Mission Architect Arc Club

Oh? My apologies. We'll grab yours next week, Gemini? That cool?

I'd like to participate, but I don't have any high level villains and the last villainous arc I tried to do with Aemilia felt so out-of-character for her that I couldn't get into it. So if you don't mind I'm going to go back a few weeks. Hopefully that's ok.

Review: Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City
Arc ID 351727

Level 40 Kinetic/Invulnerability brute. (Yes, she's a hero. Started as a warden.) +0/x2 with bosses.


Mission 1:

Someone on the forums pointed out that the dialogue at the beginning sounds like a newscast, and I agree. Maybe you should have the professor show the hero a newspaper story, then tell the hero what he thinks of it (that would be the orange text).

And here's American Hammer. I like the flashiness of his costume; it gives me the impression that he's intentionally showing off his allegiance to his adopted country.

Toxin was tough. I just barely lost to him, but was able to pop a third-tier rez inspiration and finish him off. This, I think, is a weakness of my powerset (no psionic resistance) rather a play balance issue.

At first, I though he was going to be a generic end-of-level named boss, but now it looks like we're getting ready to learn more about him.


Mission 2:

No more problems with the professor's dialogue. On the other hand, there's nothing really to establish him as a character. I suppose that's not a problem, just the lack of a feature.

On the other hand, I did learn something about American Hammer's character. I wonder whether his interrogation techniques are a holdover from his former life, or he's just worried about his partner.

And we're going to tap into Toxin's memories. I really like the idea of having the player relive the memories of an important NPC (I already used it in my first arc). I would point out that, as an interrogation technique, forcibly rifling through someone's mind doesn't seem *that* much better than beating them up. Just more effective. Is this intentional? This might be a good hook for some characterization for the Professor.

There was a boss in each of the first four groups, including three in the first room. No problem, just popped Unstoppable--but I'm new to the power and don't have a good handle on the duration yet, so I crashed in the middle of a horde of darkwolves. Oops. Before I went back in, I double-checked my difficulty settings and realized that the density of bosses is probably the result of my difficulty settings combined with bad luck.

And I just saw 'defeat Toxin' in the objectives. Oh. I had assumed I was playing *as* Toxin, but apparently I'm just wandering around in his memories. I think this confusion is a side effect of my having used the former mechanic in the arc that I'm working on, and not really something that a typical player is likely to get confused about.

Making my way through hordes and hordes of darkwolves.

And the Mechanic is in here too. Cool. I don't know how much of an established character he is in your canon, but it might be cool if he wasn't normally superstrong but was able to use his technical/programming skills to give himself superpowers in the mission. On the other hand I'm rather fond of the 'genius tank' concept. (Example: Roy Greenhilt of Order of the Stick)

Oh dear. I stumbled onto Toxin when I wasn't expecting him, so I retreated down the lift to wait until all my powers had recharged. Given the trouble I had with him earlier, I wanted to make sure I was ready. While waiting, I wrote the preceding paragraph on the Mechanic's powers. About the time I finished, the Mechanic came down the lift. He was fairly hurt, and I noticed that the objective 'defeat Toxin' was no longer on the navbar. This is the first issue I've noticed with the gameplay. If an ally can single-handedly take out the main boss of the mission, I think it's safe to say the ally is too powerful.

Well, I missed the 'Information' objective in the front of the mission,and had to got back for it. I remember standing right here, so this was probably the result of a fury buzz.

I found the remaining objectives pretty easily. Basically, I recovered some data on Toxin's past, but nothing particularly unexpected. He was a 5th Column operative who was captured by the Council and experimented on. Didn't his description in the first mission say the same thing? Perhaps you should put some sort of twist in here. As an extreme example, the player could discover that Council convinced Toxin to defect (or brainwashed him), then released him (and made it look like an escape) to infiltrate the 5th Column. This would obviously lead to major changes in the plot; some other twist might not. The scifi basis for his powers (as described in the debrief) is interesting enough though.


Mission 3

A bit more info on the Professor.

Wow, I'm glad this sort of thing doesn't happen in *my* university, especially considering that my office is in the basement, right down the hall from a lab with chemicals in it.

