PoliceWoman

Thanks for the review!


[ QUOTE ]
Storyline - ***. Germany stomps on people despite having its leader absent most of the time? I wonder if it might work better the other way 'round - showing up at key battles to swing them for the Germans, then when Herr Painter is at the victory celebration, clout him in the back of the head and lead the resulting amalgamation as the legendary heroes of the war.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not really sure I understand your objection to the story? Are you saying the player should be more involved in the day-to-day management of the Third Reich? Germany actually had excellent generals overall, and it's a common belief that Hitler's erratic micromanagement was a contributor to losing the war.

I'm not sure your suggestion of moving the assassination of Hitler to be the last mission makes as much dramatic sense as finishing with the invasion of America. I feel like giving the player ownership of the war early on gives them more motivation to actually win the battles, while being Hitler's lackey probably would be demotivating.

[ QUOTE ]
Design - ****. The russian soldiers need something obvious to distinguish them from the commissars. They all looked like a bunch of dudes in shoulderpads. Similarly the Frenchies looked like a bunch of dudes in blue coveralls. And... Red Atlas. I do hate Red Atlas so very much.

[/ QUOTE ]

While all Russians share the same color scheme, they actually do have different costumes; commissars actually have dress shirts and officer hats, while the regular troopers have long coats and a sorta cylindrical cap. Likewise the French lieutenants have dress shirts and slacks while the regular soldiers have combat vests and fatigues.

I kinda think each nationality should use the color scheme of their national uniform, so I'm hesitant to change their colors to make them stand out. I'm kinda hoping that the different name, different rank, and different costume pieces will be sufficient to distinguish them. Is there something else you'd suggest adding?

Regarding Red Atlas, I'd love to use a normal colored Atlas Park, but there are only three Atlas Park maps: the one that doesnt let you author any mission details of note, the one that has a gigantic meteorite impact on it, and the ruined Atlas Park map with Council war machines and broken tanks on it. I agree that the lack of a map and the broken terrain are not ideal, but the other two Atlas maps seem even worse to me. Is there another map you think would be more suitable for the Invasion America mission?

[ QUOTE ]
Gameplay - ***. So ally-losing blindly-wandering frantic-tabbing objective-hunt-and-pecking much. It's a huge buzzkill trying to find the, what, four things on that map I have to do and leading allies around to fight the same dudes over and over again.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you think I can do to improve this? Happy to entertain suggestions. I don't think players would accept making them "Defeat All" but reducing the number of objectives still leaves people stealthing around looking for just the objectives they need. I kinda feel that the battle scenes need to be on an outdoor map, so I am not sure I can make the maps smaller and have the missions still make sense.

[ QUOTE ]
Detail - ****. It's good, but sparse. Probably because of text limitations, but sparse is sparse.

[/ QUOTE ]

In what area would you like to see more detail? I'm hoping I will have more space to play with in I15, so would be glad to add more material.

[ QUOTE ]
Overall - ***. It's what every villain wants to do, but the plot is a little weird even for time travel, and RED ATLAS RED ATLAS RED ATLAS RAAAAAAAAAGH.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, I'm sorry that you hate this particular map so much that one map in one mission would affect your overall opinion. What map do you think I should've used instead?

Also, why do you feel this plot is "weird even for time travel"? "Germany wins WW2" is one of the most common time travel tropes (e.g., see Godwin's Law of Time Travel).

I'd be happy to make some adjustments if you can suggest any.


Anyway, thanks again for running through the arc!

A Lame Joke (arc id 22982)

Premise is to stop some sort of joker-like villain. Level range is 1-54 neutral, all custom enemies. I played a 28 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: I think the first two lines, "Just say no" and "Stopping bad comedy" are meant to be part of a header or something, and should perhaps be in a different color or font size in order to stand out.

"Labotories" should be "Laboratories". "flatulation" should be "flatulence".

With the contact being a television set, I think you should change the briefing slightly to emphasize that it's something you're seeing on TV, and not something that you're being told. "Will you stop them...?" isn't something a TV can ask you, either, and you wouldn't tell the TV "I'll keep it out of the villains' hands". You can also fix this by making the contact a more normal person.

"second-rate comedians" really don't sound like a very serious threat (haha). Maybe the contact should tell you (or show you, if it's a TV) why the regular police and/or coast guard can't handle them.

Second part of briefing: I don't think a TV would say "Godspeed!"

Mission title: "Sieze the whoopee cushions", should be "Seize".

Inside the mission, the Humour mobs look an awful lot like Carnies. I can see they have jokes in their info area, which is kinda cute, but they still seem too much like Carnies for them to really grab me as a neat new group the way the villains did in Literatura (also by this author). Also not all players will check mob info and see these, so some of these jokes will likely get missed; the dialog where the mobs tell jokes is a little better for getting the player to see them, though.

I like the "Wet Blanket" hostage and her vomiting animation in response to the jokes. Not quite sure why she is ice blast though.

Found and fought "Lame Joke", who used all her lines on, well, lame jokes. The "Lame Joke gets serious" clue needs a little more, though, in my opinion; it currently says Lame Joke reveals the whoopee cushions were a mere distraction but doesn't explain what it's a distraction from. Also, it's not a very funny clue. The "Whoopee Cushions" clue isn't particularly funny either. I kinda think with the premise of this arc, all the clues should be in the form of jokes (lame or otherwise).

Debriefing: The television says "Thank you", which is rather un-television-like. Maybe this contact should be a person; or else the briefings and debriefings be rewritten to be more in the style of stuff you see on TV.

Mission 2
Briefing: So now Lame Joke is signing a contract to write sitcoms and the contact wants me to stop her. But...wouldn't signing a contract to write sitcoms actually be legal, and a way to get a criminal like Lame Joke off the streets and into honest (well..semi-honest) work? The premise of the mission does not seem very heroic. [A bit later I remembered this arc was "neutral".] The contact tries to motivate this by implying that Lame Joke will be a terrible TV writer. But, considering the dreck they currently show on TV, I am not sure she can do much worse.

Some cute puns in the dialog of this mission. And the return of Wet Blanket.

If this is meant to be a television studio, shouldn't there be television show staffers here, in addition to the Humour clowns? The "Big-Time Hollywood Producer" is a good-looking character, but I kinda think he needs his own staff, rather than be escorted by the Humour clowns.

I beat up Lame Joke and the Producer and that was pretty much it.

Debriefing: ack, television is happy that I stopped a sit-com and replaced it with reality TV...are we sure this isn't a villainous arc? It IS kind of a funny ending.

Overall
The core of this story arc is the dialog with the many, many, many puns. Many were funny, many were groan-worthy. However, aside from the jokes, it didn't feel like there was all that much to the arc; two missions were you go in and defeat a boss or two, and that's it. There's not really a story; the antagonist doesn't have a grand plan or any special tricks that she develops after facing you in the first mission. The two missions aren't really related other than you fight the same boss twice. I think having some kind of overarching story (even over only 2 missions) would benefit this arc.

I also felt the Humour mobs looked an awful lot like Carnies, to the point where I almost think you should just use ordinary Carnies and have them tell jokes, and make Lame Joke a Carnie boss. Alternatively you could maybe change them to look like stand-up comedians or Saturday Night Live cast members or something. I'd suggest either fully embracing the fact that they're really Carnies who tell bad jokes, or else find some way to emphasize how they're different from Carnies.

Anyway, the arc was okay and the jokes were fun to read; it just did not feel like there was a lot of substance beyond that. I gave it 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir Ch3 141011 (moved this down two places, so as to alternate with other arcs)
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242
@NullGeodesic - The Superadine Withdrawal Blues 205046

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

[ QUOTE ]
Man, I'm starting to run out of submitted arcs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Feel free to poke at my story arcs if you like - I'd be happy to get a few CoHMR reviews. I hadn't submitted them earlier because I think you've actually already run through them all before, so it'd probably be unfair to ask you to do them again. But if you are needing more things to do, they have all changed to some degree (some more, some less) since your first run, and they are all on CoHMR.

I originally started off not really wanting to use CoHMR, figuring the site wouldn't get updated enough and would be redundant with the in-game rating system. But lately I've kinda bought into the concept; it seems like a site that is more useful if more people use it. Certainly this thread has contributed to moving me towards this opinion. Thanks!

I wonder how this author managed to get this arc to award not only a badge, but also reward merits? HAX!

6/17/2009

Started off Monday night playing Adventuress (24 MA/regen scrapper) and accepting an invitation to a Moonfire TF organized by the same person who led the Sister Psyche TF on Sunday. Our team mix was:

fire/thermal controller
dark/shield scrapper
nrg/nrg blaster
ill/rad controller
dark/sonic defender
ice/storm controller
MA/regen scrapper (me)

This ran pretty well but I noticed early on that I was really gasping for END, which is kinda weird for a regen; looking at my enhancements I realized I still had level 20 DOs for ENDMOD in Quick Recovery and level 20 DOs for ENDRDX in my attacks, which had gone red and were doing me no good. I had upgraded all the damage to SOs when I hit 22 but I think I skimped on the endurance enhancements due to lack of infl at the time. I ducked out to Talos for a couple minutes to upgrade these to level 25 SOs and I was fine after that. Finished the TF in 1hr 16mins for 31 merits (24.47 MPH), getting Adventuress to level 26 and Dragon's Tail.

After that I solo'd Mega (27 SS/will brute) through Becky's Revenge, a fun romp where you help a valley girl villainess wreak her revenge on Fusionette. This was a quick arc with a great concept and had really fun dialog, and I gave it 5 stars.

Tuesday night I played Mega on a quick Sharkhead SF. Our team mix was

3 brutes (including me)
spine/ninj stalker
night widow

One of the players was someone I had put on ignore about a week and a half ago after some PvP drama, but I ended up taking him off ignore, and he graciously apologized for his earlier behavior (which I accepted) and hoped I'd come to more of the PvP events. I was glad this worked out, since he's basically a good guy and we seem to team up a lot.

For the SF itself, I normally play a stalker for "quick" runs for the stealth and defense, but since I was on a level-appropriate toon at the time the SF was announced, I thought I'd give it a try on my brute. I carb-loaded with purple inspirations between missions, which let me fake having stealth (by chomping 3 purples at a time); the widow occasionally firing off Mind Link was helpful too. This mostly worked except for once I got clocked by ambushes in the Defeat Shockstorm mission, though this helped me get a head start towards the next mission.

One of the brutes had to AFK through the last mission, which made me a little nervous as we basically had 4 DPS and no debuff/buff/heal against the final 2 AVs. But we managed to beat Calystix and the Leviathan with pure DPS, finishing the SF in 33mins 33sec for 22 merits (39.34 MPH). This also got Mega to level 28 and Heightened Senses.

Mega also solo'd her way through A Little RnR, a story arc about some rich kids who turn to crime. The RnR gang is a neat idea but needed to be more tightly themed, and there were some plot problems, so I ended up rating it 3 stars.

I also spent some time on Protector server playing Dreamwind (29 storm/psy defender) as a sidekick on a 7 player Demolition Girls SG team, which did a Founders Falls safeguard and some mid 40s missions. We beat up Scirocco as an AV and Countess Crey as an EB, getting Dreamwind to level 30. I took TK Blast as a new power, but thinking that was a mistake as Dreamwind already has way too many attacks, between Mental Blast, Subdue, Will Domination, Psychic Scream, Psionic Tornado and now TK Blast...I really like taking attacks on defenders, I guess. Maybe I'll respec some of those out to get more pool powers at some point.

A Little RnR review (arc id 17523)

Premise appears to be that some out of town visitors are stirring up trouble. Level range is 1-54 blue side (apparently all custom enemies). I played a 27 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: Some rowdy out-of-towners are causing trouble. So I'm sent to stop this domestic disturbance. The contact is a police detective, but the language he uses "let them know they are not welcomed in Paragon City" sounds more like something a Family boss would say; may want to rephrase to be more police-like. "welcomed" should be "welcome".

Second part of briefing: "already over crowded with all kind of mischief" should maybe be "already overcrowded with all kinds of troublemakers".

Inside the mission, the map looks like Salamanca; this is probably a bit too urban to be a "park". May want to either choose a more parklike map, or change the briefing to say they're in a nearby suburb or something.

The mission objectives make it clear that this is a defeat all on an outdoor map. "Gravee Rich" is in my objectives, but hasn't been mentioned in the briefing, so I don't know who or what that is. Consider changing to "Defeat enemy leader" or "Find clues" or something active yet generic, to avoid spoiling the surprise.

Inside the mission there are a lot of custom mobs, all belonging to the RnR faction. I'm not what their theme is intended to be based on their names and costumes; maybe some sort of gang with money-related names. This group maybe needs to be more strongly themed.

Extravagant Princess's description, "the least resistance you have" should be "the less resistance you have".

Found Gravee Rich, she has a fun back story.

[NPC] Gravee Rich: We have new toys and that meddler will be entertaining.

...is awkwardly phrased, I suggest something like "A meddler! Let's try our new toys on $himher!" (for attack dialog) or "Let's try these new toys out on someone!" (for inactive dialog)

[NPC] Skinflint Bully: Hey! We are not one of those villain mindless villain groups! Enough with the boss' name!

