something nasty sets up this odd disconnect.
You can still probably make a joke out of giant overwrought descriptions, but again I have no idea what you have the space for.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
Review of The Second Coming of the Mega Mech (#122274)
I soloed this on my lvl 40 bane spider, pretending to be a hero.
Mission One:
To start, I enjoy your custom mission contact, Viper Calhoun. A nice, edgy, Agent Indigo vibe to her that suits the feel of Striga Isle.
The first mission starts off straightforwardly enough, though I'd generally recommend shaving the interaction time for the glowing objects down by a second or two.
Thankfully, Burkholder is one of the more manageable AV-class enemies to face when solo.
Dr. Jansen seems rather off his kilter, though. Given his ominous rantings, I feel like most heroes would ask, "Why are we letting this guy go, again?"
Mission Two:
This is a nicely structured mission. You capture the feel of a raid on a Sky Raider warehouse, with a fun blend of cross-faction battles and patrols.
Again, there's a lot of red herring glowing objects to search, and I'd generally recommend shaving down the interaction time for these, too.
This time I have to fight Dr. Jansen, which simply confirms my initial suspicions of him. It grates a little when you have to fight someone that you didn't feel comfortable letting go in the first place.
The new custom group is nicely designed, complete with flavor descriptive text and costumes evocative of the Council theme.
Mission Three:
This mission got a little repetitive and annoying, what with the multiple clickable boxes that were red herrings. Especially on a Council base cave map, which has all sorts of nooks and crannies that can hide glowing objectives.
It was also a bit much to have the objective of "blowing up the base" accomplished by beating on a pile of explosives until it, well... exploded. I'm more used to setting bombs that will presumably detonate AFTER I've left the base.
Mission Four:
The final mission occurs on the Giant Mech map, which is only right and proper. It's a wonderful map.
The final Archvillain is also quite soloable due to not having a Defensive Set. Naturally, I used inspirations to survive what were presumably hard-hitting attacks, but he went down without too much trouble.
The final mission debriefing is a bit disconcerting, though. It prompts two reactions: 1) "What agency do you work for, again?" and 2) "So just why DO chicks dig giant robots?"
Ultimately, the arc makes for a fun beatdown. But the cultlike activity of the group trying to activate the Giant Mech leaves me scratching my head, not sure if this arc is trying to be mostly serious, or mostly tongue-in-cheek. I guess part of that reaction is my not being used to seeing cults organized around worshiping an object of technology. I'm also uncertain how such a cultish subculture could develop within the Council without being noticed and stamped out BY the Council.
Oy Northman- have you gotten a review from me anywhere? I know I played Cutthroat Competition, and I'm pretty sure I gave a review... somewhere... unless, of course, that was the one that the "The form you have submitted is no longer valid" bug ate, to much cursing.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
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The first mission starts off straightforwardly enough, though I'd generally recommend shaving the interaction time for the glowing objects down by a second or two.
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Noted. I've been trying to find a happy balance between "hacking a computer takes time" and "this blinky takes forever."
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Dr. Jansen seems rather off his kilter, though. Given his ominous rantings, I feel like most heroes would ask, "Why are we letting this guy go, again?"
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Again, noted. I'm going to have to take a look at the dialogue around him again, I think he might be a little too crazy. I think I might go back to having him be an initial objective, so it's clear from the outset that he's been helping the good guys.
[ QUOTE ]
This mission got a little repetitive and annoying, what with the multiple clickable boxes that were red herrings. Especially on a Council base cave map, which has all sorts of nooks and crannies that can hide glowing objectives.
It was also a bit much to have the objective of "blowing up the base" accomplished by beating on a pile of explosives until it, well... exploded. I'm more used to setting bombs that will presumably detonate AFTER I've left the base.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was picturing it as you blow up the pile of explosives, it sets off a chain reaction with all the boxes of explosives, while you do the Demolition Man slow-motion run out of there. I am really not too happy with this mission in general. I has given me no end of problems.
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The final Archvillain is also quite soloable due to not having a Defensive Set. Naturally, I used inspirations to survive what were presumably hard-hitting attacks, but he went down without too much trouble.
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Yeah, the last patch gave him Total Focus, even at level 25. I'm worried that he might hit too hard now. Before the patch he was Hard/Standard, and was on par with Burkholder. I turned him down to Standard after the patch, and he hits harder than he did before.
[ QUOTE ]
The final mission debriefing is a bit disconcerting, though. It prompts two reactions: 1) "What agency do you work for, again?" and 2) "So just why DO chicks dig giant robots?"
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She doesn't really work for an agency, per se. I was going for the idea that there are actually heroes hanging out in some of these zones, doing all the stuff that is too dangerous for non-powered contacts but too boring for player characters. Chicks dig giant robots because they are GIANT ROBOTS. However if the briefing gives the impression that you're helping out some shady agency I'll have to tweak it. The arc is supposed to be flat-out heroic, you're not being double-crossed or anything.
