Venture's Reviews II: The Nightmare Continues
By
Aisynia,
Posted on: 2009-05-16 24:40 in Mission Architect
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If the Mender interventions really are completely ineffective, why bother with the whole setup at all? Do you regard the whole arc-set surrounding Issue 11 to be one big shaggy dog story?
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From a story perspective, the Mender interventions are NOT ineffective. _Smoke and Mirrors_, for instance, is all about the idea that if you are ineffective then the CoT will win and the world will end (or be ruled by a demon). Twilight's Son specifically tells you that he's sending you to modify the time stream, and the he will be then jumping forward to judge whether the desired future state was achieved. Likewise, you have the situation where Silos and his cronies are playing both ends against the middle by sending the heroes and villains to undermine each other, ostensibly to discover which one of their outcomes is ultimately the one that will lead to the over-arching goal (avoiding the Coming Storm).
Now, from a strictly mechanical standpoint, it's correct that the state of the world is static and all of the time traveling in the world won't change the state of the world one whit. Ouroboros would actually make a lot more sense if the world was changing dynamically (like when the Calvin Scott task force resolved and disappeared) and its purpose was to let you go "back in time" and experience content that was otherwise no longer available.
As it stands the best you can do is roll with it and work with it as it exists.
Twilight's Son says:
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I will travel forward later to see if that had any effect.
I hate to say it was all for naught, but we have yet to be successful with this type of venture. Perhaps there is something we do not fully understand regarding the time line, some variable we haven't accurately calculated.
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which make is pretty clear to me: nothing you're doing on flashbacks is actually changing anything.
_Smoke and Mirrors_, for instance, is all about the idea that if you are ineffective then the CoT will win and the world will end (or be ruled by a demon).
The problem is that "Smoke and Mirrors" is a past event. It happened and the CoT lost. It doesn't matter, even from the immersed perspective, whether you run the TF and win or go home and have a sandwich instead.
At best Ouroboros might be a Set Right What Once Went Wrong deal, but for the villains that should really be reversed and it isn't. Really, the canon has a bad case of Timey Wimey Ball.
As I said, time travel is a plot device that never solves more problems than it causes. Just Say No.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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He says the test needs to be conducted in a " Double Blind " format which technically means he doesn't know what he's doing, either.
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Not true. Magenta Rogue is the Third Party overseeing the experiment, so he knows what he is doing. The Player is the Researcher conducting the experiment, so he doesn't know exactly what is necessarily going on. The Nemesis is the Human Subject being experimented upon, who isn't suppose to know that there is an experiment being conducted in the first place.
There are two reasons for this: The first is to avoid contamination in the experiment and ensure scientific rigor. The second reason is much more sinister and requires a bit of Fridge Brilliance to understand, because I didn't want to slap the Player in the face with it. Magenta Rogue is a villian after all and he did say that there was an ethical problem involved.
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It discards as false a history of Nemesis that is given in the narrative in The Web of Arachnos (IE, not given by any character but by the "omniscient narrator")
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I am not familiar with that as it is an extra-game product. It is not required reading, and wouldn't be able to say how many players actually have read it, or if it is really even applicable to canon. Nothing in the title suggests "Nemesis Inside" and certainly no one has recommended it to me other than product advertizment.
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That's not really compatible with the canon but the characters wouldn't know that, so onward we go....
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I don't know why that should not be considered compatible with the canon. Nemesis is an established deceiver and creator of elaborate deceptions. His involvement in Time Travel is fairly founded in the existance of Ouroboros with the fact that Mender Silos is an anagram for Lord Nemesis, and the fact that Mender Silos's appearance looks very suspiciously like that of the many Fake Nemeses, that Nemesis seems to disappear from existance for decades on end, only to reappear strong as before, and that his technology is highly complex and not entirely understood even if it is archaic in appearance. Explain, for example, how entirely mechanical Jaeger Automatons in the 1820's can actually sense the presence of a target at range when vacuum tubes were not even invented until the late 19th Century and electronic sensing devices not invented till the early 20th Century. It has always been hinted that Nemesis Technology has something "extra" in it that allowed it to perform past what should be the normal limits for the technology used. It could be as simple as micro-circuitry hidden in the elaborate etching designs and relief work on much of Nemesis's devices influencing the gears spinning inside the clockwork machines. Otherwise, I would almost accuse him of using Magic simply disguised as Technology if there was any hint of that.
It IS a challenge to the estabilished canon's portrayal of Nemesis. It is not intended to violate the canon, which incidently Nemesis does not seem to officially exist in. As far as the Player is concerned, canon may simply be what Nemesis wants you to believe.
I will accept the charge of "just a bunch of stuff that happened" with a slight modification to "just a bunch of stuff that didn't happened".
The plot of the arc is actually simple, but apparently hard to catch on to.
*Magenta Rogue is accusing Nemesis, any Nemesis, of being Time Travelers from the future, and that thier natural existance does not predate our own.
*To proof this, Magenta has hired the Player to perform a series of missions.
*Magenta intends to place the Player in the way of Nemesis at each turn and disrupt Nemesis's plan, forcing the Nemesis, to keep jumping backward in time.
*The Problem: The Player has no access to Time Travel and will be moving forward in time, while Nemesis has access to Time Travel (as the theory goes) and will be moving backwards in Time every time Nemesis's plan is disrupted to restart it.
*The Solution: Magenta must predict where the Time Traveler would jump back to at each event, and have the Player already there, at that location, at that time, ready to disrupt Nemesis all over again. This means sending the Player to the Last Mission first, and proceed in reverse order, hide or destroy any historical evidence that would tip Nemesis off to this (hindsight is 20/20 and when your a Time Traveler, you can have a lot of hindsight), and disrupting Nemesis's plan for the first time in the Final Mission.
