LaserJesus

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Then we have Shurikens. Clocking in at 25% more damage than the "normal" 8 second recharge attacks, but sharing Throwing Knives' fast animation.

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This might be deliberate. Martial Arts is widely regarded as a relatively weak set: maybe it was given a stronger ranged attack to bring it up to speed?

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Katana gets it too, and is anything but weak. The ridiculous damage on Shuriken seems like a complete fluke to me, personally.

They're just plain bad. Check out this screenshot I took of what I'm talking about. You've got a crate and a superadine lab sitting practically right on top of each other. In that mission I've got a lab and 3 crates to protect, and 4 allies. Hardly any of the objectives spawn by themselves. A crate, for instance, pretty much would always have another defendable object or an ally right next to it. Not only does it make them spawn inside of each other sometimes, like above, but especially in the case of the defendable objects the two spawns together would be absurd.

I want to point out that bosses have a lot more attacks now than they used to. Energy Melee for instance has Total Focus on standard, like I said, so I'm not exactly sure if turning them down to standard will gimp them. Energy Melee still hits pretty hard even without build up, and don't even get me started on stone melee for bosses.

Also, I meant to say I would turn him down to standard in my review, just for the record.

Arc #77277: Alliance: Alien
Rating: 1 star
The short of it: Nonsensical plot, it's not my job to test your arc for you, ridiculous boss spawn

Plot Overview

This is usually the part where I do a summary of the plot. I can't even imagine trying to summarize the plot of this arc, as I'm not even sure what the plot is. Am I trying to foil a Nemesis plot with help from the Tsoo? Am I trying to rescue a Warshade from the Rikti? Am I trying to save the world from a Rikti/Nictus team up? Or is it something else altogether? What exactly is happening in this arc is an utter and total mystery.

Mechanics

The first mission takes place in an office, with your main enemies being Nemesis. There are two captives to save, both of them Tsoo tattoo artists, and a defend object that is guarded by a custom group with nothing but Council Galaxies, both regular and quantum gunner varieties. There's also an optional boss that's a Nemesis Comet sniper.

Mission two takes place in a Rikti base, with a boss to defeat and a glowie to collect. Inside there are a few non essential PPD awakened and a Guardian Drone set to single.

Mission 3 is another Rikti base that has two glowies, a boss battle, and again some non essential allies set to single. This is one of the cases where I'm led to believe that the author didn't test at all. All of the allies have ambushes associated with them. Here's the thing, when an ally is set to single, it automatically completes when you walk into the mission. This means that as soon as you enter the mission, you've got 3 ambushes of rikti charging at you. People with long load times will likely enter the mission dead. The boss fight for this mission is truly ridiculous, as it has a Rikti boss surrounded by nothing but Dark Novas and Dark Dwarves. And it's not set on easy, either. I'm talking like 5 of the things. It doesn't even matter if you take the allies with you, as anyone who's played a kheldian, or done the ITF with someone who does energy or negative energy damage, will tell you that these guys resist the hell out of those damage types. The PPD Kheldian allies won't do anything but die in this boss fight.

Mission 4 takes place inside of a council base, and the main enemy is the custom council group that is all galaxies. It has a bunch of objectives, 2 bosses, one of which is a chief soldier, the other a custom EB that appears to be hard dark blast and standard dark armor. It has a destroy object, and two glowies. It also has a few rikti patrols and another non-essential ally, another guardian drone that is set to single. One of the glowies also spawns a rikti ambush on you.

Story

Where to even start? The first mission has your PPD Hardsuit contact telling you to go stop a Nemesis attack on an office, warning you that other villain groups are inside. The other villain group are Council Galaxies, who are after the desk of a man who is a warshade. The Nemesis are apparently after some "Nemesis Defectors", who are Tsoo tattoo artists, apparently? The Tsoo claim to have information on a Nemesis plot of some kind. The Nemesis leader says something about you being there right on time, insinuating that this was some sort of trick.

Remember that last paragraph? Forget all about it. The entire Nemesis angle is completely dropped for the rest of the arc. Absolutely no mention of Nemesis. The only important thing is supposedly the Warshade that the Council were after, who apparently is a Galaxy Archon who was granted full Nictus powers, but then defected and became a hero. Well, he's been kidnapped by Rikti. However, the base he's supposed to be at doesn't have him. Apparently he's been teleported to another base, and you have to go there to rescue him.

Remember that last paragraph? Forget that one too. You never rescue the Warshade. The plot from here on out becomes about a team up between the Nictus and Rikti to conquer the earth.

Oh, and another thing that leads me to believe that this arc was never tested by the author, is that all of the Rikti bosses have <br> tags in their speech. One would think that upon going into a mission and seeing that your NPCs say <br> instead of having an actual line break, that you'd go and fix it. Either the author thought it was no big deal or never even walked into one of his own missions.

Final Thoughts

Seriously, the entire thing feels like a stream of consciousness writing excercise gone wrong. I'd love to say that it accidentally got published, but the fact remains that it got submitted for review.

Arc #40686: Go Go Chromatic Rangers!
Rating: 3 stars
The Short of it: Interesting idea but seems too light on the humor, custom enemies potentially annoying.

Plot Overview

Arachnos has had problems with a group of teenagers who has been attacking their bases. Even the most elite teams of operatives have fallen to them, and Arbiter Daos is coming to you for help. He sends you to a base in Grandville that is under attack by these plucky kids, where they are easily defeating the soldiers. During your confrontation with their leader, he comments that it is impossible for a villain to be this powerful this early in the story.

Arbiter Daos informs you that Arachnos scientists have discovered that these Chromatic Rangers as they're called have a bizarre "Genre Distortion Field" that makes it so that good always wins out in the end. Somehow you seem not to be affected by it, so he hatches a plan to try and stop them. He theorizes that the kids have some sort of leader co-ordinating their attacks, and wants you to kidnap one of the rangers for interrogation. Another Arachnos base is currently under attack, and you go there to retrieve one of the kids. Inside, you find that the kids have somehow talked the Arachnos inside to give up their life of crime and instead turn to the side of good. You manage to kidnap one of the rangers and bring her back to Daos, who will personally oversee the interrogation as he theorizes that he is "important" enough to be immune to the effects of the genre distortion field.

