PoliceWoman

Teen Phalanx Forever (67335) is 15-20, 20, 20-25 and 25-29; the first two missions would be at the low end of your range.

Celebrity Kidnapping (1388) is 30-38 to 30-40ish; villainous morality, though.

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Changes made:
* Changed all Teen Phalanxers to Lieutenants (formerly were Bosses) as a result of consistent feedback from multiple players that they hit too hard and do too much damage.

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I ended up reverting this change out. I did two test runs, one with the Teen Phalanx characters created as lieutenants, and one with the Teen Phalanx characters created as bosses (but nerfed to lieutenant level due to Heroic difficulty).

Ran both on the same character [EDIT: a level 8 SS/SR brute with TOs; admittedly low level, but I felt it a valid test as I want this to be doable by players who are on the low end of the power scale] and found the arc was much more playable in the latter test. Despite both sets of Teens being labeled lieutenants, the downgraded bosses were significantly tougher and had better power selections and seemed to have better AI.

I was able to get through the arc and defeat all the EBs in both tests, but it was quite straightforward with the downgraded bosses, while the lieutenant versions were extremely squishy, frequently dying to exploding Embalmed Cadavers or getting 1-shotted by EBs; in that test I frequently ended the mission at low life and having lost 1 or 2 team members.

Since one of the themes of the arc is that teamwork makes you stronger, I felt that barely winning with most of your team dead would send the wrong message. So I've decided I can accept having the allies make things a little too easy, in order to maintain this theme.

Thanks so much!! I'm so glad you enjoyed Teen Phalanx Forever!

Teen Phalanx Forever! won 1st place in Projectionist's Mission Architect Contest!! I'm so psyched!



Projectionist wrote:
"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."

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Scuse me? PW? I have told you a few times that I played through Teen Phalanx Forever before I submitted my arc for review, and have submitted feedback on it twice. Just making sure you know I did, since you still have me down for only two of my 3 arcs in your cue.

Just checking.

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Ultimately the reason is because I am good about tracking whether people have run my arcs but not good at tracking how many of them they've run ... I do see you've run all 3 of mine, so I'll update accordingly.

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My only complaint on the members of the TP is that there is no buffer. Given Cora's parentage, I think maybe it would be thematically reasonable to switch her secondary to Force Field. Two offensive sets on her seem to be really unnecessary since we have plenty of DPS kicking out when the whole team gets together. Actually, I guess she is a debuffer with the TA, but still, I wasn't feeling the debuffs at the time.

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Archery/FF could make sense for her too, but Cora just has too much attitude to really be a "buffer", and that attitude is what makes her Manticora and not Kid Psyche. Both psy blast and TA have some nice debuffs attached, though, and the AI seems to handle her pretty well (melee AI tends to be screwy, and I still can't get my */pain ally to regularly buff, but Cora pretty reliably fires off debuff arrows and psy blasts), so I actually think she is one of the more helpful allies.

Changes made:
* Changed all Teen Phalanxers to Lieutenants (formerly were Bosses) as a result of consistent feedback from multiple players that they hit too hard and do too much damage.
* Most of my testing has been on Heroic difficulty where they were nerfed to Lieutenants anyway, and they are unchanged at this difficulty level, so I'm hoping Heroic missions will remain the same while the Tenacious through Unyielding missions will be better balanced.
* I think the allies as lieutenants will work well against enemies up to EB level, but may die too easily against enemies who spawn as AVs. None of the bosses should be AVs while solo unless playing at Invincible (which I figure players do at their own risk).
* Will be testing at various difficulty levels on various toons throughout the week.
* Please let me know if you find this arc too difficult now! It's tricky to balance between not making this too hard and not making it too easy, so any input on play balance would be appreciated.


Thanks also to twelfth for the detailed review! I love the comments on the themes of kid sidekicks, hero 'shipping, and teamwork. I was definitely trying to reinforce the idea that working as a team would let you do stuff that you couldn't do alone (thus all the AVs in a solo arc).

I hadn't even thought of the 'shipping theme as a real theme until you pointed it out, but yeah, I do pair off a lot of the adult heroes as "parents" for the sidekicks. Kid Valkyrie's description actually mentions that Positron designed her armor, so she sort-of has two parents, but yes, poor Back Alley Boy doesn't have a mom. This is because Back Alley Brawler doesn't have a female hero traditionally associated with him (that I know of, anyway), and BAB and BABy are both "street" heroes, and I thought it would be more "street" for BABy to be an abandoned street kid that got adopted.

Anyway, thanks much for the run through and the kind words!

Operation Pitcher Plant review (arc id 4370)

Premise is that some group called the "League of Mayhem" is attacking Portal Corp and you have to stop them. Level range looked to be 25-54ish, heroic, warns of 2 EBs and 1 AV. I played a 25 SS/will brute on Malicious (level 2) difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: the contact quickly tells me that the League of Mayhem is a supervillain group and they're trying to steal a portable portal generator. Seems a basically good briefing.

Second part of briefing: She mentions a couple League of Mayhem characters by name, as if I should know them (I'm thinking they might be player characters). "techinical" should be "technical" here.

The mission seems full of a custom faction of mercenaries in powered armor. They didn't seem too bad, but they seemed to be in the role of generic mooks. If these guys aren't real dear to your heart, you might consider using Sky Raiders or Malta instead; they basically have exactly the same role (mercenary soldiers) and would save you some story arc space.

Ran into Morrigan Le Fae, a dark melee boss who had some villainous dialog sounding like she was expecting me.

Fought Cyberix, a force field boss who had fairly typical villain dialog. But she did generate a clue warning of a trap; not sure what that will mean yet.

Fought Superianna, a SS/will EB with a fairly nasty ambush - I may have been unlucky on the ambush, which spawned 3 healers for me. Lost to her in a close fight, then came back and beat her on the rematch, heavily using inspirations both times.

[NPC] Superianna: Hunh. I actually felt that. You got a bit more to you than I exepected.

"exepected" should be "expected"

Debriefing: the contact has some good dialog here expositioning about how this was apparently all just a trap for the player. She also mentions she hopes "Superianna, Cybernix and Morrigan Le Fae" stay locked up -- but only the first two are required objectives, it's possible to complete the mission without defeating Morrigan.

She also says she's glad I recovered the "portable portal generator" but I actually only found the plans for it, which isn't exactly the same thing. The first mission seems to occasionally mix up references to the portal generator itself and the plans for it.

Mission 2
Briefing: The contact tells me that the League of Mayhem is committing more crimes. Two more villains in this VG are mentioned as kidnapping a city councilman. These villains have not been introduced before, and the villains from the previous mission don't reappear.

In this briefing sometimes you capitalize it "councilman" and sometimes "Councilman", either is fine, but I suggest you choose one way to write it and stick with it for consistency.

The mission title is "Rescue Councilman Harris" but there are lots more objectives other than just rescuing the councilman (the various office worker hostages and Steel Locust); it seems possible to rescue the Councilman and yet the mission wouldn't complete because of the other objectives. You might consider giving the mission a more general title like "Stop League of Mayhem attack" or something.

Steel Locust's description: "Legaue" should be "League". I like his dialog and how he calls his allies "mammals", like it's a slight. I was initially worried about Steel Locust SBing all the mercenaries with him, but managed to get him without too much trouble (he spawned as a boss).

