CoHMR Aggregator (a review thread)

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high-40s DB/fire brute, all bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.

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I gotta say, I don't exactly believe the Prince of Lies here. I mean, isn't treason against God like the worst thing you can pull off? Won't that make things worse, instead of better?

Anyway, time to claw my way out of a grave in Purgatory and watch out for a guy with a cuisinart on his arm.

Okay. First, the First Sphere description calls them "the Fist Sphere". Second... uh, I don't know if you realized this, but Rise of the Phoenix (which both spheres thus far have) is a powerful AOE knockback and stun which gives its caster a long non-obvious period of untouchability. And it's not like the Freak rez that only goes off sometimes - this one goes off ALL the time.

Yeah, Third Spheres self-rez too.

Oh, there's an archangel here. Looks like fire control/willpower. Blessedly, he has no resurgence.

I find a mystical portal called only "The Answer" with no system interaction text.

Apparently it's God's entire invasion plan.

Somehow.

And it's halfway through the mission, with at least four rooms left to go.

But you know? I'm tired of being knocked around and unable to touch the guys that did it for an unspecified period of time, so I'll click that exit button.

---

Okay, I have to give you credit for this one. Good will always triumph because Evil backstabs itself.

But... defeat all? Defeat all on an outdoor map?

...okay, it's a tiny outdoor map.

With a Snake fight! Although the Snakes are talking like there's someone come to join the battle, which hasn't happened in ever.

Still. Defeat All is really Defeat All Twice here, so that's a pain.

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Okay, so some fallen angel has an anti-God weapon somewhere and I go spring him to find out what it is. I was going to suggest you use "Fallen From Grace" since they added in Safeguard villains recently... but it turns out this "Dark Sabaoth" guy is ALSO a Rogue Isles Villain and a fallen angel.

Man, what the hell. They even share a level range.

Longbow are such a relief to fight. They don't explode and knock me all over the place.

Hmm. This map has a prison with reinforced doors in it. Obviously the "open the doors" isn't going to be completed when they break, but certainly someone might try it.

Ah, that's how you open the doors. The computer has a reasonable description, but it's just labeled "cells". I don't think this is accurate unless the cells are extremely, extremely tiny.

So I spring DS, and a spawn of enemies appears around me. I'm a bit too busy dealing with them to notice the walls of text, and by the time I realize that that was actually the boss spawn with "Agent Crimson" (who bears a striking resemblance to Indigo) in it, DS has been shredded within an inch of his life, and I can't pull enough aggro to prevent that last inch from vanishing down the chipper.

Since I'm leading DS to the exit anyway, could you put the boss up front?

---

Oh well. Time to kill bAEbies.

Hmm. The main mission group is PPD, but the heroes are escorted by Longbow.

You may have wanted this to happen, it helps them stand out.

Oh! Not ALL of them are escorted by Longbow. There's an EB here who's got PPD with him. ...and if he's stone armor, he didn't put anything on. Also he fought with super strength. I guess that's part of the... joke, such as it is?

I have to say, this whole thing feels really off-tone. I can buy attacking greedy or otherwise viceful heroes, but when they're pastiches of certain metagame styles (idle LFTer, RPist, canon copy, clueless "theorycrafter") that just seems fake.

Not that I mind his absence, but where was Lord Darkity Dark Dark of Darkness in all this? You'd think he'd be first on the chopping block.

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Gabriel, Angel of Death, huh? You blow one Last Trump...

Classical Judaism has Samael, who separates the soul from man. Later in the Catholic tradition, Michael functioned as sort of a "good angel of death", but he's already popped up in mission 1 so reuse probably isn't an option.

"2 Defeat Gabriel, the Angel of Death"? Hoo boy.

And there's no minimap out here! Double hoo boy!

Gabriel exhibits a distinct lack of Last Trumping and a whole lot of darkity dark dark.

Seriously, dude. Samael.

So I drop one Gabriel. He Soul Transfer/Dark Consumption/Siphon Lifes himself, and for a moment I think this is what the 2 means.

Buuut no. Just down the beach is another one calling out for the minions of Arachnos to come out and diiieeeee.

He goes down. And ST/DC/SL and down again. (it's full XP even though he comes back with just a sliver of health, so, uh, small favors I guess?)

And there's still an objective to defeat him. This is a level beyond double hoo boy. I call it "Hoo boy 3".

Okay, judging from his dialogue, this is apparently "form 2" of Gabriel, and form 3, which was supposed to chain off it, spawned in when the map loaded and I fought him first.

That explains why the system text when I dropped the "first Gabriel" said I'd backed him off for good.

...oh, come on. The "orders from God" which I retrieved in the first mission were all a plant from Satan? Nice job breaking the ranks of the angels, villain?

Dude. I'm PURE EVIL. If you were all "hey broski we're gonna tweak God's nose here's some fake orders go plant 'em in Purgatory" I would have been on that like white on rice.

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Storyline - *. I just fought six Extreme DM/Extreme DA elite bosses. Yes, technically there were three of them but THEY ALL REZZED AND HEALED THEMSELVES RIGHT AFTER. And when I get back to my contact he laughs at me for being a chump. Really ends things on a high note. The metagame characters in the fourth mission feel out-of-place in an arc that the other characters I encounter are taking seriously. If you want to put "heroes" in suffering from, say, Wrath, Greed, Pride, and Envy that'd work fine. Maybe recolor some villain models - Greed is a Malta Tac Ops, Pride is a PPD Peacebringer boss, Envy is a Dark Ring Mistress, Wrath is a Vanguard robot... something along those lines. Frees up the file space too.

Design - *. The angel design is pretty nice. All one of it, not counting Mike and Gabe. Needs some variety in costuming so as to distinguish among the various types. Maybe just accent colors on the sleeves and pants. But the powers... good lord. Everything has Rise of the Phoenix. Everything. Except Mike, who stays down, and Gabe, who has Soul Transfer, which actually stuns through my defenses, unlike Rise, which just knocks me back forever. And both those rezzes have an untouchable period without an obvious trigger for it to fall off. If you free up space in mission 4, maybe just add two identical minions and one identical lieutenant and boss who just don't self-rez, so as to cut down on the number of times it happens. And then there's the matter of the AV spawning right exactly over my ally in mission 3. That was a fun surprise when I finally figured out what was going on.

Gameplay - *. Every mission with the angels in it was a slog. Drop one, get blown back 20 feet, stand up, try and pick out which of the identical white mass had just gotten up and wouldn't be damageable for the next 20 seconds... every. single. time. And then there was the last mission, which contained both an outdoor map without a minimap on, so I didn't know where I'd been, and three/six absolutely identical boss fights.

Detail - *. Agent "Crimson" is pretty obviously Indigo. The clickie in the first mission doesn't even have any text describing what I'm doing to get these invasion plans for Earth. I'm pretty sure you got Gabriel's exact flavor of death wrong, though there are darkity dark dark angels to be had. And Satan revealing he's lying at the end is just a brick to the head outta nowhere that didn't even have to BE there.