Daos returns to you with a strange tale. The girl folded immediately, being unused to villains that are even slightly competent. She told him that they take their orders from a computer called MENTOR in the basement of a library. Then, the Chromatic Rangers burst in to rescue their comrade, and Arbiter Daos went through a secret tunnel that should not have existed after giving an uncharacteristic villainous speech. Besides all of this, Daos has a plan. He wants you to go to the library and destroy the original MENTOR computer and replace it with an Arachnos holograph generator to be able to control the rangers and use them for Arachnos' ends. You go to the library and destroy the sentient computer, and plant the hologram device.

On your return to Daos, he explains that all hell has broken loose. The Chromatic Rangers have combined their powers to summon the MegaChromaMech, which is currently slicing Arachnos Fliers in half with its sword outside of Ghost Widow's tower. You're the only one able to stop it due to your immunity to the genre distortion effect, so Daos sends you to destroy the robot. Upon defeating the MegaChromaMech, you end the threat of the rangers.

Mechanics

All of the maps are pretty short. First two are Arachnos bases, the first one with a defeat boss objective, the second with an escort. The third map is the invention tutorial map with a destroy object and a collect object, and the last map is the Arachnos Flier map with only a defeat boss on it.

As for the custom group, which is the main enemy group on all maps, the difficulty is mostly well balanced. This is pretty much due to the last patch, but all the LTs and above have build up/aim type powers. On LTs, aim isn't much of a deal. The increase in damage isn't spectacular at that rank, and it pretty just means that people who primarily use defense to stay alive have 10 seconds of being hit pretty easily. Thankfully the AI on Dark Melee is stupid, and treats soul drain like build up or aim, and not an attack, meaning that they'll use soul drain as soon as they see you, whether you're in melee range or not. There is alot of psychic attacks and mezzing on the minions, however. This could be a big problem for some players. As for the bosses, I assume that the Chromatic Red was the only one, and he's hard energy melee. Since energy melee has total focus on standard for bosses now, I would turn him down to hard. Build up and total focus is fun for no one (well, some people I guess, if they think they need stuff like that to be challenged). Same goes for the MegaChromaMech. Standard has both soaring dragon and golden dragonfly, so build up could be going overboard, especially on an AV class enemy.

Story

Writing humor is always incredibly hit or miss. However, I'm rather easy to please when it comes to humor style. I appreciate the metahumor this arc is based around. The main character is immune to the Rangers' effects due to the fact that the player is self aware of the fact that he's a supervillain, and not one of the Rangers' usual foes. Unfortunately, while it has a great foundation, I feel that the humor falls a little flat. Not enough punch to the punchline, as it were. I never really laughed while playing the arc, instead I had a general sense of amusement. General sense of amusement is still good, which is why this is a 3 instead of a 2, but I personally feel more could be done to punch up the comedy. Unfortunately, that's not something where I can easily point out the issues and what needs to be fixed, since humor's highly subjective.

Final Thoughts

The enemies have a potential to be too difficult for some people, which I realize is partly due to the most recent patch, and for the most part is a really easy fix, but anyone with status protection shouldn't have too many problems, as long as you're wary of the bosses and the AV at the end. While not uproariously funny, it's still amusing enough if you like meta-humor.

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Well, the Crey Cloning lab has had problems with glowies spawning in unreachable areas, and I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do a mission in the burning forest map, only to find that bosses refuse to spawn. That's probably why those were taken out.

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Word on one of the MA boards has it that the burning forest map also had a glowie spawn point that was mid-air and couldn't be clicked with anything other than fly/hover.

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Yes, I have seen that. The glowie would spawn over a ravine. Sometimes, however, you could stand at the edge of the ravine and still get a blue hand. But that was rare, and usually I'd have to fly out to get it.

I almost put the Burning Forest into the last mission of Cry Havoc, and now I'm glad I didn't. I was, however, planning on using it in the villain arc I'm writing. Glad I changed my mind about that too.

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I'm glad mostly because I really despise the burning forest map.

I don't really have an issue with arcs that could never be considered canonical due to the events they describe happening in them. In my mind, the mission architect is akin to the old "What if?" stories in silver age comics where they would just have fun telling stories in alternate universes and dreams and such.

Well, the Crey Cloning lab has had problems with glowies spawning in unreachable areas, and I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do a mission in the burning forest map, only to find that bosses refuse to spawn. That's probably why those were taken out.

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As for lack of closure...well it's really supposed to be one arc that's just been split into three parts. I really don't know what else to tell you here, but I just hope players will recognize that...


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Having run this arc I think I know what the problem is: the "closure" or "what happens" explanation appears in a clue after you defeat the boss. Lots of people miss those (and I noticed the last sentence in the clue is in dark purple, which is very hard to see against the game background). I would suggest repeating what happened in an end-of-mission popup, or in the contact's return text.

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I read the clues for sure. My main point is that the lack of something along the lines of even a "Good job, $name! But we're not finished yet!" in the return dialogue of the last mission just kind of leaves it hanging. Like I said earlier, a lot of people aren't going to sit down and play through all three at once. The separate arcs should be treated like chapters of a novel or episodes of a television show. A sense of closure on the events of the chapter or episode, but with the plot still open for development in the later parts.

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Bosses with melee powersets getting the highest damage single target attack in the set on standard is plain ridiculous. The damage on the ranged attack powers seems too big as well. There are other problems with the changes as well. For instance, Dark Miasma gets Darkest Night, an AOE -15% to-hit debuff and -30% damage debuff on standard. Even minions get this.

