Lazarus
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Posts
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Joined
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Requesting a re-review of "Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)" (#347029). It's undergone massive rewrites and people seem to be enjoying it a lot more now.
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Quick Review: First things first, the contact has no description so I have no idea who she is or how she has access to Oroborous in order to perform unauthorized changes to the past, as she certainly doesn't appear to be a Mender.
While the recolored 5th Column troops retain German names for their LTs and Bosses, the minions are simply named "German Soldier?" The first mission also felt a bit "empty" considering that this was supposed to be the Furher's personal bunker. Oh wait, I'm Fuhrer now? I didn't realize that this version of the Nazi party functions on Asskicking Equals Authority.
What do you know, they have a pyramid in France and French Generals are psychics. This mission felt like it was missing a lot, I didn't see any battles between the Axis and Allies, and while there were Axis patrols there were no Axis allies to follow me around.
The third mission actually has some battles between the Germans and Russians, but what the heck are these Partisans doing wandering non-chalantly through the streets dressed like their heading out for a night on the town? I didn't know that Russian women went into battle in skirts and tank tops. Never saw this General Paulus either, seems he got killed on his own since the objective suddenly vanished mid-mission.
Finally found one of these damn Soviet Generals after hopping around the map for several minutes spamming my Tab key. Stealth on a required boss is a rather dick move to be honest, it just makes an already boring mission take much longer than it should.
Also he has some MASSIVE defense and speed debuffs, can ice shield his Mercs and the ambushers who come to aid him. After two pointless deaths I go off to find the other one, he was in a spot I traveled past several times now but couldn't see him because of his stealth.
This last mission bothers me right away because we know that Statesman and some other heroes fought in Europe during WW2, so where the heck are they this entire arc? Even when I go to the US he's not there, instead it's Maiden Justice and that's it?
Oh joy, minions with web grenade and they love to spam it. Then I see Maiden Justice, who is an EB with purple triangles of Doom and Unyielding running constantly. Since I'm a Dominator and she has somewhere around Magnitude 60 protection to my powers, I said "screw this" and quit right here.
I'm going to be honest, I didn't have a damn bit of fun playing this arc. 3 stars is a bit on the generous side. -
Arc ID: 25622
Arc Title: Teh Freakshow Artz Klub
Author: @Geveo
Morality: Heroic
Length: 2 Missions
Level Range: 20-54
Description: The Freakshow have attacked Paragon City's annual festival of the arts. Surprisingly, no one was injured, but the Freaks kidnapped several people and escaped. Brace yourself, it's time to battle Teh Freakshow Artz Klub!
Quick Review: This is one of the best arcs that the random button handed me in a long time. It does what it set out to do pretty well, which is to kill some time in an amusing manner. The writing was well-crafted with no obvious grammatical errors and keeps your attention, plus there are a number of optional objectives for those who like to explore. There was one custom boss at the end and he was easy enough to solo. The only things I could suggest would be a bit of color highlighting in the mission briefings and a description for the contact himself.
Rating: ***** -
Coulomb requested a playthrough of this arc that had been written for the Dr. Aeon contest.
Arc ID: 352381
Arc Title: Purification
Author: @Flame Kitten
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 35-45
Description: The monsters of the Devouring Earth have been strangely quiet, but that changes with a sudden attack on an office building. Soon you find yourself embroiled in a desperate struggle for the survival of the human race.
Mini Review:
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The arc is off to a good start but the first mission has a number of conceptual and gameplay issues. First off is the objective overload, the compass window is crammed with a LOT of things that need to be done right from the beginning of the mission. Two of the three hostages have to be lead out, which is not bad for the one who spawned in the first floor, but the one who spawned all the way up on the 5th floor added some annoying fake length to the mission. Then there were the clues, one of which was a destructable that was just a slightly different version of the other barrels that I had to destroy. Which brings me to the barrels, I always found it rather stupid that to stop an outbreak of disease/mutagen/poison gas I am supposed to smash the container open? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have a glowy that gets "deactivated" by the player removing the trigger mechanism or having it teleported away to some containment area?
