Eva Destruction

99% of science fiction and fantasy out there sucks.

There are far more time travel stories that are bad. Once you introduce time travel, it becomes a cop-out for writers who can't come up with a better idea. The very concept encourages inconsistency, and makes for an easy "you can do anything you want because at the end of the episode everything will go back to normal." It's cheap, and it's meaningless.

It is especially cheap in the context of an MMO, where status quo is god, to throw in some time travel rather than to write a good story set in the here and now of the game world with a definite conclusion that doesn't disrupt said status quo.

If you want to aspire to mediocrity, that's your prerogative. Just because you're not as good a writer as some professionals, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be.

On the other hand, there are situations where you might want all of the available spawn points in an "overpopulated" room to be filled.

And before people start throwing around words like "exploit," and "farming," keep in mind that it's fairly easy to hit your aggro cap of enemies on every spawn just by cranking yourself up to x8.

Wow, that is way beyond the level of control I'd ever expect the devs to even be considering thinking about giving us. I'd be happy with simply having all the existing spawn points numbered and being able to choose to place my boss at Boss 1, Boss 2, Any Detail 1, etc. Any improvement on the ill-defined and often-buggy "Front," "Middle" and "Back."

Edit: doh, beaten to the punch.

The actual problem was that the captive that triggered them spawned in the very back room with the EB.

Act 2 and 3 are on my list, for when I reach those levels. I didn't have any problems with the EBs in this arc (downgraded to bosses on my diff setting), even the ones I fought without the allies' help; a purple, a red, maybe a breakfree, spam Divine Avalanche, and EBs tend to die pretty easily. Although if I ever do an experiment like this again I will implement a rule of "No Madness Mages before I have my mez protection."

I just found it odd that all the super-Eidolons had some variant on powers I found in refrigerators in the first mission, but the Sonics came out of nowhere.

****
ZAGMUK Act One: The Herald
#266123

This is the start of another multi-parter. Magical war, sinister cult, ancient power...whatever happened to brainless gang members bent on mutual eradication?

The contact this time is Paco Sanchez, who sends me out to find a missing hero named Sharuu. He sends me into a Hellion warehouse, where I'm expecting a bunch of brainless gang members, but instead I find...the Circle of Thorns. A few dead Hellions and a frightened Hellion prisoner later, I find the Circle leader, which gives me a new objective: defeat the Inquisitor. There's ominous dialogue throughout, with talk of "the Master" and clues that indicates the Hellions are involved in more than their usual lame demon-worship. I do find out that Sharuu is still alive, and yay, Ding! DO time.

Through a fortuitous coincidence, Sharuu's girlfriend knows where he is. I'm not sure how she knows, or how Paco knows that Sharuu is in need of medical assistance, but there's a Circle ritual involved, so I'd better hurry. Turns out there are other "hostages" in here...although hostages might not be the right word, since it implies their lives will be negotiated for. I free them, but I don't find out what the Circle wanted them for.

Sharuu is recovering in the hospital but isn't quite coherent yet, so I go off to beat some answers out of the Hellion leader who wasn't in the first warehouse. Right off, I encounter a mysterious stranger...who knows who I am, spouts some mystic stuff about "our paths align here," but isn't very forthcoming with any actual useful information. Also, he has Gale, which is annoying. There's some nice dialogue from the Hellions in here, and some clues as to the greater plot...it's all very mystical, and very mysterious right now.

The defeat of their leader puts the Hellions out of the picture, but Sharuu still isn't being much help...no one can make heads or tails of any of the clues I found...time to head to the source and beat up the Master. This adds a new wrinkle: someone, or something, called the Emissary. From where, we don't know, but he/she/it is creepy and inhuman and talks gibberish. Strange things talking gibberish are never good. The patrol dialogue in here is again ominous and generally not-good.

Yep, not good. I return to Paco and find out that everything has gone to hell. The clues I found have been made sense of, Sharuu has woken up, and bad stuff is going to happen, like, today, unless I stop it. The map choice here is a bit odd...why would the Circle ritual be happening in a brightly lit office building? For that matter, I find out about the rituals from a captive...but there are no hapless captives involved in the rituals themselves. And, I have to backtrack to stop the rituals, which is rather immersion-breaking.

This whole final mission feels a bit anti-climatic. I am told after the fact that what I did was a big deal, I prevented a great and ancient...something from entering the world, and I did solve the mystery of the missing hero, but none of this happened within the mission itself.

Overall I think this arc could use more clues; a lot of stuff I discover within the mission, some of which pops up chained objectives, comes from dialogue, which gets mixed in with patrol dialogue quite frequently. Some of the boss and captive dialogue could use some expansion in clues. Also, more clues (definitely one from Sharuu, and some indication of what the rituals actually entailed) and maybe a few more objectives in the final mission would give it more of an "end of Part 1" feel, rather than just a "to be continued..." This seems to be the intent here, but the execution isn't quite there.

There's one other thing that bugged me; one of the Circle patrols has dialogue that claims what they're dealing with is "older than Oranbega," but the clues I find are ancient Mesopotamian. Oranbega predates Babylon and Sumer and pretty much all of known human civilization by about 10,000 years. Now this dialogue may be deliberate, but without followup, it looks like a canon slip-up.

A rather ominous tone was built up and maintained throughout the arc, up until the last mission with its sub-optimal choice of map. Great use of dialogue to this effect. There's a sense of "we're small fish in a big, dangerous ocean" here, both in the case of the NPCs, and to an extent, the enemies. It works as an epic tale told through the eyes of small players, who only get a glimpse of the real scope of events. What doesn't work is the implication that THIS IS BIGGER than we think. As part of something bigger, yes. As something bigger in and of itself, no, not so much. And as a small part of something bigger, there's enough of a hook for Part 2 that this particular small part could use a more definite ending.

If you have decent defense, you're much better off fighting Malta than Nemesis, at higher difficulties.

I think a lot of the stigma around fighting Malta is a holdover from years ago, before Sappers were nerfed repeatedly and when the FOTMs were powersets that were particularly vulnerable to them. Whisper the word "Sapper" to a soft-capped /shields or /SR Scrapper (or Willpower tank for that matter) and watch him charge in screaming.

The PP is actually a random Crey boss. It has to be, because of the break in Crey mobs at 45, and I didn't want to throw a PP Elite at a level 40. I'll have a look at his dialogue, some euphemisms might be in order.

Teh Crushifier is actually a reference to Star Control 3, which so far one person has gotten. I've never been entirely happy with some of his lines though, so they might bear a look-over.

Nothing bigger than a boss. There is one custom boss but he's actually easier than some of the standard bosses. I wrote this arc before the Great Badge Yank of '09, when I was still working on badges with my Blaster...and I'd had my fill of AVs and EBs at that point.

Malta is one of those groups that doesn't need AVs. The real "villain" behind them is a philosophy, not a person. They are far scarier when their leaders are just a bunch of faceless shadowy figures in a conference room somewhere. AVs are so prevalent in this game that they've become somewhat of a joke; giant sacks of hit points that are immediately curbstomped by any half-decent team, go to the Zig, then escape again when they're needed for another arc. Malta's leaders don't try to kill you with super powers that you can counter with your own super powers. They kill you with a phone call. They smear your reputation, kill your loved ones or turn them against you, destroy your life and everything you hold dear, and finally show up in the middle of the night and "disappear" you. And even though you're a powerful hero who has saved the world countless times and beaten up all the other Big Bads, it won't matter. You will never win, because as long as that way of thinking exists, the Malta Group will exist. And that is why I love them as adversaries.