This should definitely be on hard again like it used to be. Tar Patch isn't nearly as bad as Darkest Night. Honestly, the best thing to give them on standard in my opinion would be the heal, shadow fall, and maybe one of the control powers for higher ranks.

Well, the Nephalim does the nova thing too. I personally have no problem with nova style powers, when they're done properly, that is. :P Unfortunately the custom critter AI is just plain idiotic at times. Same thing with using elude or dull pain as soon as they see someone.

As for the lack of closure, just adding return text would go a long way. I realize it's a three part arc, but not everyone wants to sit down and play three arcs in a row. Return text would at least wrap up the story of the first one somewhat, and set the next one up.

I also was wholly unaware that Rikti Priests were only 30-30. That's a shame.

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Seeing as my question got pruned.

Photonic Savior, Venture, other takers, what's your opinions of arcs that, were they canon, would seriously violate the status quo?

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What exactly do you mean by status quo? Do you mean something akin to what was being discussed before the moderators cleaned house in here?

Arc #123675: The Lost Choir: Chapter One: The Old Testament
Rating: 4 stars
The short of it: Well written plot, overpowered bosses in final mission, lack of closure disappointing

Plot Overview

Abbas John has asked for your assistance. In the first Rikti War, the Rikti destroyed many of the churches and other places of worship to demoralize the human population. The Electist church is attempting to rebuild, and one of the churches that is being built in Salamanca is under attack. Upon arriving, you discover the place to have been overrun by Tuatha, who have kidnapped the construction crew. After you rescue them, the foremen are grateful, and tell you that the Tuatha are acting strangely and constantly talk about a Choir.

John is concerned by the fact that the Tuatha are talking about a Choir, because as far as he knows, the Tuatha have no such thing, and are likely being controlled by another villain group besides the Red Caps. However, no other villain group has such a After some research on the Rikti, he discovers that the Rikti word for Council is similar to Crier, which could be construed as Choir. Vanguard has some intelligence that might lead to some clues, and you head to a Rikti base. Inside, you find a religious altar and a Rikti holding a religious ceremony, in which it references something called the Soaring One.

John is more confused by this turn of events, as the Rikti killed all of the Gods in their home dimension, and religion is outlawed by their people. After contacting Vanguard again, you learn that the Rikti you found are part of a splinter group of the Restructurists who believe that they need faith to win the war against our Earth. Vanguard knows where one of their main temples are, but unfortunately it is about to be assaulted by the Restructurists for their dissent. In order to find more clues, you will have to save them. Inside, you discover that the Restructurists have gotten here before you, and the Vanguard officers sent to assist you have been captured. After rescuing them and the High Priest, you defeat the leader of the Restructurist forces in the base. The High Priest explains that they were unaware of the Tuatha being controlled, but mentions that the Choir likely refers to the Soaring One, the enemy of their god Thellos, who works to keep the Soaring One at bay.

When you next speak with John, he has bad news. Vanguard has detected invaders from another dimension inside of the spirit realm, and the Rikti High Priest is going nuts about it, talking about a being called the Infinite Eye. Vanguard's mages open a doorway to the spirit realm, and you go to stop this invasion. In order to do so, you must destroy tendrils that have crept into the spirit world from the other dimension, and defeat the leader of the invasionary force. The creatures inside all seem to share a sort of hive mind, and have subjugated the advance Vanguard exploration team. You also run into a Tuatha who explains that the Infinite Eye offered to free them from the Red Caps in exchange for their service. However, the Infinite Eye subsumed their will, and the one you rescue is the only one that resisted.

Upon your return, you hear more bad news, as a hole has opened in the sky over Atlas Park, unleashing more invaders. You race to the scene to find that they are different from the Infinite Eyes you faced earlier, appearing similar to angels. The PPD on the scene are no match for them, and it's up to you to defeat their leader, who claims to be the son of a being called Xhantranos. The plot is continued in the next arc.

Mechanics

For the most part, everything is fine. The first map is the outdoor Croatoa city map, the next two are rikti base maps, the fourth the Broken Teeth map, and the last is the Atlas Park meteor map. None of these maps were terribly bad, though the fourth mission can be a touch annoying to find some of the objectives on.

Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary objective-wise for the first 2 missions, just some rescue, collection, and boss details. The third mission has 2 allies, both Vanguard lieutenants, an escort of a Rikti Priest, and a boss battle with Hro'Dtohz under a different name. The fourth mission has three destroy object details, 3 vanguard LTs who are optional allies, (though they show up on the nav bar, I would remove them from the nav bar as it implies that they are necessary) another ally that is a Tuatha boss, and a boss enemy. The Infinite Eyes minions are Sonic/Sonic, and the boss is Psychic Blast/Dark Miasma. I didn't see a single custom LT in the group.

The last mission only has one detail, defeat the Nephalim, who is AV level and is Fire Blast/Invulnerability, I believe. He's on extreme, meaning aim and inferno. Unfortunately, the AI concerning nova style powers is really screwed up. I've only ever seen it used properly by custom enemies who are energy blast and dark blast. Every other time I've seen the custom enemies use it immediately as you fight them, meaning that as soon as you get up by them, there's an inferno in your face. The same problem exists with the bosses, who are extreme psychic blast. Psychic blast doesn't have aim, but it still has psychic wail, which can be a real problem for some ATs and powersets. For this reason alone, I would suggest putting the bosses and the Nephalim on hard difficulty for both of their blasts, as it's no fun to charge into a group of enemies and instantly get smashed with a nova. It's also especially bad on the bosses, because on a large team you're going to have multiple psychic blast enemies who will all hit the melee characters with a ton of psychic damage immediately. Goodbye, most tanks, and soon goodbye team. The rest of the custom group is rather well balanced, however.

Story

A warning: if you really hate religion, this arc is not for you. Don't even play it. Also, if you're sensitive about Christianity being used in a fictional context, it's not for you. Don't play it. Everybody else should probably enjoy the plot. The Electist church is obviously supposed to be Christianity, but the plot doesn't hit you over the head with Christian morals. It mainly uses Christian mythology (no offense to Christians) as material to draw from to tell the story.

