PoliceWoman

Coming Unglued (arc id 6015)

Premise is to fix some kind of dimensional anomaly. Stated level range is 41-54 blue side, solo friendly. I played an AR/dev blaster.

Contact is a lady scientist that I'm not familiar with.

Mission 1
Briefing: You may want to emphasize the caption by putting it in a larger font or bolding it or something.

The briefing seems awfully short and does not really explain much; she mentions a "time slip" and a "misalignment" without explaining what those are, then goes on to say that I need to disable some pylons. I'd suggest that you have the contact: (1) introduce herself and what she does, and (2) explain the relevance of the pylons to the problem. Possibly tell me where the pylons are and what might be guarding them.

Second part of briefing: she says the pylons are hidden inside crates, which is a little weird; wouldn't it be simpler to ask the player to gather the crates? Unless it is plot-important that they are pylons, in which case you might use a different graphic than crates, something more scientific or mystical looking than a crate.

Neat description in the mission entry popup.

Inside the mission, I find some Crey guarding these crates, and roaming Shadow Shard Reflection patrols. I'm not quite sure why.

Oddly, the Dimensional Pylon has dialog as I destroy it; it seems to be descriptive ("A shudder passes through you... Something doesn't feel right") but it's formatted as if the Dimensional Pylon is talking, which looks weird. I see that I have "Destroyed Pylon" as a clue (not sure when I got that) which I think works better for explaining these strange feelings than the crate having dialog does.

Destroying the crate spawned a Lanaruu ambush. Related to the dimensional problems, I guess; still quite weird though.

Second, third and fourth crates also talked, narrating stuff I "feel". Didn't spawn any more ambushes though. Destroying the fourth crate finished the mission, but I'm still left quite confused as to what just happened.

Mission exit popup is equally confusing. "But now the dimensions are...'unlocked'... time is of the essence." What makes me think these dimensions are unlocked? Perhaps there should be an additional clue explaining that the dimensions have become unlocked at the end of the first mission. Also it should explain what it means to be "unlocked".

Debriefing: the contact barely says anything here, just "Let me get to work". I think she should explain some of what is happening. Right now I don't feel like I know anything about the story so far.

Mission 2
Briefing: At this point the contact says that the dimensions are "unfastened". I suppose we are meant to assume this is bad, but it would be very helpful if the contact explained what this meant, and what the consequences would be, so that the player can better understand why it's bad.

Suddenly she says "We need those coordinates" but has not mentioned coordinates until this moment, so this doesn't make sense. She then says "Retrieve the dimensional parameters!" ... but where am I supposed to get them? Am I to check some sort of instruments, or is there someone I ask for them, or will they be written on the war walls in fiery text? Needs more explanation of what is being asked.

Mission entry popup: "you wouldn't think the culprit would keep such an important piece of information in such a nondescript building" .... There's a culprit now? The info presented so far just makes it sound like something is going haywire; we never got a clue suggesting someone was actually behind it all. Needs some explanation.

Also I'd agree that a random building is a strange place to look for this info. What made us go to this building, out of thousands? There must be some reason?

Lots of Crey in this building, not quite sure why. You usually see Crey in tech labs.
Suddenly, a patrol of Rularuu showed up, saw through my stealth and attacked me. This was somewhat surreal. Still not sure what is going on.

Found a glowy computer that I clicked which suddenly completed the mission. Gave me the "Dimensional Parameters" clue, but the actual text of the clue doesn't say much, just that it's the data you need to realign the coordinates, whatever that means.

I'm really not sure what this data was doing here in this office. The only NPCs who had any dialog were the Rularuu patrol, and I'm not even sure they are supposed to be able to talk.

Debriefing: Far too short. Contact should explain a little about what's going on.

Mission 3
Briefing: Now the contact says the "enemy" (what enemy?) is moving to realign the pylons in the wrong place-time. She wants me to realign them first. This mission is confusing to me; not sure if it has been fully thought out. Didn't I destroy the pylons in mission 1? And if the bad guys realigning the pylons is bad, why is it good if I realign the pylons? And if I realign the pylons in a certain way, what's to stop the bad guys from realigning them again after I leave?

Mission entry popup for this mission is cool though, helps set the scene.

Again with the glowy crates substituting for pylons? I really think you want to use a more interesting looking object for your pylons. Maybe one of the generic technology devices that looks like a big microscope?

I click the four glowies and the mission is done. That's it?

Debriefing: She thanks you for helping but still doesn't really tell you what happened.

Overall
This arc played more like a story outline than a story. There's a visible framework where the contact is getting you to help with some kind of dimension threatening problem, but within that framework there's really very little description of any sort.

The briefings and debriefings are much too sparse; I think you really need to have the contact explain more about what's going on.

The "culprit" or "enemy" is mentioned a couple times, but it's not explained why you think there is a culprit/enemy, and you certainly never catch one. I guess the Crey were involved somehow, since I ran into Crey, but this is never really explained.

It was interesting seeing the Shadow Shard Reflections, Lanaruu and Rularuu, but their presence also needs to be explained. I would guess they have leaked through from another dimension as a result of the current problem, but I think this needs to be more clearly stated either in a clue or in a debriefing. Shouldn't the Crey be surprised to see them, also?

Having the last mission require simply clicking some glowies felt rather anticlimactic, also. A more dramatic finish would be nice; perhaps you could confront this mysterious enemy. I also definitely think your glowy "pylons" need to be something more visually impressive than generic looking crates.

This arc felt incomplete. Most of the time I did not know why I was doing what I was doing. I think the arc could benefit greatly from adding considerably more text in the form of explanations, clues and/or dialog, to present more story to the player.