Overall - *. Esc, I gotta ask, is this another mistakenly uploaded version? Agent "Crimson"'s location on the map and actual identity, and the broken chain of bosses at the end, are things that should've been caught in test. The customs are a real annoyance to actually put down for the count, and the arc ends in a giant soul-sapping sextuple boss fight on a mapless outdoor map, followed by a tossed-off narrative gut punch.

Glory of Moment just got posted on CoHMR. I'd appreciate a review. ID number's in my sig.

Personally I thought Legion looked interesting. Maybe it will suck, maybe it won't. It reminded me of The Prophecy, which I liked (avoid the sequels, though), especially in that it looks like the archangel Gabriel is the bad guy again. Recent filmmakers have had it in for him....

As for "The Fight of Angels", I decided to give it a look (having only seen the tail end of Glazius' review), found the first mission to strongly resemble kicking dead whales down the beach, and gave up without rating it. From the first mission I'd say it looks like junk.

So tonight there's a double feature.

First, several brief comments on "Snake in the Grass" (2610):

• The system thinks it features Legacy Chain. It obviously doesn't, so it's probably an artifact of the updating process. How long ago did you look at this?
• Snakes look like they spawn from 1-52, but there's actually a hole from 35-45 where there aren't any of 'em, and I think anybody in this level range will face level 46 "elder" Snakes.
• It's unfinished. Heck, it's barely even started. Abandoned warehouse map, enemy group Snakes, exit clue: piece of snakeskin. These are all the salient features.
• Yes, there's a briefing. But there's no evidence in the warehouse that the briefing even matters. There's nothing to tie into it. It's just an abandoned warehouse, and we've got yonks of those. But if you're really hard up to figure out how to grow this story, here are some questions: how'd they know the captain was carrying Snakes? How'd they find him to arrest him? Did he hire someone for protection? And what if the city actually decides to hire Arachnos-affiliated exterminators to wipe out the Snakes? How bad could it get before they did that?
• I just used this to get another power on a character who was one bar away from level. Otherwise I would just have turned around. There are a whole bunch of actual stories out there, so why should I bother playing a tiny little stub of an idea?

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a low 40s ice/axe tank. All bosses, no AVs, 2 heroes at +0.

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Hmm.

Okay, two things about this sendoff.

First, those two paragraphs you got in the intro need a double space between 'em.

Second, it sounds like you're trying to write Verbose Crimson doing the briefing but you're not really comfortable with all the redirection-type stuff he usually works into his speeches:

"i can see the look on your face... it might seem unethical to attack preemptively to you. Trust me when I say there's nothing preemptive about it. This agent, Moment... his first big operation is going underway now."

If you can't write Verbose Crimson, Punchy Crimson is just as good. For example:

"Worried about drawing first blood? Don't be, because you won't be. This 'Moment' is already making his move."

Anyway, let's hit the base.

Okay, two things.

First, haha there's a little Kronos in the loading-screen shot of this place.

Second, not everybody has played this map and knows you can actually enter the base proper. You might want to mention that, somehow.

...huh. A Zeus Titan named "Joel"? I know they're made of people, but usually they're named after their operation function with an addendum afterward. "Hanger Defense Unit 04" or whatever.

"Operation Engineer: We have an MHI intruding on the premises!" And he's after your PIN numbers, right? (MHI = MetaHuman Incursion, which by default is intruding)

Ah. A laptop taken off-network. ...I guess that's intel enough? No clue about what's actually on it.

The boss here is "Delta 5-Niner", and while Malta often depart from the pattern of two NATO letters number-number-number, there isn't supposed to be anything special about this place so he should probably be standard. "Delta Tango 5-5-5" or something.

So. Crimson. What on this thing?

Wait, what? Moment's infiltrated Longbow? When did I learn that?

Calling out the Orestes Rifle also seems a bit weird. Maybe it's a nod to canon, but Crimson shoots the idea down in the next sentence, so it seems weird to have it there at all.

---

Another briefing that needs twin paragraph breaks in it.

We... know where Moment is? Okay, I guess. But how does Crimson know about his capabilities? We learned about them in World Wide Red, but given that this is supposed to be "Moment's first operation" and WWR was about Malta trying to push China and US to the brink of war, his exact powers should still be a bit of a mystery.

Okay, Crimson tells us where Moment is in the mission sendoff, which is alright.

Wait, what, entry popup? I'm looking forward to de-smugging Longbow?

I mean, okay, there are a couple ops in the RWZ who have a bit of a swelled head, but the Longbow working in Faultline (including Crimson's protege) don't have much of a superiority complex to speak of.

Ah, patrols with identical dialogue. Don't worry about it getting missed, there's a giant NPC talk radius now. If you want patrols, one talky and a bunch of silents will do fine.

...man. He runs at 75%? And with the Ballista repulsion field up, and the ambush assisting him, he's nearly impossible to whittle down by the time he hits the mission door. I managed to get him down to 5% but I was tapped dry of endurance by the time he made it out.

Especially if the sapper knocks off your defense toggles and you get blown 500 feet.

...but he was trying to steal "Ballista armor"? Ballistas are like hyper-wardens, and wardens are basically induced mutations. It's not the armor that makes Ballistas special, it's the power cocktail.

And Moment can't copy that, since he can't maintain a shapeshift form long-term without revisiting the original template, so reverse-engineering would also be impractical.

You know what he could run off with? A prototype cataphract. Put him in either a recolored HVAS or PPD Guardian. If this is prior to World Wide Red, maybe Malta are still engineering the Kronos.

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So, mission 3 briefing: "unless you can find some other way of stopping Moment, he probably won't be doing any more shapeshifting after this."

...is there a word missing or wrong in there? I have no idea what it means.

Also, Crimson, Malta are probably okay with having Moment so close to them because they've brainwashed him or have his family suspended in a room made out of poison. You know how they operate. You know what they do to metas, you and Indigo have asked me to stop them doing it.

...wait, what? The Ballista Moment copied is wounded like I beat him up? Is this supposed to be an indication of how Moment's powers work or an attempt by Malta to frame me?

Ah. Okay. Moment is a Nictus in a robot suit.

...wait, WHAT?

Moment calls what he does "synchronizing genetics", and there's an eyewitness to his power working - "He clasped my hand and changed shape to look just like me!".

That's not how Nictus transform. It definitely doesn't involve robot suits.

And... that's Moment's big secret.

You know what I wanted to find out? Why this happened: "You notice that much of this blackmail material was dug up by Moment himself. Several pages have hand-written notes in small cursive lettering with funny stories, small details, and humorous sketches of various interesting people Moment met while gathering this information."

But I don't know why this Moment would do that. Heck, I don't know IF this Moment would do that.

---

So after Moment is defeated, I have to go clean up.

Because Malta has copied the Ballista armor.

And it actually is Ballistas with Malta colors.

And I have to fight three of them.

And usually the first thing they do is stick me in a detention field so I get to stare menacingly at them for a minute.

You know, if these are supposed to be unstable prototypes maybe they shouldn't actually be recolored Ballistae, but custom enemies.