*What Happens: For the first three mission, the Player is witnessing Time as it originally exists, pristine and unaltered. During these missions, the Player is "rigging" the trap by coming to those locations ready and pre-prepared to disrupt Nemesis's plan. Each mission represents a lower state of Nemesis's plan. The Forth mission, hides the trap, and the Fifth Mission springs the trap. -IF- Nemesis was indeed not a Time Traveler, all this will fail and be for naught, and the experiment will show negative on the results.
First Mission:
*The "Reed Milsons" warehouse is a bug caused by the Mission Architect. It was changed early on to the "Dean Smileys" warehouse, and indeed that's what it shows in my Published Arcs as being.
*Clockworks should need no explanation. If they are in a warehouse they are obviously looting it for metals and building materials.
*The Clockworks were the "Psychic" faction because I did want them to be Clockworks, and I did not want to cause level shifting in the story arc. Player Level Shifting is a major complaint in reviews, especially Gratuitous Player Level Shifting.
*The importance of it being Clockworks is reflected on in the Mission Souvenir.
*This is the Lowest State of Nemesis's plan. Nemesis has lost use of the Council Robot factory and all resources used there. Nemesis must now recruit people and build the Jaeger Automatons from scratch by collecting raw materials like Brass from Clockworks and processing and machining them into Jaegers. This would take the most effort and the longest amount of time and is most likely to produce the least amount of Jaeger Automatons and at low quality to boot. The Player enters this mission and destroys everything of potential value to Nemesis. This is the final effort, and if this plan fails, Nemesis is defeated and frustrated on how a non-Time Traveler is "following" her, and must retreat.
Second Mission:
*The label of Rogue Robots is an dumb oversight. I wanted to use the Rogue Robot faction. The Rogue Robot faction does not go to level 50. This would have created yet another Player Level Shift which was to be avoided. There are some robots in the Council and 5th Column factions that do go into the intended level range, a LT and a Boss, but no minions. I created a custom Council robot minon and created a custom group and overfocusedly called it Rogue Robots. In hindsight, it should have been called Council Robots.
*"Counsil" - ouch, I know better than that.
*The importance of the factory becomes clear in the Mission Souvenir.
*This is the Second Lowest State of Nemesis's Plan. Nemesis still has enough raw materials and personel even after splitting off enough to Crey Corp. to prevent voiding the Time Line to build lots of Jaeger Automatons, but needs a place equipt to build them with. Nemesis has gone back in time and has acquired possesion of the old Council Robot factory, dealt with the occupants, and has repurposed the factory for his own end, when the Player enters, destroys everything, and corrupts the manufacturing process.
Third Mission:
*As you noted, Grace Lightning is just a Boss. I saw no reason to foreshadow this on the Mission Introduction. I don't know if this was a contentious issue for you.
*This is the Second Highest State of Nemesis's plan. Nemesis still has operatives in the Crey Corporation, and having lost use of the warehouse where Nemesis was rallying forces, changes his orders for the Nemesis Automatons to create more parts and route supplies to another destination, as well as sending a Fake Nemesis to the Fifth Mission to replace herself. Magenta's already hacked the Crey computers weeks ago and when they see an alteration in shipping orders from a pre-determined norm, they change the Player's orders to Expose the Nemesis Automatons to Longbow, foiling the plan, and further disrupting Nemesis's plan by getting Longbow to hunt down where the Jaeger Parts were being shipped to.
Fourth Mission:
*The player blinds history to the first 3 missions as if they didn't happen, regardless of whether they did or did not or what even happened. This creates structured flaws in Nemesis's ablility to plan on past events as they truely happen..
Fifth Mission:
*This is the Highest State of Nemesis's Plan. Nemesis has been massing an army of Jaeger Automatons and no one seems to be the wiser for what is in store. This is when the Player busts in and defeats Nemesis. Nemesis, then jumps back in time to the Third Mission, unaware that the Player has already been to that location at that Time Period.
The Mission Souviner:
*If you want to read the mission from the Nemesis's perspective, read the middle five paragraphs in reverse order. It is as simple as that.
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And the anagrams...people, it is not the 1950s any more, villains "hiding" their plans behind obvious anagrams is not clever, funny or anything but tragically stupid and trite. Yes, the devs do it. They shouldn't. Don't assume the devs do no wrong.
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Catch 22: Nemesis stylizes himself in an egotistical, anachronistic manner (1950's? try 1850's) and would and has used anagrams in canon. To portray Nemesis as not using anagrams would be a violation of canon. Thus, one charge can not be avoided without invoking the other.
Okay, seriously question here. Yes, the anagrams are stupid. No (sane) self respecting master villian should EVAR use them. The names used could be anything random. Have you ever thought that anagrams are not really meant for the characters in the story (that in fact, those are not the real names, which is why the characters never seem to catch on except in old Batman serials), but more for the reader as a meta-clue as to something about the story, or is that what your also objecting to? Not all readers catch on to anagrams very easily, or are even aware of them.
Arc #1153, "Chocolatier Wars!"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: overpowered mobs for a joke arc
Reviewed on: 5/21/2009
Level Range: 1-54/1-54/45-54
Character used: Cat Stevie/Virtue
Maestro wants you to save the Fruit wing of the World Chocolate Exhibition from a Goldbrickers attack. It seems that chocolate is one of the few pleasures he still enjoys since losing his hearing, and who can blame him.... The Goldbrickers in question turn out to be Elite Goldbrickers, a custom faction with a variety of annoying powers. Expect massive debuffs -- I kept seeing resistance hit -90% or so and Defense down in the -20%s. There are three chocolatiers to rescue, Dutch, German and French, along with optional "samples" to try out. All three ask if they can put you down for a dozen boxes, in their own langauges. The samples are fairly exotic stuff like Dark Chocolate and Cayenne Pepper. (Which is quite good...I used to get something similar in a sugar free variety made by Vosges from the local Whole Foods; sadly they don't carry it any more.) In the debriefing Maestro complains that they've put the Gingered Pumpkin Pralines in the fruit section when pumpkin isn't a fruit under the exhibition rules, but also lets slip that the new company entering the chocolate market is Crey.
