Lowbie Arc Reviews by an Altaholic Couple
By
airhead,
Posted on: 2009-07-12 16:40 in Mission Architect
I would like to put my arc in the queue please.
The arc is 5 missions but you should have no problem running it in well under an hour with a small team.
It's meant for villains level 22-32 and its difficulty is meant to be on par with regular storyarcs that level. So set your difficulty as you would outside AE.
I was able to solo it without any problem on my 18 MM. I also experimented and put together an 8 man team that was half PuG half SG. Some of the bosses were rough but we didd'nt wipe till the last room, where some members weren't on board with the pulling concept 
I understand you may not get to me for a bit.
I will likely start a thread for it before long but want to get a couple of reviews to tweak it first.
I have reviewed a couple now in the critiques thread and I'm enjoying MA a lot lately. I will likely check out one of your arcs tomorrow, and try to find the appropriate place to let you know how it went.
Thanks guys
-Feiz
I have a low level trilogy for you to take a look at when you can. They each tell a complete story (I hope!) but also have connections that you can follow between the arcs.
[u]Fighting the Future[u]
Title: Future Skulls
ID: 4727
Levels: 1-15
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Save The World
Description: The Skulls are just a street gang now. But they have big plans for the future. Mirror Spirit asks for your help to stop one of them. [SFMA/LBMA]
Title: Simple Times
ID: 70801
Levels: 5-14
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Save The World
Description: Talshak the Mystic has asked for your help with a minor clean up mission in a warehouse. Happens all the time, no big deal, just giving someone a quick helping hand. At least that was how it started. Sequel to Future Skulls, 4727. [SFMA/LBMA]
Title: Future's End
ID: 255895
Levels: 5-14
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Save The World
Description: Mirror Spirit has contacted you again. It is time to finish off the Future Skulls, and she thinks she know how. Can you stop the Future's End? Follow up to Future Skulls, 4727. and Simple Times, 70801. [SFMA/LBMA]
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it 
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
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I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.
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Now that is weird... he was there last time I ran it.. As well as when one of my SG mates ran it.
I'll check it out and Post if I found the issue.
{edit}
Hum he spawned for me a couple times I did it.
His name shows up as "The Dentist" I'll fix the Nav bar to capitalize the The.
Also the witches with him are doing a spell set that should light up where they are. Not sure what happened when you ran it.
BTW he always tends to show up in the bowl somewhere from what I can tell
{/edit}
Take Care,
BinkDeBook
Virtue: CaptainMayhem-50 Inv/SS Tank; NaomiArmitage-50 DM/Inv Scrap; Captn Randomizer-50 MC/Kin Cntrller; Murky Thecat-50 Claws/SR Scrap; Professor Junk-50 Bots/Traps MM; +Others Arc Id #77311, #227436
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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
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I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.
[/ QUOTE ]
Now that is weird... he was there last time I ran it.. As well as when one of my SG mates ran it.
I'll check it out and Post if I found the issue.
{edit}
Hum he spawned for me a couple times I did it.
His name shows up as "The Dentist" I'll fix the Nav bar to capitalize the The.
Also the witches with him are doing a spell set that should light up where they are. Not sure what happened when you ran it.
BTW he always tends to show up in the bowl somewhere from what I can tell
{/edit}
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It's a bug, very random and very annoying. Once every 30ish plays (made up number) one objective either won't spawn, or will spawn off the map. You have to reset the mission by logging off to get it to work, but most people would rather not go through the trouble.
Thanks for the reviews, I'm glad you liked it.
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I would HIGHLY suggest changing ALL of your boss fights to boss only to complete. The reason for this is simply continuity. We defeated the boss, he said "OK you can have it" and we didn't have anything. Only after beating the minion did we get the clue. I think that was the only thing that was confusing in each mission. Even the named boss at the end was confusing because we defeated him and still didn't know who he was until after we defeated the minion.
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I've been meaning to do that for a long time, but keep forgetting. And no one mentions it on any feedback right before my editing. I will fix that today.
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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
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Ok, the mission worked this time, stupid i15! And I hope that you take this as constructive criticism.
Rated 3 stars.
Played eng/eng blaster, level 12 teamed with a level 13 arch/mental blaster on the easiest diff.
This is another example of a one mission arc that does not take full advantage of the limited space available for your story. I think the writing is good but there seems to be a disconnect or absence of detail between the intro text and the mission itself.