Fought a supervillain who, based on his costume and description, appears to be a former Soviet (they his name doesn't sound all that Russian - but I could be wrong about that). I find it somewhat odd that the 5th Column seems so interested in hiring or manipulating former Soviets, considering that the Nazis were, if I remember correctly, rather fanatically anti-Communist.
Also, Tovarisch's dialogue seems a bit too boastful fanatical for someone whose description states he works for the highest bidder.

Overall, a quick mission with a very high density of 'and the plot thickens'.


Mission 4

So I'm working with a former Councilman for this.

Powered through a bunch of 5 Column, confiscated the weapons, and found out where I need to go to rescue Sickle.

I had some gameplay problems with Pistola, who seems to be set for Aggressive behavior, as on rescue he ran and agreed pretty much everything in sight, which I had to pull off him with taunt. He nearly died anyway.

On the other hand, I love how indignant his 'left behind' dialogue is.

And it looks like I should have just let him die. I really should have seen that coming. It fits well with the theme of shifting allegiances that you've been developing so far, and seems totally in-character for a Council operative.


Mission 5

New York Sickle has been brainwashed by the 5th Column? That is not good at all, and especially poignant since she's a former agent of a different totalitarian government.

I'm hoping Hammer will get a chance to show off his characterization in this mission, as it hasn't been made that much of yet, but has been hinted to be interesting.

I just rescued American Hammer, and got a clue… YES!! I knew it! (He was indeed concerned about New York Sickle.) Is he set to Aggressive? He seems to have an in-story reason to be, but I din't have any problems with him.

I was able to take down the EB with no problem, once I went Unstoppable. (Love that power.)

I think the clues here should be a bit longer, to really drive home the emotional impact at the climax. Maybe include some dialogue between the two leads, with a distraught Hammer begging Sickle to snap out of it.

The medical supplies were about 10 feet away from the boss fight. Was that intentional or did they just randomly spawn like that?

The climax needs to be a bit more climactic. What if you had to go back to the middle of the map for the medical supplies, fighting through a 5th Column ambush that spawned after you defeat Sickle?


Review:

Story and writing:
A solid, exciting thriller that didn't really reach for anything that I would call 'greatness' (which is by no means a flaw), but succeeded at most of what it did try for. Very nice development of the theme of shifting allegiance.

A few things I would change:

Some of the characters could use more development. The Professor isn't really any more memorable than the guys who are always asking you to hunt Skulls or Hellions at the early levels, though does hint at some more depth. Also, his very first lines are rather odd and don't match his speech pattern in the later dialogues.

Mission 2 pretty much consisted of discovering in-character what I already knew out-of-character about Toxin's backstory from reading his description in Mission 1. This made it fairly boring in terms of story development. Either his description should reveal less or there should be a twist of some sort.

I would like to see more of the dynamic between American Hammer and New York Sickle. As I mentioned above, they could have some dialogue in the clues that drop towards the end of mission 5. Hammer reminding Sickle what they fight for would make a good counterpoint to all the betrayal we've seen earlier.

The end of mission 5 could have a bigger climax. Ending with the player and American Hammer fighting through a 5th Column counterattack to get to the medical supplies for New York Sickle.

Tovarisch's motivations seem muddled. For a hired hitman, he sure does boast a lot about how the 5th Column is going to pwn the Council, crush all lesser races, unimaginable power, unlimited rice pudding, et cetera, et cetera. I think this is the biggest story problem that I noticed.


Game balance:
The enemies are all balanced, which is to be expected since most of them are stock enemies.
On the other hand, some of the allies have issues. Specifically, Pistola acts like a bad PuG teammate, and the Mechanic can solo the end-of-level boss.


Mission design:
Chaining of objectives keeps the missions moving. Nice pacing. However, Mission 5 needs a bigger climax.
Since the Council are basically recolored 5th Column in terms of gameplay, there isn't really much variety in terms of enemies. If you consider this to be a problem, you could kill two birds with one stone by having some other group involved (in addition to the Council) in Toxin's origins. They could show up in Mission 2, or just be mentioned there to foreshadow their appearance in one of the later missions.


Since this is my first review, I'm declining to give star ratings. I might add some in once I have more of a baseline. I rated the arc 4 stars in-game.

Thanks for the review and play! To address a few of your main points:

1. In the games I've played, which are a good many, the Mechanic usually doesn't survive to the end unless there's a dedicated Empath keeping him around. It's odd that he made it to stomp Toxin solo, but thank you for letting me know about this.

