Mission Architect Arc Club

I don't PuG either, so that's my excuse. When I team it's usually for TFs.

Also, the dog ate my homework.

Well, I managed to grab a low level PuG from Atlas on Virtue and tried to run it as much RP as possible. I picked The Blue Devils because I really liked the arc. I only was able to grab three other people to run it with, but they all seemed to really like it as well. I had a pretty good time trying out RP, giving the basic information of the arc to everyone and getting a team decision on the vigilante options. We ended up only doing one of them.

i prolly havent gotten around to doing much with this just yet because i been busy with all the i19 stuff still, respec 2 toons (one toon twice), ran 19 toons through the incarnate intro, have 6 toons with boosts, 3 of them have uncommons, TONs of badging with my main (up to 1178 badges on him atm), and been trying to finish slotting 2 of my toons which are missing less than 10 purps now

and now with the winter event and the new mish which is extremely enjoyable compared to the BNY mish, ect

so yeah, been quite busy lol

(on a side note i was also finishing the last 2 weeks of this college semester, so had to take some time for final projects/exams)

maybe next week ill start getting back into the rhythm with this because im on winter break now and will have loads more time

Since I just tweaked the story a bit, and I'm actually finally getting serious (hopefully) about designing its sequel, I'll put my arc into the pool.

Arc ID: 271637
Arc Title: Welcome to M.A.G.I.
Enemies: Hellions, Skulls, Circle of Thorns, Coralax
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 1 - 12 (but the arc is intended to be an alternative first arc for magic origin characters)
Description: While waiting in line at Hero Registration, you heard the jokes about Azuria losing artifacts entrusted to her care. As a new Magic hero you go to her to get your first mission only to find out she's lost the whole vault!

The "enemies with custom power selections" warning refers to the main antagonist, who should be beatable by lowbies (although insps will likely be required).

We're up to week #8 and I'm going to start allowing re-submissions, or alternate arc submissions on three conditions:

#1 - Your arc has to have been arc of the week more than 8 weeks ago. So next week, Necrotech Master would be eligible to put another arc in the pool, the next week, Lazarus would, etc.

#2 - You have to have played an arc and posted comments within the past 3 weeks, and be a silver level member or higher.

#3 - You will have one fewer chance at the random roll. So silver level members would get 1 spot for their second arc, and gold level members would get 2 spots.

And now for this week's arc:

Name: A Very Special Episode
Arc ID: 457506
Creator Global Name: @Wrong Number
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: It all begins with you finding a strange abandoned TV in a deserted alleyway and the disappearance
of a popular kids show host named Blappy. Lies are told, secrets revealed, hearts broken, and more during this
very special episode.
Number of EB/AVS – 1 EB
Level Range – 30-54
Story Type - Dramedy
Villain Groups - Nemesis, Custom and others.
Mission Count: 4
Estimated Time to Play: 45-60 minutes

Hey WN, any substantial changes since I posted the mini-review on this arc in the Pro Payne thread? If so, I'll be happy to play through it again; If not, I can just repost my review here.

Will give this a go. . . once I can. Maybe in the morning. Don't know yet!

I would love to join your club. Here is the Arc I have been working on. I’ll get started on some reviews.

Arc ID: 477906
Arc Title: One Night Bridge
Factions: Council, Crey, Cult of Stars, Awakened Division
Morality: Vigilante
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 30-54
Description: The Peacebringer Tracer Brightstar is looking for Vigilantes to help her bring a rogue Warshade to justice. [SFMA][SLMA]

Review: A Very Special Episode


Arc ID 457506

My entire experience with this mission arc can be described in three letters. WTF. Humor is a very subjective thing and I have to say that I missed a lot of humor in this arc. Still the comedy is consistent throughout the entire arc and like a bad joke, it honestly started to grow on me.

The gameplay is balanced. I did not feel particularly overwhelmed and the bosses seemed to be just challenging enough. You have a menagerie of custom enemies in your custom groups. It is hard to imagine all these enemies joining up together to fight you but on the other hand it works with the overall story. One thing I would do is make the boss Junkyard Dog have larger profile. He looks very similar to his minions. Maybe make him larger or give a different fur color.