While Maestro has had his Council forces protect the Nut wing, it seems someone has made off with a prototype Praline Extruder. You're sent in to retrieve it. I almost immediately ran into a Midas Touched Goldbricker Super Strength/Sonic Resonance Boss at +2 that killed me in two shots (over 2300 points of damage in about four seconds...dead through Dull Pain and IH). I also spotted a custom Crey Concher unit with Dual Blades, didn't catch the secondary. Once you locate the Praline Extruder you have to return to Maestro to have his people transport it due to its weight, but not before it spits out a huge supply of Hazelnut Caramel Pralines for you.
Finally, Maestro discovers the Fruit wing was so overcrowded because of a new wing dedicated to artificial chocolates. Needless to say this is overrun by Crey products, which not only suck but Crey has altered the stimulants in the chocolate so that anyone who eats them will only be able to experience pleasure by eating Crey Chocolate. This has him hopping mad, of course, so in you go again. You have to destroy the machines being used to produce the vile stuff, free the 2 test subjects and deal with the Big Bad, with Maestro's help. Normally I skip allies until the end but by this point I was so fed up with the constant insane debuffs I just wanted everything to die in a fire already, so I sprung Maestro. He made short work of the Big Bad, a "Dr. Hershey" who was now composed entirely of Crey Chocolate thanks to a lab accident. He was Dark Melee/DiedTooFast. In the end, Maestro promises to have his researchers find a way to counteract the effects of Crey Chocolate on the test subjects, not out of concern for them but just to thwart Crey.
The arc is reasonably cute but the mobs are way too tough for the joke. It would work just as well, if not better, as a regular Goldbricker arc. (Unfortunately, the level 15-20 Crey mobs from Golden Roller's arc are not available in the Architect for some reason.) It might have been fun if it wasn't so annoying.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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As I said, time travel is a plot device that never solves more problems than it causes. Just Say No.
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Does this mean not to submit arcs with any time-travel element because you feel these are bad no matter how well done? If so, I want to change the arc of mine you were going to review. Though mine is humor and not a "save the world" type story at all it does feature time travel.
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
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So, before digging into this I went and did something I should have done in the first place and found that sure enough, Magenta Rogue is an author insert. Why am I not surprised.
Not true. Magenta Rogue is the Third Party overseeing the experiment, so he knows what he is doing. The Player is the Researcher conducting the experiment, so he doesn't know exactly what is necessarily going on.
The player is not "researching" anything, he's a rat in a maze. The only person researching anything is Magenta Rogue, and he's way too deep in this to call it any kind of "double blind".
I am not familiar with [The Web of Arachnos] as it is an extra-game product. It is not required reading, and wouldn't be able to say how many players actually have read it, or if it is really even applicable to canon.
Whether you are familiar with it or not, it exists, it is considered canon as much as we might wish it wasn't unless directly contradicted by the game (which it is not in this case) and it contains a more or less complete biography of Nemesis not given from any character's point of view.
I don't know why that should not be considered compatible with the canon.
It is not compatible with the canon because Nemesis' history is not up for grabs. It's been spelled out in detail. Even if you take the book off the table you can't just discard everything ever said or written about Nemesis as being an elaborate lie and expect anyone to take you seriously.
His involvement in Time Travel is fairly founded in the existance of Ouroboros with the fact that Mender Silos is an anagram for Lord Nemesis, and the fact that Mender Silos's appearance looks very suspiciously like that of the many Fake Nemeses
Yeah, we know. It does not, however, mean any other version of Nemesis has access to time travel. Since working time travel would be an instant I Win card for Nemesis (or just about anyone else) my argument would be that either Nemesis doesn't have it or it doesn't work.
that Nemesis seems to disappear from existance for decades on end, only to reappear strong as before
Time travel is hardly necessary to explain that.
and that his technology is highly complex and not entirely understood even if it is archaic in appearance. Explain, for example, how entirely mechanical Jaeger Automatons in the 1820's can actually sense the presence of a target at range when vacuum tubes were not even invented until the late 19th Century and electronic sensing devices not invented till the early 20th Century.
Here's the explanation: it's really bad writing. Nemesis' technology is taken to work as a genre convention, just like superpowers in general. Yes, this strains disbelief well past the breaking point but some people, the ones who run this game among them, just don't care.
It IS a challenge to the estabilished canon's portrayal of Nemesis. It is not intended to violate the canon, which incidently Nemesis does not seem to officially exist in.
It is hard to see how dismissing out of hand all known history of a character is not "violating canon", and the company web page does not even pretend to be comprehensive. (It is, in fact, pretty much abandoned since Arctic Sun's departure.)
The plot of the arc is actually simple, but apparently hard to catch on to.
Simple plots do not require pages of explication after the fact.
The plot hinges on "laws" of time travel you have invented for your own purposes and apply selectively as necessary for the plot to work. For instance, if Nemesis' resources are destroyed in the past, why does he not simply bring new resources from the future? He (or she, in this case) could spend 10 years rebuilding in the future and bring it all back to ten seconds after the player's actions. For that matter, why build robots in the past at all when he could build them in the future? Answer: because then the plot doesn't work. It also requires near-omniscience on the part of the Contact, meaning we can add Xanatos Roulette to the arc's litany of sins, and several instances of Plot Induced Stupidity on the part of Lady Nemesis (really, attracting Clockwork was the best she could do for getting scrap metal, as opposed to, say, just buying it?).
I think when an arc involves an author insert throwing Nemesis the Idiot Ball we can just stick the Mary Sue fork in it and call it done.
Catch 22: Nemesis stylizes himself in an egotistical, anachronistic manner (1950's? try 1850's) and would and has used anagrams in canon. To portray Nemesis as not using anagrams would be a violation of canon. Thus, one charge can not be avoided without invoking the other.
It is not a violation of canon to have a canon character stop making stupid mistakes.