(also all the fighting Arachnos means a) the Malta have their gun turrets out, and those are a joy to fight on a Lethal-dependent character, and b) the usual moratorium on Sappers doesn't apply)

Two hours and three Shivans later, the base is finally clear. None of the "special" Malta units even says anything, it's all chatter between the Arachnos and Malta, about half a dozen times, all battle dialogue, all assuming I'm there to kick off the battles when that's just not how battles actually work.

Crimson just makes noises about how the new units failed -- uh, they really didn't. They broke into Arachnos just fine. And all I have to go on to say that they won't use this technology again is that one of the three conjectures Crimson made at the start of the mission was that Malta were... trying to seize an Arachnos production facility or something to make more of them, since they couldn't on their own?

There's nothing in the base or the units or the mission to imply that there will only ever be three Hyperion suits.

And... is there even a souvenir? I think this one may have overflowed my stock of custom souvenirs... no, that was actually the snakeskin.

That's...

Man, why do they keep doing that? I want to keep my custom souvs around!

But it looks like this arc didn't have one.

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Storyline - *. I have to admit there's a little bit of bias here. I must have played World Wide Red for the first time, what, four years ago? And I still remember the clue about Moment writing funny stories in the margins of his blackmail notes. I guess it was because it stood out so much from the rest of Malta; it seemed human, not the work of some brainwashed simp or hero under duress, but just some guy having a grand old time. Why did he work for Malta? Why did Malta work with him? We never found out. I was hoping I would, now. But nope. Space squid in a robot suit, the end. Stealing Ballista armor (which is not the pertinent part of the Ballista), so the Malta could copy it and... go raid Arachnos to get the resources to make more Ballista armor? It's not really clear. And time-wise, the bulk of my time commitment was to the last mission and its gun turrets and sappers and drawn-out identical silent boss fights. The arc was about Moment, but I spent the most time cleaning up after his schemes while he was in jail.

Design - ***. Needs some kind of independent confirmation in the last mission that these are the last Hyperion suits, that this is a field-test, or something else to back up the idea that Malta won't be using them anymore. Also might be nice to find out why they really DID decide to take on an Arachnos base.

Gameplay - **. Trying to whittle down one Ballista's health as he runs away is a nightmare. I almost made it, except I ran out of endurance, and he shoved me back and ran out the door while I was getting up. Trying to whittle down three Ballistas' health in a mission with dark backgrounds to hide Malta presence, predeployed gun drones, and a high concentration of sappers is just kind of elemental tedium. Find some replacements - if not in the second mission, then at least in the last. If these aren't supposed to be fully-operating Ballista suits, make 'em like energy assault/force field customs.

Detail - **. While my gripes with the storyline are more with the events in it than the way they were presented, the presentation was off for other reasons. Crimson, mostly. He talked in weird, circuitous ways with odd, not-quite-right phrasing. It struck me as an unfamiliarity with the words or the writing style. At least once he told me in the mission briefing that "we" knew something, but seeing it explained in the sendoff text was the first time I'd seen it personally. And because he tossed off conjectures left and right, I have no real reason to believe his assessment of the fate of the Hyperion robots is anything more than another guess.

Overall - **. Again, part of that is because I had actual questions about Moment that this arc didn't attempt to address, let alone answer. But the theft from Longbow doesn't make sense, and even if it did the subsequent invasion of Arachnos is never really explained or explored. Since that's the last mission in this arc it ends on a very uncertain note. To say nothing of what a slog three identical elite bosses are to take down in the last mission.

http://cohmissionreview.com/2009/10/the-long-road-back/

The Long Road Back has been posted here. I would appreciate any feedback you guys would have to offer.

Story Description: A secret organization within the United States Intelligence community offers paranormals operating outside the law a way out of the life… at a cost.


Story Arc ID: 338026
Author’s Global Chat Handle: @sister_twelve
Length: Very Long (5 missions)
Level Range: 10-20
Mission Status: Work in Progress
Alignment: Villainous

In-Game Keywords: Custom Characters, Canon Related, Drama

I've posted "The Tragic Tale of the Clockwork Queen" for review!!!

(I.D. #25451)

It is the tale of the Clockwork King's quest for a companion and the lives touched (destroyed?) in the process.
Who or what is the Queen of the Clockwork? And what does Nemesis have to do with it all?

Suggested lvl 40-50

Dark Blessings...
Lilith Nuit

http://cohmissionreview.com/2009/10/...ockwork-queen/

Man, weekends have been a total loss for me lately.

Anyway, kickin' off a Monday with Shadow of the Dragoness, Part 1 (319165). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Reviewed on a low 40s ice/axe brute, all bosses no AVs two heroes at +0.

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So I remember a little throwaway line during one of the Banished Pantheon arcs, about how a collection of books you found would help a contact understand the mystic arts of the Tsoo.

Not that I'm expecting anything, mind.

Hmm. Something you should know: you can put a comma after a $variable, as in "$name," and it will actually just put the name with a comma, straight after.

Something else you should know: it's really hard to read paragraphs with only one hard return between them. Use two.

Are you trying to go for an 'English is my second language" feel with the contact here? It feels rather stilted and circuitous.

As I haven't played this whole thing, I have no idea whether my contact is going to betray me or not, but if he isn't, could I suggest making him a Midnighter? That would give his presence a little more weight than just "I'm here and I haven't killed you... yet."

Also, it'd be nice to know what I was supposed to be doing to stop this Shadow Dragon before I clicked "accept". Am I breaking up a sacrifice or disrupting a ritual arrangement or putting the metaphysical equivalent of a bag of flaming dog poo on his doorstep?

I'm... going to get some kind of mystic fang to poison a "seal of madness".

That's a distressingly large number of proper nouns in the sendoff all told. Maybe just limit them to what I need to know for the first mission.

When I bug my contact he tells me that the Lords of Madness are also looking for the fang so they can weaken the seals, which would have been nice to know setting out.

Also, you don't need multiple patrols saying the same thing to make sure they're heard. NPC text is like full-radius broadcast now.

I confront a "death fang" DB/ninja who takes a few of my attacks and then heads for the hills. I figure it's the AI not liking the knockdown and slows and let him head off, but nope, dude did a runner. Completely silent to boot.

Stheno goes down pretty steadily. She calls for help at half health but nothing seems to show up, which is a shame as I really needed the defense to dodge her death scream.

And with her down, I... have to break open a cocoon in a completely different part of the map to get this fang.

I get a clue for grabbing it and a mission-ending clue, both of which say pretty much the same thing. You should only bother with one of them.

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"Legion tells" in the next briefing should probably be "legend tells". Though exactly why the actual fang isn't enough to stop these guys I don't know. It was still in its tamper-evident packaging and everything.

Also, the Circle and the Mu fought way more than just a thousand years ago. The seal would have been broken for a while.

A bit tough to carry an entire tomb around. Maybe it's one of those metaphorical ones. ...or a tome.

The mission description is asking me to drop some guys I've never heard of, and that's without even getting into the mission. If they weren't mentioned in the briefing they should show up in the navbar.