[ QUOTE ]
Ultimately, the arc makes for a fun beatdown. But the cultlike activity of the group trying to activate the Giant Mech leaves me scratching my head, not sure if this arc is trying to be mostly serious, or mostly tongue-in-cheek. I guess part of that reaction is my not being used to seeing cults organized around worshiping an object of technology. I'm also uncertain how such a cultish subculture could develop within the Council without being noticed and stamped out BY the Council.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's supposed to be kinda tongue-in-cheek (they're worshipping a GIANT ROBOT), kinda serious (it's basically a personality cult. They're not stupid enough to actually worship a giant robot, the AV just uses the ritualistic aspects to get these guys to be loyal to him. A group like the Council would naturally attract a lot of people with the "follower" mindset, so he's exploiting that.) As for how they get away with it, I guess it's time to revise some more dialogue....the idea is that they've defected from the Council, and there aren't many of them.
Thank you for the feedback. Looks like it's time to revise this thing yet again.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Regrettably, TeChameleon, I have run a number of searches, and also searched the threads where I know I put my missions up for review, but have not found your feedback anywhere. And since I have had two of my reviews in different threads eaten by the "The form you have submitted is no longer valid" bug, I suspect this has happened to your review as well.
I have since vowed to highlight all text and select "Copy" when writing one of my reviews, as a precaution against losing them to this posting bug, ever again.
Regardless... TeChameleon, I don't want to force you through the effort of recomposing your entire review, but if you could give a very abbreviated summary of things you liked/disliked, that would be much appreciated. (Since part of the purpose of this is to help me learn how to improve my designs, and learn what storytelling styles do and don't work for broad audiences.)
GlaziusF,
Thanks for your critique regarding "Fog of War." Humor is always difficult to pull off, and I appreciate your feedback.
Good catch on that typo, which I have since fixed. Something inevitably slips by, no matter how good the proofreading.
"Fog of War," like all of my published missions, hits the filesize cap. In fact, I've already done a bit of editing to try and make it less repetitive. I cut out patrol dialogue in its entirety from Mission 2, and managed to insert a "silent patrol" in Mission 1 after paring down text in the Mission Briefings.
Subsequent to your review, I've also cut the number of patrols in Missions Three and Four from eight, down to four. That should help alleviate the repetitive nature of the patrol dialogue. Unfortunately, since adding a "silent patrol" takes up a little over .35% of allowed filesize space, putting one in would require the cutting of significant amounts of text, or something else.
I'm somewhat torn about the lieutenants that can summon the Creeper Vines. The present limitations of the architect don't allow me to pick and choose individual powers for my custom enemies, or else I'd give them a selection that [u]doesn't[u] include the Carrion Creeper Vines. As it stands, those particular lieutenants have access to the Hard level of Plant Control, which grants them six or seven of the powers within that set. Cranking things down to Standard would give them only two. And that seems like a shameful sacrifice to make, though it may be necessary.
Personally, I never thought that Dr. Aeon viewed the Architect as a system for generating wealth and resources for himself. Especially after looking at his published memoirs, which note that: 1) The resources and manpower for AE came from Crey (suggesting to me that it's primarily a Crey cash cow, rather than an AeonCorp cash cow), 2) Part of his reasons for designing the AE was to toss a bone to his corporate sponsors (suggesting that he considers himself largely above mundane issues of corporate success), and 3) He considers the whole thing a scheme to benefit him and further his needs and goals. Plus, there are a number of instances where Aeon had to be reined in by Arachnos because of his self-serving schemes. So, yeah... I've typically considered Dr. Aeon to be so far gone down the route of mad science and personal arrogance that he'd have more than a few disconnects with things like balancing corporate profit against satisfying personal whims.
At any rate - I'm about to log on and play one of your arcs. A review should be forthcoming shortly.
Review of The Bravuran Jobs (ID# 5073), by GlaziusF
Every story begins with the Mission Contact, and I always enjoy it when said contact firmly establishes his own character through his own style of dialogue. The contact is established as a charming non-native speaker of English, and this works nicely for me.
The mission map is one that I don't recognize, but like the look of. I'd love to know which map it is in case I ever want to use it myself.
A minor quibble about the descriptive text for the Contessa: It reads, in part, "For a moment you wonder why Wyvern's after her, but then you realize - it's Wyvern. You pay, they shoot. At least if you're not an obvious ally of justice." That doesn't quite make sense to me - I would expect Wyvern to take my money and shoot where directed, provided that I wasn't an obvious ally of villainy. Or possibly provided that the target wasn't an obvious ally of justice.
Regardless, escorting the Contessa back to safety is a pretty painless task, thanks to the relative compactness of the map. Good design choice, here.
Mission Two:
Another advantage of having the mission contact be a non-native speaker is that I can turn my internal grammar corrector to "off," and enjoy his eccentricities. I like the fact that the briefing shows a clear villainous motivation, here.
