New Dev Choice - Wholesale Soul Sale - Arc ID 4178

Congrats Wonderslug.

Thanks for picking up new Devs Choices Dr. Aeon, I look forward to your next pick.

I actually like Longbow but I'm in total agreement that Villains need a wider variety of heroic opponents at higher levels and the Legacy Chain and Wyvern would be perfect for this role. Maybe this is something that will be addressed in the upcoming Going Rogue expansion.

Editing cause I forget to say how hilarious the Princess Bride reference was.

Played it, enjoyed it, it was different and unique, reminded me of the stories: Devil and Daniel Webster / Tom Walker story. An interesting tale and unique unto it self well done.

AV

I'll run it tonight in between lolbat runs, thanks Aeon!

I just played this arc, and oh my christ I hated it. I hated it so much I dug up this seven month-old topic to tell you all why.

So yeah, the story is good. The first mission was usual fare of beating up the CoT because they were up to shenanigans with stolen souls. After the first mission I was ready to give this arc a five star rating. then things started to go wrong.

Second mission, going after the 5th column, or council, I forget. Except this arc also added those special peacebringer 5th column that can shield themselves... and sheild others. Despite technically being stealthable to the boss, the boss battle still took more 10 minutes because it was a constant chore switching between an "only affecting self" power banish, bosses that shield themselves at 20% and then heal back up to 60%, and a basic inability to hit anything because there were shields up all over the place. (I play at 6 hero equivalency on my tanker) You might think this unfair, but this was annoying enough to warrent minus half a star.

Third mission, not too bad. I have nothing to say, really. It does however have an unrequired boss at the beginning, something that's not a problem now but does become one in later missions.

Fourth mission, this is where crap really starts to hit the fan. It tells you to gather medical supplies and defeat the raid leader. So I see a box right up front to click, is that the medical supplies? Nope! Now here's my biggest gripe with this mission, it tells you defeat the raid leader, but it doesn't give you the name of the guy. THEN it proceeds to give I think three named bosses that aren't required for mission completion. So vague instructions combined with lots of unrequired details amounts to I don't know what the heck I'm doing. But the worst part was the actual medical supplies. They're a defendable object. Pro tip: Never EVER use defendable objects. They're going to blow up. The user is going to fail. And that's what happened to me. Heck, even actual developer-produced missions have only used defendable objects like three times from what I've seen. That should tell you right there to never use them! So yeah, that was rage-inducing. Minus two stars for this mission.

Final mission, beat up 5th column. Once again we get the vague and unclear instruction to defeat the raid leader without telling us the name of the guy. I In fact skipped this raid leader, who was at the beginning, because experience of the past two missions told me that he was probably an unrequired boss. What a twist to make the first boss I see actually be required. so yeah, I skipped over him and basically cleared the next two floors before I came back to him. On that note, this mission gives you allies... the allies are Lieutenants. Another pro tip: Don't give lieutenants as allies. They go splat in about seven seconds. Give us bosses or elite bosses only please. So I finally defeat the boss that was actually required after all which finally spawned the "center" the center once again being another vague instruction. I guess he was easy enough to find, being the guy in the green military uniform tied up in ropes, but still a name would be helpful. Of course rescuing him spawns an ambush, which I really shouldn't hold against the arc, but I was just so annoyed at this point I couldn't help to rage even more from it. Minus another half a star for this mission.

So as I said, this arc has a good story that clearly had lots of thought put into it. This arc also has absolutely terrible level design that cripples any good qualities it had like a blow to the head with a softball bat. This arc gets 2/5 stars, the story being the only reason it didn't get 1/5. I ask you now, how did this abomination get developers choice status? I ask the developers to revisit this arc and rethink their decision here.

1: The Ascendant boss is a dev-created critter, and not the most difficult or annoying of the available dev-created critters by far. If you can't beat him, you're not as uber as you think you are.

2: Player-created arcs do not have to follow the pattern set by dev-created arcs. If you want the required boss to be the only named guy and to be in the end room all the time, stick to papers.

3: If you're going to give out "Pro tips" you should be a pro, or at least an active participant in MA. The fact that you expect a player-created arc that a dev judged interesting enough to award Dev's Choice to play like a paper mission shows that you are not.

I played it, didn't have any probs w/ the ascendants--I just put the smackdown on them with my control power, Seismic Smash and that sorts them out real quick. None of that namby-pamby hiding behind a shield stuff after that. Then they fight like tru warrir.

I enjoyed the arc, btw.

I don't object when people tell me my stuff is hard, because everyone has a different idea of what's difficult and how much difficulty is desirable. Specific powerset combinations can also produce unpredictable results. So I don't get bent out of shape when I get a comment like "zomg designed for brutes" or whatever (although in the case of Wholesale out of 400+ plays I think I've only had two actual difficulty complaints). I may snicker a little internally, but I don't begrudge anybody their opinions there.

But if you're going to play at x6 you need to realize that most game mechanics were not, in fact, designed around one person playing at x6. It shouldn't be a surprising revelation that anything is going to die a lot faster when it's just you standing between it and six players' worth of mobs.

For the rest, aside from what Eva already addressed there are a couple of points I just cannot take seriously at all:

I played this awhile back and I think I silently 5-starred it, (but I might have 4 starred it - have to look back through my list), because it had a low enough arc id that I doubted the author was still paying attention to the forum. Without going into detail, I thought it was a compelling story.

Had no difficulty or huge design issues that I can recall. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

PS: Also sort of annoyed at all this because when I first saw the topic, I thought someone new had gotten a DC after months of dormancy, but c'est la vie.

Just for the record, I ran this to get my "play a DC arc" badge on an AR/Dark Corruptor, set to x4 or x5 or something equally silly for a squishy without a lot of defense and more red than purple in my insp tray fighting stuff that mezzes. No complaints about the difficulty.