PLAY MINE - I'LL PLAY YOURS - Catalyst TF

I've just finished a very long project and I would like opinions so I can make adjustments. So here's what I'll do...if you will play my arc all the way through, I'll do the same for you.

Just post the details of your here so I can play it...then play mine and let me know here what your thoughts are and ideas on how to improve it.

MY ARC DETAILS:
My arc is a tough one...at least that is my hope. I worked hard on it for weeks, and my goal was to make it actually feel like an epic Task Force.

As such, it is very story-driven...with a comic bookish feel to it (I hope).

I recommend a team for the arc, not a solo run, because there are EBs. I would suggest a tank, a healer and a kin be on the team at the very least.

As to the presense of bosses, it is not a boss farm or anything like that. It is a Task Force...and is as hard as you would expect a real Task Force to be.

CATALYST TASK FORCE
by @AmericanAngel-Pete
ARC ID: 248963
Length: Very Long
Morality: Neutral
Levels: 32-50 ( map has enemies up to 52)

Description:
Hidden deep within the annals of time is a legend of an ultra powerful being. His name was Catalyst, and where he walked, Chaos reigned. His goal was complete domination of the world. This ancient evil has awakened from a long slumber, and threatens our world!

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU:
1) Point out Spelling errors. I tried to watch for them but I always miss some.

2) Votes

3) Mob tweaking suggestions.

4) Opinions on NPC text, descriptions and story

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[ QUOTE ]

Description:
Hidden deep within the anals of time is a legend of an ultra powerful being. His name was Catalyst, and where he walked, Chaos reigned. His goal was complete domination of the world. This ancient eveil has awakened from a long slumber, and threatens our world!


[/ QUOTE ]

It's annals of time. I just glanced at this thread and caught that, and thought "I don't think this guy wants people to find his arc by searching for 'anal'"

Now that I've said something, I'll give your arc a try later and let you know what I think.

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[ QUOTE ]
Levels: 1-50 (I suggest 32 or higher though; map has enemies up to 52)

[/ QUOTE ]

As of issue 15, you can now set the level ranges of missions - so you can make the arc 32-50 if you choose. Players can still enter the mission (they'll be SK'd up to 32) but at least it gives them guidance on the recommended range for the arc.

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And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Description:
Hidden deep within the anals of time is a legend of an ultra powerful being. His name was Catalyst, and where he walked, Chaos reigned. His goal was complete domination of the world. This ancient eveil has awakened from a long slumber, and threatens our world!


[/ QUOTE ]

It's annals of time. I just glanced at this thread and caught that, and thought "I don't think this guy wants people to find his arc by searching for 'anal'"

Now that I've said something, I'll give your arc a try later and let you know what I think.

[/ QUOTE ]

you also misspelled evil as eveil. If your description is indicitive of the rest of your arc, typo hunters have their work cut out for them. Good luck with it though.

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248963, AmericanAngel-Pete

4 unique maps, 1 large map, bosses and allies. One unique map is defeat all (hopefully a casino!).

As noted already, anals -> annals in the Description. Also eveil -> evil.
You've suggested levels 1-50 - not too specific

Custom group throughout. Oooh. I'm trying this with my level 50 controller, gonna be a long arc...

The contact is impressive-looking. With I15 you can add a description to the contact in the Story Settings, which is accessed through Ask about this contact.