Overall, I thought the story was well written. The quotes from the old testament as your entered a mission were all thematically appropriate to the missions and were a nice touch. The concept of an underground Rikti religion was also intriguing to me, and the Rikti's names being Riktified versions of biblical names was a nice nod. The text has a few spelling errors, but that's fixed easily enough with an edit pass.

However I do have a couple things to point out. Restructurists are mainly comprised of Rikti who were promoted from the ranks of the Lost, so would they be aware of the lost religion of the Rikti? Not a huge deal, but still something to consider. I would suggest changing Hro'Dtohz to a Rikti Priest in the third mission. A Rikti Priest attacking would make a lot of sense, as the job of the Rikti Priests is to ensure that abberant thoughts are crushed. Having one lead the purge of the religious sect would be more appropriate than a general.

In the last mission, the intro text says that the hole opened over Kings Row, yet the nav bar, mission accept text, and map all say that it is Atlas Park where you are fighting.

Finally, the last mission has absolutely no return dialogue, just saying that the story is continued in the next arc. Each chapter of the story should have it's own end point. Not even having Abbas John say anything left a bad taste in my mouth.

Final Thoughts

This would have been a five star arc, if not for the problems with the bosses in the last mission and the complete lack of closure. Aside from those problems the plot is still good, and worth a play if the subject matter won't get you bent out of shape and you can deal with the bosses in the last mission.

Arc #77928: Heroes at War - 1944
Rating: 2 stars
The short of it: Interesting NPC dialogue, outdoor maps that can make finding objectives a pain, annoyingly powerful bosses, annoying custom enemies

Plot Overview

As the title suggests, the story takes place in 1944 Europe, in the throes of World War II. You've gone back through time with the help of Ouroboros to fight the German forces and help the Allies achieve victory. You first are deployed to the beaches of Normandy, where the Germans have their own superpowered soldier. You battle with Herr Zerstoerung, a member of the German Storm Korps, and rescue the Sergeant who is leading the allied forces. Next, you're asked to help push back the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. After rallying the allied forces at a statue, you defeat two of the Storm Korps members, Sturm und Drang and Derr Kommandant, helping the allies achieve victory.

Next your services are required in Bastogne, where more Storm Korps members are making the battle difficult for the allies. You defeat Nordmaedchen and Stahlfaust and save the life of an Allied General, securing victory for the allied forces. It seems like the war in the European theater of operations is nearly over, but command has lost contact with the 7th. Command suspects the Storm Korps is responsible, as the 7th had their own superpowered hero with them. Upon arriving at the scene, the 7th is completely massacred save for one man, Statesman. You save Statesman, defeat Sonnekrieger, and the leader of the Storm Korps, Eisensturm, ensuring the allied victory in Europe.

Mechanics

Now I will admit this is personal preference, but the outdoor maps make it a huge problem to find some of the custom bosses and other objectives. The main one I always have a problem with is the second map, where finding the statue and Derr Kommandant is always troublesome. Derr Kommandant mostly because he looks very similar to the German Forces. I'd suggest giving him some sort of aura to make him stand out from the crowd.

The German forces themselves are all Willpower, making their aggro radius pretty huge unless you have a lot of stealth. On outdoor maps, this can become a real problem as there's no walls or anything to block line of sight, meaning that you'll be fighting a lot of soldiers at once. I'd suggest switching them to standard Invulnerability if you want them to have a defense set. On standard, it's incredibly toned down effects wise (even moreso than Willpower) and gives them an added bit of toughness without making them omniscient. The allied Marines seem to be all LTs or higher, and on extreme invulnerability and assault rifle making them far stronger than the German forces. I didn't see a single battle where the US soldiers didn't completely obliterate the Germans. Since the mission text always suggests that things are going poorly for the allies, they probably shouldn't be this powerful. In fact, sometimes when a boss would spawn close to a battle, the US soldiers would kill them for me.

Some of the bosses are well balanced difficulty wise, while others are far too powerful, especially the two that have storm powers, Sturm und Drang and Eisensturm. Sturm und Drang is extreme Electric Blast and Storm Summoning, meaning he has aim, freezing rain, and thunderous blast. This can pretty much obliterate most people. Eisensturm is similar, with extreme electric melle instead of blast. Same problem, freezing rain and build up means death for pretty much everyone but the most powerful of characters. Sonnekrieger and Stahlfaust may be a bit too strong, but they're not as bad as the two storm enemies.

Statesman's costume is very nice, it looks a lot like his 1940's costume that is shown in the trailers for CoH. However, he's Archvillain class and extreme superstrength/invulnerability, meaning that if you can deal with his tendency to run off and fight everything within a mile radius, that he can take out any of the elite bosses in the final mission in a couple hits. Not only does this make it way too easy when you bring Statesman along for the boss fights, it also feels wrong that Statesman is more powerful in World War II than modern day Statesman. Turning down his difficulty would both make him less overpowering and more fitting with CoH's history, as Statesman has become increasingly powerful over the years.

Story

The arc is more or less a World War II themed slugfest, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The German soldiers' dialogue was a nice touch, as they hardly ever spoke in English, and whenever they did it still seemed like it was a German speaking English and not a native English speaker. I can understand a bit of German, so I was able to get the gist of most of what they were saying, and there's always Google Translator if you want to get a good idea of their dialogue. As I said earlier, the custom Statesman with the World War II costume is a nice touch as well, even if his power level is out of touch with canon.

If there's one thing I need to point out, it's that Ouroboros only sends people back in time when something has tampered with the time stream and it needs to be fixed, at least for their task forces. However, nothing in the arc really says that there's been any tampering.

Final Thoughts

I really want to like this arc, but some of the problems with it are too annoying for me to recommend it as it currently is.