...an arch-mage of death. Ay yi yi. Those guys aren't any fun to throw down with. They're like elite bosses except with a lot more hit points.

At about 1/4 health (the Shivan helps) the map fills up with battles of the new group vs. CoT. (The minions have no description.)

The CoT seem to be knockin' em down pretty handily, as I only find one group of survivors.

I break the last obelisk and retrieve the... yes, it should probably be a tomE. (The navbar thinks it's a "portal of shadows".)

And I still have a boss to beat. He goes through the usual boss spiel -- he's invincible, I can't beat him, his boss will get me anyway, blah blah blah.

---

My contact is so excited about the goings-on that he can't bring himself to use paragraph breaks at all.

Good lord this is a wall of text.

I don't think he should suddenly come to the realization in the briefing as such? But having him detail the Tsoo mythology of the Banished Pantheon (using different names) and then reveal that we know what he's been talking about all along.

The Banished Pantheon are explicitly trying to "wake the Sleeper" in Dark Astoria. The Tsoo would know this as they've been fighting around there. So having that alternate explanation pop up doesn't make a lick of sense.

And a throwdown with Adamastor! He drops pretty easy without his giant monster resists. And then it's time to hunt around on an outdoor map for a glowie!

Joy.

I manage to find it after a couple loops, and... oh. A surprise boss that I have to take out for no apparent reason.

Sigh. Yeah, you know, it doesn't make much sense to give me a souvenir I picked up from this boss when thanks to the level of dark armor she has she rises from the dead, stunning me and becoming invincible.

Before then it was pretty smooth sailing, though.

Also I don't seem to have a clue for these ashes I picked up. The system text indicates I found them, but that's it.

I have to admit, I don't get what my contact is making all this fuss about. As far as I know, I actually have all the components these guys need to perform their ritual, and now I can just drop 'em into the lava in the Troll Tunnels or something.

---

Storyline - ***. I realize it's traditional at this point to have the heroes go gather up a bunch of MacGuffins only to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, but I really have no idea what I'm doing wrong that needs a part two. As far as I understand everything, I have three artifacts, any one of which is essential to performing the terrible ritual, so having all three should make the world double extra safe, right? I can tell my contact's nervous about something, but judging by the clues and system text in the missions there's nothing going wrong. I mean, maybe the Dragons here are, say, stealing the shadows of the ritual components and they can use them like the real things, but I'd like some foreshadowing there.

Design - ***. The ninjas are appropriately ninja. The maps are fairly thematic, but I wonder if it might be possible to put the last one in the "smooth cave" set, if only because hunting for a glowie on an outdoor map is a bit of a pain. Also, there are multiple patrols saying the same thing in the first mission and like ten battles in the second mission that all say the same thing as well. I'd really recommend using one talky element and N silent ones.

Gameplay - **. Whittling down an ArchDeathMage's hit point/resistance combo is a colossal pain, too. And as always with customs, Build Up is a bit much to handle, and Soul Transfer is just a kick in the dangly bits after I've supposedly dropped a boss and taken a trophy.

Detail - **. The Dragon EB in the first mission is completely silent, even when he cuts and runs, and it looks like the minions don't have any bio on 'em. I also don't actually get a clue for the ashes in the last mission. But even aside from that, there are some problems with revealing the setting. I can tell you have a pretty intricate picture of what's actually going on here, but having the contact just kind of spit out details even if they're not relevant yet is just a bit of an overload, and makes it hard to tell what's really important. Generally people can understand things better if they've got something to hang 'em on, so spelling out the whole ritual right at the start just results in it getting tossed down the memory hole.

Overall - ***. A few power tweaks and a little more attention paid to the "part-1-relevant" aspects of the story would go a long way towards making this better.

So how 'bout that Halloweening?

Tonight's arc: The Long Road Back (338602). Verdict - **. Review on MA Forums Thread.

Tonight's arc is a little something from the randomizer: Darken the Light: the Westin Phipps Strike Force (319423). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 40s DB/fire brute, all bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.

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Ah, Phipps. One of the more hilarious things about him was how he'd snap into character all of a sudden. Hope I see some of that.

Also I think the briefing and sendoff for mission 1 would work better reversed. Set up the do-gooders doing good in the briefing, briefly describe them and their goals in the sendoff.

Heading into the mission and fighting down. Quick note: all the minions have the typo "serve thier purpose" in their description.

Other note: "a hundredfold" doesn't refer to something like a hundred people. It's a multiplier. Seed that produces a hundredfold produces a hundred seeds for every one planted. Saying that poisoning food will "kill a hundredfold" only makes sense if 99 people other than the one who eats the food will also die. Which, y'know, I wouldn't put it past certain bioagents? But I don't think that's what's happening here.

Might want to look into a little more contrast on the minions. under some lighting conditions it's hard to tell the dark purple medics from the black claw fighters.

And there's a hard ambush at the end, which while a thrill to unload AoEs on comes too late to matter.

...Phipps talking about a hot date? Dude's got a careful social facade to keep up. It's not that I couldn't see him going out with some NGO charity director and then "getting his coat" while the Bane Spiders swoop in, but y'know, put the riders on.

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Little typo in the next mission's sendoff, "muscial" for "musical".

Next mission's navbar says "2 Destroy 2 Computers", which in addition to being the worst sequel to "Destroy All Computers" ever needs to be repluralized. "computers to destroy" or something like that.

Also, surprise bumfight.

Hmm. Is the safe supposed to be down on the first floor? Seems a bit odd that everything I had to do save one computer showed up there.

---

The start of the mission gives me an on-site report of hope in progress. Just kind of... out of the ether. Phipps doesn't say anything about it.

Also, dude is pissed. Exactly why I'm not entirely sure.

Huh. Okay, looks like the bum was actually part of the hero group. You should probably set him not to spawn in regularly.

You know the Council warehouse goes down to a Council cave complex, right?

The info on the doc I spring tells me he's made breakthroughs in time travel and parallel dimensions, which is not the sort of doctor who uses medical supplies. I'm guessing it's a default description.

He and the volunteer I rescue both are in the standard "captured (kneeling hands on head)" pose, which doesn't make sense given that they're here of their own free will.

The ending clue has "Phipps crackled", which I'm guessing should be "cackled".

---

So.

Enemy base.

EB with buildup, which I can manage.

Another one with a giant perception radius... and rage.

Rage means double damage that never misses. And that's horrible.

You know, I thought Too Much Information Mastery was an April Fool's joke. And here comes the boss, proving me wrong.

Wow. The combination of rage and willpower means I can't actually bring this boss down and then bolt during the rage, since the regen/resist factor is high enough that I can't actually deal enough damage.

I burn two Shivans to no effect. Dang Rise to the Challenge.

So, one reload on Shivans (that also reset the mission) and a sum total of FOUR Shivans later, it's finally over. Not even a closing clue.

---

Storyline - **. So there's this charitable organization, let's call them Angel International. They set up their little heavens in war-torn and dangerous areas all over the world, providing food, clothing, shelter, and that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope. And now they've come to the Rogue Isles. Well, Westin Phipps knows what to do about that!

