169571, The Unleashing (Hellions lowbie arc)

Arc Name: The Unleashing
Arc ID: 169571
Levels: 1-14
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Hellguard
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: The Hellions have finally broken their leader, Tempter, out of the Zig and are ready to show Paragon City what true evil really is. The big question is: do they even know what they're unleashing on the world?

Minor updates to this arc, based on feedback. Fixed some typos and spruced up the contact intros a bit. Not getting many plays as of yet, and would love some more feedback.

Will run this later tonight or tomorrow morning.

My review is simple - was it fun or not

This was a fun arc. I did it on my Dark/Ice defender and found it to be entertaining.

I gave it 5 stars and liked it.

Cool, thanks.

I played through it on a lvl 6 Twin Blades/Regen scrapper. Ultimately rated it four stars.

Mission #1 was short & sweet. I'm not sure if I missed any fight dialogue between the Hellions & Skulls since, in all instances except one, the fight was over before I arrived. A minor criticism: soooo many glowies. I know they weren't required but the constant thrum in the small area...

Mission #2: This was my favorite mission. Sadly, Officer Card faceplanted part way through but, all things considered, it was just as well for him. Also, he seemed to love chain web-grenading Hellions more than actually fighting them although I don't imagine that's something under your control as an AE designer. The boss mob reveal at the end was good.

Minor Mission #2 Criticism: One Hellion sees me and says "they'll make a good sacrifice." I'd change it to "$Heshe will make a good sacrifice."

Mission #3: This is where it all started to fall apart for me and for one simple reason: Custom mobs that would beat me into a fine red paste in 3 hits. It quickly went from "challenging" to "I'm spending more time staring at the loading screen than I'm spending playing the game" in short order.If I was at a level where I was incurring debt, I would have quit your mission because I probably died 7-8 times on this map and it was always from orange con Lts beating me into the dust. Maybe more abilities would have helped me but, since this is a lvl 1-14 arc, I was playing it with what should have been an appropriately leveled character.

That aside, my Mission #3 minor criticism were that the altar guards all had identical conversations.

So, all in all four stars. The main plot was nothing too new but the subplot with Card's kids added enough depth to not discount it as another generic "stop the evil". If the custom mobs were toned down enough to where I wasn't spending half the mission in the AE Medical Lab elevator, I would have given it a full 5/5.

Thanks for the feedback and the good rating. It's appreciated.

I'm planning on revamping the custom mobs, based on your feedback and that of someone else as well. They *are* a bit too powerful for the lower levels, and part of the reason for that is they were originally intended for a much higher level arc. I thought I'd toned them down enough, but obviously I was mistaken. Hopefully we'll see some tweaks to the "custom" setting for custom mobs in Issue 15 (the way it is right now on Test won't help matters any, but I'm hopeful). One way or another, they'll be getting nerfed fairly soon.

I'll spruce up the dialogue and rethink the number of glowies, as well.

Thanks again!

Updates:

Chose different powersets for certain custom mobs, to hopefully tone them down a bit for lowbies.

Redesigned a couple of the custom mobs based on feedback.

Tweaked dialogue, reduced number of unnecessary objectives.