Who are the Helsing? Where did the dentist come from? What's up with the rogue witches? There could be foreshadowing for all of these things in the mission details before they are introduced. I think there would have been less confusion if you had kept just ghosts and Tuatha but then it wouldn't have been as much fun. Give some more details about your custom characters (if not in intro, send off text, than in the mission begin clue).
Adding cast animation to the mobs around the main boss was a nice touch and basically made me forget about the frustration I ran into with the stupid i15 bug.
The treats were a unique way of doing trick or treat. I thought it was a fun, short arc that I could easily find myself taking a group of my SG mates into on Halloween. However, I'm gonna be greedy and ask for more before I do.
tl:dr
* Give some foreshadowing about what to expect before we enter the mission (why are the custom mobs there?).
* Add some more 'meat' to the story, at least in the intro (clues and mob details are nicely done).
* With only a little more detail and foreshadowing I could easily up my rating to 4 stars.
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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
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I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.
[/ QUOTE ]
Now that is weird... he was there last time I ran it.. As well as when one of my SG mates ran it.
I'll check it out and Post if I found the issue.
{edit}
Hum he spawned for me a couple times I did it.
His name shows up as "The Dentist" I'll fix the Nav bar to capitalize the The.
Also the witches with him are doing a spell set that should light up where they are. Not sure what happened when you ran it.
BTW he always tends to show up in the bowl somewhere from what I can tell
{/edit}
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Alright, we played it again. I was on my 13 Arch/MM blaster and he was on his 12 Eng/Eng blaster. I realized that two blasters might not have been ideal as a good number of the custom witches had mez powers. Still it worked out alright.
I want to say that I like the premise and the atmosphere. The variety of custom mobs was nice. I thought your contact dialog was pretty sparse though. I actually liked your "about the contact" section more than the the mission intro text. I think you could set the scene better, provide some motivation/background, and even be atmospheric in the intro text.
The Dentist was a bit odd as a boss, he sort of appeared out of nowhere, without any clues leading up to him. I would try to integrate him with the story more. I do appreciate that you added an animation though. He was easy to find on our second run through.
Also I thought the pirate elite bosses were kind of odd. At first I thought they must be a part of the story that I was missing. I think they must be more like random elite bosses, but that seems rather strange when the Dentist isn't an elite boss himself.
Also little things:
There was a custom mob called SteambrdPractitioner, which doesn't look good condensed like that.
I think some of the mob text had emoticons in it, which sort of caught me off guard, and brook the immersion of the setting.
I think there was a typo in the end mission text, "then" vs "than".
Overall, it was a nice short mission and a very cool idea. The story just needs more development so it all fits together more cohesively.
Rating: 3 Stars
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I have a 20-30 arc that might fit the bill. It needs some feedback for the i15 changes.
Info here
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Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926
Rated 3 stars.
Played with level 30 elec/dev blaster teamed with a tanky PB on easiest diff. I tried playing with a level 12 and level 13 but found it to be impossible on the easiest diff setting so I would categorize this arc as NOT lowbie friendly.
I feel like I might be generous with the rating in this one but there is a lot of effort put into it so I have to give credit for that. Beyond that, I found this arc to be disjointed, confusing, and a little lacking. The few brief lines of dialog we are giving by the contact does keep us on track but only with the barest of effort. I found myself constantly checking for clues or looking at mob details or checking back at the mission send off text to see if I could figure out what was going on.
The lack of detail seems even more apparent when there are complicated inside plugs like "reticulating splines." Castillo has a great amount of detail on the mob but seems to come out of no where. Why spend so much time on who this Castillo is and give only the briefest of connection to the story?
Some of the general immersion was also confusing and might need to be looked over and smoothed out. "Search the First Base" which turned out to be and open area was really confusing. The nav gave the clue that it's actually the delivery point that we are searching, not the base.
Ultimately, I do not see how this arc could be final. It needs a lot of work. It has good potential although the gotcha character might seem out of canon with the CoH story which could irritate some people. I would seriously go over the story and make sure you actually have one before assigning missions to it, maybe make an outline and write out what you are trying to do before you put it to the actual arc.
There is effort put into this, and that is obvious, I just think it needs a lot more work to make it a full functioning, smooth story arc.
Sorry I don't really have a good tl:dr for this. Make sure your story flows and is something more than paper thin. Try to explain why certain things happen (Manticore?? WTH??), foreshadowing would be necessary for this arc, which has a mystery feel. Check your arc, play it a lot, just make sure it's smooth before you call it done.