Step 1: as founder of Haven House, meet with local civilian coordinator. Talk business.
Step 2: walk away to get coat. Push Arachnos panic button in lining of shirt. Return to find your new collaborator unaccountably gone with no clues left behind but an Arachnos Flier-shaped hole in the roof..
Step 3: the following day, lament publicly that you should have been spirited away by spiders instead.
Step 4: suspiciously well-coordinated villain attacks on remaining charity organization members are death blow for morale, Haven House is once again the only light of hope in Grandville.

Except Step 4 doesn't go as planned. The information was all a setup. And it turns out that the Arachnos strike team that was supposed to pull off step 2 never actually returned to base.

In the frantic investigation that follows, it turns out that Angel International's "civilian coordinator" was much more than she seemed, and as they have not done great things by being gullible simps, turned the tables on the Arachnos. And, having learned from the captured strike team what a fink-rat Westin Phipps is, they're going to tell everyone.

Until a villain raids their headquarters, destroys every last sliver of evidence, and runs off the lady in charge.

But Westin Phipps is livid anyway. Not because of any failure of the villain's, mind you. Because Angel International bought Haven House out from under him while he was distracted, so now dear old Westin Phipps can retire to the Bahamas and reap the reward of a life of community service. Dear old Westin Phipps is not going to stand for being made a fool of, and as soon as he has a plan ready and some favors called in, he and the villain are going to storm the gates of heaven. So to speak.

This arc's story is not that story. This arc's story is a crude copy, in multiple senses. The sisters just come out of nowhere, seem to treat Westin Phipps as exactly what he is instead of the front he puts up for the public, and lead him around with a femme fatale. It all feels rather arbitrary, like some cosmic GM got tired of his messing around and rolled up a grudge monster. There's also no real impetus for a second arc - the end boss's description mentions she's the second in command, but aside from the info window there's no indication we're not done yet.

Design - ***. The Sisters have pretty consistent costuming. Minions have Justice armor, a hood, and a lower-face mask. Lieuts have Ulterior armor and a Blast Bot helm. Bosses have angel wings and Crey Tech armor with an electron pattern, and an electron head. But what am I seeing with that progression? It looks like they're supposed to be getting more technological, but "Sisters of Light" doesn't sound very techie, and the angel wings would be tech wings in the final form. Also the dark purple minions are easy to confuse with black ones in poor lighting, and the blue accents on the Ulterior Armor make the fire and ice lieuts look more alike than they should. It also seems like the hobo is supposed to be a unique boss, but he shows up with other bosses in normal spawns.

Gameplay - **. Without Rage, the end boss would have been a formidable wall with a relentless attack chain, and overall a tough but satisfying fight. With Rage, the end boss is a lot of staring and waiting for the yellow aura of nearly instant death to go away, and then praying my Shivan can get in a lucky streak of hits before it's Rage time again.

Detail - *. TMI line rips at your mind for 432.15 points of psychic damage, and terrorizes you! You cower in fear!

Seriously. I could have lived a happy and productive life without contemplating the contents of Westin Phipps's pants. Also, there's no background in the description of any of the Sisters, just some practical notes, and there aren't any clues to their origins, either. They really do just seem to have come out of nowhere, which isn't a good thing given how savvy they are about the Rogue Isles. And my favorite part of Westin Phipps, the simpering spin-doctor public facade, doesn't show up at all. He's just a big ball of nerd rage.

Overall - **. An interesting new angle for Westin Phipps to pursue, dampened by a grudge-monster enemy group, an impenetrable wall of a final boss, and the lack of any more varied reaction from Westin Phipps than impotent rage.

Last night I played Very Bad Girls (286566). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

I believe it's the last of Escalus's arcs I had on my plate, and I'd like to thank him for his generally cordial response to being a weekly punching bag.

---

Mission Architect isn't about the handful of arcs that make Dev's Choice or hit the hall of fame. Underneath that is a vast sea of, well, vanity publishing. I don't mean that as an insult. You can take whatever idea you have in your head, strain it through the filter of what the tools let you do, and put it out there for you and your friends to play and rake in similar rewards to what you'd get playing the game anyway.

I've said several times that one individual rating doesn't matter. If you don't have enough ratings to get your arc noticed by the general public, you need more word of mouth and promotion than one vote is able to give you. If you do, one rating isn't going to mean much.

But that's just a theory of mine. I have no idea whether or not it'll hold up. If I think one rating doesn't matter, and there are people who thing it does, why not just vote 5 and be done with it?

---

I told you that story so I could tell you this one: I am now. At least in game. Every arc the system remembers I've played (you can toggle the advanced search to twig on arcs you've played and voted on, or not) is getting 5ed as soon as I can get around to voting on them.

I'll still put "real" star ratings up on CoHMR, and in my thread posts.

And in addition to that, I'm offering just plain ol' feedback, if anyone's interested. I'll assume an arc that goes up on CoHMR is ready for prime time, but if yours isn't yet, just post it in the thread, along with whether or not you'd like your feedback public or private, and you'll get it. But with no ratings, and no in-game vote. (Once the arc's finished you can ask for another run the same as anyone else.)

This is also going in the first post.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 30s archery/energy blaster, all bosses no AVs 1 hero at +1.

---

Man. I wish I had a hardboiled detective character. Then I could start making jokes about the dame who walked into my office.

Anyway, I head off to what may very well be a death trap, and run into...

Er.

For my sanity I'm going to pretend these enemies are all like Lantern constructs or something. Probably saves you a bundle on costume space.

I'm seeing minions with... resurgence, and... is that Thunderous Blast or did they change the Zapp animation? The arch/TA boss is actually less of a threat.

Oh, and detention field. At least it gives me a chance to pop Aid Self.

I pick up my plot coupon for the next mission and head out.

---

Yeah. I really need a hardboiled detective character right about now. Good lord, briefing.

Actually, scratch that. Usually the dames end up being in with the Russkies or something when you're a hardboiled private eye. Too much hassle.

My contact does what I could not and reads the plot coupon to figure out where I'm going to go.

Ah, hostages. This shipman's description still thinks he's in the Shadow Shard.

Hmm. Now that I'm seeing more of the enemy group, some of the powers don't quite match up color-wise. Rad blasts on Peach, fire on Mercury, psychic blasts on Sky.

(also check the powers for Sky, she's not worth any XP indicating you've dropped off a standard power. Which is kind of a joke given that she's got psychic wail on her.)

...for some reason there's a constant background noise of a dispatcher in this cargo ship.

Can't think why.

Also, Mercury has Rise of the Phoenix. Naturally. And she's control-proof, at least from a stun perspective, which is all I have.

Man, Full Auto in addition to detention field? On a minion? Good lord.

So I run all the way back to the back of the ship freeing crewmen.

Then I have to find the captain, so I run all the way back to the front of the ship checking around for nooks and crannies.

Now I have to find the diamonds (the captain's guard spells it "diaonds") so I run all the way back to the back of the ship checking around et cetera...

