Col_Blitzkrieger

Arc #74519, "Valley of the Harpies"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: Short, "Just a bunch of stuff that happens", nasty mobs, no EB warning, glowie hunt on huge outdoor map, no custom mob descriptions, typos.



Used the Brute as the default one again.



Your contact is Julia Pria from Cimerora, who somehow seems to know that far in the future (your present), Harpies will invade Paragon City out of lack of food. Only, the way she's speaking makes it seem like she lives in Paragon, in our present. Very odd. Anyway, they're lead by the three sisters of myth, Aello ("storm swift"), Celaeno ("the dark") and Ocypete ("the swift wing"), and you've got to stop them.

Sure enough, Kings Row is under attack by harpies. They've scattered the remains of their victims around, so you're going to have to clean those up in addition to killing Aello (harpies are apparently acceptable targets for heroes to kill). Unfortunate choice of map, as it's a bit huge to look for five tiny piles of bones.
The Harpies look somewhat inaccurate, considering the original myths described Harpies as simply winged women - these mobs look like monstrous lizard-women with wings and claws. If anything, they look closer to Sirens (ugly bird-woman-monsters with seductive voices). They also don't have descriptions. Powersets vary - minions are either Claws/Sonic Attack, or Claws/Sonic Resonance, which means resistance-based (or squishy) toons can quickly be overwhelmed by incoming damage. The Lieuts are Claws/Pain Domination.
Aello is a Dual Blades/Storm Summoning Elite Boss, which is appropriate for her name and will make her incredibly annoying to fight for melee ATs or Masterminds. Both powersets turned up to max, so expect no mercy. I had some insights on hand so I beat her the first time. Took me a while to find all the glowies on the huge map, but I got the Assassin badge in the process.

Next up we have Celaeno, who's been tracked down to a cave under a shop. The map is one of the office-to-caves maps, full of harpies. Pretty straightforward defeat-boss mission. Celaeno, sadly, isn't exactly "straightforward" - Dark Melee/Sonic Resonance. She debuffed me a bit, hit Soul Drain, and before I could expect anything she killed me with Shadow Maul. I popped my godmode the second time and managed to take her down. You receive an irrelevant clue which uses a wrong name for her, strangely.

Finally, Ocypete needs to die. You're warned that she's the most brutal Harpy known to man. The map is a rather well-chosen Snake Hatchery map, a cave full of eggshells. In the final room we have Ocypete, who indeed turns out to be brutal, but not in the sense you'd expect.
Illusion/Kinetics. First three fights I just died horribly. Illusion is just -mean-. She could stack enough Terrorize through 2 breakfrees and 4 lucks to make me shiver. The Confusion was nasty the first few times, too. After messing about a lot and an insp restock run, I took her down, and got another flavor clue with a wrong name attributed to the Harpy. You get a rather boring one-sentence congrats from your contact and the arc's finished.



Bland. Bland bland bland. The idea is fine, I can appreciate a good play off mythology. After all, mythology plays an important role in the CoX storyline. However, it basically amounts to "bad guys are doing bad things, go beat them up", nothing better than a radio mission. It lacks a moral or strong theme. It's also short, and thus provides no background on the Harpies.
The mobs, in addition to lacking any description, are problematic. The minions stack a LOT of -resistance, and also have some -defense in Claws - more casual players might get shredded a lot in this arc. The healer Lieuts seem an unnecessary extra annoyance. I'd keep the Sonic Resonance to the Lieuts and give the Minions something easier. Also, the name of the Lieut mobs is in plural.
In its current state it's mostly just a "Go, hunt, kill" series of missions, with a glowie hunt thrown into the first mission just to be annoying. It's perfectly salvageable though, and if the story were (somewhat heavily) expanded upon, it could become something defnitely worth recommending to others. It's anything but easy, though.

Arc #23256, "The Viral Army"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: Typos, luck based timed mission, really nasty AV.



