Mission Architect Arc Club

Arc ID: 452144
Arc Name: Murders in the RWZ Morgue
Author: @FredrikSvanberg

Pros: Quick. Does a good job of telling its story.

Cons: Could have been stretched out over two or three missions.

Just one mission long, FredrikSvanberg's "Murders in the RWZ Morgue" manages to offer one of the better "mystery" stories I've seen come out of the Mission Architect. And just as the arc itself was short, so will this review be brief. I liked this arc; it stands as a great example of what can be done in just one mission. That said, its story could have been stretched out over two or three missions, embellishing a little on the suspect making his escape and the like. That's just a minor quibble and a personal take on the story, and doesn't detract from the quality of what was done here.

I found no problems with the gameplay, nor with grammar (though I've admittedly stopped looking for minor grammatical errors after my first review focused far too much on them). Overall, this is a fun and interesting story definitely worth taking the time to play.

Since I ran this recently I decided to jump in here.

Arc ID: 452144
Arc Name: Murders in the RWZ Morgue
Author: @FredrikSvanberg

I've always said writing a shorter arc is in many ways harder than writing a longer one and Fred pulls it off well here. Story wise I felt is was quite clever. Downside was the lack of exp which some people will slam it for I'm betting. If you want a quick story driven arc you won't go wrong here.

My arc for the club:

“A Very Special Episode”. Arc 457506

I picked this one because I feel most people have played The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society and A Hero in Need is a Friend Indeed! already and I honestly don't feel either of those have much room for improvement at this point.


WN

Murders in the RWZ Morgue: 5 stars!
Ran it on Tubbius, again. He's my go-to guy for AE arc reviews, it seems. Santa can be in all kinds of situations when he wants to be.

I love the idea of a one-off murder mystery. Adding a peculiar lil' already spoiled twist at the end was a splendid touch. Also, it has a cute Planet of the Apes reference that is, perhaps, not quite befitting a Rikti diplomat, but it's funny nonetheless. The author took special care to build both suspense and compassion for the misguided monkey.

If there were one thing that could be adjusted, it would be the amount of backtracking looking for clues as they're found. It doesn't matter a LOT on this small of a map, and I know it's out of the creator's control, but if the player doesn't know the level or isn't paying total attention to non-glowie objects as he/she finds them, this takes up a little more time to run through.

Well done!

Edit: If I remember right, in "Rue Morgue," weren't the murders done by a monkey? I've got everything Poe wrote, but Brit Lit's my bag, not American, so I can't honestly remember how that one ends short of rereading it.

Murder in the RWZ Morgue

I loved this mission, I really really did. Usually I'm more prone to stories that are stretched out over two or three missions but you pulled this off perfectly. I liked the idea that Longbow were only using the whole investigation to get some dirt on Vanguard, and the paranoid Vanguard troops still present in the base. In the end, I was expecting the suspect to be a Rikti, but... I was pleasantly, if a little weirdly, surprised.

Well done Fredrik! This arc gets five stars from me!

Ok I'm in. Single-mission arc that isn't comedy? You've got me intrigued.

Disclaimer: This is obviously a tribute to "Murders in the Rue Morgue," which I haven't read in many many years, so I had to look it up on Wikipedia after finding the Rikti Ambassador's name rather awkward.

Verdict: 5 stars.

What I liked: It manages to tell a complete story in a single mission.

As a tribute, it was clever; Rue Morgue > RWZ Morgue, the monkey did it, Agent G....I'm surprised nobody's thought of it before.

Commonly recognizable phrases translated into Rikti are always amusing.

What I didn't like: The Rikti Ambassador's name, as mentioned before, was awkward when translated into Rikti. It also doesn't fit the tribute, since you used the name of the detective character.

I felt Agent G's hatred of Vanguard was a bit too much. Mistrust and rivalry, sure, but his dialogue came off a bit too strong. This is of course made worse by the fact that you had to use a captive to allow me to "talk" to a non-hostile, and his Vanguard guards promptly proceeded to attack the Longbow in the area. Not much you can do about that though.

Those are nitpicks though, overall it's a unique and enjoyable arc. I actually thought it could have used LESS combat. All those Rikti are a bit distracting.