EDIT: On a side from this review:
I'm sick so I may have more time to play some arcs. I am having fun trying these out and think that even the simplest of arcs is still way better than the dev created content in the game. I'm going to bed but here's the queue:
If we have time, later this week:
A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335
And sometime this week (maybe weekend) I will personally make time for:
All Consuming, arc ID: #261148
The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709
(I've been wanting to try Lazarus' arcs)
At some point these will get reviewed:
Lockdown, arc# 250142
BE Prologue: Gangs United, arc# 250480
Quatrexin's Quandary, arc# 246604
Justice_Blues' Low level triligy, arc#4727, 70801, 255895 (might want to play a couple of our arcs for doing this one :P )
edit: whoops, wrong thread... too many stupid tabs open :P
My thoughts on Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926
The missions were short and the objectives were clear, and not cumbersome. I appreciate the playability of the missions. However, the contact, and in fact most of the story, was pretty ambiguous. I feel like the only thing I know about the contact is that he's a guy who doesn't like his boss, and that point was hammered home over and over again.
I found Castillo's joke oriented dialog incredibly confusing. Actually I barely had any idea who Castillo was, and wish he'd been described in clues or contact dialog. But I was really wierded out by the fact that he was talking about his personal appearance, etc... I think I asked Londer "Is this a complete non sequiter, or did I miss something?" Also, Castillo has never met Duray, but yet has all kinds of personal details? He's got his address, phone number, email address... it seems like his relationship is pretty friendly really.
I also felt the idea of a email address trace and the potentially booby trapped computer seemed a bit off. Plus the computers said "reticulating splines" on them, which I simply didn't get at all.
Then when Manticore showed up, I was searching desperately through the previous clues to see if there was any hint or tip off as to his involvement. It really seemed out of the blue. I know he said that you'd helped his friend, but that was an optional objective to begin with (which we had skipped) and it really seemed like a very disjointed justification.
As for the person responsible... I'm not going to spoiler it, but it seems like a major departure for a canon character an I just can't see how to rationalize it. It doesn't help when there are no clues explaining the connections. I literally did a double-take when the name appeared in the nav bar, and then went desparetly searching for clues to explain it again (finding none).
I have to say, when we started this arc I was expecting to face Duray or maybe a corrupt Vanguard guy of your own invention. I wasn't expecting to get so confused about the involvement of canon heroes.
Overall, playable mission maps, that were pretty well balanced for 30ish characters (not so much for lowbies), but the story is very confusing and touches canon in somewhat uncomfortable ways.
Rating: 3 stars
All of the arcs in my signature should be fairly low level. Not sure on playtime, however. In any case, if you decide to give them a look, you'll have my thanks.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
Yes, it is meant for 20ish lowbies. Like I stated in my post and on the page.
Hmmm, ok. I guess I assumed most people had played through the Faultline arcs and knew who Castillo was. After looking at it I realized it would be really, really confusing if you don't know he's a higher-up in the Sky Raider food chain. I fixed some text to relay this information.
I think the mission popup which explains the 'search the first base' confusion had its lines cut. Thanks for the heads up on that.
The clue says Durray is Castillos boss. This is why he has contact information.
As for manticore, the allies you pick up in the Castillo mission say they are there on Manticore's orders.
I used paragonwiki for all of my lore information. Am I missing something? 
A Guide to Champion Drama
My Videos
Ashcraft been published.
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Yes, it is meant for 20ish lowbies. Like I stated in my post and on the page.
Hmmm, ok. I guess I assumed most people had played through the Faultline arcs and knew who Castillo was. After looking at it I realized it would be really, really confusing if you don't know he's a higher-up in the Sky Raider food chain. I fixed some text to relay this information.
I think the mission popup which explains the 'search the first base' confusion had its lines cut. Thanks for the heads up on that.
The clue says Durray is Castillos boss. This is why he has contact information.
As for manticore, the allies you pick up in the Castillo mission say they are there on Manticore's orders.
I used paragonwiki for all of my lore information. Am I missing something?
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I don't know what to tell you. We didn't rescue the hostages in the mission where he tells you about his boss. And if this is all canon lore, then it has barest of ties to your story.
I would seriously think hard about the contact's dialog and whether or not you are getting across what you want with him just saying "I hate my boss, I have trouble communicating, do this next." Go Hunt Kill Skuls usually doesn't work well as a means for story telling for a multi mission story. There are tons of clues, popups and details you could be adding as well, to help the player along.
EDIT: Ok this is a LONG edit.
I went through and played Wings of Deception a second time, this time with a level 50 solo. I wanted to be sure of what I felt with regards to this arc and to find some more specific points where I got confused.