With the lack of actual story, I was torn between rating this a high 1 or a low 2; there is the framework of a story here, though, so I'll give it 2 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@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

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

Yet more changes.

* I concluded that Maiden Justice (aka Ms Liberty) having Unstoppable was simply unacceptable. Unstoppable sucks!
* I made a new custom Maiden Justice AV. She is MA/invuln and has a similar but slightly different costume, which makes sense since she's not really Ms. Liberty.
* I normally hesitate to make custom AVs because it's too easy to make them overpowered, but it's looking like a custom AV may actually be easier than the canon AV in this case.
* I considered making her an EB but decided that would be too underwhelming for the end boss of the arc.
* MA is on Standard so as to avoid giving her Focus Chi.
* Invuln is on Hard so as to avoid giving her Unyielding and Unstoppable. However, she still has Dull Pain, because I don't want her to be a total pushover.
* I deleted the two 5th Column ambushes that come to help the player; should not be needed now.
* I gave Maiden Justice a small escort of US Army soldiers.
* I had to remove the US Army Sergeant in order to make room for this new custom model. (Didn't delete him, he may come back in I15 if I have more space to play with then.)
* Maiden Justice now has, as her unaware text:

[NPC] Maiden Justice: Why, Marcus? Why would you leave me to fight this battle alone? What could have possibly been more important?

This is partly to address a problem one player had with the Nazi victory being so overwhelming that there is no glimmer of hope for the good guys at all, partly to explain why you never have to fight Statesman, and partly to reinforce the characterization that Statesman is kind of a jerk.

Marsquake, I do want to try to address your concern.... but I don't want to take away the player's moment of victory, either.

I am updating Maiden Justice's "unaware" message to:

[NPC] Maiden Justice: Why, Marcus? Why would you leave me to fight this battle alone? What could have possibly been more important?

This, coupled with:

[NPC] President Truman: Noooo! Statesman, where are you?

....will reinforce that Statesman is mysteriously missing in action. I plan to leave what happens to him a mystery, that will be up to the player's imagination to fill in.

So you can imagine that Statesman has fled to the Rogue Isles to form a Resistance movement.

Or you can imagine that a hero player evac'd Statesman to a safer timeline via Ouroboros, and together they're coming back to kick Nazi butt.

Or you can imagine that Statesman made a deal with Lord Nemesis and they're working together to overthrow the 5th Column.

Or you can imagine that Statesman is a jerk who would ditch his wife and his country to save his sorry butt.

It's a little ungraceful to leave such a dangling plotline unresolved at the finish of the arc, but I'm going to give it a try in order to satisfy your concern. (If I get a lot of feedback to the effect of, "Where's Statesman?" I may need to do more revision ... you might be surprised how many "Where's Statesboy?" feedbacks I get on Teen Phalanx.)


[Sorry again for derailing the thread.]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess if you're not wiling to budge on such a minor detail, (there really aren't 2 sides here), there's no chance in hell of convincing you that your Nazi arc has a morally offensive theme. You take too much glee in your creative output to consider the moral implications.

But, nevertheless, I suggest you rename that arc "Nazi's Win Forever!" Or subtitle it "A Shaved Head's Damp Dream," (title toned down, but hopefully you get it).

Then if people continue to play it, or tell you they enjoy it, I'll consider moving to Canada.

[/ QUOTE ]

Apologies for derailing the main subject of this thread, but it seems like Marsquake deserves a response.


Marsquake -

Believe me, I have read your feedback asking that the last act of Axis and Allies be modified, so as to give some hope that the heroes might overthrow the player's final tyranny.

I've given some thought to how this might be accomplished. Most center around either Statesman (who is unaccounted for in my timeline, due to temporarily being in the final mission, then getting removed due to being too hard) or Nemesis (who, according to official canon, has his own "Invade America" plot scheduled to go off immediately after WW2 ends).

I've considered adding clues that hint that Statesman gets snatched up by Nemesis to help with the "Emperor of the Americas" plot, or by Mender Silos via Ouroboros. This would help explain what happened to Statesman, and would also have a certain elegance in that it would give Axis and Allies the trifecta of "things Venture hates": time travel, a difficult to solo AV, and a Nemesis plot. (May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb!)

But so far, I've felt that I can't really add this plot element, because it would blunt the impact of the story ending, and, worse, it would cheat the player of victory. I don't think it would be fair to tell the player, "Sure, you won all the missions, but after the story, the heroes overthrow you, so all your efforts mean nothing."

It's my opinion that in a story arc, if all missions are successfully completed, The Player Should Always Win. I feel cheated on story arcs where I do everything right, and yet the plot FORCES me to lose in the end. The most typical examples are heroic arcs where the bad guy outwits you and gets away in the end, purely because it's scripted that way. I'd like to avoid that.

In this particular situation, the Villain is the Protagonist, and so, The Bad Guy Wins.

I hope that helps explain why I feel that the story should end the way it currently does.

Great discussion. Both sides have made some excellent points about whether "Kid $name" or "$name" make more sense for a player's $sidekickname. I'm definitely reading it all, and appreciate the input.

Thanks again for trying Teen Phalanx Forever!

Came up with an idea for how to make Maiden Justice more manageable.

* Added 2 ambushes to Invasion America mission, triggered when Maiden Justice is at 50% life and 25% life. However, these ambushes are friendlies -- 5th Column who rush to the aid of the player. Effectively, the player is a "boss" fight for Maiden Justice now, with ambushes helping the villain.
* Had to remove 2 ambushes from Stalingrad mission in order to add 2 ambushes to the America mission.