The Crey Hazmat guys look pretty cool anyhow and weren't annoying at all. Wait scratch that, some minion just stunned me with Beanbag.
The 2nd mission is better with the objectives at least until I suddenly go from checking one mainframe from having to download four separate files from separate terminals. Since the clues from most of the terminals are nearly identical, they could have easily been reduced to a single clue rather than having the player click 4 terminals in one room.
The 3rd mission was non-combat for the first half, before DE and Crey overran it. Who knew that scientists could kung-fu fight? Also got stomped when 2 patrols and a big Crey ambush converged on me at the same time I was fighting another spawn. Therefore I ended up finishing the mission backwards.
Not much to say about mission 4, other than that I never found this hero that was mentioned to be in there and if there is space left it would be nicer if the three sick prisoners were not identical with identical lines. Since I never found SpeedBolt it makes the 4th mission debriefing rather weird. Apparently he had some important clue, so he should have been a required objective in that case. Otherwise the debriefing should be rewritten.
Ok, so in the fifth mission I see that this was meant to be part of that "Evil for the greater good" contest that Doc Aeon held. Except it doesn't really work here. The reasoning is that the cure for the DE version of the disease will kill 99% of the human population, because 1% of them have natural immunity. Crey didn't use the disease when they made it as a anti-Rikti weapon because it'd kill 1% of the human population. Problem is that the cure for the DE version will kill 1% of the population (those with the natural immunity) while saving the other 99%.
Well the obvious choice is to distribute the cure. 1% mortality rate? That's probably stricter than the FDA standards on most medicines!
But the wording for the fifth mission is really confusing about how I'd supposed to go about it. When I finally do enter the mission apparently what I'm supposed to do is deliver SpeedBolt to Crey for detainment, or are they going to kill her? The wording makes little sense and I'm not sure just what the author is trying to convey. Especially since not distributing the cure would be the evil choice as it would kill off 99% of humanity.
So I deliver SpeedBolt to Crey (why did it have to be Crey instead of Longbow or something? Is this the "evil" option and they're going to kill her?) and then release the cure into the water system.
I think the main reason that this falls flat is that I'm killing off one percent of several billion people. Maybe it if was 20% or so then it'd have some real impact.
Rating: **** -
Quote:If you look at the Dr. Aeons in the editor, the special AV version from the STF (who is set to only spawn at 52) mentions the clone thing right in his description as well as having a "Summon Clones" ability in the powers list.Originally Posted by Coulomb2
Well, yes and no. I've participated in it once, and it was an ultra-quick speed through, so I didn't have a chance to really catch any of the story. I knew about the Aeon clones (esp. because they're unlockable in MA anyway), and I certainly didn't think they were customs, but I don't know anything at all about the story behind them (and it isn't something I've thought to look up in the Wiki).
I figured that since the STF was added so long ago that this fell into you should know this already territory. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is aware of it, but it is canon.
I did my best to pick the easier of the clones. Some of them are really nasty (like the Dark/Dark Corruptor one). I wish there were a way to downgrade stock EBs to Boss in the detail settings.Quote:ironically, Dr. Aeon’s clones are actually (IMO) considerably more challenging than the “standard” Dr. Aeon (imagine an elite boss version of a Paragon Protector…).
I don't know why this would be happening, the only Nagan in the arc now with any +perception is Suziku herself. Maybe you got hit with a few ambushes or patrols and didn't notice their dialog before they showed up?Quote:the Nagans are quite the challenge thanks to their varied attacks and debuffing abilities (never mind the fact that they agro on you from a long way off).
