One of the really nice things about this arc is the optional glowies with the descriptions of the chocolates retrieved.
And good job on the custom Elite Goldbrickers too, which gives the mission a higher upper level range.
I'm a published amateur comic book author: www.ericjohnsoncomics.com
******MA Arcs****
Arc 5909: "Amazon-Avatars"
Arc 6143: "Escalation" (Nominee: Architect Awards, Nominee: Player Awards, and Dev's Choice!)
This arc carries the Lazarus Seal of Approval!
'sup thou to thee? High-30s DB/fire brute in search of mission engineer. Running on diff 2 to see the bosses. Enjoy my Live Feedback Surprise! (yes, we do actually put live feedback inside! our customers find it VERY surprising!)
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Hmm. Maestro needs to throw down a little more setup than he does before I accept the mission. I mean, I have no idea where this is going on or how he knows about it... and the Goldbrickers don't sound like "a new company". There are weathered vintage-lookin' ads for Gold Bricker chocolate all over the lowbie isles.
These are new Brickers. And running on diff 2 means I get like four sonic siphons stacked on me at all times.
Weirdly enough I didn't encounter any SS-type brickers. Are those only bosses? The "sonic punches" feature prominently in the normal bricker line, is why I ask.
So tell me, are these your favorite chocos, or have you just been playing entirely too much Chocolatier?
Also, pumpkins are too fruits. They've got seeds in.
Maestro- "And don't bother me with this botanical nonsense on how they're technically fruits. To the chefs of the world, they are vegetables!
"No! I will hear no more of it. The last person to be so unromantically pedantic was rewarded with 'O Fortuna' in full voice. I believe two of his bones survived. Moving on."
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And moving on... it's everyone's favorite corporate criminals, Crey! Oh joy. Up to nefarious nuttiness, no doubt.
Ah, there's an SS bricker. But good lord, with his "I am my own -res field focus" power, plus sonic siphon, plus liquefy, the SS just shredded me.
I only get one special lieut mixed in with the Crey in the second mission. Kinda odd finding that one guy when there's this giant squad of custom Brickers.
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Mind control chocolate. Of course! Crey Corporation: if it can't enslave, we won't deprave.
Or something like that.
Anyway, I finally see another special minion - maybe you should just use your customs and a random Crey spawner or something, it'd work them in more often... at least I think it would. If that's what you're using already, I dunno what to tell you other than "make more customs". You can scale back some on the Bricker side, they only stick around for one mission anyway and it's not like the original brickers have more than three models.
And the endboss is Clayface. EXCEPT DELICIOUS. Which I can get behind.
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So, finale. About all I'd ding it for is imbalance in the customs - Brickers get a ton when they don't need it, Crey get only a few who as a conserquence almost never show up. Lighthearted little piece, though for some reason it didn't make me crave chocolate. I guess it'll be a while until they let you taste things over the Internet though, so that's hardly the author's fault.
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)
In response to Venture's review:
Sorry I haven't gotten back to you about the review for quite some time, I've been hosting friends from downstate for over a week. Thank you for pointing out the issues with the sonic debuffs when playing solo at higher difficulties using melee characters; most of the AT's I've soloed this arc with were squishies who were just simply glad there weren't massive mezzes being tossed about, and were quite used to basically being gasoline-soaked rags when it comes to being in melee range with bosses, so I tended to use ranged tactics. Thanks for the data point!
Changes to arc 1153, Chocolatier Wars! , as of May 24, 2009:
Gremlin Wranglers are now Electrical Melee/Regeneration, regen replacing sonic resonance.
Midas-Touched were Super Strength standard/Sonic Resonance Extreme, they are now Sonic resonance Hard.
Sonic Blade were Katana/sonic resonance, they are now Katana/Regeneration.
Tech Coordinators were Robotics/sonic resonance, they are now Robotics/Electricity Manipulation.
I've changed the custom group of Crey Chocolatiers to spawn my custom mobs, or random crey, instead of including all the different possible spawns for lower levels, the sheer number of other possible crey mobs from say, 30-39, were causing very few of my custom chocolatiers to spawn in the missions.