* Adjusted Maiden Justice's dialog to be a little more heroic:
- Unaware: "No matter what happens today, we must have hope! America will survive!"
- Attack: "So, $name. It's you. I won't let you take Paragon City without a fight!"
- 1/4 health: "No! I won't let you win! FOR LIBERTY!" (Unstoppable goes off)
- Death: "No! Please! It can't end this way!"

* Changed "Schadenfreude" ally from "Extreme" Assault Rifle to "Standard" Assault Rifle, and from "Standard" Pain Domination to "Extreme" Pain Domination. I was hoping this would make her shoot less and buff/debuff more, but in my testing so far the NPC AI doesn't seem to want to do that.

* Added "Munitions" destructible objects to Dunkirk mission and "Troop Transport" destructible objects to Stalingrad mission, for the sake of making the missions have more stuff in them other than enemy soldiers. I made destroying the 3 Troop Transports a required objective, but didn't think it should be required to destroy the munitions the Allies were about to abandon anyway.
* Deleted "Goebbels" enemy from Wolf's Lair mission and "Panzer" ally from Stalingrad mission to make room. Formerly these were used to lock the level range on those missions, but I needed the room and I15 should eventually give me tools to predefine a level range.
* Changed General Paulus to be a Raserei Ubermenschen Oberst (formerly he was a Krieger) to make Stalingrad a 25-54 mission.


Testing:

In two trials with my 50 AR/dev blaster, I was able to defeat the EB Maiden Justice both times, with the help of NPCs. Some of the NPC ambushes tend to get lost (due to bad terrain/bad pathfinding) before getting all the way to Maiden Justice, though, and Schadenfreude's AI is a lot less healy/buffy/debuffy than I was hoping. But having some NPC help spawn right as Maiden Justice goes Unstoppable seemed immensely helpful for keeping steady DPS on her, so I felt like it was an improvement.

I also like how the extra destructible objects looked. Adding 3 required trucks to destroy in Stalingrad makes it take a little longer, but I'm hoping more objectives will make it feel like you have more to do. I had several people complain about having to hunt the Soviet generals on a big map; adding more objectives on the map may sound counterintuitive, but I'm hoping it will mean it's easier to find those objectives. Especially because the transport trucks are pretty big and should be easy to see.

Changes made:

* Weygand now says "Vive la France" instead of "Viva la France".
* British soldiers no longer have energy melee. Thought about giving them AR/mace, but decided it was simpler to make them AR/regen.
* US Soldiers facing off against Stormtroopers now say "The Germans are coming!" and "Look out! It's $name $himherself!" instead of "It's one of those krauts over here!"
* Removed ambushes triggered by fighting generals (some players hated these) in order to make space.
* This gave me enough room to add some historical back story in the descriptions for General Patton, General MacArthur, Lord Gort, General Weygand, and General Paulus. Unfortunately, I ran out of space before I could add anything for the Soviet generals.

I've received some feedback that a stalker was unable to solo Maiden Justice in the final battle despite several attempts. Unstoppable seems to be the cause; I really think she'd be fine if she just didn't have that power.

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this yet. I really feel like the protagonist should crush some patriotic superhero in the last battle, and the only characters iconic enough for this in the WW2 era seem to be Maiden Justice and Statesman, both of whom are quite tough.

Theoretically, Lady Grey and Dark Watcher should be operating during this time period, but neither of them seems right for this role; I really need a red-white-and-blue hero to be the last defender of Freedom and Democracy.

I tested the RSF Ms Liberty to see if she'd be easier, since she doesn't have Unstoppable, but she has Liberty Belt instead, which is even worse. Also she didn't seem to downgrade properly to an EB.

Also tested the EB version of Ms Liberty, who would be reasonable (she doesn't have unstoppable) except that her level caps at 37, and I've had enough feedback about level ranges being too variable that I can't accept such a low level cap for the mission.

I considered beefing up the 5th Column Allies even more, but they're already bosses (lieutenants on heroic) so the next step would be EBs or AVs, which would seem rather excessive.

So leaving Maiden Justice at the current difficulty for now, until I can think of a better solution.

[ QUOTE ]

All of your arcs are great Police Woman, but I think we gotta go with the Nazi one Now with less Masterminds right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure, if that's the one you like! With it being a silent movie, I'm now totally picturing a CoH version of Triumph of the Will. Is that bad?

Anyway, yes, I reduced the mastermind count a lot - only bosses should ever be masterminds now.

6/1/2009

I spent Friday night playing Tehuantl (26 night widow) on an 8-player all VEAT team, running missions in Sharkhead Isle that got Tehuantl to level 28, where I took Tactical Training: Assault.

Saturday morning I spent some time farming the Cimerora walls with Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper), mostly to test how much the Romans could debuff her defense. Blond is soft capped on defense with about 50% defdebuff resist, and the Romans on the wall never seemed to get her below 41% defense, which seemed pretty good. I lucked into getting an Unbreakable Constraint (chance for smashing) recipe while doing this.

After that I played Milady de Winter (8 ice/emp controller) on a 5 player pickup team doing radio missions in King's Row. We had a wipeout fighting Circle of Thorns due to overaggro at a deadly intersection in an office map, but otherwise did pretty well; I eventually inherited the star due to attrition and recruited some more people I knew to join up. This team got Milady up to level 12; remembering the amount of sass I got on my emp defender who didn't have Resurrect until level 41, I went ahead and took Resurrect right at level 10, then Ice Slick at level 12.

When that team broke up, I solo'd April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) through Tidebringer, a high level villain arc where you fight this nautical-themed hero with ghost pirates as minions, and stop the hero from completing an evil ritual to destroy Sharkhead Isle. This was a well written story, and I gave it 5 stars.