M1 intro: you're are not -> you are not
I'd change "He turns" to "Catalyst turns", a bit less confusing. Alternately, if you're suggesting I'm one of his commanders, you might simply address me as such. Perhaps commanders and allies, to appease heroes who don't like to be ruled by nobody
M1 send-off: activateMisery -> activate Misery
My pop-up box suggests my actions will prevent Catalyst - so I am not on the same side as Catalyst? That's strange. Neutral morality, I'm very confused right now. Catalyst does sound like someone with too much power, so I think my objectives are probably appropriate, but still confused. Was I snooping on Catalyst's initial monologue?
I'm on level 1 difficulty. The map is full of lieutenants?
My goals include 15 Catalyst's Defender - I just destroyed one, and its whole team, didn't reduce the count. Can Defenders clone in ways other than the 15?
Okay, I found another group with 2 Catalyst's Defenders. I took that group out, the count went down. Looks like you have C.D. in your spawn group - with I15 you can now select that member of your Custom Group (from the listing of all in the group) and right-mouse-button, choose Not Regular Spawn. Then you can use them only for "Boss" objective, won't appear otherwise (and count will make sense).
I found Abomination. It's group is Winter Horde, you could add it to a custom group if you wanted a different name.
I saved abomination, but it looks like I really have to save all 15 of the Catalyst's Defenders. Grim.
Another problem with the Catalyst's Defender goal - looks like I need to defeat the whole group for it to count. Perhaps say "Catalyst's Defender Teams" in the Plural Navigation text slot. Or change the objective to count with Boss Only to complete.
Some of these types seem to be set on Extreme - causing tar pit and that lightning pet. So definitely not a farm, perhaps a challenge arc? I'm mostly in it for the story, luckily I'm a controller and don't need to put up with their holds and endurance drains.
Amazon Clone description: ou -> you ; it's -> its
You can also set Singular Nav description to "Defeat the last Catalyst's Defender Team" for better description of objective when only one left.
Well, that was a lot of tickets...
And when I return, it seems that despite all my efforts, Abomination has somehow disappeared? So, why did I bother with all that? Return message confirms the pop-up on this.
Okay, second mission, it's clearer that I am listening in on Catalyst who is somewhere else. Thi is unusual use of MA (which I like!) but it'll take some effort to get it clear what's happening.
M2 intro: downing -> dawning ; hte -> the ; acheiving -> achieving ; The themselves -> They themselves
The Accept string is very long, runs past the end of the window, cannot read.
Accept string: everyones -> everyone's
M2 send-off: disuaded -> dissuaded
Objectives just 2 this time (phew). One objective says "Director Prime" - rescue, or defeat? And I haven't heard of him yet.
Agent B dialog: you with my DNA -> you have my DNA
Agent B enemy dialog: .Stay -> Stay
I beat Director Prime. Why is he defended by 5th Column? Perhaps an error.
Then rescued Agent B. Again, it seems I might be too late. Pop-up suggested I might be closer (to stopping Catalyst?) but the return message indicates Catalyst is happy. Too many fails doesn't encourage me to keep going...
The "One of Catalyst's commanding officers..." text should be in orange?
Incidentally, I suspect this should be a Heroic arc, not Neutral?
Mission 2 return: manafest -> manifest
Mission 3 intro: bring my the -> bring me the ; perheps -> perhaps

I have to go to bed, I'll continue with mission 3 in the morning. I like the contact perspective, I hope you can make it work (just needs to be smoother). And if it is a Heroic arc, perhaps I can feel successful in saving lives, even if I didn't prevent harvesting of the DNA?

Cheers, airhead

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M3 busy dialog: breath -> breathe
M3 entry popup: the street of -> the streets of
Bit of a loss as to why Statesman is involved here. He makes for a pretty powerful sidekick, leaves me doing little.
Statesman (don't know if you wrote this): Colewas -> Cole ; were -> was ; well -> Well of Furies ; mention of Stefan without connecting him to the well
So it's a defeat-all on a big outdoor map. Perhaps not the worst outdoor map, but people will often quit an arc at this point. Especially if they don't have powers suitable for bouncing quickly around a map to find that last hidden critter. I finished it, it took a long time.
M3 return: "Catalyst stands..." sentence should be in orange ; saught -> sought ; essense -> essence
M4 intro: The entire description is not Catalyst speaking - you've previously colored that orange. Not sure what you want to do here. You've reversed your scheme (somewhat) and now his speaking is yellow. Also has quotation marks. All good, but should be consistent with first two missions. Also, why "near worship"? Sounds like there's ambivalence among the troops.
M4 intro: presense -> presence
This next mission is like the first and the third, big open map with the same creatures to beat, one new boss. Like the first mission, I have specific groups to defeat, this time there are 24 of them. I resign from the arc, I just don't have time to do this.

The arc is monotonous in its gameplay. But otherwise, it has an interesting Contact concept that might work, and a grand story that should ultimately be quite heroic (for contact and plot I rate this a "potential 4-stars"). But I am tired of fighting the same group in outdoor clumps over and over, I'm afraid I cannot finish this. I suggest you plan to playtest this right through with at least 3 different archetype heroes for play balance - that should also test your patience for this.

I have a heroic arc with a bad-guy contact, #1144 (in my sig). The plot is much smaller in scale than yours, the contact is petty, not grand, but you're welcome to give it a try if you like.