I find an oil barrel on top of a stack of cargo crates amidships. It's glowing, and I don't think I remember it from before. So I click it, and I wonder why the captain didn't just tell me he put them in an oil barrel.

...and then I get the heck out of Dodge as I hear armor toggles going on. Of all the spawn points in all the cargo ship, the boss had to spawn right next to the glowie.

Man, the Rularuu axe and shield look freaky when they're white. But she's got Active Defense so I can't stun her or knock her around or keep range at all.

You should probably rearrange objectives so the boss comes after the captain. That way her clue shows up after his in the clue window....

Though it's not much of a clue. "I'll get you next time" is de riguer for villains these days.

---

So, much like the first mission, I'm taking a tip from my contact to go break up something she was supposed to help with.

It's a drug deal this time. Or at least I think it is, but it seems to be just a lab with a tiny Council incursion that's over before I get there. (Though the dialogue assumes I've gotten there, I never make it to any of these things in time) No clue what they're making, but it blows up onomatopoeically. Kinda seems redundant given that I'm already hearing these sounds from my attacks connecting and the thing going boom, and the dialogue box for objects spawns under the map somewhere, which is just odd.

(The guards are just saying "Gossip..." Was this a note for you to fill in something later?)

The mission exit clue seems to think it was a drug deal as well, but there was no one there buying and/or selling.

---

Oh boy, surprise timed rescue mission. (seriously, work that limit into the mission briefing somehow, I put dinner on hold for this)

For someone who doesn't fancy body paint my contact's laying it on awfully blue.

...Greater Ice Sword and Thunderous Blast. On minions. One of many ways a blaster gets two-shot.

So when the bombs go out, a whole raft of bosses show up to investigate. Can be nasty if you get caught next to one.

And now for the hostage...

Oh! I THOUGHT she looked familiar.

Maemae von Whooters, ladies and gentlemen. You may hide your name, you may hide your enemy group, but you can never hide your unique enemy type.

You know what'd be great? An arc was about the colors coming out of TV and going on a rampage.

---

Ah, the Marchand penthouse.

Unfortunately there's really no predictability to be had here. The map's still bugged. You put a boss in the back, you might wind up fighting them on the second floor.

Like me, right now.

No warning about the EB here either, though I expected one anyway.

Ah, the Romulus sword and shield. I was half expecting a dark dwarf with the boss name.

---

Storyline - ***. Some comics you buy at your Favorite Local Comic Shop. Some comics show up in your mailbox in a brown paper wrapper. This is one of the latter. My own personal misgivings aside (for some reason interactive Harlequin Romances skeeve me out even worse than the regular kind) the story here is pretty simple: repentant criminal wants to make good before they get sent to the slammer. I could see this being about some Family made man -- minus the violations of my personal space, naturally. It's a little up in the air where my contact stands with the law later on - I could swear she was going through the courts at about the time she decided to throw herself on the not-hardly-mercies of her gang in mission 4. There were a lot of smaller things up in the air, really - more on that below.

Design - ***. If nothing else the solid colors made it easy to develop associations between enemies and their powersets, even if they didn't always match up tint-wise. Super strength is more golden than energy melee, force fields are green but get shot by a brown minion, et cetera. Sometimes powers went off a property of the name - Copper shot electricity, Mercury was en fuego like her namesake planet - but I would have liked to see more of a consistent match between particle effects and solid color. (also you'll want to check on Sky's powersets, as I said she's worth no XP which means she's missing a standard diff power somewhere) I'm not going to dock you for Marchand's Penthouse not having a nice boss fight on the roof/in the office, because that's unpredictable. But the cargo ship in mission 2 and warehouse in mission 4 both had essential objectives -- the captain and MaeMae (er, my contact) -- placed somewhere in the Middle of the map but spawned on a chain, which is a lot of ground to re-cover looking for them. The cargo ship in particular with its four chained objectives was a little much back and forth - maybe put the captain on from the start and keep the crew around as optional "flavor" detail.

Gameplay - **. In addition to the running about over empty maps trying to get things done, the enemies are pitched a bit unreasonably hard. Tier 9 rezzes, nukes, and melee attacks on minions and lieutenants? Getting detention fielded on a timed mission? Bit of a sticking point. And there's nothing in the briefings about that timed mission, or about the final boss. Generally those get picked out in color in the intro screen.

Detail - **. Most of the incidental details in this arc tell instead of showing. I get a clue that "tells me where the gang is going next"... okay, clue, so why not spell out where they're going? The captain "tells me where to find the diamonds", but even if he only said "I hid 'em in a barrel amidships' that'd be some help in scouring this entire map for one glowie. There's a drug lab, but no indication of what drugs are getting brewed, who's buying, or who's selling. The threat to my contact's family and the directions for where to go both happen offscreen, and I never see them - would it hurt to see the ransom note as a start-mission clue?

Overall - **. Personal objections to raciness aside, there's the core of an interesting story here. If these enemies represent a reasonable threat without their tier 9s, cap the arc at an appropriate level. If you'd like them to have their full suite of tricks, floor the arc so that people have to face them. And whatever you do give the mind-kin lieut back whatever standard power is robbing her of experience. A little shuffling and reassigning to give everybody chromatically appropriate abilities wouldn't be a bad idea, either. The second and fourth missions could use a little cleaning up to reduce the back-and-forth, especially the second map, which has a million places to hide anything. And there's a lot of unnecessary indirection in the arc, with clues telling me I've found things or know things when they could just be telling me what those things are.

Possible disadvantage to voting everything 5: now that my work in CoH is done, the adrenaline rush fades and I have a lie-down in the middle of writing up the last part of a review.

So here's last night's arc, Shadow of the Dragoness, Part II (319167). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Continuing the saga with the low-40s ice/axe tank, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

---

The first mission is simply titled X. I'm guessing there's a problem there.

We... need a carnival mask from Vanessa DeVore. Like, her master mask? Because the rest are just kinda receivers for the giant mass of Italian noble psyches. We can't just take Sister Psyche's mental monocle and go scanning?

Man, either there's an unannounced boss fight here or I just had some bad luck with spawning - a Dark Ring Mistress and four other Carnies along with, including two lieutenants.

So okay. Vanessa goes down, chains to a boss fight with Giovanna Scaldi, who has been able to come out of the mask all this time, which leads to a navbar objective that's "1 Shadow Mask", which I can only assume is a collectible of some sort.

On an outdoor map.

Yep, after I run around for another 20 minutes I find it. It doesn't have any interaction text at all, or system text on completion.

Wait, seriously? It actually is the master mask of the Carnies?

I didn't notice Giovanni or Vanessa actually saying anything about the Shadow Dragon. I mean, they probably read my mind but it'd be

...and the return text is just another x.

---

So the briefing for Mission 2 here is basically "we must act now, before it's too late!"

Which doesn't tell me about what I'm actually doing here.

Okay. I'm putting the carnie mask on my face. This is gonna get trippy.

Huh. Actually kind of interesting. The last boss from the last arc was sacrificed to a demon and I'm in her brain to let her out.

The demon mangles Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth before going down...

And now I have to fight the boss from last arc.

Again.

For... some reason.