[NPC] Mercenary Trooper: Once Mega gets here, we put her down hard, got it? Superianna ain't paying us play around.

"paying us play around" should be "paying us to play around"

[NPC] Councilman Harris: Wait, you abducted me and my people just to lure one hero here?

...might not make sense if the player is on a team of heroes.

[NPC] Councilman Harris: Thanks for saving me, Mega. Gamma Emitter is around here somewhre, let's be careful...

"somewhre" should be "somewhere"

Found and fought Gamma Emitter, who was a rad emission EB for me, and spawned with a group of 5th Column; his dialog and clue finally reveal that the reason this villain group keeps trying to "trap" me is because the 5th Column hired them to do it.

I like the "Gamma Emitter speaks" clue. "I may was well" should be "I may as well". "Zigursky" should be "Ziggursky".

When I get the Councilman to the door, he says:

[NPC] Councilman Harris: Thanks again, Mega. I just wish we knew why the League is after you...

....but this doesn't quite make sense because Gamma Emitter has already told me.

Debriefing: I like how the contact tells me that the people I rescued are doing well. "Zigursky" should again be "Ziggursky" though.

Mission 3
Briefing: So now I'm sent after the 5th Column boss who hired the villains to attack me. "currecnt" should be "current". This briefing warns me I should take friends with me, but both previous missions already had AVs (downgraded to EBs for me) in them? So this one is even harder? Wow, that's a little scary. Guess we'll see how it goes.

Inside the mission: I like how the 5th Column talk smack about the Council; I'm a little puzzled by one of them saying "did we actually go back to our past?" Does this mean they are futuristic Nazis? Hmm.

[NPC] Oberst Richter: Mega! I knew it! Warn herr Olbrech, and we will buy the rest of the facility time to evcuate!

I think "herr" should be capitalized as "Herr" (like how Mr. is always capitalized). "evcuate" should be "evacuate".

[NPC] Nacht Ubermenschen Force: Jahwol, herr Richter! You speak and we obey!

"Jahwol, herr Richter!" should be "Jawohl, Herr Richter!" (Or maybe "Herr Oberst".)

Richter's dialog confirms that these are Nazis from the future. I'm now guessing their whole plot was to come back and get rid of me because "future me" causes them headaches.

I beat up Richter, then searched the whole complex and couldn't find Olbrech at all. I started clearing the whole map hoping that would do something; finally I killed one stray soldier that turned "Find Olbrech" into "Defeat Oberst Olbrech". I'm guessing this was a stray soldier from Richter's group, and clearing Richter's group triggers Olbrech to appear. I think you should change it so that the Richter objective (which I assume corresponds to Find Olbrech) is completed as soon as you defeat Richter (only), not his whole group.

Found Olbrech; he needs a description (he has generic boilerplate there). The ambush calls him "herr Olbrech" but should probably call him "Herr Olbrech" or "the Oberst".

Not quite sure why the last mission gives such a big warning about its difficulty when all three missions actually have AVs in them.

The USB Flash Drive clue that Olbrech gives is very interesting...though having him be from another dimension instead of from the future is pretty weird. Not sure what happened here now.

Mission exit popup: "may take all of this a bit personal in future" is awkward sounding. Maybe rephrase to "may take this all a bit personally".

Debriefing: "hellicopter" should be "helicopter". I like that the contact has people follow up on where the 5th Column was trying to escape to, but finding a portal device there seems to leave the plot dangling.

Souvenir: "Oberest" should be "Oberst". "Apparantly" should be "Apparently". "demaning" should be "demanding".

Overall
The plot left me confused. As best as I can tell, Olbrech is from an alternate dimension, and in this other dimension, a version of my character repeatedly beat him up. Consequently, he has traveled to this dimension in order to try and take revenge on me, by hiring supervillains to lure me into traps. I'm not sure this plot makes sense as presented; why take revenge on Earth-1 me, when it was Earth-2 me that did all these things to Olbrech? I think I could've bought that a future Olbrech might be angry at me because future me messes up his plans, but alternate dimension Olbrech doesn't have the same motive, IMHO. Straightening out exactly what Olbrecht's motivation is here could help improve your plot.

The missions themselves seemed fairly simple in concept - stop a robbery, rescue a hostage, with some EBs and AVs thrown in. The maps seemed a little large, but the missions worked fine.

I liked the League of Mayhem villains, but felt each one was a bit underused/underdeveloped. Each one appeared only in one scene in one mission, then didn't appear again; and none of them had much foreshadowing or introduction to build them up as credible threats. As a result, the various villains seemed more like cameo appearances than developed characters. Spending some more dialog/briefing space/clues developing each of the villains would make them seem much more 3-dimensional; possibly you might want to have some of them appear in both the early missions rather than just one, to make them more like recurring characters.

It's quite possible that these villains are characters in someone's villain group, in which case someone from that VG wouldn't need to have that much character development to know who they are. But people who don't know these characters won't have that same feeling. (I certainly enjoy the vanity arcs written about characters in my VG, but probably other people don't get it.)

Anyway, I rated this 3 stars - hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@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

6/5/2009

Wednesday night, I was just standing around shopping at the Black Market in Sharkhead on Mega (20 SS/will brute) when someone I'd teamed with before recognized me and invited me to a Silver Mantis SF. We had a team mix of:

arachnos soldier
SS/inv brute
SS/will brute (me)
fire/fire dom
robo/dark MM
ninj/ninj stalker
ninj/regen stalker

We used the soldier's VG base to start the SF, and had no real problems except in the last mission where we got a little spread out while fighting the Sky Raiders helicarrier. But we regrouped after we realized this, and smashed enough of the turrets on the lower levels of the helicarrier to spawn Colonel Duray just as we reached the top. We pulled him down to the water level and beat him up there, finishing the SF in 2hr 14mins for 38 merits (17.01 MPH). Mega gained quite a lot of exp on this SF, getting to level 24 and taking Rage and Hurdle as new powers.

Finished the night soloing Mega through the revised Axis and Allies, and confirmed I could solo the final AV, Maiden Justice (formerly Ms Liberty, but I changed her to a custom AV because Ms Liberty was too strong). She spawned as an EB for me while solo, and I used 2 purple, 2 orange and 4 green inspirations, and had some help from 5th Column allies.

On Thursday night I played Star Amethyst (29 warshade), sidekicking to a 4 player LEGION team doing low 40s missions in Peregrine Island; through various dimension hopping we defeated the Psychic Clockwork King for the Emancipator badge, and cleared a map of Hydra for the Multidimensional badge. This got Amethyst to level 30, where I took Twilight Shield (nrg/neg resist) for lack of a better idea.

I then joined a Manticore TF formed on LBx, with a team of:

shield/fire tank
warshade (me)
nrg/fire blaster (quit after mission 1)
dark/dark scrapper
nrg/nrg blaster
shield/SS tanker
grav/rad controller
dark/fire scrapper

Some of the team members didn't seem to understand how task forces worked, and one blaster quit after the first mission due to needing to do other stuff. We were a little light on support classes (just one rad controller, who was a more aggressive tanker than our tankers) but did fine anyway. I got to heavily use Amethyst's ability to stealth/superspeed/TP through some of the stealthable missions; with stealth and recall friend built into the warshade powersets, a warshade seems surprisingly good at this. Finished in 1hr 34mins for 32 merits (20.43 MPH) and got Star Amethyst to level 31.

