Venture's Reviews IV: The Search for Part III

The MA arc team on Triumph played Mission: Awesome over the weekend and I think we had a full team of 8 suffer at least 2 team wipes against the Egyptian robots. Although we were fairly low level (my character was brand new and had no enhancements) which may have contributed to this, but the arc is labeled 1-40. I think perhaps the min level should be at least 25; I thought the custom mobs were not well balanced against a pre-SO character.

I also remember wishing there were more to do during that arc than fight lots of Egyptian robots.

I honestly didn't notice that the minions were that bad - but I was running on default difficulty with a blaster so they tended to drop before they could really do much to me. I didn't really like the arc though, I found a lot of the humour kind of lame.

Arc #41646 "Origin 5th Element - Part I Get Max"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", incomplete, gameplay issues

Reviewed on: 10/20/2009
Level Range: 50-54
Architect's Keywords: Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Custom Characters
My Keywords: Challenging, Origin Story
Character used: Venture/Virtue
Difficulty: +2x5+B-AV

Part I, capped level range, extreme warnings, those tags...I don't like it already.

"Drake Steel", founding member of the 5th Element supergroup, offers you a chance to experience the events that went into the origin of the group through an AE simulation. You are to look into the disappearance of his partner, "Max Savage", who vanished while investigating a new gang called Interga^H^Hcrime. You're warned that while Drake pulled this off alone you may want help. As you enter the warehouse a pop-up tells you "the Pulverizer" knows something about Max's disappearance, which you are to learn through percussive interrogation. Intercrime turns out to be a custom faction with a mix of guns and blades and not very inventive costumes. Bosses have Unyielding, so sucks to be you, Controllers. As for the Pulverizer, he turns out to be an AV/EB (Energy Melee/Invulnerability) who was a bit of a pain to deal with thanks to some lucky shots. On defeat he tells you he'll be out of the Zig soon and that Max was "mind swiped" and is now a member of Intercrime. This is confirmed by some files you find on a laptop.

Pulverizer gives up some more info, presumably after extreme rendition, leading you to another warehouse. Drake warns you that Intercrime is bringing in some Rogue Isles supervillains to keep you off their back. On entry, I heard a patrol boasting that this was actually a set-up by the Pulverizer. The first of the villains was Boneyard, a Dark Melee/Dark Armor AV/EB. The second was Bonfire, a Fire Blast/Dark Miasma AV/EB:



His backup showed up after he hit the floor. On capture he gives up Intercrime's plan: their leader, Lustre, plans to use the Mind Swiper to take over the city. This doesn't seem consistent with what you were told about the Mind Swiper device in the first act, but moving on....

Time for the Fight Scene: you have to head to the office HQ of Intercrime, take down Lustre (whom Drake knows nothing about) and likely beat up Max as well.



Max Savage turned out to be a War Mace/Invulnerability AV/EB with BuildUp who instantly hit me for about 2400 points. I took another death fighting a "MilTech Commander", who managed to land a KO Blow for about 1300 points. The Big Bad, Lustre, turned out to be an Illusion Control/Energy Blast AV/EB in a Stripperific getup. She calls two ambush waves as her health declines, and her defeat clue throws off some info that's supposed to lead into the next part, as does the aforementioned MilTech Commander.

The arc has no theme, and doesn't resolve all the plot elements it brings up. Many of the mobs have their difficulty ramped up gratuitously. (I will point out that in a few cases truly obnoxious powers were left out -- nothing used a tier-9 defensive, and the Super Strength mobs did not Rage.) The arc doesn't do anything truly horrible but there's nothing to really commend it for either.

Are you ever gonna stop banging on that particular drum? Just curious.

I dunno. In a way it's useful to have a tangible metric for the bottom of the barrel. One of the NYC newspaper movie reviewers used to use Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge as his example of "as bad as it gets".

OTOH I'll probably stop when people stop taking shots at me over it. That will depend on them not attaching "Blight" tags on my next review thread, of course. (Or gems like "troll with good publicity"...I thought it was against forum rules to accuse people of trolling but whatever.)

Sorry to be the one to say this, but ever since you started 'reviewing' arcs from people who didn't ask to get their stuff torn apart, you do walk the line in that regard. In fact, if your motive was to get an emotional rise out of people, then you've already crossed it. Since I don't know whether it was, I can't say it for sure, but you definitely walk the line.

But isn't bringing it up again and again to get a reaction the very definition of trolling? :/

Whatever. Your review thread. I'm bowing out.