Normally I'd use my MM for an arc with AVs. However, you are warned about timed missions, and my MM doesn't have a travel power. My Brute has Super Speed and a stealth IO, though, so I'll be using that.



Dr. Steve Sheridan informs you that Dr. Leona Logan, an elderly woman scientist, had been presenting her work on some sort of virus that stimulates cell-growth - until a bunch of mercenaries broke in, took her hostage, and promptly let the virus loose into the building. Sheridan gives you an anti-viral shot before sending you off to the rescue.

The map is an office, full of custom enemies of the Gundown's Army faction. They look like more flamboyant versions of Nemesis Soldiers, and come in a small variety of powersets - Assault Rifles, Devices, some have Maces and Shields with a big G on them. Bosses have Mercenaries/Martial Arts.
You have a few goals here - close the virus canister to prevent further leakage (somehow the mercs didn't think getting infected would be bad for them), rescue Dr. Logan who's set to spawn in Front, and defeat Gundown. Gundown was rather annoying to fight - his powersets are Mercenaries/Devices, and he kept spamming Smoke Bombs, making me unable to fight back. I converted some of my stash of respites into insights and beat him into the floor.

Dr. Logan is safe and Gundown behind bars, but Dr. Sheridan's got something else to worry about - the rest of Gundown's men are releasing the virus into Steel Canyon, and you're tasked with... destroying their cars, for some reason. I'm sure it helps to contain the virus, somehow. You're warned in advance that you'll have 10 minutes after accepting. The mission is full of hostile civilians who have begun to replicate into evil clones, including an optional boss who died too fast for me to identify his powersets. The normal mobs all have Willpower - hope you're not a stealther, because they have high perception.
Sadly, this mission really demands a longer time limit. It's the villain cape mission map. Your goals are to destroy 3 cars and defeat the boss; the boss is a generic Gundown boss, Mercs/MA, and defeating him causes him to blurt out "You'll never find the canister we hid in the garbage dumpster!". Oops. This spawns a destructible dumpster as an objective. I only found one of the three cars in time, so I failed the mission. The fact that this map has decorative non-destructible cars of its own didn't help.

Regardless, Dr. Sheridan next sends you to rescue Dr. Logan, again - it turns out her exposure to the virus has caused her to begin replicating herself, and her clones have become evil and taken over her lab. You'd think she'd have seen this coming, being the scientist researching this virus, and quarantined herself or something...
Upon arriving, you notice the clones... aren't quite done perfect yet. They look kind of icky, and have disturbing powerset choices - imagine a beige-brown veiny slimy humanoid thing that either sprouts spikes of bones and hurls them at you, or one that just grabs a big old bone from its body and starts using it as a war mace.
You have 15 minutes (it is not said why, but you're warned anyway) to rescue Dr. Logan and destroy the replication capsules. Actually, there's three Dr. Logans to rescue - you're supposed to find the right one. They're all Super Strength/Invulnerability, and the two wrong ones turn on you upon being escorted to the door. Luckily the tech lab map used was very small, so I managed in about 5 minutes.

Now, who else was affected by the virus? Oh right, Gundown and his men. Naturally, the Zig is in chaos due to suddenly being overpopulated by soldiers in questionable green-and-yellow outfits. You're sent to clear things up. On the way to the cells, you bump into Gundown's treacherous clone (I hate Smoke Grenades so very much) and a Bane Spider Executioner, wondering where Jenkins is as they're here to bust out some villains amidst the chaos. Nice touch of flavor there. Gundown is a non-escort ally (the mission ended when I rescued him though) and tells you the whereabouts of the hideout of his boss, being angry over betrayal.