Finished the night playing Mega (24 ss/will brute) through some architect missions. I solo'd through Curse of the Pharoah's Tomb, which was about archaeologists that dig up an Egyptian King's tomb, and, shockingly, get cursed and are attacked by mummies! The story was a little thin, but the theme was strong and the Egyptian costumes were really very cool. I gave it 4 stars.

A stalker friend joined me and we duoed through Amazon-Avatars, which was about a Knives of Artemis plot to make some of their number get possessed by the souls (and powers) of classical Greek goddesses. This seems exactly the sort of thing the KoA would be into, I thought. The story started a little slow but I like the mythological premise, the dialog was really good and I liked how each of the goddess-avatars had her own personality. I gave it 5 stars.

Thanks a bunch for giving Teen Phalanx Forever! a try!

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I always prefer multiple rescues et. al. to be combined so it's "4 Teen Phalanx members to meet" instead of "Meet Citadel XP, Meet Manticora, etc." And when it's down to the last one, use the singular to add their name.

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I hear you on this; my missions admittedly have long laundry lists as objectives. I did consider accumulating them all into "4 teammates to meet", but I ended up listing them individually mostly as a stylistic touch. Seeing their names up there reinforces that they are individual people with names, and recurring characters which I hope the player will remember in the next mission -- unlike the "4 hostages to rescue" in mission 1 and "2 hostages to rescue" in mission 2, who are bit characters that don't appear again after being rescued.

I also intentionally shift from "Meet Kid Valkyrie" (full name) to "Link up with Val" (nickname) in later missions, in an attempt to symbolize that the player gets to know her teammates better in later missions.

Anyway, I agree the nav tool is rather cluttered this way, but I feel that using their names and eventually nicknames here helps make the characters of the teammates more memorable. Building up the teammates as "real" seeming people was an important design goal for me.

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throughout the missions, rescuing the same teammates over and over started to get repetitive. The dialog was enjoyable, but it felt like I was just rescuing the same four people over and over. ... you could have a rotating 2-3 in each mission.

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Well, this is a valid comment; you do end up meeting the same 4 people each mission (except mission 3). I could cut down to fewer allies per mission, and you're not the first to suggest it. But I'm hesitant to do so; I was really trying to go for the idea that you're on this 5 player team (if you're a soloer anyway) who mostly works together but has some internal drama. The fact that Cora and XP never show up to help in mission 3 is meant to be something of a clue as to their fate; something that would be lost if some characters were missing in earlier missions, too.

Also, with 4 supporting characters, I really wanted them to be recognizably different characters, and not Ally_001, Ally_002, etc. Every Ally only gets 2 lines per mission, and maybe a Clue, so there is really very limited dialog each of them gets; yet I wanted to make the player feel like they each had their own personality. So I'd be loathe to remove any of the Teen appearances, for fear of losing character-building scenes.

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Having the "hostage" in an empowered animation and the "captors" in a captured-type animation. This allows for some slight variation, and feels like you're not bailing them out at every step and turn, that they can actually handle themselves once in a while.

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I actually was trying for this; in the earlier missions when you run into the Teen Phalanx, I tried to give most of them animations that made it look like they were fighting. In the last mission, I tried to give the two active characters "fighting" animations, and the two captured characters "captured" animations. This must not have come across well though; are there particular appearances that you'd suggest I change the animations for?

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One other minor thing to mention. During the monitor duty (liked the use of the timed mission here) mission, the lockers are optional and even though it's fairly safe to assume most people will click on them, I started rescuing allies before looking through the lockers so it was odd to read the dialog "Hey, who went through my stuff" before I looked through her stuff and "Hey, who ate my ham sandwich" before I ate the ham sandwich.

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That does make sense. I kinda thought that people would either click on all the lockers, then the monitor computer (in which case I imagined the embarrassed teen player hero maybe going, "Uhh, I have no idea who was in your underwear drawer! And I didn't eat your sandwich! It was like that when I got here!") .. or else ignore the lockers and just click on the monitor computer, in which case the player would assume the Freaks did something offpanel.

I could maybe drop the dialog that refers to messing with Val and BABy's stuff, but it works and is funny the great majority of the time, so I'm leaning towards keeping it.

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Random note - I loved all the BAB name calling jokes.

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Haha, glad you liked that BABy trying to be cool, but flying off the handle because people keep disrespecting him, was something I tried to make sort of a recurring theme.

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Anyway, I absolutely enjoyed it and hope you find my comments useful.

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Thanks much! Glad you had fun!

The Producers is awesome! I would absolutely put "Don't be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi party!" to the tagline of the story arc except that the obscenity filter would totally go berserk on that line.

Now that you've reminded me, I'm tempted to change the "France surrenders" clue to say, "Springtime for Hitler, and Germany! Winter for Poland and France!"

Anyway, in other news I ran a test run of the revised Axis and Allies on a solo 24 SS/will brute, slotted with SOs only, on Malicious (level 2) difficulty. I found I was able to beat the new Maiden Justice, who spawned as an EB for me, in a single try using 2 purple, 2 orange and 4 green inspirations, with some help from 5th Column allies.

So, hopefully the final boss should be much more doable for soloers. Wish I had made her a custom boss long ago; I had resisted doing so before because I thought the "standard" AVs would always be easier than a "custom" AV, and I also wanted to save the story arc space.

Amazon-Avatars (arc 5909)

Another player wanted to team up with me, so fair warning, I was under more time pressure to keep moving than I would be while solo. So this isn't quite as detailed as if I ran through solo. Hopefully having a second player run through the arc and leave a rating will make up for that.

Stated level range was 41-54, but I played a 24 ss/will brute (admittedly low for this arc) and was lackeyed to a 39 elec/ninj stalker. We played on Malicious (level 2) difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: "recieving" should be "receiving"

Alexander wants me to take a mysterious artifact back from the other Warriors, but does not explain what it is or why it's important. Would be nice to be given more info to motivate why this artifact needs to be recovered. If this artifact has been in the hands of the Warriors for awhile, it seems like he would know at least something about it.

It appears the CoT and Warriors have been manipulated to fight somehow? Not quite sure why the CoT were attacking, possibly I missed a clue on that (was in a bit of a hurry as brutes are expected to smash stuff nonstop), but I did catch that the KoA tricked them into it somehow in order to cover up a theft.

Lots of artifacts gave nicely detailed clues that eventually point towards the KoA.

Mission 2
Briefing: though our clues point towards KoA, we decide to go after the Malta? Okay, so the KoA usually serve the Malta, but this seems a little bit of a stretch.

Contact says an informant told him to send me to a particular Malta base; would be a little nicer if the player found a clue somewhere (perhaps in the first mission) that pointed to this Malta base.

Inside the mission I find that sappers are really, really bad when you're level 24. I get END drained and toggle dropped repeatedly. This is purely my fault for bringing a low level character though; if I were level 41+ as the mission is rated for, I'm sure I'd have something better I could do about END drain. We gradually work out a system of alpha striking all sappers with KO Blow/Assassin Strikes.