2. Manuel Pistola is a recurring villain of mine who appears in a few of my arcs. As for how he acts in the mission, sometimes he goes ape killing everything in sight, and sometimes he hangs back and doesn't do much at all. It's really weird seeing the different reactions.

3. Tovarisch's name is most definitely Russian.

4. I'll see what I can do regarding the second mission. I like the "Use the MA interface to dig around in Toxin's head" bit, but I can certainly understand your confusion about who's being whom at the start.

5. I don't like seeing tons of backtracking in missions if I can help it, and I'd rather end mission 5 with the medical supplies cabinet right there near New York Sickle than to make the player(s) arbitrarily run back through an empty map just to click a glowie that might have been forgotten about already.

Thanks again for the feedback. I'll keep tweaking, of course. I'm just glad it's getting sore more runs! Feel free to try out one of my other arcs or to review one of the many fine arcs already in this Arc Club--and welcome to the Club!

To clarify some of my points,

1. It's possible that I hurt Toxin pretty badly before my tactical retreat.

2. That's what Pistola did with me. Maybe you should just give him an in-character explanation for that behavior and run with it.

3. I believe you. Actually I can't figure out why I thought it wasn't. (Maybe I got Nazi v. Soviets confused with 5th Column v. Council and was looking for an *Italian* name.)

4. I'm pretty sure my confusion about who was whom in the second mission was largely the result of my arc having a similar mechanic. In my arc the player experiences the memories in first person, so I assumed that was what you were doing. I don't think most people will have that confusion.

I really like the idea---my problem with that mission was that I was watching my character learn something that I already knew as a player.

5. I guess I'm not really recommending making the player backtrack so much as adding a 5th Column ambush after Sickle is subdued.

I just remembered that being attacked interrupts collecting a clickable objective, so you would have to defeat the ambush before you could finish the mission, which was the only reason I brought up backtracking.

Spawning Chaos (Gave it 4 stars; but this could *easily* be 5 stars – what the arc really needs is to be jam-packed with lots of optional flavor objectives to really capture that ‘celebration of anarchy’ that you’d expect from the Freaklympics. Read on!)

Liked: The premise is a good one – you take command of a Freakshow faction to compete in the next Freaklympics. Missions three and five stand out in this arc: IMO, mission three felt the most ‘Freaklympicy’ (sow anarchy by interfering with the Vanguard’s efforts to contain the Rikti), and mission five was predictable – but in the good way (*of course* the heroes have to make another attempt to crash the awards, only this time you stop them; plus it was neat to see the other faction leaders there).

Didn’t like so much: The missions felt strangely bare for the Freaklympics – by that I mean that, IMO, the missions really need a chaotic, random-violence feel to them that felt missing to me. What I’d do is add a lot of details to really jazz up the missions:

*Ambushes, ambushes, and more ambushes! You should have Freaks of other factions trying to interfere with my efforts and ‘steal the glory’ at every turn.
*Related to that, I’ve put in even more battles (on the indoor maps – the outdoor maps don’t work as well), with more variety: my faction vs. an enemy faction, two enemy factions, etc. And make ‘em as big as you can, so that there’re still going on when I get there.
*More allies! You’ve got the right idea with the ‘helpers’ to get across the idea that I’m the head of a whole faction of Freaks, now you just need to scale it up. I should be ‘freeing’ minions and lts. (in addition to the boss leaders) in every mission. Heck, by the end of each mission, I should have a vertible army of Freaks in tow! Yeah, I know that results in an XP hit, but boy would that *feel* right!
*More random destruction! The Freaklympics is about smashin’ stuff up! I’d add a whole bunch of destructible objects as optional objectives – literally as ‘flavor objectives.’ And bombs. I should be planting bombs.
*More heroes in that last mission! As in actual heroes from the ‘Paragon Heroes’ faction! After all of the random chaos and destruction in the first part of the arc, I’d imagine I’m going to have attracted the attention of a decent number of angry heroes. Heck, I should have heroes try to stop me at random points in the earlier missions. I wouldn’t necessarily make them required objectives in the earlier missions – but I’d expect heroes to be showing up on the scene from time to time to try to stop the violence: seeing Fusionette in mission three was really a neat touch, and I’d run with the idea.

What it boils down to is more, more, MORE! With an eye toward making the whole thing seem a lot more chaotic.

