Lazarus

Summary of Arcs Reviewed Thus Far
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Arc ID - Title - Author - Rating
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57352 - The All-Seeing Eye - @Steele Magnolia - 5 Stars
2595 - The Extadine Lab - @Vanden - 5 Stars
40783 - The Stream of Time - @Silent Spy - 2 Stars
11102 - Merulina Awakens! - @Neuronia - 3 Stars
33034 - The Descender - @MrSquid - 4 Stars
61013 - The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space! - @Aliana Blue - 5 Stars
1237 - The Storyteller: Sabrina's Tale - @Redbone1 - 5 Stars
2180 - Bricked Electronics - @GlaziusF - 5 Stars
1501 - Heroic Rescue - @Robzilla - 3 Stars

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The crates at the back showed up in blue text. That means they're optional objectives. I should have put that in the opening accept text.

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Question: How do you get your non-required objectives to still show up in the objective window? I haven't been able to find any answer to that question. Not surprised since I see it appear so rarely.

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You have to enter text for both plural and singular navtext, even if it's only one optional objective.

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So it's exploiting a bug? (At least I considered it a bug when I stumbled upon it during Beta.)

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The crates at the back showed up in blue text. That means they're optional objectives. I should have put that in the opening accept text.

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Question: How do you get your non-required objectives to still show up in the objective window? I haven't been able to find any answer to that question. Not surprised since I see it appear so rarely.

I'm getting tired of spineless twits who are scared to leave feedback. Makes me wonder how they handle real life communications.

Well I'm on a roll today, so time to take Anna through...

Arc: Heroic Rescue (Extended Version)
Arc ID: 1501
Author: @Robzilla
Number of Missions: 3
Description: You commit a random act of Heroism (being a hero, that is generally what you do. . .) that leads to something more. . . .
Rating: ***

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Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50

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Not a very eye-catching title, to be honest. I also noticed that the 2nd mission drops me down to level 14 and wonder how that is going to be justified.

Mission 1:
I turn on the radio to hear a report on a building fire, with the addition that it is a chemical solvent manufacturer that is on fire. Luckily I'm nearby and can come to the rescue.

I have 10 minutes to enter the burning building and rescue four workers from...toxic waste canisters? I'm wondering how they all managed to get cornered by them, then oddly I got ambushed at the door by some canisters that moved towards me.

Inventive, anyway. I rescue all four workers with 5 minutes to spare and exit the burning building. The radio reports my success, yay!

Mission 2:
Now the radio reports a new development. Several chemical bombs have been set around Steel Canyon and only I can disarm them as the bombers have threatened to remotely detonate them if anyone else tries to. Apparently the fire was only to cover their theft. Hmmm...

Now I have 15 minutes, but have been dropped to level 14 for no apparent reason.

So I'm searching for the glowies, along the way I see some guy named Nuclear Archer taking shots at more toxic waste containers lying in the streets. Ok.

Oh great, some of these glowies are fakes as well.

So I found all the real bombs with 10 minutes to spare and moved on to find out now that the bomber is holding the radio station hostage.

Mission 3:
I have 30 minutes to rescue them all and thankfully am level 50 again. I get to the Radio Station and enter to see a group of Jester-themed villains.

I rescued the first two hostages and went up to the second floor. The third hostage was all bloodied up and mumbling about a trap. Regardless, time to find the boss, who calls himself The Imposter, and end this.

I find him around the corner and boy does he take a long time to kill. When you're on your own without allies, Willpower EBs are a PAIN. Not that he ever stood a chance at killing me, but he took nearly 10 minutes to kill, eating up a lot of time.

And what made that more annoying? After he drops he reveals that he is not even the real Imposter and that I have another bomb to stop somewhere in the building. I find the bomb, which was not really a bomb, and the mission ends.

I leave and talk to the radio to find that there is no ending. Is this arc even finished?

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The Verdict:
Well the first mission was pretty neat and inventive, after that it goes downhill. If you want to drop the max level of the player mid-arc, give a reason for it. Even if it's something like "the toxic fumes have made you weaker, it should wear off in 15 minutes" or something.

I don't know what to think really about the Imposter and his minions. What is the reason for the Jester theme and why is everyone Dual Blades/Willpower or Dual Blades/Devices? Why are the Devices ones semi-transparent? Do you know how annoying stacked Caltrops and Web Grenades are in a timed mission?

Is this arc even finished? It just drops dead after the third mission with no explanation. If you're planning to add more put in a disclaimer at the end.

I can't give it more than 3 stars in it's current state.

So it's finally GlaziusF's turn. I took a glance over his three offerings to see what looked interesting.