Inside the mission, I see that two of the mission objectives are provided in light blue text. This leads me to guess that they might be optional goals, but we'll see if this is true.
Yep, looks like that's the case. Which is a good thing, given how awfully big this outdoor map is. Nevertheless, I rescued one of the farmers and took down the boss, who was in my way.
I like the characterization of the earth spirit, and the explanation that's given as to why he looks like a normal Red Cap. I only wish that, when I completed the mission, the clue gave more of a hint as to what he really looks like in his natural form.
Mission Three:
I begin to wonder if the contact is cagier than he lets on, and is merely putting on a deliberate show of innocence. Actually, I started wondering this a while ago. It's well-written, regardless.
Now I get to see a full custom group, filled with custom minions. They're well-designed, power-wise. Manageable in small chunks, but they can certainly overwhelm you if you're careless. (Which I was, in one instance - an ambush caught up to me as I was fighting another group.)
I'm not as enamored of the long passages of flavor text for these particular custom enemies. Several parts of them are repetitive, and it's a little annoying to pick out the new pieces of information from the wall of text.
Mission Four:
A pretty straightforward mission. Oddly enough, the main objectives all appeared in short order on the first floor, leaving the remaining two floors as purely optional. Dialogue for the Carnival party-crashers is well-written.
Mission Five:
And, thus it is that I find myself robbing the vaults of my own employer. Interesting. Ordinarily, even as a villain, I would choose to maintain a certain level of professionality. But given that the contact has [u]always[u] provided missions through feigning ignorant reading of the headlines, I'm guessing this is a challenge to something greater.
And, apparently, it is. You kinda have to admire the brazen charm of an employer who doesn't hold a little thing like robbery against you, and apparently is more interested in dueling you for the sport and challenge of it.
Conclusion: All in all, a fun arc, with some fun characterization. Purely on the level of personal taste, I wasn't a fan of what I found to be overly long custom minion descriptions, as noted above. Plus, I'm mildly disappointed that this wasn't a story that gradually built with each mission, but rather a series of separate but related vignettes, tied together in a single arc. But only mildly disappointed - there's definitely a fine place for fare such as this.
As a final note, I'm curious as to what steps you've taken to publicize your assorted arcs, each of which has an impressive number of playthroughs and ratings.
Hello there. Mine's in my sig. Possible at any level, reccomended 20+ at least. Custom bosses, final is an EB, ally available. Explicitly heroic arc.
And the review!
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Doing Tooth for a Tooth, with a level 25 corruptor, on heroic so the AVs downgrade. Liveblogging:
Mish1
Interesting way to explain away the deleveling process.
Hrm no system text on the crates. Did I find something? Did I not find something? How do I knooooowww??
I had my Midnight Visage temp power still. It does still work! That made the mission a cakewalk.
Mission fairly uneventful.
Mish2
A magic keg of mead? Are you serious? Well, ok then...but I better not be doing this guy's grocery shopping.
Not a lot of dialogue here... the boss doesn't even say anything.
Mish3
Outdoor mission, time to totally ignore all the spawns and fly to the boss!
Custom mobs suck before 30. Ow.
Weyland down on round 2 thanks to the magic of purples.
Mish4
Well the mead makes sense now. I guess.
Whoa, hello there [hero]. That seems a little random. I mean I understand the reasoning for having A hero there, but That Particular Hero? Hrm.
I would have had him on the first try, but I knocked him into adds. Haha. So on the rematch I waited for Hero to knock out the gardevord I'd accidentally aggrod. THEN he had the nerve to get stuck in the wall. I hate being Energy sometimes. Killed him though, after spending five minutes running around, insping through his fire blasts until he decided to unstick himself.
Second EB kill not so tough, until he managed to stun me and my purples ran out. Down on round two. No big.
Four stars, not bad.
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The mission map is one that I don't recognize, but like the look of. I'd love to know which map it is in case I ever want to use it myself.
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It's an outdoor mercy island map, filed under "arachnos" I think in the unique maps? Shows up in Burke's introductory arc.
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I like the characterization of the earth spirit, and the explanation that's given as to why he looks like a normal Red Cap. I only wish that, when I completed the mission, the clue gave more of a hint as to what he really looks like in his natural form.
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Had a little room so I popped it in, not that it's going to make much more sense.
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I begin to wonder if the contact is cagier than he lets on, and is merely putting on a deliberate show of innocence. Actually, I started wondering this a while ago. It's well-written, regardless.
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I never do nail that down. I've tried a bit, if you bug him for details about the later missions. But even if Lloyd is an innocent, he's savvy enough to know that you can't seem TOO ignorant in the Rogue Isles.
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A pretty straightforward mission. Oddly enough, the main objectives all appeared in short order on the first floor, leaving the remaining two floors as purely optional. Dialogue for the Carnival party-crashers is well-written.
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Yeah, that's odd. It's a random map and occasionally it picks one where there aren't any spaces for clickables to spawn on the top floor.
