Roy Cooling FTW!!!! *Possible Spoilers*

I just had a thought. Keith Nance totally owns as an ally in the latter mission. He is a total BAMF who runs in to spawns without hesitation and wipes them out. Now, I've run the ITF countless time and was never terribly impressed with the assistance Imperious provides, but drop Keith Nance in there and watch the f*** out!!

This is what led me to a new theory. Are we really supposed to believe that seeing Keith Nance in action in the same issue release as the itroduction of the Incarnate system was a coincidence? I think not.

Keith Nance = Incarnate BAMF

I'm playing through the arc right now. Only on the second mission, and I can't wait for a revamp of all the old missions (if they ever happen). Just the ability to say something other than "accept" is freaking cool. I know that's been around for a while, but still. I also liked how in the first mission (and I assume more throughout the arc) you could choose how to deal with Louie Dogger.

I just feel like I'm missing part of the story. The initial dialoge just starts off talking about some guy named Stanfeld like I should already know who he is, and about all this medi-port stuff like it's been going on for a while, and my toon just hasn't been watching the news lately.

Other than that, so far I'm enjoying it. Nice break from all the 13-15+ mission arcs in the 40-50 range.

EDIT: Gah, and I just failed on the mission where the building collapses. I'm pissed now, lol. Actually, that's probably a good thing because with all this side switching and Praetorian stuff, my toon was supposed to encounter a time where he walks on the very edge of "that line" (in my lore for him). This could very well be that event.

I absolutely HATED Roy Cooling's arc right up to the very end, when I was willing to give it a passing grade. Why? The writing. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that, on the technical side, his arc is well done. Unique and interesting maps, cool mechanics, nice surprises. But was it too much to ask for this to come with writing that doesn't make me tear my hair out?

Seriously, this has to be a new low when it comes to writing, and I don't say this lightly. I haven't seen it this bad since Montague Castanella, and at least his writing could be ignored because his missions are simple. But Roy is rife with horrible grammar, text errors, really forced dialogue and just overall bad writing. I mean, I played Vincent Ross' arc almost immediately before this one, and it was GREAT! Vincent was excellently written by a clearly talented writer (which can't be said for that arc's supporting cast, but oh, well), but Roy Cooling is just... Ugh! It feels like this was written by a level designer or a programmer or ANYONE who should have no business writing professionally.

I mean, yes, I can see that there might have been a good idea somewhere in there, like the plot may not have been so terrible... But it's executed SO BAD! This is the kind of writing that makes me want to skip my briefings and just kill stuff to make it go away. And it manages to bastardise existing contend YET AGAIN!

You know Malta, right? That clandestine paramilitary organisation that almost NO-ONE KNOWS ABOUT? That's their shtick, after all. They're a secret conspiracy that secretly runs the world behind the scenes, assassinating presidents, toppling governments, mind-controlling people. Crimson and Indigo go out of their way to explain how no-one really knows about them. Crimson even claims they're still largely unknown, even in intelligence circles. In fact, the entirety of the result of World Wide Red is that Malta is finally known to SOME authorities, and it'll be harder for them to hide their business.

But forget that. Secret organisations are no fun, so let's make it so everyone knows about them. Oh, yeah, Roy Cooling knows. The rogue PPD know about them. The Sky Raiders know about them. It's no big deal. It's not like they're secret or anything. Hell, if Daedalus over in ancient Rome knew about the Malta group enough to send you to hunt them down across time, why wouldn't Roy Cooling? Good job making both Crimson and Indigo into complete idiots, Roy. Good job!

What happened to the "story bible?" Serious question here. Wasn't there supposed to be this large compilation of background lore and future story development that the game was following? They made a big deal out of it when they removed the 5th Column back in the day, so what happened to it? Because from where I'm standing, it feels like none of the current writers really care one bit about currently existing lore, nor do they feel like they've actually played the actual game. Any place that new content interfaces with old content, it manages to make a contact redundant, a story arc pointless or an entire plotline obsolete. Why does this have to keep happening?

*edit*
OK, I will admit. That one EB Zeus Class Titan right at the end was cool. But would it have been that much of a problem to NOT reveal who Malta is? Just treat them like these "mysterious benefactors" and drop the Titan at the end as a "What the hell is that thing?!?" moment, then leave the thing with no resolution until people actually meet Malta for real.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

In closed beta I laid into the Devs heavily for how poorly the last mission was designed from a mechanical point of view for a level 20 fresh from Praetoria.

It was advertised as their intro to Paragon City, which meant, the first thing they did leaving Praetoria from a solo-only mission.

So, imagine the last fight in the last mission from the point of view of a real Level 20 Praetorian with no Shivans, no Accolade Powers, no Kieth Nance, and trained to take on missions as a soloist.

Castillo resets his fight with you twice, which means commencing to engage an EB three times over. That will totally exhaust all your inspirations and long term buffs. Then, on top of that, an EB ambush. That's basically 4 EB fights in a row.

People freaked out with duo EB fight in Ramiel's arc. Where's the real rage for this really outlandishly overpowered final 4-EB fight for level 20s?