...doesn't make sense. Not sure what this is supposed to mean.

[NPC] Gravee Rich: My net worth may be ten times yours but I will not beat them off alone! Get in here!

...wow, that sounds kind of obscene! Maybe not what you meant to say.

[NPC] Miserly Stuart: Gravee Rich needs a hand. Mega is a peddler. Get her off!

I'm a "peddler"? Maybe you mean "meddler". Or maybe peddler is some kind of slang for these money-oriented people.

Profligate Heir's description, "no problem spending some on helping hands or protection" maybe should be "no problem spending some on hiring bodyguards for protection".

Free Spender's description, "The Free Spender have made money" should be "The Free Spender has made money"

Rescued Chemical Fire and got the "Shipments have left" clue that mentions "she has seen some of this loot leave already." I don't think it's clear which loot she is referring to.

I like the "Shopping List" clue I got from Gravee, hinting at more RnR activity elsewhere.

Debriefing is pretty good, explaining what is known so far.

Mission 2
Briefing: Now we need to rescue a "forest activist" from the RnR gang. Not quite sure "forest activist" is the term you want to use; maybe "environmental activist" or "tree hugger" would work better.

I actually thought the next mission would be one of the addresses on the "Shopping List" clue received in mission 1, so it's a little puzzling that the next mission is something else entirely; not quite sure how rescuing this activist connects to the story. The contact says it will get more info on Electric Mango, but I don't see why he would think that; it seems to me that it would be more logical to follow up on the clues from mission 1.

Inside the mission: a little odd that the "forest activist" is in an office and not in a forest at all! Also the objective "Activist Anne Laforet" should maybe be "Rescue Activist Anne Laforet".

I like the gang members chatting about the relative wealth of their named bosses. I guess materialism is their common theme.

In Anne Laforet's description, "Coatoa" should be "Croatoa".

After saving Anne, I got the "You saved the forest activist" clue, which was nice but didn't really say much except that she went back to saving the forest in Croatoa. This is nice for flavor, but leaves me kind of puzzled as to why the RnR gang decided to kidnap her; she doesn't have money or techy stuff, which seems to be what they're interested in.

I now have "Silver Lining" as an objective; maybe should be "Defeat Silver Lining".

[NPC] Silver Lining: Anne Laforest was not important. She was a tool. Keep Mega busy as long as we can !

"Laforest" should be "Laforet" based on her earlier appearance. Also I kind of think that Silver Lining's costume should be more...silver. It's got some silver on it, but is more purple. Thinking about it, it would make sense if Penny Pincher and Pretty Penny had copper colored costumes, too. Up to you though.

Silver Lining's description: "Steeve" maybe should be "Steve" unless you spelled it that way on purpose. "Villains of east coast" should be "Villains of the east coast". "He...has become Mango's secret vault" doesn't quite make sense; he's a vault? Maybe you mean lieutenant or henchman or something.

Defeating Silver Lining gives me the "Diversion" clue, where I find out that, in fact, they had no reason for kidnapping Anne Laforet -- it was all a trick to lure me here to keep me busy. The mission exit popup even says "You hate being played for a fool, but it does seem that way".

The mission exit popup and the debriefing both call the hostage "Anne Laforest" .. I think you need to decide whether her name is "Laforet" or "Laforest" and use it consistently.

I kind of thought this mission was a distraction even at the start, so having the plot force me to be "tricked" doesn't really seem right. I think maybe you could avert this by having the contact say in his briefing something like, "Yes, we should follow up on our other clue...but innocents are in danger, you have to stop and help them!" rather than imply that rescuing Anne Laforet will give us some sort of new info. Or alternatively you could cut this entire mission to tighten up the plot; I'm not sure it is actually needed for the story.

Mission 3
Briefing: The text is oddly formatted, with lines being different lengths. I think maybe you meant to insert paragraph breaks after each of the shorter lines.

The contact says "I looked up this RnR" and found out who they are, and why they're doing stuff. I don't buy this; where do you look stuff like this up? And if you can look this up in the Big Book of Bad Guys, why didn't we look it up before mission 1? I like the explanation that RnR are a bunch of wealthy, bored kids, but I think it would be better if the player finds out this information as a result of clues in earlier missions.

Also, the idea that they are all wealthy and bored kids appears to contradict the descriptions of some of the minions who are described as not having enough money (the Penny minions, Skinflints, Miserlies, etc). Some of the mobs don't really LOOK like rich kids either (the bald models, especially Skinflint Bully).

"Paragon city" should be capitalized "Paragon City".

The mission accept prompt is "Take out Electric Mango", but Electric Mango is mentioned nowhere in the briefing. Thinking about it, Electric Mango's name has nothing to do with money, which is unlike all the other RnR members; seems inconsistent.

OK, in the second part of the briefing (after accepting the mission), Electric Mango is mentioned; some of this maybe should be moved to the first part. He also mentions "that scientist", but it's not clear to me who he's talking about; when did RnR kidnap a scientist? Is this the woman who Chemical Fire heard screaming in mission 1? No, the briefing says "take him" into custody. Needs some explanation, I think, unless I missed it somewhere.

"Shipment of Technology" objective should maybe be "Destroy last shipment of technology".

[NPC] Electric Mango: Finally, I can test these armor improvements! Get Mega

...should have an exclamation point after the player's name.

[NPC] Miserly Stuart: I really want to see what Dr. Boyce Boyd will be able to come up with great technology we have here.

I think "with great technology" should be "with the great technology".

Debriefing: though the debriefing does mention the things that you accomplished, it seems awfully short to me. Would be nice if we got to find out what ends up happening to RnR (if they break up and go home or whatever) and whether Boyd was there voluntarily. Maybe even what happened to Miss Laforet.

Overall
The RnR gang is an interesting new villain group; however, I think they need to be more tightly themed. I sorta got the idea they are money-related due to their names (but some of them had "poor" sounding names rather than "rich" sounding names; based on their premise, maybe they should all be "rich"). Their costumes (with a mix of armored pieces) don't really strongly suggest who they are. If you aren't strongly attached to their costumes, I'd suggest reworking them to be more evocative of the fact that they are spoiled rich kids -- perhaps give them "dressy" looking clothes instead, preppy or Hollywood type hairstyles, or make all their armor solid gold (or copper) with gems. Something like that.

I do like their dialog, which is a little corny with the constant money references, but is just right for their theme.

Some plot problems: I'm a little puzzled as to why the first mission, where they are stealing technology, is set in a "park" -- wouldn't it make more sense to steal high tech from a lab type map? Also, whatever happened to the clues from the first mission -- the woman who screamed, the shopping list with places to go. Maybe the woman captured in mission 1 is meant to be Miss Laforet, but if so, the story needs to say so.

Scripting the player to be "fooled" by mission 2 is a little unfair, I think, especially when mission 2 doesn't obviously follow from the c lues received in mission 1.

And where did they get Dr. Boyd in mission 3? Needs a little foreshadowing. Also, it's not quite clear what the RnR hoped they'd get from the technology and Dr. Boyd; the dialog only suggests they hope he'll make something cool out of it. Maybe they should have some particular toy that they want Dr. Boyd to make for them.

Anyway, with all that, I gave this arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir Ch3 141011 (moved this down two places, so as to alternate with other arcs)
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240, Pt2 221242

in queue:

@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

You get 3 arc slots for free (well, for your subscription cost).

I have a real job, so I have no problem paying $20 for 5 more arc slots.

I realize a bunch of people are going to complain about the cost, because it's "just storage space" (not considering the cost it took for the devs to actually create Mission Architect), but consider that you pay more than that for:
* Dinner in a restaurant. And that's just, you know, ingredients that probably cost almost nothing.
* An oil change. That's just some cheap chemicals, after all! Why should it be so expensive?
* A hardcover book. It's made of paper for chrissake! You can get blank paper for way cheaper, what's with the huge markup?
* A ticket to a concert or sporting event. That's not even something material! It's just rental of a seat for a couple hours! Why should it cost money at all?

In summary, everything is a rip off! But CoH is less of a ripoff than most.

I got motivated to comb through my old reviews and see which arcs are actually on City of Heroes Mission Review, and I went ahead and posted the summary section of my review for any arc that I could actually find on the CoHMR site.

I submitted reviews for:

1567 MacGuffin Delivery Service
2622 A Tangle in Time
3573 Unbearable Funk
5073 Bravuran Jobs
5909 Amazon-Avatars
6143 Escalation
55715 Freaks and Geeks
84420 Death to Disco!
99394 The Once and Future King Sac
101681 Through Rose-Tinted Glasses
110465 Hunter of Beasts
136522 Fine Literature
137561 Time Loop
163274 Return of the Three Fold King
177930 Fighting Freedom

I had already previously submitted reviews for:

1709 The Amulet of J'gara
1874 Dream Paper
2180 Bricked Electronics
5349 Childhood Horrors
58363 Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force



Here's an update on my queue (inserted twelfth, who I somehow missed adding before):

I owe a review to:

Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir Ch3 141011 (moved this down two places, so as to alternate with other arcs)
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
twelfth - Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069
MrCaptainMan - The Audition Pt1 221240

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

[ QUOTE ]
The clue is a great idea, which should hopefully clear up some confusion (I thought the parameters were pretty clear, particularly that there was no penalty for banging on the drum whether or not you "succeeded.")

[/ QUOTE ]

I think my confusion was that I thought banging on the drum meant I was giving up on the exercise, "crying uncle" as it were, and I wanted to pass the test.

[ QUOTE ]
is it actually possible to change the description on the Major and other "stock" characters? I thought that was hardwired unless you make them "custom,"

[/ QUOTE ]

You can replace the description for a Boss detail (but not for his minions).

[ QUOTE ]
Not sure what to make of his difficulty level, though. As with a lot of EBs, he seems tough for some characters, less so for others. "Canonically" the Lobster Men are kind of paper tigers

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, I wasn't complaining about his difficulty level - I was on low difficulty so he wasn't even an EB for me, just a Boss. I felt that defeating a single boss is a little too straightforward for the final mission of the story arc, which ideally should be more of a dramatic finale. Continuing along the theme of making the Lobster Men more mysterious, perhaps you could initially be sent in with the objective of "Discover secret controllers of gorilla guerillas" which would be a glowy somewhere, then clicking the glowy gives you a clue that is photographs of lobster men climbing out of flying saucers (or something similarly incriminating; a crazed mad scientist hostage babbling about lobster men would work too) and triggers the Lobster Man's group to spawn, and then your objective turns to "Defeat Lobster Man from Mars"?

[ QUOTE ]

1. The Blackhorse Squadron only has "named" bosses, so with a sufficiently large player group, they might run into clones of themselves.
2. I really wanted to avoid the "Come tag along while my favorite character has all the fun" syndrome you see in a lot of arcs, and maybe went a bit too far in the other direction. Plus (cf. #1), the players won't see Su Lin, Saakje, or Monique at all unless they have a big group, so better to risk them meeting their clones than not have them at all....


[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's legitimate, really... but the premise of your arc is working with the Blackhorse Squadron, so I did think it was strange that none of them actually ever stopped to help me. Keeping the named bosses in a separate faction is a good idea (at least until I15) to prevent spawning duplicates. You might consider having the patrols of the generic Blackhorse Commandos, then additionally having just one or two "ally" Blackhorse characters, low ranking minions or lieutenants that follow the protagonist around but aren't powerful enough to steal too much glory (or could be ditched by the player if desired). I wouldn't mind seeing some of the named lieutenants from the training exercise reappearing in this way. Totally up to you though.

I've done this in two of my story arcs, and I really like the technique because it makes your mission unfold very differently than a traditional door mission. The effect is very impressive and dynamic-seeming to players.

Basically replace all (or most) spawns on your mission map with triggered spawns. Examples: Ambushes, Boss objectives, Hostage objectives, whatever; the key is that they must be triggered off of something else. You can even trigger spawns to be triggered from other triggered spawns, to daisy-chain them together.

Each of these triggered details "reserves" a spawn point, which makes your mission a little more empty. I'd be careful of linking too many ambushes at once, that can overwhelm the players. A Boss objective with a specified quantity (e.g. 5 Bosses) can work well.

With careful counting and/or testing you can replace every single spawn on your map. Testing is key! It's very easy to mess up the sequence of triggered objectives.

Map selection is important for this technique; generally a smaller map is better, to keep things better controlled. On larger maps, triggered spawns can actually annoy players because they have to search your large map for whatever their new objective is.

You can see examples of this in:
1388 Celebrity Kidnapping
1567 MacGuffin Delivery Service (by Lazarus)
67335 Teen Phalanx Forever!

Hope that helps!

Teen Phalanx on the forums!

Bubbawheat's Review of Teen Phalanx Forever!: "I had a lot of fun playing this arc, I enjoyed all the in-jokes, and the mechanics of it, and I rated it 5 stars."

LaserJesus cites Teen Phalanx as an example in response to someone's wishlist request in "Things You'll Never Be Able To Make in the MA".