A friend on an ITF team was asking for help to fill the team and get it started, and the team wanted a debuffer, so I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor). The team decided to do it on Invincible difficulty, and had a team mix of:

2 tanks (one of which quit right away)
1 fire scrapper
1 night widow (was AFK for the first 2 missions)
1 dark corruptor
1 cold corruptor (me)
1 dark defender
1 storm controller

One tanker quit as soon as we formed the team (not sure what he was thinking) and our VEAT took a lengthy unannounced AFK, so we were left with 6 players to do the first mission. We beat up the Romans and freed Sister Solaris, but for some reason no one actually would lead Sister Solaris to the final objective -- everyone got too focused fighting the kheldian ambush; I got killed trying to get Solaris's attention, and we eventually suffered a completely avoidable team wipe. We hospitaled and regrouped, and I eventually lured Sister Solaris to the altar to complete the mission.

The surviving tanker suggested that since we were down to 6, we should quit tne TF and reform with a full team, but the controller was like, I'm not coming back if we quit. I was inclined to agree (it was really pretty ugly so far), so we decided to press on with 6 players. (Hey, it made sense at the time.) The night widow came back from AFK late in the second mission and complained that we hadn't made enough progress so far, which was met with resounding derision from the rest of the team.

During the third mission for some reason while we were fighting the Phalanx computer and the horde of robots, someone pulled the Romulus AV on top of our heads at the same time, causing a semi-wipe. We managed to overcome this and muddle through the rest of the ITF, though, completing it in 1hr 53mins and gaining 28 merits (14.87 MPH).

I switched to Mega (19 ss/will brute) and solo'd through Seer Marino's Oh Wretched Man! story arc, which for some reason I really like; though I really shouldn't like it, because I hate those stinking Mu and their END drain. Nevertheless got through it for 6 reward merits and level 20. I then solo'd the AE arc Fighting Freedom where you basically grief a teen supergroup that has stirred up enough trouble in the Rogue Isles to annoy Arachnos into retaining you as a hired killer. Good premise, good looking enemy group, and chilling description of what happens to the captured teens, but a little thin on gameplay content in the last few missions; I gave it 4 stars.

After that I joined a Statesman TF as Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker). Our team mix was:

fire scrapper
ice/storm controller
fire blaster
archery blaster
will tanker (me)
2 rad/sonic defenders
ill/rad controller

I was a bit nervous about this as I'd never played tanker on the STF, but I'd been meaning to do it for the sake of badgy completeness. Someone wanted us to try for MoSTF, which I didn't think was likely to happen and one of the blasters scoffed at the possibility, but the leader went ahead and set it for 0 deaths just to try. This was promptly spiked when one of the squishies died to the ambush in the first mission; this was almost a relief, as it reduced the pressure. I think we needed to set "no temp powers" for it to have counted anyway.

With Thunder Girl's defenses near capped (about 40-42% to most damage types) I was quite comfortable tanking everything in the first 4 missions without hardly a scratch; having 4 debuffers certainly helped for that too though. In the third mission I tried taunting the thorn tree, because I had heard this can help protect your squishies from death, but I found that I couldn't even target the thorn tree while vines were up -- so that didn't work out as well as I hoped. I made sure to stand in front of the thorn tree and kill all the vines in front of it; not sure if that helped or not.

The fourth mission we were very lucky and got the key from the first security chief we found, and easily manhandled Dr. Aeon. In the final mission, the patron AVs were no problem at all; Mako died without a fuss (4 debuffers...) and I kited Ghost Widow around so she never got a heal off. Ghost Widow never hit me with her uber-hold, either; I had raised my dark DEF up to about 40% thinking that would help for ITF, and I like to think that helped stop her dark holds, too. I had stockpiled break frees for that fight, but found I didn't need to use any of them.

The Arachnos flier was no problem either, and I was generally feeling good about how things were going until I stepped up to face Lord Recluse himself, who promptly smashed me in maybe 2 hits. Res'd and fought and died, hospital'd and fought and died; Lord Recluse just didn't seem to notice any of my defense or resistance. I got targeted with some scorn for being "just a willpower tank" at this point, but tried to let that slide. One of the rads decided to tank LR instead, using toggle debuffs to pull him into the sky and trap him in geometry. This seemed kind of ignominious, but I didn't really want to kick up a fuss, since it was working. We destroyed the 4 towers, but then found LR was so stuck that we couldn't get him back down again. So some of us ended up flying up to where he was pinned and fighting him there; poor scrapper spent most of his time trying to SJ up to where we were. It was definitely a situation where Fly was the right travel power to have.

We finished LR off and completed the TF in 1h 20mins; Thunder Girl got a fistful of badges and a Nucleolus SHO.

After that, Thunder Girl promptly got invited to an ITF, and I thought, what the heck, it'll help salve my wounded ego from not being able to tank Lord Recluse. So I joined up and our team was:

2 blasters
1 kin defender
1 earth/therm controller
1 shield scrapper
2 will/nrg tankers (including me)
1 invuln tanker

I'm really not quite sure why we needed 3 tankers, and was tempted to offer to switch to something else, but the team leader was enthusiastic about my powersets (apparently he had a will/nrg tanker too) so I stuck around. The invuln tanker tended to like to herd and the scrapper had a habit of going off and soloing stuff away from the team (he must've taken out half the cysts in mission 2 on his own), but overall it worked fine and despite the tanker-heavy team balance, we got through the ITF in a very respectable 1hr 16mins, for 28 merits (22.11 MPH).