I'm going to keep the somewhat low difficulty of the end Elite Boss, I'd had complaints when I'd first written my arc that he was too hard when I'd originally had him at Hard level Dark Melee/Standard Dark Armor, but no one had seemed to mind the Midas-Touched being Super Strength Hard/ Sonic Resonance Extreme until Lazarus set me straight, and I'd toned him down to Super Strength Standard. Thank you for letting me know he needed to be tweaked downward further.
Okay, going to play through the changes with a few of my characters, thank you again for reviewing my arc!
I just played this arc with my 42 DB/Fire scrapper.
Feedback:
Mission 1: You need custom objective text for the hostages, such as "Free the ... chocolatier". Did a pretty good job of that elsewhere in the arc. A little frustrating not knowing what the hostages were saying...
Text correction: "Stop you, the strawberry ... belongs to us."
You need a comma after the Stop, or get rid of the word "you".
Very funny clues from the glowies. Nice custom mobs.
2) Mission 2. We switch from Goldbrickers to Crey. I had mixed feelings about this. 1 - a break in continuity. 2 - I really enjoyed the custom mobs, but on the other hand, the "Crey Plot" to use a product to control people is just classic.
Mixed capitalization on "Praline extruder". I'd make extruder begin with a capital letter.
Mission 3:
Doctor Hershey: Possible copyright violation. I'd be very careful there. Also, some people might construe this as being racial in tone. I'm not politically correct, by any stretch of the imagination, but thats the first thing that hit me when he had his "dark chocolate" line. The defeat clue let me know otherwise, however. He's made of chocolate. Maybe a slight costume modification to make it more obvious?
"Heartbroken chocolate lover/connoiseur/etc." - mixed capitalization names
I gave it 5 stars. Very enjoyable comedy arc.
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In response to the Hercules review:
Mission 1:
The objectives underneath the mission text, "Rescue the chocolatiers, and maybe score some samples!", are listed as, "French Chocolatier, German Chocolatier, Dutch Chocolatier" (yes, I typed out the single Navigation text, I didn't just leave the hostage names as default). I understand what you are saying, I should type out, Free the French Chocolatier, Free the German Chocolatier, Free the Dutch Chocolatier, so people will know they just need to be freed. Rather than needing to be walked to the exit. Tossed in a little color on them, too. Actually, I've gotten several compliments on using the Chocolatiers' native tongues in their texts, and how the Goldbrickers are completely baffled by non-English speakers.
Changed "Stop you, the strawberry ganache belongs to us!" to, "Stop, the strawberry ganache belongs to us!"
Mission 2:
I'm switching from Goldbrickers to Crey, to continue exploring the story, the stakes have increased from needing to prevent the kidnapping of the greatest minds in chocolate creativity, to preventing the chocolate experience itself from being turned into a tool for enslavement, and a bad-tasting tool at that! I want to demonstrate that the only two villain factions that have any sort of canon-based connection to sweets are both taking action, but for very different reasons.
Found the instance when Extruder was typed with a lower-case "e", thanks!
Mission 3:
Actually, I'd only had a complaint about Doctor Hershey once, but the person said that the only thing they associate the word "Hershey" with, is "Hershey squirts". I'm going to change the name to Doctor Chocolatefinger, with his backstory... it's a Bond reference, but not a direct copyright violation. To those of you with dirty minds... just deal with it, heh! I have the character dark chocolate-colored, with Dark Melee and Dark Armor, and brown heavy body rocky crumble, I don't know what more I can do to modify his costume to project a more chocolatey appearance. I also really want to keep the white lab coat, for character background purposes.
Went through to correct mixed capitalization. Also, noticed that just yesterday, the Vendor with Cart emote was pulled, which I was using on all my first mission hostages... Gahhh! Must... come up with... something else... fast... Or at least until the next time they take away the emote I was using.
Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Arc ID: 1153
Creator's Global Name: @Electroanagesia
Synopsis: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that!
Number of EB's/AV's: One EB in the final mission, but an EB ally to help with it.
Story type: Humorous, and chocolatey.
Mission count: Three missions, but the second mission can be finished by clicking on the machine glowie if you have a nut allergy.
Estimated time to play: Depends how long you spend drooling over the clue descriptions of the optional boxes of chocolate, four glowies in each of the first and second missions. About 30-45 minutes to play.
Special Note: I ate a total of three bags of Guittard chocolate chips while writing and editing this arc so far. (Not all at once)