Lazarus

Suspension of Disbelief only goes so far. Just because someone can shoot lightning doesn't mean that all logic goes out the window. Even though we bend the laws of physics to fantastic degrees they still for the most part apply. Just because the premise is fantastical doesn't mean that things don't have to make sense at all.

Really, find me a mission in the regular game where we stop a plague by blowing up biohazard cannisters. I'll wait.

Anyhow, another reason for why the Nemesis plot ending would work better: in the end we're done with this arc and none of it happened. Atlas Park is still there and looks just fine.

Whether you want to treat AE as just a simulator or as actual canon is up to the player, but in the end you simply are not what the arc tries to make you think you arc. This all being a plot by Nemesis to get some critical information out of you, like in the Star Trek: TNG episode "Frame of Mind" would have worked very well in such a case and could be believed to have actually happened? This "oh you're an insane lunatic" ending is just better off ignored because it didn't happen anyway.

And you can delete souvenirs that you don't care to keep.

It's a feature that's been requested since i14 beta, I really don't know why we didn't get that option right from the start.

And yeah, the cut-n-paste thing is annoying when you're adding a whole new mission to the middle of an arc.

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I've never seen Buffy but one example that jumps to mind is "12 Monkeys", a movie I very much enjoyed. It is superficially very similar, the contrast of 'reality' with 'hospital' and continually asks the viewer "what is real?"

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Except that 12 Monkeys is clearly real, especially when we get to see events from points of view outside that of the main character. Had the entire movie been seen from the eyes of Bruce Willis's character then you'd have a point.

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It couldn't have developed a leak upon arrival?

It could have but no competent HAZMAT worker would make that assumption. They'd assume the worst because they'd have to.



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You're talking about a game in which we defuse bombs by shooting them with powers (including fire and electricity), dispose of dangerous chemicals by shooting them with powers, and save the Hydra from the Rikti by.. shooting them with powers.

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I don't know what game you're playing but generally we defuse bombs by clicking on them. Anyhow...

Mission 1:
Typo in send off: Deactive -> Deactivate

If it is so critical that the canisters do not leak, why am I not just clearing the path for the Hazmat team instead of dealing with the canisters themselves? Or planting some kind of force field generator on them to form a containment field? What about using the teleport beacon trick and teleporting them away after I click them?

Why are they destructibles at all? Just because the Devs did it once with a stupid mission where you remove the threat of a tank of poison gas by punching the beejeezus out of it doesn't make it ok. This is just silly.

Nice to see Ms. Liberty standing around doing jack all as usual.

So a cannister is already cracked and leaking, but the clue tells me that the released amount is impossibly minute and nothing to worry about. There's that idiot ball I heard of.

So how did I incinerate the thing like the clue says I did? I don't remember be given a supply of thermite and napalm before starting this mission. I'm just a Mace Brute smashing these because the contact told me to.

Knowing that this mission technically fails anyway, you might as well just make the cannisters defendables and the objective to stop the Arachnos from carrying out their orders to open them. That would have made more sense and probably wouldn't need much change to the writing tying missions 1 and 2 together.

More idiot ball as I don't tell the contact about the cracked container.

Mission 2:
Nothing to complain about in this briefing except for this: THIS IS ATLAS [CENSORED] PARK! THE CENTER OF PARAGON CITY! How does nobody know what has been going on in there for days now?

Why did they wait a week to call me as well? Why does this place look like it was hit with a nuke and who brought the Megamechs? You're telling me they couldn't see all this with air and satellite surveillance?

Also when did Ms. Liberty turn into a Katana Scrapper? At least she's much easier to beat than the regular Ms. Liberty.

Mission 3:
Synapse ran off and spread the disease? Considering what a wimp he is really stopping him shouldn't have been any issue for Statesman, or anyone else.

Oh, and how do we know that Mako made it anyway? That just came out of nowhere with no explanation.

Not much variety with these infected. The ones in the Arachnos base look the same as the ones in Atlas Park. Actually, they all look the same aside from the Pyrolich.

