New Author Needs Someone To Take the Chance

I published my first story a little over a month ago and got no takers. I polished a few things based on private suggestions and hope I've got it better now.

Unfortunately, each mission in the arc involves either a rescue or in the last mission, an ally. So, the XP "fix" is an issue. However, it's primarily story-based.

Arc # 416094 -- As If You Saved The Entire World

Background: Deirdre Willows is an old friend who is a member of the Midnight Squad. When she disappears on assignment, Montague Castanella calls you in to help again. A series of flashback missions in progressive level ranges shows your history with Deirdre, from your rescuing her from the Hellions as a teenage runaway through her struggles with dealing with her magical heritage. Then you go on to aid her in her current circumstances.

The flashback missions are all stock enemies. The enemies from the later missions are custom but I tried to balance them for an overall even difficulty. The last mission has an AV Boss but also an EB ally to balance it.

Love it or hate it, I'd just appreciate somebody giving it a try and letting me know. Thanks in advance.

Looks interesting. I'll give it a shot next time I log in.

First of all, I really enjoyed this arc. It took a lot of work to make the text convey the flashback-like interludes and the friendship between your hero and Diedre without being obnoxious. Solid writing, good atmosphere and balancing.

I love the way Diedre changes over time, from the spunky girl in the first flashback to her college days and beyond.

You might want to have some of montague's dialog be reaction to the character telling the story instead of montague bringing it up the same way for every mission.

The last mission's custom enemies were a little tough, even for my 42 scrapper. Some minor tweaking might be in order here.(the dark-wielding LT's esp cause some problems for me.)

BIGGEST ISSUE: I had no idea what the Psychic Blocks were. I spent a lot of time hunting for glowies or destructable objects or anything before I just decided to mass slaughter the map until I found them. Honestly, I could have done without that objective altogether, especially considering the map and the fact that if you were in her mind already, then you'd obviously bypassed the blocks.

Okay, I gave it a whirl.

So I didn't understand that the arc was told in flashback form until after completing the first mission. Once I realized that, I was kinda blown away. good storytelling device. Usually I don't like it when arcs have their level ranges go all over the place, but I will make an exception here since you were telling the story of the player's career. Clever use of the level ranges honestly. In additon, the story overall was creative and well thought-out. The map choices were appropriate for their respective missions. Misson compass instructions were concise and clear (vague instuctions are a huge minus in my book)... for the first four missions anyway.

Now for the negatives. Just like ashcraft said, I too was expecting something other than a kill-all for defeating the psychic blocks. I was looking for a destructable object or two. I had to come back and read ashcraft's review to learn otherwise. So you need to either get rid of the kill-all mission requirment or make the compass instructions more clear. It also kinda bothered me to suggest that the player is great friends with Deirdre, yet our only interaction with the woman is coming in, saving her, and she runs away. That's being friends with a woman like Mario is a friend to Princess Peach. Actually no, that's a bad anology. At least Mario hangs out with Peach on his off-time.

I think it would do wonders to establish this so-called friendship by having Deidre as an ally in one of the flashback missions. Nothing quite speaks friendship like being comrads in arms. I would see opportunity to fixing this in the third mission by switching Percy and Deirdre around. I mean you save Deirdre first and then she helps you the rest of the mission to save Percy.

Lastly, it kinda bothered me that this arc suggested that you've watched this woman grow up from the start of your career to present. It suggests that your hero has been in Paragon for, what? Ten years at the very least. Makes me feel old :/ But that's a personal pet-peeve and I don't hold it against your score. Overall I voted this arc a 4/5. Fix the two problems of the unclear instructions in mission five, and doing something to make me feel like this woman is actually my friend, and it easily goes into five-star territory.

I like the ally suggestions, Lone. I add my thumbsup to it.

Thanks to those who provided feedback. I've added some clue text to flesh out the back story and tweaked a few things, and also decided what I didn't want to change, which is also useful.

So, the arc is in its final form, until the dev team breaks it with the next "exploit fix." I have one or two more ideas I may try. Until then...

This was a lot of fun. A solid 4star. Looking forward to your next one