Throwing one of my arcs in the ring: #431270 Until the End of the World

Thanksgiving is here, and along with it some free time. I decided to catch up and play through the arcs that I've missed. All of these are played though on Paladin, my 50 BS/Regen Scrapper under +1 Difficulty, with x2 spawns and bosses.


Breaking the Barrier

In order to keep the allies alive I stuck to pulling with Confront and mini-tanking for the rag-tag bunch of Nagans, Longbow, and Hero(es). Fun minigame.

Very impressed with the work here, Lazarus. In much the same way as the Portal Bandits I had difficulty getting into the story until the third mission, but when the story struck it hit hard. The dialogue is excellent, and the send-off text is gripping enough that I was eager to get in there and accomplish what needed to be done.

Teaming with the Longbow in the Shadow Shard was a very pleasant surprise since so often they're cast as villains.

Thanks for letting them be concerned with protecting civilians. I even got to use my Longbow costume on Pal.

The finale, though? Outstanding. From the send-off text to Suziku's realization that she could be a hero, to Dr. Aeon's defeat-laugh bleeding into his ambush-laugh, this whole mission was 6 star-worthy. The smoke and flames hid the computers enough that it built up the atmosphere where I really felt the weight of what rested on the characters' shoulders. Dr. Aeon's motivations were classic and brought a smile to my face as well. Plus, Nagan and Longbow vs. Rularuu? Gold star stuff!

It was nice to see that the little changes to the Nagans' personalities have stuck. I'll be playing through the rest of your arcs to see what happens next, whether or not they're ever put on the club roster.


A Clone of Your Own

Ran it with Pal under +1 Difficulty, with x2 spawns and bosses.

This arc was enjoyable, and I had fun fighting clones of my characters. The doctor's a lot of fun, and the dialogue's got some wit and snappiness to it that I really liked.

I did feel like the characters needed some polish, though. It's hard for me to describe, but it seemed like who the Dr. was, along with the clones and the freakshow, were all more outlines than what they're meant to be. Also, the first clone who joined sides may be set to a non-fighting ally - he would charge enemies but then just stand there, suicidal. Might be a bug?

Thanks for creating this fun arc!


The Murders in the RWZ Morgue


Given my past troubles getting into arcs until the second or third mission, I thought that I wouldn't enjoy the story here. Man was I wrong. From the initial send-off text I was intrigued; you've got a great knack for formatting text to be appealing and engaging.

While I wasn't happy to see Longbow being shady again, the story really was solid. The Rikti monkey's red paws was a nice touch. The chaining mission features fit in about three missions worth of information into one, and it was a solid short story.

Nice job!

Murders in the RWZ Morgue

Thought I'd give this mission a try.

Pluses:
Well written, didnt see any obvious grammatical mistakes.

Negatives:
- The reference to "Vanguard Mercenery". Vanguard is a para-military organization. "Vanguard Soldier" would be more appropriate. As far as I know from game lore, Vanguard are not for hire.

- Couldnt figure why Le Bon and his "captors" were firing at each other. They seemed to be having a normal conversation.

- The Rikti "in" the base seemed odd to me. There was a reference to the base being under attack due to the Vanguard confusion over the murder, but I wasnt expecting them in the base. Vanguard patrols are needed to make it appear that the base is at least being defended, instead of entirely in Rikti hands.

- Didnt like the constant searching the entire map as chained objectives were spawned. Very, very annoying, and the mission objectives were pretty vague. I almost quit at the end after finding the monkey's owner and couldnt figure how to end the mission. Standing over the corpse I had already clicked? How was I to know to do that?

- Agent G is more of a calm, cool collected secret agent type, not a W. M. Deitrich. The "I hates Vanguard and they're all scum" attitude is out of character.

Suggestions:

- Le Bon needs "I'm lost" text.

I guess it couldn't please everyone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hercules Negatives: - The reference to "Vanguard Mercenery". Vanguard is a para-military organization. "Vanguard Soldier" would be more appropriate. As far as I know from game lore, Vanguard are not for hire.

I haven't checked but I believe that comment was from Agent G, regarding the kind of men Vanguard have hired as mercenaries. He doesn't like them and he doesn't care if they are actually mercenaries. As far as he's concerned they can be all kinds of villains, murderers, etc. Mercenaries is the mildest term he could use for them. It's not an army of volunteers as far as I know.

