New Spring Fling missions [SPOILERS]

I've always thought I'm not going to start complaining on these forums about the writing in this game because if I start, I may never stop. And seasonal missions are naturally going to be the worst since they're written on a tight schedule and are only going to be visible for a short time anyway.

With that in mind, let me complain on these forums about the writing in these seasonal missions.

SPOILERS (seriously)








1) I'm an Archmage. Seriously, that's what the badge says: "Your research into the arcane, coupled with your experience in fighting magical foes, has unlocked heretofore unknown magics within you, earning you the title of Archmage." Surely I would have a better handle on how to use a magical ritual rather than "mutter some spells I heard somewhere once and hope for the best"? Minor gripe, can't write for everyone, most heroes are not magic scholars, I know.

2) Why does my character's life have to be linked to that of Red Widow? My character is a hero. She doesn't need much additional reason to go save the life of someone she's just brought back from the dead.

3) I haven't worked with Miss Duncan a day and already I'm entering a warehouse, beating up security and trying to steal an artifact that the owner, as far as I know, has not aquired illegally. I should probably quit before I wind up wearing white and red spandex taking a flamethower to homeless people on foreign soil.

Okay, so it is Crey, who are fairly throughly corrupt, but my sole justification is "I need that thing to mess with someone's mind and the Countess won't give it to me". There is pretty much no way I can look at this and see myself as a hero.

4) On a villain character, I decide to try out Arbiter Hawk's version, and suddenly all becomes clear. It is *exactly* the same story except with "Longbow psychology profilers predict Recluse might become a little less obsessed" replaced with "Arachnos Fortunatas forsee a GLORIOUS FUTURE where Arachnos rules all".

So what I *suspect* happened is that the writers wrote the villain arc first - with the "you have to stop her getting killed or you'll die too" motivation, and the "someone has an artifact I want so I'll break into their place and rob them" and then did the equivalent of search-and-replace to make the hero arc. Heroes are always running around doing anything a contact tells them with the vague promise of 'world better somehow' at the end of it, anyway.

Is this an attempt at making us emphathise with villain players who complain about their content being merely copy-paste of hero content? Or is this an attempt at evening out the quality of red and blueside by lowering the latter instead of raising the former?

In summary, Jessica Duncan's arc is the lowest point in my enjoyment of CoH writing at least since AE was introduced. Even the writing in the Trials has never been bad enough that I wanted to complain on the forums about it.

I haven't run the Hero arc yet, but the timing seems kind of unfortunate. What with Statesman being recently departed, I'm wondering why Ms Liberty is going to the trouble of trying to bring back someone else.

Speaking of spoilers ... I haven't run the hero side version yet, but on the villain side, DJ Zero tells you in passing that Julianne Thompson is Countess Crey. There's the setup for "The Evil Countess Crey" blown. (He also tells you that Vanessa DeVore is the leader of the Carnies, but that one has long since been spoiled by other new content.)

Currently the writing formula seems to be blueside = redside - content.

All that said, and there are STILL more disparaging remarks to be made about this mission.

First off, is Ms. Liberty out of her flippin' mind?!?

She is Statesman's Grand Daughter. Leader of the Vindicators and her own faction of Longbow. She has all these connections and doesn't get some big kahuna NPC wizard to cast this spell? She just sends off a random hero who may or may not have experience casting spells, with no concise instructions, to travel to the netherworld and resurrect a high ranking Arachnos assassin?!?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

None of my heroes would have really taken this mission. I would have rounded up Positron, Castella, and Azuria and had a nice little intervention for Ms. Liberty... Preferably in the mental ward in the bloody Zig!

From top to bottom, the hero side of this arc makes NO sense! I could have gotten a better plot from a 5 year old! It is truly the worst story I have ever seen in CoH, INCLUDING AE arcs.

Maybe she trusts the player, because they're so powerful and important?

OK, it wasn't just me scratching my head over this one.

I've played through the hero arc, and my in-character thought walking away from that first mission briefing was "OK, she's seriously coming apart at the seams here. I'll play along with this until we can get a team together to try to talk her down. There's no way this ritual is going to work, anyway. This could get really messy in the long term. If we can't get her to see sense, we're going to need an interim leader for Longbow. Her judgment is just plain shot..."

It just makes no sense. Even if she was cracked enough to start messing with the barrier between life and death (always a bad idea, no matter how pure your motives) I can think of two people off-hand whose resurrection should have been a lot higher on her list, but she doesn't even consider this and wants to restore a known assassin and villain instead? Huhn?

If Ms Liberty had led us to discover a plan being enacted by Arachnos, then when suddenly confronted with what the villain was actually plotting, she is unsure that stopping it was the right thing to do and maybe even has us help her finish the job, that would have been at least a little believable. Initiating such a scheme, though, regardless of what kind of advice she's getting? It makes my head hurt.

Haven't run these missions yet, but after reading some of the stuff here, I may have come up with some reasonable justification for Liberty's decision.

Considering the events that led to the deaths in her family were done through magical rituals it's possible that those people can't be brought back to life(or that the ritual can specifically only bring back people that died fighting) so with these limitations in mind it would makes sense why Statesman or her mother aren't the targets for the ritual.

Now with that in mind why target Red Widow? Because Recluse is the only true family she has left and if she can bring him some happiness, he may open up to her and then she'll have emotional support from a family.

Alternatively if she's really gone over she may be trying to set up a surrogate family with Recluse and Red Widow filling the voids she now has.

Also alternatively she may be targeting Red Widow to see how/if the Ritual Works, and if there any drawbacks to the ritual they would be Recluse's problem not hers.

I think it's mostly funny that getting Lord Recluse a girlfriend diminishes his desire to go conquer the world.

The way to stop Emperor Cole is to get him a wife. The old ball and chain will never let him go on any interdimensional wars when he's got to go visit the in-laws!