Granted, level 50s exemplared down, or folks on team won't have that problem. But this doesn't give a fresh Praetorian soloist a chance of survival.

Not to mention the annoyingly long mission map that has to be traipsed through with each trip to the hospital.

This mission should really have been level 25-30 (or higher) and given after Kieth Nance's mission so that soloists will be given the hint to take Keith along for the help. Also, by that time, Praetorians will have had the chance to join a SG or pick up Shivans.

But for level 20 Praetorians newly arrived to Paragon City? This arc is a pure set-up for failure.

Yeah, I just attempted this on my lvl 20 Fire/Dark Corr straight out of Praetoria.

Ouch.

Always hated fighting the PPD villainside, so I just stealthed as much of the missions as I could. Didn't manage to fine all 12 of the Rogue PPD in the burning building and when I finally found the guy I was supposed to rescue, he didn't seem to want to run as fast as possible. He just did the usual crappy NPC escort nonsense.

Then theres the second to last mission, where you have the 3 PPD with you. So I try to fight my way through the Rogue PPD. Also get spammed with ever changing mission objectives before I can even make sense of what the hell I'm supposed to be doing (more on this later). Anyway, I get to a bit where I end up fighting 2 groups at once due to the map layout, I cant heal my allies because I have perma flashbang on me (often 2 applications). Oh wait no, I cant heal because I'm held half the time. Oh wait no I cant get to them to heal them because my runspeed it debuffed. Oh wait Twilights Grasp isn't even recharged yet becase of the recharge debuff. All my allies die. Screw this.

In the hospital I drop the mission.

Talk to Roy. Dont understand a thing he's on about. Because I dropped the mission, I missed out on whats going on and also some clues or something. Whatever. I'll just finish this now.

No.

No way in hell will I finish that last mission. Why do my objectives change every 5 seconds? Why is it never clear what I have to do? Whats this timer for? What happens when it runs out? One ambush? Infinite? Apparently something will happen in 60 seconds. But nothing does. A few minutes later a load of Sky Raiders jump me. Where these related to the timer? Did I spawn them by clicking a glowie? .

What is it with this "X minutes until an ambush shows up" thing we have now? Am I supposed to do something before it happens? I have no idea.

Roy's objectives? What are they? Are they optional? (ie, something Roy would LIKE me to do for his cause but I can choose not to if it doesn't suit My goals?) or are they something that HE has to do himself? (in which case, why are they showing up for me?).

I never made it to the end. Got my face smashed in by Callisto on the roof, with a load of Sky Raiders helping him. I didn't stand a chance. I was able to apply debuffs and fail to destroy his FF Generator before I died.

I dont even know why my character is doing this or what is going on or what this chip is. I just have no idea, I cant make any sense of it and dont feel inclined to.

In 3 days I'll drop the last mission and never touch this arc gain.

Probably the worst arc I've ever played. And if someone tells me I'm supposed to be higher level or have SOs or something before I do this, why was I directed to do this as soon as I left Praetoria?

I was really excited to stumble on this mission this afternoon - it sounded pretty compelling. I just wasn't prepared for how *long* it was going to be! I was playing my level 22 Defender (weather/psychic blast) and teamed with an electricity blaster of comparable level; we typically work very well together.

The mission was tough, but fun; my mode of reading copy is to skim thoroughly enough to get the story line but quickly enough to not get bugged by plot holes or typos, so that didn't bother me. We spent nearly 8 hours slogging through the arc (albeit with food breaks, phone breaks, and breaks to go outside and shovel, because we're getting socked with a colossal blizzard right now), and were just to celebrate our victory over Castillo ("Okay, this HAS to be the end!") when, out of *no*where, we start getting pounded by the EB Zeus Titan. Our initial toe-to-toe with it was going surprisingly well and we had it down to less than half when we both were defeated, so we rez'd, re-beefed up, and went back in. And got pummeled. We tried again. And got pummeled. And again.

I started wondering if we were missing something, or if there was a trick to this, but apparently not. The second time, we made the error of trading off who exited the mission to fetch inspirations, and, while the involved maps were a very cool feature, having to run through level after level of the Sky Raider base just to get back to the final fight did feel a bit like an exercise in futility. After 8 hours of working this arc ("Wait, are you sure this isn't actually a task force?"), we had to face the fact that there was no way we would beat this EB, and were just too wiped to keep trying only to just accrue more XP debt than the fight would be worth. What a let-down, especially after the number of boss fights we'd already won!

On our last rez, I called Roy and opted for the auto-complete option, as we just didn't want to have to go through that long string of Jump/Assault Bot boss fights in the Sky Raider base all over again.

Our victory felt a bit hollow.

Welcome to the forums, Syagria

EDIT: There must have been a lot of breaks, as 8 hours is kinda on the long side for that arc

I was annoyed by the use of Malta as well. It felt like they were shoehorned in just to have the moment at the end when the Zeus Titan shows up.