Quote:

- Couldnt figure why Le Bon and his "captors" were firing at each other. They seemed to be having a normal conversation.

It was supposed to represent them firing at Rikti or anything else they think they see in their paranoia, not each other. I can't control which way they are looking.

Quote:

- The Rikti "in" the base seemed odd to me. There was a reference to the base being under attack due to the Vanguard confusion over the murder, but I wasnt expecting them in the base. Vanguard patrols are needed to make it appear that the base is at least being defended, instead of entirely in Rikti hands.

I thought Agent G told you that the Rikti had invaded the base, taking advantage of the situation? I might be wrong, haven't looked and I'm not able to log in right now. There are Vanguard in the base fighting back - you just mentioned finding some in your previous sentence. I didn't want to make Vanguard patrols since they wouldn't fight the Rikti properly if I didn't set them to "Rogue" and if I had done that they might have attacked the Vanguard as well. The base is being defended, as witnessed by the three static spawns of Vanguard you come across during the mission.

Quote:

- Didnt like the constant searching the entire map as chained objectives were spawned. Very, very annoying, and the mission objectives were pretty vague.

The arc is described as a mystery with some fighting but mostly exploring and reading. If you avoid combat it's 5 minutes, tops. The mission objectives are somewhat vague because it's a mystery.

Quote:

I almost quit at the end after finding the monkey's owner and couldnt figure how to end the mission. Standing over the corpse I had already clicked? How was I to know to do that?

Sadly the "lead to target" objectives seem a bit wonky with the navigation and the target locations.

Quote:

- Agent G is more of a calm, cool collected secret agent type, not a W. M. Deitrich. The "I hates Vanguard and they're all scum" attitude is out of character.

Since I've never heard Agent G talk about Vanguard anywhere in the official content I took the liberty of giving him enough contempt for them as necessary for the story.

Quote:

Suggestions: - Le Bon needs "I'm lost" text.

Very well.

Thanks to everyone who has played the arc so far. Regarding suggestions to make it longer I will have to disappoint: I made it as a challenge to myself to create a story in just one mission. I think it's perfectly fine as a single mission and I don't see how adding more missions could add more than it would detract.

Welcome to all the new members, I'm still glad to see this is taking off. It's interesting to see how many different people look at the same arc in different ways, and some people like things that others dislike. Let's keep it going!

Also, I went through the latest round of plays and promoted some more people to silver level for their third play. Congratulations to myself, Necrotech Master, Hero Prime, and Paladin. If you would like a specific level range for your free random silver recipe ticket roll, PM or global /tell me with your request and I will do my best to accommodate. Otherwise, I'll send you a level 50. Thanks for all the support!

Hooray for MA Arc Club peeps!

That is all.

I finally got around to running The Murders in the RWZ Morgue #452144 by @FredrikSvanberg today.

Pros: It was one of the very few one mission arcs I've run that I enjoyed. Very well written.

Cons: I've been playing Dragon Age for about sixty hours and the controls are all bass ackwards in CoH.

Okay...maybe that's not Fred's fault, huh?

So, what IS Fred's fault? Unlike a few other well-intentioned players, I didn't have a problem with the chained objectives. I thought they were well done and easy enough to follow. There's no way a one mission arc could be this effective without them.

I think the only problem I had has been mentioned before, though. Besides playing Dragon Age while I recuperated from my hand surgery, I've watched all two-and-a-half seasons of Castle, so I've become an expert on murder mysteries. My wife and I always bet on which of us can follow the clues to the real murderer quickest. There's always a variety of choices, which makes it something we can invest in. She almost always beats me to the punch, by the way.

Anyway, I think this arc could be improved by adding the Rikti diplomat and perhaps a Longbow contact or something early on and providing some kind of reference that more strongly suggests - to the player character, at least - that it *is* a mystery, instead of a chain of objectives leading to a reveal you didn't have the chance to see coming.

It would probably require expanding the arc to at least one more mission, however, which may defeat Fred's purpose in wanting to create a single mission arc. If so, maybe a little more dialogue, or a couple of more confusing clues?

In any case, just my two bits. I enjoyed it, and still feel it was worthy of five stars. Thanks, Fred.

