The Shattered Sapphire, Arc ID: #92364, by @Sapphire Keeper
It's never been voted on!
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Summary
The synopsis above, different to the Arc Description, suggests disruptions that are seemingly normal, yet (?) are no interest to the press. Not sure what you meant to say there.
Since it has so many EB/AVs, I'll play it on level 1 difficulty and hope for the best with my mind/ff controller, Aehaed. The level range for this jumps around a lot. You can lock this down in i15 release to, say, 35-41, which exists for all missions. Unless there's a reason for jumping around (eg. Ouro travel, some form of powers loss, simulated 'bug').
Making the first mission the hardest is unusual, usually there's an escalation of difficulty. It's an origin story. Some people avoid these, expecting it to have little to do with them. But good origin stories are driven by the player hero, and I'm hoping for that here. Unfortunately I feel increasingly irrelevant mission by mission.
I'm not sure what direction you want to take this, to find a way to engage the player more, to make it a team challenge, or a solo challenge, to balance the mission difficulty more, to develop the Contact into a unique personality... so I can't really give clear suggestions on improving. Instead, I'll just post my stream-of-consciousness as I went through the arc.
Remarkably accurate grammar and spelling, for an arc that's never been voted on. I've never seen anything like that. Nice work getting it this far!
Cheers, //airhead
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The contact looks like a Crey. Her synopsis is that she's been investigating Crey, so she's presumably some sort of auditor or internal affairs. If that was clearer I'd feel more comfortable as a hero.
Samantha's send-off comments are quite aggressive - I hope I don't need her to teach me to be prepared for anything!
11:29pm: enter first mission
I'm to "Remove Crey presence" - perhaps Samantha is part of some sort of Crey clean-up operation? It didn't sound like Crey Arcana was something that needed eradicating. Remove the presence from who - Circle of Thorns?
Why am I annihilating Crey at the bequest of a Crey?
And then I find the EB. He is indeed very tough - -must be an AV at other difficulty levels.
I use my last Shivan to take him out. I hope the warning on the can is correct, that this was the hardest mission![check of Alchyn is a standard AV]
11:51pm: return to contact
Return message is suitably short - since only the leader of a team will see it, and I already suspect this is a team-oriented arc.
M2 intro: second sentence grammar is confusing at the beginning. Also: arising -> arousing
11:56pm: enter second mission
M2 entry pop-up: definately -> definitely
I find a file labeled...etc. But it doesn't provide a Clue - not that it has to, but glowies often do.
I really like this ally. Perhaps a bit strong but at least she's doing a great job of buffing.
There's an unecessary apostrophe in Chris' description.
This mission is definitely much easier for having the ally. Solo-able, unlike the last mission (for me at least).
Ahh, the need for a Clue is satisfied at the end of the mission. Strange file, particularly the Satou family references. Intrigue.
12:14am: return to contact.
M2 return msg: Contact repeats herself, not sure if intentional (relation...relation)
I'm not entirely sure why I am visiting another site of the Crey Arcana. Still searching for basic clues? Perhaps another item like the sapphire?
12:16am: enter mission 3
Mission pop-up - why must there be something here, perhaps it is gone now?
Another very powerful ally.
It's a complex (although not big) map - but hopefully my clue is this EB, and not a glowie.
Oh dear. Even with my sidekick, I've managed to get beaten up - time for hospital.
I come back - we win! Fairly convincingly. I just stalled him a bit. It would be interesting to see what would happen if I wasn't even there. I definitely felt a bit incidental that time.
Comprehensive clue. Definitely a back-story for your hero. Not sure how it impacts me.
12:36am: return to contact.
I am asked to "Accept" - but it's not entirely clear what I'm to do.
12:39am: into mission 4.
Sapphire Blade has an interesting backstory, short and quirky.
And her AI is the melee one - she stands up to the bad guy, and just watches as I take him down. Sometimes she draws her sword, but just for show. Kind of her to give me the xp. Perhaps she'd be more interactive if she had gotten hit.
12:48am: return to contact
Okay, we're to beat down the bad guy 'to maintain balance'. Doesn't define evil, but that's okay, I'll do it. He's been messing with souls, so I'll use that reason instead.
12:51am: enter last mission
It's a lot of sidekicks this time! Wipe out the Crey Arcana - so what on earth was Samantha's mandate, being Crey??
I'm rescuing extremely powerful beings held captive by weedy Circle of Thorns types. Perhaps they could be animated to be in some kind of magical hold.
Okay... everything we meet lasts less than 2 seconds, as my posse nukes it.
Healer gets left behind a lot, strange as she's the flying one.
So for kicks, I decide to leave the big bad to the sidekicks. They splatter him even before him ambush comes to the rescue. Healer is almost taken down before the villain foolishly switches to Gunner. Ah, but that EB wasn't the big bad! There's still Phylos to go. He's nearby, and I leave him to the sidekicks. He's doing better than his number 2. Lots of knock-up.
Blade is going down. I chip in a little bit, Blade finally gets the heals she needs from Healer, and they do eventually win.
1:14am: return to contact
Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!
Thank you very much, I appreciate your comments! 
I have made the grammar changes, and made Samantha's objective clearer. I shall begin working on the story itself tomorrow.
Freedom Mains:
Sapphire Healer, Emp/Psych Def
Sapphire Blade, BS/Regen Scrap
Sapphire Gunner, AR/EM Blast
Izumi Reconstructed, Ice/Ice Corr
Operative Misaka, SoA
Arc #92364: The Shattered Sapphire
Just played through this, I'll do my best to offer some useful feedback:
Character: Infatum - Level 50 MA/WP Scrapper
Difficulty: Unyielding
Rating: ***
My two biggest complaints of this story arc come right out of the starting gate. Who is this crey looking contact I'm working for, and why am I working for her? She describes an arcana based division of crey, and then basically says "let's beat them up, they're crey!"