Sunday it seemed I just couldn't get away from the ITF, as I joined a speed TF team. The team leader asked me to play something survivable with high damage, so I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper). Our team was:

1 will brute
1 shield brute
1 rad corruptor
1 ninj stalker
1 fire blaster
2 shield scrappers (including me)

We had one person or another sitting at the contact most of the time while the other 6 of us blitzed the missions. We were very support light (with only 1 rad corruptor, who was the contact sitter for a couple of the missions, so no support) and essentially operated as six soloers that were vaguely soloing near each other. We raced to each of the sibyls in mission 1, each of the nictus crystals in mission 2, and each of the generals in mission 3, ignoring all the stuff in between with our high defenses. This didn't seem like it should work, but it totally did. We finished the ITF in 32min 31sec for 28 merits (51.66 MPH). I also had a very nice Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG) recipe fall in my lap during this TF.

Several of the same players went on to do a speed LGTF, and we recruited a few people to fill up the team. I stayed on Blond Justice and our team became:

2 shield scrappers (including me)
2 fire blasters
1 plant dominator
1 poison MM
1 fire brute
1 dark defender

Several of the squishies died a lot, which I felt guilty about, but the melee element steamrollered ahead regardless, finishing the LGTF in 42min 47sec for 39 merits (54.70 MPH).

A friend wanted to do yet another ITF that I let myself get drawn into; he wanted to make a team with a max level of 45 so that everyone would get exp. I started off wanting to play Idealist (44 fire/thermal controller) but when I saw how melee-heavy our team was, I switched to playing Primadonna (40 sonic/kin corruptor). Our team was:

shield brute
kin corruptor (me)
cold defender
emp defender
ice blaster
regen scrapper
fire scrapper
ninj stalker

This team got through the ITF with no serious problems in 1hr 19mins, getting Primadonna to level 41 (haven't figured out what new power to take) and 28 merits (21.27 MPH).

We then swapped around alts for another LGTF, on which I played Schadenfreude (45 AR/pain corruptor; someone has also told me there is a 5th Column NPC on test named Schadenfreude now, which is going to be weird). Our team mix was:

cold defender
inv tanker
stone tanker
shield brute
ice/storm controller
pain corruptor (me)
kin controller
ninj stalker

We didn't do this TF for speed, instead doing everything the "real" way, by rescuing Penelope Yin, Infernia and Glacia and clearing all the Rikti that dared stand in our way. This took a bit longer (2hr 3mins) but was still quite fun. Schadenfreude hit level 46 and got 39 merits (19.02 MPH).

After having done ITF twice and LGTF twice in one day, I was pretty burned out on TFing, so I switched to soloing MA arcs.

Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) solo'd through a MA arc called Return of the Three Fold King, which was about stopping an evil ancient mystical king from coming back and taking over the world. The plot was pretty formulaic and the missions were not too exciting, so I could only give that story 2 stars.

Over the weekend I played Sabine (a new SS/SR brute) off and on. Duo'd for awhile with a newbie corruptor who said he was just starting CoH and had come over from WoW, which I thought was totally awesome. He was really impressed by Mission Teleporter and veteran Team Teleport, which I used to get him to the Defeat All Infected mission quickly. Despite being new, he was actually quite a good teammate.

Later on Sabine (at level 7) solo'd Bricked Electronics, a story arc I've run before, where Mark Freeman sends you up against Goldbrickers and many adventures ensue. I had previously rated this 4 stars, but on this run-through the story seemed so much more polished and fun that I upped my rating to 5 stars. This also got Sabine to level 8 and Knockout Blow.

Sounds like lots of fun. Feel free to use any of mine, whichever strikes you as most cinematic.

Changes made:

- Maiden Justice changed from "Ms. Liberty (Signature Pet)" to "Ms. Liberty (40-54 AV)". (Note: this is NOT the one that needs the special Malta gun to kill.)
- Motivation for this change: the Signature Pet version didn't scale well. Pet version was disappointingly easy for every team I've played with on this mission, but was still quite hard for a soloer. She also looked like a full Hero to both soloers and teams, which gave people wrong information about how hard she really is.
- Using the 40-54 AV, Maiden Justice properly scales between EB and AV depending on difficulty.
- In order to test soloability, I fought the EB version of Maiden Justice (aka Ms Liberty) three times with my main villain, April Fool (50 thug/TA MM), on heroic, no temp powers, no allies, but I did freely use inspirations. I won two out of three; got clocked one out of three. I decided this was an acceptable ratio. However, I realize a MM may be better at soloing EBs than some other ATs. I think I could definitely do this on a high level brute, maybe could on a debuffy corruptor or a high DEF stalker/VEAT, probably couldn't on a dom (but, in fairness, I'm a terrible dom player).
- The actual mission has 5th Column allies who can help.

Responses to comments:

[ QUOTE ]
On the positive side, I think this was a very well put together arc. The story is a straightforward classic, and it flows very well. Each mission 'felt' appropriate to the story thanks to the setup, map selection and some nice details. I particularly liked the design of the Allied military critters: each had a distinctive yet appropriate look. Given the limitations of the available MA artwork and file size, I don't think you can do much better.

[/ QUOTE ]

- Thanks much to Darkonne for a detailed review!

[ QUOTE ]
What I don't understand is why Schadenfreude wants me to become the new Führer. We've known each other for a single mission when she gives more or less ultimate power over the cause to which she has clearly dedicated her life. I can't see how that would work.

If she really is devoted to the 5th Column, wouldn't she want to make Requiem the new Führer?
....
Basically, I think the arc glosses over exactly why I become the Führer.
...
A simpler solution would be to make someone else the Führer (either Schadenfreude or Requiem). ... This solution risks making the player feel less involved himself (since he's now a flunky ratter than the ruler of Germany)


[/ QUOTE ]

While this comment is valid, and makes some sense from a character motivation standpoint, the player is the star of the story arc and consequently I felt it would be more effective for the player to become the new Führer than for the player to help Requiem become Führer. The "loss of involvement due to being a flunky" you mention is the major reason I'd rather make the player the big boss. Conquering France and Russia for Requiem is much less cool than conquering France and Russia for yourself!