Regards, airhead

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airhead, this is exactly what I needed!

Your review is so detailed I have to go through it step by step today...but in addition to the review you've pointed out possible solutions too. Thank you so much! I'm actually learning from this experience!

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[ QUOTE ]
248963, AmericanAngel-Pete

4 unique maps, 1 large map, bosses and allies. One unique map is defeat all (hopefully a casino!).

As noted already, anals -> annals in the Description. Also eveil -> evil.
You've suggested levels 1-50 - not too specific

Custom group throughout. Oooh. I'm trying this with my level 50 controller, gonna be a long arc...

The contact is impressive-looking. With I15 you can add a description to the contact in the Story Settings, which is accessed through Ask about this contact.

M1 intro: you're are not -> you are not
I'd change "He turns" to "Catalyst turns", a bit less confusing. Alternately, if you're suggesting I'm one of his commanders, you might simply address me as such. Perhaps commanders and allies, to appease heroes who don't like to be ruled by nobody
M1 send-off: activateMisery -> activate Misery
My pop-up box suggests my actions will prevent Catalyst - so I am not on the same side as Catalyst? That's strange. Neutral morality, I'm very confused right now. Catalyst does sound like someone with too much power, so I think my objectives are probably appropriate, but still confused. Was I snooping on Catalyst's initial monologue?
I'm on level 1 difficulty. The map is full of lieutenants?
My goals include 15 Catalyst's Defender - I just destroyed one, and its whole team, didn't reduce the count. Can Defenders clone in ways other than the 15?
Okay, I found another group with 2 Catalyst's Defenders. I took that group out, the count went down. Looks like you have C.D. in your spawn group - with I15 you can now select that member of your Custom Group (from the listing of all in the group) and right-mouse-button, choose Not Regular Spawn. Then you can use them only for "Boss" objective, won't appear otherwise (and count will make sense).
I found Abomination. It's group is Winter Horde, you could add it to a custom group if you wanted a different name.
I saved abomination, but it looks like I really have to save all 15 of the Catalyst's Defenders. Grim.
Another problem with the Catalyst's Defender goal - looks like I need to defeat the whole group for it to count. Perhaps say "Catalyst's Defender Teams" in the Plural Navigation text slot. Or change the objective to count with Boss Only to complete.
Some of these types seem to be set on Extreme - causing tar pit and that lightning pet. So definitely not a farm, perhaps a challenge arc? I'm mostly in it for the story, luckily I'm a controller and don't need to put up with their holds and endurance drains.
Amazon Clone description: ou -> you ; it's -> its
You can also set Singular Nav description to "Defeat the last Catalyst's Defender Team" for better description of objective when only one left.
Well, that was a lot of tickets...
And when I return, it seems that despite all my efforts, Abomination has somehow disappeared? So, why did I bother with all that? Return message confirms the pop-up on this.
Okay, second mission, it's clearer that I am listening in on Catalyst who is somewhere else. Thi is unusual use of MA (which I like!) but it'll take some effort to get it clear what's happening.
M2 intro: downing -> dawning ; hte -> the ; acheiving -> achieving ; The themselves -> They themselves
The Accept string is very long, runs past the end of the window, cannot read.
Accept string: everyones -> everyone's
M2 send-off: disuaded -> dissuaded
Objectives just 2 this time (phew). One objective says "Director Prime" - rescue, or defeat? And I haven't heard of him yet.
Agent B dialog: you with my DNA -> you have my DNA
Agent B enemy dialog: .Stay -> Stay
I beat Director Prime. Why is he defended by 5th Column? Perhaps an error.
Then rescued Agent B. Again, it seems I might be too late. Pop-up suggested I might be closer (to stopping Catalyst?) but the return message indicates Catalyst is happy. Too many fails doesn't encourage me to keep going...
The "One of Catalyst's commanding officers..." text should be in orange?
Incidentally, I suspect this should be a Heroic arc, not Neutral?
Mission 2 return: manafest -> manifest
Mission 3 intro: bring my the -> bring me the ; perheps -> perhaps

I have to go to bed, I'll continue with mission 3 in the morning. I like the contact perspective, I hope you can make it work (just needs to be smoother). And if it is a Heroic arc, perhaps I can feel successful in saving lives, even if I didn't prevent harvesting of the DNA?

Cheers, airhead

[/ QUOTE ]

Note: changing the levels to 32-50

1) Anals & Eveil fixed.