Have you ever thought that anagrams are not really meant for the characters in the story (that in fact, those are not the real names, which is why the characters never seem to catch on except in old Batman serials), but more for the reader as a meta-clue as to something about the story, or is that what your also objecting to?
Tipping the player off early that he's stuck in a Nemesis plot is throwing the character the Idiot Ball.
As for Wrong Number's question:
Does this mean not to submit arcs with any time-travel element because you feel these are bad no matter how well done?
No, but if your arc has logical flaws because of time travel I'm not going to give them a pass on MST3K Mantra grounds.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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which make is pretty clear to me: nothing you're doing on flashbacks is actually changing anything.
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Huh. Looks like I need to visit Red Tomax for a refresher on Ouroboros dialog. I think that I automatically filed this under "The Coming Storm is inevitable" as opposed to "time travel is pointless".
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The problem is that "Smoke and Mirrors" is a past event. It happened and the CoT lost. It doesn't matter, even from the immersed perspective, whether you run the TF and win or go home and have a sandwich instead.
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Here, I remembered Twilight Son blathering about the "causality field" (terminology I used to hand-wave in my own Ouroboros arc) and I figured it was the explanation. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to give you the nod here: According to Red Tomax, Twilight's Son never bothers to explain WHY there's a "causality field" in the first place. Being more interested in playing it than analyzing it, I chose to not examine it too closely. Either something initiated a change in the past that Twilight's Son is not telling you about or else he's the liar that the Mysterious Letter Writer claims he is. Or maybe the author of the arc forgot to tie up the loose ends.
Oh well. Fair warning that the second arc in your lowbie queue (I don't have the number handy) is an Ouroboros arc that assumes that Ouroboros actually is what they claim to be and that one of their jobs is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
*EDIT* While I'm not interested in derailing the thread into an Ouroboros discussion, I'll note this bit from the last official letter:
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But again, my train of thought wanders. I'm writing you to tell you that, as surprising as it might sound, Mender Silos and his time traveling cohorts are actually succeeding in delaying the coming storm. Note, I didn't say preventing. There is still hope.
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The Letter Writer appears to indicate that the meddling by Silos and his cronies is not entirely ineffective.
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and that his technology is highly complex and not entirely understood even if it is archaic in appearance. Explain, for example, how entirely mechanical Jaeger Automatons in the 1820's can actually sense the presence of a target at range when vacuum tubes were not even invented until the late 19th Century and electronic sensing devices not invented till the early 20th Century.
Here's the explanation: it's really bad writing. Nemesis' technology is taken to work as a genre convention, just like superpowers in general. Yes, this strains disbelief well past the breaking point but some people, the ones who run this game among them, just don't care.
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This, unfortunately, negates any point you may have Venture. You cannot acknowledge that it is acceptable to strain disbelief in the comic genre, while simultaneously berate someone for doing just that. It's a shame because you had some good points.
The in-game explanation for the MA is that the stories are else world in nature, made up by the city's denizens, and therefore subject to faults and whims of fancy. By Canon, non-canon stories are cool.
Now if their poorly written, which you say this is, more than valid crit.
He never actually said it was "acceptable", just that it's commonplace.
Rise of the Copper Legion (#60280; with soundtrack)
The Fractured Dreamer (#498588; with musical theme)
"Now Leaving: Paragon City": original composition for the end of CoH
This, unfortunately, negates any point you may have Venture. You cannot acknowledge that it is acceptable to strain disbelief in the comic genre, while simultaneously berate someone for doing just that.
I did not say it was acceptable. I just said it was being done.
I have expressly said on several occasions, some recently, the developers make mistakes; what they do is not right simply because they did it. This is one such occasion. Nemesis' technology is beyond stupid. I don't blame the Architect in question for wanted to provide a more reasonable explanation. The problem is that any such explanation would have to stand up to the fact that DATA, Positron, Aeon, etc. have all had many opportunities over the years to examine Nemesis technology (think of how many destroyed Jaegers and Automatons you've left in your wake) and haven't found anything. Either Nemesis' "real" technology is so advanced that it doesn't even look like technology (in which case why hasn't he won already?), or it's really Magic (it isn't, we know from the canon that Nemesis has little knowledge of magic), or it's just bad writing.
Which it is.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Either Nemesis' "real" technology is so advanced that it doesn't even look like technology (in which case why hasn't he won already?), or it's really Magic (it isn't, we know from the canon that Nemesis has little knowledge of magic), or it's just bad writing.
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Or... it's really as straightforward as it looks? I feel like I'm missing something.
Also, I feel compelled to point out that the whole comic book genre is filled with little pockets of internal logic, whose borders with other pockets of internal logic tend to produce mind-bendingly convoluted non-logic. I'm not sure it's possible to make an MMO that's genre loyal and entirely consistent. The whole magic vs. technology thing is already kind of a contrivance.
EDIT: This is all a threadjack, but I feel like we're getting to the heart of a real question here. How much logical consistency can we reasonably demand of a game that intentionally incorporates so many disparate "reasons" for super-powered-ness?
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Arc #49035, "A South Side Story"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: zero Clues, excessive AVs/EBs for the level range, problematic escort
Reviewed on: 5/21/2009
Level Range: 5-14/1-14/5-14/5-14/1-14
Character used: Amy Sunflower/Virtue
Detective Rachel Torres asks you to help out "Teardrop", one of her CIs...who happens to be a female Skull. According to Teardrop the "Bone Mama" has split from the main Skull gang to form the Southside Skulls, which has provoked a turf war. That doesn't seem to be the main issue right now, though. Torres has a man inside the Lost (problem: no one gets inside the Lost without being exposed to Shift) who needs to be extracted. Her first plan was to get her brother Chico, a Skulls boss (it says, not Bone Daddy), to go after the Lost. The plan was for Teardrop to go along with Chico and get the cop out in the confusion. Teardrop seems surprised for some reason that her brother doesn't trust her...well, duh, factional issues up the first paragraph honey...so she can't go along on the raid. It falls to you to head in and bring out the undercover cop. He turns out to be named "This must be the guy" and is a Lost Minion...combatant escort. Unless this mission is intended to fail (which is bad) this makes things interesting as you have to keep him alive past respawned patrols. Fortunately for him, I was playing a Controller with a +res buff and two heals, which he needed. The Architect did deal with the Shift problem, as the cop's guards were complaining about him being "unevolved" and threatening to "evolve" him.