That's why I decided to scatter so many optional allies across the map. Ideally if you lost some along the way you'd get a chance to find more later into the mission.Quote:To aid you, you are given access to multiple allies – many of them boss class. Normally I’d complain about “overpowered” allies, but for this arc they were very helpful, and I was glad to have them (and I’d argue having some boss class was necessary, as any allies that were lt. ranks or lower very frequently died within a few fights – especially in rooms where multiple spawns would agro onto me)!
The "rooms of death" are an issue with Tech Maps in general right now. Anyways, these maps were carefully chosen because most of the others had even worse rooms in them or had really bad spawn placements and I wanted to be sure that you were likely to come across the objectives in the correct order and not go running back and forth looking for everything.Quote:I can’t think of many ways the challenge could be reduced and the arc still work – I suppose it’s possible there are lab maps available that might not have quite as many of those “rooms of death,” but I also understand that they still have to be large enough to accommodate all of those complex mechanics that are a real highlight of this arc
Possible sequel hook.Quote:And finally, the arc made (literally) a passing reference to some sort of dialog that had been going on between Aeon and Suziku, but that never seemed to be developed (and I was kind of curious to know more). 
Not exactly, the first mission does say to Capture "Any" Nagans present, it doesn't spell out that they are present until the "lizard people" clue. Of course you're going to assume that they're present anyway so that's a bit of a moot point. Anyhow, I didn't foresee anyone not making that connection upon seeing them, what with the reptilian tails, clawed feet, etc. Keep in mind that their existence is not meant to be common knowledge at this point, so the civilian didn't know what else to call them. They're a lot more covert than the Rikti and didn't have a mass invasion in front of the public eye in the previous arc.Quote:Finally, the “lizard people” thing. As you can tell from the “playthrough notes,” I was evidently being exceptionally dense in not figuring out that the Nagans were the lizard people until half a mission after the clue telling you exactly that was given to me. Ignoring that little bit of stupidity on my part, though, I do think that at least until the beginning of the second mission it might not be clear to the player that the Nagans are the lizard people referred to (and I can’t really think of a specific reason it would be important to withhold that info specifically until the first mission is totally over – after all, the mission objectives make it very clear in the first mission that there are Nagans present) -
Quote:I take it then that you're never run or heard about the fight with Dr. Aeon in Statesman's Task Force? The Aeon Clones (which were not customs, they're part of the Arachnos group) are meant to be a earlier prototype of what happens in the third mission of that TF.Originally Posted by Coulomb2
However, I did find myself wondering “what’s up with these Aeon clones”? I think I was wanting more of a “story” reason for them to be there – but if there was, I missed it – to me they just seemed to be there as a sort of “misdirection”, an excuse to fight Aeon over and over again without defeating the real one until the very end. Also, related to this was the bit about research into Time Displacement – that never seemed to be developed or made part of the main story. I gathered that it was meant as a hero-side tie in to Project Destiny, or possibly even Recluse’s Victory – or maybe foreshadowing a future story arc?
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And general larking about.
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The description implies that this is a sequel to some other arc. What was the first one?
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Quote:At least your server hasn't had the channel taken over by farmers and people advertising all sorts of non-AE related stuff, which is another reason why so few are listening to it anymore.Originally Posted by ReclusesPhantom
Heck, at least fix the AE Channel. Don't hide it away because it's dead. Well, at least it is EU side. You see about two, three people max talking on it at least once a month if your lucky. Most of the time it's only a quick question, no one bothers to advertise their arc on that channel anymore because no one's listening.
And yes, just about all the global channels other than Ma Arc Finder are utterly dead. When I started pruning my global list again I found a lot of channels with only 2 or 3 people hanging out in them but never talking. -
Quote:It doesn't help that the Random button is hidden in a submenu behind the vague "More" button that is tucked over in a corner. The text box for Search shouldn't be hidden by default either.Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
But there is a "random" button already. Clearly the search interface isn't as obvious as it has to be. Of course it would be nice if the random arcs that popped up weren't 95% farms or abandoned unplayable arcs or test arcs, as well. I.e. the database should be cleaned out every now and then, somehow.