The final showdown between you and Thought Block, the mastermind behind this plot, takes place on another tech lab map. It's populated by every possible type of clone you've seen so far. You have an optional objective in destroying a psychic booster which has allowed Thought Block to mind-control the clones so far - doing this spawns some allied patrols of clones in the mission, not terribly useful.
The boss, Thought Block, is an AV (scaled down to EB for me) who looks like a cross between Fu Manchu and Leader, in a questionable turquoise outfit. He turned out to be Mind Control/Illusion Control - after I was utterly destroyed, I stocked up on Breakfrees, Insights and Lucks, and took him down in the rematch. Not an easy fight, a truly evil powerset combo...

The story ends somewhat awkwardly in terms of closure. Thought Block is locked up, presumable somewhere where his powers are suppressed. And the clones? Apparently they just have to live on as normal people. Well, normal aside from having a hundred or so others just like them. And our dear little Earth was already overpopulated...



The arc's not bad, really. Some of the plot elements were questionable, such as the mercenaries' total disregard for their own well-being (exposing themselves to the virus), and Dr. Logan not realizing that being exposed to the virus would be a bad thing, despite being the scientist researching said virus. Needs some creative tweaking, there. The car-destroying objectives in mission 2 were somewhat random, could probably be replaced with a glowie hunt where you get rid of leaky canisters of the virus. And increase the time limit! It's an outdoor map full of custom mobs!
I liked the boss design, his costume was like something out of old comic books, exposed brain and Fu Manchu beard going together well. Though Mind/Illusion is always an insane pain to fight, at least it matched his appearance and powers pretty well. In fact, most of the custom mobs were done well, and the author even makes fun of his own silly costume designs for Gundown's soldiers. Aside from the high-WP mobs in mission 2, and the final AV, nothing in this arc should be overly tough.
Worth playing, definitely, though bring a lot of insps or some friends for the final fight, you'll need them.

Ambush lines seem to work properly.

[ QUOTE ]
So as your only facing virtual foes why would you receive as much inf as you would receive fighting the real thing.

[/ QUOTE ]You don't.

Brutes have single-target punch-voke.

[ QUOTE ]
3) Remove inf from MA missions that arent devs choice.
inf doesnt fit the theme anyway, the mobs are supposed to be hologramms, why should they give something apart from xp and tickets anyway ?

[/ QUOTE ]Inf is not money.

As far as I know, yes.

Arc #79274, "Collared by the Maestro"
tl;dr: 1 star, do not play this arc. Offenses: Stretching out an unfunny joke everyone is sick of by now for 5 missions, Idiot Plot, contact makes you want to punch him in the neck, typos, overly durable mobs, Cardboard Prison.



Default to Brute, as usual.



Your contact is a guy named Bluedarky, an obvious author insert due to sharing names with the author's global. He says "Nice to see you again" (I've never met the guy in my life) and mentions a group of catgirls have taken over a warehouse in Paragon City.
...Catgirls.
There's a gazillion "GO KILL CATGIRLS XDDD" arcs out there. It's not funny. It might have been funny the first few times. It's long since stopped being funny. It's stupid. It's one of the most unoriginal dead horse gags you could come up with for an arc, and there was no need to stretch it out for 5 full missions. I repeat - it's NOT FUNNY ANYMORE. Catgirl arcs are a dime a dozen.

Taking a big manly sip of coffee to brace myself, I told myself I'd endure this and do a full review, though, so I clicked "Accept" against my better judgement. The contact says catgirls are common in Paragon City (lololol) but this case is suspicious, and he's sent Amanda to scan their minds (which is totally not an unethical breach of privacy).