Next up, Teardrop says she's found out through her cousin that Chico has declared war on the Hellions and called for a rumble, Sharks^H^H^H^H^H^HSkulls to the east, Hellions to the west.... He won't be going himself but he's sending a bunch of guys. You're to go in and arrest as many of both gangs as possible. The target warehouse is filled with Skull/Hellion battles, one of which triggered an ambush upon resolution that spawned right on top of me. Fortunately for me, Seeds of Win (sic) was up. The nav bar objective called for defeating the Skulls leader, Toothbreaker Jones. When he hit the cement it changed to "Defeat Hellion Leader". I also got an ambush of Hellions saying "Devil Dawg is down, avenge him!" The Hellion leader turned out to be a custom mob, "Fire Fist", whose info said he preferred to use his martial arts training. He never got into melee range so mostly used Fire Blasts on me, did throw a shuriken once. When he got low an ambush wave spawned silently and hit me in the back, which made things "interesting" for a bit but I pulled it off. Both Fire Fist and Toothbreaker Jones spawned as Bosses for me solo on Heroic, suggesting they are really Elites. There was never any sign of "Devil Dawg"...maybe there was a body bag somewhere I missed.
Act III is when the star-crossed lovers foreshadowed by the arc title finally make their appearance. It turns out Teardrop is in love with a Hellion named Johnny. She had been worried that he'd be at the brawl you just busted because Devil Dawg was his leader. He wasn't. Both of them want to get away from their gangs but they're both getting the leave-and-you-die treatment. Now just to make things worse, the Hellions are going after Chico since he got Devil Dawg killed. And it turns out Chico knows about her and Johnny and is afraid she'll be killed if the other Skulls find out. He provoked the rumble hoping to get Johnny killed so she'd be safe. For now, Teardrop wants you to bust Chico, giving up his location, so he'll be safe from the Hellions coming to kill him. This one says it is a defeat-all on an abandoned office map but actually ended when I downed Chico (custom Boss, Dark Blast/Assaut Rifle). Again, clearing a battle dropped an ambush on my head. Chico vows to rise again after his defeat.
New problem, though: with Chico in stir his second, Cryptic, has taken over what's left of the gang and is now specifically hunting down Johnny. Again, you're asked to bust the Hellions so the Skulls can't get them. The plan is for Torres to separate Johnny during processing so he can get his family to safety and split with Teardrop. It occurs to me that even if the mission goes off successfully this will put Chico and Johnny is close proximity.... Immediately on entry to the warehouse, though, there was a "Captive Hellion" being threatened by other Hellions. On rescue he said they'd already killed Johnny for being an informant and fled. The warehouse was already under attack by Skulls and Lost, including a custom Lost Boss (Broadsword/Psychic Blast) named "Shoeless Joe". Eventually I found Johnny's corpse, ending the mission.
Teardrop's response to this is to take Johnny's corpse to the Bone Mama to see if she can resurrect him. Cue Pet Sematary flashbacks. The Bone Mama has told Teardrop there's a chance if Johnny's soul hasn't fled yet...that's what, d4 days per level? It's been a while...anyway, new complication: Cryptic is following Teardrop around. She's skipping the restraining order and going right to having you clobber him at her next meeting with the Bone Mama, more or less as payment for her help since this will greatly weaken the Bone Mama's competition. The mission takes place on a small abandoned office map. Teardrop and the Bone Mama are both unguarded allies, both (I think) Dark Blast/Dark Melee Lieutenants (presumably Bosses). When you get upstairs you run into Cryptic, an Elite Boss. I have no idea what his powers were because between the initial spawn and an almost instant ambush I was casting like crazy trying to keep myself and both allies alive. Johnny was in this room as a hostage, back from the dead and feeling much better, it seems. The mission is a defeat-all and in searching for the last mobs I ran into none other than Marrow Drinker, one of the two Skull leaders, also an Elite Boss. Both he and Cryptic should have been downgraded AVs, but neither one's PToDs kicked in, a bug I've seen a fair number of times in Architect missions. Marrow Drinker tried to run but that's when I finally got some holds stacked on him, then it was all over. As a result of having multiple allies the whole time, I got a whole one bonus ticket for the mission. On exit a popup declares Failure Is The Only Option: Marrow Drinker slips away somehow. Teardrop and Johnny get away from their gangs with the Bone Mama's help, and gang violence in Kings Row is diminished thanks to you arresting so many punks.
The arc has a lot of strong points. The theme is a classic of course, which is why I used it too. Teardrop's dialog is reasonably well-written and the Architect was read up on the canon. Unfortunately there are some problems too. There are exactly zero Clues. Not a one. This means there is really no significant dialog that does not come from Teardrop. The mission would benefit a lot from expansion here. The use of a Minion ally escort in Act I is very problematic. If the mission is intended to fail it really shouldn't be. If I'm right about the proper enemy ranks, there are really way too many EBs and AVs for such a low-level arc. A number of ambushes, as you may have noticed, are set to spawn in the same region as the triggering objective, meaning it's likely the player will get hit with a potential Rocks Fall Everyone Dies issue. Johnny's resurrection is really too convenient, but I suppose given how many times players snuff it and get better this can be overlooked. Finally, it is somewhat irritating to have Torres speak through Teardrop so often. Either Torres should hand off the player to Teardrop in the intro, or maybe Torres should be the Contact and Teardrop a character we meet and hear from in the missions. This arc could easily hit five stars with a little more work.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
The player is not "researching" anything, he's a rat in a maze. The only person researching anything is Magenta Rogue, and he's way too deep in this to call it any kind of "double blind".