The writing is a bit much on the eyes. I say this for two reasons. One, you have walls text thrown at you at times. Break these walls of text into 2-3 paragraphs and your writing will be far more readable. Your mission 2 send off is a prime example of this. Two, your enemies sometimes shout a paragraph out when you are in the mission. I would cut these down as well. It puts an unnecessary break into the action since I have to start reading a chat log to figure out what they are saying.

Overall, I think this is a great arc. It was more enjoyable then the radio and T.V. missions created by the developer’s. For that, I am giving it 5 stars.

Thanks very much for playing he arc and for your feedback. I was not expecting any plays at all having my arc fall during this hoilday week, so it was a very nice surprise! On to your comments.

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Originally Posted by Supicous Glenn My entire experience with this mission arc can be described in three letters. WTF. Humor is a very subjective thing and I have to say that I missed a lot of humor in this arc. Still the comedy is consistent throughout the entire arc and like a bad joke, it honestly started to grow on me.

I agree, it's not really much of a humor arc (so much so that I thought of removing the humor tag from it). It's really a origin story with drama and a little humor thrown in. This was one of the reasons I thought about removing the humor tag, people see it and expect non-stop jokes which is not this arc at all.

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The gameplay is balanced. I did not feel particularly overwhelmed and the bosses seemed to be just challenging enough. You have a menagerie of custom enemies in your custom groups. It is hard to imagine all these enemies joining up together to fight you but on the other hand it works with the overall story.

"Henchmen for Hire" are not a group at all, just a bunch of out of work henchmen. The Injustice Legion has a clear back story that is mentioned numerous times through out the arc in a variety of places. Did you feel the group was not clear in what sort of villains it was made up of or is there something else?

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One thing I would do is make the boss Junkyard Dog have larger profile. He looks very similar to his minions. Maybe make him larger or give a different fur color.

I will definitively take a look at him.

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The writing is a bit much on the eyes. I say this for two reasons. One, you have walls text thrown at you at times. Break these walls of text into 2-3 paragraphs and your writing will be far more readable. Your mission 2 send off is a prime example of this. Two, your enemies sometimes shout a paragraph out when you are in the mission. I would cut these down as well. It puts an unnecessary break into the action since I have to start reading a chat log to figure out what they are saying.

This arc is by far the most text heavy arc of all of my arcs and that was on purpose due to the fact it was for one of Dr. Aeon's contests. It's well known at this point that he wants graphic novel type stories over comic book ones, so I added more information than I even like reading myself. That said, some people like that sort of writing like Dr. Aeon, and others like us don't. So this is my arc for the over the top detail lovers out there.

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Overall, I think this is a great arc. It was more enjoyable then the radio and T.V. missions created by the developer’s. For that, I am giving it 5 stars.

Thanks so much, I'm happy you had fun playing it.


WN

My review of:

"A Very Special Episode"- Arc 457506

Arc played using a Level 50 Fire/Ice/Fire Blaster with Bosses set to spawn as Bosses

Mission One:

The opening text is good. I think you capture the spirit of the Television contact pretty well (basing this off of the redside unlockable contact). Some of the formatting choices seem weird, but not an issue.

Going through the mission I couldn't find any real errors or issues. Berle seems to follow you around uselessly, though I found his abandoned and recovered text funny. I think I have to gist of what's going to happen over the course of the arc as well- we'll see if I'm right or wrong though. Not sure also how I feel about Percy being a Fake. I guess I was expecting a custom boss of some sort and it caught me by surprise.

When you exit the mission to the "Not another Nemesis Plot!!!" text, if the "I hear" is in reference to our character, usually these messages are written in the second person from my experience.

The text upon returning to the contact is good, and I particularly like the inclusion of the hero's name in it. On to mission two!

