Another Arc Review Thread


3dent

 

Posted

Oh well, I'll thrown in mine as well then. It's a short one if your toon can handle it... I tried to tone down the stacking mezzes and slows of my custom mobs by tinkering with their powersets, but haven't tested this version much yet, apart from one 9-minute run-through with my lvl 50 Brute. One regular Boss when soloing, no AVs or EBs.


Title: Camera... Lights... Action!
ID: 90822
Suggested Level Range: technically 1-54, but recommended for toons with mez protection to cut down on the annoyance factor.
Description: B-Movie director is looking for A-List Superhuman to star in his latest masterpiece - a teenage vampire slasher flick!
Just a one-shot mission so far, I might add another one or two eventually (doubt I'll get more than that into one arc due to space constraints)
Link to City of Guides entry: http://www.cityofguides.com/ma/view-mission.php?id=82


 

Posted

I know you have played this before ( a rather old version,... perhaps v1) but if you could bear it, v4 of

The Viral Army
ID 23256
Suggested Level Range: 22+
Also posted on City of guides

PS: Has included many of your suggestions, so thanks btw!


 

Posted

I'd like to submit my new one for full review. I know you've played it once but I've heavily revised it in that time.

Duplicity - 85847
Suggested range: 45+ (level range of AV, otherwise all levels)


 

Posted

REVIEW: Tidebringer (Arc ID: 12290) (villainous, lv40-50)
By @Col. Blitzkrieger

You know, I know it was just fairly random timing, but it doesn't seem very fair to me that I have to review the other reviewer's arc first! There's a lot to measure up to here. Oh well... lets see what we have.


Summary: "Tidebringer" is a high-level arc intended for villains, with several tough AV/EBs, optional boss allies to help you, and a well-designed custom group. The story is decent but while it's well written and fun to play, it unfortunately suffers from two of the most common complaints levelled at villain content - the player is merely a lackey of Arachnos throughout, and it ends with the player taking actions that would be more suited to a hero.

Should you play it?: Yes you should, especially if your villain is a mercenary-type or noble villain.

Overall, 4 stars.

I played this arc on Victik, my lv50 Necromancy/Dark/Soul MM. Difficulty was Vicious.


(spoilers from here on)

Report:
Our contact is Brick Johnson, a VEAT contact who's already known for not playing fair with the player. Port Oakes is having problems with its ghosts, and they need an exterminator. Calling a thousand-year-old necromancer seems to be a good move!

Victik: Brick Johnson irritates me greatly. I have defeated all who dared defy me on these miserable isles, yet he treats me like I only recently arrived from Mercy Island.

Brick's dialogue did initially annoy me. While his disparaging attitude toward the player might be suitable for the lv10 game, this is a 40-50 arc and it's galling to see this Bane Spider calling my god-killing character a "schmuck" and telling me to my face that I wasn't the best choice for this job.

Mission 1 is fairly straightforward, as you investigate an Arachnos base and get rid of the ghosts. This is a defeat-all, but it's a small linear map and entirely reasonable. The ghosts are a well-done higher-level recreation of the Spectral Pirates faction, which my zombies totally rolled over thanks to my many fears and holds. Interacting with a computer reveals that the worst case scenario has come true - the ghosts have learned to use the Internet.

Victik: These ghosts are weak-willed spirits, but I do envy their grasp of this modern "technology."

They've been searching for information on something called ""Tidebringer," which turns out to be an artifact owned by Captain Mako. Presumably they've been taught to use computers by their new leader, a man they only refer to as "The Admiral."


Brick is worried by this so - reasoning that the Admiral is probably a hero - he sends us to a Longbow base to find some info. Soon the base commander is covered in zombie bile and happy to oblige. It turns out Admiral Darkwater is a descendant of Blackbeard, and wants to remove the curse from the Spectral Pirates and free them. Well, we can't have that. Time to go make an example of this guy.


Darkwater is holed up in his lair, an abandoned cargo ship. A fairly straightforward level, the sole complications are a useful ally - a Boss level pirate who disagrees with what Darkwater's doing - and the man himself, a BS/Regen EB.

Victik: Darkwater was a fierce warrior, but his sword was no match for those of my knights, Artura and Lancell.

Yeah, He was fairly easy, and mostly thanks to just having Standard Regen. Darkwater is dragged away by Arachnos, and Brick is ecstatic... until he immediately escapes.