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You kinda have to admire the brazen charm of an employer who doesn't hold a little thing like robbery against you, and apparently is more interested in dueling you for the sport and challenge of it.
Conclusion: All in all, a fun arc, with some fun characterization. Purely on the level of personal taste, I wasn't a fan of what I found to be overly long custom minion descriptions, as noted above. Plus, I'm mildly disappointed that this wasn't a story that gradually built with each mission, but rather a series of separate but related vignettes, tied together in a single arc. But only mildly disappointed - there's definitely a fine place for fare such as this.
As a final note, I'm curious as to what steps you've taken to publicize your assorted arcs, each of which has an impressive number of playthroughs and ratings.
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"Brazen charm" is pretty much what I was going for. The arc is intended "to introduce Bravura", which I could do by dumping a pamphlet on you or by, well, a villainous little flyover.
As for the plays? Well, all the arcs were ready to go from day 1 and pretty good to start with as well. I promote in the "MA arc finder" channel and have my missions listed on cohmissionreview.com, and my arcs get a little general playtime whenever they kiss 5.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
*grin*
Not getting off that easy, Frozen 
Seriously, though, I'd feel better if I did a proper review (especially as it's been long enough with enough other runs in between to make me a bit leery of trying to do it from memory).
So-
[u]Cutthroat Competition[u]:
Playing through with my usual tester, my level 50 Energy/Energy/Munitions Blaster, Energon X. No purples or anything, so he's not all that high a performer- he's just my main and the character I'm most comfortable playing.
As always, you'll be getting my (in)famous stream-of-semiconsciousness reviewing, where you get my thoughts at about the same speed I do.
MISSION ONE:
Minor sorta-kinda-error in the briefing- pretty sure 'passerby' is both singular and plural (so not "passersby").
"Raxanthris the Abductor"? My, career day in Oranbega must be interesting...
Ugh, ghosts >.<
Hmm... this map is kind of on the big side for multiple leadouts and a boss fight- any chance of using a smaller one, since it's just a CoV office?
Raxanthris, meet my little friend, Mr. Blaster-Level-Damage-Spike. B'bye, Raxie.
"Minmae" Van Whooters? Keep wanting to correct that to "Minmei"... and yes, I am a Robotech fan, how'd you guess?
Wonder what that says about me that I had a harder time with a random Spectral Daemon Lord than the actual boss? >.<
Rose Thorn doesn't seem to have that much in the way of a sharp tongue from what little dialogue she has- especially not sharp enough to deter kidnappers :/
MISSION TWO:
Interesting premise, and it makes a certain amount of sense, heh...
Wow, another bloody huge map.
Huh. My own personal Abomination. *starts singing "My Pet Zombie" to the tune of the 'My Pet Monster' themesong*
Argh. I have to escort a fighting, minion-level ally all the way across this bloody oversized map? Blech.
Oh joy. I drag that idiot three-quarters of the way across the freaking huge map, then he decides to live up to his name and suicide against a group of CoT that I missed on the way in. Bah.
Mission failed because the janitor was a moron. Whee.
MISSION THREE:
Aha- that's what happened, I think- I don't remember anything beyond that horribly oversized map- I think I wound up getting cut off by a Rikti Mothership Raid, and discovering that it killed my mission progress >.<
Okay, so, destructables.
Huh... custom mobs. Interesting. Where did they get the souls of frenzied warriors, though?
Pfft... hahaha..! Poor Soulbound Berserker. His stubby little hyperthyroid arms are so thick that he can't actually do the fist-in-palm wait animation properly- he can't reach! Might consider a redesign, he just looks silly. Mind you, it didn't matter much one way or another- thanks to his brief introduction to my little friend Mr. Damage Spike, I don't even know what powers he had.
I swatted Stratus the Overseer as well, since he was handy.
O... kay? Both remaining altars spawned within a few feet of one another. I'll be very glad when they allow us more control over what spawns where >.<
Odd. Altars are apparently on the list of 'things that are no longer immobile', considering that it was affected by my KB. Looked more than a little odd, too.
Ha ha... exploding altar killed the guardian spawn of ghosts. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hate hate hate hate hate HATE HATE CoT ghosts!
MISSION FOUR:
The Facemaker is a weird one, isn't she. I'm surprised she didn't declare war on Serge at the same time... fun dialogue, though.
Argh... outdoor map. Huh- and the boss spawned within a few metres of the starting position. Fun. Meet Mr. Damage Spike!
And, succesful. It's good to be a blaster 
Time to wander off and gather up allies, I suppose. Wait, why are the models suddenly 'trusted nurses'?
... ah, okay- they're not actually the models, just nurses re-built using bits of the models. Might consider renaming them, since it kind of left me going "... bwah?"
*grumble* Okay, having the allies be optional would be nice. I've already stomped the boss flat, having to hunt all over this huge-[censored] map trying to find some random idiots is a bit grating, especially since they should theoretically be able to take care of themselves.