I wanted to play Anna more today, so looked at The Bravuran Jobs, but noticed the wonky level ranges and decided to skip it. If there is a reason to be going from 30 to 54 between missions it better be a good one.

It then came down to Bricked Electronics and Dream Paper. I noticed that Dream Paper was at 44 reviews and still 5-starred, so it was tempting to go in and find any flaws that I could, but Bricked Electronics looked more interesting at the moment. Largely because it has Goldbrickers in it. I miss those guys.

Arc: Bricked Electronics
Arc ID: 2180
Author: @GlaziusF
Number of Missions: 5
Description: Mark Freeman finds a ghost in a machine. Follow it through the trash heaps of Skyway City to stop a grievous heist.
Rating: *****

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Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 20

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Mission 1:
Hello Mark Freeman, just pretend I'm a Tanker instead of a Brute. So you can talk to machines? That's nice, and you found some sort of 'ghost' on this old cellphone that disturbs you and want me to go to the shop you got it from and ask around? Sure, why not?

Hmm, you probably meant to say "stashed among a bunch of little shops" rather than "smashed among".

So I enter the pawn shop to immediately run into some Goldbrickers. In Skyway City? Awesome. I take them all out, including their chatty leader Billmark and search the place for clues. Seems the shop owner didn't come in today, but I found his home address.

Something odd happened. The two crates in the back were listed as objectives, but the mission ended upon defeating all of the Goldbrickers instead. I think you need to take a look at this mission and see if some objectives are overriding each other.

Anyhow, Billmark had an old copy of the Rogue Island Protector that was all marked up, Mark is having it analyzed to find out if any of them is signifigant.

Mission 2:
I figured I'd be going to visit the shop owner next, but Mark talked to him for me and sends me over to the warehouse where the owner got the cellphone. The warehouse turns out to be infested with clockwork.

Of course I picked the character with no end drain protection. Oh well.

Seems the game heard me because every inspiration drop I got during this mission was a blue. However I noticed these Clocks were part of a group called Constructs, and soon ran into some very different robots. Nicely designed ones, somebody was having fun with the Cyborg Booster Pack.

However there are some bugs. While fighting one spawn a robot ran away through two other spawns, which proceeded to attack it. Next thing I new all three spawns were attacking each other instead of me, despite being of the same group.

I found the warehouse owner, J.J. Cartwright, who left peacefully after I smashed her robot guards. I found the two crates full of old cellphones as well.

Mission 3:
So Mark finds a few more phones in those crates that give off the ghost vibe and apparently JJ got them from a pile someone had dumped into a sinkhole somewhere. Since she's been wiping the memory of them all, I need to go and retrieve a more "fresh" specimen for Mark to look at.

The cave I arrive in is a Council base. Apparently that sinkhole is the airshaft and these Council guys are getting a bit annoyed at someone dropping crates full of trash down them. I locate the two crates and find the Archon. Upon defeating him however, he decided to release toxic gas and I have to search the place for the three canisters. That's rather annoying as I had just searched the whole map already and now have to do so again.

Fortunately all three canisters turn out to be in the nearby cistern room. With them all taken care of I can move on.

Mission 4:
Well of course since the phones I found have cameras, their previous owners couldn't resist using them. That means Mark was able to extract photos of the Goldbrickers and their hideout.

Oh, and JJ send me a little robot ally as well. I wonder how long he'll last being only a minion.

The answer is, quite a long time as long as the melee ally bug keeps him from attacking and grabbing aggro. However, he nearly died early on when a Bombadier hit him once for half of his health.

On the third floor I found a LT robot that JJ had sent as well. Sweet. By then I had also found both "laptops" (the desks have desktop computers on them however) and found some odd plan from the Goldbricker boss to re-elect the president. President of what?

Turns out it's a coded message, the kind Mark Freeman is not familiar with. Spy-speak.

Mission 5:
Finally a break, The Exchange Bank shut down its security systems for an inspection and the Goldbrickers made their move right then. They've tricked the staff into thinking that the bank is closed for repairs, leaving the place abandoned but the alarm guys showed up anyways and alerted the PPD.

And stupid JJ has gone off to play hero as well, so I have 10 minutes to rescue her before she gets caught in the crossfire. Here we go.

I find JJ in the lobby and free her, taking out all the Brickers and heading off to the vault. I didn't even notice she was suddenly a Bots/Kin Mastermind until she finished summoned and caught up, as I stop for nothing on timed missions. Got to the vault and finished the mission in 4 minutes flat.