Darkwater immediately attacks Mako's museum, trying to steal Tidebringer, and I'm sent to stop him. Apparently Tidebringer is a sword infused with the rage of the sea and every sailor who ever died in it, which is some pretty mighty juju, and it can lift the curse, but to so so it needs to spill some powerful magical blood. Brick points out that if your villain is of magic origin, they might suffice...

Victik: He's welcome to try to take some of my blood. I'm eager to take his.

As soon as we enter the museum, we find... Operative Jenkins, who has somehow managed to get promoted as far as Bane Spider Executioner. Who keeps promoting this guy?

Halfway through the mission we find an empty Tidebringer display case. Looks like we're too late. A new objective appears - defeat the leader of the ghosts, who turns out to be an EB called Red Terror. He actually came as quite a shock, as I initially mistook him for a Lt, but he went down without too many problems.

Brick freaks out when I return, and immediately plays the trick of blaming me for Arachnos' failings. It seems the "magical blood" Darkwater intends to spill isn't that of a villain, but of... the Leviathan. While he would free the ghosts in doing this, he'd also wake the beast, and it would probably destroy the Rogue Isles. It's time for some amateur Heroics - we need to get down there and stop Darkwater, who's apparently been given godlike powers by the Tidebringer.

The final mission is set in the Leviathan caves, and a little bit of exploration gets us a few allies - Brick Johnson himself, and Veluta Lunata, who Brick has been consulting with about the ghosts. Getting to Darkwater is pretty easy. He's now a BS/Storm with Flight - flight was actually the most useful of his powers, as he moved around quite a lot. Since he didn't have an armour set his HP dropped quickly, but on the way he spawned three ambushes - some allied Arachnos, some Rogue Longbow and some Enemy Pirates. These ambushes were actually more dangerous to me than Darkwater probably was.

Victik: I must give them credit, Longbow and the Spectral Pirates knew to come directly for me and ignore my minions. Between their attacks and stuns, they very nearly destroyed the corpse I am currently wearing. This was a highly chaotic battle.

Overall he died quite quickly though, (no armour set) and Tidebringer was broken. It is somewhat gratifying to see that Brick has changed his opinion of my by now (promises to put in a good word for me, presumably with the man who I showed his own severed head.)


Overall I definitely enjoyed this arc - It's well written, perfectly playable, the custom enemies are well designed and the story is interesting, but it's let down by a few small grammar errors, an irritating misjudging of the contact's tone and IMO a real lack of actual villainous content. I give it 4 stars.


(gosh, reviewing is hard work. I may cut down on the detail in the future. If you have any comments on how I'm reviewing, I'd like to hear them)


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

Looks good to me Leese, I was wondering how you would spin the whole "point of view of the character" and it turned out quite well.

However I'd try and cut the character comments to something a bit more "useful", else they could just turn into an endless stream of waffle.

I look forward to your next one.


 

Posted

The IC comments are great. I vote for more.


I really should do something about this signature.

 

Posted

I suppose it depends on what you are trying to do:

tell the story of your character's journey through the missions - then yes, IC comments are a great way to help explain your character's view of the events etc. But if this is the case, avoid the impartial technical stuff.

or

Give an impartial review: in this case, the IC comments are superfluous and only serve to give the reader a sense of bias that more than likely isnt actually there.

I do like the IC comments but I dont feel that they have a place in an impartial review.


 

Posted

Nice work, Leese. I also liked IC comments.


 

Posted

My main aim with the IC comments was to use them to support the points I was making and to make what could be a pretty dry technical review more interesting to read. I probably didn't succeed all the time but hey...

I'll probably shorten the Report section of the review in the future, condensing it down to a few notable bulletpoints rather than describing everything.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

The IC comments are a nice touch. But you should make sure that you feel up to the task to provide the review. I can imagine that it is a lot of work like this.


 

Posted

Leese- it might make more sense to apply IC comments to the more lore-based missions and/or arcs; trying to make IC stuff fit with the more comedy / off-topic sorts of arcs is pretty much making a rod for your own back and adds the weight of needing to be creative to the already-quite-tough job of writing a constructive and smart review. But hey, its your sandbox, play in it how you like


Cancelled in Three - MA ID #34608. Please play and comment! Top 10 placing in Projectionist's MA contest!

 

Posted

I'll add an arc for review:

Title: March of the Maniac Mimes
ID: 3007
Suggested Level Range: 30+

Description: You’re called upon by a Mystic named Lynne to investigate a disturbance in the Midnight Club that is preventing the mystics from entering. They need someone to go in there for them and see what’s happening, though by the title of the arc you may be able to hazard a guess as to what's kicking off…

The last mission contains an EB and an AV, though I was able to give them a good kicking with my BS/Inv scrapper! Also, try not to get the glowies on first go and remember that a Mime’s actions are louder than it's words!