She spouts some stuff about killing her, not killing her, killing the Shadow Dragon... all I know is I'm not getting the mission complete fanfare until she goes down.

Oh. Not just her. Some other dude too. Her old master, apparently.

He's dark blast/DA and less of a threat than his protege, though if that Blackstar had hit it would have hurt.

But man, soul transfer is annoying. It's got a giant range and an unresistable stun.

---

So, hang on a second. I have three essential parts of the ritual from the last arc. I've gone into the brain of the focus for the ritual and kicked out all the aggression and probably broken a demon's hold on her.

Also I know where she is and what the cult is doing. Somehow. It'd be nice to get a clue about that.

But how can they still perform the ritual at all? I have the important bits, and their focus isn't working anymore.

...the bug text for the third mission is just "Z".

Okay, so I actually did get myself an elite boss ally with that last mission. Keen.

Not so keen: her damage aura gets the minions around her vocalizing right when I spawn in.

Definitely not so keen - because of the difficulty setting for the map, she's a -2 elite boss. Ay yi yi.

Also, absolutely none of the custom enemies in the main group have a description. They're all using the default enemy rank description.

Oh gragh. The bosses have Rage. Rage is absolutely terrible to fight against because it's double damage and guaranteed hits basically forever, as opposed to Build Up which only lasts a little while.

Fortunately the ally snaps to the proper level range once she's following me.

Unfortunately allies will stare at Oranbega crystals forever and can only be pulled free with multiple partings and rejoins.

Fortunately the extra damage from the ally makes up for the extra healing on the dark armor EB.

She goes to Whiff City against the DB/Nin EB, but that's to be expected.

And after the entirety of the first arc proves to have been completely fruitless, the boss. DM/DA. He rezzes, of course.

But the mission isn't over, of course. It's a defeat all. Which means that the universe isn't really saved until I track back to the big hands pool room and take out a minion who's treading water.

---

Storyline - **. Based on everything I'm seeing here, the previous part of this arc doesn't really matter. I get what my contact tells me are vital elements for performing the ritual, and not only do the antagonists perform the ritual anyway, they actually get it done before I get there. That aside, there's this big noise made about how it's about the stupidest thing in the world to put the master Carnie mask on my face, and nothing ever comes of that. I mean, how do Vanny V and Jovie S know what's going on, and why do they care? Their giant army of puppet harlequins backed off the last interdimensional invasion, but this one is apparently a big enough threat to put the linchpin of the entire Carnival of Shadows in the custody of a hero.

Design - ***. The maps definitely help set the atmosphere for what's going on here, but here's the thing. On the run-up to the final boss I put down Vanessa, Giovanni, Baphomet, an extreme DBlade/extreme DA AV, an extreme DBlast/extreme DA AV (twice), and an extreme DB/hard Ninj EB. That's not a problem in itself, but it kinda robs an extreme DM/extreme DA AV of most of his bite, since I've fought extreme dark armor three times already. It feels like an identical shadow wall instead of a unique threat. And I can understand why I have to wipe every demon out of my later ally's mind, but once I've destroyed the thing they were trying to summon, do the remaining cultist peons really matter? Especially because of the many places they can hide in Oranbega geometry, it's just a hassle to go back and sweep for them.

Gameplay - **. Aim and Build Up on minions and lieutenants, Rage on bosses, and the auto-stun fight-it-again of Extreme DA are all downers to various degrees. They just add to the hassle of sweeping out the last two maps. And hunting around for the activated reliquary on the Steel Canyon Carnie map is just a nightmare. So many little blind corners. If Giovanna is going to give you the mask, why not just have it be a clue and be done with it? I mean, unless she's just bein' a jerk.

Detail - *. No background info window for any of the rank-and-file dragon cultists. Missing interaction text in the first mission, and missing contact dialogue or other parameters in other places. This just feels half-done, and it doesn't help my feeling that there's something going on (with the ritual, with the Carnies, take your pick) that's just happening for the hell of it, that I can't affect or understand.

Overall - **. Needs the text holes filled in, the customs generally toned back so the boss has more impact, and the map objectives rebalanced so they don't need quite so much hunting around into blind corners to get things done. Fighting is generally fun, but sproinging around over empty terrain and pounding tab for enemies/listening for glowies is just janitorial work to get to the next mission.

Tonight's arc is Heroine Hit List: Shadow Spider's Strike Force (337900). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a high 40s DB/Fire brute, all bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.

---

Ah, Shadow Spider. She's like a villainous Indigo except she and Viridian actually possess the mysterious "cellphone" technology.

Mr. Homeless is still running with these people. You might want to have that looked at.

...oh joy. Liberty Belt Miss Liberty. It takes a Shivan to beat her natural regen, and she pops Unstoppable.

Three Shivans and an equal number of ignoble deaths later, she's finally down.

And the end clue says to expect more of the same. Hoo boy. Time to restock and rearm.

---

So, taking out the heroines of Paragon City will get the lady in charge riled up. Because those crazy wimmins, they're a HIVE MIND.

That's really the angle you're going for here?

...it's spelled "Numina". With two Ns. The entry popup and navbar both get it wrong.

And so does her actual name. Eeka topeka.

So okay, this is kind of funny. A couple of Surviving Eight stepping into Ms. Liberty's shoes tending to the newbs and being completely exasperated about it.

But run with that, man. Color some low-level mobs and make up some patrols of gray "newbie" heroes. Have Numina and Psyche talk about people wondering where to mine for fish or where the sewers are or something.

As it is Numina's largely silent and Miss Sis Psyche is going on a Hopkin-green-frog level obsessed rant about some fanfic she found on the Internet. it's kind of creepy, honestly. It seems somehow personal.

Besides, you can't hook your brain into the Internet, it'd turn you into some kind of freakazoid.

---

Look, man, I feel for you, really. Not all of the canon missions are masterpieces, but it feels like you're using the MA as a platform to riff on that, and that's just kinda bad form.

"Defeat all enemies in end room!" is the standard text for the defeat all. You might want to get more specific about it. Call it Ghost Widow's lair or something.

So, there's Fusionette who is diagetically useless, and on the top floor a DBlast/DA AV... who is missing one of the standard powers for one of the sets, and is therefore worth no XP at all.

Even though, thanks to Dark Embrace, I have to beat her twice.

Fun.

Ah, and Ghost Widow, who is getting her strength back after soulstorming the Vindicator ladies into next incarnation.

---

So, last boss.

While it's hilarious to see a kineticist bolt, Swan's kinda got the universe against her here. It feels... well, again, somehow personal.

Mynx is a bit more of a threat, hard-hitting quick-firing melee damage and all.

Good lord. Four lucks do nothing.

Sigh. Maybe you wanted to put something about Club Caprice in her death scream but there wasn't room.

I mean... this arc is supposed to be about a serious threat to the Rogue Isles, and while I appreciate a little incidental humor I would at least like to see things in the main base being relatively serious.

So I click on a bookcase in the last room.

...right. The end boss is a painted Jezebel. As were they all! Thank you for your many contributions to popular culture, Frank Miller.