Okay, and one last bit of feedback: to be honest, the thing that made mission three stand out is that it was the only one that really felt like a Freaklympics event. Stealing red coral from Cage in the Rogue Isles just doesn’t seem very ‘Freaklympicy’ – but randomly terrorizing an office building in Paragon City would (e.g. salvage as much electronics as I can carry, plant lots of bombs, destroy stuff). Likewise, rescuing a Freak from an Arachnos lab doesn’t seem very ‘Freaklympicy’ – but breaking some Freaks out of the Zig might (just an idea).

Score: 3.705

Thanks for the feedback Coulomb! Glad to know that you liked it quite a bit. I'll buff it up and maybe rewrite a mission or two to give it a more 'Freaky' feel.

Unfortunately you seem to have been the only person to have played it for its run. Oh well, thanks for playing it in any case!

Actually, let's see how this goes over the weekend, Hound. It might get some more plays yet. . . .

Review: Spawning Chaos

Level 36 brute

Deaths none

Overall, I thought this was a fun mission. It did not do much to impress me but since I have played many MA arcs it happens. I did enjoy the writing of the contact. He sounded freaky enough without being too confusing. One thing I would change is the dark purple text. It is hard to see. In addition, the Freakshow tend to steal the show a bit. I would consider lessening them. They need a presence but they are a bit too numerous now. One other thing I would like to mention is that the places where these events are happening seem to jump back and forth from the Rogue Isles to Paragon City. Arcs do not really do this and it felt awkward playing through it. You might want to change the location of the second map from Sharkhead to somewhere in Paragon City.

Mission 1 – I ghosted through it so it was really abrupt for me. My suggestion would be to have an escort freak at the beginning that you had to take to the end to beat a boss. Then you could write in the story that you have freak usurping control. Heck you could even throw in your contact as the escort. It would make him more active in the story.

Mission 2- The red coral thing makes sense for freaks. I would add Shock Treatment, Doc Buzzsaw or the t3H S00p4rFr34k here as a surprise boss but other than that the mission is good.

Mission 3-Add Ritki patrols and battles here. You are in RWZ and need to show it. Take a walk around that area of the Mothership in RWZ to get a feel for what belongs there. You could say that the Vanguard took the area but it is the RWZ and the Vanguard should never be able to take the area hence all the RWZ raids. I would add several patrols of other groups such as Malta, Nemesis, Knives, Crey and/or The Council as well. If you give them some good patrol dialogue, this level would be fantastic.

Mission 4- This map felt entirely too large. Try making it a medium sized Tech Lab.

Mission 5- I thought it was well done. The freakshow boss helped immensely with final battle and the general feel of the level was great.
I thought this was a good 4 star arc. It is missing that extra flare to make it shine as a five star arc. The arc could fit within the main game easily. If you do those things I mentioned above, I feel this arc would easily be a 5 star arc. The missions could use a bit more detailing.

This ain't over yet, folks. I've been talking in occasional messages with Bubbawheat about what to do next. Stay with us, and watch this space!

If you're still interested in this, feel free to post a new arc to be put into the pool. I've also got a couple other ideas brewing that will have their own shot at the draw. Will probably post something tomorrow afternoon.

Ok, mission for this week: Play a Dev Choice arc you've never played before and review it here. Tell why you think it got a Dev Choice in the first place.

And again, if you have a new arc to throw into the pool (which is currently empty) feel free. Otherwise, I'll post up a weekly mission for you every week, either a specific arc, or something more vague like this week. Hope you guys still want to participate!

first off, i know i havent been very active on here lately, but i been bogged down with i19 and i19.5 stuff (alpha boosting a ton of toons, rebuilding some toons, running 50 weekly tfs on my main for badges, ect)

the dev choice arc that i ran which i have never run before was Out of Place created by @minimalist

review:

first mish - even reading through, the mish as a whole was just insanely confusing, the objectives didnt really feel like they were helping to direct me at all, the mish as whole felt kind of boring, there were almost 0 enemies in it to fight, the few that were werent too bad and designed fairly well, the names for the glowies made absolutely no sense (they were labeled as "mq")

i also dont know if it was bugged or not but there were a LOT of random dancing NPCs and such which are coming up with red targeting boxes making it even more annoying to find the grand total of 5 enemy group spawns on the map


second mish - a basic "rescue smash and bash" type mish, nothing superb about it, only things i noticed was that dr aeon rescue and neutrina rescue just followed you if you were non stealthed but never actually did anything which kind of confused me a few times


third mish - was one of the better ones, had some nice uses of Lanaruu enemy group, the objectives were a little bit unclear at times, but overall this mish was very well designed


last mish - overall was very good and well designed and wraps up the story nicely


final comments - aside from the awful first mish, the other 3 mishs were very well designed and i give it a 3/5


for the club - honestly when i entered the first mish i was "wth is going on, how in the world did this get dev choiced?" but after finishing it, it was deserved, however i still think the first mish is kind of pointless and adds little or nothing to the storyline, the other 3 mishs were very well done