Mission Two:

Reading the opening text for this mission gives me another idea as to where this arc may be headed, again, we'll see. Into the mission!

The custom group that's taking from the normal game NPCs in here is neat. I think it's a nice blend of mobs that work pretty well together. The Injustice group was good as well, what little I've seen of them so far. I also like how Angel ran off, refusing to be a sidekick to yet another hero. At the end of the first mission, I was pretty confident I had been given the whole story and could see a direct line to the end. Now, I'm not so sure, it's a lot more interesting, though I do still hold some theories. I also wonder if maybe this mission would do better actually placed inside of the Pawn Shop map, rather than the warehouse. One of the ones that has the Safe section in the back perhaps? If it's available of course.

Again, on the return text I enjoy the direct nod to the character and, is that a musical theatre reference I spy? If it's intended, kudos ^_^ This text also continues me in my belief that you understand Television's style of dialogue well.

Mission Three:

I'm liking the little bits of added information we're getting with each of these contact dialogues and how them coming from an outside perspective changes our insider's perspective.

I'm liking the Injustice Legion more as well playing through this mission. And Sis Boom Ba's health milestone dialogue was really cute. Bright Angel was good support throughout the mission as well.

The return text here was fine, I have no real comment about it.

Mission Four:

Good opening text here. Fast paced, high-energy, good set up for a timed mission. In we go!

Walking in, I was a little disappointed to see "Defeat Blight Angel" up on the objectives. Even if it's not too surprising, it feels like a complete drop or give-away. Perhaps the objective could be given a slightly more ambiguous name? Or revealed after completing a different objective a little further into the mission? Anyway, moving on.

Wrong Number wasn't too tough. Might have even been a little easy, but we'll see how I feel about her when I get to the EB. Again, Berle likes to just follow me around. If he does fight, he hasn't bothered just yet.

Blappy doesn't look like a Children's Show character at all- though I get that part of it is her villain duds. Her fight wasn't too bad- but boy is Berle turning on you something that catches you off guard! I guess he can fight after all!

Blight Angel is probably my favorite part of this mission. I love her dialogue and her character, her description is neat and she looks awesome. I'm a bit of a sucker for that type of character though. The only thing I didn't like about the fight was that I was held for all of it- if it weren't for Defiance, this would have been a very annoying battle.

Wrap Up:

Overall, I like the arc. I think it's a cute story with some noteworthy characters and moments. I'm not sure if I fully understood how the first Nemesis mission fit into things. I think I got the idea, just not a solidified following. I felt for pretty much the whole arc that either Blappy or Angel were going to turn and it was just a matter of which one. I loved the clues that we kept finding lying around, but wonder if maybe there are too many of them, and if there can't be some more surprise that Angel has turned. Maybe it should be leaned into more heavily that Blappy is secretely not so good and the hints about Angel should be backed off of? I loved the surprises I did find in the arc, such as Berle betraying you and wouldn't mind seeing just one or two more.

You captured Television well, I think. If I had one thought on it, I would say that each contact text should either have some form of tie-in between the show on television and the upcoming mission, or that each one should display totally different genres of television (if you can do both of these altogether.) This thought occurred to me after seeing the news shows and then going into the money management show- they felt very similar in my mind as a genre. Just a thought.

I liked the arc very much and gave it a 4/5 and would be very interested to see more of your work. Nice job ^_^




This is my submission for the club arc pool:

Name: Bringing A Lord to Power
Arc ID: 475246
Level: 40-54
Morality: Villainous
Length: Very Long
Description: Blightlord has a task for you. Can you rise above and prove yourself in a City of Villains?

A Very Special Episode

Run by Mr. Doome Eng/Eng Blaster

General Cons: The humor at the start was, for the most part, not to my taste. Overall I think it detracted from the arc rather than added to it. More on that below.

General Pros: A good story and very well-written arc with enjoyable enemies. Also a good job using the Television, even if I really don't like it as a contact in general. Most of the humor later in the arc did fit into my taste and that much I did enjoy.

