Lazarus

Critical Review

Arc ID: 182874
Arc Title: Time's Maelstrom
Author: @Armory1
Description: A rupture between timestreams has doomed the future. Can you save the world and time itself, and after all of that decide the fate of billions? Player-determined outcome.
Rating: ***

================================

Character used: Raikou Shingai, Level 43 Electric Melee/Dark Armor Stalker
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 43

================================

Mission 1:
Looks like Mender Silos has a job for me. Somehow a version of Manticore from 10 years in our future has traveled back to our time without using the Pillar of Ice and Flame. This concerns Silos as not only is he using an unknown form of time travel, but that his method may cause the sort of damage to the timestream that the Pillar is designed to avoid. I am tasked with finding this Manticore and bringing him in.

Manticore for some reason appeared in an abandoned warehouse being used by the Freakshow, who are pretty surprised by his arrival as well. I find Manticore about halfway through the warehouse and fortunately I don't need to fight him as he has a message for me. In 2020 a villain named Maelstrom managed to nuke both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, killing millions of people and superpeople as well as myself. Posi managed to use a damaged Pillar to sent Manticore back. The interesting thing is that Maelstrom and I have a history, or at least will eventually.

However Milos has even worse news. Manticore came from only a possible future, but in his act in coming back to warn us he may have shifted events to make his future more likely!

Mission 2:
Milos informs me that the timelines are beginning to merge and he cannot stop it with his own powers, however we may be able to stablize the future by preventing key events in that future from happening in our own timestream. Sounds pretty risky though as it was meddling with time that started this in the first place.

The Menders have found out how Maelstrom gained his powers and are sending me to that event to try and prevent it from happening in the first place. There is a catch though, in our timeline Maelstrom died in that event, so I have to try to prevent his empowerment without killing him by recovering the cryochamber he was being stored in when the facility was destroyed by the storm that hit it.

The targeting for the time jump was a bit off due to the interference from the time rupture, so I arrive as the storm is already hitting. Unfortunately I am too late, as Martin Langstrom has already been freed from his pod and has gotten drunk on his new powers. Even worse, after defeating him he has sworn revenge on me. Whoops.

Mission 3:
The future is stabilizing more, which both good and bad in that it allows Mender Silos to see further into it. He has looked beyond the point that Manticore came back from and sees that Maelstrom intends to do deliberately what Manticore did accidentally, punch more holes in the fabric of spacetime. Doing so could possible merge all of the timelines into his own, making Maelstrom's reality the only reality.

Some good news though is that PsiLord, Maelstrom's dragon, has followed Manticore back to the same warehouse from mission 1. If I can defeat him here he will not be present after Maelstrom's victory to go back in time and... wait, I'm getting dizzy here.

Anyhow, I go off to defeat PsiLord.

Well this is interesting. Not only are the Freakshow gone, but along with PsiLord and someone named Tick I have the most interesting defeat all ever: Defeat Multitude... all of him.

Yes, the map is filled with identical minions named Multitude.

Hmm, this is not the same warehouse from mission 1, the layout is different.

Ok, what the hell were you thinking giving an elite boss Super Strength, Kinetics, and RAGE? He was obnoxious enough solo, I hate to see what would happen if a full team tried to face him.

After dealing with Tick I destroyed the Portal Machine that PsiLord had brought with him and then went to punch him in his exposed brain a few dozen times. He was still confident in his plan right up to the end though.

Mission 4:
Mender Silos tells me that with PsiLord's defeat and capture Maelstrom's plan to merge all the timestreams will not succeed now. However the original problem still remains of him destroying the Rogue Isles and Paragon City. He has determined that the only plan that may work is to send me 10 years into the future to defeat Maelstrom just before he launches the nuclear assault. I have 1 hour.

Manticore has gone on ahead of my, somehow, so I'll be able to find him somewhere in the mission. Off I go to save the future!

Why are PsiLord and Tick here? Oh yeah, I defeated them after this event. Time is so messy. At least I don't have to defeat Multitude this time.

Bug: you have several customs who are in the All Custom Characters group.