You really need to qualify that. Do you understand how a double blind study is conducted?
*Magenta is the 3rd party removed from the "lab" as it were. He has pre-prepared the planned outline of the experiment but does not interact with the Test subject (The Rat) as to not interject his own biases, reactions, and/or presence into the mix.
*The Player is the Researcher, who performs the experiment by following the planned outline. The Player sets up the maze for the Rat (Nemesis) and interacts with the Rat. The Player performs the function of an isolation barrier between Third Party and the Rat.
*Nemesis is the Rat, the subject that is actually being tested. The Rat interacts with the Researcher but does not interact with the Third Party.
It is not compatible with the canon because Nemesis' history is not up for grabs. It's been spelled out in detail. Even if you take the book off the table you can't just discard everything ever said or written about Nemesis as being an elaborate lie and expect anyone to take you seriously.
While there being an extra-game canon source totally screws with the plot of the Mission Arc, the purpose of the arc was not to discard everything as an elaborate lie, but to show how misperception of a much larger, greater, more complex picture could be construed and simplified as Nemesis being a single person of a bygone era, based solely on the in-game presented facts.
Considering, though, that all of this happens in a Virtual Virtual Reality, and that the Mission Architect is basically Fan Fiction 1.0, your dragging canon into a designated non-canon environment and trying to call foul.
Yeah, we know. It does not, however, mean any other version of Nemesis has access to time travel. Since working time travel would be an instant I Win card for Nemesis (or just about anyone else) my argument would be that either Nemesis doesn't have it or it doesn't work.
Saying that Time Travel is an instant I Win Card is Throwing The Idiot Ball in a big way. That completely disregards how all but the most frivolous and laughable fringes of the Time Travel Genre. Time Travel is all about cause and effect, of actions or inactions, of consequence and repercussions, both foreseen and unforeseen, intended and unintended.
Characters that go into Time Travel willy-nilly and try and treat it as God Mode, always make that one tiny mistake, and prove their own undoing. When Death gets mad, it just kills you. When Time gets mad, it erases you from existence.... or even worse.
Time travel is hardly necessary to explain that.
It does not NEED to explain it. It is just that it COULD explain it.
The plot hinges on "laws" of time travel you have invented for your own purposes and apply selectively as necessary for the plot to work. For instance, if Nemesis' resources are destroyed in the past, why does he not simply bring new resources from the future? He (or she, in this case) could spend 10 years rebuilding in the future and bring it all back to ten seconds after the player's actions. For that matter, why build robots in the past at all when he could build them in the future? Answer: because then the plot doesn't work. It also requires near-omniscience on the part of the Contact, meaning we can add Xanatos Roulette to the arc's litany of sins, and several instances of Plot Induced Stupidity on the part of Lady Nemesis (really, attracting Clockwork was the best she could do for getting scrap metal, as opposed to, say, just buying it?).
What your asking for is to be the Omniscience Reader who knows all the reasons, all the facts, the entire situation. All these questions could have good, solid answers. The Story is limited to 18,000 CHARACTERS + additional tidbits. The Player only gets to read the story from the Character's Perspective. That means the Player get the One Sided Abridged Version. Exactly how many times do you think you could alter, re-alter, re-re-alter, ect., ect., a selected portion of Time before you did something that would cause it to implode upon yourself? Exactly how much of a disruptive historical act could you inflict without possibly compromising your own existance? How much power and resources is really needed to send men, materials, and supplies, back and forth? Are there practical limits? Is there physical restrictions? Laws of Physics that apply? Finite Resources that are available? This is not Plot Induced Stupidy.
And "litany of sins"? This isn't a Holy Inquisition.
Yes, it is a Xanatos Roulette. No one is going to want to read a Xanatos Roulette that doesn't even get off the ground. This is the Comic Book Genre. Masterminds and Mad Scientists are know for playing out successful Xanatos Roulettes after making obsessive studies and brooding for long periods of time about this kind of thing. They call it a relaxing hobby.
I think when an arc involves an author insert throwing Nemesis the Idiot Ball we can just stick the Mary Sue fork in it and call it done
You can have your fork back. There is no Mary Sue and you know it.
The main problem I see with this arc (from reading it, not playing it, mind you) is that the person supposedly doing this experiment (i.e. the contact, Magenta Rogue) seems to be omniscient already. Otherwise how does he know exactly how to place the player in this grand tapestry before the events that cue it have happened yet? (I'm assuming your Fridge Brilliance is that Magenta Rogue is a time traveler himself, which would explain this part.) But if that's true there's no reason to do an experiment in the first place; Magenta already knows what's going on. If the experiment is supposed to be a ruse, it seems like an unnecessarily elaborate one.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
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Arc #49035, "A South Side Story"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: zero Clues, excessive AVs/EBs for the level range, problematic escort
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First, let me say thank you for the review! It's my first arc and first review, and I'm happy to see that really pretty much everything was experienced the way I intended for it to be experienced. Yay!!! 
Clues were not overlooked. I'm just an anti-clue guy. I don't read them and I don't write them. I don't think they really fit in with this style of game. Maybe they would fit with a Neverwinter Nights type game, but IMHO they just don't flow in CoH/V/R. Now I know many of the people discussing Architect on the forums are in the clue camp, but when I'm in the game I sometimes quiz people I'm playing with about this or that in the backstory and virtually always the answer is "Huh, I never knew that." Even when they've been playing since day 1. Like when you do the mission from Peebles in Striga to free the Eastgate researchers and their "mysterious discovery." Well, no one seems to know that it is a Coralax body that the researchers recovered, and that's what the Council and Sky Raiders are fighting over. If the story was told visually, with a Coralax body in a blue tube (like the red ones in Arachnos bases), then it would be pretty darn clear. But since the information is secreted away in hidden scraps of text, the vast majority of players have no clue - hehe - about what's happening in that mission.