Mission 1: Not sure why Berle was following me around as he never did anything. I did like his agent line when I finally lost him. Overall I very much disliked this mission.

Mission 2: I liked the henchmen club. The humor in this mission is an example of what works for me.

Mission 4: I actually found Blappy to be the easiest of the 3 bosses. Berle just about owned me since I was in the middle of fighting another spawn and didn't realize he was the one hitting me until they went down. Where I'm left confused, however, is why is he attacking me? I could understand it if he turned when I fight Blappy, although that would make it one hell of a tough fight. I'm left scratching my head when he attacks me after Blappy is dealt with.

(By the way, at one point Blappy says "I'm really like the injustice legion so far", which sounds like a typo to me.)

Ummmm...Blappy is...ummm....mind controlled....yeah, mind controlled, that's the ticket. Obviously Blappy is a bad guy and now he's going back to his children's show? Shouldn't I be doing something about that?

I also didn't get the way caps were used on certain letters in Blight Angel's speech. It didn't look like it worked as emphasis so I kept looking for a code. Couldn't figure it out if it was, though.

Overall: As I've been writing the mission by mission feedback, I realized that my initial reaction to the humor was actually only to the humor in the first mission. With it's "Nemesis' kid tries to collect Blappy as a new toy" theme (which is what I got out of it) I think it really hurt the rest of the story. It put me into a poor frame of mind because it sets a tone that the arc is meant to be a farce. I didn't find the humor in the rest of the arc to be farcical, at least not in the context of the super-hero world of Paragon City.

Despite not being to my personal taste, I give it a thumbs up (which equals 5 stars in my new resolution to only rate 5 stars to any arc that I think is good).

Thanks for the play and for the detail feedback. 5 stars on Christmas, what more can I ask ask for?

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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini Mission 1: Not sure why Berle was following me around as he never did anything. I did like his agent line when I finally lost him. Overall I very much disliked this mission.

Known MA BUG. He is set to remain in place and about 75% of the time does, but when the bug kicks in he follows.

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Mission 4: I actually found Blappy to be the easiest of the 3 bosses. Berle just about owned me since I was in the middle of fighting another spawn and didn't realize he was the one hitting me until they went down. Where I'm left confused, however, is why is he attacking me? I could understand it if he turned when I fight Blappy, although that would make it one hell of a tough fight. I'm left scratching my head when he attacks me after Blappy is dealt with.

This must be part of the known betrayal MA BUG. I've never had it happen to me or even heard of this happening in this arc before (you must be "lucky" I guess). Berle is set to turn when Blappy is at 1/4 health which is in line with what you thought and of course makes stopping Blappy tougher.

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(By the way, at one point Blappy says "I'm really like the injustice legion so far", which sounds like a typo to me.)

You, that's a typo and will be fixed by the time you read this.

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I also didn't get the way caps were used on certain letters in Blight Angel's speech. It didn't look like it worked as emphasis so I kept looking for a code. Couldn't figure it out if it was, though.

It's to illustrate her state of mental unbalance and her total slip into madness.

Thanks again for the feedback and for playing the arc!


WN

Ok here goes. Run by Darkfire Avenger, level 50 DM/SD Scrapper set to +1/x6. Notes taken as I went along, final thoughts at the end.

M1 Intro: The normal newscast is somewhat out of character for Television...it should probably be part of the South Park show.

M1 Return: "Percy being lead" should be "led."

Nemesis's son? How does that work? Nemesis has been essentially a brain in a jar for a long time.

M2 Intro: "who has been stopped and is..." lose the "who" or the "and."
M2 return: "middle age woman" should be "middle aged."

M3 exit pop-up "with out" should be "without."

Wrong Number has too much inactive dialogue. I had to scroll up to read it. On the other hand, AAO appears to override the fear component of Ignite. Berle barbequing a pack of Injustice Legion goons was amusing.
M4 return: "back to critics" should be "the critics."

Souvenir: " has finally went" should be "finally gone."