First thing I found was that there probably needs to be some kind of level cap on this mission. Unless you only want level 20s playing it in which you are going to have a VERY small audience. Personally I believe that any map that is rated for level 20 or level 30 etc should be playable with a level 50. I digress, map 1 spawned level 43 mobs and level 35 boss (gray) while I was level 50. Map 2 spawned level 35 mobs while I was level 35 which might be a bug because i was on Unyielding (second to highest diff). Map 3 scaled to level 28? with me at 28. Final map is level 51 with me at 50.
Given what i15 put out I truly think there needs to be a constant level cap throughout this. The final map really is not bad, I had no issue with a level 30 sk'd up to 50, but it's lacking for continuity.
Contact:
Who the hell is this guy and why am I helping him? This guy is the weakest character in the arc and he should be the strongest since he's the contact. If he's supposed to be mysterious, then make him more mysterious. If not, tell me about him. There is nothing in his "about this contact" detail. Also noticed (minor error) "I gives me heartburn." in send-off text for second mission.
Map 1:
Robots? The contact says about financial and then check this out. I really wish I had a popup to gently guide me into this shocking detail. And why am I taking on these robot supervisors. There is nothing in the mission details or clues to explain why I'm doing the things I'm doing. Doing things 'because' is not a good plot device. Clues? Popups? Mob details? Nothing tells me why I'm doing this stuff in the first place. Glowy at the end gives me two clues but only one is useful. One tells me robots are building jetpacks. The other tells me the council robots are slaved to the skyraider jumpbots which seems like a small detail which is only useful in explaining why council robots would hang with skyraider jumpbots. Couldn't this have been explained in the mob details? Over all, mission has 2 clues, only one is useful, and no popups.
Contact explains and suddenly the story gets interesting. Alright, i like a good mystery! I'm still not sure why I'm helping this guy but this part is great lead into the story.
Map 2:
Contact clearly says he wants me to check out delivery points but then my first and only popup tells me I'm heading for a base? Nav says "Search first base." Wait what? Where did this base come from and why am I searching it when my contact told me to check delivery points? And after getting over that confusion, I'm smacked with another. I'm destroying the deliveries? Why? Contact never mentioned that I needed to destroy them. He said to check them. Is there a clue to fill in this lost detail? No clue. Detail on Special Shipment says "The contents of this crate must be destroyed!" Why? I'm a confused player and you're not throwing me a bone here. I really think you need to add some more to the story here.
Ok I destroy the shipment and it tells me about this Castillo guy. I didn't play through all the faultline stuff or maybe he's just a very forgettable character but I don't know who he is. I wouldn't call myself a nub, I've been playing for 5 years and have 7 level 50s. If I hadn't heard of him, chances are there are others as well. You might wanna clue those players in so they don't feel left out. Mission had one clue and one popup.
Ok, so contact explains this guy's probably stealing money. Not sure how that's connected but I'll go with it. Then the contact seems to change his mind and simply suggest this guy knows who's stealing the money. This was confusing. Is Castillo assumed to be the main guy right off the bat and then switched once you get to him or is it known from the start he isn't and we're still on the hunt?
Map 3: Wyvern?? Why are they here? No clues, no popups, no mob details again. Why should I save this guy? Maybe I won't, he's not required for the mission. So I skip ahead. Another named hostage. No mob detail, I don't know how this guy is connected either. Skip ahead. Get the boss at the end, he says he'll talk but no clue. O mob ported away. Defeat mob, get the clue. Might wanna change the conditions for this to be complete when the boss is killed, not the group. And I'm very confused and a little disturbed by the manic ravings about dancing from this guy. How is this guy connected with dancing? Non of his details explain.
Clue! Ok boss he's never met but he has his phone number and email. Weird. And contact does an email trace? How does the contact have connnection with mail servers? Did he see @aol and think "o I've traced the email?" This is a little outlandish. To fit with the whole mystery thing, might wanna try something like having this boss only contact through another officer or high ranking official. It just seem like such a small, paper thin detail to cover such a HUGE gap in the story. It also leaves me wishing there was more leadup or foreshadowing up to this. And boobytrapped computers? This is also a little outlandish. Who boobytraps computers, even in the comic world? I keep thinking that wooden stakes are going to fly out of the monitor.
I noticed the name of this mission does give some hint about the mysterious contact but I don't think it's enough. I totally missed this the fist time through and probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been ready for it.
Map 4: WHOW! Level 51s! Well, after the initial shock it actually isn't that bad but it might turn some people off who don't know if they can handle it on their sparkling new level 20 character.