Yeah, willpower is brutal if you set it on hard or higher. I think invuln is the way to go. The tohit bonus on invincibility is mainly a problem for defense sets, like I said, my peacebringer didn't have any troubles except for when light form crashed.

The spelling and grammar aren't terrible, just cases of a wrong word used here and there, some punctuation and spelling errors and such. It was more noticeable in the earlier missions than in the later ones. The only specific example I can think of is in the first mission's intro text, conscience should be consciousness. The rest is just small stuff like mission periods and commas and spelling mistakes.

Arc #89545: Light of the Sun
Rating: 4 stars
The short of it: Decent plot, interesting custom enemies (though one enemy was a bit annoying), author gives clear warnings for multiple things, needs an edit pass for spelling and grammar

Plot Overview

This arc takes place after the events of The Revenant Hero Project story arc. Janet Kellum has sent a younger hero into a warehouse in Crey's Folly that had suspicious Crey activity. However, a few days the hero returned in the hospital with severe burns and is in a coma, so no one knows what exactly took place inside. Janet wants you to go check it out for anything that Crey possibly left behind, even though it's likely that Crey has scrubbed the base for evidence. Members of the Freakshow have moved into the warehouse, hoping to score some free stuff. Upon defeating their leader, Butcher Betty, you persuade her to tell you what she knows. She says that one of the shipping containers they looked through had a shipping manifest from a Crey facility in Warburg.

Longbow intelligence shows that the Crey facility gets shipments from Arachnos Fliers periodically, so to sneak in, you "commandeer" a flier and fly directly to the Crey Facility. The facility is being run by Crey's Spacetech division, and is under heavy guard. Inside you find a shipping manifest on a computer, which leads you to a Crey owned office. Before you head to the office, Janet explains that Crey's Spacetech division provided the solar shielding for a space mission that NASA and the ESA put together to gather data on the sun. The solar shielding failed, and everyone on board would have died if the captain hadn't been able to plot a return course before it was too late. All three parties have been involved in legal bickering ever since.

Inside of the Crey Spacetech office, you find documents regarding the space shuttle incident, and notes made by a Crey scientist about harnessing the intense solar radiation for use in his Paragon Protector research. You also interrogate the head of security, and learn the location of the lab where the research is taking place. Janet warns you that the Paragon Protector in question is probably what put the hero she sent before you in such a dire state, and that it shouldn't be taken lightly. Undaunted, you proceed to the laboratory. The lab is run by a Dr. Mendares, a protoge of Dr. Summerfeld, the mastermind of the Revenant Hero project who is continuing his mentor's work. You apprehend the doctor and eliminate all traces of his research, before encountering the Sunpowered Protector, who commands extraordinary powers of fire. After a tough battle, you defeat the Sunpowered Proctector, effectively stopping Dr. Mendares' work in it's tracks.

Janet thanks you for your work, and gives you a heartfelt letter from the young hero who has fully recovered from his injuries.

Mechanics

First two missions are short and simple. In the first, is a small Freakshow warehouse with only a defeat boss. The second is the Arachnos flier map on Mercy Island with only a single collect object objective. First mission obviously has Freakshow as it's enemy and second obviously has Arachnos. The first mission has a custom boss, a Freakshow who is Katana/Pain Domination. Nice use on the rusty katana as a thematic choice.

The third mission is also relatively simple. It takes place on the Warburg map, with a single collect object inside as your only objective. The author is kind enough to mention in the introduction where the doors inside are, for those who haven't done a mission on this map yet. Here is where we run into the custom group Crey Spacetech Security. First, they have the level 46-50 Crey Tanks in the group. The custom minions are roughnecks and gunners, roughnecks being Mace/Invulnerability, the mace being the baton, both on standard. The gunners have Assault Rifle, and I honestly could not tell you their secondary. I know it wasn't any kind of defense set.

The lieutenants, let's see if I can remember them all, because there are a few: There are Field Medics, Assault Rifle/Pain Domination, Engineers, Robotics/Something, I honestly can't remember, I only saw a few and they didn't do anything annoying enough to stick in my mind, Scientists, who were Radiation/Claws, and then to my least favorite of the bunch, the Brawlers.

The brawlers are Martial Arts/Super Reflexes, two of the worst scaling powersets. First off, Super Reflexes are all or nothing. Standard and hard have no differences. Personally, I would have made it so on standard, they only have the passives, and on hard they get the toggles, but whatever. Not under my control or the authors. Martial Arts starts with two basic attacks and a stun, but then when turned up to hard, like these were, gets three more attacks and build up, which include a knockback, a knockdown, and an immobilize. On my Scrapper it wasn't such a huge deal, since he's armed to the teeth with accuracy thanks to HOs and don't care about any status effects besides fear, but on my Peacebringer they were just plain awful. Constant knockback and stuns and immobilizes, as I play full human, and the high defense made it very hard for me to land my attacks consistently to give out my own knockback and status effects, which is pretty much how my Peacebringer does his whole thing. While having one or the other isn't too bad, though the build up makes Martial Arts worse than it needs to be when you add in the status effects, combined it's rather ferocious. However, that one enemy is the only one that is a problem. All the others are set low enough and have powerset combinations to function pretty much like a normal villain group.

Oh, and the two bosses are Superstrength/Invulnerability, both on hard, and Assault Rifle/Couldn't tell you, Assault Rifle being on extreme, which isn't a huge deal. The arc is designed for high levels, so you should be used to fighting things that strong anyhow, and the worst thing on Assault Rifle is beanbag, which has a long stun duration.

Mission four takes place in an office and has two collect objects and a boss, specifically the assault rifle one. Nothing really special about this mission.