And the revelation. There was a law that allowed the Banks to reclaim money in inactive accounts after a certain amount of time. This law had been suspended during the Rikti Was but was going to be reactivated soon, and the Goldbrickers were after a particular account that they didn't want to be claimed by the bank. The account likely belonged to King Midas himself.

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The Verdict:
This was more fun that your typical lowbie arc. It was nice seeing the Goldbrickers in a heroic arc, heck in any arc at all since I've not seen anyone else using them yet. I like seeing neglected groups showing up in MA arcs.

The gas canister part in mission 3 felt totally unnecessary, but not anything worth subtracting a star for. All other flaws were minor mistakes that can be fixed.

Well played, here's your 5-stars. Don't spend them all in the same place.

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That's two five-star reviews in a row again. People are gonna start thinking I'm easily pleased if this keeps up.

It's time to review something that hasn't been requested, one of those little gems I've stumbled upon on my own. I present to you...

Arc: The Storyteller: Sabrina's Tale
Arc ID: 1237
Author: @Redbone1
Number of Missions: 4
Description: Reading a story is on thing, watching is another, but to relive it... That's something else entirely. The Storyteller invites you to live through one of his tales in which we see that sometimes, superpowers can't make the world right.
Rating: *****

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Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50

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Mission 1:
The contact is an elderly man, dressed in white with a long beard and glasses. The Storyteller is a keeper of tales from now and before and offers me a tale from the later. However, he does not simply tell you the story, he gives you the chance you live through it. He offers me the tale of Sabrina.

When the Storyteller was younger he knew a woman named Sabrina, a woman of beauty and grace but whom was pursued by more then mere men.

This story takes place before the Rikti, before the Council, before much of what we knew as evil today. It begins when Sabrina failed to arrive for a date with the Storyteller, and on his way to her home he heard her voice from inside an abandoned building...

That of course was a mere summary, the contact text is much more verbose than that. You'll have to play the arc for yourself to see it all. Now I begin the first mission, taking the place of the Storyteller.

I enter the abandoned office building and find it to be inhabited by spirits. Not very far inside I find Sabrina, being held captive by the spirits. They were not happy at all when I rescued her, and after leading her out Sabrina told me that something called the Finder of Souls was after her.

With Sabrina waiting outside the building, I searched it for the Finder of Souls and found it on the second floor. What it told me as it faded away upon defeat was disturbing: "She is ours. She was ours. She will be ours again."

Mission 2:
For some time Sabrina and the Storyteller were safe, but he could always see the spirits watching them from the shadows, out of the corner of his eye. He knew he had to learn more, to find out what the Finder of Souls meant, and there were two groups who could tell him. The first, the Midnighters, would not help him as he was not of their ranks. But the other group, whom you would not want to deal with, could be forced to tell him.

I stepped into the Storyteller's shoes and entered the halls of Oranbega. There I had to search their bookcases for information and question the Keeper of Knowledge. I fought through their halls and came to the library, where I fought the Keeper (an Archmage of Ruin) and found two books, "The Unliving" and "Dwellers of the Beyond".

After the battle was over, the Keeper told me about how there is much more than simply the Living and the Dead. There are in fact many places inbetween, and among them are those who could be living but are not due to chance, willing to do anything to escape that limbo. Such beings were described further in "The Unliving", but was more distressing was what I learned from "Dwellers of the Beyond". I learned that the Finder of Souls was harmless in itself, but once it found its target the Grim Reaper would soon follow.

Sabrina was one of the unliving, and whomever she had made a deal with to escape was coming to take payment.

Mission 3:
The spirits came to Sabrina's apartment and dragged her away. The Storyteller was able to get help from his friend in the Midnighters and divine her location, a disused warehouse inhabited by its own ghosts and now inhabited by a much more powerful spirit.

I entered the cold, dank warehouse and searched it from end to end, defeating every ghost until I came upon the Reaper who had taken Sabrina away.

The Reaper is a rather well designed Elite Boss in my opinion. Necro/Dark MM with a costume that fits his name to a T.

Regardless, I am too late to save Sabrina.

Mission 4:
Of course the Storyteller was not ready to give up just yet, even if he had already lost. He went to every seer, mystic, and fortune teller he could find, until one told him where he could find Sabrina one last time.

I entered the office building to find that a number of lost souls were being rounded up and forced into portals to the beyond. I freed these souls and sealed the portals, then found Sabrina, who had become the new Reaper as required payment for her time spent alive. There was no choice but to defeat her and send her away.

That is what the mystic who told him where to find her had meant by saying that "In order to win, he must be willing to lose."