Leroy is Dr. Vahz? WHAT? Yeah, sorry, but no. The Facemaker is Dr. Vahzilok's pupil; she shouldn't be surpassing his greatest creation with some guy she picked up off the street... well, the sewer. And what was up with his dialogue? "You'd think the Mission Architect would give me a better default animation!"? Again... WHAT?
Also, Doc V is the wussiest EB ever >.O
Minmae... "If only mom could see me now"? Is it one of Facemaker's Nurses, or is it Minmae? And if it's actually Minmae, what's she doing as a 'trusted nurse' when you kidnapped her all of two missions ago?
Also, none of them seem to have lost/found text- not that I cared that much, since I just ditched them, but it could prove awkward if someone actually did want to keep them around.
Bleah. Still flying around looking for the last ally ten minutes later. This could definitely have been trimmed (or at least made optional), since I didn't actually need any of them.
Ugh, FINALLY. And... "Every Rose has its thorns?" Seriously?
Good closing comments...
So, OVERALL:
Fun little story; some of the dialogue could, I think, use a little tightening, in-mission, especially. The first, second, and fourth maps are just way the hell too big- and why would the CoT be around the PTS? That's a non-CoT demon, and you'd think they'd be wary of getting onto Bat'Zul's turf.
The Allies in the final mission need to be optional, especially on that map- they could pop up anywhere, and they're more than a little annoying to find.
Some plot stuff didn't work for me- why were the Circle so hot to get more 'warriors'? Surely the Facemaker doesn't have the firepower on her own to warrant a massive buildup on the part of the Circle of Thorns... Also, their usual MO is to just grab (live) victims and stick a thorn in 'em- reanimating corpses is more the BP's schtick. In other words, the custom mobs were nifty, but kind of unecessary (and a bit suspension-of-disbelief-breaking).
I like the basic premise, but I think it could use some tweaking- maybe this is just a single faction of CoT? Also, the level-ranges were kind of inconsistent- it was a bit annoying to have certain powers come and go at random.
Polish it up a little, and I think you've got a five-star arc on your hands (as it was, I gave it... eh, 3.5, rounded up).
EDIT: Oops- feel free to take your pick of my arcs to review- whichever one interests you (and the requisite info should be in the descriptions).
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Co3O4, Thanks for the review of "A Tooth For A Tooth." Since you rated it 4 stars, I'm curious as to what you would change or improve to make it better.
This arc, like all of my arcs, hits the filesize limit. That means I have to make some tough choices on what I keep and what I cut to squeeze out every precious .01% of space for text and the like. When it comes to interactive objectives, I typically cut the system text, but leave in the text that appears over the red interaction bar. I also put in a Clue that appears so that you know when you've found the key item. As the contact explains in the briefing, stealing the rest of the items is just for show, to keep people from guessing what you're really up to, and trying to interfere.
I'm curious as to just how important it is to players to have bosses spout dialogue in their fights. The Mission Two boss, indeed, doesn't say anything, though I could probably cut and tweak some dialogue here and there to make room for a line for him.
And yes, Custom mobs do tend to hit really hard and hurt really bad against lower-level characters. I'm still trying to figure out where the threshold is for making customs that are appropriate to certain level ranges.
In the final mission, if there's another hero other than Infernal available that would make a better choice (and less annoying to fight), I'm open to suggestions. I don't have enough filesize left to make a custom hero, and I didn't exactly want to try using Valkyrie. (In part because of how annoying her fights have been at later levels.)
As a side note, I'll mention that Positron played this particular arc, and left feedback saying that he enjoyed it, and might be able to Dev's Choice it if I edited the briefings to warn players that help might be needed on the final mission because of the difficulty of the villains. I've since made that change (though I suspect Positron's been too busy to get around to revisiting this arc, despite my PM). Nevertheless, I particularly welcome feedback on how others would improve this particular arc.
A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.
Hi F-N,
I've played two of your Arc's so far - Cutthroat Competition
and a Tooth For A Tooth -- and really enjoyed and recommend both.
What I especially liked in Tooth for a Tooth was the blending of history and fantasy, something I haven't seen before in other arcs. (No details or spoilers here - just a strong recommendation for people to go out and play this one!)
What I can say withouth revealing anything of the story, is that both of these arcs share one thing in common: Wonderful writing - which I always appreciate.
P.S. As per my recent post, please do not review my arc in return ... as I think the less said about my story the better. As you can probably tell from this post, in general, I fear that Review Threads are a Catch-22 at best:
1)They DO increase playership which is great ... but 2) they often give away too much of all the great twists and turns that make arcs like these fun to play. 
Review of Threads, ID# 170506, by Co3O4.
Played through this one with my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.
[u]Mission One:[u]
The initial hook for the story works just fine - a desperate student has seen one of his friends just ket kidnapped, and wants to rescue him. It's a little vanilla, but many fun stories derive from basic beginnings, especially when plot twists show that things are not what they seem.