The Random button has other issues as well, such as that if I click it 20 times often the same arc will show up at least 5 of those times. Sometimes multiple times in a row even. -
Our rating system might as well be binary anyway: every time I've done a census the 4-star section was larger than all the other sections combined.
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Like I said in another thread, when sorting results the interface needs to take the quantity of ratings into account rather than just the average. Is it really fair that an arc with a 4.42 average after 200 ratings is listed dozens of pages behind an arc with a 4.43 average after only 10 ratings? Being able to hold onto a 4-star average after hundreds of plays (since people are very fickle and subjective with their votes) says a lot more about the quality of an arc than one that is already on it's way down into the pit of despair.
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Quote:Come to think of it, I remember that people who were helping one another farm ratings (back when there was a new badge for every X number of them) mentioning that you had to wait at least 3 days or the new rating wouldn't count.Originally Posted by Zamuel
Actually, I think this is incorrect if your second rating is is done about a week or so afterwards. I had uprated someone's arc about a month after I first played it since they made some changes and I noticed that the number of ratings increased. It bugged me since I was under the impression that my new rating would be overwriting the old one.
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Quote:Interesting, could have sworn that I've seen the rating count go up when I rated an arc for the second time.Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
Well, actually re-rating automatically overwrites your old rating (You can only ever have 1-rating per arc, and you can never lower a rating you've given, as per Posi way back when). So that's not really an issue - but it's still true that people rarely ever re-rate.
Anyhow, I think that it would be better to give the author some leeway if the errors are not anything serious. Knocking off an entire star over some typos that they would have fixed anyway after receiving a review that they requested from you would be a rather dick move.
Unfortunately with the current climate of MA this is all just preaching to the choir. You can advertise all you want but hardly anyone outside of this little sub-group of the forums is even listening. Nor is the Architect Chat channel enabled by default, so any advertising there goes unheard by the majority of the playerbase on any server. The MA Arc Finder channel isn't exactly crowded either, so unless you can get a lot more people to start using it then we're mostly advertising back and forth to each other.Quote:Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
I agree with Cheshire Cat that a better sorting algorithm for story arcs, maybe some improvements to the MMI for searching & sorting through AE arcs, would go a loooong way to making it easier for players to find arcs and good arcs to get players to try them. In the meantime, doing little promotional things like forum contests, QPQ reviews, advertising on MA Arc Finder channel, playing on the MA Arc Superteam, and other community activities, all help for getting people to try your story arc.
A lot more would be done by fixing the problem at the Search Interface end, since that is what the majority of players will be finding arcs through. There's even a contact at level 5 to tell you about it's existence. -
Quote:What's even worse is that they'd need to re-rate it 5-stars several times to cancel out their old 3-star vote. Fat chance of that happening.Originally Posted by The_Cheshire_Cat
I think for a lot of people who request reviews this is how they work - I know that the Astoria in D Minor that got Dev's Choice is a VERY different story arc than it was when I first published it. Likewise even though you rated my Tomorrownauts arc at 5 stars, I still found your feedback helpful and made a bunch of changes based on it. Mostly little changes, but I think it's the little things that can make the difference between 4 and 5 stars. I guess one problem with the rating system is that even if an arc is refined a great deal based on feedback from a 3-star rating, the person who made the original rating rarely ever goes back and re-rates the arc.
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Get the DC and HoF arcs off the first two pages for starters. Move them to their own tab or something, just stop monopolizing the front page with the same dozen arcs for the last several months. All it does is make MA look stagnant to the more casual players.
If anything, the first page should be a random assortment chosen from the arcs in the system. My idea would be something like: 1 random Guest Author, 1 random HoF, 1 random DC, 4 random 5-star arcs, and 4 random 4-star arcs.
The search options need to be expanded by default. The little More button off to the side is not only easy to miss for your average user but also vaguely worded and it doesn't click for everyone what it means.