Edit: I just read the previous posts (would have helped earlier, huh?). Since expanding it another mission isn't an option (understandably so), scratch that suggestion. Since the contact is so anti-Vanguard, maybe an inside-the-mission Vanguard contact catches you right off and suggests that the Agent may not be 100 percent or something? Good arc any ways.

Okay, first, I'd like to throw in my 'entry' into the club: "The Blue Devils" (ID#468738)

It's a brand new arc, with only two plays so far. It's five missions long, and is intended as a "starter" arc (all missions are levels 1-5).

I've had two goals in writing it:

One, I've tried to write it with the idea that it can serve as the very first arc the newly created character of a more experienced player can play (much like "Learning the Ropes" it's intended as alternate low-level content, but this time it features a custom group so even the foes won't be the standard low-level foes.)

Two, it's an attempt to create a balanced, but very low level custom group, using the custom XP system. In other words, the mobs basically have the bare minimum powers I could give them and be worth 100% XP (or close to it) at level 5. Obviously because they're custom mobs, they are harder than dev mobs at that level would be.

And now...

The Murders in the RWZ Morgue #452144 by @FredrikSvanberg

(Quick reminder: I try very hard not to read others posts on the arc of the week, so that my comments are ‘genuine’ and not influenced by other opinions.)

Based on the description, sounds like an interesting premise. I look forward to seeing how the author has used the MA system to put together a one-mission murder mystery.

The Mission: Okay, so the girl’s been strangled by someone with fingers that don’t look quite human, and the mom’s had her throat cut by an energy blade. And the Rikti are attacking the Vanguard base. Seems pretty obvious they’re involved, and Longbow is erroneously assuming the energy blade is a Vanguard talsorian blade (or however you spell it) – but it’s probably a Rikti energy blade. Of course, that leaves the question of what Rikti were doing in a Vanguard base? But I still need to find the suspect…

Actually, the warning in the arc description that there’s “some” fighting but it’s mostly just reading clues probably gives the wrong impression. I fought through plenty of Rikti to find Le Bon; heck the arc strikes me as both short and action-packed.

I got Le Bon back to the saferoom, then looked for more clues to prove his innocence. The next part of the mission is a string of clues that point toward the real culprit being a Rikti monkey that escaped out of a box, and ran through the base to pick up an energy scalpel (there goes my ‘it’s a Rikti blade’ theory). But I don’t yet know how it got there. Or why it’s trailing blood everywhere? Or even how the Vanguard didn’t notice a bleeding Rikti monkey moving through their base…

Okay, so the monkey is a pet, smuggled in. Reasonable enough. And it wants to lead me back to its master, who is likely the real killer.

Well, actually, it’s master is the Rikti diplomat Dup’n. Apparently, his monkey escaped, hid in the base, saw the doctor perform an autopsy on a Rikti soldier, went berserk, realized it had made a mistake, and tried to hide the body. I suppose the daughter was with the mother at the time, although just from the clues alone, that’s not totally clear.

Likes: The mission is put together very well, and it’s actually quite fun to play through. By and large, the murder mystery is interesting.

Dislikes: I did think the solution was a let down – it came right out of left field since the diplomat didn’t even appear until the very end, and there really wasn’t much of a clue as to why the monkey would go on a killing spree until you actually see the solution at the end of the mission. I think the arc needs at least some foreshadowing that the diplomat exists to make the solution to the murder a bit more satisfying. Also, an additional (or even optional) clue where you find an autopsied Rikti warrior in the base might be good, so there’s at least some clue present as to what might set the monkey off. Heck, a few more ‘red herring’ clues added to the mission might be useful (so the player doesn’t automatically assume every clue is relevant to the mystery). And I was never clear why the Rikti monkey *started* with bloody paws – it seems like he’d only have blood on his paws *after* the murder… unless I was following the trail backwards, and the monkey had hid in the box afterwards, then left again.

In other words, I’d favor some more (perhaps optional) clues scattered about – some relevant, some not – to really make this feel more like a murder mystery.

And no, I’ve never read Murders in the Rue Morgue, so I wouldn’t know if that story also has the same ‘plot holes’ in it (nor would it convince me that more clues wouldn’t make the arc more fun).

It was still a very fun arc! (Five stars given in game.)

