Looking for feedback

It's finely finished and I would love some feedback.

It starts in Atlas (Megan Duncan Task Force)
Arc #381565
Heroic
Solo friendly, canon related
lvl range 11-15

Story Description:
The last few days the Hellions have been causing more trouble than usual. It was also reported that one was seen talking to a Circle of Thorns Mage. Something big must be brewing.
Ms. Liberty is looking for you.

@GlaziusF

Running this one on a single-digit will/DMelee tanker, +0 x1 with bosses on.

---

Huh. First time I've seen what happens when you use $supergroup on somebody who doesn't have one. Not that I want to ding you for it.

So, okay. Time to go patrol Atlas.

Aw, man. Finding stuff on an outdoor map is kind of a pain.

Chaining on an outdoor map? Agh agh agh.

Okay, here's a thing you should know: the placement options don't mean anything on an outdoor map. It doesn't recognize any of the locations.

...escort on an outdoor map, and his dialogue warns that he's bugged. Ay yi yi...

And his rescue chains into both a boss and a car to find somewhere?

Four chains. That's practically a clear all.

(Also to kinda add insult to injury, the orange exit rectangles don't actually make you exit from these stage, so the bug didn't really need to be called out.)

Anyhow. All this chaos was in pursuit of some kind of pendant.

And despite all the clues, there's this giant debrief about a skull war, the artifact, and a pending invasion. Wouldn't this have made a little sense to show up as a briefing for the next mission?

---

Huh. Meteor Atlas?

Dr. Empath gives me a briefing about the Skulls setting off even more powerful bombs, and tells me about a Skull boss with a detonator, but I don't see either of those objectives in my navbar.

Ah, Okay. Freeing an Electra-Lass who seems to be suffering a slight S shortage gets me the objective.

Boss drops. With a buggy-looking defeat message that seems to be an attempt at humor?

And then I have to beat up some bombs anyway.

A second giant chain on an outdoor map in as many missions.

This one just seemed like kinda filler, though. It was just a Skull gettin' mad on account of last mission. Nobody really gave up more information on whatever this artifact was.

---

And the MAGI vaults get raided again, and... another outdoor map? Ay yi yi.

Oh. No. It's just a burning office.

Okay, there's some boss-level AR/MA guy just kicking around in the lobby, a desk with a phone that doesn't seem to do anything, three more desks marked "Superadine concentrate" that I can't interact with yet, and a boss on the top floor surrounded by stone monoliths which are the artifacts I came for, I guess?

Halfway through the boss fight the cops show up. AR/dev customs, looks like. For some weird reason the desks show up in the navbar at this point, as well. After it's over some 'Chosen' Hellions show up... in what seems to be a group made up only of lieutenants.

In addition to being a bit of a challenge for a possibly pre-DO character, they don't give as much for XP because they're missing a rank of enemy.

And...

Oh, wonderful.

Because of the vagaries of the fight, the cops have gotten parked in a door only one character-width wide and I can't get back up the stairs and into the office to click the glowies I need to click to complete the mission.

Restarting...

Did you mean for the pendant pieces to be on the bottom floor and the Superadine to be in the boss room? Either way it wouldn't avoid the problem I just had, but I wanted to point that out in case. "Back" seems to mean "Middle", and vice-versa, when it comes to glowies.

And because this mission is coded "defeat all", I have to take out the patrol on the bottom floor that's got stuck in an office, which presumably you put in just to hint at what's coming next.

I get an end clue which is a weird mix of the mission briefing, the CoT chatter I heard during the mission about some kind of gate (and I'm sorry, but Realm/Gate just makes me thing of .hack//WHATEVER) and the Hellions' planned breakout.

---

So about that breakout.

The prison yard is empty. A handful of Hellions patrolling it say their job is done.

Ms Liberty didn't seem to think much of the villains' chances. So what went wrong?

Uh. Okay. Here's what I actually do.

Run inside. There's a boss in the escape tunnel. Fight him. He talks about planting explosives. Detonate one barrel of explosives inside, look around, head back outside, find the other barrel near the entrance, detonate it.

Now there's something about a corrupt guard. Search the prison yard, find him. He spouts off about a getaway van. Search the prison yard, find it. Halfway through three PPD minions spawn.

Finally I get an objective about the security computer. Search the prison yard, don't find it, head back inside, it's in the last cell on the right.

The end clue seems to think this required about three fewer trips through the escape tunnel than I actually took. At least I actually managed to prevent the breakout.

---

So the last mission is to stop the enhanced Hellions from running riot in Perez Park anyway.