The mission itself seems very straightforward. The boss seems to be from a Custom Group called the Horsemen, and has a custom description reflective of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So that provides some foreshadowing of what I can expect to face in the future.
The target of the rescue also has descriptive text, though I'm not sure why his having a fauxhawk would be a sign that I'm too late to help him. A sign of poor fashion sense, perhaps. But the pale skin, proclamations of the CoT that I'm too late, and the student's fearful running away after rescue are surely signs that something bad has already happened to him.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
Purely from a descriptive standpoint, I think there's a better way to phrase his current condition than to say, "Michael didn't sound like a Circle." I'm not sure how much room you have left on the briefing, but I'd suggest rewriting the sentence "Michael didn't sound like a Circle, so his mind should still be at least marginally in control" to something like "Michael's words and actions suggest that his mind is still at least marginally in control."
Looks like this next mission is a setup to find a MacGuffin to find Michael again. On a personal level, the setup feels a bit forced to me. The professor has a magic compass that will point to a person if you feed him a bit of DNA, and the student's Mom keeps a full kit of forensic samples of her student as a safe kit? Sounds like Mom always worried that her son would turn to a life of crime, and wanted to be prepared to help the police finger her son as a suspect.
I would typically suggest a simpler scenario for how to have a bit of DNA close at hand for the missing student. If you say that the mission contact and his friend are roommates, then it would be a pretty simple matter for the contact to collect a few strands of hair from his roommate's hairbrush or comb.
Another potential storytelling inconsistency - the mission contact says, in the briefing, that the compass is owned by his History teacher. He later says that said teacher is presently at the university, and that he thinks the teacher "teaches Latin or something." I recognize that professors can teach more than one class, but that just struck me as a little jarring.
At any rate, on to the mission itself... I discover an ally in the mission, whose descriptive text says that she's the cousin of the mission contact, and sister of the guy who was originally kidnapped. Which means that the mission contact and his friend are likely cousins as well.
True to my predictions, this mission has another one of the Horsemen as a Custom Boss. And the Circle of Thorns happens to be raiding the Midnight Club just as I'm seeking out the professor. It's not clear why, though. Admittedly, the clues show that the professor was researching CoT activity, which means that it's conceivable that the CoT would eventually butt heads with him, but having the CoT stage a coincidental raid on the Midnight Squad headquarters just feels a bit forced.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
Slight misspell in the mission briefing - when the contact sends you off, the descriptive text says that you have another friend who "scrys" the location of some Circle abductors. That should be spelled "scries."
So this mission involves rescuing some victims who have varying degrees of magical talent, and foiling a side plot of the Circle's to kill a bunch of people. It is also revealed that the Circle has a mage, Thanatos, who has found an easier way of possessing people that doesn't involve killing them first. That seems to contradict what seems to be the Circle's standard mode of operation. Every time I've even seen or interrupted a Circle possession ritual in-game, the target has been alive during the process.
[u]Mission Four:[u]
In the final battle against Thanatos, getting him down to a certain level of damage triggers an ally ambush that starts coming to help me, which is a pretty cool concept. Of course, there's a typo in what the Midnighter Dueller announces: "The [u]calvary[u] is on its way!" That should be "cavalry." You might also consider moving the trigger point for the ally ambush to an earlier spot in time. It took so long for the cavalry to come, I had finished off the Elite Boss by the time they arrived.
Okay... so, from what I see happening in this mission, Michael's will has been largely subverted by the soul that has been summoned into him to manifest another Horseman. So I suppose that's what you were getting at when you previously explained that the Circle had developed a new means of possessing bodies "without killing them." It seems that you mean the Circle is using a new means of possession that doesn't automatically expel the original soul/consciousness of the host body. And it means that the hero at least gets to walk away having successfully rescued the original victim. It would have been a real downer to have failed on that level, given the number of deaths we already had to wade through in the previous missions.
[u]Final Thoughts:[u]
On a purely technical and play-balanced level, the arc works fairly well. Nothing terribly overpowered, and you provide allies to help with the final Elite Boss. Spelling errors are minimal, and you provide descriptive text to the custom characters, which I always appreciate.
My critiques are primarily on the story-telling level, as listed above. Furthermore, while introducing custom characters themed on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is potentially cool, I wish there were more of a story reason for it. Granted, the Lady Grey Task Force is an example where some Horsemen-themed enemies are introduced without a story reason other than the presumed intimidation factor. So I probably shouldn't hold that against it too much.
I also am missing what connection there is between the title of the arc and the plot. I come away from the arc wondering why it's called "Threads."
Ultimately, I rated this arc at three stars.
Sincere thanks for taking the trouble to rewrite that detailed review of Cutthroat Competition, TeChameleon.
Some assorted responses to your critiques and comments:
There seems to be a common opinion amongst players of all sorts that if a mission is going to require escorting characters to the mission entrance, it bloody well should be a short map to reduce what I call "the boredom factor." I generally agree with this sentiment. Of course, I think it's possible to make escort objectives more interesting. I've even seen examples in other people's arcs - such as triggering the creation of patrols and/or boss spawns after an escort is obtained, thereby ensuring that there will still be interesting fights and scenery on the trip back.