So for story coolness reasons, I felt it had to be this way.

[ QUOTE ]
The "best" solution would be to make this arc the second part of a multi-arc story. In the first part, the player meets Schadenfreude and works with her to help preserve the 5th Column in the present day; at the end of the arc they find a way to go back in time, thus starting this arc. This would give the player time to bond with Schadenfreude. It would explain why she's willing to trust him as Führer, and make the player more invested in her story (as much as possible given the whole "Nazis win" premise). The problem with this solution is obvious: it's a massive amount of work and would require another story slot.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would be awesome if I had the ability to author lots more story arcs. With only 3 story arc slots allowed to me, though, I prefer to tell three different stories, in three different genres, over telling one extra long story that takes all three arc slots. Part of this is because I want to try different things in my different stories, and part of this is because I fear my sequels/prequels will inevitably be weaker than the main story I want to tell. Helping Schadenfreude build up the 5th Column in the present day in order to gain her trust might make logical sense, but the story behind that would be a lot less compelling than, say, Assassinating der Führer and Invading America.

[ QUOTE ]

* In mission 1, the Führer is being guarded by 5th Column troops. AFAIK, the 5th Column never operated in Germany; they were Requiem's private army, and only operated in America. It would be nice if you could create a unique group for the mission (the Wehrmacht, SS or somesuch) instead of using the actual 5th Column.

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually tried making a Wehrmacht faction and just importing the humanoid 5th Column models, but in testing this did not work as well as I hoped. For arcane reasons, the Mission Architect wouldn't let me place standard models for "Boss" objectives from this custom Wehrmacht faction, and I couldn't afford to create a custom model for every German officer.

[ QUOTE ]
* In Mission 2, Gen. Weygand says "Viva la France" upon seeing me. I think that should actually be "Vive la France."

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're right. I'll change this.

[ QUOTE ]
* In mission 2, the use of Energy Melee by the British Soldiers seems a little out of place. I know most of the likely candidates are already used by the other armies, but EM struck me as off. Perhaps you could just give them a minor defensive set instead?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I gave the British soldiers this to give them a sort of pugilism set, to match the French having martial arts and the Russians having super strength. It may be a little too shiny; I'd rather give them Fighting pool (with Boxing and stuff) but that isn't an option. Maybe I can just give them a nothing secondary like low regen.

[ QUOTE ]
* In Mission 4, the soldiers guarding the Stormtroopers have a line to the effect of "There's one of them Krauts!" when they see me. The line feels appropriate to the time period, but given that I'm supposed to be the Führer of Germany at this point, I think they should recognize me personally.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm, I meant for them to be talking about the Stormtrooper, but I can see how the dialog as presented might be confusing. I'll look into rephrasing it better.

[ QUOTE ]
* As far as I saw, none of the generals in missions 2-4 had a unique /info description. If this was done to save space it may be unavoidable But if you do have the space, a line or two about their (altered) history would be great.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm very tight on space sadly (I used far too many custom characters)... but this is a fun idea, and I've had people wonder how MacArthur ended up in Paragon City. I'll see if I can make space for it.


Praise/Damnation from this thread:

[ QUOTE ]
It just may be the most villainous arc I've yet played. It sets up, and forces the the player along for the ride, the complete victory of the Nazis and 5th Column, including the takeover of the US.

This concept has been used before in novels, films and comics. The Red Skull conquers the world in the current Avengers/Invaders series. But there is always a way out, or at least the suggestion that its possible to resist, an ominous hint of doom for the Reich. In this author's arc there is not even a whisper of that possibility. Total victory, period.

"Axis and Allies" badly needs to be opened up at the end. Or at least make it part 1 of a larger story.

Morally, its the darkest arc I've seen.

[/ QUOTE ]


I must say that I consider this high praise, I was absolutely shooting for an evil, world-conquering story arc.

Regarding the outcome being "total victory" for the Third Reich, my usual philosophy is that the protagonist should "win" at the end of a story arc. Since in this case, the protagonist is the villain, "winning" is crushing all opposition and conquering the world.

I could probably add a ray of hope in there somewhere; perhaps some of the heroes escape to fight a resistance against your tyranny. But I think this would actually be dissonant from the main narrative of the story arc. I mean, in final mission you are invading America, defeating the US Army, beating up the last Hero, capturing the President, and crushing Democracy to set up a 1000 year Reich. I think adding a teaser for some new hope might actually detract from the story.

Return of the Three Fold King (arc id 163274)

Premise appears to be helping a professor recover an ancient artifact, then this leads into something bigger. Level range was 1-54, but with Tuatha, Arachnos and Custom groups, I figured I'd better play a 50. I solo'd on a 50 bs/shield scrapper with soft capped defense, on Unyielding difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: I suggest you change the font of the caption of the briefing ("Return of the Three Fold King Part 1") to make it stand out a little more; make it bold, another color, or larger type.

"I am glad to hear that you answered my ad in the Paragon Times" is a bit awkward, I suggest trimming to "I am glad you answered my ad in the Paragon Times".

"artefact" should be "artifact"

"The reason I myself cannot go is currently there are Circle of Thorns crawling all over the place trying to find the item" seems awkward to me; I suggest rephrasing to, "I tried retrieving it myself, but I found there were Circle of Thorns crawling all over the place -- probably looking for the same item! That's where you come in."

Entering the mission, I find that "Defeat the Depthlord" is my objective, but the Depthlord has not been mentioned up to this point and doesn't clearly help me "find the Runestone of El", so this is rather puzzling.