2) Contact Description added...although 300 characters is extremely limited. The contact is in hte last mission, where is description is more detailed. I did notice AE added some weird symbols though.

3) You're are not is fixed (oops)

4) "He turns" changed to "Catalyst turns"

5) To clarify that you are his enemy, I changed the "Elsewhere, happening someplace you are not..." to:
"Elsewhere, happening someplace you are not...a new enemy schemes..."

6) ActivateMisery has hte space added

7) The popup has text added now that states that Catalyst is a worldwide threat, and as such everyone, heroes and villains should stop him.

8) Yes, you were snooping

9) Set defenders to not autospawn
I didn't know that was even possible, and it solves some issues I've run into in the past...thanks!

10) you do have to take out all 15 defenders, but I've made the above adjustment so it should be easier now.

11) Apparently my navigational text is gone that I had entered. No biggy since going through it again.
I added "Catalyst Defender Teams Left" for plural and "Catalyst Defender Team Left" for single, as you suggested.

12) On the mobs that are set to extreme...with tar pits and lightning...do you think I should reduce that setting? I wanted the tar pits, but the lightning guy drove me crazy while testing the map...I was on a stoner and was constantly having endo drained lol.

Which I guess was partly the goal. It is meant to be challenging like a TF would be though.

13) Amazon Clone: fixed "ou" to "You" and "it's" to "its"

14) On Abomination, my real goal was to have the player fail at saving him, but I have no idea how to pake that happen. It's needed throughout the arc that Catalyst get his DNA samples. I'm open to ideas on how to best make it work.

15) Fixed downing and hte (hte is a common typo of mine )
Achieving also fixed; and They

16) The accept string is shortened to "Catalyst has been pulling eveyone's strings, but what choice do you really have?"
Although I have to ask the devs why allow 100 characters if they don't actually fit?

17) Director Prime:
Changed his description to
"Director Prime isn't happy that you've invaded his base without proper clearance. In fact, he thinks you're one of the bad guys! Too bad you don't have the time or desire to explain things to him."

and also changed the navigation text to say "Fight Director Prime"

I actually had entered some of this stuff over the last few weeks...something made it disappear

18) fixed agent b dialog

19) When I ran through a test run yesterday, I was surprised by the 5th column also. I just checked and for some reason the enemy group with him was set at 5th column. It's now changed to longbow.

20) At your suggestion, I set it to heroic, and while I was there, I also selected the following keywords:
Challenging, Custom Characters, Save the world

Whew...day one done! hehe. That was a lot of changes, but all of the suggestions were great ones.

Gonna get on to the nest set of corrections you suggested, but I just want to thank you for taking the time to do such an indepth review.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Description:
Hidden deep within the anals of time is a legend of an ultra powerful being. His name was Catalyst, and where he walked, Chaos reigned. His goal was complete domination of the world. This ancient eveil has awakened from a long slumber, and threatens our world!


[/ QUOTE ]

It's annals of time. I just glanced at this thread and caught that, and thought "I don't think this guy wants people to find his arc by searching for 'anal'"

Now that I've said something, I'll give your arc a try later and let you know what I think.

[/ QUOTE ]

you also misspelled evil as eveil. If your description is indicitive of the rest of your arc, typo hunters have their work cut out for them. Good luck with it though.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks, btw. I fixed it in the arc

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[ QUOTE ]
M3 busy dialog: breath -> breathe
M3 entry popup: the street of -> the streets of
Bit of a loss as to why Statesman is involved here. He makes for a pretty powerful sidekick, leaves me doing little.
Statesman (don't know if you wrote this): Colewas -> Cole ; were -> was ; well -> Well of Furies ; mention of Stefan without connecting him to the well
So it's a defeat-all on a big outdoor map. Perhaps not the worst outdoor map, but people will often quit an arc at this point. Especially if they don't have powers suitable for bouncing quickly around a map to find that last hidden critter. I finished it, it took a long time.
M3 return: "Catalyst stands..." sentence should be in orange ; saught -> sought ; essense -> essence
M4 intro: The entire description is not Catalyst speaking - you've previously colored that orange. Not sure what you want to do here. You've reversed your scheme (somewhat) and now his speaking is yellow. Also has quotation marks. All good, but should be consistent with first two missions. Also, why "near worship"? Sounds like there's ambivalence among the troops.
M4 intro: presense -> presence
This next mission is like the first and the third, big open map with the same creatures to beat, one new boss. Like the first mission, I have specific groups to defeat, this time there are 24 of them. I resign from the arc, I just don't have time to do this.