ProPayne re-plays Teen Phalanx and says "I also re-played PW's Teen Phalanx arc! I just wanted to mention here that I love the rewrites! With the new additions, this arc is a solid 5-star arc (in my opinion, of course), no questions asked!"

EvaDestruction mentions The kind of awesomeness "Teen Phalanx" has.

6/15/2009

Been a while since my last update, so this may run a little long.

Last Tuesday, I played Mega (26 SS/will brute), first joining a pickup team that took down Ghost of Scrapyard for 2 merits and the Hammer Down badge.

After that, I agreed to help a 27 db/da brute who was having trouble completing his Defeat All CoT mission. Looking at his build I could see why: at level 27, he had all 4 Flight pool powers, 3 of the Teleport pool powers, no Fitness powers (no stamina) and no defenses except for the required one he had to take at level 1 and his damage aura power. I could see he had no veteran badges at all, so was probably a new player; I tried to tactfully suggest he take more defensive powers. He sheepishly admitted it was his first character. Nevertheless the two of us were able to duo our way through his mission, for which he seemed quite grateful.

I went on to solo my way through an arc called Through Rose Tinted Glasses, a villainous story where your extremely nearsighted contact is convinced you're a hero, and sends you on purportedly heroic missions while you advance your own nefarious agenda. This started off a little slow but ended up being pretty cool, so I gave it 5 stars.

I started Wednesday night playing Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) on a speed Lady Grey TF with a team of:

2 fortunata
AR/pain corruptor (me)
AR/rad corruptor
SS/shield brute
defender (didn't get powersets)
warshade
ice/kin corruptor

This was ludicrously speedy, finishing in 32min 30sec for 39 merits (72MPH).

From there I went to join an Imperious TF as Millie Volt (35 elec/inv brute). Our team mix was:

AR/rad corr
ice/kin corr
blaster (didn't get powersets)
kin controller
scrapper
defender
elec/inv brute (me)
fortunata

The team leader asked if I could tank, and I felt pretty good about being an invuln against the lethal-using Romans, so I said sure. This turned out to be a mistake on my part - an invuln brute, even with Tough, is significantly squishier than an invuln tanker. I seemed fine at getting aggro with my elec melee AoEs, but it was rougher for me to survive the aggro; the +DEF from Invincibility was quickly overwhelmed by the Cimeroran's DEF debuffs, but my total lethal resistance was still only about 65% (even with RPD, TI, Unyielding and Tough all stacked) so I would quickly bleed out unless I burned inspirations or the support people were actively healing me. Part of this was also that I was initially lackeyed to someone who tended not to stay with the group, so I spent much of the first two missions at level 35, which made it harder to survive aggro as well.

The second mission started off with my boss, the fortunata, going off to kill Nictus crystals on her own; this finally got me lackeyed to someone else, so I could play at 49 the rest of the TF. Unfortunately the fortunata killing crystals way in advance of the rest of the team resulted in multiple Cimeroran ambushes triggered on our heads, wiping the rest of the team twice. The team leader ultimately ended up asking us all to just stay dead and let the fortunata solo the rest of the mission. This was pretty ignominious but seemed to work.

The rest of the TF seemed to go more smoothly and we ended up finishing in 54mins 56sec for 28 merits (30.58 MPH) and getting Millie to level 36. This experience kinda soured me on invuln for non-tankers, though; if you can't shake off mobs using pure lethal damage, what good is it? The lackeying issues make me want to stick to 50s on ITFs for a bit, too.

So, speaking of invuln tankers, I decided to switch to Strong Woman (29 inv/SS tanker) for a hero-side 1st respec trial. We had a team mix of:

rad/dark def
emp/elec def
fire/TA controller
fire/SR scrapper
AR/nrg blaster
?? blaster (quit almost right away)
stone/nrg tanker
inv/SS tanker (me)

We started the trial and found the first door mission was bugged out for us, splitting the team into two separate instances. I think because the unknown blaster was on an Architect Entertainment story arc when we started the trial; he ended up quitting the trial and didn't come back. My half of the team completed the first door mission on its own; not sure whether the other half also had to do their mission or were able to piggyback off of our completion. Otherwise the trial went just fine, except for at the very end, when we defeated the last wave of Sky Raiders and the trial didn't complete. Eventually we tracked this down to one loose Sky Raider stuck in the ceiling of the reactor room, who we put out of his misery. Finished in 1hr exactly for 27 merits (27 MPH).

On Thursday night I played Mega (26 SS/will brute) through The Praetorian Invasion of the Land of OZ, a story arc where I help Ozma save Oz from the machinations of Tyrant and a Praetorian Dorothy. This was surreal and cool, and I liked the final battle where you face off against Tyrant and "evil" Dorothy with the help of "good" Dorothy; but the combination of Praetorians, Oz and time travel elements all at the same time, ended up overwhelming my suspension of disbelief. I gave the arc 3 stars.

I then ran Mega through Romulo & Juliette, a story arc very loosely inspired by the Shakespeare play. I didn't think the Romeo & Juliette theme quite worked as presented (the main story ends up being about something else) and I felt there were some plot problems. I gave it 3 stars.

Friday night I had company in RL so missed the PvP event, but I was on long enough to play Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) through a speed LGTF. Our team was

3 corruptors (traps, pain, dark)
3 scrappers (DA, 2 regen)
dev blaster
elec/shd brute

...and we finished in 38min 10sec for 39 merits (61.31 MPH).

On Saturday I solo'd Mega (26 SS/will brute) through some Sharkhead missions that got her the Agent of Discord badge and level 27.

After that I joined a Cap au Diable SF with TokyoRose (15 sonic/sonic corruptor) with a team of

necro/pain MM
necro/storm MM
wolf spider
blood widow
db/ninj stalker
sonic/sonic corr (me)
(think there was a seventh, but can't read my scribble of their powersets)

We weren't particularly stealthy so ended up completing most missions the normal way; this mostly went well except for one team wipe in the mission where you fight the CoT Librarian. Finished the SF in 1hr 21mins for 12 merits (8.89 MPH), getting TokyoRose to level 17. I took Disruption Field, which everyone called "the sonic tutu". I started off putting on the stalker but eventually switched to putting on the widow because the widow tended to stay with the team more, and I think it may have been breaking the stalker's stealth.

Went on to join an Imperious TF; the leader initially said I could bring "anything" so I started off bringing Millie Volt (36 elec/inv brute) for a rematch, but when a rad defender bailed on the team I volunteered to switch to Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team ended up being:

shield tanker
fire/kin controller
2 fire blasters
ice/kin controller
bs/shield scrapper
night widow
fire/rad corruptor (me)

With a solid tanker, high DPS, and both kin and rad buffs, this went really well, though we had a few deaths. I gleefully used Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation every time I could, which earned a "Fallout, hell yeah! That's a good rad!" from one of my teammates. Later on someone asked who was "healer" for our team so they could know who to run to, and although I actually do heal when I notice people being hurt, as a villain I just had to say, Don't count on me, I get too much good stuff from letting you die. Everyone seemed okay with that. We steamrollered over everything to finish the ITF in 52min 12sec for 28 merits (32.18 MPH).

On Sunday I solo'd Mega (27 SS/will brute) through Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War, which was a fun WW2-themed arc where you join the Blackhawk squadron...umm...Blackhorse squadron and battle gorilla warriors and wacky Nazi superscience. This was good fun, though I thought the final mission was a little anticlimactic. I gave it 4 stars.

Then I played Adventuress (21 MA/regen scrapper) on a Sister Psyche TF organized on LBx. Our team mix was:

fire/thermal controller
storm/rad defender
kin/energy defender
2 MA/regen scrappers (including me)
claw/SR scrapper
nrg/ice blaster
kin/psy defender

Running through Wentworth's I got a compliment from a random passerby on Adventuress's costume (admittedly, closer to a wolf whistle, but I figure that counts ), which was nice. We had lots of support on our TF so did quite well. I started off asking for and getting an SK, but my mentor kept going linkdead so I decided to stop pestering him about it; soon leveled up enough to not need one anyway. The other MA scrapper had to quit about 2/3rds of the way through, but we did fine anyway. Finished the Sister Psyche TF in 2hrs 25mins for 50 merits (20.69MPH). This got Adventuress to level 24; I had not really planned her build out in advance, so I haphazardly took Resilience at 22 and Hasten at 22, for lack of better ideas.

Finished the night soloing Kyrie Eleison (33 bs/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter Two: The New Testament, which is the second part of a huge 3-arc epic. The story picks up after part 1 where this massive interdimensional invasion has taken over most of the Earth, and I have to go wake up a Rikti goddess in order to stop them. The plot is very dramatic and worthy of being an epic, but there were gameplay issues that made some missions unfun; mostly hunting for hard to find glowies and other objectives on big maps with poor visibility. I gave it 4 stars. This also got Kyrie to level 34.

Just as a note, on request I'm happy to repost any of my reviews (or at least the rating and summary section of it) to the City of Heroes Mission Review site. I don't do this by default because not all story arcs are listed there. Feel free to post your reviews of my story arcs there if you like, also (this isn't required to get a review or anything though).

[ QUOTE ]
I assume "nip" is a "profanity" because it refers to drinking alcohol.
.....
the 'nip' thing probably refers to nipples. the profanity filter is ridiculous sometimes.

[/ QUOTE ]


I actually think "nip" is considered an ethnic slur.


[ QUOTE ]
Threadjacking ventures review thread wasn't what I had in mind, I just wanted to offer a balance to the 'ventures great at spelling, grrammar and syntax therefore he is God of Reviewers' gushing post before mine.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's perfectly legitimate to do this. I, myself, thought it would be fun to check the creative output of the people who are doing reviews of other's work, and consequently created the Who Reviews the Reviewers? thread. So far I've found some good stuff, and some..not so good stuff.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

[NPC] The Sarcophagus of Thellos: ....a....wor...wor....worshiper?....
[NPC] The Sarcophagus of Thellos: I....thoug....thought...I...was....for....forgott. ..en....

I like this dialog, but Thellos clearly doesn't have a Vanguard translator, so probably should talk like a Rikti.


[/ QUOTE ]

If PW doesn't mind gonna interject an alternative thought on this one part of the review (having played through the arc myself). Since the Rikti were originally humans from another dimension... I think it's fitting for their goddess to speak "normally" also... As a Goddess she can probably transcend linguistic barriers speaking directly to the heart/mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

I could buy this, maybe. Later in the arc Thellos always talks

-In sentences surrounded by dashes like this-

....which I thought maybe was indicating some sort of direct mental contact rather than regular speech. Maybe the sarcophagus should do this too.

The Lost Choir: Chapter Two: The New Testament review (arc id 136959)

Part 2 of a 3-arc epic, this takes place immediately after a transdimensional invasion by rogue angels. Level range seems to be around 40-54, but I played Kyrie Eleison, an avenging angel who is a 33 bs/inv scrapper, for thematic reasons.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact is again Abbas John, but all of the briefing text is out of character information that doesn't come from John at all. So is a little incongruous; if all the mission are like this, maybe the contact should be someone or something else.

The briefing does throw me right back into the plot, trying to seek help after the destruction of Atlas Park.

Inside the mission: I like the objectives set, "Find Help" and "Find a way to call others". Admittedly this makes it hard to know what I'm looking for here, but it sounds neat.

I wonder if "Cheribum" should actually be "Cherubim"? In Cheribum's description, "bizzare" should be "bizarre".

I flew over the ruins of Atlas Park for awhile looking for whatever the objective was, but I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do, so I eventually turned to simply killing everything in sight. (That's heroic, right?) I was struck by the lack of civilians on the map, though; even after Atlas Park has been largely destroyed, I might think there'd still be a few normal civilians around and in trouble, perhaps as hostages or something threatened by the rogue angels.

None of the rogue angels seem to say anything on this map. Consider adding some spawns or patrols that have a few lines of dialog to help define the setting and exposition about what's happened during the time the protagonist was unconscious.

I think an Ophanim tried to wormhole me! Didn't succeed, but seems possibly nasty. The fact that it buffs force fields on the shield-using angels adds up to a lot of defense.

The Cheribum having build up and broadsword might make it quite dangerous to some players. Might want to scale back powers so he doesn't have build up, at least.

These two along with the empathy-using B'nai Elohim make this enemy group potentially quite hard. I've been able to do it fine while soloing so far, but some players or teams might have a lot of trouble with them. I'd suggest you keep an eye on whether these mobs are too hard, and maybe try testing them with a mid-sized team sometime if you haven't already.

I killed everything on the entire map (as far as I could tell) but the mission still didn't end. At something of a loss, I exited the mission and looked at the Mission Architect UI to find that the arc description says mission 1 should be Ambush, Collection. So I'm clearly missing some sort of glowy. I like the ruined Atlas map (I use it in one of my own story arcs) but it's quite hard to find a glowy on it, since it's outdoors, covered in broken terrain, smoke-filled and has no map. I think some players will find this frustrating.

After circling three times around Atlas Park with my volume at max to detect the sound of glowies, I found the glowy - a patch of rubble that looks almost exactly like the terrain.