Mission five takes place on a lab map, and has two defeat bosses and a destroy object. The destroy object spawns an ambush when it's at 50%, nothing too major. The first boss you should encounter (I take no responsibility for the wacky way things spawn in MA missions) is Dr. Mendares, who is a lieutenant. I thought it was a nice touch that the doctor was by and large a pushover. So much in fact, that all I could tell you about his powers is that he's Radiation, as both times I fought him all he had the time to do was use accelerated metabolism. The second boss is the Sunpowered Protector, an Elite Boss. I was confused that he was a standard Elite Boss and not an AV powered down to one, as the description tells you to get allies.

As I read his description, I found out why. The description warns in a roundabout manner that the elite boss has extreme fire melee, which means build up, and a host of high damage attacks. I could also tell just by looking that it was hard level invulnerability, as I saw the beams of light that indicated invincibility. For my SR scrapper, this was all very bad news. The to-hit bonus from invincibility is itself enough to wreak havoc on his defenses outside of elude, and the build up is just the icing on the killing me cake. However, I was given ample warning that I should get help, and fortune favors the bold, so I hit elude, toss a shuriken, and wait for the build up to subside. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky. I was taken down fairly quick for it being an elite boss. Round two, I used archmage, and thanks to the resistances I was able to kill it, though I did have to wait for elude to come back as archmage dropped before I could finish it off. Not surprisingly, my Peacebringer faired far better, as with Light Form and his toggles, his resistance to all damage but psi and toxic is capped at 85%, and with essence boost active his HP is higher than my Scrapper's. Unfortunately, due to his lower damage capability, he too could not finish it within light form's duration, after which I quickly ate lab floor. The boss was really close to death though, so I rezzed and cheesed my way to victory by flying, hitting the boss with -fly, and using ranged attacks.

This elite boss is incredibly tough, but I've fought far worse. The intro gives warning to bring allies, and if you read descriptions like I do, you'll know to be very careful going in, so I'm going to let this one slide, as it's not so much of a bus running you over like fighting enemies with build up usually feels, but more of sneaking up and poking a sleeping tiger and having it come to maul you. You know what you're getting into before you fight it.

Story

Like I said earlier, this needs an edit pass badly in some places. Missing punctuation, grammar and spelling problems. Not so bad that you can't read it, but it needs some definite cleaning up. I'm not going to go through and point them all out to you, since that's not my purpose here, but having a friend look it over and editing it would really help.

As for the plot itself, it's nothing spectacular, but by no means bad. It's on par with most of the CoX story arcs, which is a good thing as for the most part I think the plots of the CoX story arcs are rather decent. It's a good superhero plot and makes for an enjoyable play.

I like the overall design of the custom group. It was a refreshing change to fight Crey that's over level 45 and not be fighting wave after wave of those damnable tanks that resist everything under the sun. It was also nice to see bosses that weren't in power armor or were Paragon Protectors. The first two missions being quick playthroughs was very good for the overall flow of the story. Evidence collecting missions, in my mind, should always be quick and painless for the player, as the plot hasn't really picked up yet, and you don't want to bore your player before you've hooked them with your story. Nice job on that front.

Final Thoughts

As long as you are prepared for the difficulty of the last mission and can deal with the Brawler lieutenants, this arc is a fun one that shouldn't disappoint.

Arc #4370: Operation Pitcher Plant
Rating: 3 stars
The short of it: Mostly balanced custom group, decent plot

Plot Overview

A Dr. Engles has received a report that a supervillain group known as the League of Mayhem has attacked a Portal Corp laboratory to steal the plans for a portable dimensional portal generator, and has asked you to stop them and retrieve the plans. On site, you run into Morrigan Le Fae, Cyberix, Superianna, and their mercenary minions. After finding the plans and defeating the League of Mayhem, you find that it was all supposed to be a trap, but they failed. Upon your return, Dr. Engles informs you that a city councilman has been kidnapped and is being held hostage by the League of Mayhem. Obviously, this is another trap, but a life hangs in the balance, so you go to rescue him. On site are two more of the League of Mayhem's villains, Steel Locust and Gamma Emitter. As you are leading Councilman Harris out of the building, Gamma Emitter ambushes you along with 5th Column soldiers. After his defeat, Gamma Emitter explains that a 5th Column soldier named Olberst Olbrech has hired the League of Mayhem to kill you.

Dr. Engles explains that Olbrech is about to try and make an escape because of the League's failure to kill you, and that in an hour he will have gotten away. You rush to an abandoned warehouse, and confront him. During the fight he rants that he came back in time to seek revenge for you defeating him in the future. Defeating him and ending his plans, you return victorious.

Mechanics

The custom enemy group is rather well balanced. The two minions are Energy Blast/Empathy and Assault Rifle/Martial arts, and the Lieutenants are Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation and Assault Rifle/Willpower, which was thankfully set to standard. Being solo, I didn't see the bosses, however, Morrigan Le Fae, Cyberix, and Steel Locust were all boss rank and were in the League of Mayhem custom group along with the minions and LTs, so on a team they will spawn as the bosses in regular mission spawns. Since they all seem to be unique characters and not just named versions of the League of Mayhem bosses, I strongly suggest moving them to their own group apart from the mercenaries. Also, the battlesuit lieutenants and the medisuit minions looked practically identical, the only difference being height and their body sliders. I would suggest giving the battlesuits a different color scheme to make them easier to differentiate in a fight.

The first two maps felt a little long, the first because lab maps are always huge, and the second, while not excessive, felt a lot longer due to the escort.

The third mission, while it does state before the mission that it is a timed mission, it didn't register with me when I first read through the intro text. I suppose this is my fault due to the way I read, but I would suggest making the warning a different color than the rest of the text so people who read fast or people who just skim will see it for sure.

Story

The plot isn't spectacular, but it is well written, aside from typos and little grammar errors. Nothing big enough to make you not enjoy it, however. The characterization of the custom bosses I thought was very good. Overall the experience was a positive one.

Final Thoughts

I wanted to give this a 4 star, but some of the problems I pointed out earlier, like the unique characters being bosses in the same group as the minions, knocked it down just barely to 3. However, this is definitey not an arc I would suggest against playing.