Inside the mission I find it's not CoT at all - it's a custom group of "Lemurians". This seems to contradict what the contact told me, though.

"Foot Soldier" description, "and they generals" should be "and their generals".

As I get close to a Lemurian/CoT battle, I hear Ice Thorn Caster say "Oh great its $name!" (I wasn't close enough for it to use my name apparently.) This message maybe should be its "active", not its "inactive" message.

"Honor Guard" description, "relegated" should maybe be "promoted", as relegated usually means a sort of demotion. "lieutenats" should be "lieutenants". It actually doesn't make sense that the Honor Guard makes up the lieutenants and officer of the Lemurian military; normally an Honor Guard is its own unit, not cadre for the rest of the military.

"Depthlord Valkurn" has a description that calls him "Depthlord Valkum"; guessing Valkurn is correct since it also appears in objectives. "anyones guess" should be "anyone's guess". "it appears he is after the Mace as well" is puzzling as there has been no mace mentioned in the story so far.

I got the "Runestone of El" clue when Valkurn dropped; maybe should make it clearer, either in Valkurn's dying dialog or in the clue, that he is the one you get it from.

Debriefing: Professor Cramer admits to deceiving me about the goal of the mission and why he couldn't go. This seems like a bad start to a contact/hero relationship; I'm not sure what is gained by deceiving the player in this manner.

"Falconeer" should be "Falconer", "artefact" should be "artifact".

Now that the professor has revealed he is a hero in his own right, and he tricked me into getting this runestone for him, I am unsure why I should agree to help him on his quest to get the four Runestones needed for his ritual; I mean, he's a hero, why can't he do it? Also, he lied to me already, so not sure I would be strongly motivated to help him further. OK, so his powers don't work on Lemurians ... so why make him a hero in this story then? I think it would be simpler to keep him a normal professor if his powers are not relevant to the plot.


Mission 2
Briefing: I think it's a little early for him to say "I hope that you would be willing to fight The Three Fold King"; perhaps hint more subtly at the threat the Three Fold King poses.

I have to say the "need 4 runestones to complete the ritual" plot is a little formulaic.

"Tuath de Dannon" should be "Tuatha de Dannan".

Second part of briefing: "probebly" should be "probably". "their leaders" is a little ambiguous as to whether he's talking about the Tuatha or the Lemurians.

Mission entry popup: "A cool ocean breeze carries with the smell of blood." I think you mean "with it the smell of blood."

Mission objective: I now have the objective to "Defeat Elegor the Brazen", who has not been mentioned up to this point. I am guessing this is the "leader" that supposedly has the Runestone, but perhaps Elegor the Brazen needs some introduction.

I hear some Lemurians talking about a "necklace". Not sure what that is yet.

Elegor says "A noble attack,but futile!" missing space after the comma.

Mission ends right after I defeat Elegor. Seems kind of a big map for just defeating one boss; not sure how the Lemurian patrols factored into this mission, I didn't have to interact with them at all.

Debriefing is kind of on the generic side, basically a longwinded "Thanks, 2 out of 4!"

Mission 3
Briefing: The contact says that the Lemurians are angry at us and are holding some hostages because of us; but it so happens it's also in the same office that the third runestone is in. I'm not sure this makes sense; wouldn't the Lemurians have gone after the third runestone anyway?

I like that there is more to do in this mission (rescuing 3 hostages). The hostages have rather stilted dialog though; "Thank god! Its Blond Justice! Quickly, come and help me!" does not sound like something anyone would really say. "Its" should be "It's". I'd suggest using something shorter and more natural sounding. Even just "Help!" would probably sound more natural.

Some of the bad guys say "What? Its Blond Justice! Destroy him!" should be "It's Blond Justice! Destroy her!" (i.e. "It's $name! Destroy $himher!")

Found a safe that contained the runestone, giving me "The Stone of Liu" clue. Looking at the clues, I notice the first is "Runestone of El", the second is "The Runestone of Uo" and the third is "The Stone of Liu" -- if you keep this four runestone idea, you may want to standardize the name of the clues (e.g. make them all The Runestone of Xxxx).

In "The Stone of Liu", the phrase "very different to the other stones" maybe should be "very different from the other stones".

Got "A Safe Combination", not quite sure when; possibly from a hostage rescue. Is it possible for the player to find the safe before rescuing the hostage that gives this clue? Not sure; it worked the time I did it, just wondering if the other order would mess things up.

Got "A Strange Map" at the end of the mission also. Would be nicer to know what it shows, even if you can't make out the symbols.

Debriefing is kind of on the generic side, basically a longwinded "Thanks, 3 out of 4!" Shouldn't he mention the map I found, if the map has any meaning?

Mission 4
Briefing: I think "I have found the last Runestone Blond Justice" should be "I have found the location of the last Runestone, Blond Justice" -- he hasn't ACTUALLY found the stone, since he is sending me to get it.

How is it these runestones got scattered all over the place anyway? Maybe needs more backstory. It's a little too generic-fantasy-quest-plot as it stands.

Not sure why the Lemurians would barter with Arachnos, as presented here; don't all surface dwellers look alike to us? Unless they maybe have a connection to the Mu Mystics...hmmm, that would actually make sense.

"bring the Runestone of De back.." has an extra period at the end of it.

Mission entry popup: "This cave appears deserted"...but I can see a spawn of Arachnos right past the popup bubble, so this message seems wrong.

The "3 Crate" objective in the nav bar should probably be removed (make the false glowies optional).

"Defeat Felaren" is in my objectives, but I have no idea who Felaren is; maybe he should be mentioned in the briefing. Or alternatively you could make it "Defeat Lemurian negotiator, Defeat Arachnos negotiator" -- or perhaps "2 Negotiators to defeat".