I like that you get a clue on the Knives of Artemis Tracking Database that clearly leads to the next mission. Though it's a little strange that there would be a KoA Tracking Database; usually these super secret paramilitary organizations are much more compartmentalized, so having a central database listing all agents and their location would be unlikely.

I like the supervisor's dialog also.

Mission 3
So we track the KoA to Croatoa and are sent to stop a ritual.

Mission objectives say to destroy Ritual Tablets, but the actual objects are called Ritual Stones. Should make those consistent, probably both Ritual Tablets. The description of the Ritual Stone has an extra period at the end of it.

[NPC] Mercenary: Protect the artifact sisters. Perhaps soon, we will drink of it's power.

should be

[NPC] Mercenary: Protect the artifact, sisters. Perhaps soon, we will drink of its power.

I like the dialog but for some reason in this mission all the dialog is repeated twice. Possibly a bug due to having 2 players? Not sure.

The optional allies we found in this mission were suppressed from being "rescued" by the KoA caltrops, until the caltrops faded. Not much you can do about that, but thought you should know.

I like the ally dialog and their motivation to bring the KoA back under Malta control. I was shocked that we had a Sapper as an ally; in the previous mission I had made a hotkey to quick target Sappers so I could kill them, so I spent most of this mission instinctively wanting to kill my Sapper ally every time he fired off his END drain attack.

Mission 4
Second part of briefing: "essesnce" should be "essence"

Found and fought Aphrodite. I think she spawned as a boss for us. Wow, she's so very pink. Shouldn't she be in a "toga" costume rather than the "bridal" costume? I guess bridal could work, too, though. While fighting her, we had a crazy number of charmed warriors ambush us. I think it must have been two or three ambushes all at once (we had high DPS so reduced Aphrodite's HP to zero very quickly). That might be a lot of ambushes for the average person to handle. Then again, Aphrodite is depicted here as mostly running things by charming others into helping her, so maybe giving her a lot of helpers makes sense.

In Aphrodite's background story, "Aprodite" should be "Aphrodite".

Aphrodite's dialog is very good! However, "Illiad" should be "Iliad".

The Entranced Warriors have a Mars symbol as their shield device; I don't think this makes sense since they don't serve Mars in any capacity. Maybe they should have a Venus symbol (though I'm not sure male characters can get that) or a Moon symbol (representing Artemis). Or a big pink heart to symbolize Aphrodite, though that would probably look too silly.

I like Hestia's dialog and motivations.

[NPC] Mercenary: These gang members make an army, when charmed and inspired by Aprhodite, then trained by Athena.

"Aprhodite" should be "Aphrodite" here.

Fought Athena, who was axe/shield. Athena traditionally wields a spear, but no way to really represent that. She has the Jupiter symbol on her shield, but Athena's shield (the Aegis) is traditionally depicted as having Medusa's head on it; there's not such a device in our costume creator, but maybe a snake motif would work.

You might consider giving all the goddess avatars a glowing nimbus or halo? To signify their (semi-)divine status?

Mission 5
Entry popup, "Artermis" should be "Artemis".

Artemis has a terrific costume! Her background story, "reverance" should be "reverence".

She also has mad ambushes when fighting her (she spawned as an EB for us). I like how you re-used a bunch of existing mobs as potential servants of Artemis. Her attack set being archery totally made sense too. I thought the map was a bit large for having just one objective on it (Defeat Artemis), but with all the patrols and ambushes, it kinda works too.

Overall
I like the mythological premise, and I think this is exactly the sort of plot the Knives of Artemis would love to enact. The dialog is very good and I particularly like how each of the goddess-avatars has their own personality and opinion of the situation. I thought the hook for why you're doing the first two missions was a little weak and could be improved, but the last three missions were all quite good.

I gave this story 5 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@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

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

Curse of the Pharoah's Tomb (arc id 118970)

Premise is something about death and artifacts and a curse. Level range is 1-54 neutral, seems to be all custom enemies. Played on a 24 SS/will brute on Malicious (level 2) difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: The contact tells me that a team of archaeologists have been digging in some tunnels and have unleashed some sort of curse. She mentions they were digging under a Mastaba, which I had to look up, and is now a new word I've learned but it must be very obscure, so you might explain what it means. She names a couple of her colleagues and asks me to save them. Seems pretty reasonable.

Second part of briefing: The contact goes on about how bad the curse is, but is very vague on the particulars. Some explanation of the curse and how they unleashed it would be helpful.

Mission entry popup: great description, does a good job of setting the tone for the mission.

Wow, love the costumes on the mummies. "Mummified Concubine" description: "one of the palaces concubines. Poorly preserved" should be "one of the palace's concubines, poorly preserved". "mumification" should be "mummification".

Is there any reason the concubine's eyes glow but none of the other mummies have glowing eyes? Maybe they all should.

I found a body bag and clicked on it; it decremented by "2 researchers to find" to "find the last researcher"; should capitalize "Find". Also, the first body bag gave me a clue saying "You've found the bodies of two researchers" ... but really I've only found one so far. May need to change that to be more consistent (maybe make one clue for each body). Also, the "Researchers" clue needs a period at the end of the sentence.

I found a second body bag and upon searching it, I found a second clue, also called "Researchers", saying that I wasn't able to find anyone alive. The two clues are pretty similar, you should consider merging them into one clue.

Debriefing: Seems awfully short; maybe add a little more text here where the contact recaps what has happened, tells more info about the situation, mourns the dead, or something. 7 words for a debriefing just seems awfully short.

Mission 2
Briefing: Seems a very similar set up, two more archaeologists working in the tomb that I need to find. I know here you have them in the antechamber whereas before they were under the Mastaba, but it still seems awfully similar. Also, "colleages" should be "colleagues".

Another very nice entry popup.

Found a large number of glowy "small clay pots" that didn't seem required, but had interesting messages. You might consider having them generate a few clues, also; the way they are currently, only the person who clicks them will see the message, and it won't be a real conspicuous message.

Uh oh, found another body bag. No clue attached to it though. Second body bag (for Edgar) did have a Papyrus Scroll on it. I believe "heiroglyphics" should be "hieroglyphics".

Mission exit popup: "Papyrus" shouldn't be capitalized. "yeild" should be "yield".

Mission debriefing: better, but still kind of on the short side. Needs a little more text.

Mission 3
Briefing: "I can't make all of it out, I wasn't the language scholar in our team Edgar was" should probably be "I can't make all of it out; Edgar was the linguist on our team." "heiroglyphs" should be "hieroglyphs" (in two places). "Edgars books" should be "Edgar's books".

Why is the contact frightened of going to Edgar's library? His library shouldn't be inside the tomb ... or IS it?

Inside the mission: I like the map selection (looks like the university map). The mission title "Get book on heiroglyphics" is awfully similar to the objective, "Get the heiroglyphics book"; and in both cases "heiroglyphics" should be "hieroglyphics". Consider making the mission title something different, like "Research hieroglyphics" or "Search the library" or "Conduct research" or something like that, just to make it less repetitive looking.

Found the glowy and clicking it completed the mission; seemed a little simple, but maybe that's ok for a middle mission on a long arc.
Debriefing: Shouldn't the contact be able to translate the papyrus scroll now that I gave her the book? She should say more about it.