Honestly, does a 1 hour timed mission need so many Elite Bosses? Is there any reason that some cannot be regular bosses, they're pretty tough as it is.

Interesting, the two allies I just freed are Merc Masterminds. Nice touch.

Got Manticore right afterwards. PsiLord didn't stand a chance.

OH COME ON! An Elite Boss with Regen and Instant Healing? That's just being a jerk, for the first few minutes of the fight he took 0 damage while that was running, even with me and all the allies pounding away at him.

Hmm, Maelstrom's dialog is not using the $name and $hisher tags right as it's actually going off before you get into aggro range.

Oh great, Tick again and in the same room as Maelstrom. I decide to take Maelstrom first, despite his Hurricane making the allies useless from all the constant knockback.

Add to that to-hit debuffs, confusion, and hitting the slow cap. Congratulations for designing such an annoying EB.

Defeated Tick and finished the mission with 30 minutes left on the clock. So where is this "Player Determined Outcome" advertised in the description?

Mission 5:
Ok, so there is one more mission? What would have happened if I had failed mission 4? This one assumes that I suceeded, so why was mission 4 timed anyways if failing it would be ignored?

Ok, this makes no damn sense. Why did I even bother with this arc if now I'm being asked to go all the way back and prevent this entire arc from happening in the first place? This is the worst use of a reboot button I have ever seen, if it's so necessary then why didn't I do it 3 missions ago?

I can't see anyone wanting to follow through with this, but I need to see the last mission just to finish the review. Besides, I can just delete the souvnir since I won't be wanting to keep it now.

A shame, 'cause I was enjoying this arc for the most part up until this point.

15 minutes to destroy the time machine, at least it's not something insane like defeat Positron and Manticore in 15 minutes. Still it's a crappy way to end the story.

Spare me your damn speech, Silos. If it was so important to press the reset button on this then you should have done it yourself right from the start.

*souvenir deleted*

================================

The Verdict:
This was looking to be a five-star arc until the midway point. First all the overpowered EBs dragged the fun factor way down, and then the really stupid "player determined outcome" not only killed my enjoyment of the arc but was also completely pointless as it undoes everything that I had done up to that point. I can't give this more than 3 stars.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hero Version
Villain Version

Each person you speak to tells you a short story, unless you're the same origin as them then which they'll tell you a lot more. Overall when you look over all of the extended stories they all imply that every origin owes it's existence to magic.

What a crock.

[/ QUOTE ]
The only person who really implies it is Tarikoss, who is flat out wrong, anyhow. Probably lying, considering his Strike Force. If you do enough CoT arcs, both heroside and villainside, and that one Portal Corp mission heroside that has the dimension where the CoT were peaceful, you'll know that War Witch's explanation is the correct one.

The mutant thing is just flat out retarded, however. Isn't Sister Psyche like 80 years old or something? That would mean she was born before 1938. She also says "We're both mutants", "No mutant was born before 1938", and "I don't think of myself as a mutant". Which is it, lady?

[/ QUOTE ]

Positron is the one who annoys me the most, especially since I prefer to ignore the stupidity of the whole Doctor Brainstorm thing and the BS explanations of why certain powers were not allowed to certain ATs before but are now. Such a thing did not need a meta explanation and the one Posi gives makes him sound like an idiot.

Golden Roller on the other hand, the villain Tech contact, doesn't give you any metaphysical mumbojumbo at all.

Changes made to "Of Futures Past":
* Cobalt Stinger now has "Ask About This Contact" info.
* Added Mission 1 Start Clue: Cobalt's Shopping List.
* The fight with Dr. Aeon in misson 1 is now required. Seems everyone was electing to fight him anyway and you have plenty of backup.
* Cut down on some of the extraneous clues in mission 3, moved their text to the objective complete text.
* Removed the buggy explosives detail from mission 3.
* Added timestamps to the mission 4 clues like GlaziusF suggested.
* Expanded the Ubermensch's dialog in mission 4.
* Alina Ivanov in mission 5 is now set to continue following you after attempting to lead her out. Revised the dialog of all ambushes and the Raid Leader to reflect this. However since the escort objective is technically completed, if she is defeated after this point the arc will not fail.
* Raid Leader in mission 5 now explains in his dialog why you cannot leave without defeating him first.