Link to City of Guides entry: http://www.cityofguides.com/ma/view-mission.php?id=56



 

Posted

ID 1200
Skylabs Emergency Training Module
Length: Medium
Description: A Training Module where Heroes are tested against a possible emergency situation at the prestigious Skylabs implant firm. Will you qualify?

Link to City of Guides entry http://www.cityofguides.com/ma/view-mission.php?id=6

I have aimed for a fairly quick Arc which is not heavily loaded with story text, but still a fun play.
Should be Soloable as i played it with my Grav/Emp controller.


Tidgy

---------------

 

Posted

REVIEW: Cancelled in Three (Arc ID: 35608) (neutral, lv40-50)
By @JamieB

Summary: "Cancelled in Three" is a short comedic arc intended for both heroes and villains (though it really suits heroes better) The story is entertaining, with many jokes about the nature of fans, the comics business, and a particularly entertaining parody of a popular comics writer, but it severely misjudges the difficulty of many of its custom mobs, and the ending is... unsurprising.

Should I play it: If you have an armour set, you should get a lot of enjoyment out of this arc. It is probably far more challenging for squishies. If you are a controller or Dominator, consider staying away. Many of the most dangerous minions and LTs are immune to control effects - or hold and stun at least.

Overall, I gave it 3 stars.

I played this arc on difficulty 4 as Jacintha, a level 42 Archery/Elec/Elec blaster. A significant part of her survival comes from the ability to stun/hold dangerous enemies, and the ability to hover out of melee range.


Report:
The contact is a man in a suit called Walt Kurtzberg - it's never exaplained who he is, but he seems to know us. Apparently we have our own comic book, and it's about to be cancelled, so Walt sends us to a convention to speak to its creators and find out why... and also buy some "ephemeral tat" as is traditional.

The convention is in a warehouse full of psychopathic comic fanboys - there's the Pest, the Cosplayer, the Goth, the Messageboarder... it's a fun custom group, with some funny bios. About halfway through we encounter Kirby Eisner, a comic creator, who is being pressurised by "editorial staff" to give up his copyrights. The clue he gives me once I rescue him is a genuine LOL moment. The tat we bought was also quite funny.

One strange thing - Kirby Eisner's skin was a strange shade of red, I think. At first I thought he was wearing boxing gloves.

Eisner's clue suggests that we check out Paragon Comics's offices, which are full of more of the faction that was menacing Eisner in the last mission. They've recently bought the comics company and are relentlessly squeezing it in search of improving the bottom line, so we need to go in and beat up The Publisher.

If only it were that easy.

These mobs were difficult. I died, twice, on the very first spawn. Probably half of them have armour sets and often mez protection, cutting down my damage and making it impossible for me to hold the dangerous ones - Sub-Editors in particular were especially frustrating. SS/EA - good damage, good defence and mez protection, these guys were tough and I met them extremely, hair-pullingly frequently. To make matters worse, the low ceilings of an office map frequently gave me nowhere to hover out of melee range. The Publisher himself was a Thugs/DA, but in a large room so at least I could hover. He was still a real challenge, but he was a EB so that's OK.

After defeating the Publisher, we find some chemicals that seem to be a mind-control agent mixed with ink. Someone is trying to mind control Paragon's comic fans! We hit the printers to find out who it is, and as we round the first corner we see a "Support Automaton..."

That sound you just heard is me smacking my forehead against the desk.

Yeah, it's a Nemesis plot. The final mission is another warehouse, where we need to destroy a few machines and confront the new owner of Paragon Comics. Nemesis is his usual AV/EB version, though his writing is a little off - he comes across as a senile old man, rather than an evil genius. I'm sure it was done for comedic effect, but it wasn't as funny for me as the rest of the arc was - maybe I wasn't in the mood any more after mission 2, or maybe I'm tired of Nemesis.

This arc would have easily been a 4, maybe a 5, if not for mission 2 which was an exercise in sheer frustration. Yes, I know I was playing on a high difficulty, yes I know Blasters should expect to die, but... lets look at HOW often I died.

Mission 1: No deaths.
Mission 3: One death (to EB Nemesis)
...
Mission 2: Twelve deaths. Nine times to normal minions/lts. Three to the EB.