Mission 4
Briefing: Still no translation of the scroll, but now the contact says the scroll is incomplete and I need to "find the rest of it". I guess this IS kind of hinted at in the Papyrus Scroll clue, where it says it's "a scrap of a papyrus scroll"; but wouldn't Linda have noticed this earlier, without even needing to translate it? Since it is physically just a scrap?

I like the "It's got to be in here!" objective.

Clicking a glowy instantly completed the mission. Seemed a little too easy; and I can't help but notice that the first 4 missions have all been purely glowy hunts. May want to mix it up a little; maybe make mission 3's objective to rescue a scholar or professor (a hostage) who can translate the scroll, instead of finding a book.

Also, finding the second piece of the scroll should probably award a clue, just like the first piece of the scroll did.

Debriefing: again, too short. With the two pieces of the scroll and the hieroglyph book, shouldn't the contact be able to translate the scroll now? Should end in a period, also.

Mission 5
Briefing: The contact now says this is the tomb of Setihotep II; presumably this is from translating the scroll, though she doesn't say so (maybe she should explain). It seems very odd to me that an archaeologist would not have already known the name of the pharoah whose tomb she was excavating; perhaps you should have her name the Pharoah earlier on (maybe even in the first or second briefing), and have the blood pact be the thing that is learned from the scroll. Or if you prefer to keep it this way, emphasize in early missions that the tomb is that of an unknown Egyptian ruler.

"ressurected" should be "resurrected".

Suddenly Linda says her daughter at home is in danger. How does she know? Should explain.

Second part of briefing: OK, here she explains that her mother called her on the cell phone. I think this info needs to be moved to the first part of the briefing; and the explanation of the curse maybe could be moved to the debriefing for mission 4.

I like Sarah Carter's dialog as you rescue her. She is in the "Cursed Egyptians" faction, which I'm pretty sure isn't right, though. Also, the Cursed Egyptians talk in this mission! They didn't talk at all in the first four missions, so I thought maybe they couldn't. If they can actually talk, you may want to give them some dialog in previous missions (maybe create some mission details, patrols or something, purely for sake of dialog) as well.

I found a bunch of Cursed Egyptians guarding an Artifact of Darkness that were all doing the animation where you flip a bat or nightstick around repeatedly; this animation doesn't look right for the mummies.

The ambush saying "Protect the Pharoah" should have an exclamation point at the end of their dialog. The Pharoah was in an "Egyptian Horde" faction, while the Queen is in "Egyptian Royalty"; I kinda think they should both be "Egyptian Royalty".

The Queen mob is named "Queen Nerferaten" but the briefing calls her "Neferaten"; I suggest you standardize on "Neferaten". Though I think -aten may be something Egyptians stick at the end of male names, though I couldn't swear to it.

I very much like the King and Queen models; excellent costuming. The worshipful animation that the Queen's entourage uses is really good.

When you are down to the last artifact, "destroy the last artifact" should have Destroy capitalized.

I searched the final mission for over half an hour and never did find the seventh artifact. I'm not sure why because the others seemed pretty visible, with mummies guarding them doing an animation. I ended up having to quit without completing the arc, which is a shame. I am guessing maybe it failed to spawn the 7th artifact or somehow spawned it inside a cliff or other object.

Overall
I love the Pharoah's curse concept, and the custom undead Egyptians look terrific. The story is a little thin, especially because the first four missions are spent just hunting glowies to learn more about what's going on, and this is a little repetitive as you have two missions where you look for bodies, then two missions were you work on getting stuff to translate the scroll. The story could benefit from having a little more plot, mixing up the objective types for the earlier missions, and adding some more verbiage to the debriefings. But I felt the theme was very strong and as a result I gave it 4 stars.


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I owe a review to:

@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
Mecha GM - Operation Pitcher Plant 4370
@Mr Squid - 2 of 123675, 136959, 141011 The Lost Choir (Ch1-3)
@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

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

Celebrity Kidnapping plays well in the 30-38 range.

I know another reviewer is relying heavily on TVTropes terminology to describe story arcs, and I thought it would be a fun exercise to apply this method to my own story arc. And so:



Synopsis of Axis and Allies (arc id #1379)
with helpful links to TVTropes!

[SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS]

The story begins when our Villain Protagonist meets up with an archetypical Evil Blonde in Black Leather. The Baroness wants to send you back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Specifically, she wants you to assassinate Adolf Hitler, who has Outlived His Usefulness due to the fact that historically, he was a General Failure.

So you time travel to Nazi Germany in order to kill Hitler. Now, normally this would run afoul of Hitler's Time Travel Exemption, but since the goal of this endeavour is to create an Alternate History where the Axis wins World War II, Godwin's Law of Time Travel (i.e., "The more time travel the characters do, the chance of creating a universe in which the Nazis won World War II approaches one") ends up taking precedence.

And because Asskicking Equals Authority, once you defeat the Evil Overlord you discover that You Kill It You Bought It, and you become the Unexpected Successor to the Evil Overlord of the Third Reich. Your status as a Super Villain makes you Stupid Jetpack Hitler, the Superpowered Führer! You Are In Command Now!

In order to Set Right What Once Went Wrong for more General Failures, you head to Dunkirk on the Western Front, where as a One Man Army you take out The Brigadier, defeat the British Army and force The French to surrender.

In the next mission, you move to the Eastern Front as you are forced to rescue yet another General Failure from the Dirty Communists surrounding him at Stalingrad.

In the final mission, Invasion America begins as Nazis with Gnarly Weapons conduct a bombardment of Atlas Park to soften it up. You arrive on the scene and link up with your Stormtroopers, as well as your contact, the Dark Chick, who you end up having to rescue, proving that she's really just a Faux Action Girl.

Once you get your Red Shirt Army together, you fight through the US Army and ultimately confront the Hot Amazon who is the Last of Her Kind. It's democracy's Darkest Hour, but she declares You Shall Not Pass and makes a heroic Last Stand. Unfortunately for the Lady of War, the Villain is the Protagonist, and so The Bad Guy Wins.

You end up capturing the President and forcing him to Kneel Before Zod, and the arc finishes as you successfully Take Over the World.

What People Are Saying about Teen Phalanx Forever!

Mentioned in first message of Tahlana's AE Story Arc Recommendations: "A fun adventure comic book style!"

Lazarus's review: "a fun romp for a lowbie character...The dialog is pretty good as well and full of fun jokes and references."

Venture's review: "a cute arc that handles its motif well...a good comedy, recommended"


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[Tell] 2009-05-04 02: 00:51 Message From @S'tera : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: You're a computer geek, aren't you?


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Guilty as charged.

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[Tell] 2009-05-04 15: 05:26 Message From @Dragon King : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: could not finish the last mission due to being a defender and to low level but plan on revisiting this wonderful arc once a little bit higher in level.


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[Tell] @Amberlynn: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Send a comment to the author (optional Loved it was alot of fun, nice work!


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[Tell] @drfantasy: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Real cool. Love the whole idea. Honestly one of my favorites 5 stars. Love to see this as a dev's choice. Altho I would edit the back door boy comment lol. If u get a chance try one of mine its short arc#2517.