---

Storyline - ***. Pretty basic here: somebody's being a thorn in Arachnos's side, so look into them, draw them out, put out a local fire, and take them down. What I don't get is the "draw them out" part. Given how savvy this hero group is perceived to be and how much information they have, it doesn't seem likely that they'll rise to take the bait. In fact, making a move against Arachnos isn't unwise on the face of it, and I don't even get to draw out the necessary information - Ghost Widow takes care of that on her own.

Design - **. The same problems with the custom enemy group as last time. The new second is a black blob with wings and glowing eyes, which is about all you can usually expect from DA, but the lack of XP for dropping her is a bit of a problem. The hardest fight in this arc was Ms. Liberty in the first mission - and it didn't even seem necessary as I picked up the computer on the first floor and fought Liberty on the second. The end boss gave me the least trouble - she was a toned-down Sonic Warden (no Liquefy I could see, or Dreadful Wail) with a handful more hit points. That seems about the opposite way things should go.

Gameplay - ***. Wow, that Ms. Liberty fight was a giant pain. I got all stocked up for the devastation to come and everything else was actually pretty easy. The giant unavoidable stun on Soul Transfer was another, smaller pain, but more manageable.

Detail - *. There are a lot of lines from the contact and the various NPCs that must have been very personally funny, but absent the context all they seem like to me is bizarre nonsense.

Overall - **. Another arc with a decent premise that needs to spend a little more time making it plausible and a little less time kicking the canon when it's down. It could stand to do with a shuffling of the canon heroines so the tougher ones show up later on in the arc, a bit of a tougher final fight, and actual XP from the new EB.

Alright, Whack-a-Mole #2711 was just now submitted to CoH Mission Review. Feel free to take a look at it.


And don't forget your mallet!

And after a weekend spent in hibernation, I emerge to bring you:

Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today! (337333) Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums thread.

I'd love a review of my two-part arc, "A Spanner In The Works." ArcID's are in my signature!

Thanks for looking over this one, Glaz. Been away for a bit, so was nice to come back to!

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF @GlaziusF Storyline - ***. Some comics you buy at your Favorite Local Comic Shop. Some comics show up in your mailbox in a brown paper wrapper. This is one of the latter. My own personal misgivings aside (for some reason interactive Harlequin Romances skeeve me out even worse than the regular kind) the story here is pretty simple: repentant criminal wants to make good before they get sent to the slammer. I could see this being about some Family made man -- minus the violations of my personal space, naturally. It's a little up in the air where my contact stands with the law later on - I could swear she was going through the courts at about the time she decided to throw herself on the not-hardly-mercies of her gang in mission 4. There were a lot of smaller things up in the air, really - more on that below.

Yeah the storyline is pretty simple, though I've gone in and clarified some of the storyline as well. She wasn't quite going to trial at that point, that was more for later on, but I've tweaked it as much as I could. Was quite close to the 100% mark, which I didn't realise. Didn't think it was that high, but the sizes have been a bit screwy lately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF @GlaziusF Design - ***. If nothing else the solid colors made it easy to develop associations between enemies and their powersets, even if they didn't always match up tint-wise. Super strength is more golden than energy melee, force fields are green but get shot by a brown minion, et cetera. Sometimes powers went off a property of the name - Copper shot electricity, Mercury was en fuego like her namesake planet - but I would have liked to see more of a consistent match between particle effects and solid color. (also you'll want to check on Sky's powersets, as I said she's worth no XP which means she's missing a standard diff power somewhere) I'm not going to dock you for Marchand's Penthouse not having a nice boss fight on the roof/in the office, because that's unpredictable. But the cargo ship in mission 2 and warehouse in mission 4 both had essential objectives -- the captain and MaeMae (er, my contact) -- placed somewhere in the Middle of the map but spawned on a chain, which is a lot of ground to re-cover looking for them. The cargo ship in particular with its four chained objectives was a little much back and forth - maybe put the captain on from the start and keep the crew around as optional "flavor" detail.

I can see what you mean about the characters/powers matching up and I've reordered them slightly so that now the green character has rad powers, and the character with rad powers has the war mace and other tweaks. Also fixed Sky - very odd as I usually add powers in rather than take away. Speaking of powers I went in and tweaked the minions so the tier 9s aren't there. When you play as a scrapper you sometimes forget squishys. Have tidied the missions up as well, though I don't have as much leeway with mission 4 as I'd like, but I have tweaked it so it might be slightly easier and there is a warning about the time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF @GlaziusF Gameplay - **. In addition to the running about over empty maps trying to get things done, the enemies are pitched a bit unreasonably hard. Tier 9 rezzes, nukes, and melee attacks on minions and lieutenants? Getting detention fielded on a timed mission? Bit of a sticking point. And there's nothing in the briefings about that timed mission, or about the final boss. Generally those get picked out in color in the intro screen.

Tweaked the mission notes, because 100% is hard to work with without dropping a custom and I couldn't decide which of them was out. It should play a little easier now, with a smarter power selection and tidier missions with warnings. Though they are subtle warnings, without being too subtle (I think!) which has an irony given how non-subtle the arc is at times!

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Originally Posted by GlaziusF @GlaziusF Detail - **. Most of the incidental details in this arc tell instead of showing. I get a clue that "tells me where the gang is going next"... okay, clue, so why not spell out where they're going? The captain "tells me where to find the diamonds", but even if he only said "I hid 'em in a barrel amidships' that'd be some help in scouring this entire map for one glowie. There's a drug lab, but no indication of what drugs are getting brewed, who's buying, or who's selling. The threat to my contact's family and the directions for where to go both happen offscreen, and I never see them - would it hurt to see the ransom note as a start-mission clue?

Altered the clues so they're a lot more useful to work with, and fleshed it out a bit more. Would have done more but am strapped for space and I really hope that gets fixed at some point, because there could be more clues and expansion if there was.

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Originally Posted by GlaziusF @GlaziusF Overall - **. Personal objections to raciness aside, there's the core of an interesting story here. If these enemies represent a reasonable threat without their tier 9s, cap the arc at an appropriate level. If you'd like them to have their full suite of tricks, floor the arc so that people have to face them. And whatever you do give the mind-kin lieut back whatever standard power is robbing her of experience. A little shuffling and reassigning to give everybody chromatically appropriate abilities wouldn't be a bad idea, either. The second and fourth missions could use a little cleaning up to reduce the back-and-forth, especially the second map, which has a million places to hide anything. And there's a lot of unnecessary indirection in the arc, with clues telling me I've found things or know things when they could just be telling me what those things are.

Thanks for the feedback, and the critique. I've certainly gone in and tweaked it based on what you said, and thanks for trying it out - especially as the arc is a bit racy with a bisexual contact, the AlmostNaked Ladies (which is a play on Canadian rock group) and custom chars which don't leave much to the imagination (I can see why in some cases the colour pallette of the skin tones doesn't match the costume tones because then this game would need a much higher rating!). I know people who have played it have enjoyed it, but maybe we're just pervs!!

Either way, the tweaks will help make it better, so thanks again.