"My Level" is WORTHLESS. There needs to be a drop-down list with level ranges just like in player and market search. The current option is not only thwarted by arcs lazily set to 1-54 but also doesn't help anyone if they're looking to do content in a certain range and want to exemplar their high-level character for whatever reason.
The sorting of arcs should not just take ratings average, it should also take the quantity of ratings into account. If you're not going to show us the true ratings and keep with this simplified rounding, then an arc that is 4.3 with 200 ratings should not be listed 20 pages behind arcs that are 4.34 with only 2 ratings.
The Sigma Clipping method mentioned earlier would be a suitable alternative and would also make ratings griefing tougher as well since a single 1-star cannot torpedo your average by canceling out the last several 5-star ratings.
I really would like to be able to see stats on arcs. If something is 4-star average then I'd like to see how many of those actually were 4-star votes. If you can't give this to everyone then at least allow the author to see them for their own arcs. -
Quote:No he hasn't. Bat'Zul had already been imprisoned in Mount Diable a couple centuries earlier by Father Henri. Aeon only discovered him when drilling for geothermal energy and discovered that the demon was the reason that the mountain had much more heat in it than there should have been for an extinct volcano. He kept the whole thing a secret because Lord Recluse would kill him if he failed to provide a power source for the island; Aeon is already technically a dead man anyway since Recluse went to the trouble of executing someone else in Dr. Egon's place to allow him to stay alive as Dr. Aeon but as his servant. This much was pretty well spelled out for you if you ran Marshal Brass's arcs and did the Virgil Tarikoss SF.
Aeon is equally power hungry but far more discrete. Not to mention he has trapped a demon to power his evil plans -
This arc has gone through some massive (and much needed) rewriting since PoliceWoman's review, I'd like to see the PoV of someone who hadn't played the original version.
Arc ID: 347029
Arc Title: Breaking The Barrier (And Putting It Back Together)
Factions:Soldiers of Rularuu, Arachnos, Nagans
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 45-54
Description: A group of aliens may have bit off more than they can chew when an experiment with stolen portal technology threatens the stability of the Universe itself, allowing the soldiers of Rularuu free access to our dimension. (Sequel to arc# 3326 "The Portal Bandits") -
I never understood the level spread of some groups. For example, Crey is a group that should have started much lower than level 30. Heck, villains can fight them in CoV as early as level 15 through a certain arc.
On the other end I never was sold on the Cimerorans being a level 35 group, much less a level 50 one. How are these guys even a threat to superheros and villains? They don't have any obvious magical armor or weapons, and the monster units are EBs who only appear inside the ITF. Really a single Mercs Mastermind could probably slaughter all of them as only Requiem and Nictus-Rommie are real threats in the ITF. -
Quote:Arcs don't expire with the author's account. There are a lot of abandoned arcs out there, a lot of which should probably be purged by now.Originally Posted by MLEdelen
I never said or pointed to the assumption that it was pulled. As I said, his account might have expired.
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Mini Review, meaning it was meant to be a quick one but grew too large. Was poking around with the random button again and saw something with quite a number of plays and a 4-star average, so I thought I'd take a look.
Arc ID: 58816
Arc Title: Stealing Science
Author: @Savannah Nightwolf
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 1-54
Description: Dr. Aeon is up to something again. This time, he's stolen the basis for his work, and is now attempting to modify it for his own use. Can you discover what he's up to, and stop him?
Mini Review:
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This arc had the promise of a fun story, but ultimately is marred by a lot of little things that added up fast. First off, while the contact has a description it doesn't tell us anything about her ("daughter of..." is meaningless if we don't know who the mother is anyway) or why we're working for her and following her orders. Secondly, the arc is set to be 1-54 for no apparent reason, which not only screws with the "arcs my level" option in the AE search but also makes no sense as if this is supposed to involve Crey and the Revenant Hero Project then why should any hero under level 30 be playing it?