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The Verdict:
This is definitely one of the best story-driven arcs I have played since the Mission Architect was added to the game. I am having trouble finding any flaws whatsover. The description lacks a warning about the two EBs within the arc, but that's not a problem with the arc itself. The story is well written and the idea that you are placed in the Storyteller's shoes to experience it yourself is rather creative. Now I don't know if he really had superpowers or if the big battles are just embellishment, but honestly I don't care to ponder that question at all. A well-deserved 5 stars.

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Another I played was set back in the first Ritki Invasion. The goal was to hold your little patch of ground. It was the same map as the Psy-Clockwork King. That's a nasty map for a defeat all, but the purpose of the mission was to stop the invasion. There's not really a good story based way to do that and still leave some standing.



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Sure there is. The contact says "$name, if you can take down a few of the raid leaders, the rest won't put up much of a fight and the PPD can get in there and clean up." Reference the clean up in the return dialog as well, just be sure not to play down the character's accomplishments.


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That's basically the advice pohsyb gave me for one of my missions during open beta. Instead of Defeat All you just have to defeat their leader and the rest will go into retreat, mission over.

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Boss text: Not much is needed beyond "Aware" so that people know an important mob has aggroed. Maybe "Unaware" and/or "Defeated" text for EBs/AVs important to your story. But the 3/4, half, 1/4 texts don't add much because they're always variations of the same thing.

3/4: Ha! Is that all you got!
1/2: Arrgh! Maybe you're tougher than I thought!
1/4: Owww! How dare you! Now you must feel my wrath!

Even if you do something more creative, like having the villain monologing about his evil plot during the fight, players may miss it. So fight text is a great area to pare down the file size.

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I'm about to dump this text altogether except for the "blarg I'm dead" line anyways because I only rarely see the other, earlier lines actually show up on screen. They do show in the chatbox so I know they're registering, but I think my boss has uttered them "out loud" in a word balloon only once out of ten tests.

Blargh indeed. Anyone else having this issue?

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I'd leave the Unaware in always for required bosses. They speak it once you get within a certain range of them, so it makes finding the necessary boss a lot easier.

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I've given up on some outdoor missions because the boss had no unaware text. If he had I wouldn't have just missed him on the other side of that pile of rubble several times.

Mastermind critters can resummon all of their pets almost instantly and they come pre-buffed. I was surprised how fast all those robots reappeared after wiping them all out before killing the MM.

Sometimes when I'm having trouble getting started, I instead write the ending first. Then I go backwards coming up with all of the events leading to the conclusion until I have the reason for the player getting involved in the arc to begin with. That's how I came up with "The Amulet of J'gara" (1709).

Changes made to "The Portal Bandits":
* Nagans are now the primary group in mission 4. Rikti are added in via battles.
* Anna now appears as an extra optional ally in mission 4.
* Updated Naga's description.

I'll just be happy if Melee Allies finally fought correctly instead of often standing just out of range and doing nothing.

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I don't know what would make them "interesting" to you so nothing I can do about that.

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Sorry about that, I sounded glib. I meant: The contact provides information, and the allies follow along, but I don't get a sense of their personalities, anything quirky about them.

You could again say that you don't have enough text space left to do this. One less custom toon would give you a lot to work with, but would require a sacrifice.

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It's not like I can give allies battle-dialog while they fight alongside you or make enemies outside of boss details talk. Even patrols only speak once when you arrive on a new floor and might be so far away that you'll miss it anyway.

Did you open the arc for editing and then resave/republish it? That is when the new critter info gets put in.

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Add an Ally
Once you have everything balanced out just the way you want it, add a custom combat defensive Lt Ally to further help those soft and squishies. I like an Elect Hd/FF Hd Lt, they help everyone and have minor self healing so they don't fall over dead too easily.

[/ QUOTE ]I'll disagree with this. Only add an ally if your story demands one. Don't add an ally for the sole purpose of making your mission easier.

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If you're going up against EBs, make the Ally a Boss at the least. LT allies tend to die fast, even ones with defensive sets. It does the player no good if the ally dies before you even get to the boss fight and also adds an extra element of frustration.

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Please do mention if your arc is solo friendly or not, and whether it is intended for low or high level characters. Custom group scaling is borked up right now, so this is especially important if you don't use stock critters. I have lost count of the number of missions I have had to cancel due to crazy numbers of orange con custom LTs spawning in arcs.

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It's not broken. Having a ton of lieutenants show up is what happens when the author doesn't put any minions in the custom group. All the minions are replaced by lieutenants.

It can make for fun solo times but a team is going to die, die, die, and die again.

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I think the poster is talking about bugs like that one where Carnies will spawn as low as 30 for a villain, but a hero playing the same arc will never see them spawning lower than 40, which can be a problem is the arc is only scaling the hero up to 30-35.