Still, given that my current arcs are near the filesize limitations, it'll be simpler to pick out some smaller maps. I'll see what I can do on that score. I'll also look into making Leroy the Janitor a freeable "hostage" in Mission Two, and all of the allies optional in Mission Four. Those are all completely reasonable changes that I can solidly get behind.
I'll also look into revisiting the in-game dialogue made by Face-Tailored Minmae in Mission Four, since I don't want players getting unnecessarily confused as to whether they're nurses or models. (And as a side note, I am utterly unfamiliar with Robotech, so any similarity to Minmei of that series is completely coincidental. Minmae was a reference to an NPC that appears in one of the CoV missions, Maemae van Whooters, who is listed as a B-movie actress in the sixties.)
Leroy's grumbling about how he's being forced to spawn on his knees being menaced by "captors" was an expression of my own frustration of a Mission Architect limitation that I doubt will be addressed any time soon. Namely, the fact that if you insert something like an Abomination, Dr. Vahzilok, or a Red Cap as an ally, you can't assign him any animation whatsoever. The Mission Architect simply will not let you.
Nevertheless, I'll cut out Leroy's remark that breaks down the "fourth wall," though I'll still be keeping the Dr. Vahz model for him. (This is in part due to the fact that I don't have room to design another custom enemy, partly because I like inserting Dr. Vahz as an ally, and partly because I've gotten some enthusiastically positive comments from other players about that particular design feature.)
I also have no problems, story-wise, with the CoT operating on the PTS grounds. The Cap au Diable Strike Force in City of Villains firmly establishes that they have no issues with conducting a large-scale raid on those very premises, and they even tried to bind Bat'Zul for their own purposes, and were extremely ticked off when the players interfered with their plans to do so.
And the plural of "passerby" is, in fact, passersby. Had that tidbit drilled into me in high school English. This is backed up on Dictionary.com as well.
At any rate, a playthrough and rating should be forthcoming later today.
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Co3O4, Thanks for the review of "A Tooth For A Tooth." Since you rated it 4 stars, I'm curious as to what you would change or improve to make it better.
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Everything I run starts at a 3 star rating, and moves up and down based on various factors.
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I'm curious as to just how important it is to players to have bosses spout dialogue in their fights.
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I expect at least an "Unaware" dialogue, primarily because the text popup gives the player a way to know "oh hey, there's the boss".
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And yes, Custom mobs do tend to hit really hard and hurt really bad against lower-level characters. I'm still trying to figure out where the threshold is for making customs that are appropriate to certain level ranges.
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I wasn't really complaining about that, just giving commentary.
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In the final mission, if there's another hero other than Infernal available that would make a better choice (and less annoying to fight), I'm open to suggestions. I don't have enough filesize left to make a custom hero, and I didn't exactly want to try using Valkyrie. (In part because of how annoying her fights have been at later levels.)
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The filesize limit is understandable. A custom hero would work better in my opinion, but you have to work with what you're given. I guess Faultline is overdone huh?
I think you're just limited too much by the filesize here. If I HAD to suggest something to cut, I would maybe say the custom group in mission2. They seem to be just something to fight, never show up again, and could be replaced with something like redcaps I suppose. Custom mob groups take up an insane amount of room, and this would allow you to add more text and details.
Thank you for your review, Frozen_Northman.
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The boss seems to be from a Custom Group called the Horsemen, and has a custom description reflective of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So that provides some foreshadowing of what I can expect to face in the future.
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Editing error, whoops. The arc was initially a lot more involved, with a custom Thorns subgroup and a bigger plot, but like you I ran up against the filesize limit. I rewrote and didn't catch all the retcons. I like to keep the custom bosses though, for character and to avoid level-locking. I'll remove the misleading text.
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hough I'm not sure why his having a fauxhawk would be a sign that I'm too late to help him.
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Poor attempt at humor.
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The professor has a magic compass that will point to a person if you feed him a bit of DNA, and the student's Mom keeps a full kit of forensic samples of her student as a safe kit? Sounds like Mom always worried that her son would turn to a life of crime, and wanted to be prepared to help the police finger her son as a suspect.
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This was an attempt to fill a plot hole. I figured the player would wonder "where the heck am I suppossed to get DNA from a missing person". Safe kits are actually an "in case of kidnapping" or worst-case-scenario type item and are real. It is a bit forced though, I'll have to rework it.
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Another potential storytelling inconsistency - the mission contact says, in the briefing, that the compass is owned by his History teacher. He later says that said teacher is presently at the university, and that he thinks the teacher "teaches Latin or something." I recognize that professors can teach more than one class, but that just struck me as a little jarring.