Patrols of Hellions, Skulls, and allied custom cops and... Lost? Really? And HYDRA? Really?

So I find the SS/something guy I was looking to find, who reveals the Hellions on the map. Unheralded, I also find the "ledengary" (according to his description) Sister Flame.

And with the drugs reclaimed, and the Circle talking about heading for a sewer somewhere...

Oh wait. That was mission 5. Arc over.

Ms. Liberty's debrief talks about the High Council. ...the city council, maybe? "High Council" sounds kind of fantastic.

---

Storyline - **. I'm only seeing half the story here, and it's not actually the half I'd prefer to see. I mean, okay, the Circle buy off the Hellions with some magic potion so they'll cause a distraction and leave the Circle free to scry for a more powerful artifact that will let them... and that's where the Circle's story ends.

Despite being the more powerful faction on offer, able to raid MAGI at a whim and lead the Hellions about by the nose, the Circle plot is a bit of a B-side, not even showing up in missions 2 and 4, and not resolved at the end of the arc. It's still kicking around, with the Circle talking about going to a sewer to do... something.

Is there a planned second half to this story that I'm not seeing? I'd be all in favor of just scrapping missions 2 and/or 4 in order to add a little resolution to the Circle plot. Not even necessarily stopping their ultimate plot, but heading down to the sewer to see what's up.

Design - **. The missions feature the extensive use of chained objectives, but for the life of me I can't see why, most times. There's really no logical tie a lot of times. Why does the boss speech in mission 3 trigger the superadine to be collectable? Why does the van suddenly show up in mission 4 halfway through the fight with the corrupt guard? Why do I need to spring a hero in mission 2 before I find the boss, and fight the boss before I find the bombs, even though I know both of those things are kicking around from the start?

Chains, especially on outdoor maps, can be worrying because the random placement can stick something in an area you've already cleaned out. As such they should be used sparingly and of limited length.

Gameplay - ***. The enemies weren't too punishing to fight, but the running back and forth wasn't a lot of fun, and getting blocked off of part of the map by an unfortunately positioned ambush in mission 3, while it wasn't necessarily something you could help, was still frustrating.

(Maybe you could set it in that other burning building, the one with Superadine lying around? It's got a much more open boss arena.)

Detail - **. The text wasn't very readable. You had a habit of putting carriage returns at the end of sentences, making the text as a whole look jagged-edged, which messed with my sense of continuity. And capitalizing words seemingly at random kind of screwed up my sense of where sentences were starting and ending. Starts of sentences and proper nouns are the only things capitalized these days.

Overall - **. Crisscrossing outdoor maps can be a little frustrating even when everything's there from the start. Hunting up seemingly arbitrarily triggered objectives just adds to that. And the story stopped more than it really ended -- the CoT who started the whole thing are still at large and doing whatever they planned on.

Ouch I got bit by a Bunny
I'll only comment on a few things. I think its a fair review and this is a first attempt at making a mish.I do appreciate your input.

I guess I did go over board with the chains, I didn't think they would be that irritating. I am an Oddball player and like things in the game that others don't.
I do see the point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF (Also to kinda add insult to injury, the orange exit rectangles don't actually make you exit from these stage, so the bug didn't really need to be called out.)

That's the only way I could get him to exit the map. After a few players said they had the same problem I added the clue.
I have been thinking of removing that escort from the mish.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF Boss drops. With a buggy-looking defeat message that seems to be an attempt at humor? And then I have to beat up some bombs anyway.

Lol a failed attempt apparently.
His defeat clue said he had activated the bombs so they needed to be deactivated

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF Did you mean for the pendant pieces to be on the bottom floor and the Superadine to be in the boss room?

The burning office map should have had the Phone/pendant pieces and the Superadine active at the beginning? All glowies should have been on the bottom floor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF The end clue seems to think this required about three fewer trips through the escape tunnel than I actually took.

On the breakout map the boss was supposed to spawn in the yard and his defeat should have spawned all objectives? That's how it played when I was testing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlaziusF Patrols of Hellions, Skulls, and allied custom cops and... Lost? Really? And HYDRA? Really?

Was trying to recreate Perez Park in total chaos, Guess I was trying to hard.

There is a second part planned that deals with the Cot are doing.Scrapping missions 2 and 4 sounds good. It would allow for the needed space and help tie up the loose ends.

Anyway thanks for your time looks like I've got alot of work to do.

It sounds like either you hit a really weird bug or perhaps uploaded an earlier draft of the mission by mistake. I definitely didn't see the desks become active until the boss was damaged in mission 3, and the jailbreak in mission 4 played out exactly as described.