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[Tell] @Kalkin: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: totally awesome!!!! - great dialog and you have to love Citadel Vista


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[Tell] @Kurrent: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: That was a terrific arc! Well-written, funny, challenging and very smooth to play. 5 Stars!
[LBx]Kurrent: ok, PW's teen phalanx arc is awesome


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[Tell] @Spineshank: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: That was actually a pretty awesome Arc. Well done!


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[Tell] @muddlewait: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Best AE arc ever.
[Tell] @muddlewait: Certainly the best solo arc ever.


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[Tell] @Veras Q: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: The first two missions were a pain because it forced me to play at 19 even when the missions were for 20. The third mission was very fun and creative. However, all that for a Microsoft joke? Really?


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I'm guessing this is difficulty setting. The first two missions are level 20, but if you are on Rugged/Unyielding, I think it will exemp you down to 19.

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[Tell] 2009-05-07 02: 53:23 Message From @madrain : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Maybe a few less heroes in mission 1, hard to even gain xp solo. Meet less in that and meet rest in mission 2 maybe? Didn't get to finish, was tired of doing missions for no xp and having mary sues rob me of influence. Interesting though!
[Tell] 2009-05-08 03: 33:50 Message From @Fireflyte : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: I enjoyed the story, and the arc was fun... My only issue was the amount of kill stealing the pets did was getting quite frustrating...


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The teen allies being too powerful and/or kill stealing for exp is the most common complaint I get currently. Having the teen allies is pretty central to the concept of the story, though, so I don't have a good answer for this. I dialed down Back Alley Boy's powerset a bit to be less damaging. I'm hesitant to nerf them too much, though, for fear of making the arc too hard for some players to solo.

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[Tell] 2009-05-09 00: 43:29 Message From @PhiladelphiaPA : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: love this arc good stuff


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[Tell] @AegisWolf: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Nice story (but I don't think Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer will appreciate it ), however I don't understand the meaning of the time limit in 3rd mission. If you want you can do one (or all) of my arcs (ID 13639, 69759 & 125110).


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The 2 hour time limit is actually meaningless, it's purely meant to scare the player into thinking she will actually have to sit in front of the stupid computer monitor for 2 hours.

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[MA Arc Finder]Metal Justice: how did these teen phalanx get beer
[MA Arc Finder]Justice Blues: Manticore bought it for them?
[MA Arc Finder]Metal Justice: heh he seems the type that would
[MA Arc Finder]AegisWolf: maybe Cora has a fake ID card and always say "what's wrong if I'm short?"
[MA Arc Finder]Metal Justice: lol


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[Tell] @Metal Justice: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Best arc I have played since I returned to the game. Should be Developer's Choice if it's not already


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[Tell] @Aracade: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: I promised myself I would never do this over the comments thing. Not to mention you are already going to review something I'm nervie about... Maybe I shouldn't write comments without a word processer @_@... anyway I very much enjoyed this arc. It' sa nice story you put together... It also makes me want to stop going into these things with lethal using characters... That rules out 75percent of my characters though >_< Anyway... Ya write good stuff. All I can say is hope you make the hall of fame.
[Tell] @Aracade: It's like I said, ya do good work... I just need to make a character that doesn't do lethal or smashign damage because fighting robots is a pain when that's all you can do @_@


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I just used the canonical low level enemies, but yeah, Clockwork, Freaks and Rogue Robots all have lethal resistance by default. I sympathize; my main character and many of my alts are lethal-users. Vahz might actually be vulnerable to lethal, though; I forget. Recently I've added a number of custom Vahz, Clocks and Rogue Robots; none of them have any special resistance. Hope that may help a little with lethal resistance issues.

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[Tell] @OnyxNine: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Nicely done, had a lot of funs.


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[Tell] 2009-05-11 11: 23:21 Message From @SinnerSaint : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: A fun idea and arc to play, 5 stars. Please check mine out, keep in mind they are very challenging. Man's Insanity: the begining #93644 and Savethe CoH Podcast # 103442


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[Tell] 2009-05-11 17: 34:42 Message From @Johnny Courageous : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Extremely creative, especially the "monitor duty" mission. Great dialog, great fun, a real winner!


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[Tell] 2009-05-16 13: 24:18 Message From @Aracade : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Would you hold it against me if I told you Kid Valkyrie is kind of cute. Darn future Kid Aracade better make some attempt or I will be so disappointed in him.


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[Tell] @BattleStar: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Good story, good dialogue. Nice characters, Monitor Duty is a good unique mission, well thought out. Good job.


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[Tell] 2009-05-17 23: 50:18 Message From @Zubenelgenubi : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: I'm in the first mission of your arc. I like what I see so far. Manticora is hilarious.
[Tell] 2009-05-18 00: 02:54 Message From @Zubenelgenubi : very nice character design on the Teen Phalanx
[Tell] 2009-05-18 00: 05:11 Message From @Zubenelgenubi : VERY nice detail, having the clockwork say "I hate Zubenelgenubi" like that. Nice reference to the real dev-created story arc.
[Tell] @Zubenelgenubi: LOL "meddling kids!"
[Tell] 2009-05-18 00: 23:07 Message From @Zubenelgenubi : what a great 3rd mission! Snooping into lockers! Sooo appropriate!
[Tell] 2009-05-18 00: 40:56 Message From @Zubenelgenubi : dude... just, dude... truly awesome story. Great idea, expertly executed, with good use of humor and creative use of glowies, spawns, etc. 5 stars for joo! And if this doesn't make Dev's Choice, then there is no hope for ANY of us.


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[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: OK, this is *NOT* my arc, but you all MUST GO PLAY IT! Teen Phalanx Forever! 67335. It's so full of awesomesauce...
[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: I just finished it. seriously, it's awesome
[MA Arc Finder]PhiladelphiaPA: yeah it's really cool arc
[MA Arc Finder]TheCheeseman: Could a level 12 stalker solo it?
[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: hmmm... not sure... there's some serious ambushes in mission 3...
[MA Arc Finder]PhiladelphiaPA: lots of EBs
[MA Arc Finder]PhiladelphiaPA: but help too
[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: but you get to paw through Manticora's dirty undies...
[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: (daughter of manticore and sister Psyche)
[MA Arc Finder]Zubenelgenubi: alas, the souvenir is a communicator. You don't get to keep the undies.
[MA Arc Finder]PhiladelphiaPA: thats sick dude


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[Tell] @Tahlana: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Fun arc, funny ending Good story and great mission design (loved the one "monitoring" the base!)


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[Tell] @Lazorman: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Never really been a fan of the teen-hero genre, but wow you nailed it... cheese and all! This was a great 'team' set of missions as well, and nice speculations as to what the 'next generation' might be. Mission 3 was especially inspired, never seen a mission like that. And I joked when we started, "Citadel XP? So is the villian gonna be Citadel Vista." Lol! Nice!


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[Tell] 2009-05-23 14: 43:22 Message From @Cassiopea : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: u cant fit the hum...states boy thing in there...if u folow his story he didint get his powers before the age of 60. hes actyualy 100 years old. so is ritchard.(recluse his old bud) bu tother that that this was fun.