And this is where the story kinda falls apart for me. Not sure why i'm clicking on computers and after i do, my chat not seems to echo that with "I hope this triggers something." I get a clue that seems to belong to when I free manticore but I haven't freed him yet. Bug possible. Clue says I rescued manticore's friend. Who? Does he mean that guy I DIDN'T rescue from last mission? No further details other than he's following you and you saved his friend. There could have been a lead into this, something to indicate you are being tailed or a hero is here. Seems very random and very abrupt.
After I trigger something with the last computer, bam. There's the traitor and it's certainly not who I expected but I'm feeling empty about it. This is a huge leap and I'm confused. Most mysteries drop little hints or give you a chance to guess, who done it. Plus there's no more clues. The only clue tells me about some random hero who doesn't even show until now and isn't apart of the story. Seems to me the most important, gotcha, character in the story should get the most detail, not the least. Seems to me this would at least warrant a clue "turns out..." This character's dialog seems strange and I'm not convinced this stayed true to canon. The contact, strangely enough, seems to echo this by stating that this villain has actually saved the world time and again.
At the end I'm still left wondering who this contact is and why I did all this stuff for him and why he can chose to hold onto very sensitive information that could ultimately harm the reputation of Vanguard. I don't get the feeling he's an important enough person to be in charge of that kind of power.
CONCLUSION:
Second time through I still got the same feeling from the first. The arc doesn't seem complete and needs some work. It leaves the player confused at many points and makes leaps of logic to come to the ultimate conclusion and does not fully utilized clues, popups, and mob details. I would still do what I suggested in my first review which is:
tl:dr
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Make sure your story flows and is something more than paper thin. Try to explain why certain things happen, foreshadowing would be necessary for this arc, which has a mystery feel. Check your arc, play it a lot, just make sure it's smooth before you call it done.
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Yes, it is meant for 20ish lowbies. Like I stated in my post and on the page.
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We originally tried it on some mid teen level characters, which admittedly are lower than 20, but in practice shouldn't play much differently from a level 20 character, when you consider that a 20 character has spent a lot of their powers on Fitness and Travel. Londer and I also have a lot of vet reward attacks, so that tends to skew our lowbies a tad more powerful for their level. Also remember, level 20 characters don't have SOs yet, and at DO levels of slotting we found we just weren't doing enough damage to the mobs. In any case, that's not something we held against you in any way, but it's maybe something to playtest a bit more. We switched to level 30ish characters because we wanted to try out the arc, and we were fine with that.
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Hmmm, ok. I guess I assumed most people had played through the Faultline arcs and knew who Castillo was. After looking at it I realized it would be really, really confusing if you don't know he's a higher-up in the Sky Raider food chain. I fixed some text to relay this information.
I think the mission popup which explains the 'search the first base' confusion had its lines cut. Thanks for the heads up on that.
The clue says Durray is Castillos boss. This is why he has contact information.
As for manticore, the allies you pick up in the Castillo mission say they are there on Manticore's orders.
I used paragonwiki for all of my lore information. Am I missing something?
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I think we're maybe a tad less familiar with Castillo, because we don't spend a whole lot of time in Faultline. I can't even remember the last time we ran the Faultline content, it must have been years ago. We usually level our characters through the teen levels by running TFs with our SG. In any case, more description and/or clues about Castillo would be welcome.
I think what hit me the wrong way about Castillo/Duray was that "never met him" seems to imply sort of an air of mystery, but having all his contact information seems to imply familiarity. If Castillo is familiar with Duray then it's not necessary to emphasize that he's never met him. Especially in this digital age, it's actually pretty common to have relationships with people you've never met, but I usually don't see the "never met" part being emphasized. For example, at my job I have coworkers in the UK. I talk to them and email them regularly. It's sort of irrelevant that I've never met them in person.
On Manticore, we actually skipped the optional allies in the Castillo mission, so we didn't see their text. I'm sure this contributed to the surprise of finding Manticore in the last mission. Still, I kind of got the impression that Manticore was there to steal the show, and provide sort of a dues ex machina ending that my character never asked for. It also didn't help that he called my character a "fool." So I found myself both surprised and annoyed at his presence.
SPOILER BELOW
Sorry, but Dark Watcher being a villain who is for some reason in league with Sky Raiders is just too much for me. Dark Watcher is a powerful dimension-hopping being who was one of the original founders of the Freedom Phalanx. His interests seem to tend towards Nemesis and the Shadow Shard, and I just cannot rationalize how or why he'd ally himself with Sky Raiders, who are really pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things.