I'll hunt down a Dev's Choice to play through this evening if I can, when I get home from work.

Purification (352381)
by @Flame Kitten

Act One: pointless timer. Cool but overused big map. Objective overload with 8 objectives, only one of which is an escort that need to be led to the exit, mercifully. So far so good, regular DE fare - something dangerous has been released, threatening to kill mankind.

Act Two: They didn't put everyone from mission 1 in quarantine despite me overhearing the DE bragging about the new strain's virulence, the desperation of the Crey scientist, etc. Not off to a good start. Either I never told them (which leaves me with the idiot ball), or they didn't listen to me or believe what they heard, which doesn't make me look like someone they trust and respect. Good job. Oh, and the acceptance text for the mission and its response makes me look like some kind of moron. "You need me to follow the only lead we have?" "YES!". Again, a bit of objective overload with 7 objectives. Thankfully it was a small map but chained objectives forced me to run back and forth a bit. Now the story has taken on regular Crey fare.

Act Three: Unnecessary complexity to this mission if you ask me. Yes, it's neat to trigger patrols all over an otherwise mostly empty map. We've all done it. This time all it did was make me run all over the map many more times than necessary thanks to chained objectives. Could have been done much easier by having the contact tell us about an attack on a laboratory and send us in to save the day, straight up.

Act Four: has me running to quell a prison riot and also distributing/field-testing a possible cure for the virus my contact and her idiot friends released. 3 identical sick prisoners to treat, with identical dialogue. The "charismatic" leader of the riot, a prisoner called Jimmy, is about as charismatic as a wet rag. Not easy to convey with just three or four lines I guess but why even try?

Act Five: Big surprise, the "cure" was actually a lethal poison to the one percent of the population who was immune to the virus to begin with. And once again my character's acceptance text makes him seem like a moron: "I'm not totally sure I follow, Jenny. Spell it out for me, and I'll make the call." - if I can understand what the contact is saying I'm pretty sure my character can as well. Okay so I rescue Speedbolt and deliver her to Crey so she can't warn her supergroup and prevent them from delivering the cure to the rest of the world. Again my character is treated like an idiot - I could probably have come up with some other way of preventing her from warning them without having to hand her over to Crey of all people. Also, now that I have done what the arc was about: committing evil for the greater good, why do I have to do all the rest of the objectives on the map? The deed is done, let me get out of here!

Finally I'm done and the contact treats me like this was all my idea and my fault. Yeah, don't ever talk to me again, Jenny Firkin. The feeling is mutual.

I'm not saying this arc didn't deserve a DC. It's certainly better than 99% of the stuff out there, and also better than about 90% of the other DC arcs. It's difficult to present choices without the nifty new GR dialogue technology and I think this arc did a good job of it: save the other super and bring her to Crey to prevent her from stopping her friends spreading the cure (and killing off the one percent); or save the hostage and let her get defeated and mediported out so she can warn her friends not to spread the cure.

I believe the reason this arc got a DC was that it was a runner up in one of the contests Dr. Aeon held. This one was the morality contest where a hero is forced to do evil for the greater good. My personal morality doesn't allow me to sacrifice billions of lives to a virus I unwittingly helped release, in order to let the millions who were immune to the virus die as well from the collapse of society/rampant DE monsters, so I don't see where I was doing evil here, but maybe I'm strange. Maybe it was when I delivered another hero into the hands of Crey. My hands were tied and I couldn't click on her to try to convince her not to warn her friends after I beat her up, but that's what I would have done if I had the choice. Instead I will have to save her from Crey after the mission is over. I've done it before, I can do it again.

Yeah, I'm back. I've been distracted by Incarnate shinies, but since this week's "assignment" is to play a Dev's Choice arc and they drop shards, I'm back.