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The contact is actually suppossed to be in High School. This is supossed to hint that the contact doesn't actually know what the history teacher DOES at the university. Then the player loads into the Midnighter Club map, and you're suppossed to figure out 'oh he's a Midnight Club member'. Thus, the Midnight squad is involved and... I'll have to think about this one.
I have the ambush in mission4 set to the same location as the boss, "back". The AE system just doesn't want to play nice with me.
The arc is called Threads because I honestly had no freaking clue what to call it and pulled something out of my posterior.
Well, time to put in an editing pass.
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Arc Title: Fog of War
Arc ID: 138914
Description: Fantasy gamers have been hacking the Mission Architect system, and AeonCorp is hiring you to help repel the hackers and get to the bottom of the disturbance. Deliberately designed as a humorous spoof of fantasy games. The final mission includes two standard Elite Bosses, so squishier toons may need a teammate or two. I also recommend that this arc be played by characters level 40 or higher.
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I just ran this arc with my Level 49 Plant/Storm Controller. Very well balanced mobs, with one exception I'll get into later.
No glaring spelling or grammar mistakes, except for 1 line in Chapter 4 ( below ).
Chapter 1:
I have just a minor quibble with the mob names. You seem to alternate between prototypical Race/Class names, such as Dwarven Gunner or Gnomish Tinkerer, and other names such as "Holier than Thou". For example, If you wanted to stick with the humorous names, Dwarven Gunner could have been "Irish Brogue-Speaking Dwarf", to make fun of the Irish accents that most fantasy games seem to stick on the dwarf race.
Question: I don't play red-side. Who is Dr. Forrester? Maybe a little background...
Chapter 2:
The "Knight of the Living Dead" died before I ever found him. Not sure how you'd fix that, other than making him a bit tougher?
There was no interaction text from the Rikti, like "Query: Goblin Trickster? Another: Nemesis Construct?" I guess you could say the same about the first chapter.
Chapter 3:
PoW means "Prisoner of War" to me. I realize you were trying to make a spinoff on World of Warcraft with a slight variation, but PoW just doesnt work - at least not for me. It's possible a veteran might get a little offended.
Chapter 4:
Wording: "... and that should get us prepared ....
Maybe: " ... help prepare us ...."
All of the patrols have the same text. I'd limit to 3 patrols or less if you're out of space. The same text over and over gets old.
Dead Man Talking: "Hospital transport ... for one .. Dr. Aeon"
Ok... I guess that means Dead Man Talking is Dr. Aeon in disguise? That one had me just a little confused.
Chapter 5)
I appreciated the backup for Dr. Aeon, but poor Snaptooth didnt survive the Minotaur. Cute dialog from the Minotaur, but if you need additional space, that might be one mob that could go.
The Dr. Aeon ambush needs text. I hate getting popped from behind with no warning. Maybe: "Defend Dr. Aeon!" at a minimum.
As I explained in-game, the Plant Control power set on one of your mobs is problematic. The game has a bug that seems to be confusing my plant control powers with the enemies powers. After winning one fight, every time I used any root power, the enemy carrion creepers kept spawning on my rooted areas. You might want to consider using another power set until the Devs resolve it.
Overall, a very nice arc. Good job.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
I've enjoyed seeing these types of threads develop, and I like being able to give and receive detailed feedback, so I'm starting my own.
How it works:
Play any one of my three listed arcs that sounds interesting to you. Rate it honestly, and post your Arc ID with your feedback. In return, I'll play your listed arc, rate it honestly, and post a review on this thread.
Admittedly, one or two of my arcs may be best played with one or more teammates - I'll point that out in the description. So if you play one of my arcs with teammates, and those teammates ALSO have arcs of their own, and give my arc an honest rating and tell me their Arc IDs... I'll play and review theirs as well.
Feel free to ask me to play an arc that benefits from team play when you ask for a review - I will do my level best to round up some of my regular teammates so that we can play it together. Just make sure to point out in your request if I should assemble teammates before running it.
So... here are my arcs. Hope you enjoy!
Arc Title: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 10171
Description: A simple collection task for the Facemaker soon escalates into all-out war with a rival faction over harvest rights to the limited pool of innocent victims. Four missions, all capping off at about level 20. Designed to be solo-friendly.
Arc Title: A Tooth For A Tooth
Arc ID: 10173
Description: A centuries-old dwarf seeks help from villains to rebuild his influence in the modern age. Elements of Scandinavian mythology are incorporated. I recommend playing this arc with characters of level 25 or above. I also recommend having a team - especially for the last mission. The final mission has two Archvillain-class enemies, and auto-scales down to level 20 because of the particular enemies involved.
Arc Title: Fog of War
Arc ID: 138914
Description: Fantasy gamers have been hacking the Mission Architect system, and AeonCorp is hiring you to help repel the hackers and get to the bottom of the disturbance. Deliberately designed as a humorous spoof of fantasy games. The final mission includes two standard Elite Bosses, so squishier toons may need a teammate or two. I also recommend that this arc be played by characters level 40 or higher.