Anyway, this is what I'd do with the story if it were me, and I'm not saying you should do any of this. It's just my personal taste, so feel free to dismiss it entirely.
I would cut back on the "I hate my boss" stuff, and add more character and plot development into the contact's dialog. He doesn't like his boss, we get that, now tell me something that propels the story forward.
If you're going to involve Wyvern, I would make some mentions of their involvement from the beginning, either from the contact, or via clues. I would also remove Manticore, he's too powerful for a lowbie arc, and allies of his stature tend to steal the show. Plus I think his presence skews the level range of the last mission. Instead, if you're going to use Wyvern allies, I would try to develop some lieutenant or boss characters over the course of the arc, so the player gets to know them a bit.
I would also remove Dark Watcher as a villain, and instead the contact's boss could be some kind of middle management dweeb who's misappropriating cash. Hell, the boss could even be a completely misguided dude who idolizes Dark Watcher. If you went that route it would have to be developed of course, and again revealed through clues, but I think that's one way to resolve it without stepping on the toes of canon. It would also allow you to bring the level range of the missions closer to 20-30.
Anyway, just some suggestions. Again feel free to dismiss them entirely if they don't work for you.
Edit: I also want to add, if you do wind up making changes and want a re-review, we'll be happy to play it again.
I couldn't find a thread for Manifesto so I assume it's ok to do a brief review here.
The Liquefactionist Manifesto
Arc ID: 191029
Levels: 1-20
Length: 5 missions, 45 minutes
My reviews are allways more gameplay oriented but I do enjoy a fun story and good writing, and this arc has both. I loved it! Very funny! I found myself clicking on glowies I didn't need just to see what it would say .
My villain is an idiot for listening to this freak, but she's just a level 5 sonic/dark corruptor so what does she know?
As for gameplay, also great! Balanced perfect for lowbies, I will defenitely play this again with friends some day to level our lowbies.
I'm afraid I can't offer much criticism, I really enjoyed it!
Totally gross and totally hilarious. I normally dislike excessive glowy use in missions but all of yours made me at least smile if not lol.
If anything I would have liked a little more! 3 of the maps are extremely small and even the cave was pretty small. It kind of felt wrong to me that the only map of any real size was in the first mission. I would have defenitely preferred a larger map for the final mission to more fully relish my revenge.
Overall great job! Really nice variety in missions and critters including a very fun custom group.
Five stars! Highly recommended for lowbie villains with a strong stomach
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I couldn't find a thread for Manifesto so I assume it's ok to do a brief review here.
The Liquefactionist Manifesto
Arc ID: 191029
Levels: 1-20
Length: 5 missions, 45 minutes
My reviews are allways more gameplay oriented but I do enjoy a fun story and good writing, and this arc has both. I loved it! Very funny! I found myself clicking on glowies I didn't need just to see what it would say .
My villain is an idiot for listening to this freak, but she's just a level 5 sonic/dark corruptor so what does she know?
As for gameplay, also great! Balanced perfect for lowbies, I will defenitely play this again with friends some day to level our lowbies.
I'm afraid I can't offer much criticism, I really enjoyed it!
Totally gross and totally hilarious. I normally dislike excessive glowy use in missions but all of yours made me at least smile if not lol.
If anything I would have liked a little more! 3 of the maps are extremely small and even the cave was pretty small. It kind of felt wrong to me that the only map of any real size was in the first mission. I would have defenitely preferred a larger map for the final mission to more fully relish my revenge.
Overall great job! Really nice variety in missions and critters including a very fun custom group.
Five stars! Highly recommended for lowbie villains with a strong stomach
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Awesome! I'm glad you liked Manifesto!
I never have any expectations about what people will think of that one, because the comments have ranged from "Hilarious" to "You sick @!$%&", and I think both opinions are probably equally valid. 
I think the map sizes reflect my own desire to try to make stuff fit under an hour. When you have to play test something over and over again, it kind of makes you gravitate toward shorter maps. I'm really honored to know you'd like to see more of it though.
Thanks for playing my arc. This moves your arc to the top of the list, and we'll play it tonight as long as we're both feeling up to it. Unfortunately he's sick, and I'm starting to get sick. 
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Unfortunately he's sick, and I'm starting to get sick.
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Uh oh! Troll flu?
Take your time and feel better.
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Well here are a couple for your next batch. I don't see any of these taking over an hour to complete.
* "All Consuming" (#261148) is levels 20-25 and heavily features the Banished Pantheon.
* "The Amulet of J'gara" (#1709) is levels 25-33 and is split between Circle of Thorns, Tautha de Dannan, Fir Bolg, and a custom group of my design.
