A Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed! (arc 375018) [Dr. Aeon's Second Challenge]

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A Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed!


WN

Today this arc, along with my other page 4 arc, was greifed with FOUR 1 star ratings pushing out of the 5 star range for the first time since it was published. Since four 1 star rates erase over 28 5 star ratings (I would need 28 new 5 star ratings just to average 4.5), the arc has been effectively killed.


WN

That seriously blows.

And for some reason I can't log into the game right now. Weird.

Apparently after over 350 plays the arc has suddenly become "too hard for a group of level 13's to play" because "at that level they only have a few powers". That, or people don't realize the arc is made of 90% dev created characters and they don't know how to play their characters yet. In any case, the end result is the same, down rates and back to the 4 star sewers for the arc.


WN

P.S. - In case you are wondering, I did check to make sure nothing was altered in the arc via stealth break and it was working as intended.

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

(feel free to PM me and I'll edit if this gets too spoily)

@GlaziusF

Running this on an archery/energy blaster over the arc cap, on old heroic (+0/x1 with bosses on).

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An artifact hunt in Kings Row. Sure, I'm game.

Looks like there's a duplicate patrol here. NPC dialogue is wide-ranged enough these days that you can just put one talky patrol in and N copies.

I spot the chain glowie early, but the map is small enough that it wouldn't be much of a bother to find it.

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Unsurprisingly, the first mission in the arc doesn't resolve all the problems, so it's time to go punch some Council.

The base leader has thoughtfully set the object I'm looking for right in the base entrance. Unfortunately he's made the common newbie mistake of scattering poison gas throughout the base. I have no choice but to bring him to justice.

Man, these guys are really invested in their magical trinkets. This is the second dude who's threatened revenge.

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A... possessed computer? Well, these are Black Blood of the Earth folks, so a little technology might not be so unreasonable.

The Hellion in charge seems to be CADing up some ice sculptures. To each their own.

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Huh. The entry chatter in this mission gives me certain uncomfortable premonitions.

The piece of paper I find in the wastebasket could use a mention of a certain in-hindsight-obvious power of the person in question.

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The mission accept clue is pretty inspired.

Interesting custom group here. A small handful of customs and interesting reuse of canon mobs.

The clues themselves could stand some proper ordering, so the one you get on mission clear actually pops up at the end of the list, but otherwise there's a nice puzzle here.

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Storyline - *****. It goes good places from the pedestrian opening. That's all I can say.

Design - *****. The custom group's got a nice theme to it, and the last mission makes good use of the tools available to create a bit of a little puzzle in Architect, something I don't see a whole lot of.

Gameplay - ****. The descriptions on the destroy objectives mention this, but here's me: destructibles in Mission Architect don't become valid targets until their guards are engaged. I don't know why that is exactly - maybe a genuine engine limitation, maybe a holdover from the time when destructibles actually gave out XP.

Maybe it was just my bad luck with spawn locations, but it seems like pretty much every (single) guard on the destructibles in the last mission was on the other side of a solid barrier from the object they were supposed to be guarding, mixed in with some other spawn entirely, or both. I don't know if increasing the guard level on them would necessarily help with that, but it couldn't hurt to try.

Detail - ****. The ordering of clues in the last mission is a little messed up. You can drag and drop objectives to change the order their clues show up in, and I think it'd make more sense if the clues came in the order of the boss fight, then the hostage rescue, then the glowies, then the final destructible (perhaps as a mission complete clue?)

Overall - *****. Easy to play with a fun progression from start to finish. A couple minor issues with the last mission - clue ordering which could stand to be corrected, destructible targeting which might not be able to - but otherwise a solid arc.

Thanks very much for playing the arc and for the awesome review!

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project. The clues themselves could stand some proper ordering, so the one you get on mission clear actually pops up at the end of the list, but otherwise there's a nice puzzle here.

I seem to remember there was some issue with getting them to come up in a set order in the list because of the random factor of how they generate each time, but I will check it out again because it has been a long time since I looked at them.

Quote:

The descriptions on the destroy objectives mention this, but here's me: destructibles in Mission Architect don't become valid targets until their guards are engaged. I don't know why that is exactly - maybe a genuine engine limitation, maybe a holdover from the time when destructibles actually gave out XP.

This is unfortunately is an MA engine limitation and it is an annoying to have to break the fourth wall to mention how to work around it. You may well be right that it's a leftover from when destructible gave exp. I spent many hours finding a map that worked well and was fairly linear. This map works well in that the front stuff you should almost always find before the end and the middle stuff is blocking the end objective. It's not perfect, but I feel as good as it gets within this system.

Again, thanks for the review and play...happy you enjoyed the arc!


WN