You have a definite difficulty spike there that, in my experience, kills your arc and needs to be addressed. The arc definitely required further testing.

So, three stars overall.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

Thanks so much, Leese - I really want to make this a mish that's funny, rather than tiresome, so I'll massively dial down the mobs on mish 2 - especially the /EA ones (I didn't really get that EA is kind of not like the player version, ie quite effective even set on Standard (which it is)).

Also, I'll have a look at Nemmie's dialogue again. I understand that BWA-HA-HA-IT'S ALL A NEMESIS PLOT is probably annoying even by now but I hope you'll agree that the treatment of it is OK...

Would love for you to take another look now I've done a fair bit of tweaking (with invaluable testing assistance from Xemulas).

Massively obliged to you for running through!


Cancelled in Three - MA ID #34608. Please play and comment! Top 10 placing in Projectionist's MA contest!

 

Posted

Review: "Total Domination" (Arc ID 22433, villainous, lv50)

This arc carries a warning that it is difficult and not intended for solo players. While I did solo most of it, I've kept that in mind regarding the difficulty. Nothing wrong with a hard arc that carries a warning.

Summary: A highly challenging arc, "Total Domination" presents the player with a wide variety of challenging but balanced encounters. It's not fantastic for story lovers, but the narrative is good enough to hold it together, and high-level villains who are fed up of being lackeys of their contacts will enjoy it.

Should I play it?: If you plan on soloing this, be sure you can kill a lv52 AV solo - it won't scale down to an EB! Otherwise, this arc presents an excellent challenge suitable for a high level group.

4 stars.

I played this arc on Tenacious as Leese, my lv50 MA/SR scrapper. I'm not the type of person who can be bothered fully IOing a character - despite being my main she doesn't have a single Purple, but she is partially soft-capped and has significant recharge, damage, endred, regen and accuracy boosts.


(spoilers for the arc, and also Kelly Uqua's missions, follow!)


Report
The contact is Kelly Uqua - or a hologram of her, that is. (nice touch there) We're planning on kidnapping her - as a Rikti spy, she has the knowledge we need to finally put our plan for conquering the world into action.

Kelly's in a Crey Lab map, defended by a custom Crey faction. This was extremely appreciated, as I find lv45-50 Crey to be among the most boring enemies in the game, so it was nice to see some custom agents and scientists in among the standard Tanks. There are even custom Paragon Protectors, who seemed to be missing a Tier 9 but rez when defeated.

The main downside to the custom Crey were the agents, who had /Nin. I know this is intended to be a challenging arc, but making use of a bug to do it seems like the wrong way to me. If my Ranged Defence hadn't been soft-capped, I'm sure these guys could have been an extreme threat. A similar complaint can be aimed at the LT Paragon Protector Quantums that were a common spawn. Kheldians may find this mission highly frustrating.

Kelly is a psychic AV/EB when I get to her, and not too awful a threat. She does call in three ambushes though - two Crey, one Rikti, which makes the fight much more tricky.

Once subdued, Kelly agrees to help with my plan so long as I don't let slip about her true origins. She tells me I can get a Rikti Organelle - a psychic computer of sorts - from Area 51, which turns out to be a warehouse guarded by Vanguard.

First spawn as we enter has a Vanguard HVAS, a tough fight, especially since it raises the alarm and brings a vanguard ambush down on me. The rest of the mission is easier - check crates to find the organelle, one of which calls another ambush.

When we find it, we get to one of my favourite sections - defeating the Security Chief. I was expecting a guy in black SWAT armour. Instead I got a stolen Rikti Heavy piloted and guarded by the US Military! Very nice encounter. The Commando Officers and Commando Colonels that spawn with him are all Soldiers/Dev bosses, and at 50% he brings in an ambush of more of them.

I really enjoyed this fight, though I suspect more squishy characters would just die over and over. For a soft-capped /SR though, it was epic and fun. The Security Chief's dialogue was also some of the best in the arc, as he struggled to figure out how to fly this thing.

Anyway, we got out, organelle in hand, and Kelly realises what I plan to do with this thing - reverse engineer it so that I can mind control the entire planet! But to do that, we'd need a powerful broadcasting tower - like, say, The Web? To use it though, you'd need to capture the designer of the web - Dr Aeon.

The next level is somewhat chaotic. The very first spawn upon entering is two groups of "Aeon clones" - the ones from the STF - battling each other. They're all EBs that only con as yellow for some reason, and thankfully completely optional. I died for the first time to one of these battles - there are multiple.