Actually I don't think a single enemy outside of the MA has any kind of build up power.

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I would like to clear up some of the sequence of events for you. The ship was McCord's from the start. His plan was to hire the Raiders to scuttle the ship, but the Council got to it first. That was the comment in the opening briefing about there being another group that he didn't really trust.

The goal of the second mission was to gather a crew. A group of warehouse workers seemed a reasonable choice. I missed the level cap though.

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Oh, I realize the reason inside of the plot for the first two missions, don't get me wrong. However, the first two missions themselves really only served as intermissions of violence between mission briefings. The missions themselves didn't add anything to the story, and didn't increase my enjoyment of the story. Hence, the missions felt like fluff.

[ QUOTE ]

I'm sort of surprised you had that much trouble with the custom group though? What was your difficulty set to? I ran it with a Brute, a Scrapper, and a MM, without much trouble on the first setting.

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My level 50 scrapper had no problems on difficulty level 4, which is what I always run him on, since he's slotted with practically all HOs, and is a scrapper. My blaster, I run on difficulty level 2. He's the one who had some problems, but only with the chief petty officers, due to them having RTTC, and the elite boss, since he had so many ranged attacks.

My issues with the plot is that no matter how I play out his plan in my head, it doesn't make any sense. I figured the two possible scenarios were that A: He was trying to get the insurance money or B: He is trying to kill me. If he's trying to get the insurance money, then he doesn't really need my help if he's got the Sky Raiders on the job. And even if the Council stole it out from under the Sky Raiders, then he would get the insurance money.

However, if he's trying to get the insurance money, then why is he getting a crew? I mean, he was trying to have the sky raiders scuttle it earlier. If getting the crew was to lend a sense of legitimacy and make it not look like fraud, then shouldn't that have been the first mission?

Then we come to the third mission, where he wants me to stop the Sky Raiders from taking the ship. Again, if the plan is to get the insurance money, then he should have just let the Sky Raiders do it, and not had me on board.

Then we come to the fourth mission, where he shows up to stop me himself and blow up the ship with me on it. Here's where I really think that he's just trying to kill me, and trying to do it in the most roundabout way possible. The only problem is, I haven't done anything to make him want to kill me, and if he's getting paid to do it, the story arc doesn't say.

That's more or less the problem. Nothing is really explained all that well. Now, I like to think that I'm a pretty smart guy, but even if I'm dead wrong and I'm a completely average person, I should be able to figure out your plot by what is in the story arc, not by having you explain it to me afterward.

[ QUOTE ]
is the prison map for Breakout available?

You could have them appear in prison that way

[/ QUOTE ]
The prison map that you can choose has the player enter at the Arachnos flier.

Arc #106017: The Uniocracy of Gray TaskForce Pt.1
Rating: 1 star
The short of it: Horrible writing, overpowered EBs, annoying custom group

Plot Overview

Xelif Benzen (who is apparently an ex-Freedom Phalanx member) is plotting to use an Item of Power to recreate the universe, and his ex-lover Hawkstarr has contacted you to stop him. Xelif Benzen's group, called the Unicracy of Gray have attacked the Freedom Phalanx headquarters and stolen new power armor that increases the wearer's powers greatly. You need to go to the Freedom Phalanx warehouse where they are keeping the power armor, retrieve it, and find out any information you can about the Item of Power. You go to the warehouse, defeat the Equalizerz, and return with the power armor. Hawkstarr tells you that they are attacking a longbow base to try to weaken Statesman's power base for the upcoming war between the Uniocracy of Gray and the Freedom Phalanx.

Mechanics

There's only one map, and it's not a warehouse or a Longbow Base. It's the rikti caves map that extends from the abandoned lab map, and it's huge. Not only is the map huge, the mission is a defeat all. There's I belive 5 elite bosses that you need to kill, all of which have one or both of their powersets on extreme. Thankfully I was playing my level 50 scrapper and was able to defeat all of them with liberal use of inspirations, elude, archmage, and geas, but anyone who isn't level 50 and armed to the teeth with IOs or HOs and accolades is going to find it nearly impossible to kill all of these guys. The custom group has quite a lot of enemies. I took down a list of all the ones that I fought and their powersets.

Minions

Fire Control/Sonic Blast
Pain Domination/Radiation Blast
Claws/Energy Manipulation
Storm/Archery

Lieutenants

Psychic Blast/Dark Melee
Martial Arts/ Willpower, willpower on hard
Martial Arts/Ice Armor

The Claws/Energy Manipulation minions were probably the only one of these things that wasn't annoying, mainly because they hardly ever used their energy manipulation. Seriously, guys, don't put willpower on hard. A custom enemy with RTTC and Fast Healing will have roughly 200% regeneration when it gets into melee range, in addition to all of it's resistances and increased health. Just don't do it. I don't think a single enemy was on standard.

There were 15 weapons racks to collect, and once you collect them all an ambush that I believe was set on hard spawns. There are also some ambushes after some of the EB fights.

Story

The writing is so terrible it makes my eyes bleed. Here's a few samples of the NPC dialogue:

[NPC] Gray Multa'Shieldark: How could this happen...I Love you Xelif...you have big chocolate!!!

[NPC] Gray Sho'Gaia: I am soooo uber!! who want some of this?? Didn't think so...Hahahahahaha!!

[NPC] Gray Gaio De Auro: You can't this big chocolate!!!! Get off of it now!!!! You Beoshes!!!!

[NPC] Gray Blizzo'Frio: You want a piece of me? No one is going to keep me from delivering these goods to Lord Xelif..Atk!!

The NPC descriptions follow the same vein. Some of them even have emoticons in them.

As for the plot, this is only part one so I can only judge it based on this mission alone. The plot seems to be run-of-the-mill stop the world from being destroyed, but judging from the NPC return dialogue's hints to the next mission, it seems like it's going to be more mindless fighting against overpowered enemies.