Score: 4.458

Another week, and the random roll comes up with:

Arc Name: A Vague Notion
Arc ID: 451725
Faction: Hero
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Hero Prime
Level Range: 46-50
Difficulty Level: Rough. Multiple EB/AV spawns. Multiple EB/AV class helpers, too.
Synopsis: Saving a little girl is only the beginning. Trailing behind are exploding worlds, flaming whips, psionic storms, and DOOM!

Estimated Time to Play: 90 minutes to two hours, depending on whether you read everything. There are 5 missions, 4 of the maps are Large. One of the large maps, however, is a collection mission.

I apologize for not checking with the author before writing this, to find out if there was something wrong with the arc before I started dumping all over it. Turns out that the arc I played was missing a bunch of custom enemies, which caused most of the problems I was having with it. I'll play the corrected version today.

A Vague Notion

Overall: Why are the mission level ranges all over the place? Set them to 45-54 if that's the range the arc is balanced for. After playing this I'm now convinced that it's not a challenge arc or even intended for teams. Instead this arc was created to punish people who want XP and enjoyable gameplay. The enemies give lousy rewards and one of the missions is nothing but a glowie-hunt on a far too large map.

Contact: He seems to be rambling a lot. The intro for the first mission was very odd. I actually end up liking him around mission 4. If he hasn't actually said that word he doesn't want to say in any of the mission briefings so far (I can't remember and I'm not playing this again to check), it's awesome.

Mission 1: Vagary Keller doesn't have a bio. The clue about the altar shows up twice, slightly different. Some of the clues simply repeat what the mission introduction already told us and don't add any new information. I suggest you get rid of the unnecessary clues, e.g. the ones named "GPS coordinates" and "The Altar". The information about the altars that were used to summon her is also repeated in the exit popup AND in the mission debriefing. The contact says that he's "traced this altar back to its source" but we never actually found an altar, it was just something Vagary talked about. The altar wasn't there. Perhaps he should say it differently or just not talk about the altar at all. He could say that he's tracked the trace energies of the summoning spell left on Vagary or something like that.

Mission 2: "Protein" is spelled "protien" in the busy text for mission 2. "Tuatha de Dannan" is spelled "Dannon" in the intro popup. An ambush spawned with nothing but bosses (downgraded EB willpower/demon summoning whips?). Since their group consists of nothing but bosses they only give a fraction of their reward, about 25% more than a minion of the same level. I decided to not stop to defeat them all since they could barely hurt me. I suggest you add lieutenants and minions and maybe regular bosses to the custom group, perhaps with some real attacks.

Mission 3: In the mission send-off text the blue text indicating the contact's action is on the same line as his speech. ... Three hostages, all guarded by the same all-boss custom group as in the previous mission. So this means I can't just ignore them this time around. If I wasn't playing my practically unkillable tanker (they managed to kill me anyway once when I got bored and sloppy) I would have quit by now. I don't think any of my other characters could survive these witches. Sadly the fights aren't fun on the tanker either, just long and tedious. The abductees are actually called "1st Abductee", "2nd Abductee", etc. It would be better if they had real names, or simply were called "Abductee", in my opinion.

Ok, the second hostage turns out to be an ally with enough buffs to make the rest of the fights tolerable, but not more fun than fighting regular minion-lieutenant-boss groups. The trick of having a tough boss-only ambush is ok, once or twice. Using the same boss-only group everywhere is just going to make your arc crossed over into "deliberately pissing off your audience"-territory. Since the ally is turning these fights into something rather trivial it would seem to make more sense to me to remove the ally or make her less powerful, and add minions and lieutenants to your custom group, so players of all ATs can enjoy the arc. Unless you only want Brutes and Tankers and perhaps Masterminds to play it.

The "3rd Abductee" doesn't have a bio. Escorting the hostages to the exit seems extra pointless when nothing tries to stop me. Not that I want to fight anymore of these annoying witches. Scratch that, a spawn of +1 Elite Bosses showed up in the path to the exit. Going to try to just walk past them and hope that my stupid allies don't decide to stick around and fight. Which they did. I tried to pull everyone, enemies and allies alike, to the exit, but the allies decided to stop 20 feet away from the door and fight so I couldn't complete the mission. Have to do this the boring way...

You have to be kidding me; an ambush of six more elite bosses appear when I kill one of the first three EBs. They are supposed to be unique individuals but sadly several copies of each show up in the ambush. Another reason why it's a good idea to have some generic mobs in the custom group.