The clues I get from the rubble are pretty good though. A Vanguard person shows up and is friendly and I get a briefing about what's happened recently; the lack of civilians in Atlas Park is explained; the rogue angels apparently are genociding humans and have already depopulated several continents. Wow! Maybe there should be some body bags on the map for mission 1 that aren't required, but clue you in that the angels are simply murdering everyone.

Debriefing: OK, Abbas John is talking again, which is good. I like how he's pleasantly surprised that I "survived" the invasion from part 1.

Mission 2
Briefing: Text is a little repetitive; first sentence says "I am truly sorry" then second sentence says "We are sorry". Then first sentence of third paragraph starts wtih "So the Vanguard has" and the second sentence of third paragraph also starts with "So the Vanguard have". Suggest you revise the text a little to avoid this.

It sounds like I'm being sent to infiltrate this temple which is being massively assaulted by Vanguard, while at the same time being strongly defended by the Lost Choir? This doesn't quite make sense because if "all the might" of the Lost Choir are defending this temple, it should be very hard for me to "slip inside" as the briefing suggests.

I like the map choice, the glowing blue temple seems very mystical. It seems very quiet here, though, for a temple that is supposedly being assaulted by the full force of Vanguard, and defended by the full force of the Lost Choir.

"Defeat Trisagion" is among my objectives, but I have no idea who this is, so not sure why I need to do this. Consider rewording as "Defeat Choir leader" or something similar.

I found "The Altar of Thellos" and the clue I receive includes dialog from Sadu'sii, who I think is the heretical Rikti priest from Part 1. But Sadu'sii is not here; my guess is that Sadu'sii is the "familiar ally" referred to in the mission objectives, but I have not found him yet. Consider rewording this clue to make sense regardless of whether or not Sadu'sii is with the player.

This mission seems very quiet... you might want to consider adding some fixed spawns or patrols with dialog, or other mission details of interest (perhaps religious texts, artifacts or more shrines). I'm about 3/4ths of the way through the map and haven't seen any dialog or anything of note other than the Altar of Thellos itself.

Aha! Found Sadu'sii at last, near the back of the map, and was rewarded with some dialog between Sadu'sii and his guards. Only Sadu'sii has been changed from a regular Rikti to one of the Heavy Elites, which is kind of strange. Where would he get this armor suit? The other Rikti want him dead, so wouldn't have given it to him.

Sadu'sii is now an Elite Boss ally, which seems a little overpowering, especially because I found the level boss, Trisagion, in the next room. Trisagion only spawned as a Lieutenant.

I kind of think having Sadu'sii use a translator device to talk normally is cheating; something is lost by having a Rikti character use normal grammar instead of Rikti-speak.

The "Sadu'sii speaks" clue hints that the Lost Choir is, in fact, the remnants of the angels that served the deities of the Rikti. Hmmm! Very interesting development!

Mission 3
Briefing: This briefing really doesn't say anything at all, just that I need to go meet Sadu'sii. I almost wonder if Sadu'sii would make more sense as the contact for this arc, as he knows more about what is going on, while Abbas John, as a human priest, is really out of his depth.

Second part of briefing: My trip to RWZ to find Sadu'sii is hand-waved and now in the briefing text Sadu'sii is speaking... so Sadu'sii really is the contact now.

Sadu'sii wants us to travel to the "realm of the divine" to talk to Thellos, and the only way to do that is to go through a special Rikti portal. I'm not quite sure this make sense, because the arc portrays most Rikti as not believing in gods, so it seems inconsistent that a Rikti portal would be able to go to a divine plane. I mean, if the regular Rikti can teleport to heaven and talk to god, it doesn't make sense for them to be atheistic, does it?

Mission objectives: "4 Portal calibration stations" maybe should have some explanation of what is to be done with the stations. Maybe "4 Portal devices to calibrate"?

Found a Portal Calibration System and clicked it. On the progress bar, "eminating" should be "emanating". The text message when you finish the clicky has "signiture" in it, should be "signature".

Found what I think is the survivors of some angel/Rikti battles standing around at low health; I think maybe these battles should have some more dialog for the sake of color.

When I got down to the last portal, the singular objective text is "Calibrate the portal." Should remove the period, since it looks strange with a comma after it. Maybe make it "Calibrate the last portal".

Found Sadu'sii; one of his captors has the dialog:

[NPC] B'nai Elohim: You hope to return Thellos? I cannot belive it!

..."belive" should be "believe"

Sadu'sii is back to being a lieutenant; still not sure why he was an EB last mission.

This map seems really huge; is it necessary for this mission to use such a large map?

Finally found the fourth glowy very, very deep in. I'm a little surprised that there was no clue for getting the last glowy or completing the mission, considering it's supposed to be transporting me to the divine realm.

Debriefing: aha, here there is some text about being transported to another plane. Poor Abbas John continues to be an irrelevant contact. I think some of this text needs to be moved to either a clue or a mission exit popup; if a team plays through this arc, only the leader will see the debriefing text. And since it describes being transported to the "divine resting place of Thellos", it's definitely something the whole team should be able to see.

Mission 4
Briefing: Contact is still not relevant. Whole briefing is description of what you find in Thellos's realm. This mission is to Reawaken Thellos; I think there needs to be a little more text, probably in a clue or dialog from Sadu'sii, explaining why reawakening Thellos is a good idea. I mean, she is a Rikti goddess, who might not be friendly towards humans. I can guess that reawakening Thellos might somehow cause the Lost Choir to stop supporting Xhantranos and go back to Thellos ... but how do we know Thellos might not like having her followers conquer the Earth, too? Could use some more motivation for why the player should do this.

Second part of briefing: It warns me that failing here could cause the universe to be destroyed. Was it actually stated somewhere that Xhantranos intends to destroy the universe? I may have missed that. So far he's just been genociding the human race, which I suppose is bad enough.

Inside the mission, it's quite disorienting how foggy this cave is, making it hard to see much of anything. This is actually quite annoying, but I imagine it's intentional, part of the atmosphere of this strange dimension.

I like how you've reused Black Swan's minions here for shadow creatures.

Near the very back of the mission, I found Sadu'sii.

[NPC] Sadu'sii: What sort of monster is this? Thellos, have we really been this unkind to you?

...this dialog seems to be addressed to Thellos, so I think it should maybe follow Rikti grammar, not translated human speech.

[NPC] The Sarcophagus of Thellos: ....a....wor...wor....worshiper?....
[NPC] The Sarcophagus of Thellos: I....thoug....thought...I...was....for....forgott. ..en....

I like this dialog, but Thellos clearly doesn't have a Vanguard translator, so probably should talk like a Rikti.

I found Sadu'sii and the Sarcophagus in the same room, which was convenient. Breaking the Sarcophagus appears to have spawned Thellos, who says some lines of dialog. I can't see her in the smoke, but she is supposed to be glowing like a star. I see her dialog and she's talking like she's here .... but I don't see her anywhere. I'm not sure if she actually spawned in another room or I just can't see her in the fog.

After searching the room carefully, I conclude Thellos didn't actually spawn in the same room as the sarcophagus. So I backtracked through the cave looking for her. I eventually found Thellos in a side room near the front of the cave; she had some kind of damage aura power going that was damaging her guards, who were near death when I arrived. I almost think she would've freed herself given enough time - not sure that is a desirable outcome for your story.

Debriefing: Aha, Abbas John has a few lines again, albeit ones of simple awe and wonderment. "Godess" should be "Goddess", though. Also, "I never thought we mortals could interact with gods so easily" does not seem like something a devout priest should say -- unless I'm much mistaken, priests believe they interact with gods every day, via faith and prayer.

Mission 5
Briefing: Abbas John is gone again and now the briefing explains that Thellos herself is communicating with me. Thellos' resurrection has converted some of the Rikti, but the Lost Choir remain opposed to her, so she wants me to help with this.

I like the map choice, very moody looking. I quickly found Thellos; again, her damage aura had nearly killed her guards. I must say, the damage aura gives her a really awesome looking nimbus of energy, which seems perfect for a deity, so maybe you should keep it even if it kills her guards.

Thellos is an EB ally, which is usually unbalancing because the EB can beat up everything without my help now; but considering she's a deity, making her weaker probably doesn't make story sense. I don't want to think about the theological implications resulting from potentially getting her killed, either.

Thellos and I go slaying our way through the various rogue angels; although the angels guarding her had some dialog, I think there should be more dialog from the angels we run across on the way to Xhantranos, too. Since they ARE fighting their goddess, essentially. Consider adding some patrols/ambushes/static spawns that have some dialog about how they don't believe in Thellos any more and Xhantranos knows the way now (or something like that).

Fought Mind of Xhantranos. Its dialog is wonderfully megalomaniacal.

[NPC] Mind of Xhantranos: ...and subjugated galaxies beyond comprehension!!!>

... this line is missing its opening < bracket.

The fact that it was a mind/rad EB was pretty scary, I was worried he'd manage to confuse Thellos into turning against me. Fortunately my EB was able to defeat the bad EB before I got into serious trouble.

Debriefing: "he has entered out universe wholly" should be "our universe".

Not a bad finish for this part of the story.

Overall
It's the middle arc of the trilogy, but still seemed pretty decent. The idea of awakening the Rikti goddess to oppose the nihilistic Xhantranos is very cool and the way you go about doing it feels right. Possibly Sadu'sii should explain a little more about how resurrecting Thellos is supposed to help against the Lost Choir, to help motivate why you're doing it.

I felt there were a few gameplay issues, though. Mostly searching for objectives on big maps that have obscured vision. I spent quite a lot of time searching the first mission for a glowy that basically blends in perfectly with the terrain (patch of rubble on the ruined Atlas map). Then on the third mission the map was humongous and it took quite awhile to get all 4 glowies there. The fourth mission with the thick fog everywhere made it cumbersome to get anywhere, then after I destroyed the sarcophagus and spawned Thellos, I had to search the whole map again to actually find Thellos. I understand why you made the map choices you did (they do largely support the story), but repeatedly searching large maps with bad lighting or heavy obscuration adds an element of frustration that reduces the amount of fun. I think you will find some players will be turned off by this enough that they won't want to continue.

I also felt most of the missions were too quiet, with not enough dialog. Part of this was because the maps were so big, I had to clear a lot of enemies between the special details that actually do have dialog. Consider adding more mission details with dialog to help have more items of interest on these large maps.

Finally I don't think Abbas John is an appropriate contact for the middle arc. Although he makes some sense as contact for the first arc, he has almost no connection to the story of the second arc. I actually think Sadu'sii makes more sense as contact for the middle arc; most of what you are doing in the middle arc is motivated by Sadu'sii.

I also think it would be nice to have the arc explain what happens to Sadu'sii after Thellos is awakened in mission 4. As presented, Sadu'sii kind of drops out of sight and you start talking with Thellos directly. Thellos says that the Rikti have regained faith; I think it would be a nice touch if she (or whomever you make the contact for this arc) tells you also that Sadu'sii is accepted by the other Rikti again and is now her high priest, or something. (Since his last state was wanted criminal for being a religious nut.)

I do think the story is progressing well, and I like the overall plot. With all that in mind, I gave this arc 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir Ch3 141011 (moved this down two places, so as to alternate with other arcs)
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636
@Citizen Razor - 195149
@Dalghryn - Consequences of War #212069

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War review (arc id 130809)

Concept seems to be a war movie set in the 1940s. Level range was 1-54 blue; I played a 27 SS/will brute.

Custom contact has a nice costume, very "Lady Blackhawk" looking.

Mission 1
Briefing: It is Lady Blackhawk! I'm supposed to work with her, but she wants to test me, so I'm sent to "Blackhorse" Island for a training exercise.

Inside the mission, the objectives are not terribly clear - the nav tool says to Bang on Drum to end the Training session, but the briefing says to defeat each of the top officers in order to pass the test. Maybe defeating the named officer should be an objective too?

The Blackhorse costumes look great. Nice map choice too. Would be nice if they had some dialog though - maybe commenting on testing the new recruit, or whatever.

A little confusing that the contact says to defeat "top officers" and there are also "Blackhorse Officers" in the mission that don't count towards this. Only the named Blackhorse characters do, and they do not stand out very well against the background, so I ended up clearing most of the map before I found the first one.

I have no ability to proofread the French or Dutch so will trust that the French and Dutch characters are saying something reasonable.

[NPC] Blackhorse Mechanic: Hi Ho, Shadow Team, away! Let's see how the Mystery Men handle surprises!

Nitpick: I'm actually a solo female character. But "mystery man" is the period term for comic book heroes, so maybe it's okay.

I defeated all the named characters up to and including Lady Blackhorse, and cleared all the Blackhorses from the island entirely, but the mission still doesn't end despite having "passed" the test. It looks like I have to "bang on drum to end training session" but the briefing warned me that I would fail the exercise if I did this, so I'm kind of reluctant to do this.

There doesn't seem to be anything else I can do on this map though, so I clicked on the metal drum. There should be some text on the progress bar, like "Banging on drum".

Maybe defeating Lady Blackhorse should give you some sort of clue indicating you passed the training exercise.

Mission 2
Briefing: Love this briefing and the idea of a mad scientist inventing gorilla guerillas (or guerilla gorillas).