Final Thoughts

I would suggest people give it a play to read the hilariously bad descriptions and dialogue, but the enemies are ridiculously overpowered.

Arc #26420: Now Hiring
Rating: 2 stars
The short of it: Hardly a plot, and what is there makes no sense, missions that feel like fluff, annoying custom enemies

Plot Overview

A man named Mr. McCord has offered you a job to procure for him a ship. The ship is currently in the hands of the Council, and he wants you to take care of that. You arrive on the ship, and the council are fighting off an invasion of Sky Raiders. You clear everyone out of the ship, and upon your return, McCord tells you he needs a crew. You go to a warehouse and beat up all the Scrapyarders there, presumably telling them that they work for Mr. McCord now.

Now Mr. McCord wants you to manage the ship as it takes it's cargo. Upon your arrival, you find that the Sky Raiders are attacking yet again. You destroy the remote navigation computer and defeat the captain that is leading the raiders, securing the ship. After a radio call to Mr. McCord, he tells you that the ship is now 2000 miles south of the Carribean, and that they are probably going to try and attack the ship again. A different crew of pirates attacks this time, and have planted bombs on the ship. After destroying the bombs, you find out that Mr. McCord is there (somehow) and he is destroying the ship for insurance money with you on it. After defeating Mr. McCord, he swears to get his revenge on you.

Mechanics

The first mission is a defeat all on a ship map. I can't stress enough how aggravating those are. Thankfully it's just against Council and Sky Raiders, who die rather easy, especially since the Sky Raiders pretty much get killed every time by the Council.

The second mission is yet another defeat all. This time in a warehouse against Scrapyarders. The warehouse is small, but there's absolutely nothing to this mission except beating up Scrapyarders.

The third mission is against Sky Raiders, with a few battles between them and allied Scrapyarders. The first objective is to destroy a computer mainframe, after which a Sky Skiff boss spawns which you have to defeat.

The fourth mission is where the custom enemies come in. They're called Pirates TNG, the minions are a Medic, an AR/Pain Dom, and Marines and Gunners, which from what I could tell, both were AR/Devices. I could be wrong though. The LTs were Petty Officers, Mercs/Willpower, both seem to be on standard since I didn't see any spec ops, and Chief Petty Officers, who were Dual Blades/Willpower, both of which I believe on hard. I know for a fact the Willpower was on hard, because they had RTTC, making them hard as a Boss to kill, at least for my Scrapper. My Blaster couldn't even kill them due to the high amount of attacks and high regen. At first there are 6 bombs to destroy, which are destroy object details. After that, Mr. McCord spawns. He's Elite Boss rank, Energy Assault/Energy Blast, both of which I want to say are on hard, though I'm not sure of the energy blast. On my Scrapper he fell in no time flat, but on my Blaster, there was no winning. At range, I would get pummeled by a huge amount of ranged attacks, including a snipe which took 3/4 of my life in one shot, and if I tried to get up close to stun him, he would stun me first with bonesmasher and drop me to the ground pretty quickly. Frankly, if you want him to have energy blasts and energy melee attacks, just make him energy blast energy melee. The amount of ranged attacks he has is incredible, especially for an arc that professes to be designed for solo around level 30-35. Speaking of being supposedly 30-35, The missions with Scrapyarders cap at 30, so that's disingenuous.

Story

Frankly, the story is just not good. First, it plays out like a bunch of radio missions, and second, parts of it make no sense. How did Mr. McCord get an insurance policy on a boat that I stole from the Council? Also, the clue claims it was from 4 months ago. If that was the case, then how come the arc wasn't only 1 mission: plant bombs on the boat? How did Mr. McCord get to the boat so fast when it was 2000 miles south of the Caribbean? Which, by the way, is impossible, considering that 2000 miles south of the Caribbian sea is the middle of South America. But that's nitpicking.

Mr. McCord's plan makes no sense whatsoever, unless his big plan was to kill a bunch of council, scrapyarders, sky raiders, and the player, and even then it makes no sense. Seriously, if he had an insurance policy on the boat 4 months ago, it should have already paid out, since the boat was in the hands of the Council, therefore meaning it was stolen from him.

The first two missions really don't have any worth the the story, since there is no dialogue in them, except for in the first one which consists of:

Council: "You're not taking this ship!"
Sky Raider: "Yes we are!"

Why were the Sky Raiders even after the ship in the first place? What was the Council transporting on the ship? There's no story in any of these. It's just places with people who need to be beaten up.

Final Thoughts

I gave it a 2 star rating instead of a 1 star, because while I don't recommend the arc, it's not unplayable. Still, for an arc that claims to be story focused, there needs to be a lot more story.

[ QUOTE ]
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Pure conjecture: this is the quick anti-farming version; more thought out changes will be made in the future after players chew on it awhile. I would not be suprised if this were rushed to Live as an emergency maneuver.

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I hope the "more thought out" change is letting us choose the powers ourselves, with some minimal "must-take"s of course. The ranged attack in Melee sets could switch to optional if a ranged powerset is also chosen.

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The only problem with that, is that it would make custom critter files even bigger.

Any enemy LT level or higher will get fiery embrace from fiery aura when on hard or higher. While the build up on hard is annoying, it's not the end of the world, because the way that powers are unlocked on attack sets is different. However, considering that fiery aura is a defense set and only has fire armor and temp protection on standard, I really think fiery embrace should be moved to extreme.

Also, Gravity Control gets singularity at hard. While I personally actually support controller sets getting their pets at hard difficulty, I have to strongly disagree with Gravity Control's change. Singularity give a large amount of control just by itself, and could make things a living hell for non-melee ATs, whereas the other pets are mainly damage oriented, and can be killed more easily and are less problematic for non-melee ATs. I would leave singularity on extreme.

Whoa whoa, hold the phone, everyone gets darkest night on standard? That's horrible. Darkest Night makes things just plain awful, to-hit wise.

*chalks up dark miasma as a set to never use*