What bugs me is that, in the 20-30 range, you're not going to be seeing any more Malta for a while (barring sidekicking up and such, of course). So the arc presents you with a supersecret organization dedicated to undermining the government and hunting supers ... and you can't do anything further about it for another 10 or 20 levels.

Why not use Crey? They've got a very similar schtick -- infiltration, manipulation, super-tech -- and a character in his or her 20s will be getting Crey arcs and missions relatively soon.

I can certainly understand the argument that the arc is too difficult for a level 20 fresh out of Praetoria, and perhaps should not have been presented as the first challenge to those players, however, I do not accept "It's too hard" as an argument that something isn't good. If it's too hard, level up, get some friends, adjust your settings, employ different strategies, etc. Ever read a comic where the featured hero can't handle a task by themselves? It happens, they try new things, the good guy wins. I am primarily a solo player, but would never attempt this solo because the scope is too large for one hero. I was able to do it with relative ease with a team of two (elec blaster and kin defender). Yes we died, and we had to discuss strategies in a lot of places, which made it that much more fun.

As far as the writing goes, I try not to pay too much attention. It's a video game. If I want good writing, I'll grab a Vonnegut novel.

Its not so much that it was too hard, its that it wasn't FUN. I didn't actually die that many times on this, but each time I went to the hospital I kept thinking "why am I doing this?".

Walking through mires of debuffs at lvl 20 for several missions with only DOs is not my idea of fun. I couldn't even fall back on reading the story because it just makes no sense, for all the reasons Samuel_Tow listed. So I dont have any reason to do this either for myself or my character.

I think this arc would be much better suited to being 10 levels higher. Its not like we need more 20-30 content at this stage anyway.



Oh and GG, I dropped the mission because I couldn't face going back in on my own, as all my NPC allies had died. I was bad enough with them helping me. I really wish we could read clues and dialogue from a mission after we'd finished it. Really help for those boss fights where the boss and the hostage will spam 3-4 speech bubbles each at the start of the fight.

I'd read the first page or so of this thread and was looking forward to this "epic" story arc. I finally ran it today, on Sable Lance, my level 47 dual pistol/devices blaster.

I noticed in the first mission that I was set to +2. But Sable Lance is well IO'd, and I was having fun laying trip mines and pulling enemies into them. Slow, but it felt like I was the better "normal person with tech gadgets" operative. They had no super powers, I had no super powers. I was sneaky and using my mines and caltrops and guns, and taking out one group at a time.

The glue was REALLY annoying. That made a very slow process even slower. It never stopped me from winning a fight, it just delayed the next fight by a couple of minutes.

When the bomb went off in the office building, I was a bit confused. I remembered the post about the "epic fight on top of a burning building" or something like that... so I thought, "Oh, we're several missions in, this must be the big ending. Where's the stairway to the roof?" Needless to say, I could find no stairway to the roof, failed to find the room with the boss and hostage right away, went down two floors by accident (kinda confusing in all that fire and smoke), and when I finally found them I didn't realize I was on a timer. I was laying trip mines when the mission ended.

The warehouse mission with the three other guys was kind of annoying too, because I was being pushed to run forward, run forward, I'm on another timer, but that's not really the style that works for my blaster solo. But once my allys were dead and the timed ambushes were over, I went back to my old habit of laying trip mines and pulling enemies to them.

Everything went slow but steady until the big final fight. This is where I realized that being set at +2 was a REAL problem. But also, Castillo was just plain annoying. I'd buff up, lay mines, attack, and he'd run away. Buffs would wear off, I'd lay more mines, and then he'd come back. Buff up, attack -- he ran away. On his third return I was low on inspirations and he killed me. I bought a boatload of purple inspirations, ran aaaaaaalllll the way back, and repeated the above scenario over and over again -- buff, lay trip mines, attack, he runs away, buffs wear off, lay trip mines, he comes back, buff, attack, he runs away.... He killed me two more times, so I went through more than two full trays of purples (remember, I'm 47, this is a full sized tray) trying to kill him. And thank god they put a hospital in Striga or it would have been even more unbearable.

Then I finally somehow finish him off, and I'm ambushed by an EB that is all but invulnerable to bullets and somehow keeps killing me even when I've swallowed 3-4 purples. I went through several more trays of purples fighting him, died multiple times, but at least the robot didn't run like a scared rabbit. It did fall off the top of the platform more than once, though.

Anyway, this fight, from the eyes of my blaster at +2, was hardly "epic". It was a painful hour spent trying to whittle two EBs down. When I finished, the arc had taken me 3 hours and 24 minutes total.

Now I realize it'll go much faster and feel much different on one of my scrappers... if I actually want to run it again.

Hooray for everything being highly resistant to S/L.

Just tried this arc twice on my 50 with an SG mate for the badges through ouro. Both times we failed the fire rescue mission, and then we both ragequit lol.

That fire rescue badge misison is so cluttered with crud objectives it's horrible. Terrible design. Faile.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Roy Cooling Arc, yeah ran it a few times, always nice to get "No One Left Behind" not really a tough mission or anything if we can see more of this kinda content, then playing the mid-level stuff will be worth it!