Anyhow, when you make custom critters, put something, anything in their description fields. Seeing "A minion is..." just screams laziness. Put a small amount of background on the custom group in there, or maybe some clues as to the nature of the critter's powers like Longbow does for each of its Wardens.

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Have you tried making the boss a non-required objective? That might do it. (I agree this is a bug, just thinking this might be a workaround.)

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Sounds like its worth a shot. Thanks KD.

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That turned out to be what was keeping it from working in one of my missions. A required boss seems to override Defeat All.

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NPC descriptions - Yes! It currently makes me sad when I look for a description and see "A minion is no match for a hero...".

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Whenever I see that it just strikes me as laziness. Put something in there!

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Clues - I find myself forgetting about clues a lot, I wouldn't put any story-important information in there. Maybe just if something needs explained a bit better.

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If the arc is meant to be played with a team I will repeat some of the story in the clues just so that the rest of the team can follow along. Too often I've done an MA arc with a team and had no clue WTH was happening since so many important details were in the debriefings and ended up not even rating the arc because I couldn't make an informed decision.

Boss Fight Text: I don't bother much with this outside of Unaware and Attack unless it's a EB/AV fight. Then I'll fill up all the lines.

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but there is a saying in engineering:
The product is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but rather when there is nothing left that can be removed.

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Maybe if you're a very utilitarian engineer.

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They call the addition of 'stuff' to a good design "feature creep". This is why Microsoft products are generally rather bloated and resource hungry, because the people designing them kept 'tacking stuff on' instead of sticking to the main purpose of the original design.

In other words, if you keep adding 'convenience features' to a Corvette, you'll end up with a fiberglass Winnebago that can't win races.

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Exactly.

Changes made to "The Portal Bandits":
* Minor grammar and spelling corrections.
* Minor story change in mission 2.
* Replaced Engineer spawns in mission 4 with Shockfist spawns.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Mission 3 is Defeat All again, figured out what was keeping it from working right. Don't anyone whine, it's a tiny map after all.
* The Avatars in mission 4 are all optional now.

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I would've just put in text to the effect of "if you can't stop Mindskewer in your state, you might have to spend some time focusing your mind to regain balance, strength, and initiative."

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You pretty much just described the new mission entry pop-up.

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So a non-standard heist to get started. Not much to add, it's a decent setup and a good way to get the ball rolling, you sneak in and when you thought you had everything solved, bam! Someone saw you. I almost waited at the end of the mission to see if I'd get a Family ambush - it almost sounded like I'd get one, but nope.

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Right now boss text is still buggy. There is family in the back but they are not saying their idle dialog that would alert you to their arrival. I had to use a boss instead of a patrol otherwise the mission would not have same level range as the rest of the arc. (Yes, I am very adamant about my arcs having consistent level ranges across all missions).

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I do have to agree that the ambushes/patrols feel a bit on the light side, but I understand your caution.

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I've decided to up them to Medium. Really their purpose as the Ring Mistress up front mentions is to flush you towards the front where she is waiting.

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One thing, the return text for this mission was in the present tense (I think it was on this mission's return text), it'd probably need to be changed to past for consistency.

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Fixed.

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[NPC] Storm Strider: Red Viper may have failed, but I shall secure the MacGuffin for the Tsoo!

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Fixed.

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I liked the setup, yes, the box I took the MacGuffin from was the kind of box I was looking for! I don't think it's an "idiot ball" moment, the immediate question would have been "well, how did the MacGuffin come to be on its own in the first mission then?" (that was the first thing I asked myself), but, dealing with the arcane, there are possible answers all around (the previous owner died and no one had claimed it yet, a special ritual - not a box - may be required to get rid of it, etc.), so I don't mind that my villain didn't immediately think about the box the MacGuffin was contained in in the first place.

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I never intended to answer all of the questions, if I did then it wouldn't be a MacGuffin story anymore. The statue coming back at the end and being the souvenir was played purely for laughs.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Each Avatar has a clue attached explaining their purpose and significance.
* Mission 4 has a completion clue now.

Sorry, I was aiming for a genius bonus in mission 4 and seemed to have overshot it.

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I liked the Amulet of J'Gara well enough. The plot wasn't really my cup of tea, but I recognize that it was a good one. The final mission was very well-done, but I thought the allies were pretty overpowering, especially since they were required to win. They did most of the work of beating the final boss for me.

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They're required to be freed as they're aspects of your mind, but you could very well have skipped them all, run right to the AV, and then come back for them later if you wished. I don't know how to make it much clearer without sounding like I'm treating the player like a moron.