What I liked: Good pacing on the story, good use of Television for the most part. Berle. Custom group was well balanced, none of the bosses seemed overly powerful. Use of optional details combined with map choices made it so there was enough stuff to do without resulting in objective overload.

What I didn't like: How is Nemesis involved exactly? That kind of went nowhere. Also, I felt you fell back on news-type shows a bit too much in the contact dialogue. Television in canon doesn't need to do that.

Overall though, it was a good arc, fun to play through, flowed well.

Just played through 457506 on a level 36 Thugs/Traps Mastermind, Tubbius Regalis. Overall, Tubby had no trouble with the arc whatsoever, apart from a slightly hairy moment coming into mission 3. The "breaking the fourth wall" element in the intro and outro dialogues took a little getting used to, but in the long run, it was a fun touch that added something different to the arc. Good work overall, with no major fixes seen!

That wasn't supposed to say disliked o.o Should have said really did like. Sorry about that, heh.

Yeah, my experience with Berle in the last mission was that he stopped following me as I ran into Blappy's room, I got Blappy down to the Betrayal marker, he betrayed, but I didn't have to fight him til I ran back to see what the fuss was.

Sorry I didn't get around to this week's arc, been busy with other projects and was out of town all Christmas weekend.

Edit: Wrong Number reminded me - This arc used to be a 5 star arc with over a hundred plays. A rare thing nowadays, and I know this is a 5 star worthy. It recently dropped to 4 stars, so if you rate this arc, please rate it a 5 star. Let's see if we can use this club to bring arcs up in the ratings where we can.

This week's random roll goes to:

Arc Name: Casualties of War
Arc Number: 241496
Author: Dalghyrn
Number of Missions: 5
Synopsis: On May 23, 2002, the Rikti invaded Earth. During the war that followed, tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and heroes sacrificed their lives to save Earth. One group of heroes that made the ultimate sacrifice was The SOLUS Collective. This is the story of the sacrifice made by everyone during times of war, hero and civilian alike. This dual arc was based on the official CoH narrative of the Rikti War and adds greater depth to the time surrounding the Rikti offensive against the heroes that took place about six months after the first war began.

Review: Casualties of War

Arc ID 241496

Level 50 Claws/Ninja Stalker, Zero Deaths

I liked the overall story of this arc. You took an existing historical event and portrayed it in vivid detail. The ending was particularly good. Shifting through the rubble really got me in the right mood for that last boss. I honestly wanted to kill him for the things that he did and it felt satisfying to take him down. You seem to hit many of the good points of a war story: duty, desperation, revenge and loss.

Story- The story is what drives the arc. You spend a lot time describing events in text that Architect scripting could not have done. This helped immerse me in the overall story and helped me understand the overall scale of what was going on. A good example of this is when the buildings started crashing down around you or when the giant tank pounded the battlefield. You also picked some awesome levels for this arc. It almost seems like they were designed especially for this arc.

Gameplay- I particularly liked the older version of the Vanguard. This was spot on. The Vanguard in the current game obtained most of their technology from the Ritki so it made a lot more sense to reskin them as longbow so that they had modern battle armor and modern weapons. It did seem odd fighting them in the second mission where you defend the base. Why would they be fighting the Rikti and you if they defected and why were some allied and some not? Another weird boss battle was in the 4th mission. You use the mother mayhem hospital and I encountered a Rikti rider as the final boss. He cannot fit in the tight space of the hospital and most of time his body was sticking out of the world. You should make the boss something smaller like a chief soldier, chief mentalist or magus.

Objectives- Most of the objectives were clear. I do think you planted an excessive amount of dead bodies in the 3rd mission. At first, I thought I had to click on all of them but eventually I got tired and just avoided them. It would have been nice if I were told that these bodies were an optional objective. In addition, some of your rescue and combat dialogue is a bit wordy. I realize you want to tell a strong story but I personally dislike having to sift through a chat log to catch up on text and it is distracting during combat.

Overall, I thought this was a great arc. I rated it 5 stars because you managed to capture the grim feel of Ritki War.