I picked the only level 50 Dev's Choice I haven't played yet:

A Mythos of Mystical Mysteries (Arc ID #84285) I hadn't played it before because it contains one of my "do not play, ever" warning signs, namely Extreme everything, but I just got my Super Rare, I'm feeling either awesome or insane or stupid or d) all of the above. Since I'm a Scrapper I'll go with all of the above. To make it extra dumb, I set to +1x8 (really only +0 with the level shift...how hard can it be?) and turned AVs on. Since I regularly fight Arachnos at +4/x8 I figure if I get instakilled the author has mistaken "cheaty player killer" for "challenge." Yes, there's a difference. Anyway, on with the arc.

My contact is Faathim, who is impressive but hard to click on, he warns me about an ancient evil that threatens all of existence, nobody believes him, I have to find evidence. I'm not entirely sure why people wouldn't believe the giant floaty pointy-headed guy and believe little old me, but anyway, it's off to Oranbega I go, to find out what Zoria knows, and hope he's not the Akarist model.

I walk in and the CoT appear to be fighting off...someone. The first patrol I run into is level 49. Fighting under-cons is mildly annoying at best, extremely annoying if you have knockdown. Backloading: think very carefully before you do it. There appears to be no reason for it here. Aha, I see some of the mysterious intruders. The group is called "Death Cultists" and they are wearing a lot of skulls. Right. Ok, so now we know they're EEEEEVIL. Fortunately Zoria isn't Akarist, it's Zoria, and he's a captive of the Death Cult guys. Who have powers like Dark Blast, Dark Miasma, Necromancy and Battle Axe, because they're EEEEEVIL. The raid leader is just one of the bosses with a name (You know they're in charge because they have REALLY BIG SKULLS on their chests) who rants about death and blood and sacrifice and how his master is going to reap all our souls. Yeah. In case you hadn't guessed....EEEEEVIL. So evil the Mu and Oranbegans have declared a truce to deal with them. EEEEEVIL.

Oh, now Faathim doesn't want to tell me more because he doesn't want to "bias my investigations." Stupid pointy-headed jerk. And if he can talk to his contact by psychic means, why the hell did I have to run back to him after every mission when I did his task force?

Ok so now they're going to break into a Mu Vault, summon Hequat, and sacrifice her. I have to either stop the ritual or defeat Hequat...of course I'm going to have to defeat Hequat. And of course it's that glowy purple map. Ow, my eyes, it burns! It's also a big map, with a lot of these Death Cult guys on it. They only have two critters for each rank, and with all the debuffs and Necromancy pets and Pain Dom heals they don't die fast. The altars I need to destroy are guarded by Mu...now my ears hurt as well as my eyes. Since when do ALL the guards at a destructible say the dialogue? It's annoying. And of course the Mu and Death Cultists aren't actually hostile to each other, so I can't use them to kill each other off. I'm actually doing ok against Hequat despite the end drain, until she summons a Mu ambush, which drains all my end and kills me. There's no way I can reset and finish the mission in 18 minutes, so I'm gonna see what happens if it fails. Oh, but I did find out the cultists are nabbings gods to sacrifice to summon their dark gods, starting with THE ONE SO HORRIBLE THE MU WON'T SPEAK ITS NAME and they're going after Stheno next. EEEEEVIL.

Oh, and doesn't matter that I failed, because Hequat and the Mu fought them off. Yeah, it's a bit meta, but that's the problem with putting failable missions in the middle of an arc and stressing that they're important. They can't be, because success or failure can't significantly change the outcome. And in this case it wouldn't matter anyway, because they got Stheno. Oop, the cult is a tool of the Banished Pantheon. Why the frak didn't the author just use Banished Pantheon? Now I have to stop the summoning, which the briefing makes it look like I'll be fighting Stheno, and it's another timed mission so I'll be turning the AVs off like a sane person would.