There are also Aeon robots, designed to look like him, which make up the standard spawns on the map. These guys are fun, apart from the Sapper LTs, who have Elec Armour and love to use Short Circuit. While fairly easy to defeat by themselves, they present a serious challenge if they have any backup - your toggles WILL drop.

Aeon himself is the usual AV/EB, supported by his EB clones. Once again, it's the ambushes, not the boss, that is the player killer here - one ambush of more EB clones, one of his robots, one of Arachnos. I was doing fine until a sapper turned up in ambush 2 - his appearance led to my second death.

This mission was OK, but felt a little like padding.

With Aeon captured, we can install our device in The Web. This mission was a little strange. There aren't any regular spawns in it. Instead when we click a glowie, groups of Arachnos Cruise Missiles appear.

Now, I've actually never encountered these things before, but their AI was pretty odd. They just hovered up to me and sat there, not exploding. I couldn't target them, so I AOEd them to death and still didn't suffer any repercussions. A group of 4 did explode once - three of them missed me, one took off half my HP. I suppose I got lucky.

The boss is Regent Korol - a lv52 AV who does not scale down to EB. This scrapper is pretty good, but she's not a AV killer, and definitely doesn't stand a chance against psychic AVs with powers that completely ignore positional defence. (death 3) So I got some allies - special thanks to King of Toys, Gunbunny and Thorny Devil for the help! Korol went down easily with their assistance.

With the Web under my control, and my mind control machine warming up, all that remains is to stop those pesky heroes from destroying it. The final mission consists of not much more than a series of battles against Heroes and AVs - Malaise, Sister Psyche, Manticore, Kalinda and Ghost Widow to be precise. Fortunately these spawns did scale down to EB, meaning that the main challenge in this mission was actually getting though Longbow - for some reason, probably due to inviting those helpers in the previous mission, the Longbow spawns were very large with several wardens even though there were only two of us left. Both of my deaths in this mission were due to warden aggro, not EBs, but since I suspect this was a bug I can't hold it against PRAF.

The ending was brief but satisfying - Kelly Uqua merely asking "What is your command, master?" when I talk to her. It worked!
It's refreshing to play a villainous arc that is an unqualified success, though it obviously nixes any chance of considering this arc even slightly canon. There is no souvenir.


Overall I definitely enjoyed this arc - it was extremely tough going at times, but was never advertised as anything else, and the challenges were extremely satisfying. Mission 3 however felt somewhat irrelevant to the arc as a whole, and mission 4 seemed buggy and poorly balanced, as it presented a significant difficulty spike. I dread to think what kind of debt-fest it would be if the cruise missiles actually worked. The dialogue was well-written but the plot was quite bare-bones, and there were a few grammatical issues that occasionally annoyed me. Recommended for teams or solo-optimised characters.

Overall 4 stars.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

The Cruise Missiles worked last time I tried!

Kohol scaled to an EB too I soloed it with my tanker - hardly an AV killer.


I really should do something about this signature.

 

Posted

Please try mine, numbers are in my sig below


Please fight My Brute: http://2hero.mybrute.com

Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
The Cruise Missiles worked last time I tried!

Kohol scaled to an EB too I soloed it with my tanker - hardly an AV killer.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry PRAF, but she was definitely an AV when I ran the arc on difficulty 2. And I've talked to someone else who's said she was an AV when he duoed her on difficulty 1.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

I suspect it got change in a patch. The AVs in the final mission where pegged at 54, but that got changed at some point. No matter, I will remove the soloable tag from the CoD entry.

I have an idea what is wrong with the CMs. I think they have old Photon Seeker disease. I reduced the number, and changed some of them to patrols, based on earlier feedback. When they where working, they where static spawns. I shall have to change them back.


I really should do something about this signature.

 

Posted

Title: Vernon von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions
ID:115174
Suggested Level Range: 45 - 50, villain
Description: Vernon von Grun is placed in charge of Arachnos' version of Portal Corps...
Link to City of Guides entry: City of Guides entry

Contains three AVs (although only one of them is a mission objective) and an EB. I've soloed it on an AR/Dev Blaster and a BD/FA Brute, though.

It's supposed to be humorous, but might not appeal to all.


 

Posted

Review: "Goldbricked!" (Arc ID 83859, heroic lv10-20)
By @3dent

Summary: A low level arc that sees the Goldbrickers finally show up heroside, "Goldbricked!" is an enjoyable and well-paced arc that unfortunately needs much more polish (especially regarding spelling and grammar) and a bit more inspiration.

