Arc x Tales of the Terran Space Marines - Eternitiy's Edge

DeathSentry · 12-13-2010 10:51 AM

Arc Name: Tales of the Terran Space Marines - Eternity's Edge
Arc ID: 360243
Level Range: 41-54
Faction: Custom: Terran Space Marines, Elisyur
Difficulty Level: Medium, should be soloable by most builds with the use of optional allies. There are EBs in the third is a tough EB at the end, but but you will have allies to help if needed.

Synopsis: You interface with the AI of the local salvage assignment computer to take on what appears to be a routine task though with the addition of the marines, you start to wonder is there more going on than initially thought.

Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes: 3 missions, 2 medium, 1 medium-large (search mission but items are highlighted)

Please post feedback here!

Arc: 378122 "Tales of the Terran Space Marines -The Apocalypse Initiative" 5stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rgl4...687B0FC89F142C
Arc: 481545 "Twilight of the Gods - The Praetorian conflict"8000+ hits!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxJ6S...848B21E2350DCC

GlaziusF · 12-13-2010 06:34 PM

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Running this on an armed man of my own, a low-40s merc/TA mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.

---

Going 2001, are we? Ah, no, this little one is computer-synthesized.

The accept text kinda runs off the end of the mission screen. You might want to make it a bit less verbose. I find that accept texts work best as objective statements of the mission goals.

The mission brief all tends to run together between my internal monologue and whats being asked of me. Multiple line breaks and shorter paragraphs would help.

Hmm. None of these enemies seem to have any descriptions, aside from the recolors, which have their original descriptions.

Many of them also seem to be missing spaces in their names,

For some reason the general starts following me around. This makes the enemy plant control NPCs a real riot to fight, as their creeper patch seems to spawn one creeper per target in it. Im also seeing rain of arrows from minions here, or at least think that I do.

Coupled with the illusion control bosses theres a good chance that most of the fighting takes place for no XP after the real threats are down.

For some reason I destroy a Terran beacon that the blue-skinned catlike aliens are standing around.

---

And now we kill everybody, take our troops back, and virus-bomb them all. Just another glorious victory.

Between finding the bombs, waiting for the general to resummon the robots hes already got, and trying to track down the many chained boss fights, this mission has a whole lot of running around and waiting.

Apparently these energy creatures created us, and the blue-skinned catlike aliens are forms that decided floating around the cosmos knowing everything was boring and went back to being fleshy.

Ive just been a soulless cog in a corporate machine this entire time aaaand my entire species is now getting wiped out. Thatll be fun.

---

Well, maybe if I turn traitor Ill feel happy when were all sucked into the cosmos.

Oh, bah. First room is one of those lab affairs where you run up a ramp right at the start and get three groups at once. That doesnt go easily.

...moreso because some of these minions are resistant to any sort of crowd control. Wow.

Did I say some? I hit a spawn with my EM arrow and nobody was held.

Some of these soldiers also have Energy Drain, which is an undodgeable half the blue bar taken away.

I pick up some kind of chief alien in the entry, though, whos a help.

And some more converted PPD, who seem to have taken a roll in the technicolor.

Anyway, the general drops, who I think is the end boss (an HVAS) drops, and then in the same tiny room its... my contact as an energy-spewing robot?

And an energy being, just for fun, even though I never really jump down to tag it before the fights over.

And as a result... oh, forget this. Ill see you in the breakdown.

---

Storyline - *. So Im some kind of independent salvage contractor, or maybe a frozen cloned space marine, or perhaps a soldier in a future PMC, talking to my daughter, who is actually an AI playing off my implanted memory, who may have been compromised by a lab technician or perhaps by the energy aliens who created all life.

You may notice Im a bit unclear on exactly what I am and what Im doing in space in the first place. I wasnt exactly clear on a lot of what was going on in this arc. Having everything run together in the briefings makes it harder to pick any information out of them, and I dont think until I return from the final mission that anything in the briefings is actually supposed to be true.

The enemy bosses tend to provide a lot of the necessary exposition, to the point that I suspect that some of the chained boss fights are only there because all the exposition wont fit into one fight. But none of them really touch on the little matter of who I really am, or why in the end the aliens pull the hammer of destruction away.

The story needs more time to develop. It feels like youre trying to address each of the points in every briefing and as a result not really saying much about any of them. Maybe lead off with a normal salvage mission against those nasty alien fauna that showed up in the outdoor mission, to establish the protagonists identity a little better, and right before the end put a mission thats more of a psychological breakout of all the drugs and conditioning the space marines have subjected you to, so you can muster up the will to turn traitor and in the process learn more about yourself and whatever force it is that wants to help you do so.