The custom character inserted into the second mission has no point in being there since he gives you a safe combination (how did he get that and not get the safe contents anyway?) and then just run off instead of helping you. It would have made much more sense to have cut him out entirely and have the custom boss guarding the safe first instead of spawning after the safe is opened. I get the feeling that these cameos are meant to be more for the benefit of the author's supergroup than the player, since so little info and characterization are given.
Now the third mission is supposed to be in an office, but Tech Computers are used for glowies instead of Office Computers. While this is a nitpick, it's still a valid one as it does screw with the immersion a bit seeing glowies that just don't look like they fit on the tileset being used. I figure that the author may have originally used a Tech Lab map but thought that the player may have gotten sick of them by now.
Speaking of things to get sick of, why does mission 3 have so many damn computers to check if only two of them even matter? Why is the data on two separate computers anyway and why do I have to check them all to complete the mission? Arrg!! It's not like we get extra badges anymore for clicking X amount of glowies. It'd also be nice if the clues told me something specific about what was in the research files. Those little tidbits go a long way towards building atmosphere.
The Aeon Hero dialog is also confusing me. The attack dialog gives the impression that I am fighting a different person each time, but the defeat dialog implies that I am fighting the same person each time. Which is it? Also, since there are so many different Aeon Heroes now it wouldn't hurt to give them each a slightly different description to reflect this.
So it turns out that the DNA sample that I got in mission 2 shows that the Aeon Heroes were cloned from someone I don't know anything about but I'm spoken to like I'm supposed to be shocked or something. I'm pretty sure now that this was written specifically for the author's friends and SG-mates.
Now in mission 4 suddenly the Council and Nemesis want Aeon's hero clones. How did they even find out about them and why do they want them when they never showed interest in the original Revenant Heroes that they are based on? This just feels like a flimsy excuse to throw some more bad guys into the group.
Well it didn't take much time for the mainframe to get destroyed (and it had to be defended why? who steals data by smashing the computer?) so I never got to see this Mark VI Aeon Hero. Regardless, the entire mission felt like it could be removed without having any effect on the story, and since the arc continues anyway, it doesn't.
Wait a minute, now it says in mission 5 that Crey and Nemesis tried to stop Dr. Aeon? I thought Nemesis was there to steal the info, no destroy it, and there was no Crey in that 4th mission. Major plot hole.
So the hero who was cloned has finally showed up as an ally. If she was this important and not the contact, then why wasn't she the contact instead?
And then I /ragequit. Why? It had something to with there being 5 destroy computer objectives, each defended by an all-boss spawn of Aeon Heroes. The all-boss patrols of Aeon Heroes didn't help either. On top of that was another "Defeat Aeon Hero" objective.
The ragequit is why I didn't rate this arc. Up until this point I would have given it a 4, with all the stuff I listed up to the 4th mission being the things keeping it from being a 5. But with the fifth mission I just couldn't be bothered anymore to complete the arc but it wouldn't be fair to blast it with a bad rating over something that can be fixed pretty easily.
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Rating: NOT RATED -
Quote:Wise words but not to be taken as law. Just because it can be told in three missions doesn't mean that it has to be.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
A good story length is whatever is necessary to tell the story. If your story needs five missions to tell, it should be five missions. If it can be told in three, it should be three.
Use as many as you feel are necessary. There will always be people who for whatever reason complain if they have to zone more than a couple times. Then there are people like me who like changes of scenery and probably would enjoy 4 short missions more than 3 long ones that get boring halfway through. -
This guy would just walk all over Requiem and the rest of the Council/5th Column if he wanted. Well, maybe not 5th Column Requiem but he certainly could curbstomp Council Requiem.
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Quote:But then were are you going to keep your stuff?Originally Posted by Scythus
Rule it? My goal is to destroy it.
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Yep, you cannot put line breaks in NPC dialog.
Also, the character limit for Boss Unaware dialog is greater than what will be displayed in a word bubble. The entire thing will show up in the NPC Dialog channel but the word bubble will cut it off.