And it's the Black Swan graveyard map with 9 bosses and 6 destructibles, and Stheno. Fortunately it's full of Banished Pantheon as well as the custom group. Unfortunately, none of the objectives stand out much. Banished Pantheon emote like crazy in their normal spawns, and some of the bosses are masks which are hard to click on or mouse over, and the destructibles are guarded by the custom group, with bosses with Shadow Fall. Usually stacking Shadow Fall probably, since every objective seems to be set to Hard. I have Tactics but they're still hard to see from a distance. Oh, and said custom group is also guarding a bunch of captives who serve no purpose but to spout unfunny pop culture references. There's a head summoner guy custom AV in there, which I presumably needed to defeat although he's lumped in with the other boss objectives; fortunately he's Dark Melee so he doesn't actually have Build Up. I ended up finishing the mission with about three minutes to spare and one boss objective left...so I guess most of them were optional.

Why I think this arc got a DC: I honestly don't know. It's not like the AE isn't full of "EEEEEVIL custom group tries to summon something they shouldn't" arcs. It's not like half of them aren't set to Extreme. This group turned out to be not actually challenging; I only died four times, once was to a standard AV that technically isn't supposed to be soloed anyway, twice was on Stheno's group, and she has Mind Control powers that pretty much ignore my secondary and hit pretty hard even on an EB especially when I'm standing on two Tar Patches, and the second time was my own stupidity and a giant ambush. They were less challenging than Arachnos, Longbow, IDF, probably even stupid cheaty Rularuu. They were just so. Freaking. Tedious, even for a character with high defense who can avoid most of the dark blast debuffs. It didn't help that pretty much every objective in the arc is set to Hard, which means four bosses, usually two Necro/Dark Miasma with all the pets. Their costumes aren't anything I haven't seen on about a million player villains, usually named stuff like Dark Lord McDarkness. Their bios are all about a paragraph about where that particular critter fits in the EEEEVIL heirarchy of EEEEEVIL. There is nothing about them that suggests any tie to the Banished Pantheon.

The first map is ok, It's Oranbega because it has to be, but it's not a particularly big or stupid Oranbega map, and the last room where all the required objectives are is nice and open and hiding-place free. The second map hurts my eyes and is too huge for what's on it. The third is just huge.

What does Faathim have to do with anything? Since when has he taken an interest in anything that doesn't involve the Shadow Shard? It's not like there aren't any more appropriate contacts available; Akarist immediately comes to mind. He's not really written all that well either, he comes across as pretty bland, and here's a memo to all arc contacts: When you send me off to investigate something, getting in touch with "your other contacts" after the fact just makes me ask, why the hell didn't you get in touch with them in the first place and save me the trouble?

Oh and you wanna talk cannon derailment? Yeah, we're all a bunch of arrogant archmages who think it's a good idea to try to bind an aspect of a dimension-devouring godlike entity, tried to build a ladder to heaven, flipped the gods off, and kicked an ancient aquatic civilization with godlike power on their side off some real estate we figured might have resale value....but let's put aside that millenia-long tiff we've had going ever since that silly genocide incident and try to get along because this EEEEEVIL is so bad neither of us can possibly handle it alone.

So: Poor gameplay, unimaginative story, cliched and unnecessary and poorly designed custom group, inappropriate and unfunny attempts at humor...hardly an example of the best the AE has to offer.

Yeah, I'll join the club, good pointer for some decent arcs to try.

So, in the spirit of the club, I've had a run through Spawning Chaos.


Played through on lvl 31 mind/psi dom slotted almost exclusively for team control. 2 deaths (both on fusionette with her mezz/confuse resists)

Mission 1

Ghost to baddie, slap him down. Very simple and simplistic mission, possibly could have done with a couple of minor objectives to flesh it out a bit but that's nit picking. Might suggest increasing map size slightly as it was tiny. Not much more to say.

Mission 2

Liked the theme, made sense thematically. Again, quick and simple for ghost / mezzer but possibly could have done with feeling a bit more chaotic (maybe an ambush or two?). Map size spot on, quick and easy mission to get through.

Mission 3

Probably my least fave mission in the set (although I really liked the set so not grumbling) - and not just because fusionette killed me twice Took a bit of hunting round for ally and also for the spawned bosses, would suggest some kind of dialogue to announce themselves as running on larger mob settings was a pain finding them in such a wide area when lots of mobs about. Also, the tank boss couldn't keep up (scouting with SS) which meant either waiting for ages on his support or taking bosses without him (I went for the latter) which made him a tad wasted really. Maybe worth spawning the enemy bosses at the start and making the ally rescue optional? Realise this stops folk potentially seeing some of the text but they'd still have option of finding him if required (on a defender for example). Saves having to scout map twice if you don't want to. However, the general premise was good, it felt in tune with the story and I didn't miss the extra damage of the ally so not much to moan about.