So, as a design philosophy, when I'm in the game I prefer to have as much shown as possible ... which, especially in the infancy of the Architect system, may mean a relatively lean story without a lot of frills. In "A South Side Story" I wanted people to SEE the gangs fighting, and ultimately SEE the characters of Johnny, Teardrop, and the Bone Mama facing off against the Petrovic brothers. And while a lot of the story unavoidably comes from Teardrop's expositions, basic information and motivation/emotion comes from NPC dialog too.
So if I lost a star for being "clueless" - lol - I can accept that. Some people like the clues, some people never see them, and I designed for the latter.
As for the excessive bosses, what I was aiming for was an arc that had more of a middleweight feel to it. Not the lightweight feel of your typical lowbie canon arc, nor the heavyweight feel of a task force, but something in between. So I configured it to give bosses, not lieuts., on heroic. I felt this was justified as you do encounter bosses on heroic in the Hollows as low as level 8. I had my two "master villains" make an appearance at the end as EBs, to represent toughness, and their defeat is not a required objective. None of the boss NPCs had defenses, so they were relatively squishy.
When I tested the arc after the ranged attacks were patched in, I used a plain old level 16 blaster on Unyielding. I died a few times - as the bosses had turned to EBs - but with regular powers, Nemesis Staff, and dropped inspirations, I was able to muddle through.
When I created the arc, I wanted to provide something for a team to play after they'd finished their second safeguard in Kings Row. I wanted it to be thematic to Kings Row, exposing both some new material and some under-utilized old material. In particular, I wanted to do what I could to show that Marrow Snap and Marrow Drinker were the actual founders of the Skulls and not just dime-a-dozen Bone Daddy lieuts., thereby correcting what I see as an "error" in the way the devs handled the Skulls missions.
For the game play I wanted the missions to be more challenging than the regular canon, yet doable. While I began with defeat alls and large maps, that proved to be too much, and I ended up downscaling to boss defeats and medium or small maps. I filled many of the maps with battle spawns not only to show the scale of the gang fighting, but to give the player(s) the option to either attack double-size mobs or wait for the battle to end and pick up the pieces. As much as possible, the rest of the mobs were set to patrol so as to reduce the number of standing, fist-pounding mobs. Pretty much all of the mobs in battle and patrol were set to Hard. I also wanted to keep the action spicy by adding ambushes, which I knew would make some players groan, but they were all set on Easy.
One person wrote me a comment that said, "Enough ambushes, doncha think?!" lol But it's really not that bad, only challenging. In fact, by far most people commented that they appreciated the level of challenge in the arc.
Two of the ambushes spawned on top of Venture as he played, which I think was possibly just bad luck. I did vary the directions of the ambushes according to who was ambushing and what position they should logically be at on the map. (In other words, invaders coming from the front door, defenders coming from the back.) If Venture had pulled toward the front door and then the ambush came from the front door, I could easily see how it could happen. And maybe there is an element of randomness in where they appear, in addition to "front, middle, and back." I've played the arc many times and had it happen maybe once or twice.
As for the undercover agent the player rescues from the Lost (who happens to be named Det. Krupke, as a tip of the hat to West Side Story), it doesn't matter to the plot whether he lives or dies. It is just a challenge the player can win or lose. The real story starts as this incident brings out the tension between Chico (aka Skullcracker) and Teardrop, and causes Teardrop to reveal her desire to be free of the Skulls.
As for the EBs in the final battle, it is set up for the player to believe they are there to defeat Cryptic, but the fact that you gain 3 allies upon entering the mission cues the player that something is up. The two master villains, the Petrovics - who have been mentioned in the story - are there to make a show before executing a tactical retreat in the face of your unexpectedly strong power. If the player happens to defeat the EBs, it's extra credit for the players and okay for the story, because they still somehow escape collection by the police ... which is an accepted tradition in superhero stories. Also, if any of the helper NPCs were decked during the fight, the final exposition explains they are recuperating at the Bone Mama's base. If there was a better mechanism for controlling the EBs' appearance and actions, I would use it, but with what we have at our disposal this method seems practical.
I guess the last note I have on this is that while I originally wanted to have it so the first contact was Det. Torres and have her pass the baton to Teardrop, I found we couldn't do that in Architect yet. So, seeing as it is mostly Teardrop's story, I put it all in her hands. Everything not given in her exposition is either shown or delivered through entry/exit pop-ups, NPC dialog balloons, or NPC descriptions.
Again, much thanks!
I checked on this ...
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The Hellion leader turned out to be a custom mob, "Fire Fist", whose info said he preferred to use his martial arts training. He never got into melee range so mostly used Fire Blasts on me, did throw a shuriken once. When he got low an ambush wave spawned silently and hit me in the back, which made things "interesting" for a bit but I pulled it off.
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There actually is no ambush or any other trigger on Fire Fist. It must have been a patrol that came up behind you, hence the silence.
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The main problem I see with this arc (from reading it, not playing it, mind you) is that the person supposedly doing this experiment (i.e. the contact, Magenta Rogue) seems to be omniscient already. Otherwise how does he know exactly how to place the player in this grand tapestry before the events that cue it have happened yet? (I'm assuming your Fridge Brilliance is that Magenta Rogue is a time traveler himself, which would explain this part.) But if that's true there's no reason to do an experiment in the first place; Magenta already knows what's going on. If the experiment is supposed to be a ruse, it seems like an unnecessarily elaborate one.
[/ QUOTE ]
The whole arc really assumes that the Theory that is put forward during the arc is true. If that was not the case, then there would be no arc.
It is revealed during the arc that Magenta was tipped off to the Nemesis activity while hacking a Crey Corporation server. This is suppose to be a chance happening, not something he was originally looking for. It involved the manufacture of mass quanities of Jaeger Automaton parts, albeit disguised as "Not a Jaeger" products. It did, of course, lend an opportunity to test the theory discussed in the mission arc.