Interesting that you take my statement to mean that. Very interesting. But okay. Like I said, I don't know your motivation, so I can't make a conclusion on it. YMMV, as they say. And while I'm not sure why you brought 'Blight' up again then if that's the case (personally, I would've just dropped the subject a long time ago), I can't say there either - the author says you attacked him, you say the author attacked you, and since I don't actually know either of you, I have no idea who's being truthful.

I left feedback on the arc, which, as you may recall, we are given space for, and left a post saying I didn't like it. Everything else has been in reply.

As I said earlier, the thread is still available. Anyone who cares to can see who said what to who and when.

Not trying to get the thread locked, Venture, but as an outsider looking in, I've got to wonder when the whole matter's going to be "let go," myself. I'm not questioning your bona fides one way or the other, but it certainly seems to me that a person with your intelligence should eventually be able to come to a point when it's done. Constantly (or, at least somewhat often) using "Blight" as your whipping boy really isn't doing much more than stirring a pot that should have long since settled, and it distracts everyone -- whether they've been in any way involved in the ongoing fracas or not -- from your other intelligent (if sometimes controversial) thoughts and comments.

If you've never considered something the proverbial "dead horse," before now, maybe now's the time to do so?

Up to then, it's fun, engaging, and constantly throws something new at the player that wasn't seen coming a mile away.

If anything in "Psychophage" wasn't seen coming a mile away it's because people weren't looking. :P Except maybe the aliens -- but since the entire thing is a Crey/Rikti story in drag (something that either no one has noticed or no one has thought to comment on) even that's a bit of a stretch.

Wait, so if I read your response right, you're upset because people who are not me put some tags you don't like on your thread and continued to make comments defending the arc?

So you're going to keep driving this into the ground, and refuse to move on with your little grudge towards me...because of actions of people who are not me, and not affiliated with me, who did something in your threads? That's really even worse, because it means you've now moved into the territory where you're being petty towards me for something I DIDN'T EVEN DO.

...
Here's my theory on why I honestly think Venture will never let this go, so long as Blight remains online. Obviously, Venture is a smart individual. He possesses lucidicy, cunning, and analytical skills. AE was new, and he was on a roll reviewing, but how to push it up to the next level, become a big name, so to speak? Simple, pick a high profile target and go comically opposing to popular consensus to create a buzz.

Blight may not be the perfect arc, but at the time, it was on page 1 of AE and rising rapidly. People obviously liked it. People still obviously like it, as it's still the fourth highest play/vote ratioed non-player's choice arc, and is a nominee for the AE awards contest by the devs. The author barely posts on the boards and isn't well known. Perfect choice for this idea.

The next part is easy. Test the waters to get a reaction - post '-5 stars' on the arc's praise thread, and message 'Your arc committed a litany of sins to great to list' to the writer. You got a reaction! Good, now to build the 'controversy'. No matter what the arc does, no matter how it does it, it is wrong, even if other arcs do it and you PRAISE them for doing it. Every enemy has custom bios, all text fields filled out with gramatically correct, relevant material? Too bad 1 star. Level range consistent and enemies balanced? Too bad, 1 star. Unique mission using objectives cleverly? Too bad, 1 star. etc. etc. When backed into a corner, start making things up, anything, to justify how absurd your position is - "your arc didn't follow proper US government hazmat procedures and is therefore 1 star", "I don't care if AE is innately non-canon, your arc isn't canon, 1 star", "you used an anagram, 1 star" and so on. Harp on it ENDLESSLY.

It pushes both him, and the arc into the spotlight, and is win/win for him. If he demolishes the arc by constantly dumping on it and influencing others to do so, he's eliminated some front-page competition (second page now). If he doesn't, then it stays prominent due to the exposure, giving him something to rage against with a steady stream of people he now knows will react to his actions whenever things die down, creating more instant spotlight, more drama that people will check out, which of course means more views to his thread and more attention.

The fact he is basically making my play experience utterly miserable for something beyond my control is inconsequential to him at this point, as it's pretty apparenty that even if I took the arc down (actually, especially if I did given how high profile it is) people would still react to his seemingly unending slamming of it. And that's what he wants, the reaction. The arc could have been any arc, really.

I haven't even touched the arc since July, and I am still getting Venture drama for it. Drama perpetuated by him, which falls on me, over the actions of people who I've never met, have no control over, and in all likeliehood probably don't even play on the same server as me. I'm basically just a bystander caught in the crossfire at this point, and every time it starts to quiet down, it happens AGAIN.