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[Tell] 2009-05-24 10: 39:49 Message From @Mithas : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Great task for low levels


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[Tell] 2009-05-25 08: 16:37 Message From @Sumerian : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Well done! This arc is inventive and fun. Nicely done missions, attention to detail, and a solid story. Teen version customs were great except there was a lack of support sets. Try my new arc #187269.


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[Tell] 2009-05-26 19: 01:17 Message From @Venture : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: 5 stars, posting a review shortly.


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[Tell] 2009-05-27 01: 39:22 Message From @Mr Squid : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: I played through this arc once before, but that was before I posted my arc the lost choir in your review thread. I still think this is a fantastic arc. I am amazed at how...well...human all the dialogue is. In only four missions you managed to not only create unique characters, but give them a bit of growth as well. These all feel like people I would actually meet in real life. I did find the villain a bit weak, but the character interactions made up for it.


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[Tell] @Death Evan: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Aha, this arc was fun. Great work.


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[Tell] @Evilstan: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Like the concept, but XP suffers with all those assistants!


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[Tell] @Rowdy Watchdog: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: great story line


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[Tell] @Black. Arrow: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Thanks for concentrating on a great story! What fun! (If you'd care to play my own story-based arc, it's ID# 196108)
[Tell] -->@Black. Arrow: thank you! I'm glad you liked it!
[Tell] @Black. Arrow: Loved it, actually. Great concept and wonderful execution. I loved what you did with the clues.
[Tell] @Black. Arrow: I'm going to recommend it to others.


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[Tell] @Dalek 1313: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: nicly done....Bride of Vasilok


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[Tell] @Wyst: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: the monitor base bit was just awsome thou almost killed me


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[Tell] @Most Definitely Skary: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Maybe the description should say "To your sidekick"? Also, Manticoar in mish 1 uses Winterborn Jr. for some reason.. The poster is awesome. Hell. Whole arc is awesome. Have 25 tickets and a warm spot on my SG's list.

[Tell] @Most Definitely Skary: Also, love the poster in #2. That's -exactly- what the King would do.
[Tell] -->@Most Definitely Skary: Haha, thanks! I had a good time making that poster, I thought it was perfect for Clockwork King
[Tell] @Most Definitely Skary: I had to pause on account of laughing too hard
[Tell] @Most Definitely Skary: 'She's going to look like the love of my life! ...in a bikini! ...with bigger boobs!' ))


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[Tell] @mr law: Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: great fun


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[Tell] 2009-05-29 04: 28:11 Message From @LaserJesus : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: Fun story, but the allies are too powerful, even for fighting AVs. I hit clockwork king maybe twice before the allies took him out.


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[Tell] 2009-06-03 10: 41:13 Message From @'Rope : Feedback on Architect Mission Teen Phalanx Forever!: A work of twisted comedic genius. Bravo.


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Ready for some more arcs! This week-ish type thing:

humorous arcs. Give me some good, funny arcs. Bizarre, satire, parody, what have you.

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I believe you've already run through Celebrity Kidnapping, which has some parody elements in it. Don't let me stop you from doing it again though.

Teen Phalanx Forever! has a lot of jokes and pop culture in it, which has gotten people to label it a comedy (though my original concept was "teen melodrama"). It would be a good match for your 12 blaster, but also works quite well for a 50 who exemps down.

Ever since Mission Architect was first announced, my main villain has wanted to steal the giant doughnut in Faultline.

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You seem generally intelligent from what I've read

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Thanks! I think.

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but in this case you seem unable to grasp the moral implications of your story. It's not surprising that a Triumph of the Will style video review sounds appealing to you.

It's not possible to sanitize Nazis enough to have them win even in a silly fantasy game. Or has enough time passed in 3 generations that people have forgotten the horror they perpetrated?

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Hey, I definitely agree that Nazis are evil. They did some horrible things and we shouldn't ever forget that.

However, because Nazis have become an iconic sort of evil, they are instantly recognizable as villains in any story, and are almost a stock character. They're even quite accepted as stock villains in CoH itself; I certainly didn't create the 5th Column, or Axis America. (Incidentally, the existence of Axis America basically implies that the Nazis won WW2 in their timeline...which is what we are discussing as whether it is valid subject matter.)

I agree that we should not revel in the particularly cruel things that the Nazis did. But in this story arc, the player never is depicted committing an actual war crime, never forced to participate in an actual atrocity. There are no death camps on screen, no instances where you are forced to endure hateful ideology. Everything the player does in the arc is strictly within the "laws of war" -- except for actually assassinating Hitler himself, which most would consider a praiseworthy act.

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Try this analogy. Would you be ok with a story that sends you back in time to help the Confederacy win and perpetuate slavery? I would hope not.

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I absolutely would have no problem with helping the Confederacy win the war via military means (not sure where you live, but you may not realize how much the CSA is romanticized in the US, especially in the south). However, I would not care to do a story arc where I have to go around acting like a plantation owner and brutalizing slaves and stuff. Helping General Lee win the Battle of Gettysburg is not morally equivalent to that, though.

Let me offer you another analogy: the story arc I've written is loosely inspired by the board game, "Axis & Allies". This is a Risk-like game where you push around little plastic soldiers and roll dice to simulate World War 2. Is it ever acceptable for the player of Germany to win this game?

Another example: "Panzer General" was an extremely popular computer game for quite awhile, where you get to move around simulated Panzer divisions to invade France, Russia and Britain. Is it ever acceptable for the player of this game to win the war?

Yet another analogy: suppose someone wrote a "Cowboys and Indians" story arc, where you help the heroic cowboys beat up the villainous Indians. Now, in the real history, the US Army did some pretty bad things to the American Indians; things that would definitely be war crimes, even genocide, by current standards. Is "Cowboys and Indians" also an unacceptable subject matter?

I think it's great that you care a lot about this subject. I hope some of these arguments might make some sense to you, though.

6/3/2009

Spent most of Monday night playing TokyoRose (13 sonic/sonic corruptor), duoing with a friend playing an Arachnos soldier. We did a King's Row mayhem, then my Origin of Power story arc (3 merits), then his Aeon Conspiracy story arc; picked up a third player for the tail end of that arc, where we rescued Amanda Vines, but then smashed all her TV broadcasting equipment. This got TokyoRose to level 15; I took Fly at level 14. I was also a little lucky on drops, getting two Blessing of the Zephyr drops (one TRAVEL, one TRAVEL/END).

Finished Monday night soloing Sabine (8 SS/SR brute) through Hearts on Fire, a lowbie arc that starts out with a goofy Skulls/Hellions romance, but then bad stuff occurs and it becomes ultimately tragic. I really rather liked this story, and I gave it 5 stars.

After that I solo'd through Dungeoncrawl Inc., a single mission story arc that was exactly as advertised, a D&D style dungeon crawl where you fight monsters, rescue damsels, and get loot. This wasn't terribly deep, but was fun, and I gave it 4 stars.

Tuesday night, I played Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender) on a 5-player LEGION team that did the Pandas vs Rikti story arc. I was the only support character and I find it's pretty hard to keep people alive with just kinetics; I offered to switch to an empath, but people wanted SB and FS more, so this team was all about killing fast and dying fast. We had two wipeouts in the final mission due to overaggroing Rikti in this huge, densely packed room in the Rikti base, but managed to overcome that after we started pulling, and so we managed to finish the arc.