The arc is monotonous in its gameplay. But otherwise, it has an interesting Contact concept that might work, and a grand story that should ultimately be quite heroic (for contact and plot I rate this a "potential 4-stars"). But I am tired of fighting the same group in outdoor clumps over and over, I'm afraid I cannot finish this. I suggest you plan to playtest this right through with at least 3 different archetype heroes for play balance - that should also test your patience for this.

I have a heroic arc with a bad-guy contact, #1144 (in my sig). The plot is much smaller in scale than yours, the contact is petty, not grand, but you're welcome to give it a try if you like.

Regards, airhead

[/ QUOTE ]

1) breathe fixed

2) I didn't write that test on Statesman, but I decided to rewrite it now:
"Marcus Cole drank from the well and was granted incredible powers to become Statesman. He is here to give a speech, but apparently Catalyst needed his DNA for one of his Hounds."

BRB...gotta reboot because my drop downs in the editor are suddenly not working agin...grrr.

Okay, back.

3) I've removed the defeat all and made it a defeat 10 defenders. My main reason to have the defeat all was to prevent a stealthable scenario...but the 10 defenders should help in that area.

4) fixed the spelling errors in the return message, and made the suggested text orange.

Mission 4

5) removed "near"

6) fixed the text colors. I have to admit...I got lazy lol.

7) On the 24 bosses to defeat, the name of the boss is Legion...meaning a great multitude....so my thinking was to have a lot of them.

After reading your comments though, I reduced the requirement from 24 to 8...hopefully that will help. The idea is to show that there are multiple clones of this hound, and that number shoud be sufficient.

A note on the Catalyst History objective...I actually have a longer history but we're only allowed 300 characters...that was frustrating because the history I came up with is needed and I have nowhere else to put it.

Maybe I can break it into more than one collection?

Mission 5
All of the Hounds and Catalyst are faced.

NOTE: I didn't know we can now customise the power choices of our mobs...interesting.

I removed the Pet and cage powers from the Lightning Man Clone.

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btw, airhead, I plan to check out your arc later today! Thanks!

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Okay! Finished the arc through sheer force of will. Let me preface this by saying I like the arc and I love the faction, they were a real challenge and with one exception I'd say don't touch them. Now, that out of the way, no sane person can ever finish this arc in its' current state.

Short Checklist of Things That Would Make Me Five-Star This:
[*] Typo - Catalyst Healers "plany powers"
[*] Typo - Line break "<br>" in mission 4 clue interaction bar
[*] Mission 1 and 4 need a total overhaul, no sane player will EVER finish these. I don't mean this offensively, it's just that noone likes huge outdoor maps hunting for over 7 bosses. This alone took way too long. Suggest reducing the number of defender groups in 1 and 3 to 7/5 respectively and
condensing all of the Legions into one group (more challenging and less mind-bendingly tedious). Same goes for the final mission.
[*] Director Prime's status as 'Longbow' in mission two was out of place, and his boss group is currently bugged to be comprised of 5th Columnists, but that's a quick fix. Maybe recolor him not to look like Longbow if you wanted him to seem as though he were an enemy commander of some sort, and possibly give him dialog suggesting this.
[*] Catalyst seemed quiet at the finale for the Big Bad. Was this intentional or did his text bug out?



Long Feedback of Why I'll Withhold My Rating For Now:

This was actually in and of itself fairly fun. The problem, is that it's simply too tedious. Outdoor maps can be frustrating, and this is made up of four. Furthermore, they all require hunting all over the place looking for the bosses who largely don't stand out much. If you reduced the number of bosses you had to hunt down and beat up, it'd make this a lot more enjoyable.

This brings me to the second thing that really killed the arc for me. Legion is essentially just a different looking Catalyst Archer as far as I could tell, impeding you only through the time you waste hunting through the entire map for all of the Legions. My suggestion here would be to make a separate "Catalyst Hounds" faction containing only Legion so that you can simply have the player(s) fight a single group of Legions. If you were to do this, you might want to take her Dark Miasma away so that she doesn't stack a zillion tar patches and annihilate the player. I'd actually recommend this regardless, to make her something more than a renamed Catalyst Archer. Sonic Resonance or something would be teeth-gritting difficult without driving people (well, me at least) insane.