Why would the Clockwork King be at Phoenix Medical Center anyway, shouldn't he be in the Zig? Also since when does Mako have command of the Arachnoids?

Mission 4:
Right, so apparently Paragon City doesn't exist and the guy here with the Nemesis anagram name is a psychiatrist. It probably is a Nemesis Anagram because I doubt it means any of these things. At least the name the author tries to give me is unisex enough, since the character I'm using is a girl.

Why did the Chief of Medicine refer to me by my character name? Should a doctor really be indulging a patient like that when they're trying to keep them grounded in reality? The nurses are instructed to do that by the drug prescription but that doesn't explain the doctors.

Why is one of the zombies here? If it was a normal person reacting in fear and having the name Screaming Undead it might have worked, but it shouldn't look like a zombie as well.

Nice to see that the Doctors do not bother with passwords on their computers. Apparently HIPPA doesn't exist in this world either.

Also why have The Screaming Dead and Surgeon started following me around? Better check their settings. Actually, all of the ally spawns are following me now.

Typo in Chief of Medicine's description: Not just missing a ? at the end, there is no punctation at the end of that sentance at all.

The contact tries to tell me that everything I saw was real and blah blah blah. Or it could easily be a tech lab with a bunch of actors in it.

This can only end in one of two ways: either I've really been character-jacked and this is the truth or it's all a Nemesis plot with no apparent reason to it yet. The sad thing is, the Nemesis Plot would be more interesting and more believable.

Wait, if my mother admitted me then why could she not be allowed to visit me? Maybe I'm wrong, but how can the hospital forbid you from coming to visit your own child?

Mission 5:
Statesman, Lord Recluse, Paragon City are all constructs based on people and places from the hospital and my past? So why didn't I see any of that in the last mission? I didn't see any doctor named Marcus Cole or such.

Anyhow, time to smash my way out of this place and of course it's the poor man's silent hill hospital map.

The ending is ultimate unsatisfying. The author tried too hard to have it go both ways when they should have just picked one ending and focused on it.

The Verdict: 3 stars
Clumsy story telling, too many idiot moments in the plot, and an ending that tries so hard to be vague that it ends up being stupid. Doesn't help that I've seen this plot handeled before and better so many times. Heck, Star Trek even did it twice in The Next Generation and Deep Space 9.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara": Toned down the allies in mission 5.
* Avatar of Strength lost Slice, 5 attacks is plenty for him.
* Avatar of Initiative traded Empathy for Fire Manipulation and Fire Blast for Fire Assault.
* Avatar of Balance traded Dark Miasma for Empathy.

Having two healers available and such powerful debuffs made the battle with Mindskewer too easy was a common issue raised. I hope this finally addresses it.

Well this is lovely, was testing an arc of mine and now my Empathy ally is not behaving right either. No Clear Mind and almost never heals anymore either. *grumble*

Since you asked, I present "All Consuming" (261148) and "Of Futures Past" (254599).

Same here, I had to add extra warnings to one of my arcs because some people didn't seem to get that if all the missions are set to 40-54, there is a good reason for it. Especially when a lot of custom critters are involved who were balanced to challenge level 40+ players.

I'd rather that the auto-sk mechanic had a limitation like not being able to start the arc if you're more than 5 levels below the highest minimum level among the missions. That might also encourage people to use reasonable level ranges, although some fools will still try to just leave it at 1-54 with their custom critters who probably will mop the floor with anyone below level 15.

I couldn't stand being in a chorus, must be also why I dislike big teams and prefer small bands where everyone gets a chance to shine. I also vastly prefer playing villain archetypes and prefer them on my teams as well. Even in a Co-Op TF like the ITF or LGTF I'll look for villains first.

This has been going on since MA came out. The only buffing set that Allies use properly all the time is Empathy, go figure.

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You don't want to bother playing it? After you've already been "paid" to do so? How "honest" is that Lazarus? You made the initial offer to review the arcs and stated the "payment". After the "payment" was made you now want to include your likes and dislikes as criteria for playing it in the first place and make that part of the rules?