Oh yeah, these level 51 EBs give 50% of the xp of a level 50 minion, because they are Elite Bosses in a group with no minions or lieutenants. One of them actually rewarded 21,000-ish xp, but that's because she was the Boss in the fight boss objective spawn. The rest were basically worthless for the time it took to kill them.

They are all using Psychic attacks (correction: one of them used dual blades and mental manipulation) which makes my Invuln tanker a sad panda. Now you've turned off the majority of Brute and Tanker players, and the MMs are unlikely to survive all the area attacks these guys spam. Now NO AT can solo your arc with any pleasure. I suppose this is intended for teams or as some kind of challenge?

The exit popup and the debriefing says that the third girl betrayed me, but she didn't. Was she supposed to? The contact does some magic scrying here and says "This is not good". I'm inclined to agree, and disinclined to keep playing but I wonder if it can possibly get worse, so here I go.

Mission 4: The mission objective text in the navbar have periods in them, which makes them look weird when separated by commas. Remove the periods. The interaction text with the "looking for the file" file cabinet spells "rifling" as "rilfing".

I liked this mission, at least at first. By the time I had clicked four file cabinets and found nothing, then searched the entire base looking for another kind of file cabinet which triggered three other glowies... I was wondering why the hell I had to click so much stuff. I've clicked 10 things and only got two clues. Four, no wait, five of them were completely pointless "you found nothing" red herrings. This mission could be set on a much smaller map and with much less running around. The all- boss ambush bosses don't have a bio. Cool name and costume though, and they aren't all using psychic damage so my tanker can just stand there and laugh at them while I type this.

Mission 5: The mission intro text is a blatant lie! I can see a spawn of elite bosses (same group as the ambush in mission 3, all psychic damage - HATE!) from the entrance, and the popup says "This looks like it might be fun" or something like that (I closed it before I could copy the text exactly). Fully stocked with purple inspirations I can possibly avoid most of them. Let's see. The navbar objective text has a period on it again, by the way.

I trudged through most of that mission using purple inspirations to avoid as much combat as possible, managed to find an ally and four glowies which spawned a destructible item and a boss. I actually knew where they had to be, since I had been moving all over the place looking for the first five objectives. I destroyed the destructible, but I couldn't be bothered finishing the boss. She was using World of Confusion and so did her two or three clones, which meant that I would be perma-confused fighting all-psychic enemies on my invuln tanker. It's 3:19 AM here so I'm not going to spend the next hour trying to do that.

As usual this mission was ridiculous because all the spawns consisted of the same four or five unique individuals, copied dozens of times through the mission. Again I must recommend creating minions, lieutenants and regular bosses for this group, and not all Elite Bosses.

In Conclusion: In its current state I can't recommend this arc to anyone except the most powerful and masochistic Dark Armor or Willpower Tankers, or a team that doesn't care about getting rewards.

The contact is actually funny and well written, and maybe there's some kind of revelation in the last mission debriefing that makes it worth your while but I just spent 3 hours on this that I could have spent playing Players' Choice nominees instead. I wish I had quit in mission 3.

I know we're supposed to give something positive in our reviews in this club so I'll say that if the custom groups are fixed, the elite bosses toned down and everything rebalanced, it's probably a good arc. I didn't rate this arc in-game.

Buh... what?

Okay... I'm going to have to look at this arc again. When I published it in September, it didn't have any random elite boss spawn. None. What would have changed that?

Grrr. Looking at it now.

EDIT: Or I would, but every time I try to run it, my computer locks up. Odd.

Sorry to do this, guys, but the issues Fredrik had with the elite boss spawns shouldn't have been in there at all - weren't there when I wrote it. I'm not sure what caused it, but since I can't seem to load it without my computer locking up, I'm pulling this from review until I get a chance to figure out what went wrong.

EDIT AGAIN: I found the problem. It appears that when I re-saved the mission after fixing a typo a couple weeks back, it eliminated the majority of my custom group enemies. I don't know if it's because the files for those enemies weren't on the computer I used to publish or what, but all the other members of that whip-wielding succubus's enemy group were just gone, as well as other custom enemies that were part of the arc. I've pulled the hard drive from my old computer and am moving all my custom villain group and custom enemy files over from it, and will republish it tonight. Sorry about that... I wasn't aware fixing a typo would so drastically break the arc.