Another thing that I found strange was the Amazons. I won't say remove them outright, because there's already enough hard LTs, but they seem to disproportionately weak compared to the other members of the faction that if you needed to cut one for filespace to make any of the above changes to Legion, you could definitely axe them. They seem sort of out of place, if you ask me.

Catalyst himself seemed "easy" (and I only say this compared to the rest of this extremely difficult arc) compared to the rest. I don't usually reccomend using ambushes with bosses, but here, it only makes sense (given that we've already killed something like eight-gazillion of his toadies PRIOR to his full-scale invasion) and would make the fight more interesting. Maybe even have Legionsquad ambush here instead of just being in the mission?

Speaking of craaazy difficulty, I'm fine with an all-LT faction with tons of debuffers, sappers, and extreme-level empaths, but you really need to make it clear that this arc is extremely hard in the arc summary.


All that said, I'll gladly replay it and see what changes you make to it in the future. The arc has potential, it's just a little on the masochistic side right now. With all that out of the way, here's my own overly-difficult pet project.

Arc ID: #251938
Author: @JadKni
Name: Pest Control


I've played through your psychotic arc, now play through mine!

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QR

Weatherby_Goode - "Heck, Carrion Creepers negates the knockdown from Carrion Creepers."

JadKni, I made some changes yesterday where I reduced the boss requirements.

Did you play before or after I made the changes?

Otherwise I printed out your post and am going through it today

Thanks!

Edit: Actually, I'm logged on now and seeing that some of my changes didn't take. Grrrr.

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[ QUOTE ]
Okay! Finished the arc through sheer force of will. Let me preface this by saying I like the arc and I love the faction, they were a real challenge and with one exception I'd say don't touch them. Now, that out of the way, no sane person can ever finish this arc in its' current state.

Short Checklist of Things That Would Make Me Five-Star This:
[*] Typo - Catalyst Healers "plany powers"
[*] Typo - Line break "<br>" in mission 4 clue interaction bar
[*] Mission 1 and 4 need a total overhaul, no sane player will EVER finish these. I don't mean this offensively, it's just that noone likes huge outdoor maps hunting for over 7 bosses. This alone took way too long. Suggest reducing the number of defender groups in 1 and 3 to 7/5 respectively and
condensing all of the Legions into one group (more challenging and less mind-bendingly tedious). Same goes for the final mission.
[*] Director Prime's status as 'Longbow' in mission two was out of place, and his boss group is currently bugged to be comprised of 5th Columnists, but that's a quick fix. Maybe recolor him not to look like Longbow if you wanted him to seem as though he were an enemy commander of some sort, and possibly give him dialog suggesting this.
[*] Catalyst seemed quiet at the finale for the Big Bad. Was this intentional or did his text bug out?



Long Feedback of Why I'll Withhold My Rating For Now:

This was actually in and of itself fairly fun. The problem, is that it's simply too tedious. Outdoor maps can be frustrating, and this is made up of four. Furthermore, they all require hunting all over the place looking for the bosses who largely don't stand out much. If you reduced the number of bosses you had to hunt down and beat up, it'd make this a lot more enjoyable.

This brings me to the second thing that really killed the arc for me. Legion is essentially just a different looking Catalyst Archer as far as I could tell, impeding you only through the time you waste hunting through the entire map for all of the Legions. My suggestion here would be to make a separate "Catalyst Hounds" faction containing only Legion so that you can simply have the player(s) fight a single group of Legions. If you were to do this, you might want to take her Dark Miasma away so that she doesn't stack a zillion tar patches and annihilate the player. I'd actually recommend this regardless, to make her something more than a renamed Catalyst Archer. Sonic Resonance or something would be teeth-gritting difficult without driving people (well, me at least) insane.

Another thing that I found strange was the Amazons. I won't say remove them outright, because there's already enough hard LTs, but they seem to disproportionately weak compared to the other members of the faction that if you needed to cut one for filespace to make any of the above changes to Legion, you could definitely axe them. They seem sort of out of place, if you ask me.

Catalyst himself seemed "easy" (and I only say this compared to the rest of this extremely difficult arc) compared to the rest. I don't usually reccomend using ambushes with bosses, but here, it only makes sense (given that we've already killed something like eight-gazillion of his toadies PRIOR to his full-scale invasion) and would make the fight more interesting. Maybe even have Legionsquad ambush here instead of just being in the mission?