Should I play it?: It's an arc that is well-balanced for its level range, it has an interesting plot, and heroes may find its villain group a nice change from the usual.

Overall I gave it 3 stars, but it was so close to a 4...

I played this arc on Heroic as The Mighty Millionaire, a level 16 MA/Inv scrapper.


(arc spoilers follow)

The contact is Captain Cooper of the PPD. He's got a lead on a museum break-in that he'd like us to investigate. Apparently he had some of his men on stakeout, waiting for the thieves, but they've not radioed in recently so we have a few goals - stop the robbery and rescue the cops.

The museum is full of Goldbrickers and it's fairly straightforward. In a nice touch there are lots of completely optional painting glowies scattered around the walls, which your character can Appreciate, but they are all the same - a good way to make the arc more entertaining would be to work some parodies of famous paintings into the text.

Our three officers are standard Rescue objectives, and the boss is a normal Goldbrickers spawn called "Jason" who drops a Clue telling us where he was to meet his client - in the WSPDR building in Cap au Diable.

Since the PPD has no jurisdiction in the RI, the Captain sends us to Cap au Diable to apprehend the client. I'm not sure how legal that is, but OK. The client is a fairly generic Family boss, whose only purpose is to supply us with the phone number used to contact Jason. It also appears someone inside the PPD has sold us out, tipping off Arachnos that we would be here.

My favourite part of this mission was the final spawn, consisting of two Wolf Spiders hoping to get a promotion by bringing me in. It didn't work out for them, but their dialogue was good and rang true.

The phone number is in Paragon, and belongs to a small time crook called Jimmy the Fence, who seems to have struck it big recently. We go to his office to check things out - naturally it's guarded by Goldbrickers. Along the way we uncover Blackmail tapes implying one of the cops in the first mission is a superadine addict - sure enough, they show up after that with a troll, looking for their 'fix.' That explains who's been selling out the PPD.

This is a good idea, but you need to work on the writing here a little bit. The Captain's debriefing text is a bit too overwrought and over-dramatic IMO. I also think this entire subplot could do with expanding. Adding a mission where you had to go arrest the cop could be a good idea, as it would break up the Goldbricker missions with a troll one, for a change of pace.

Anyway, we catch Jimmy who reveals the location of the Goldbricker's next robbery to us. One quick bank mission later and we fight the next boss, who drops a GPS cell phone.

The cops are able to look though the GPS logs and determine where the Goldbricker's base is, and the final mission is shutting it down. The Captain joins us for what is really a pretty straightforward defeat-all.


I enjoyed this arc, but I get the feeling it kinda ran out of steam in the latter half, which simply isn't as interesting as what came before. It's also rife with spelling and grammar issues, and really needs a thorough read-through and correction. But it's perfectly playable, mainly thanks to using standard mobs, a wise choice IMO given how difficult balancing custom critters for the lowbie game can be.

It took a long time to decide between 3 or 4 stars, but in the end I had to give it 3, but just barely.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I shall have to change them back.

[/ QUOTE ]

While you're at it, you really should add a souvenir called "The Earth" or "Global Domination" or similar.


 

Posted

QR
Thanks!
A few comments
1) Grammar. Working on that. Although being non-native, I {and the spellchecker} can do only so much. (lame excuse, I know.)

2) Second half ran out of steam, traitor subplot rushed... Pretty much yes, I planned to rewrite it, but The War On Spawn Bug took too much time and energy. Maybe in V3.

3) (almost) standard mobs. Yes, exactly for that reason. I was tempted to customize the final boss, but decided that guaranteed lowbie-soloability is more important.

Overall, - fair rating and useful review, 1000 thanks for the advice.

P.S. Did you see Amanda Vines in the middle floor of 2nd mish? (It's really an insignificant cameo, mish works withot her, but if she's affected by spawn bug, I want to know it.)

P.P.S. Legality of going to RI. It is illegal, but so would be half the things we do in published arcs, TBH, vigilantism act or no. And it rings true to the genre, good guys should act maveric from time to time.


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
P.S. Did you see Amanda Vines in the middle floor of 2nd mish? (It's really an insignificant cameo, mish works withot her, but if she's affected by spawn bug, I want to know it.)

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I did, but I'm trying to cut down on how much I'm writing in the report, and her cameo was nice but irrelevant in the long run, so I didn't note it.


"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.