Yeah, I remember there being a much easier way to do it.

Can you two just take it out back already?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
AR/TA/Mace for ULTIMATE REDRAW ACTION

Yes, I'll be rolling one tyvm

[/ QUOTE ]

Beautiful. I'd love to see if you got past level 20 before giving up from frustration.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geez, I didn't even make it past 6 on my AR/Dark. Actually, none of my AR/? attempts did, I hate the redraw so much. It's one of those things where you know that the animation is not really slowing you down, but the appearance of it just makes the illusion that it is so strong and you just can't get over it.

[ QUOTE ]
for example, instanced missions are an example of the curious case of the game asserting that something is real but *not* part of consensus reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

Like multiple teams, or even the same team, defeating the Clockwork King for the last time multiple times in the same day.

I ran a big test of this a while back where I made a bunch of custom allies and swapped them out to see which ones worked and which didn't. Empathy was the only consistent one and that seems to be over as well.

I dunno how you got Pain or Thermal to work, every time I try those they don't do jack most of the time or only buff once per mission. Even when they're the only damn non-hostile in the entire mission.

If it's a EB/AV, it will spawn as an AV if you're solo only if you're on Diff 5. The only way it will spawn as an AV all the time is if it's a task force AV who doesn't have an EB version, those tend to be the ones with a level range like 54-54.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Really odd. Doesn't match my experience at all, though I'm not discounting your experience. I wondered if the problem was server related so a couple of sessions ago, I brought out my old AR/Dev blaster on Guardian server to see if I can get a team started around 11 PM Pacific time. I started with just two people joining, but had a full team of 8 (levels 44 - 50) doing parts of the Maria Jenkins arc and radio missions just for flavor. We even did a Safeguard mission (wow, that was hard on Invincible!)

I don't have any villains on Champion, but I have no problems on finding/starting teams where I have most of my major characters (Guardian blue side, Virtue blue/red side).

[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't surprise me, because Guardian has a very high blue to red player ratio, just as Champion does. And Virtue is the second most populated server in the game, so it'll have a higher redside population by default.

[/ QUOTE ]

And even there you can still broadcast every few minutes and send tells to everyone with a few levels of you in Search yet still come up empty handed.

One of the most annoying times was during the first couple weeks when VEATs came out. I got really tired of people talking about how easy it was to get a team redside, leaving out the "if you're also playing a VEAT" part. My Dominator soloed for hours with her LFT flag up and broadcasted between every mission, not a single invite.

Amusingly, one I did manage to recruit some people, the first thing the 5th or 6th to join said was "Thank god, no [censored] VEATs!"

I've never been desperate enough for a team to lackey far outside my level range, not that teams want lackeys anyway. Nor am I going to exemp when I could be getting XP unless it's a TF that I missed and want/need the badge for.

On a few rare occasions I had to invite some lackeys because we honestly could not find a single free Corruptor who wasn't 10 levels below the level of the team.

Hero Version
Villain Version

Each person you speak to tells you a short story, unless you're the same origin as them then which they'll tell you a lot more. Overall when you look over all of the extended stories they all imply that every origin owes it's existence to magic.

What a crock.

[ QUOTE ]
Treating everything as "just a simulation" when many arcs could easily fit into the game world lessens the impact of those arcs, IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nor should it be used as an excuse for bad writing. As far as I'm concerned, it's to be taken as canon unless explicitly said not to be. Even the souvenir for this arc gives the impression that it was meant to have actually happened.

Of course you're free to take what you want as canon. I myself don't accept the whole Origin of Powers thing as canon since it contradicts so many things and cheapens many of the origins by trying to say that they're all really caused by magic, even the Tech and Natural ones.

[ QUOTE ]
I've always interpreted the "Idiot Ball" differently. To me, it's when you (the player) suspect something is happening in the arc, but your character is written as conveniently oblivious. It's not that it forces me to be wrong, but rather that it forces me to be wrong when I already know better.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's how I see it as well. Idiot Ball is related the the Idiot Plot, a plot that only works because every character involved is being an idiot while the audience can clearly see that nothing should be working the way it is.