Speaking of craaazy difficulty, I'm fine with an all-LT faction with tons of debuffers, sappers, and extreme-level empaths, but you really need to make it clear that this arc is extremely hard in the arc summary.


All that said, I'll gladly replay it and see what changes you make to it in the future. The arc has potential, it's just a little on the masochistic side right now. With all that out of the way, here's my own overly-difficult pet project.

Arc ID: #251938
Author: @JadKni
Name: Pest Control


I've played through your psychotic arc, now play through mine!

[/ QUOTE ]
Okay...made some more adjustments:

1) For some reason, some of the changes I did yesterday did not stay...such as the level settings. Changed them to 32-50 again.

2) fixed the spelling error in healers and removed that line break

3) My text for catalyst is gone...I have to re-enter it (one of those grrrrrs)

4) Director Prime is actually not out of place...the 5th column were. I fixed that yesterday, but again...for some reason it changed back again.

You did make me think though...I think I should add a couple battles between hte army and longbow, because that is supposed to be a longbow base.

5) Made the longbow base map in secon mission medium instead of large.

6) Changed Legion to a Sonic as suggested. The arrows seems a "stinger" type of power...but I can live with the change and you made a good point.

7) Made Amazon and Catalyst Archers into minions. Hopefully this will help the soloists out there. Although my concerns is that not all the mobs will appear now. That was the original reason I made them all LTs...to get all the custom mobs to appear. If it works out well, I won't change it back.

8) Made the 4th map a cave map to change things up. It was the only mission with an outdoor that could be changed and still make sense. Hopefully that will make things less tedious.

9) Reduced the number of Defenders needed from 15 to 10 in mission 1.

10) Space is indeed an issue, but with i15 it gave me slightly more space. I had want to make Legion have her own group before, but space stopped me...maybe I can now.

11) I changed Catalyst to an energy tank. This should make him more difficult and more of a challenge. Thought about making him an AV...but holding back on that for now.

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Edits not sticking is a right-royal pain in the butt. I don't know the fix (some say it's a matter of refreshing the arc selection panel before selecting again) but what works for me is:

Only make edits to one mission. Then Republish. If the interface didn't go away, Exit/Abandon anyway. Definitely wait until the Chat window says your arc is 'updated'. Then wait a bit more - about a pinch and a half - then go back into the architect interface, hit Search to refresh your arc listing, and go back in and edit. When you go back in, first check something stuck from before. Then go and edit the next mission. It might then take you five times through for a 5-mission arc...

This kind of (potentially pointless) ritualism has worked worked great for me. Also writing down the edits you're doing, in case you have to redo, and redo, and redo...

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I think the error is in the "Republish" button.

When I click "Replublish and Exit" it seems to work better. I still have to give it time to update though.

Additional changes:

1) was able to make Legion have her own group and still fit her in.

2) Also added 5 longbow patrols to the mission 2...just to help make it clear it's a longbow base.

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airhead, I'm playing through the rest of your arc right now.

I have to say, it's a fun one! I love Rat Races attitude and characterization.

Matron Holicapo, in M2 I think, was a nice challenge too. I love her confession, lol.

Not sure if this is on purpose:
Matron Holicapo: Nexta child to misbehave getsa spankin'!

Nexta and getsa...it's possible you wee making an italian accent though

"everyone deserves a fair go" - Very clever!

Note: I want the Rat Litter Maestro Day Badge

Edit: You evil, evil man! Quantums??! A Lot of them??? lol

btw...I always suggest a "Part 2 of 5" type of count for the missions. Lets people keep track.

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Okay, airhead! All done!

I loved the arc, and there's really not much I would change.

The only problem I saw was the final mission was extremely short...sort of anti-climatic.

I still gave it 5 stars though, because of the overall arc. Fantastic job!

Yours is next, JadKni!

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Contain the Infestation...it's either the 3rd or 4th map Jadkni...

I could not even start the map because "Bull Ant" killed me and my partner over and over. I was on a 50 Fire/Kin, he was on a scrapper.

I quit the map after dying 5 times at the entrance...we were hit as soon as we zoned in each time.

I did not cast a vote...figure I'll give you a change to fix it before I decide on the vote. All the other maps so far were good, but this one experience had me wanting to give it 3 stars or less, simply because I hit a brick wall. He's just too tough.