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That criteria was included in the first place, the submitter ignored it.

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If the criteria were intended to be construed such that the inclusion of one of the "dislikes" would change or void the "review-for-review" transaction, I'm afraid that was not clear to me. Quite frankly, I read the list of dislikes and knew that you wouldn't like the level jumping, but I decided to take my chances anyway; it didn't occur to me that you might decide to delay playing the arc simply based on one of these dislikes.

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I was trying to do people a favor by giving them a chance to correct the level range issue before I do the review and knock of points for such an easily avoidable flaw. Nowhere did I say that I had thrown the arc off the queue, I had simply given a warning about something that already had been pointed out. Your arc was not even the first to get that warning and I was getting tired of doing it on a per-arc basis and decided to make an announcement. Last time I did such a thing was when the Devs changed what Standard/Hard/Extreme meant, I made an announcement and delayed all reviews for a week so that people could fix whatever may have been broken before I got to their arc and ended up giving them a bad review.

MrCaptainMan, you're the last person who should be addressing me on "clarification".

I'm through with this nonsense.

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I have to admit I'm still baffled as to why you care. If the top level range varies widely, yes, that affects what powers and abilities you'll have as you progress through the arc. But if the lower limit varies, all that happens is the bad guys may get a little beefier - AFAICT it doesn't really materially affect how easy or hard the arc is overall.

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As I understand it, the biggest problem with this kind of level jump is that just because a lowbie has been auto-SKed up to the appropriate level doesn't mean that they can actually handle enemies at that range. Putting aside the problem of not having nearly as many powers and slots at that point as they should (including a number of defense/control options), there's also the fact that once you hit level 25-30, the game will be assuming that you're completely decked out in SO enhancements at the very least, if not a few IOs, and will be balanced to that assumption. A lowbie who's still using TOs or even DOs is going to be seriously out-classed.

From the other side, I personally find being suddenly auto-exemplared to be equally frustrating since it means I won't be getting XP for that mission.

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Someone deserves a gold star.

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I cut it off before your list of likes and dislikes, because those appear to be "outside" the rules of getting you to post a critical review.

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So here you're deciding for yourself what applies and which doesn't, because right in that part you quoted: Now let's cover the things that I like and dislike in arcs, so you have some idea of whether or not you want to submit yours to me.

It's pretty bleeding obvious that one should read that part and not submit an arc containing things that the reviewer does not want to put up with. Those things were listed so that you don't have to waste your time.

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You don't want to bother playing it? After you've already been "paid" to do so? How "honest" is that Lazarus? You made the initial offer to review the arcs and stated the "payment". After the "payment" was made you now want to include your likes and dislikes as criteria for playing it in the first place and make that part of the rules?

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That criteria was included in the first place, the submitter ignored it.

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At least now I've found another reviewer to scratch off my list who lets their own bias color the reviews,

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Good luck finding an unbiased human being. Maybe robots will start doing reviews sometime in the future.

Oh, and nice job totally missing the tongue-in-cheek joke in my thread's title.

Too be honest, I don't really need more feedback on "MacGuffin Delivery Service", "The Portal Bandits", or "The Amulet of J'gara". All three are now flagged as "Final" status. The arcs I need feedback on are the newer ones: "All Consuming" and "Of Futures Past".

You're free to play the arc you want, and I do hope that you play them all, but after a hundred or so ratings you're not likely to tell me something that I haven't already heard about that arc over a dozen times already.

And just because I've heard it a bunch of times doesn't mean I'll address it, especially if it's a trivial complaint like "3 rooms for a CoT map is too big, WAAAHH!"

One should always listen to criticism, but one also needs to know when to stick to their guns. If we authors addressed every little thing that someone found annoying, and different people have different annoyances, we'd all just be writing farm arcs or some crap.

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I noticed that you dislike glowie hunting on outdoor maps - this is almost the same thing.

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Not the same thing at all, especially when the only relevant glowies are all in the same room and you're flat out told right at the start where to look for them. The rest are just there for people who enjoy exploring.