The map is a generic warehouse - hope you like them, because the entire arc is full of them. Who needs variety, every mission also uses the same custom enemy faction as well, to make it even more monotonous.
And the repetition doesn't stop there. The catgirls all wear black outfits that looks like underwear from a fetish shop. However, their hair and faces are all the same. Clones have never been this disturbing. Unfortunately, they all look the same in the sense that they all have straight black hair and slanted eyes. Yeah, that might be taken the wrong way by players of Asian origin (there are surprisingly many both in the US and EU).
The mobs have some variety in powersets - naturally, the obvious Claws/SR is present. Unfortunately this also extends to minions, so fighting them isn't particularly fun (Deflect Deflect Deflect), especially because some of them have Dark Blast to debuff your accuracy. Others just have Dark Armor tuned up high enough for Mez protection.
Amanda is Psi Blast/Super Reflexes and cons as a Boss. After clearing the warehouse of catgirls, you find a collar off one of them (just one?), which you take back to your contact for study. However, your contact is Too Dumb To Live, and promptly puts the collar on Amanda to see what it does.
*EARTH-SHATTERING FACEPALM*

After band-aiding my forehead and rubbing my sore palm a bit, I resumed the arc. Turns out Amanda was kidnapped from the test facility by the catgirls. Cool security, bro. Bluedarky mentions he'd help you save her, but he's busy saving the city from certain doom. Way to make the player feel important! You need to beat up more identical catgirls and escort her out - she doesn't help you this time because the collar is blocking her powers. Nicely done, Bluedarky. Bringing her to the exit triggers an ambush which you don't have to fight, because the mission is complete.

Mission 3, Bluedarky has managed to pinpoint the mastermind mobilizing the army of catgirl clones, and sends you to arrest him. He mentions Amanda, still collared, who rushed ahead upon hearing of this, and asks you to find her, too. She's starting to sound like Fusionette... (one of the mission entry pop-ups Lampshades this).
Again, you beat up some catgirls, rescue Amanda (who can fight again for some reason), and fight the Maestro of Mayhem, who turns out to be some creepy old guy in a tux and top hat, hanging around skimpily-dressed teenage asian catgirls... Squick. He's Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation, and cons as an Elite Boss. Your contact warns you about his this guy is second only to Nemesis in deception, and is so charismatic he can make nearly anyone see his point of view. Yeah, right...

The Maestro promptly escapes from jail, and Amanda transforms into an evil catgirl and runs off. Bluedarky says he'd love to help you get her back, but he can't stand to see her in pain...
*Rubs temples.*
Next mission is yet another warehouse full of catgirls, one of which is Amanda (now with straight black hair and slanted eyes...), who cons as an EB and whose powersets are now Claws/Something. She spouts some lines of implied loyalty to the Maestro (eww) during the fight, then thanks you for freeing her as she drops unconcious.

Final mission, you get to fight the Maestro again. Bluedarky says he'd love to help out, but he has to stay with Amanda. I suppress my desire to punch my monitor - it isn't easy. I'd much prefer if the guy just shut the hell up instead of specifically pointing out to me how damn useless he is.
Anyway, this is pretty much a copy-paste of mission 3, minus the ally, so I'm not even going to bother describing it. Scroll up.

In the epilogue, Bluedarky says the Maestro probably won't stay in jail for long, which doesn't surprise me based on how the rest of the arc is written.



Playing this arc made me feel dirty. I apologize for the harsh words, but it's really that bad. The catgirl gag has been done to death. Even before i14, catgirl gags were rampant. The fact that the mob design implies that all catgirls are Japanese, and all Japanese people look the same, didn't help, and could be seen as offensive.
Minions with armor sets are just unnecessary, especially if they -all- have it. Defense and scaling resists. There's a difference between "challenging" and "tedious". The ToHit Debuffs made it worse. I did have Insights though. At least the EB was Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation, which means he'll go down fast.
The writing is terrible. Your contact is a grade-A moron, which is evident from as early as the beginning of mission 2. Just as people don't like to be bossed around by idiots clearly several times stupider than them in real life, people don't like it in games. The plot itself relies on everyone being mentally challenged, and due to being based on catgirls, doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.
Seriously, I don't even see how you could fix this, aside from unpublishing it forever. The whole idea was stupid and unfunny to begin with.

Lag is a delay in the server communicating with the client, resulting in pauses before powers fire off, rubberbanding, etc.

Performance issues are from your machine having trouble rendering everything going on at the same time, turning your game into a low-FPS slideshow.