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The Bull Ant..? Oh, I think I might know why. The Bull Ant is roughly as hard as a Freak Tank on his own, without the selfrez, but I remember taking heat exhaustion away from the magma ants due to the mind-bending levels of frustration it caused me and gave them Forge to compensate. Re-testing and seeing if that's making the Bull Ants that get forged totally invincible. I'll also move all of the bull ants on the map to the "Middle" group so that they aren't camping the door. Thanks for the heads-up.


EDIT: Alright, replayed the Catalyst TF. Cripes, this thing is difficult. Much more pleasurable experience, here's my list.
[*]Suggest downgrading Legion somehow, either back to Lieutenant or taking Dreadful Wail/Disruption Field away
[*]Catalyst ambush is bugged, you're ambushed by Catalyst Hounds (Attrition, Oblivion, Misery) instead of Catalyst Hounds Legion
[*]Awkward compass text in mission 3(?) for Misery, the "final Misery clone". Suggest changing to singular and not plural


Long Feedback:

Much different experience this time. The amazons are actually fairly dangerous due to that KO blow, and the archers can be a nightmare if not quickly killed due to mass tarpatches. The healers showing up among the peons is an interesting twist as well.

Something I noticed but didn't mention last time is that the mission 3 compass text to beat up Misery is somewhat awkward as explained above. Not much to say there.

The changes to Legion made her a seriously tough customer. I would almost say too tough in the final encounter, I was soloing this and had to basically pull them one at a time and kill them. Mass-Legions wouldn't have been bad as LTs, but they're now dozens of times more threatening individually. I'd say take away their dreadful wail and disruption field. They'd be tough but not nearly as much so now.

I'm thinking that they were meant to be in groups, but they're still accompanied by normal Catalyst Army mobs. Intentional or not?

A slight bug in the Catalyst encounter, the ambush is actually made up of Catalyst Hounds and not Catalyst Hound Legions. I'm not sure which would have been harder, but dear god is that a difficult encounter. I prevailed in the end though. This TF is much less monotonous and is still challenging, easy five-stars from me for the unique contact style and epic feel.

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QR

Weatherby_Goode - "Heck, Carrion Creepers negates the knockdown from Carrion Creepers."

American Angel, glad you enjoyed The Amazing Rat Race! It saw a lot of changes just before your review, particularly the fourth mission (which used to drag on forever). I've also updated based on your review. Revenge was always possible, but now I highlight how in the pop-up before the mission, instead of after (duh). I also boosted the villain to Boss, since, well, he was the boss. Hopefully it is recognizable and a challenge to provide a better conclusion. I've added progress (eg. 3/5) to the mission titles. And I added a warning to Kheldians in the Arc Description, something that has been pointed out before.

That was just a really bad Italian accent, fake, per the confession. An early reviewer reminded me I couldn't hope to pass that rubbish off as being said by a real Italian Rat Race is still working on the paperwork for your badge. You know how reliable he is.

Cheers, airhead

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lol...too funny...

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I was very interested when I saw this post because I have my own Task Force MA Arc. I tried to run the whole thing but was forced to quit on mission 3. Here's my feedback from what I could run:

A little more warning about the over-the-shoulder narrative might be nice.

Typo in mish 1 sendoff - "be sufficient to activateMisery"

/dark on minions gets annoying in large groups(stacked -acc and slows) and for objectives since their spawned effects delay objective completion

Typo in mish 2 intro - " With the downing of hte new day,"

Typo? Not sure what this means - "Hah! The themselves play a role in this story."

Final boss in mish 2 is like fighting a brick. Boring and hard. Another annoyance factor when he cage bubbles you.

Typo in mish 3 sendoff - "Sekk the help of those you call villains!"

Finding 10 groups again... very annoying. (spending 20 minutes hunting for one guy is not that great)

Had to quit on this mission because I could not find the final misery clone. Searched the whole map twice with nothing.

Interesting story and npcs, wish I could finish it. Still very buggy and unbalanced. This feels more like an arc in the testing mode than one meant for live.

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I had actually fixed those typos...twice now. And once again they are back. It's been that way daily. Fix something, it's fixed for a day, then the problems are back again. They really messed something up with this issue...

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Are you sure you are editing the live version of your arc and not the saved copy on your pc?

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A Guide to Champion Drama
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