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Third, I didn't care for the way the dialogue was laid out like a diary entry. It disallows the appearance of free will by writing the characters own thoughts

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It's pretty much impossible to make the player "their own contact" without this caveat.

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if the story merits the range (for whatever reason) then why not just let it go?

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I don't have to put up with such nonsense in dev-created arcs (even Oroboros only does it for one short arc) so why is it so excusable in player-created arcs.

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The concept that "I can't fight that, its 40 levels beneath me!" is seriously laughable. If I'm a hero, I'm going to fight the fights that need winning regardless of who the enemy is.

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And if I'm a villain then it probably is beneath me. If I'm a high-level hero then I'm handling the big threats, it's not like there aren't bunch of lower-level heroes around to take care of it in the CoX world.

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I suppose I've played only level 50s for so long that I forgot about XP as a motivating factor.

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It's not always the XP issue, very much of the annoyance is the "where the hell did half of my powers just go?" issue that it causes. Especially aggravating if the character was not built to be exemplar friendly at all levels and to be honest, many builds just plain suck below certain levels when critical powers are unavailable.

Alright guys, let's give it a rest. You've all said much more than I had planned to say.

I just want to reiterate that my stance on level ranges is pretty strict, that's why it's mentioned right in the starting post where I laid out the rules for this thread. I said that I really dislike inconsistent level ranges, so anyone submitting arcs with such a flaw are just asking for it really. The reason I, and other reviewers, have submission criteria like that is so that submitters know ahead of time if they should pass on by instead of wasting our time and their own.

Don't submit an arc that contains one or more of the reviewer's pet peeves, especially when they told you up front what they are.

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I think when i15 came out and I changed a few things around, one of these arcs (or maybe it was both?) ended up with one of those "WARNING: this arc may kick your puppies because it's so freakin hard!" sorts of warnings on it - don't believe such lies!

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I hate that warning as it applies to everything. The only custom could be someone you used from another arc as the contact, who appears nowhere in the missions, and you'll still get that warning.

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Spacenut has been playing his Stalker like a Brute

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Actually, I play my Stalker like a Dominator.

*tosses Blinding Powder*

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I play mine like a Scrapper with really good stealth. No point in using Assassin Strike on one mob if a Thunderstrike + Lightning Rod combo will take out the entire spawn at once.

It makes me sad when I see some gimp Stalker who skipped all their shields and didn't slot anything other than AS. Almost as bad as the last time I saw a Dark/Dark Corruptor who had 3 attacks, skipped all powers from Dark Miasma except the heal and rezz, and took the entire medicine pool. WTF.

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Does the Glowie name even show up? I thought they showed up as "Book case..." This is a problem. I called mine "Cabinet" and "Fake Cabinet"

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It shows up in the Target window when you click on it.

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The Abandoned Sewers are even worse. Who the heck ever goes there?

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Sewer Trial teams.

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People still do the Sewer Trial?

I've been looking through my queue and already noticing some issues before I even play the arcs that have been offered to me. The biggest issue, level ranges.

Seriously people, it's issue 15 and you have an easy way to fix this. Unless you're doing a Ouroboros-style time travel arc with the annoying "dude, where's my powers" mechanic, which you ought to be upfront about in the arc description, there is no excuse for things like this.

Mission 1: level range 40-54
Mission 2: level range 11-20
Mission 3: level range 20-20
Mission 4: level range 1-15
Mission 5: level range 40-54

Just what level character is this arc meant for? I know if playing a 50 I'll be really annoyed by missions 2-4 and if I'm playing a level 10 I'd be very unhappy if I was expected to fight something like Malta in missions 1 and 5.

Already I'm looking at that level spread and don't want to bother playing it. I'm not saying who it was here but it's going to the back of the list until the level issues are sorted out.

Crazy, unexplained and unjustified level ranges are a automatic -1 star on the rating. Try to save everyone the annoyance and either fix it now or have a very good reason for it.

And it better be good.