Mission 4

Slight aside - you're missing a space at start of third paragraph on the mission intro. Liked this mission, once again felt suitably chaotic. Was slightly confused by the destructible computer terminals that don't seem to do anything (?) but felt that was in keeping with the general chaotic freakiness of the arc so didn't jar. Didn't like the fact that I couldn't place the bombs until the terminal was down, meant backtracking a couple of floors when I'd spotted the glowie on the way up but that's personal preference. Generally a good mission and blowing the place up felt totally in line with the theme.

Mission 5

Great final mission. Sadly Lockdown spawned behind the ballista making him less than useful however that didn't matter as the EB was perma confused anyway and the damage from the first tank boss (organiser) helped me take him down quick enough. Nice touch adding in Longbow coming to stop the event and rounded out a good mix of enemy groups for the arc. Mission felt suitably chaotic throughout and choosing the map from the original arc's final mission tied it up well. Last glowie gave a suitable end to the arc and just felt right to me.

Conclusion

Thought that the premise was well thought out and well written throughout. Mission contact was excellent with some good (and at times that rarest of things, funny) dialogue and the clues, chat between mobs, etc was of a high standard with good ideas. Missions were about the right length, maps were of a sensible size and mix of enemy groups kept it interesting. Please get rid of the purple text on the mission intros though, it's a nightmare to read

Final souvenier was a good summary of the arc except that it references a mission that has either been changed or wasn't at all what I thought I was doing - talks about rescuing Doctor Zapster in the souvenier. Personal nit pick preference also - prefer it when folk put the arc ID on the souvenier as I'm lazy when finding them again.

Overall I'd say a five star (certainly in comparison to a lot of other missions I've played) and have marked it so. Realise that's a personal opinion and I've put quite a few nitpicks down but each to their own, I thought it was very enjoyable and of a high standard therefore it's a five star in my book. Others will have different opinions no doubt but to me I don't see any of the above points as flaws that would stop my enjoyment. Given the support you're optionally given as well, it should be easy enough to do on any AT which is also important.


I'll throw an arc into the mix when I've finished writing it, in the middle of tidying it up just now. I like the idea of a MA club, it's easier to fit into my lifestyle than a book club is! Good idea to set up, hope it continues to catch on.

Thanks again for another review, even though we've moved on!

As people can probably tell, I've made a few changes since the first review, most notably I've completely rewritten mission four from its original setting of rescuing Doc Zapster from Arachnos. I've added a small optional chain of objectives in mission two which start with saving the Sneaky Freak B4KST4BB3R. A few other changes involve dialogue tweaks and editing out the Zapster bit in the souviner text. (Which I shamefully forgot about.)

Currently, I'm working on getting rid of that awful purple text. However, deleting even one letter that turns the words purple seems to completely take everything else out; other colours, paragraph gaps and more. Then it just seems to leave me with all my original dialogue but without colour, paragraph gaps and has added the <br>'s and such as actual text. I will eventually get rid of it, but it'll take a while.

Anyway, I'm planning on getting into the reviews again for the club. Just been a bit busy but you can expect a review on a DC arc before Saturday.

Well, think of it this way - this week's mission has brought a lot more attention than any of the regular weeks, which could mean more plays than if I had posted your arc before doing this week's theme. But still, sorry about that, I should have double checked the most recent posts.

My review of The Do-It-Yourself Laser Moonbase Project by @Twoflower.

The contact... what to say about him? I found him utterly hilarious. I've played some arcs with the dialect that Igor speaks and I can say he does it the best. I love how he pokes fun at nearly all of the villain contacts from levels 1-50 as well.

I loved the missions and I especially loved the bosses like Officer Gentleman and Hans Toten-Toten... that guy who's name I can't remember. I adored the over-the-topness along with the references to the periodic table and Zero Wing. Made me feel like a real moustache twirler. All in all, I can see why this arc got a Dev's Choice; it's funny and it has some nice moments in it.

The only nitpick I have with this arc is that there is no dialogue anywhere except on the objectives. There were so many opportunities for a random placement or patrol to be thrown in that I couldn't even count. A joke about Hans' ridiculously long name for example could be put in mission two. Just to liven up the atmosphere a bit and make it more immersive.

My conclusion though? Five stars from me.