Inside the mission, I like the dialog from the Blackhorse patrols and the mix of 5th Column, Red Army and gorillas. The gorillas look pretty good, though I confess I'm confused as to why Uzbek Gorilla Fist is wearing a kilt.

Red Army Soldier has no description.

You may want to change Major Wolfgang Hochstetter's description (the default one refers to the Council takeover).

The Abwehr dialog about the gorillas turning against them is interesting.

Every gorilla except Gorilla Commando seems to be called "Uzbek Gorilla Something" ... maybe the commando should be "Uzbek Gorilla Commando" for consistency?

Instruction Files glowy should have some text on the progress bar.

I saw a Blackhorse patrol, but thought it was a little odd none of them actually would work with me.

Mission 3
Briefing: I think the contact should describe the mission a little more before saying "Our main objective"; just another sentence or part of one to give some background context.

[NPC] Raserei Ubermenschen Fist: Achtung! Ashley Porter's Blackhorse Commandos!

"Achtung" maybe should be "Alarm" here?

I like Colonel Burkhalter's dialog.

I found Ilsa Kopf, a hostage guarded by gorillas; I think she could use some dialog before she is "rescued" expressing dismay at the gorillas turning against her. She gives a nice clue though.

Debriefing: "Major Kopf" should probably be "Doctor Kopf"? She wasn't in uniform and was never referred to by rank prior to this that I can recall.

Mission 4
Briefing: I like this briefing and how it refers to one of the other named Blackhorse operatives. All these briefings have been nicely in character.

Mission title: Considering the contact tells you she doesn't know what to expect in this mission, having the title be "Defeat Lobster Man" and the objective be "Defeat Lobster Man from Mars" seems like a huge spoiler. Maybe should rename both these to something less spoilery, then have the discovery of the Lobster Man be uncovered as a clue, or be a surprise when you run into him.

In the mission, suddenly Lady Blackhorse knows about the Lobster Man. How did she find out?

Fought the Lobster Man; all his dialog appears to be in Korean, except for one word. Was a neat effect though.

Actually fighting and defeating the Lobster Man seemed awfully easy, though; I simply beat him up and then the mission ended.

Great debriefing, though, I like the reports of the flying discs over other parts of the world and the mention of how it will affect the war and stuff.

Overall
Love the overall period look & feel that this story arc has. Very much feels like a WW2 period piece with generous amounts of weird science.

Despite the plot's focus on the Blackhorse squadron, however, the actual gameplay made it feel more like I was fighting adjacent to the Blackhorse commandos, and not really working with them. The Blackhorse patrols in the middle missions had some nice dialog, but never really cooperated with me. I think you should consider adding a few Blackhorse operatives as (low powered) allies in each mission, to give more of a feeling that they're on your side. Perhaps you could re-use some of the other named Blackhorse characters from mission 1? After a promising introduction in mission 1, none of those characters reappear again except Lady Blackhorse herself, so I feel they were rather underused.

I also felt the final act against the Lobster Man from Mars was somewhat anticlimactic. After building up the mystery of who's really in control of the Gorillas in missions 2 and 3, the mystery is instantly spoiled by the nav tool text in mission 4, and the actual confrontation with the Lobster Man is over much too quickly. I'd really recommend being coy about who is controlling the gorillas for just a little longer, but let the player uncover information about who is really in charge in the final mission (via clues, maybe Martian equipment laying around, or Gorilla dialog somehow hinting at who their real controller is), leading up to the final fight with the Lobster Man.

I enjoyed the theme and the strong characterization of Lady Blackhorse, though. I gave this story arc 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir (Ch2 and Ch3) 136959, 141011 [alternating with other arcs]
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885
@Stormsurge - Of Liberty and State Pt1 218636

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

For Cobalt Red:

A rich celebutante has been sentenced to jail for drunk driving. The plan is to break her out of the Zig, then hold her for ransom for immense profit! What could go wrong? Celebrity Kidnapping (villainous, arc id 1388)

Missions on this arc are generally 30-38.

Here is mine - I'm afraid it's a screen shot from LGTF so it's not perfect for showing her costume though.

Rain Dancer

Romulo and Juliette (arc id 45146, by Peacemoon)

Another Romeo and Juliette inspired story of star-cross'd lovers. Stated level range is 26-30 blue side. I played a 26 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: "Two gangs, alike in dignity, in fair Paragon City..." Closely follows the introduction of the play, so far. Then a dream sequence begins.

Mission entry popup: "you here the feint noise" should be "you hear the faint noise".

Whoa, what happened to all the stuff about Skulls and Hellions? This mission is full of custom "Darkfire" gang members, who seem to be amped up Hellions. Oddly, some of them have dark blast.

[NPC] Darkfire Smiter: A Hero, how did he get in here, the entrance was sealed!

My character is female, so this is wrong; "he" should be "$heshe".

OK, inside the mission we're not so much following the script, as now I'm helping the police try to arrest Romulo and Juliette.

There's lots of non-required glowies with interesting clues.

"Desk: Kidnap Plan" - "would be to try kidnap Azuria" should be "would be to try kidnapping Azuria".

Midnight Flamer's description: "Midnight Flamer's are the mystical leaders" should be "Midnight Flamers are the mystical leaders".

"Bulletin Board: Newspaper Articles" - "commited" should be "committed". "civilions" should be "civilians". It seems our star-cross'd lovers are not nice people.

I like rescuing the various cops, that's a nice touch.

Shadow Daddy's description: I think "Formally known as Bone Daddy's, these are among the most feared of Darkfires villains" should maybe be "Formerly Bone Daddies, these are among the most feared members of the Darkfire gang". Also "heros" should be "heroes".

Romulo Skull has a lot of plot-important info in his background story that I haven't seen anywhere else yet; but not everyone reads those, so it might be a good idea to put some of that info into briefings or clues. In his background, "Darkfires became" should be "The Darkfires became", and "campeign" should be "campaign".

Upon defeating Romulo, I got a clue saying that he "died trying to resist arrest"; this is a little surprising as arresting villains is normally nonlethal (even when using broadswords or full auto). I assume it's required for the plot though.

Same comments for Juliette's background and death while resisting arrest. I kind of think some heroes may be distressed to be scripted into killing two (possibly innocent) people in this story.

Trash Can: Agreement of Allignment - "Allignment" should be "Alignment". "thankyou" should be "thank you".

Mission exit popup: "check your clues" is somewhat immersion breaking.

Debriefing: "infront" should be "in front". "heroe's" should be "hero's".

Mission 2
Briefing: Romulo and Juliette are already dead, what more story could there be? Nevertheless, there's another mission. "infront" should be "in front". Now the stone that is the contact wants me to rescue Azuria.

[NPC] Death Brother: You should of stopped at the mansion...

"should of" should be "should have"

Death Brother's Diary: "pursuasion" should be "persuasion".

[NPC] Azuria: You seek guidance, I seek a helping hand. Lets get out of here Mega!
"Lets" should be "Let's"

"Azuria's Parting Words": the first mission was all a dream? I guess this lets me off the hook for having killed Romulo and Juliette, but "it was all a dream" is still rather unsatisfying. Also "thankyou" should be "thank you".

Debriefing: it says here that I "avenged" Romulo and Juliette, which is sort of true, but sort of not true if I actually killed them in mission 1. "heroe's" should be "hero's".

The last line in orange text, "However it is with great pride..." doesn't rhyme and isn't in iambic pentameter, so doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the quotation here. (Admittedly, using the player's name will make it difficult to put into iambic pentameter...)

Overall
The story itself, rescuing Azuria from a kidnapping, isn't bad, and I like how there are many clues to find out what is going on. I also liked rescuing the various police officers in the first mission.

However, the Romeo and Juliette theme didn't work for me; the story arc's titular characters manage to unify the Skulls and Hellions, and so are really not that analogous to the classical Romeo and Juliette and their perpetually feuding families. The pacing feels wrong to me as well; I thought Romulo and Juliette dying in the first act didn't work. It felt like the player was scripted into killing two innocents, and then with the story's title characters already dead, the second act felt rather tacked on -- this despite the Azuria subplot which turns out to actually be the MAIN plot when Azuria reveals "it was all a dream!"

I kind of think the gang members could've easily been a mix of normal Skulls and Hellions instead of fusing them into the custom Darkfires, and the story arc could be brought down to the lower levels where Skulls and Hellions are more normally encountered. Up to you though.

Anyway, the story was okay but didn't quite work for me. I gave it 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!


(Feel free to review any of my story arcs for your QPQ, if you are still doing reviews)

Romulo and Juliette (arc id 45146, by Peacemoon)

Another Romeo and Juliette inspired story of star-cross'd lovers. Stated level range is 26-30 blue side. I played a 26 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: "Two gangs, alike in dignity, in fair Paragon City..." Closely follows the introduction of the play, so far. Then a dream sequence begins.

Mission entry popup: "you here the feint noise" should be "you hear the faint noise".

Whoa, what happened to all the stuff about Skulls and Hellions? This mission is full of custom "Darkfire" gang members, who seem to be amped up Hellions. Oddly, some of them have dark blast.

[NPC] Darkfire Smiter: A Hero, how did he get in here, the entrance was sealed!

My character is female, so this is wrong; "he" should be "$heshe".

OK, inside the mission we're not so much following the script, as now I'm helping the police try to arrest Romulo and Juliette.

There's lots of non-required glowies with interesting clues.

"Desk: Kidnap Plan" - "would be to try kidnap Azuria" should be "would be to try kidnapping Azuria".

Midnight Flamer's description: "Midnight Flamer's are the mystical leaders" should be "Midnight Flamers are the mystical leaders".

"Bulletin Board: Newspaper Articles" - "commited" should be "committed". "civilions" should be "civilians". It seems our star-cross'd lovers are not nice people.

I like rescuing the various cops, that's a nice touch.

Shadow Daddy's description: I think "Formally known as Bone Daddy's, these are among the most feared of Darkfires villains" should maybe be "Formerly Bone Daddies, these are among the most feared members of the Darkfire gang". Also "heros" should be "heroes".

Romulo Skull has a lot of plot-important info in his background story that I haven't seen anywhere else yet; but not everyone reads those, so it might be a good idea to put some of that info into briefings or clues. In his background, "Darkfires became" should be "The Darkfires became", and "campeign" should be "campaign".

Upon defeating Romulo, I got a clue saying that he "died trying to resist arrest"; this is a little surprising as arresting villains is normally nonlethal (even when using broadswords or full auto). I assume it's required for the plot though.

Same comments for Juliette's background and death while resisting arrest. I kind of think some heroes may be distressed to be scripted into killing two (possibly innocent) people in this story.

Trash Can: Agreement of Allignment - "Allignment" should be "Alignment". "thankyou" should be "thank you".

Mission exit popup: "check your clues" is somewhat immersion breaking.

Debriefing: "infront" should be "in front". "heroe's" should be "hero's".

Mission 2
Briefing: Romulo and Juliette are already dead, what more story could there be? Nevertheless, there's another mission. "infront" should be "in front". Now the stone that is the contact wants me to rescue Azuria.

[NPC] Death Brother: You should of stopped at the mansion...

"should of" should be "should have"

Death Brother's Diary: "pursuasion" should be "persuasion".

[NPC] Azuria: You seek guidance, I seek a helping hand. Lets get out of here Mega!
"Lets" should be "Let's"

"Azuria's Parting Words": the first mission was all a dream? I guess this lets me off the hook for having killed Romulo and Juliette, but "it was all a dream" is still rather unsatisfying. Also "thankyou" should be "thank you".

Debriefing: it says here that I "avenged" Romulo and Juliette, which is sort of true, but sort of not true if I actually killed them in mission 1. "heroe's" should be "hero's".

The last line in orange text, "However it is with great pride..." doesn't rhyme and isn't in iambic pentameter, so doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the quotation here. (Admittedly, using the player's name will make it difficult to put into iambic pentameter...)

Overall
The story itself, rescuing Azuria from a kidnapping, isn't bad, and I like how there are many clues to find out what is going on. I also liked rescuing the various police officers in the first mission.

However, the Romeo and Juliette theme didn't work for me; the story arc's titular characters manage to unify the Skulls and Hellions, and so are really not that analogous to the classical Romeo and Juliette and their perpetually feuding families. The pacing feels wrong to me as well; I thought Romulo and Juliette dying in the first act didn't work. It felt like the player was scripted into killing two innocents, and then with the story's title characters already dead, the second act felt rather tacked on -- this despite the Azuria subplot which turns out to actually be the MAIN plot when Azuria reveals "it was all a dream!"

I kind of think the gang members could've easily been a mix of normal Skulls and Hellions instead of fusing them into the custom Darkfires, and the story arc could be brought down to the lower levels where Skulls and Hellions are more normally encountered. Up to you though.

Anyway, the story was okay but didn't quite work for me. I gave it 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

The Praetorian Invasion of the Land of OZ (arc id 168841)

Premise is to help the magical land of Oz repel an invasion by the Praetorian AVs. Stated level range is 45-54 heroic, but I obstinately played a 26 SS/will brute anyway because I wanted exp on that character.