Design - *. Youve done a very nice job with the aliens, creating a very primitive appearance through the use of tribal shields, primitive weapon powers, and a credible attempt at clothing made out of leather straps.

I could instantly tell they were supposed to be the Navi.

And... thats kind of a problem.

Sometimes, when you make obvious visual clones, theres a good reason. Ive seen them very well used for parodical purposes, or to create expectations which the mission then subverts. But neither of those purposes are in evidence here. Their role in the plot is roughly the same - native species on a planet the space marines want to mine a rare ore from. There is an additional wrinkle in terms of the energy beings but thats not much of a subversion of the source.

I can tell you put some time into the design, but that doesnt make it any less a copy.

Gameplay - *. Minions with full auto and rain of arrows. (Rains a lot of fun when its an ambush just of those minions and thats what they all decide to drop on you.) Minions immune to crowd control. Lieutenants with aim, power boost, and controller pets. Trying to target the actual threats through two dozen carrion creepers. Running all over an outdoor map trying to figure out where the latest new boss spawned. And the last mission, starting out with three simultaneous groups of minions who couldnt be crowd-controlled because of their defensive sets, and ending...

Well, have you ever been on a team where you wonder if youre actually doing anything? Where nothing you do seems to affect the outcome of anything the team does, and all sorts of things are happening just kind of on the periphery? It isnt that the team doesnt succeed, but that you dont feel involved in that success. Well, there were so many allies by the end of mission 3 that it felt that way.

Aside from the very beginning of mission 3 there wasnt that much utter defeat-based frustration, but there was quite a lot of frustrating gameplay - fighting pets for no reward, tracking over empty space to try and find chained bosses, chafing as my allies in mission 3 ran off to kill and then crashing back down as I realized they were doing just fine against the enemies who wrecked me.

Detail - *. None of the enemies except for a few bosses had any descriptions on them, and as I mentioned up in storyline the briefings and boss fight speeches seemed to be made of rather messily compressed misinformation and information, respectively. Paying attention to any given briefing or boss ranting didnt actually do much to help my understanding of what was going on - I just followed the instructions in the navbar and hoped for the best.

As an aside, one way to establish a plot/world, outside of pouring everything into the briefings, is through enemy descriptions.

Overall - *. Plagiarized designs, a labyrinthine story, and frustrating missions all combine to torpedo this one.

Supicous Glenn · 12-25-2010 11:06 PM

Tales of Terran Space Marines

Lvl 38 Fire/Inv Tank- Two deaths. (Mission 3 due to ambush/patrol, Mission 3 due to ambush after Suzi)

GlaziusF has already stated the vast majority of things I found wrong with this mission arc. Listen to his advice it is gold.

Story- It felt very confusing. Most of this has to do with your relationship with Suzi and the mind control and such. I get what you were trying to do but the implementation of it seems cluttered to say the least. The story line needs more time to develop. Maybe extending the arc to 5 missions would give you more time to flesh out the details. The overall story feels something akin to the movie Avatar that is most likely the point. However, you are not parodying the story and you are not true enough to the lore of Avatar to be a tribute to Avatar. This makes the story feel like you were trying to rip off the story and make it something your own. That is called plagiarism.

Objectives- The missions have a sense of objective overload. You spend too much time chasing after objectives. Also have divergent objectives is nice but be careful how you use it. The last fight for example has you fighting an elite boss then a boss then an ambush. Why? One boss is enough why do I need two and then an ambush. This was a very frustrating encounter to say the least. The same goes for your second mission. Why have a second form for a boss when one form would do. In addition, why do you need to plant virus bombs and rescue hostages. Keep the missions simple and it will be more enjoyable.

Gameplay  I could just copy what GlaziusF said because I feel exactly the same way. My advice, remove all pets from minions and lts. Pets are not fun to fight. Never ever use decoys, phantasm or carrion creepers unless it is a unique boss. These pets are completely and utterly annoying to fight. In addition, bramble prevents flying, your main ally flies all over the place so he can actually be prevented from moving at all by the this skill for more than a minute (until bramble wears off). It also prevents hostages from being released so I had some definite down time where I was just sitting there waiting for bramble to wear off. Not fun. Your Terrans seem to have an energy drain attack. This pretty much meant I had to wait for my rest to recharge before I could go back into the fight. Honestly, I got bored and surfed the internet while my end recharged. There are several other little things but I have to say the enemies need some serious balancing. The one thing I did enjoy was the general pet you have in mission 1 and 2. I would leave him untouched.

Details- None of the enemies has descriptions. Many of your clues seem redundant. Your enemies look nice though.