This is one of those "they do it in canon so it's fine" things that doesn't fly with me. We're heroes, even if Infatum might under some circumstances dance around the law, you should be at least giving me something that might result in a warrant in bizarro land's justice system even if it wouldn't even come close under RL laws. Remember Crey *is* a law abiding corporation as far as the government is concerned, we need a dang good reason to beat them up, especially if we're doing so because they're invading Oranbega, arguably a heroic thing to be doing in the first place.
Specific dialogue regarding this:
[ QUOTE ]
The branch itself is still very small so it hasn't gotten much, if any, public attention. I've dedicated myself to prevent that.
[/ QUOTE ]
What exactly is she trying to say with that? She wants it to get public attention? She doesn't want it to get public attention? Why should we care if it gets public attention either way?
In any case, I think it's very important to draw the player in early on. The intro is currently very weak, and really offers nothing more than "let's go beat on some unique crey!"
Moving on...
First mission, we get introduced to the arcana-crey and basically hit on most of the issues I see with this arc mechanically.
All boss custom group
Playing on unyielding, I was fighting an elite boss escorted by 4 bosses. Although Infatum stomped them into the ground, I'd imagine most characters are not going to be able to solo this kind of stuff, and I really don't see why you've made them so powerful. There's no offered story reason why Crey's mages should be so much more powerful than the Circle of Thorns who are pretty much the standard of CoH mages. In fact the last mission makes it sound like they should be less powerful. I'd suggest downgrading to lieutenants if you don't have enough room to make a more fleshed out group, and going with standard difficulty on all counts. Customs tend to be pretty challenging no matter what you set them to.
So many Elite Bosses
Elite bosses can be fun, I enjoy fighting them as do some others I'm sure, but they lose their flair when they're thrown around willy nilly, and that seems to be the case in this arc. Once I15 hits (with the ability to flag mobs as unique), I'd suggest only having the last two EBs as EBs. This would also fix the next complaint...
Unnecessary Level Scaling
The level of two missions scales down for the sole purpose of including two clones of a CoT EB. There is no obvious reason they should be EBs according to the story (The Sapphire sounds like it's only really being used by the big bad), and as generic bosses you wouldn't have the level scaling issue. If there is a good story reason for these, then it needs to be fleshed out more, if not, go with bosses.
As the arc continues, we meet the characters this origin story is about. Which I'm fine with, but...
Elite Boss Allies
There's really no reason for allies this powerful, at all, ever... I realize you have an attachment to your characters, but players are here to see our characters cleaning house, not yours. Scale them down to lieutenants with extreme powersets, and maybe I won't make an active effort to leave them behind every mission.
The missions overall weren't bad, the writing was decent. The final boss might have been a poor choice though at least mechanically. Although I didn't find him hard, he was so resistant that the fight became a long snooze fest of me hammering out my attack chain, doing double digits the entire time, and never breaking 100. If there's a different AV you could choose for this, I'd suggest doing so, as the one you used seemed exceptionally boring and probably deadly to squishier characters.
The only other nitpick I can remember was the custom group naming. For the EBs (most of who I think should be just 'B's), they really feel silly using first names as their titles. Instead of Necromancer Chris, why not "Magister Smith" or something. That would sound a lot more Crey-ish, and more inline with canon naming convention. For the Boss-Minions Archmage Acolyte in particular makes no sense and is a bit of an oxymoron, how can you be an Archmage and an Acolyte at the same time? How about "Acolyte of the Archmage" instead, or something else entirely?
Overall I didn't mind the arc, but it didn't wow me either. The biggest offense was the intro, and that alone being changed to pull the player in and give them a good reason for being here would earn an extra star. As I mentioned earlier your writing is decent, so this arc feels mostly just in need of some plot-based polish to take a step away from being just another origin story, and towards being a fun arc for the player. If you decide to make some changes, I'd be happy to replay it and rerate it, I hope I didn't come off as too harsh, and I hope you keep working on this arc
Infatum on Virtueverse
Arc Name: The Shattered Sapphire
Arc ID: #92364
Faction: Circle of Thorns, Crey, Crey Arcana Division (Custom)
Creator Global: @Sapphire Keeper
Difficulty Level: At least one EB/AV in every mission. Allies start appearing in the second mission. In my opinion, the first mission is the most difficult.
Synopsis: An underground division of Crey and the Circle of Thorns have been butting heads lately, causing disruptions in isolated areas of the city. While seemingly normal, these conflicts have attracted absolutely no attention from the press. There must be something bigger causing all this.
Estimated Time to Play: I managed to solo it with my BS/Regen scrapper in about 40-50 minutes, but it probably depends entirely on the team size and skill.
I spent a while writing the origin stories of my 3 lvl 50 heroes, and eventually made it into this, my first Misison Arc.
I tried to do the best I could regarding the storyline. I have some doubts regarding certain aspects, and certain ideas for improvement, but I'd like some input from people other than myself before I start changing it again.
Tell me what you think, constructive criticism greatly appreciated!
Freedom Mains:
Sapphire Healer, Emp/Psych Def
Sapphire Blade, BS/Regen Scrap
Sapphire Gunner, AR/EM Blast
Izumi Reconstructed, Ice/Ice Corr
Operative Misaka, SoA
Arc #92364: The Shattered Sapphire