Over the last two days I've also been heavily tweaking my Axis and Allies story arc, for story and balance. I felt like the middle two missions (Dunkirk and Stalingrad) were a little too boring and I got a fair amount of feedback about how annoying it is to find 2 generals on an outdoor map; but I also get a lot of positive feedback on how well the maps match the geography the mission is supposedly set in (war torn France and Russia), so I didn't want to change this. Instead I added some destructible objects to each mission, in an attempt to spice them up; putting piles of explosives labeled "Munitions" in Dunkirk, and some trucks labeled "Troop Transport" in Stalingrad. It's kinda fun blowing up the dynamite and smashing the trucks into smithereens, so I liked how that came out.

I also kept having people say they can't solo the final AV in the "Invasion America" mission. I used to have both Statesman and Maiden Justice (aka Ms Liberty) in the final mission, then I decided Statesman was too hard, so I removed him. Ms Liberty still seems to be too hard for people to handle, though; the key power that makes her too hard is Unstoppable, which basically puts her in godmode for minutes at a time. I did some testing and found that I'm able to solo Ms Liberty (in EB form) with either my main hero (50 AR/dev blaster) or my main villain (50 thug/TA MM), winning about 2 out of 3 fights with some effort; but, they're both heavily IO'd level 50s that I'm very familiar with playing, and I probably couldn't solo Ms Liberty on most of my other toons, so that might not have been a fair test.

There's already 4 Boss allies in the final mission to help out. I didn't want to make the allies EBs or AVs since they would steal the player's thunder, so I tried adding some reverse ambushes to the AV fight: at 50% and at 25% life, an ambush of 5th Column would spawn and run to the player and help against the AV. This seemed to help some, as it would increase DPS against Ms Liberty in the final stages where she starts using Unstoppable; but the friendly ambushes had pretty bad pathing problems and only one guy out of the ambush ever seemed to actually make it to the fight.

Ultimately I decided I just couldn't use the standard Ms. Liberty model any more, and ended up making my own custom AV to represent Maiden Justice, and giving her martial arts/invulnerability, but setting her power levels so that she wouldn't have Focus Chi or Unstoppable, so would be more manageable.

I tested by running through Axis and Allies with Kashira (21 dual blades/ninj stalker) and was able to beat the new Maiden Justice after 2 tries, using 3 of the allies and 6 purple inspirations. Since Kashira was only slotted with DOs, I figure if she can solo Maiden Justice, it's gotta be doable for an average soloer.

I also had someone call me out on the Mission Architect Stories forum for Axis and Allies being "the most villainous arc [he'd] yet played" and "Morally, its the darkest arc [he'd] seen". Initially, I thought, wow, that's awesome! I was hoping to make my arc really villainous! But after a few posts it became clear that he was really upset that the Nazis end up winning the war and crushing all the heroes. This seemed a strange complaint to me, because the whole premise of the arc is that you're a villain who goes back in time to win WW2 for the bad guys; but he was quite upset and wanted me to insert a "ray of hope" showing that the heroes might end up winning in the end.

Personally, I believe that story arcs should let the player win (assuming all missions are successfully completed); I hate when I do everything right in a heroic story arc, but the bad guy gets away because he's scripted to escape, no matter what you do. So likewise in a villainous story arc, I figure the bad guy (being the protagonist) should win; crushing democracy and conquering the World and all that. I definitely didn't want the story arc to end with "And then you conquered the world. But heroes eventually overthrow you / Mender Silos sends people back to fix the timeline and undo all you've done / whatever"; that would feel like cheating the player.

But this guy seemed upset enough by this that I unbent on this long enough to add one line of dialog hinting that one of the heroes was unaccounted for and may have escaped; this would be a fig leaf allowing players who don't really want to conquer the world to think that the good guys still have a chance, while not being so obvious that it spoils the victory of the player who really did want to conquer the world.

Anyway, I finished the night soloing through The Bravuran Jobs on Kashira, getting her to level 22 and SOs. This was a story where you're basically a freelance mercenary acting on tips provided to you by this foreign government; you're not technically working for them, but the implication is that you're doing them favors. I'd tried this a couple times before but always gotten stymied by (what I believe to be) MA bugs that kept me from getting all the way through. The writing was good, the missions were okay; the custom mobs seemed too powerful to me (they all could buff each other, and handed my little stalker her head a couple times); I finally got to reach the final mission, but the briefing hinted that it was a trap and gave me the choice of doing it or not. It didn't seem to make sense to walk into a trap, so I sat out the timer, but didn't get much reward for doing that either. I ended up letting my previous rating of 3 stars stand.

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PW - Is there one particular arc of your that you'd like some responses or plays on more than others? Your first two look like they were probably on Test, so I'm guessing you've pretty much got them where you want them; but "Teen Phalanx Forever!" is getting a fair amount of buzz so I expect that it might be the same.

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Well, I would say play whichever sounds most appealing to you; I've purposely tried to make my story arcs all fairly different in theme and genre, because I wanted to try a variety of things.

Although I am pretty happy with how my story arcs are shaping up, a lot of the improvements I've made have been due to the very good feedback I've received both on this forum and in game. More feedback is always good! I find myself constantly fiddling with little changes to each story arc, trying to make it a little more cool with each iteration -- a sort of "polishing".

In direct answer to your question, though, I'm pretty happy with where Celebrity Kidnapping is right now, and haven't changed it in awhile.

Teen Phalanx Forever! got a fairly extensive remodeling about a week or two ago; this has been pretty well received, but it's still sorta new-ish, and so I definitely think it could use more testing, and I would be glad of additional feedback.

Axis and Allies has had a moderate amount of tweaking over the last few days. Despite this originally coming from test server (as you noticed), I actually feel like this is my weakest story currently, mostly [u]because[u] it was the first story I wrote, and so has all my MA newbie mistakes in it. So it's probably the story that can most use constructive suggestions. But it's fairly villainous, so I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea.


Hope that helps!

I've noticed this too. Currently I work around it by reassigning the custom character to belong to another, dummy custom group that I don't use in any story arc. This ends up removing them from their original custom group, while not actually deleting the character.

That's an awesome looking promo poster good stuff!

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Wait, do friendly ambushes work now? For the longest time only one critter from the ambush would actually move from its spawn location.

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Huh! That would explain a lot. In my testing, the friendly ambushes would act just like you describe. I had assumed they just had poor pathfinding on the ruined Atlas Park map due to the broken terrain.

I ended up removing them and putting in an easier AV instead.

Test results:

I ran through Axis and Allies on a 21 dual blades/ninjitsu stalker, on Heroic. I was able to defeat the new version of Maiden Justice (who spawned as an EB) after two tries. I did not use any temp powers, but I did eat 6 purple inspirations (two at a time) and had the assistance of Schadenfreude and 2 Stormtroopers. Without Unyielding, the new Maiden Justice was very vulnerable to knockback from the 5th Column allies, which helped mitigate damage by a lot. She did get to use her Dull Pain, which helped prolong things long enough to wear me out of all my purple inspirations, though.

My 21 stalker is slotted with DOs and normally runs at 20.77% defense to all positions when unhidden.

With those results, I think Maiden Justice should definitely be easy enough for most soloers to handle.