I like the model for Ozma of Oz.

Mission 1
Briefing: "Princess Dorothy was kidnapped taken to Paragon City" should be "Princess Dorothy was kidnapped and taken to Paragon City".

"Ojo the Unlucky as ultimately responsible" should be "Ojo the Unlucky was ultimately responsible".

"find out what there up to" should be "find out what they're up to".

The plot synopsis given in this briefing is rather confusing, introducing a lot of stuff that sounds like it happened in a previous episode. I remember I ran through Prisoners from the Land of Oz; I don't remember Ojo being in it, in fact I think Dr Vahzilok was the big bad guy. For someone just starting with this story arc, though, all the stuff about Ojo being the kidnapper, but Ojo not being the real Ojo, is rather confusing.

It also seems rather discordant for a contact from Oz to send you on a mission to Portal Corporation. I'm not sure I fully buy that Ozma would consider an attack on a place that isn't even in Oz to be this important.

Mission entry popup: This instantly tells me that Praetorians are the culprits without me even seeing an enemy yet. It might be nicer if you left this in suspense for a little bit, then the player could see the Praetorian mobs and come to her own conclusion. You could also add a clue to that effect, dropped by a boss or on mission complete.

"The Praetorian's goal" should perhaps be "The Praetorians' goal". "Jules Verne an HG Welles" should be "Jules Verne and HG Wells".

[NPC] Servant: Stop the hero.
[NPC] Dr. Franks: Go, Mega.
[NPC] Dr. Franks: You have to stop them.

...all three of those lines probably should end in a "!" instead of a "."

Special Agent Gale's description: "Opertation" should be "Operation". "Tyrants personal direction" should be "Tyrant's personal direction".

[NPC] Special Agent Gale: Domy, relax Tyrant'll be plenty pleased with both of us.

I think you need one of "!" "." or ";" between "relax" and "Tyrant'll".

Seems to me she should be named something other than Gale? Unless you intend for her to be a relative of Princess Dorothy, aka Dorothy Gale. (Will see, I guess.) Oh, she has magic silver slippers! OK, so she's a Praetorian Dorothy. She ran away faster than I could kill her, though.

[NPC] Special Agent Gale: Well, it's been fun but I got some history to rewrite, Domy-babby, take care of the rest.

"babby" should be "baby" here.

[NPC] Dominatrix: A hero? Do you think I've been a bad girl, do you want to punnish me? Sorry that's my job.

"punnish" should be "punish"

I managed to beat Dominatrix after a lengthy fight and lots of inspirations.

"You're too late" clue needs to say who is speaking this ... Dominatrix maybe?

Debriefing: "other-worldy" should be "otherworldly". "This book, is about how I became was restored to the throne of Oz" should be "This book is about how I was restored to the throne of Oz".

Mission 2
Briefing: We seem to have entered time paradox land as Ozma thinks the Praetorians are changing her past, but she can send me back in time just before she fades away. I find this a little hard to believe, but will try to get past that.

I do think there needs to be more explanation for why Ozma knows that this, particular moment that she's sending me back to, is the correct one to fix the time paradox. She could either see it in Glinda's book, or maybe have two different conflicting memories due to her timeline changing...something like that. Without some more motivation for going to this particular point in time, I think it is a little too coincidental that she would guess the right one.

Second part of briefing: "so weak" should maybe be "I feel so weak..."

Mission entry popup: "disorientated" should be "disoriented".

I like the Oz Invasion Army's costumes, but they all need descriptions; Flying Monkey, Accolyte of the West, Quadling Soldier, Munchkin Medic and Gillikin Archer all currently have the default minion/lieutenant info.

Accolyte of the West should be Acolyte of the West.

I'm surprised that Gillikin Archer doesn't seem to have archery; it used nothing but sonic blast on me.

Munchkin Medic maybe should be made shorter? Perhaps the min height?

Would be nice if these Oz Invasion Army guys had some dialog expositioning about their invasion, and/or were fighting palace guards or something, to make it seem more like a proper invasion.

[NPC] SPECTRA Series I: Target Scarecrow: Elminate

"Elminate" should be "Eliminate"

The Scarecrow is an Elite Boss plant control/illusion ally! I think this may be too powerful. He summons a lot of pets which makes fighting a little confusing too.

Tippetarius is also an Elite Boss ally, so now I have 2 EBs helping me; this is probably too much help. They beat up the mission boss, Queen Jinjur, without me needing to help. I'm on the lowest difficulty, also, so they're probably AVs on higher difficulty or with larger teams. You might consider lowering them to be Bosses instead.

[NPC] Queen Jinjur: Ah my new allies told me to expect interloppers.

"interloppers" should be "interlopers"

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, Ozma is better now and she confirms that Gale is the Praetorian Dorothy. Now Ozma wants me to go destroy the Praetorian time machine, which she has located by magic.

Inside the mission, "Defeat base leader." objective should remove the trailing period (looks weird with a comma after it).

The Time Machine is conveniently located near the entrance for me, so I destroy it. The guards on the Time Machine didn't have any dialog; I guess because they are robots, but having no dialog from the guards and nothing special happen when I destroy the Time Machine seems a little anticlimactic.

I've now destroyed the Time Machine, and the mission title is "Destroy the time machine", but the mission is still going because I haven't defeated the base leader. The mission title maybe should be rephrased to something more general so it still makes sense even after the time machine is gone.

Kind of odd that Nightstar's robots are here, but the Praetorian boss is Antimatter.

I like how Agent Gale talks to the Praetorian AVs with a lot of attitude, though.

[NPC] Antimatter: Mega, here's some payack for Dom.

"payack" should be "payback". I also think "Dom" should be "Dominatrix" or at least the more girly sounding "Domi" or "Domy".

Lost to Antimatter my first try, but ran back from hospital and beat him on the second try.

Antimatter's confession: "Gale is Tyrants envoy to our Oz" should be "Gale is Tyrant's envoy to our Oz". "it's ruler" should be "its ruler".

Mission 4
Briefing: Now I'm being sent to battle the Praetorian Oz army, which we think is going to invade our Oz. "doppleganger" should be "doppelganger".

I like the number of things to do in this mission, between linking up with allies and defeating AVs; makes for a more dramatic finish.

I kind of think the guards on Dorothy should say, "Surrender Dorothy!"

Dorothy Gale's description mentions a magic belt, but her costume does not have a belt.

Empress Dorothy Gale spawned as a boss for me, but the Dorothy Gale ally spawned as an EB for me. This seemed pretty unfair my EB allies smashed the villain quickly.

Dorothy Gale and Empress Dorothy Gale are a little too similarly named and could get easily confused? Maybe make the good one "Princess Dorothy" and the evil one "Empress Dorothy"?

Empress Dorothy Gale's description, "she can't help but loving Tip" should be "she can't help but love Emperor Tippetarius". (Since "Tip" is too much like the "good" Tip's nickname.)

Emperor Tippetarius's description, "natural forum" should be "natural form".

[NPC] Emperor Tippetarius: That woman with you what I would have looked like as a girl? Hah, I think I'll keep her as a toy.

This dialog won't make sense if I don't have Ozma with me (which I think may be possible if I don't rescue her first or if I rescue her and leave her behind). Also, "with you what" should be "with you is what".

Fought and defeated Tyrant, with the help of the two EB allies.

[NPC] Tyrant: Mega you think you can challange me? I've already crushed my world's version of you.

I like this taunt! But "challange" should be "challenge".

Debriefing is pretty short, but maybe that is OK. We never did clear up what was up with Ojo though did we?

Souvenir: "elluded" should be "eluded".

Overall
I think it's a neat concept and I especially liked the big finish in the final mission.

I did feel there were a few too many fantastical elements being used at the same time, though, which made it hard for me to fully believe in the story and get fully engaged in it. I think I could believe in a story about any one, or even any two, of (Oz, Praetorians, time travel), but using all three at the same time exceeded my suspension of disbelief. I kind of think it would be nice to simplify the story by dropping the time travel element, but this would require extensively rewriting mission 2, so that might be too much to ask.

Oz versus Praetorian Oz is the main idea in your arc, and I think it would benefit if you increased the focus on Oz-related themes. In my opinion, having missions 1 and 3 set in scientific looking labs (instead of Oz) weakened the Oz theme; I think it would be cooler if you ran into Dominatrix raiding something in "our" Oz, and attacked Antimatter at his base in "their" Oz.

It would also be great if there were more dialog, clues, or other text that is strongly Oz-related, to help increase the sense of immersion. The Oz Invasion Army looks great, but didn't have any lines or background story. You might consider inserting some (non-required) patrols or bosses just for the sake of giving them some lines of dialog to say.

Anyway, I hope that helps. I rated the story 3 stars, I hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir (Ch2 and Ch3) 136959, 141011 [alternating with other arcs]
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874

Through Rose-Tinted Glasses review (arc 101681, by @Leese)

Premise seems to be that some batty old lady thinks you're Manticore and you interact with her. Stated level range is 40-54. I played a 26 SS/will brute, who is admittedly too low but I wanted the exp.

Mission 1
Briefing: "goldmine" should be "gold mine". This lady is looking for a hero and is convinced I'm Manticore? I'm an 8 foot tall female character.... but I have the same color hair, that's probably what does it.

So she wants to send me to recover some of President Marchand's old treasure stashes and bring them to Paragon City. This sounds like a fun premise. I think she should say something more specific than "Paragon City" though, like a specific museum, or Azuria's MAGI vaults or something.

[NPC] Crab Spider Slicer: Whats his problem? Never handled Arachnoids before?

"Whats" should be "What's". The Bane Spider Coward is hilarious.

I like Barclay's dialog. The Shiny is MINE now!

For a long time I thought jewellery was misspelled, until I looked it up and found it was a valid spelling.

The debriefing is wonderful. I really like it.

Mission 2
Briefing: Premise of this mission seems awfully similar to the last; go to a hidden treasure stash and "recover" it.

Despite having multiple "treasures" to recover, the mission ended as soon as I clicked on the computer; maybe this is intentional though, since the first treasure I found was described as ruined. I imagine they all are except for the computer. I'm a little skeptical that there were many computers in President Marchand's time (he was deposed in 1963), but it's comic books, so let's go with it.

Debriefing: "Be careful if you encounter them, please!" should be "Be careful if you encounter $himher, please!"

Mission 3
Briefing: I like how you're portrayed as interrupting the contact to prevent her from sending you on another wild goose chase.

I'm not quite sure I buy into the idea that whatever is on this ancient computer could be super important, considering its data is 40 years old now and belongs to a deposed administration. Maybe when what's on it is revealed, I'll think otherwise, but currently I'm not fully believing in it.

Clicked on a glowy named "Safe 1" .. probably should just be "Safe".

(Very nitpicky) Ripped Journal has "journals" in lowercase, Singed Journal has "Journals" capitalized; maybe should be consistent. Journal Page has a differently formatted name than the other 4 clues, which are all Adjective Journal.

Ripped Journals, "civillians" should be "civilians".

OK, the Project Ragnarok clues do add up to something very interesting. But I'm still puzzled as to how they relate to the computer that I found earlier; all of these journals were in plaintext.

Also, if Arachnos had all 4 of these clues, they would have to be idiots to not spend enormous effort to finding where these nuclear bombs are placed.

There were some Longbow ambushes also which hinted that Longbow knows about the journals somehow too. This is puzzling at the moment; hoping it gets explained later. Perhaps mention of Miss Liberty in the clues is foreshadowing.

Debriefing: civillians should be civilians. I like how this briefing gives a summary of what you've found out about Project Ragnarok. I didn't catch that the computer was actually the access point for the doomsday device until this point; maybe one of the earlier clues should make that more clear.

It's a little inconsistent that the entire debriefing is third person and the contact doesn't get any dialog in this debriefing at all. Maybe not a big deal, just seems odd.

Mission 4
Briefing: Oh, I like this briefing and this plot twist. It finally ties the contact back into the main plot and in hindsight I see the foreshadowing for it. Her obsession with Manticore is pretty funny still.

Black Scorpion is in here and expecting Manticore? LOL! Black Scorpion's dialog is priceless. The batty old lady must be somehow leaking disinformation to the bad guys.

Philip's dialog and the dialog of all the ambushes/patrols that spawn after I capture Philip is pretty funny. I love how everyone totally buys into the idea that Manticore is going to show up any moment.

[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: We can't let that villain past

....needs a period or exclamation point at the end of it.

[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: Lets hold down the fort until Manticore arrives...

...."Lets" should be "Let's".

I end up running past Black Scorpion, avoiding fighting him since he isn't required.

Debriefing: "take him o Paragon" should be "take him to Paragon City". Isn't it kind of dangerous to leave Philip around, regardless of whether you give him to Arachnos or Longbow? He IS the only source of the needed DNA, after all.

Mission 5
Briefing: Looks like the contact is pretty much out of the picture and I simply decide to test whether Philip's blood will activate Project Ragnarok. This seems like a dangerous test; if it actually works, won't it set off the doomsday device?