All my other arcs are level 35+.
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I played The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709 solo.
5 stars.
Played with a level 13 elec/elec brute solo on easiest diff.
This arc was challenging but fun, solid and entertaining. I knew I was taking a risk using a level 13 for level 25 arc but it actually worked just fine. The main boss spawned as a lieutenant first, than elite boss at the end. I was able to handle both just fine.
The story writing is solid, smooth and clues, mob details kept me up to speed on everything going on, but the story itself was enough to keep my interest going.
The twist in the story was awesome and creative.
I only found one minor issue with a sentence in the map 1 follow up. "I wonder what the Circle of Thorns were doing the there to begin with."
I actually forgot to keep notes because I was having such a good time. Great job!
I'd like writing lowbie Arcs! Would you mind giving the ARC below a go when you can:
Title: Big Trouble Kings Row Style!
Arc ID: 259924
Level Range: 5-14
Synopsis: Detective Darcy Armand is having trouble keeping peace in King's Row since the Rikti invasion. Now a disturbing increase in gang activity threatens the city's comeback. Help Darcy discover the identity of the mysterious gang leader who is the cause of the city's recent woes!
My level 50 Dominators:
Madame Mindbender 50 Mind/Energy
Fly Agaric 50 Plant/Thorn
Nate Nitro 50 Fire/Psi
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I would like to put my arc in the queue please.
The arc is 5 missions but you should have no problem running it in well under an hour with a small team.
It's meant for villains level 22-32 and its difficulty is meant to be on par with regular storyarcs that level. So set your difficulty as you would outside AE.
I was able to solo it without any problem on my 18 MM. I also experimented and put together an 8 man team that was half PuG half SG. Some of the bosses were rough but we didd'nt wipe till the last room, where some members weren't on board with the pulling concept
I understand you may not get to me for a bit.
I will likely start a thread for it before long but want to get a couple of reviews to tweak it first.
I have reviewed a couple now in the critiques thread and I'm enjoying MA a lot lately. I will likely check out one of your arcs tomorrow, and try to find the appropriate place to let you know how it went.
Thanks guys
-Feiz
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Mecha Mutiny: Quatrexin's Quandary, arc #246604
Not rated, see below.
Played with level 13 elec/elec Brute teamed with a 13 dm/fa Brute.
I enjoyed the arc, thought the story was good, the writing was decent. You need a spell checker. Type your stuff up in Word or google docs before you put them in the editor.
I don't think I saw any clues. Maybe one popup. Non of the mob descriptions were changed which was ok but would have been nice to make them custom for your arc. I think the mission description was good enough to carry the story but I would suggest utilizing clues. They are always helpful and nice to give to your players.
I usually don't have an issue with bosses having the mission complete tied to the boss group rather than the boss himself so long as you reflect that in the nav, mission goal. We went to get the last boss at the end, pulled him off the scaffolding (we were over an hour as it was and I wanted to move on) and then found that defeating him did not complete the mission. This was disheartening since we knew that in order to complete this, we were going to have to clear our entire way up. So we quit out early.
I figure this will give you an opportunity to fix the things the obviously need fixing and spend some time on throwing a few more details into your missions. I think with a little bit of touching up, I could rate this at 4 but as it stands, I'm just not going to rate it right now.
The robots were loads of fun and the concept is very creative.
tl:dr
*Spellchecker, text is spotty with obvious spelling errors (how did you misspell 'heroes?' It's in the game title! 
).
*Add some clues to help the player, maybe popups too.
*consider removing the requirement for boss group and limit mission complete to just the boss defeat or change the nav text to reflect it. (example: "Defeat boss and his soldiers")
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Unfortunately he's sick, and I'm starting to get sick.
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Uh oh! Troll flu?
Take your time and feel better.
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Thanks! I knew I shouldn't have inappropriately touched those Trolls!
Mecha Mutiny: Quatrexin's Quandary, arc ID 246604
First I want to say that I really enjoyed this arc. I thought the story was good, and fighting a variety of robots was really pretty awesome. I feel really bad about giving this arc an average rating. There was just a lot of detail missing, and even some frustrations in play, so I felt I couldn't give a higher rating right now. However, this stuff is easily fixable, so please make some adjustments and we will absolutely run it again and re-rate it higher.
Here's some feedback I made note of while we were playing it:
Mission 1
There is a strange run-on sentence in the intro text: "Well this 'Edison' project went rogue this morning as well and Lord Recluse would like to keep it secret from the other factions of Vanguard and is willing to pay top dollar for the help."