I'm not much of a computer-savvy person, but that's my general understanding of them, anyway.

Taunt significantly increases the threat your other abilities cause to the afflicted mobs for the duration.
It'll make your taunt aura little less weak. It does NOT snap mobs onto you instantly upon use, though this is often what it looks like when used on mobs within the taunt aura - pulling with Taunt from range without following up with a ranged AoE damage power is still likely to lose your agro once the other Brutes close in (though being the first one on the agro table has its advantage in keeping the mob on you, so not as easily), but it'll at least direct the alpha at you

This seems to happen on outdoor maps more often than indoor ones.

Most players don't read forums and will not know what this means, though. :/

A checkbox when publishing/editing an arc to indicate this would be good, but for that we'd need to get the Devs to like the idea.

You say that as if other games don't have those issues.

Lag isn't something you can just "get rid of".

Trick or Treat mobs are -mostly- based off existing mobs:

Coven
The Coven is made up of witches also seen as the Cabal enemy group found in Croatoa. Note that this group is the most visually different from their normal in-game spawns of any of the Halloween mobs. The Cabal is primarily colored in shades of grey and black, while the Halloween Coven is much more colorful.

Fir Bolg
Fir Bolg can also be found in Croatoa at the present. Note that there is no badge for defeating them.

Spirits
Spectral Demons from the Circle of Thorns were used to create the Spirits faction.

Vampires
5th Column vampyri were the models used to make up the Vampires enemy group for the event.

Werewolves
5th Column nightwolves and warwolves were the models used to make up the Werewolves faction for the event.

Zombies
The zombies are Banished Pantheon soldiers.


The Zombie Invasion event mobs are unique, and presently not available in the MA.

To be fair, the Lightning costume change emote is colored like Lightning Storm and Thunder Clap, which are yellow for both sides.

Arc #63175, "Trouble in the Music Business"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: "Just a bunch of stuff that happens", annoying mobs, needs a good proofreading by a native English speaker.



Used my default toon again - no exemping involved, and no mention of AVs.



Your contact is Detective Fish of Brickstown. He tells you he's got a bad feeling about a local club called "The Golden Crab". There've been a lot of "troublemakers" in the general area, and two cops that went to investigate have gone missing. Your job is to go fetch, and look for anything suspicious.

The map's the Rave map. The enemies are a semi-gratuitous custom faction of what appear to be dancers, with a somewhat wide variety of powers, but not to the point of being overly random. Lots of mezzing though, and almost everything has an armor set (willpower or invulnerability), so it's probably not going to be very easy for everyone. Certain Lieuts have Terror and Confuse.
You have a ton of goals here. Recover a policeman's body, search for clues, optional body bags and pictures(???) to search, and you have to "talk" to the Barman, who is a somewhat frustrating boss due to having Unstoppable for no good reason. You have to talk to him with your fists, naturally, since everyone at this rave has apparently turned into a murderous lunatic.
One cop's in a body bag, the other one's still breathing, and a captive - no escort, which was nice of the author. The clue you're looking for is in/behind a picture frame - a small device which you instinctively shut off. This is implied to stop the ravers from being stark raving mad (sorry, couldn't resist), and stop the itching in your ears that began as soon as you entered.

The detective, deeply troubled by the loss of one of his men, next sends you to investigate another nightclub. Except it's actually a casino. Though the map looks more like a garage. There was a gambling table, though.
The mobs are custom-made Bikers, which appear to use various combinations of Martial Arts, Assault Rifles, Traps, and Thugs. Oh so very, very, many Thugs. Luckily they seemed to be low-difficulty. The map's pretty small, and your only goals are to loot a trashcan for a list, and a picture on the wall for another device.