That means he starts out already knowing enough about Mission 3 to create a plan surround it from the start. From Mission 3, he can extrapolate Mission 5 just by tracking the shipment of the parts.
The whole intent of the experiment is just to see if Time is being retroactively changed when the Nemesis's plan is failed, or if indeed, there are plans, with in plans, with in plans, in which case, Time is not changed. It's not really suppose to be about defeating Nemesis, or what the Nemesis's plan is, or thwarting it. Its just to get Nemesis to react to a stimulus and see what happens.
To that end, Magenta must have devised or secured some way of preserving information from being changed even if Time and Reality is altered. This fact is never discussed, as it is not really important to the player. It represents the unaltered Time Record to which Magenta would later have to compare history too.
Since the 20/20 Hindsight of History is probably the best source of reconnaissance info for a potential Time Traveler, Magenta looks into potential collectors and curators of historical info and documents. This leads to Mission 4 and the Historical Archive where it's pretty plainly apparent that the building is staffed by Nemesis Automatons upon close inspection to the trained eye, and very likely the key source of vital information for a future Nemesis about the past from which to plan from.
Since the records cared for there represent most or all of the data that the Nemesis would be looking at, Magenta looks though those records and bases his decision, helping him limit what factors and information to actually consider so it is not an open ended problem. The place is a public archive house so this is not a problem, he can do it covertly or overtly without disturbing anything or drawing attention as long as he is discreet about it.
So now that a finite limit on available info has been placed, and Magenta knows that Nemesis wants to create X number of Jaegers based on the activity at Crey Corporation, he needs to deduce where good fall back positions are. Jaeger Automatons are nothing new, and being a Robotics mastermind, he would be at least knowledgeable in what the general the requirements for manufacturing them and what kind of resources they required.
This means that Magenta must try to predict Missions 1 and 2 based on the above. In order to further narrow down the options, Magenta has the data in the Historical Archive modified in Mission 4 to narrow down possible locations, as well as to obscure any record of mishaps that would historically tip the Nemesis off about his own plans.
Still, that could leave a lot of potential options open. Those options are further investigate before hand by Magenta before Magenta meets with the Player for the first time. Having narrowed down the list as much as possible, it is then time for action. Magenta then not only hires the Player, but several NPCs in similar capacities to the Player. He then "Just Happens" to send the Player to Missions 1 and 2 where the real action will occur as the NPCs go to other places that will be duds or non-starters. The Player and the NPCs are not told about each other for secrecy reasons and act independently.
Not to take up too much space in your thread Venture but...
If you guys need to post a essay about your story's plot maybe you didnt explain enough in your arc. I found my biggest problem with my arc is I understand the plot without the story and I forget others may not follow the story as easily. Just my 2 cents
Virtue
--Blazing Tiger-- 50 Invulrn/Fire Tank
<<Virtues Tankiest Kitty>>
Try my Arcs: #4892 and #112548
@Blazing Tiger and @Aqua Fox
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Not to take up too much space in your thread Venture but...
If you guys need to post a essay about your story's plot maybe you didnt explain enough in your arc. I found my biggest problem with my arc is I understand the plot without the story and I forget others may not follow the story as easily. Just my 2 cents
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QFT. The ideal story should be simple enough to grasp its basic plot and themes at a base level, yet complex enough to not be able to grasp everything on the first pass through.
In other words: Plot=first run through. Themes, metaphors, and motifs=second run through.
Having worked professionally as a writer for the theatre, I'm going to post up a guide soon to writing and responding to criticism. I may not be the best writer, but I have learned a thing or two about how not to do what's going on a lot around here lol.
Dude, you're mistaking a forum board for a newspaper. It's a lot more wild-wild-west on a board. If you're planning on creating a thread meant to instruct posters on proper behavior, then you'll really need to put on the flame-retardant suit! 
Just sayin'.....
EC
When you ASK someone to review your creation it is subject to his/her views and prejudices.
Personally I am sick of the entire Star Trek - lets go back/forward in time again instead of exploring an endless universe theme they have.
That's just an OPINION.
The people submitting Arcs for review have ASKED for Ventures OPINION. Then they complain when he gives it.
Seems rather silly to me.
How much logical consistency can we reasonably demand of a game that intentionally incorporates so many disparate "reasons" for super-powered-ness?
Lots. There is no imperative to be logical inconsistent.
For instance, would it actually hurt anything if the /info on a Nemesis soldier said "The weapons used by these troops may look archaic, but that's just an affectation. On the inside, Nemesis technology is nothing but cutting edge superscience" instead of trying to tell us that Nemesis is so CRAZY BRILLIANT that he can do things with steam that are utterly impossible?
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Not to take up too much space in your thread Venture but...
If you guys need to post a essay about your story's plot maybe you didnt explain enough in your arc. I found my biggest problem with my arc is I understand the plot without the story and I forget others may not follow the story as easily. Just my 2 cents
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Your right.
I just need to clear my head of this, drop it, and walk away. I had questions about it to begin with, and was hoping for something more constructive that I got. That's life.
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If there were a particular source of power they'd found, or that they needed from our dimension, it could add some sense of drama and urgency to the story.
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Well, that still isn't a theme. It is just a different thing that happened.
It would take some work and I'd have to make a decent number of changes to pick a theme and make sure the story supported it. I think the story works fine as an action movie and is entertaining, but not thought provoking. If one of the possible themes ever worms into my head as something I'd like to explore in an arc, I would probably just modify this arc to support it.
For some examples of themes that are touched on in my arc but not developed: betrayal of one cause for another; coping with a friend's change in outlook; democracy vs. fascism (although that is pretty impersonal and a too broad really, one would have to pick something specific about that philosophical conflict in such a short medium); overcoming differences in philosophy to work together (I did want to explore this a bit, but when I tried to work it in I felt I was losing the action feel and was also putting too many thoughts into the players head, so I scrapped it (I guess I could use the contacts revulsion of the Malta to explore this theme without putting the thoughts into the players head)).
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.