Inside the mission: I have a mission objective called "Access Project Ragnarock" ... should be "Ragnarok".

[NPC] Longbow Spec-Ops: If we could control Project Ragnarock, we could force Arachnos to leave the Rogue Isles forever.

... "Ragnarock" should be "Ragnarok".

[NPC] Longbow Rifleman: Killing civillians is more your forte. We're here to keep this from falling into the wrong hands.

... "civillians" should be "civilians".

[NPC] Longbow Rifleman: Better you you! Attack!

"Better you you" should be "Better than you".

I'm glad you finally face down with the real Manticore...and his dialog is hilarious. I love how incredulous he is that the original contact could possibly mistake me for him. "Is your contact a cavefish or something?" LOL.

"goshdang" rings a little false for something he'd say, though...I suspect what you really meant to put here got intercepted by the profanity filter.

Nitpick: Manticore isn't technically a Longbow leader - he is leader of Wyvern.

Clicking the computer the progress bar again mentions "Ragnarock" but should be "Ragnarok". This also completed the mission without me having to fight the Arachnos leader, whomever that was. I assume this was intentional; I wasn't sure why it should be required to defeat the Arachnos and Longbow leaders anyway.

"No Network Connection" clue again has "Ragnarock" in it.

Debriefing: wow, nicely written debriefing. I almost felt bad that I .. I mean Manticore .. keeps losing to my character. I really like the moment of realization she has at the very end though.

Souvenir: Pretty nicely written, I like the last sentence that emphasizes how much you embarrassed Manticore. "Mantocore" should be "Manticore" though. "embarrasment" should be "embarrassment".

Overall
Started off a little slow, but got more interesting as it progressed. The batty old woman thinking you're Manticore the whole time seemed rather unbelievable at first, but started to really work as the arc progressed, and her final realization at the end was great. I like how the initial larceny leads into an interesting plot involving the doomsday device, and the introduction of Philip as a character was a good twist.

I thought there were a couple plot holes though. I found it hard to believe that Arachnos could know about Ragnarok and not do anything about it for 40 years; I think it's too hard to believe that they searched for those 40 years without any luck. And, how did Arachnos and Longbow start to get the idea that Manticore was actually at all these sites? For most of the arc, Manticore is only present in the contact's delusions -- how do the enemies know that "Manticore" has been getting beat up by the protagonist? I can only guess that maybe the contact is blabbing to people about how Manticore is helping her out -- but she hates Arachnos, so she wouldn't tell them. I'm not quite sure how Longbow got involved either; it's not at all clear to me how they found out about the doomsday device.

I also was rather disappointed that my villainous plot was ultimately foiled and came to nothing. Okay, so maybe I can't reasonably expect to end the story arc as a new nuclear power...but I oughta end up with something in the end. OK, so I got the proceeds from mission 1 and from ransoming Philip earlier, but that was then, this is now.

Despite these misgivings, the quirky framing story, the excellent dialog, the showdown with Manticore, and especially the final look of horror on the contact's face, pushed me into rating this 5 stars.

6/9/2009

I started Friday night by joining the Friday Night Kickball PvP event in Pocket D. I was worried there might not be enough people interested (after hearing of abysmal showings at previous events), but was pleasantly surprised to find this event was very heavily attended, with more than 24 players showing up. We initially had 3 team captains picking players from a list, but with the number of people dropping in and out of the event it got really confusing and messed up, and ultimately the event organizer simply decided that we would randomize teams each match instead of picking. I think this was the right call as it got things moving a lot faster.

I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) for the first match, where we had a tanker, stalker, 2 blasters, 3 scrappers and a brute on the Perez Park map. I was shocked at the number of meleers (formerly known as lolmelee) present and doing well at PvP. Our team seemed to work pretty well and we won the match; I managed to score 4 kills.

People switched to alts for the second match, so I switched to Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) and ended up on a team with 3 blasters, 3 corruptors and 1 scrapper, on the factory map. I probably spent too much of my time SJing around trying to buff ice shields, since supposedly buffs aren't too hot in the new PvP, but dammit, I had buffs and I was gonna use them! As an obvious squishy, I got targeted some and got to use Hibernate a lot, which does seem really useful; this is the first toon I've taken Hibernate on, mostly because she's the only one that Hibernate makes logical sense on. Anyway, as a result of buffing and hiding, I wasn't attacking as much and only got 2 kills, but our team won anyway.

Third match I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a team of fortunata, bane, blaster, stalker, 2 scrappers, on the graveyard map. Having high defense still seemed pretty helpful in this match, though it certainly didn't make me unhittable. I managed to score 2 kills and the team came in 4th place.

Fourth match I was back on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) with a team of 3 blasters, 1 controller, 1 tanker, 1 bane and 1 TA defender on the factory map. Our team was pretty disrupted and died a lot, but I managed to kill-steal my way to 8 kills, my best performance for the night, and our team came in 2nd place.

Fifth match I stayed on Police Woman, on a team of 3 scrappers, 1 blaster, 1 corruptor, 1 brute and 1 tanker in Steel Canyon. I got 5 kills and our team won the match.

Sixth match I was again on Police Woman, on a team of 3 blasters, 2 defenders, 1 corruptor and 1 scrapper, on the Atlas Park map. I got 5 kills and our team came in 3rd place.

During this game I managed to trap a scrapper in one of the little pools next to Atlas Plaza with web grenade, and the -jump kept him from jumping out of the pool so he was kind of stuck there until some other players showed up and chased me off. For some reason this made him really, really mad and he relentlessly harassed me for the next half hour about how mean I was for web grenading him and stopping him from having fun. I tried talking it over with him, but somehow this incident got magnified in his mind until he thought I had been hovering above him while web grenading him for 5 minutes straight (he actually said this). This was particularly weird because my character can't fly, and I don't think I was ever continuously alive for that long during the match, so there's no way he could've seen that. He just wouldn't let it go, and eventually got nasty enough that I had to put him on ignore because he was making me mad. This put a damper on how fun the earlier PvP was, and it was also kind of sad because this player was someone I've teamed with lots before and previously had a high opinion of. Unfortunately, PvP sometimes affects people badly.

After the arena event I accepted a team invite which ended up being an AE farm; I'm not really into farming, but for the sake of being polite I stuck around for one run through the mission before excusing myself, picking up about 1000 tickets.

On Saturday, I played Mega (25 SS/will brute) for a bit, soloing a couple missions in Bloody Bay and picking up a Shivan while there.

Then I switched to Strong Woman (27 inv/ss tanker) for a Hess TF with a team mix of:

warshade
2 regen scrappers
will scrapper
inv scrapper
inv tanker (me)

We did a mix of fighting and stealthing and had no serious problems until the final mission where a nictus crystal spawned smack dab on the place where you normally pull Burkholder to, which made things a little hairy until we took it out. Finished the TF in 42mins 38sec for 19 merits (26.74 MPH), and got Strong Woman to level 28 where I took Rage, and found a level 30 Steadfast Protection RES/+def recipe, which I went ahead and crafted and slotted it, to give Strong Woman an extra +3% global DEF, stacking nicely with Invincibility.

After the Hess TF, Strong Woman accepted an invite to a 5 player pickup team running missions in Croatoa, which got her to level 29.

Later that night I joined an Imperious TF; the team leader asked for a kin, so I played Primadonna (41 sonic/kin corruptor) as a lackey. Our team mix was:

fire dom
peacebringer
2 blasters
2 shield brutes
2 kin corruptors (including me)

With only kinetics for support, we were fast but squishy; this worked fine and we blitzed through the ITF in 53mins 7sec for 28 merits (31.63 MPH), which got Primadonna to level 42.

Spent some time shopping at the black market and ended up 6 slotting Primadonna's sonic nuke with Obliteration IOs, for +3% global dmg, +9% global acc, +5% global rchg and +3.75% melee DEF.

After that I played Millie Volt (33 elec/inv brute) for awhile on a 3 player LEGION team. I spent 40 merits from previous SFs on recipe rolls, getting a 33 Mako Chance for Lethal and a tasty 33 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) from the deal. Our team ran through the Skip Tracer badge mission and defeated Serafina, getting Millie to level 34.

Joined another Imperious TF late Saturday night; this one was trying to run at level 38-40 so that everyone would get exp, and so I played Maitresse (40 necro/storm MM). Our team was:

SR scrapper
shield scrapper
emp defender
cold corruptor
robo/poison MM
necro/storm MM (me)
fire blaster

We were a little slow moving due to no proper tank and no kinetics, but seemed to do fine. I tried to be careful how much stormyness I unleashed around the scrappers, but had a few moments of unabashed stormyness, especially against the phalanx computer. The final mission we had some trouble with Romulus because he would keep running away from us, due to debuffs or slows or something. We killed the first Romulus, then the second one ran away far enough to aggro more stuff and give us a team wipe. The team thought maybe it was Snow Storm (double stacked between the cold and myself) that was making him freak out, so we tried again without Snow Storm running. He still ran away a lot, not quite sure why; guess he just didn't like our debuffs. Ended up getting him this time, though, to complete the ITF in 2hrs 8mins for 28 merits (13.13 MPH) and getting Maitresse to level 41. I immediately spent 20 merits to get a level 41 Obliteration (chance for smashing) recipe.

On Sunday I solo'd Millie Volt (34 elec/inv) through the Origin of Power story arc (3 merits), then the Midnight Squad story arc to unlock Cimerora (another 5 merits). Also did a Talos Island mayhem which got Millie to level 35, where I took Tough Hide.

On Sunday night, my Teen Phalanx Forever! arc won 1st place in Projectionist's Mission Architect Contest as most enjoyable story arc! He wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
1st place: Teen Phalanx Forever! by PW (Arc ID: 67335)
An absolute blast to experience this arc with the brilliant premise; that you are not even playing your own character. With its well written humor and clever use of AE mechanics, the whole arc manages to be a tribute to your character and to the game itself. It’s an arc every one of my high level heroes will play. Every mission is a mini-adventure in itself.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was very psyched! There were lots of other winners announced, and Projectionist has promised to create some artwork for each of the winners, which I'm really looking forward to.

On Monday night I ran Kyrie Eleison (33 broadsword/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter One: The Old Testament, an interesting story arc about religion and extra-dimensional invaders. This is part 1 of a massive 3-arc epic; it had a ton of ideas but the plot was fairly confusing. I found the final mission especially cool because both my character and the final end boss were, essentially, angels, fighting on the Atlas Park map. Since we both had wings, I pulled him up into the air and fought a very cool aerial duel near the statue of Atlas. This was such a pretty fight that I ended up spending more time taking screen shots than fighting the EB:

Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 1
Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 2

Anyway, I gave that story arc 4 stars. I also burned 420 tickets on 6 Bronze reward rolls; the best I got out of that was a Doctored Wounds (HEAL) and another, very nice Steadfast Protection (RES/+def).

After that I played Schadenfreude (46 AR/pain corruptor) on a Recluse Strike Force, with a team mix of:

kin corr
AR/pain corr (me)
sonic/rad corr
sonic/cold corr
mind/ice dom
SS/will brute
SS/stone brute
necro/poison MM

This went extremely well, finishing in 49mins 11sec with Schadenfreude dinging 47 just as the strike force completed. I had to train to 47 before it would let me take the Synthetic HO reward, which was a Centriole. I also had a Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE/END) recipe drop for me on this mission, along with a fistful of badges. I promptly switched Schadenfreude's badge title to Archvillain.

After that I did yet another Imperious TF, joining a friend who asked for a rad, so I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team mix was:

fire scrapper
shield brute
kin controller
DA brute
fire/rad corruptor (me)
night widow
plant dom
pain corr

We didn't really stealth, we just rushed and killed everything as fast as we could. Our DPS was quite high so this worked just fine, finishing in 45min 59sec for 28 merits (36.54 MPH).

I finished Monday night letting another friend wheedle me into joining her LGTF. She asked for someone who could stealth past Rikti (trickier than it may sound because the drones have high +PER), so I played Mayday (50 fortunata). Our team mix was:

AR/traps corruptor
fire scrapper
regen scrapper
2 blasters
fortunata (me)
night widow
rad controller

At the Black Market I found I had bought the ingredients to make my sixth Coercive Persuasion IO, which I slotted for an extra +5% range DEF, giving her a 45.55 range DEF (while hidden, but not counting mind link). This let me easily stealth down to Penelope Yin's room in the first mission and team TP people down, as well as stealthily glide around the second, third and last missions. Sadly some of our other teammates were not as sneaky and died a lot trying to emulate the stealthers, and I got immense use out of Mayday's Vengeance and Rez powers. Nevertheless we got through the LGTF pretty quickly, finishing in a very respectable 46min 49sec for 39 merits (49.98 MPH).

The Lost Choir: Chapter One: The Old Testament review (arc id 123675)

Premise seems to be about faith and religion. Level range seems to be 40-54 blue side; for thematic reasons, I played Kyrie Eleison, a 33 broadsword/invuln scrapper whose back story is that she's an avenging angel.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact presents himself as a representative of a Judeo-Christian sounding church that feels it was particularly persecuted by the Rikti during the war. "patheons" should be "pantheons" here, and also reminds me, should he perhaps mention the Banished Pantheon as one of the new religions people are turning to? Or perhaps because they are "evil" they don't count.

