FredrikSvanberg

I decided to check up on how the same author might have improved between two separate arcs. "Beasts II" (511355) by @SwiftJammer was in fact a vast improvement over "Beasts", with something that resembled a plot and an actual introduction by a contact who had an actual name and seemed to fit the idea of the arc.

2 stars for improvement. He should do something about those custom mobs though, they are awfully easy to kill. My controller finished this in just a few minutes.



Despite my much more favourable review, I was once again rewarded with a reply complaining about getting feedback, and some abuse. Despite the MA not being intended for creating farms, the author insists that his story arc is indeed a farm, and should be treated as such and not as a story arc. This must mean that he intends to delete it immediately.

Next up was "Chick Magnet - Fire Ambush Farm" (501098) by @Tank Anja.

The contact is a mysterious woman called Anja (uh oh, looks like this might be an origin story and we know how those usually turn out!), which the contact info tells me is a hologram created by the mission architect computer itself. I like the idea but it seems kind of derivative - too many other people have used the same story for their contacts.

This story started out promising with a visit to the warehouse headquarter of the hot biker women. They sure were hot, because they were all on fire. I noticed a slightly risque element: one of the first women I met practically begged me to hurt her, but when I did a surge of her jilted lesbian lovers flooded the corridor until I could barely see my own character behind the wall of near-naked flesh.

The gameplay was like a fever dream: long, repetitive and confusing, with one exactly similar warehouse after another, with the same masochistic women summoning the same horde of biker women as soon as I touched them. I was slowly losing my tenuous grasp on reality. How long had I been in here, stomping and burning? It had to be an eternity, but no, all five missions breezed by in less than 10 minutes. I could scarcely believe it. Five missions and the story didn't progress at all. No character development or anything.

I noticed an error in the fourth warehouse: Anja tells us it's the third warehouse. Or maybe I was just confused. Why do they need so many similar warehouses, couldn't they have different ones? There's a random map option so it doesn't become all the same, and the author could add some patrols talking about what the bikers are doing in the warehouse. Because of the mistake in mission three, or if it's four, I can only give this arc 2 stars.

Today's first victim was "Burn The Witches!" (505715) by @Hanoosh.

I'm used to brevity in these stories by now but this one was especially spartan. And no, I don't mean that a large, bearded man told me that this was Sparta and kicked me into a well. I mean that the entire story consisted of a single sentence, summarized in the title of the story.

After entering the high-tech laboratory of the witches (I don't know what that was about), I proceded to burn them all, following along in the story as best I could.

A portal promised sweet release from the torment of clicking buttons over and over, and I was soon whisked away and back to safety after having burned all the witches.

It's almost as if no effort went into the creation of this story at all, and I'm thinking that maybe I've been going about this the wrong way all along. Naturally I shouldn't try to think of a plot or motivations or anything like that - those things merely get in the way of what's really important; the mindless clicking of buttons.

Feel free to join in and post your experiences in this thread.

I also played "Zombie Robots (Fire Farm Version)" (504303) by @Ji O'Dee. It seemed like a promising arc with a story about finding the creator of the fire farms and kill him. He was supposed to be a zombie clown, so I'm pretty sure it was some author self-insertion or maybe even an origin story. I were to be severely disappointed, however, since the story was cut short. I entered the warehouse expecting the worst when I was immediately ambushed by hundreds of zombie robots. Some kind of malfunctioning robots, I'm guessing, since they were all spewing fire out of every orifice. Do robots have orifices? Zombies might. Anyway, after I footstomped my way out of the pile of necrotic robot flesh I found a computer humming along right next to me, so naturally I investigated it. This must have given the zombie clown time to escape because the mission ended. There was no end debriefing to tell me what had happened to the clown that created this mission, so I'm waiting for the inevitable sequel. In its current form I don't know if I can recommend this arc. It had a strong meta-game flavor that I don't particularly care for. The custom mobs use the same kind of power choices that I have seen in a lot of arcs recently. I'm guessing they might be placeholders, since they seem to be copy-and-paste jobs. The costumes looked ok though. Due to the shoddy workmanship and non-existent storytelling I must give it the lowest possible score: one star.

Since I no longer have an arc with a 5 star average I can do this without "fear" of downrating retaliation. My new project is to play the top ranking farms but treat them like story arcs, send comments to the author, rank them and review them as if they were actual stories. I want to see what kind of responses I will get.

Yesterday I played "Beasts" (505560) by @Swiftjammer, which is supposedly a "work in progress". I thought it was a rather uninteresting story with little to none exposition. The arc was only one mission and I never even left the first room of the map - everything spawned right on top of me as I killed and destroyed the objectives. Finally I clicked a refrigerator and retrieved some genetic material. For some reason this surprised the contact (so generic I couldn't remember a name or appearance), and the arc was over. I believe the arc was about mutant animals escaping in a laboratory but I'm not sure. The custom mobs were horrible and didn't even bother following any kind of theme; people with animal heads, boxing gloves and togas shooting fire? What kind of nonsense is this? I suggest that the author works on the story some more before republishing. I cannot recommend this arc as it stands for anyone: avoid, avoid, avoid. One star.

This was a huge success since I received not one, not two but three tells in reply, filled with abuse.

What I'd actually buy new skins for:

Mastermind Primaries.

I want thugs that look like secret agents, and ninja that look like yakuza (or in the case of the Oni, an actual ninja). I want mercenaries that look like Longbow or Vanguard or Arachnos, or a SWAT team, or 1930's gangsters. I want demons that look like mutants. I want steampunk robots. I want zombies that look like vahzilok zombies instead of magical zombies (including a tier 3 pet that looks like a zombie instead of a lich). Or zombies that look like mummies.

As far as I can tell, with a few exceptions, this would "only" require new skins/costumes for most of these. Some might demand a new body ("Huge" instead of whatever body the Oni uses, for example).

People are already expected to pay to play Masterminds, so they might be willing to shell out more money to be able to costumize their pets. And I'm not actually asking for real customization, I just want different kinds of premade skins. I don't have to be able to change colors on them or anything.

For this to be any fun Twilight's Son's host must also be Lord Nemesis.

They can both be in the Ouroboros enclave at the same time thanks to time travel. Twilight's Son stays in nova form so as not to give away his true identity.

I just want to put forward my favourite theory, or whatever you might want to call it.

Take "Darrin Wade", turn the W upside down to become an M, and now rearrange the letters.

"Dr in a dreaM" - the Dream Doctor.

Rerolling my main for, oh I don't know... the twelfth time? Maybe more.

It's finally getting the powersets it was always supposed to have: SJ/Will. If only those powers had existed 6 years ago...

I certainly try to have all my arcs give full rewards.

In some cases I even put in "bonus maps" that you can keep playing even after the mission is complete, if you want more rewards. The arc doesn't work right now but in "Evolve Or Die", one mission has all the objectives appear in the first room, and then there's 3 or 4 entire floors of enemies remaining to be killed, for those who so desire.

Solar Flare isn't a stompy animation anymore?

So long, level 50+3 peacebringer. It was nice knowing you.

My point was actually that the Willpower and Regeneration self-rezzes should have the untouchable period added to them, and then this Rise Up power could exist as written.

Will it work well with Masterminds?

Does it fix the AI?