There are a lot of Vanguard powersuit guys, but they all have standard descriptions for Arachnos, Crey, etc... Add custom descriptions here to explain them
None of the objectives had clues
End text "The Clockwork King", "heros"
Mission 2
"suspitions" misspelling in the mission begin text
I liked the still busy text "No! Get your own armor!"
There was a popup in the beginning of the first mission but no popup in the second one
Nav bar title is "defeat clockwork maiden" and a mission objective is also "defeat clockwork maiden"
Defeat maiden objective didn't end with defeat of the maiden, had to clear the whole room to find the right mobs to end the objective. Suggest changing all boss type objectives to boss only.
Killing lots of robots is lots of fun!
End text mentions a transmitter. What transmitter? I don't have a clue regarding a transmitter
Mission 3
Beginning text mentions "greater Paragon-RI area" I'm not sure if you mean Paragon and Rhode Island, or Paragon and the Rogue Isles. Keep in mind that Paragon and the Rogue Isles are not nearby each other.
"transmitions" misspelling
Why are vanguard friendly now?
A few more glowies than I would have liked, also the elite bosses looked awesome, but were a pain in the butt. Suggest reducing glowie interact time (to minimize interruption) and maybe number of glowies down to 5 or 6.
Mission 4
The hint seems strange in the popup. Popups usually add to the atmosphere, not break the atmosphere. I would move the hint to the mission accept text and put it in parentheses.
The placement of the elite bosses made them difficult to avoid. We would have taken them, but our brutes were under leveled as it was, so we wound up zerging past them, with mixed results.
Mission 5
Nav bar is "defeat edison prime", objective is also defeat edison prime.
Please, if you make no other changes to this arc, change this objective to defeat boss only. We pulled the boss off the top of the scaffold, and watched with horror as the mission did not complete after we killed him. At that point, I turned to Londer and asked "do you want to fight our way up there and try to find the boss group? Or should we quit out?" We decided to quit out at that point because it was already taking longer than an hour, and we weren't feeling well.
So anyway, overall I really liked the story, I liked killing robots, and I really wanted to rate it higher. And I will rate it higher with added detail and cleanup. Add clues, polish the text up, adjust a few objectives, and this will be an excellent arc.
Rating: 3 Stars (I know we didn't quite finish it, but we got really close so I figured I'd go ahead and give a rating)
The updated queue:
Sometime this week:
A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335
All Consuming, arc ID: #261148
At some point these will get reviewed:
Lockdown, arc# 250142
BE Prologue: Gangs United, arc# 250480
Justice_Blues' Low level triligy, arc#4727, 70801, 255895 (might want to play a couple of our arcs for doing this one :P )
TheDeepBlue's arcs 1402, 61866, 2260 (we'll probably pick one of these, or more if you play our arcs)
Big Trouble Kings Row Style! Arc ID: 259924
Thank you both very much for your thoughts on the arc. I'm planning on making changes this evening based on your comments. (I swear I fixed all the spelling errors but I guess I either missed some or it didn't take). I will defenitely be changing the boss objectives, removing a couple of the glowies from M3, and adding clues. I'm thinking Aeon needs a little more dialog too, he is usually quite chatty.
Hopefully I'll get these changes in before Citizen Razor reviews it. After his review and another tweaking session I will likely create a thread for it.
Thanks again for your very helpful comments.
-Feiz
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Wow, I guess I should have read faster. Had this up meaning to post, and all five spots filled already. Next time then.
edit: okie dokie.
Arc Name: Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
Arc ID: #137561
Level Range: 15-30
Missions: 4, fairly small maps
Description: Foreshadow didn't see this coming. He sent you to retrieve a temporal artifact and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to figure out how to stop it.
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Rated 5 stars.
Played with eng/eng blaster at level 11 teamed with shield/fire tank at level 14 on easiest diff setting.
I'm sick so I don't really feel up to picking apart this arc but I can tell you I had fun, only had a slight leaning toward boredom with the idea of repeating the mission but found that it was well done so it wasn't bad. I would have rated at 4 stars but because of the difficulty of pulling off a "ground hogs day" type arc, I gave it a 5.
I would HIGHLY suggest changing ALL of your boss fights to boss only to complete. The reason for this is simply continuity. We defeated the boss, he said "OK you can have it" and we didn't have anything. Only after beating the minion did we get the clue. I think that was the only thing that was confusing in each mission. Even the named boss at the end was confusing because we defeated him and still didn't know who he was until after we defeated the minion.
Otherwise, great job! Lots of fun.