As this seems to be more widespread than the detective originally thought, he sent some other heroes to search for clues. One of them managed to find something to help decode the list, which pointed out a certain warehouse you're sent to investigate, alongside said hero.
The hero, Cyrene, is a rescuable ally who seems to have... hummed her guards into submission until your arrival. Turns out she's Sonic Blast/Healz0r, and I certainly appreciate a good Fortitude. The Souvenir later goes into somewhat unnecessary lengths to describe how attracted you feel to this awesome character, which makes me suspect author insertion. Together, you destroy crates of these sonic emitters, and take down the leader, a Thugs/Invulnerability. Yes, he has Unstoppable, what were you expecting? A short fight against a normal human? He threatens to sue you into the ground as you smash his face into the floor, since you don't have a 'warrent' [sic].

He dropped a notebook, which the detective decoded to find mention of a meeting the next day. Cue timeskip, and you and Cyrene team up again to arrest all those responsible. The detective says he's not allowed to tell you there's Paragon Protectors on the scene. Whoops.

Warehouse map. There's four bosses, one of which seemed to be an optional Paragon Protector Elite, which can be painful. The others include the same Thugs/DieFasterDamnYou guy with the seemingly electric-fist-proof suit yuo beat up in the last mission, a Thugs/Sonic guy in a suit, and a Crey Scorpion Tank, implied to be the scientist behind the sonic emitters. No EBs or anything, so pretty straightforward.

In the epilogue, you learn that the two suit-wearing guys were trying to devalue the clubs (ravers going on murderous rampages would certainly do it) so they could buy them, and Crey were trying to find a sound frequency that'd turn normal people into obedient supersoldiers. Well, anything's worth a try to a comic book mad scientist. Personally, I find the easiest way to turn people murderous is to force them to listen to Nickelback songs, but...
Naturally, Countess Crey has already prepared a story for the press about how an unfortunate rogue agent has been wasting company resources. Of course, the press is stupid and eats it all up, but props to the author for getting Crey's usual response to heroes meddling in their affairs accurate.



It's a fine arc. The English is pretty bad at some points, and could use a professional proofreading for both spelling and grammar. The mobs are a bit too durable - the minions in mission 1 really should lose their armor sets, and the bosses don't have any sane reason to have Unstoppable, unless "Barman" is a superhero name like "Iron Man". Sidenote, a superhero with the superpower to serve a nice cold beer whenever someone needs it would be wicked awesome.
The plot could use a little bit of development, though. It lacks impact. The fact that crey were trying to make people into soldiers is only briefly alluded to in the epilogue, and the problem is resolved somewhat rapidly - comparing proportions, you spend a little too much of the arc figuring out what's going on, and not enough fixing it. Sure, it's implied the other heroes on the case disabled the other devices, but then was this really that critical of a matter? Seems the detective had enough helpers to spare that the problem was fixed even before you punched out the culprit.
Also, might want to cut down on the admiration of Cyrene in the souvenir.

No, sorry, was a Quick Reply.

Dear god, some of the uninformed replies in the thread... I'm not trying to be a dev fanboi here, but wow. Some people must've been playing a different game than I have, and posting on some different forums.

[ QUOTE ]
you get pistols and everyone knows there cool

[/ QUOTE ]Since the OP mentioned he's looking for good, he's probably not interested in MM personal attacks.

[ QUOTE ]
wow i must have missed the red lightening happening where you people live. Round my way its all a white/blue colour.

[/ QUOTE ] Believe it or not, some people actually still play villains.

Duration 5 seconds, cooldown 10 seconds, afaik.

[ QUOTE ]
a back mounted Jacob's Ladder similar to the ones used by the electric wielding freaks

[/ QUOTE ]Very very do want!

Will when maintenance finishes... *checks*

The theory I've heard is that republishing an arc deletes all instances of its souvenirs from people who have played it; haven't verified this though.

[ QUOTE ]
more -def

[/ QUOTE ]You mean -End, they use electrical blasts. They're extremely useful, though.

Getting a patron pet in addition to the normal 5 is well worth it, if you ask me.