This is a very solid and enjoyable story. Surprisingly few customs. 14 votes and still at 5 stars - the griefers are slow today. I'll add a 5-star to this.
capitalize Ming (loads of these)
Nice first and second missions. Very conventional stuff, but done very carefully, complete with good animation choices.
Haiku could perhaps have a seasonal element in each (I think some do).
On return from second mission, I learn the police have seized the vase, and Liang Qian. I thought I did that.
I guess I haven't met Amanda Loomis much, but she's, uh, optimistic!
Nicely worded reveal of Wu's suspicious nature.
Lt. Anders is very cool!
The plot and style of clues is very much aligned with existing content. The devs may like this.
M4 entry popup: each-other -> each other
(Long-)Wu, the solitary custom, gets progressively uglier throughout. Nicely done.
The story is conventional, but it's very well written. I expect it doesn't contradict CoH lore, it all felt logical to me. Sorry I cannot offer any suggestions for improvements, aside from typos. Unless you were to make a crowd of little dragon-like pets to spawn with the big boss at the end. Or in I15, it could be Storm Elementals, if they can exemplar correctly (currently that seems only to apply to the mission-wide spawn type selection). In I15 you could also recolor the Long Tsoo to have that same yellow-green skin, if there was some logic behind that change. Or keep it just the way it is.
Cheers, airhead
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!
Most of my comments were already sent over PM, but to increase your reads here, I'll expand on my notes.
I rolled this solo on Selene Dioscura, my 31 MA/SR Scrapper as the arc recommended heroes in the 20s & 30s. Diff was set at 3, my normal setting for both MA & PVE content. This particular toon is not frequently used, so she's not IO'd out and has a lot of old enhs.
[u]Mission One:[u]
Briefing Text is solid - in fact all the text in the mission briefing and the "still busy" text is solid. No typos or outrageous errors other than the "ming" issue which I and Airhead mentioned.
I noticed that some of the computer desk glowies spawned in odd places (like stuck between two cubicles in the office areas). Since you only need to find one of them, it's not a big deal if you miss one in the front or in the middle, so other players probably won't notice.
I noticed you didn't do any exit mission pop-ups. I don't miss them, so it's probably not an issue.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
I loved the haikus. I have a hobby of making silly haikus myself, so his flubbed haiku got a smile.
By this point, my plot saavy was already basically clued into what was going on.
No other comments here, 'cause I was too busy kicking people in the face!!
[u]Mission Three:[u]
Oh, Sky Raiders, ever the chewtoys of the CoX world.
I loved the boss' (Lt Anders) defeat text. This was a gag I saw in a old Scud: The Disposable Assassin comic book, so even if it wasn't a direct reference, it brought a smile to see it. Was a little curious if Anders was supposed to be a BSG reference.
I went through the whole mission without finding the glowie, so I had to do a little backtracking after I beat the boss. That was a just a smidge annoying, but nothing hideously aggravating. Not sure how to fix that since this map is supposed to be the same as the first map; shrinking it wouldn't make sense. Maybe providing some red herring glowies could keep the player's eyes and ears open for it.
Might be interesting to see some destructible items (set on rogue) for the Sky raiders to be smashing in revenge...not sure about that though. Could break the map.
[u]Mission Four:[u]
Called it on the plot twist.
Mission was very quick, very fast. No messing around.
The pop-up text mentions that the Tsoo are fighting among themselves, and I see a few survivors of the battles - we really don't hear anything from them. I think this could use some fleshing out in maybe some patrol text or some other hapless random hostage.
The Boss spawned as a (red) boss & was also pretty quick, but I had chewed up a good number of insps to counter his elec debuffs.
Selene sez: "Oh yeah! White girl kicked you aaaaaaazzz!!"
It couldn't be helped, she was listening to 80s pop.
[u]Mission Five:[u]
EB/AV Warning noted, team recommended.
As I mentioned, on solo, this mission seemed to just go on a little long. I think the map might have been a little too large considering that there's nothing to do but to beat up regular spawns and patrols. Actually, the patrols don't even really say anything to suggest what is going on. You really already know what is going on, so I know extra content and such might just seem tacked on. And again, on a team, this might run a lot more "fast & furious".
For action's sake, there are a lot of patrols in the mission, maybe defeating a particular one could spawn an ambush of Tub Ci's Tsoo trying to beat you to the punch/kick? Or maybe some glowies of defeated Loyal Tsoo which had been left as warnings against those who might want to take on the new Dragon?
The final boss spawned as a Red EB (instead of the AV I imagine he was designed as). I ended up dying about five times, the first was just sloppy mis-clicking my powers and the second was just sloppy work. After that point, I was popping purples and reds and the occasional blues to keep up with his elec armor end drain. Not too bad since I didn't have any way to debuff him and, as I said, my build is not top-end on this toon. Each death whittled him down a little bit more. I did end up using the "Socialite" Accolade placate twice when I was in trouble to help mitigate impending deaths - but that was about as cheaty as I got.
[u]Overview:[u]
All in all, a well constructed arc and solidly written. It captures some Original Flavor of the normal PVE content, which doesn't happen often in the MA Arcs. I think this actually has some replay value and I wouldn't mind doing it on a team. The plot isn't much of a surprise, but really, we're all jaded players at this point - it's sort of hard to surprise us. Even if you do, half of the time folks will call it an asspull. *shrug* I wasn't really bothered by this, the arc was fun and it played smoothly without a lot of bogging down.
I think airhead's above suggestions on customized groups isn't bad, and definitely an option if you want to change things up a bit. Still, if it isn't broken...
"...his madness keeps him sane.": My Profile on VirtueVerse
Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
Task Force Mutternacht #349522 <-- 1st AE Challenge
For anyone interested I've implemented a handful of changes based on criticisms, feedback and other comments from various people and this arc SHOULD be in it's final form. Well, final as far as major changes go, I'd still love to hear any additional comments people may have!
I'll put this on my list for a repeat, it was a pretty fast arc.
"...his madness keeps him sane.": My Profile on VirtueVerse
Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
Inhuman Resources - At Work with IE #298132
Task Force Mutternacht #349522 <-- 1st AE Challenge
Let me chime in to join those saying this is a good arc.
I played it based on knowing the Architect in-game.
Nebs mentioned he was going for a certain type of arc, namely a good "standard style" arc. I.e., using normal factions from the game, keeping custom stuff to the minimum needed, and so on. Basically, make it play like a really good story from the standard game.
I think Nebs succeeded admirably in this, and also wrote a good story.
I need to make time to play the most recent revision, but based on the earlier play, I give it my thumbs up.
I'm a published amateur comic book author: www.ericjohnsoncomics.com
******MA Arcs****
Arc 5909: "Amazon-Avatars"
Arc 6143: "Escalation" (Nominee: Architect Awards, Nominee: Player Awards, and Dev's Choice!)
Hello! First time poster here.
I've semi-recently finished my first AE story arc and am looking for reviews and honest critiques from people: Good, bad and everything in-between, I'll take it all!
Title: Release the Dragon
Arc#: 229358
Alignment: Heroic
Length: 5 mid-length missions
Story Type: Action ("Stop the baddies + save the day")
Suggested level range: 20-30
Intro: It seems a Paragon City businessman has landed on the bad side of the Tsoo, who now want to make an example of him by taking his life. What did this unlucky citizen do to earn the tattooed gang's ire?
I'm eager to know how people like this arc... Or, if they DON'T like it, what exactly they didn't like so I can improve it!