Yeah, Allies and Escorts have a new bug. Allies set to Wander or Do Nothing will start following you anyway and Escorts set to Exit Mission will not do so.

I really wish they'd add a "Return to Exit" detail, I guess for here the boss having some sort of jamming equipment would work.

[ QUOTE ]
minuses for stock descriptions on stuff like the Nagans and Mission 4 Agency that the mission logic tells me I'm not supposed to understand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well the Agency you have a bit of a point for, but I'm not going to make duplicates of the Nagans just to change their descriptions, which I would have to as I don't have enough room in the arc to overwrite them all. (Adding a new description to a boss/ally spawn only overwrites what the player sees, it does not overwrite the description built into the critter so the storyarc file ends up bloated.)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
SomethingAwful, for the record, is not as unmoderated as /b/.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's like saying that a volcano isn't as hot as the sun.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well for the record, Magma ranges from 700 to 1300 degrees C while the surface of the sun is 6000 to 11000 on the surface.

After testing my ally again it seems that she only uses her buffs one third of the time and even then it's often a case of buffing you when you rescue her and then forgetting that those powers exist for the rest of the mission.

Post deleted by Moderator 08

I've had to crank all my allies up to aggressive to get them working again. This was getting really annoying seeing them stand around doing nothing.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't believe a friendly community has to include author-coddling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, this isn't childrens soccer where everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

MrCaptainMan, if you abuse and misuse the term "open mind" one more time...

The only reason it's Venture leading the debate rather than I was because I waited a few days before even looking at the arc. Already it was being hyped as the best thing since sliced bread. Had I played it before hearing the spoilers my review would have probably been even worse because I'd be less prepared for the incompetent audience sucker punch that the arc tries to deliver.

[ QUOTE ]
Note that you also destroy bombs by punching them every third story arc, too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hyperbole will get you nowhere. Aside from the rare set of explosives that are placed so that you can use them to hurt the surrounding enemies, nowhere do we go around punching bombs to disarm them.

"The Portal Bandits" (#3326) and "Of Futures Past" (#254599) are set for level 40-50. The second should easily be finished in an hour, the first is going to depend on how fast your team is and what your diff is set to.

"The Portal Bandits" is designed to be challenging in a "pay attention to what you're doing" sort of way. Blindly charging into rooms packed with big spawns is not recommended, but you should get the hang of the customs soon enough.

All you've done is outright ignore the points brought up or twist them around to make it look like the critic is making unreasonable demands of you.

I won't be answering any more posts here on this topic, let Citizen Razor's thread get back on topic.

[ QUOTE ]
Stephen Sheridan has a mission in which one of the stated objectives is 'Destroy the Mutagenic Cansiters" which cause people who come in contact with them to become Lost.

[/ QUOTE ]

So one old arc from before issue 1, which was rife with bad writing, and has never been done again since. That's hardly something that we do all the damn time in this game, which is what you try to make it sound like.

[ QUOTE ]
It's funny actually, because near the start of this thread, the arc had over 90% 5-star votes, and nearly a hundred votes. Once the 'forum cartel' folk latched on, it all of a sudden got hit with a bunch of 1 and 2 star votes that have been coming in in bursts. But not before, and the arc had literally been around months, and hadn't been advertised at all. My supergroup has 4 active players, and my coalition has another 6-8, so I know those prior masses of 5-star votes weren't from them. We're a small crew.

The lesson here is, don't dare upset the Forum Cartel because apparently they've got connections. :P

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh get over yourself. Almost no one makes it past the 100 vote mark with a 5-star average, you weren't anything special really to begin with. Next are you going to blame the person who started this thread and began hyping the arc up on your behalf?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Seriously Witch Engine, just apologize for your arc kicking Venture's dog, and the healing can begin.

[/ QUOTE ]
That won't solve anything, since it's reached the point where the entire MA Forum has started arguing with Venture. Actually if anything, this is getting Witch Engine tons of exposure.

[/ QUOTE ]

While the rating of the arc drops. Law of Averages has already taken hold.