Although perhaps it is implied, I think the briefing should end with the contact asking for help with protecting the new sanctuary.

Second part of briefing: "dont" should be "don't".

It strikes me that Croatoa, with its history of neo-pagan monsters and witches, is a particularly awkward place to build a new church. Perhaps this was intentional, though, to set up the conflict with the Tuatha.

Mission entry popup: I like the Biblical verse to help set the tone.

"Something about a choir?" clue: "wierd" should be "weird". The Tuatha guarding this Construction Worker kept saying <XHA!> or <XHAN!> (incomprehensible) but the worker says they were talking about a "Choir"; seems inconsistent. Maybe the Tuatha dialog should directly mention the choir.

All 5 workers seem to have identical dialog; only the first one gave me a clue. The mission ended after I found and freed the 5th worker. This is okay, but doesn't seem too special; you could make it a little more interesting if the different hostages had different lines, or were even different types of hostages. Also the contact asked me to make sure they didn't "disrupt construction", but there was no objective that matched this; maybe consider adding some construction materials as an object to guard.

Debriefing: the contact acknowledges that Croatoa is probably hostile towards his aims. He also says "the Tuatha obey the Redcaps", and goes on in this vein. I didn't realize this was the case; interesting. "Redcaps" should be "Red Caps" in any event.

Mission 2
Briefing: the contact wants me to follow up on this "choir", which he thinks means something in the Rikti language, so he wants me to check out a Rikti base. This seems like a huge intuitive leap, maybe too big a leap to be believable, especially since there is no obvious connection between Rikti and Tuatha.

I think to better motivate why you'd go to a Rikti base, you need more clues pointing in this direction. I like the Rikti translation idea you have, but I think it needs some supporting evidence; perhaps if you had some clue in the first mission that doesn't make any sense until the Rikti idea is mentioned, then the two things together might point this way.

[NPC] High Priest Fara'sii: Thellos. we: return. Grant: Salvation: Soaring one.

This doesn't sound like proper Rikti grammar (if there is such a thing). I suggest: "Thellos: Returns. Salvation: Grant us."

[NPC] High Priest Fara'sii: Ceremony cannot: observed. Allowing knowledge: to superiors. Doom: us

I suggest: "Ceremony: Observation: Forbidden. Superiors: Must not know. Our fate: Doomed."

Debriefing is very interesting. The Rikti gaining "faith" is an interesting idea.

Mission 3
Briefing: "Rikti War zone" should be "Rikti War Zone", "Rogue" should be "rogue" throughout (2 instances) and "restructurist" should be "Restructurist" throughout (2 instances).

"be careful Kyrie Eleison!" should be "Be careful, Kyrie Eleison!"

"Vanguard has agreed to help me as long as we are still performing activities in the Rikti War zone, and they went off and did a bit of research on their own" is very awkward sounding, I suggest rephrasing it. Perhaps "With the Rikti involvement, Vanguard has agreed to give us some limited support; no actual troops, but Vanguard R&D has given us some insight into this "Thellos" cult."

The contact asks me to save the High Priest of the Thellos cult, from getting purged by other Rikti. The motivation for this seems rather thin; "we might risk losing our only lead". But if the contact thinks this High Priest is behind the attack on his sanctuary, shouldn't he be happy that the High Priest and his cult are about to be wiped out?

We've wandered pretty far afield from the original goal of protecting the Electist construction site and I'm not quite sure why the contact wants me to do this. Possibly you can solve this by changing the nature of the contact (perhaps he could be a scholar of theology who is fascinated by both the Electist sect and the Rikti cult). Or if an Electist member somehow were kidnapped and needing to be rescued, perhaps. The plot so far is pretty interesting, but right now I just am not sure what my motivation is for being here.

Mission objectives: "Rescue the High Preist" should be "Rescue the High Priest".

[NPC] Guardian: Listen! Gods: must be returned!

.. I suggest: "You: Must listen! Gods: Must return!"

I think the Rikti dialog could be tightened up a bit throughout the arc in general, to better match how they talk in other missions. Their canonical syntax seems to be "Noun: Sentence fragment".

I came across a battle where both sides were Rikti; it was a little puzzling to tell who was who. Maybe this is intentional (since maybe all Rikti look alike to us). If not, you might consider defining the religious Rikti as a separate faction, like "Rikti Cultists", to make it more clear what is happening.

Found a Sergeant Luther, not quite sure what he was doing in here. Maybe Vanguard is offering troop support after all!

Found Sadu'sii, "Preist" should be "Priest" in his name also.

"Defeat Nii'Roh" has appeared as an objective after I freed the priest. Nii'Roh hasn't been mentioned in the story yet; the briefing does mention a Rikti general who I assume is Nii'Roh. You might want to make the objective either "Defeat Rikti general" or "Defeat General Nii'Roh".

When I got Sadu'sii to the door, he gave me "Sadu'Sii's warning". I suggest you decide whether his name is capitalized "Sadu'sii" or "Sadu'Sii" and use it consistently. This is a neat clue, though, warning of the effects of a lack of religion.

At this point Sadu'sii is safely out, but the mission doesn't end (since I still have to defeat Nii'Roh); consequently, "Extract the Rikti Priest" is no longer an accurate mission title. Suggest you name the mission something more generic that covers both rescuing the priest and defeating the general. Why IS it necessary to defeat the general, anyway? Wasn't getting the priest out the key objective?

I am a little puzzled as to why the religious Rikti are a splinter of the Restructurists; it seems like it might make more sense if they were Traditionalists, since they want to return to the "old religion". Unless Thellos is a war god or something. Will be interesting to find out.

In Nii'Roh's description, "Hro'Dtoz" should be "Hro'Dtohz". "millitary" should be "military" (in 2 places). "incence" should be "incense". I like his description though.

Managed to beat Nii'Roh, with help of the Sergeant and a couple purple inspirations.

Debriefing: Hmm, the contact talks like he is surprised that the chapel came under attack by other Rikti, but he totally told me that it would get attacked in the briefing. Seems like a continuity error.

Mission 4
Briefing: Turns out the Rikti aren't connected to the Tuatha after all? That really seems to waste the impact of the last two missions, which were otherwise rather interesting.

"who apparently feeds on sentience but can be driven off by faith, or at least "divine energy" as the Vanguard put it" sounds rather awkward, and makes it sound like some Vanguard person is interjecting during Sadu'sii's interrogation. Maybe drop the "or at least.." part.

But now the contact wants me to do something that the Rikti priest is asking for: check out someplace called "The Spirit Realm" and see if it's been infiltrated by "The Infinite Eyes", whatever that is.

This seems rather weakly motivated; what is the contact's interest in this matter? Why should I do something that this Rikti wants, a Rikti that the contact now says has nothing to do with the original attack? I guess the Rikti is warning of some vaguely foreboding thing that might attack us, but the motivation for checking this out still seems rather thin to me.

Second part of briefing: The contact admits he has no idea why we are doing this or what to expect. Hmm. Also Vanguard apparently is massively helping us here, by opening a portal and sending an expeditionary force; I'm not sure it's believable for Vanguard to devote this amount of resources to help out a Rikti, who are Vanguard's traditional enemies.

Inside the mission, suddenly I have a mess of objectives I didn't know about before: Find Redroot, 3 Dimensional Tendrils, Find the Eye of Beyond. Yet I don't know what any of these things are, so I don't have a good reason to DO these things. I suggest that you either have them mentioned in the briefing (so I know to get them) or else redefine the objectives to be something much more vague like "Learn something" "Find something interesting" or the like.

This place looks really weird with all the custom mobs in it; I'd normally suggest you put some description of this strange place in the mission entry popup, but currently you have biblical looking verse there.

Found The Eye of the Beyond; it was in the "All Custom Characters" faction, should probably be in the "Infinite Eyes" faction. In its description, "bizzare" should be "bizarre". Apparently "Find the Eye of Beyond" is completed by killing it.

"Infinite Glance" had sonic attacks against me; this doesn't seem consistent with its Eye theme. Consider changing to energy, dark or illusion? Sonic just isn't right for an "eye" monster.

"A window to the beyond" clue is an interesting vision. "bizzare" should be "bizarre".

Found a Dimensional Tendril; strangely, it had dialog, so it can talk? The thing guarding it said <Xha> a few times, then XHA! which should probably have angle brackets around it to be consistent with the other times it says <Xha> ... whatever <Xha> means.

Dimensional Tendril clue, "bizzarely" should be "bizarrely".

Destroying the last Dimensional Tendril spawned a Tuatha ambush, not quite sure why.

[NPC] Dimensional Explorer: I've seen some wierd stuff in this job, but this has GOT to be the wierdest!

"wierd" should be "weird" and "wierdest" should be "weirdest".

Found Redroot; his description is that of a default Bres. This wouldn't be a problem except that it says he bears the name Bres.

[NPC] Redroot: They...decieved us!

"decieved" should be "deceived"

"The last of the Tuatha" clue should more clearly state that it is Redroot narrating the text that follows.

Debriefing: the contact seems very puzzled by the plot so far, and I tend to agree. This mission was surreal and interesting but I still am not sure what is going on.

Mission 5
Briefing: OK, here is something that makes more sense; bad guys are attacking Atlas Park. But how is this related to the earlier story? I think the contact needs to more clearly state how that these "things" pouring out are connected to what we've done so far. Based on the text he gives here, it could very well be a Rularuu invasion with nothing to do with our current plot.

Inside the mission, suddenly there are a lot of evil fairies/angels (they have insect wings and halos) and Hebrew sounding names.... wha? They are the members of "The Lost Choir". This is quite a surprise, I was thinking the Lost Choir were actually connected to the Rikti plot earlier, former Lost or something.

Considering this is Atlas Park, I kind of think there should be some innocent bystanders here being menaced by the invaders, that you can save as optional objectives. I do like the PPD patrols battling the angels though.

Melakh Adonai's description: "Litterally" should be "Literally".

B'Nai Elohim's description: "radience" should be "radiance"

The "XHA" exclamations are finally explained as the evil fairies refer to Xhantranos as their leader, or god, or something.

My objective is "Defeat the Nephilim" which I initially thought was defeat all (thinking Nephilim might be the name of their race), but I found an EB named Nephilim and beat him. He had wings so I took to the air and fought an aerial duel under Atlas' globe just for the coolness factor. This was such a beautiful looking fight that I spent most of my time taking pretty screenshots when I should've been fighting:

Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 1
Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 2

... I eventually had to get serious when I started running low on inspirations, and beat him up. He fell to the earth in a very satisfying manner.

Debriefing: neat story description wrapping up part 1! However, I'm still quite puzzled as to what has happened so far. Would be nice if we had a clearer picture of what is going on for the sake of closure.

No souvenir, but maybe that makes sense considering it's only part 1.

Overall
I really like the ideas presented here; especially the Rikti religion and the idea of this Biblical, end-of-days level menace coming to Paragon City. The final scene with the invasion of Atlas Park was really neat and I liked the custom enemies that I encountered.

I found myself rather confused by the plot, though. I now know the Infinite Eyes mind controlled the Tuatha into attacking the Electist church, but I really have no idea why. The connection between the Infinite Eyes and Nephilim and the evil angels is not explained at all. There is foreshadowing for the Soaring One appearing on Earth and conquering Paragon City, so the final invasion is connected to the story, but does not seem closely connected to what just happened immediately before. I really do like the ideas presented here, but there are so many unanswered questions... I know this is only "part 1" but I think some explanation of what is happening would help a lot.

I was puzzled at what my motivation was for doing some of the missions, and why the contact wanted me to do them, and why Vanguard would be willing to help the Rikti religious leader. I thought the missions were pretty cool, but the framing story would benefit if there was better motivation for why you're doing them.

Despite being rather confused by the plot and motivations, I liked the ideas and enjoyed the arc. I gave it 4 stars.

Note: I'm going to rotate between the Lost Choir arcs and other story arcs to give myself a chance to reset between each run, and the author a chance to fix some stuff in later arcs based on feedback from arc 1 (if he thinks it worth doing).



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I owe a review to:

@Mr Squid - The Lost Choir (Ch2 and Ch3) 136959, 141011 [alternating with other arcs]
@Sakura-Kishi - Invasion of the Land of Oz 168841
suedenim - Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War 130809
Thornster - A Little RnR 17523
@Elisenda - A Lame Joke, 22982
@Ridiculous Girl - Hero Therapy! 119228
@Cheriour - Revenge of Dr Radium 100293
Graeve_Digger - 2 of Hero Simulator Ch1 172700, Ch2 172468
Major_Paragon - Fatale Attraction 181264
@Sumerian - Power Play 187269
Darkonne - 161865 Aeon's Nemesis
@Chocolate Rage - Rider's Ribs Restaurant Rescue 163967
Hercules - 178774 Tales of Croatoa
Emansor - The Day I Tried To Live 131780
Noght - Warrior's Three 64885

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
@KemLi - A Father's Iron Will 198952
Cerulian Shadow - Attack of the Toymenator 207874