EDIT NUMBER THREE: I have republished it with all the enemy groups in-tact. I did reduce the collections in the fourth mission, but have otherwise left everything as it was originally published. I'm still not sure where you got whole groups of Elite Bosses downgraded to bosses. If you were fighting whip-wielding succubi, they're bosses (and always have been) with the exception of a named one, Lucinda, in the first mission. When I ran through the mission just now (before publishing the original version), they downgraded to Lieutenants. I'm not sure why they didn't downgrade for you, Fredrik - maybe because of your difficulty settings? - but they weren't EBs. That said, they shouldn't have spawned as a group of bosses-only, either, and that has been rectified with the republishing of the old file.

Okay... now that the enemy groups are working right, I went through and addressed some of the issues. I added a short bio to Vagary Keller, a simple one-line bio to all three Abductees, and fixed the spelling of "protein" and "Dannan". I also reduced the number of glowies needed for the fourth mission, including getting rid of the computer hunt for Vagary's datafiles completely, replacing it with the need to find a single computer.

For anyone trying to play this arc, the number has changed due to an unpublish and republish. The new number is:

Huh. Ok, that makes so much more sense. Not knowing your usual style I didn't consider that it might have been a mistake. Sorry about that.

Yes, your enemy groups are stored in local files so if you republish from another computer it could probably not find all of the enemies. I'll replay it today and will probably have a much better time.

A Vague Notion
For Real This Time

Pro: Interesting contact with entertaining conspiracy theory blathering. Nice design on the customs. The core of the story is solid.

Con: Gameplay still suffers in mission 4 and 5 because of large maps and too many seemingly unnecessary glowies. Why did you add two more psychic dampeners to both missions? You removed some of the glowies in mission 4 but you added two more dampeners, which meant that you had to add two more dampeners in mission 5 as well. Net result: more glowies, most of which don't even provide a clue to anything interesting. I don't see why we need more than ONE of these things, for story reasons. In mission 5 the semi-transparent orange glowies are very hard to find in the orange-brown Oranbega map, making it even more annoying.

After I finally reached the end of the arc I was wondering why the things the contact reveal to us in the debriefing weren't touched upon earlier. One NPC (Vagues) from mission 3 had apparently an interesting background involving her home dimension being destroyed by a magical superweapon - why didn't we find this out in mission 3, and why didn't we try to recover the weapon and use it against the villain in mission 5?

When we are told about it after mission 5 we can't really use that information for anything except nod and go "ok, that's nice". It seems like a piece of foreshadowing which never got used but still hangs around.

I recommend that you reduce the number of Psychic Dampeners in both mission 4 and 5 to at most three, preferably one. That is by far the most glaring problem with this arc right now. So, on the whole, not a big problem.

ill do my best to get around to playing this, but i may or may not be busy with i19 stuff this week (maybe the next couple weeks) lol

A Vague Notion:

Pros: LOVE the contact! Exceptionally well written mission text. Clues are plentiful.
First two missions are well-paced and not unstoppably hard.

Cons: A few particular annoyances, but possibly because I was running this on a level 49 Assault Rifle/Devices blaster (Pistola). The amount of psionic damage in this arc is absolutely ca-raaaaa-zy, man, and the custom group members seem to take some serious pain to put down. Mission 4 is particularly slow-going, with the need to hunt 5-6 glowies in the Longbow mission map with nothing else happening besides the NPC chat. The EB at the end of the arc isn't TOO bad if you stay on top of her, but the double ambush in the middle of a bridge/pit room is very difficult. Maybe 1 ambush at 50% health would be more suitable?

Knowing the arc better now, I think I could get more enjoyment out of it on a second play. It's certainly a strong arc overall in terms of action, challenge, and storytelling. That's good. However, on a first pass, it comes off almost excessively hard, at least for me.

Rated it 4-stars.

--Tubbius

Would the fourth mission work better if it was just picking up the three items - the file cabinet with Jenna's papers, the computer with Vagary's datafile, and the psychic dampener - in a smaller map?

Absolutely. It could work if you pick up more stuff too but only if everything you pick up adds to the story somehow. In my opinion. That is if you need more clues to tell everything you want to tell.