Eva Destruction

The glowie must be a required objective, otherwise you can't set it as a destination for a required escort. You'll get an error message.

In that case, why bother? Just make her a captive and save the player an annoying lead-out.

You could revamp the Atlas Park contacts using only the mission tools the devs had to work with at the time (so no lead-outs, let alone lead-tos) and they'd still be far more engaging than the non-arcs we get. Add in all the tools currently available in MA, and you could come up with something pretty good.

Honestly, after having spent the last year and half asking for simple things such as the ability to use standard Lieutenants as "fight a boss" details, I've pretty much given up on ever having anything that isn't new and shiny added to AE.

+0/x1? I hereby suspend your Scrapper card. It will be returned to you when you set your difficulty to something reasonable and come back with a few debt badges to show for it.

I look forward to having my Kat/DA chewed up by space lizard chicks and creepy floating eyeballs....sometime this week.

The Trolls are using cheap drugs. The guys who get the good drugs are the Family.

Another group whose members may move up are the Skyraiders (a Nemesis soldier shows up in one of their missions, and there is the Lockhardt Aerotech connection between the Skyraiders and Nemesis). Canon doesn't state that they do, but they could. Hellions might also graduate to the Warriors.
It turned out that doing it would destroy the world, so you don't do it.
Read their bios. The CoT are possessing Portal Corps scientists to gain access to portal technology. Apparently it worked, since they're in the Shadow Shard doing Not Good Things. One of the Possessed Scientists shows up in the Faathim TF as well.

Archvillains should be used when appropriate. Some people seem to feel that Archvillains MUST be used, and for a project like this, that would be the first thing to go wrong; badly designed, inappropriate and unnecessary AVs would show up for every enemy group that doesn't have one. Even the devs do it, that's why we have Gyrfalcon.

Specifying anything about the character playing the arc is also a big no-no, since as a canon expansion project it would have to assume you're using the same character you played through the canon arcs with. Which could be anyone.

I don't know where you got the impression that "just for fun" missions are frowned upon by the AE community (one of the most vocal supporters pretty much publishes nothing but comedy, and some "critically acclaimed" arcs are definitely on the "just for fun" side) unless you've been reading too much into a certain poster who has a habit of stating his personal opinion as absolute fact. What would not belong here is simple "fluff" missions: The Continuing Adventures of Lord Nemesis in the Shadow Shard and such. When you create an arc that claims to tie up a loose plot thread, I expect it to be more or less serious (although a few jokes or a lighthearted tone are certainly fine, as long as they're not at the expense of the story), to be plausible in the context of existing canon, and for the author to have done their research.

Arcs on the "featured" list should be examined immediately if they're reported as farms. There wouldn't be as many, so they'd be much easier to monitor than the hundreds of thousands of arcs in the entire system. Smart farmers try to keep their farms off the radar anyway. The dumb ones can just lose arcs slots and come here and cry about it. To steal a line from the market forum, their tears will be delicious.

How so? I'm honestly curious why you think so. It seems to me that finishing the first mission would put farms and actual arcs on a somewhat equal footing...but it would still be easier to "dislike" a farm, due to the fact that farms are designed to be easy to complete. On the other hand, it wouldn't make it any easier to "like" a farm than it is now.

The problem with simply moving away from stars and to another rating system is that it accomplishes nothing when drive-by griefing is so easy. You can just as easily drive down an arc's like/dislike percentage as you can its star average. It honestly ticks me off quite a bit that there has been no dev comment on this whatsoever. They were wrong. We have absolutely no need to be able to 1-star anything so horrible we can't finish it. It can sit there in 0-rating obscurity forever.

It's the level 20-30 villain Morality mission.

I think they're supposed to be the same thing. You know, a bunch of guys who were working in intelligence during the cold war. They are old and even with the Eyepatch and Hat of DOOOOMMM and guns held sideways their aim probably sucks by now. Also a bunch of guys who NEVER NEED TO SHOW THEMSELVES, because they can kill you with a phone call. Or if you're a real threat, they'll sic a giant robot on you.

Really though, I just shrug off any "loose threads" from the Khan and Barracuda TFs as bad writing and/or did not do the research. The whole thing should be done over. And Vanessa De Vore and Countess Crey will take offense at their portrayal in the train wreck that was Khan v 1.0, and erase everyone's memories of the event. It'll be like none of it ever happened.

The badgers dealt with their accomplishments being "taken away" when the more insane badge requirements were reduced. I'm sure the current DC and HoF authors can deal too.

I think in an interview shortly before the release of i14 one of the devs mentioned that the back story of the Coralax would be told by the players, through AE. That obviously never came about, and it's not really the devs' fault since there aren't a lot of arcs dealing with the Coralax. I've played a LOT of AE, and I haven't played anything that deals with them and their backstory in a serious way.

Well of course not, those jerk villains keep trashing all the construction equipment. Now they're blowing up the progress that's already been made in their morality missions too.

It's implied that the Shiva entity has a sentience behind it. So if it didn't hit in Praetoria, or on the Rikti Homeworld, or wherever, it's possibly because it didn't feel like it.

Nictus all look the same. For all we know that's the Nictus equivalent of Nemesis or Recluse.
Tielekku banished the Banished Pantheon, not the CoT. As for the CoT keeping the sleeper bound, well, they also tried to bind Faathim. Whatever reason they have for binding the sleeper, it's probably a nice one, and you probably wouldn't want to help them. Unless of course it's a villain arc where you betray them later.

The 5th Column return plot was going nicely, until they had to go throw a wrench it in by bringing back the Reichsman. Badly. It could have been done well, creating a schism in the 5th between those who followed Reichsman and those remaining loyal to Requiem, adding to the whole 5th vs. Council plot, leading to many many more opportunities for our characters to punch, shoot, blast, kick, and stab Nazis, but instead it was sadly mishandled. I keep hoping that one day someone will clean up that whole mess. Leading of course to many more opportunities for our characters to punch, shoot, blast, kick, and stab Nazis.
It could be part of it, but it's implied that the Coming Storm isn't just one thing, but a bunch of **** hitting the fan all at once. We are told that when it happens, the heroes will be in no shape to fight it off. The Praetorian invasion could very well be a part of it. Then Rularuu invades. Then Shiva. And the Council or 5th unleash a horde of Mega Mechs on Atlas park (there are multiple wrecked Mega Mechs on the ruined Atlas Park map, so it's canon.) And the Malta reveal their army of Kronos titans to the world. And Calystix awakens the Leviathan, and Black Scorpion has his goons put a giant laser on it's head. It will be awesome.

The RWZ storyline goes all the way back to the Superdyne backstory in the 80s. I'd say it's pretty big. Seriously, give it a rest already. "It's a Nemesis plot" is a cop-out by the devs and a joke to the playerbase. We don't need a bigger one.

The CoP deals with getting enough DPS and debuffs on your team to win. That's all. Rularuu are used presumably because they were the toughest enemies in the game at the time. It doesn't delve any further into their lore. It's just a giant lagfest pounding on a bag of HP.

They do have a "faction" color scheme, based off the Iron Valkyr's red and silver color scheme (she's loosely based off a character of mine, an Elec/Elec Brute who predates power customization and uses "armored" costumes. Hence red and silver.) I did try to mix it up a bit, with some being darker and some being brighter, but like you said, it's hard to see in a mission, especially on a darker map.

No idea. I haven't seen them myself, but then again, I wasn't really looking, I just assumed I didn't have access to them.

The bombs are optional because they are a pain to find, and I want the arc to end with the EB fight, not with a blinky hunt in a three-story map. Also, blinky hunts in a three story map tend to annoy players, especially when the map is full of fire and smoke. They were originally listed in the nav bar, but that led to players assuming they were required and going out of their way to try to find them, and getting annoyed for no reason.

I've never figured that out. I tagged it "Romance" because it amused me. It's a villainous arc though, and people kind of expect villain relationships to be somewhat dysfunctional.

Well I'm glad you decided to spare him. The guy has great taste.

I admit, I'm a bit old-school in my mission briefings. It's the contact talking. I don't see a reason for the contact's dialogue to look like a pack of Skittles, so I mainly use color for titles and out-of-character warnings to the player (timed missions and EBs). On the other hand, many authors do use color well in their contact dialogue, and it's become common in dev-created missions as well, so the old-fashioned approach might look a little dated and bland these days.
Honestly, the appearance of these guys has been giving me the most headaches out of anything in this arc since I gave up on my original lone villain idea and gave you a human contact. There really aren't a lot of costume options that look like robots and not like a guy in a robot suit. I don't have the cyborg pack and using too many clockwork pieces makes them look like, well, clockwork. Furthermore, they're not a villain group per se, they're a very large bunch of Mastermind pets. Let's just say they're still being tweaked and leave it at that.

I'm glad you found them balanced though, aside from your psi hole.

If I added in every optional objective the nav bar would fill half your screen. Did you know there's a limit of 25 unique objectives per mission? I didn't, until my last edit of mission 5. I also take the approach that the nav bar represents character knowledge to some extent, and if your character doesn't know it's there, it doesn't go in. Also, with that many objectives, I don't want to make the player think they have to go hunting down, say, 6 bombs in a map that's on fire and full of smoke, and I find the labeling of optional objectives as such to be immersion-breaking.

Could be wabbit, could be. Unfortunately the super stunners aren't available, and I'm not sure they'd be suitable anyway, since if you're going to be handling high explosives on a regular basis I'm not sure you'd want to rig yourself up be shooting off sparks all the time. He's supposed to be pretty smart for a Freak. Sonic tanks don't seem appropriate either. The problem with a custom is this arc is already at 93% file size, I plan on adding another lieutenant to the custom group once Kinetic Melee becomes available, and making a custom Freak to look Freakshow is.....a challenge to say the least.

See, it DOES suit the Romance tag!

Thank you for the play and the review. By the way, I liked the in-character style you have going here, especially the "stuff I didn't hate." They really need a "no fade" option for Energy Cloak so you can take better pictures...and, you know, actually see your guy.

Now that you mention it, I did that quite a bit too. I took on Maestro at -1 or -2 with my MA/Regen and I think a -20 Dr. Vahz with my Ice Blaster (it was an open arc I didn't know I had). I did solo Dr. Vahz at even level at one point with my fully DOd BS/Regen Scrapper that I don't have anymore. So that was my first AV. It took a very long time, and much running around the big central platform waiting for Reconstruction to recharge. That was, of course, before AV regen was buffed.