One crate I searched gave up "The Statue of Nocturn", which satisfied my "runestone" objective, but this statue is not actually described as a runestone in its clue, so I'm not at all sure it is the right object. Seems inconsistent; maybe it should be described as a runestone, or your objective should be to find the statue, not a stone.

I see four more crates glowing, but I have "2 Crate" in the objectives ... yet I already have the runestone, or statue. I think you must've made some of the crates optional and not others, which is confusing and probably not intended.

Okay, searching the extra glowy crates, the ones that don't decrement the "2 Crate" objective actually have clues inside, while the crates with nothing inside, do decrease this counter. This is rather illogical. I'd suggest you make the glowies with no clue completely optional; and the glowies with a clue either optional or have an objective of "Find clues" rather than "Crate".

"A Strange Book" clue has "Three F old King" in it; has an extra space inside the word "Fold".

Found Arachnos Negotiator. "Oh great its Blond Justice! I heard of them! Get em!" should probably be "Oh great, it's Blond Justice! I've heard of her! Get her!"

His dialog where he attempts to "negotiate" while I'm fighting him sounds pretty cheesy, I'm afraid. "Can't we all get along?" and "Look, I will scratch your back if you scratch mine!" do not sound like anything I'd expect an Arachnos officer to say.

Warmaster Felaren also says "Its Blond Justice!" but should say "It's Blond Justice!" And "mearly a scratch" should be "merely a scratch".

I think it might make sense if you highlighted the common ground the Lemurians and the Mu have, being both sorta ancient Atlantis-era civilizations.

Debriefing: the contact says I found "The Runestone of De" but I didn't get a clue anything like that. I'm guessing "The Statue of Nocturn" got renamed somewhere along the way and not all references were changed.

Mission 5
Briefing: The contact basically says that now that I have the 4 items, I can fight the final boss, and the final boss is going to be tough. He uses slightly more flowery language than this, but that's the meaning of it.

In the mission I find I'm in a (thankfully small) Oranbega map. I beelined to the Three Fold King, who spawned as a +1 EB for me, and fought him.

In his description, "The God of War of the Lemurians" is awkward sounding; I suggest "The War God of the Lemurians".

In his dialog, "I had just reawoken!" ... I'm pretty sure reawoken is not a word. May want to rephrase that; maybe risen, awakened or returned would be a better word.

Defeating the boss ended the mission, which was awfully quick and straightforward for the finale of 5 mission story arc. I'd suggest you put more stuff to do in this mission, to make it seem more dramatic. Perhaps you have to fight his lieutenants before facing him, or rescue someone from a horrible ritual, or click four glowies that represent you using the 4 runestones you found ... something more. Just going in and defeating the boss and having the mission end is a little anticlimactic.

Debriefing: Now he starts talking about Nocturn, who hasn't really been mentioned before (except as part of the Statue of Nocturn clue). The fact that Nocturn is pleased with me doesn't really resonate due to the fact that Nocturn hasn't been introduced until now; maybe need to introduce her earlier in the plot. Also, "artefact" should be "artifact".

Souvenir: "War Gods return" should be "War God's return". "Falconeer" should be "Falconer". "Tuatha del Dannon" should be "Tuatha de Dannan". "aurdous" should be "arduous".

Overall
I'm afraid I just can't get past how formulaic the "get 4 objects to kill the boss" plot is; it's a very generic fantasy plot. I'd suggest you rework the plot to be a little less formulaic, if possible.

The fact that the contact basically lies to you to get you to do the first mission, then expects you to do 4 more missions for him anyway, is a big negative. He also reveals that he's a hero, but the fact that he's a hero is never relevant in the rest of the plot.

I found the dialog to be rather awkward. You don't really meet any recurring characters in the story (other than the contact); even the Three Fold King himself never appears until the very last act, so you never get an opportunity to understand him and/or hate him enough to want to beat him. Missions 1, 2 and 5 were all too generic in construction (go in .. defeat boss .. mission over) and needed more of interest in them; especially the last mission, which should be a more dramatic finale. Mission 4 was better because it had more clues to find, but the way the crates were defined as mission objectives was very confusing and unintuitive.

I wish I had some more positive things to say, since you clearly put a lot of work into this. But as it stands, I felt I could only give it 2 stars. Sorry!

-----

I owe a review to:

@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@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

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

Fighting Freedom (by @LaserJesus) (arc id 177930)

Premise is that you're beating up a team of young heroes, which is nicely symmetrical with one of my blue side story arcs, so I thought it'd be a good one to try. Level range is 21-30 red side. I played a 19 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: good explanation of the situation. I'm to go help the Marcones against this Freedom Militia hero group.

Mission objectives: "Save Jummy Velasco", should be "Save Jimmy Velasco".

I rather like the Freedom Militia uniforms. The group reminds me of a more heroic Outcasts group. Nice dialog. I kept thinking the fire blaster girl was my Paris Hilton NPC though; it's the orange outfit.

Anarchist Blaster maybe should be Anarchist Defender with her empathy powers?

I like all the objectives you need to save here (the various drug shipments and labs and the Family guys).

(Leveled to 20 and took Quick Recovery.)

Mission 2
Briefing: contact has me going after a Freedom Militia officer called Ice Queen. I think it would be a little nicer if the player got a Clue about Ice Queen in mission 1; it's clearly from interrogating the Freedom Militia captives, perhaps the boss of mission 1 could give this info?

Ice Queen's description, "She glady helps" should be "She gladly helps".

Ice Queen's dialog seems to show she is talking to someone; I thought maybe another hero, but no one is with her but a Wyvern agent, so maybe she's meant to be talking to him. Regardless, this seems a key point - I suggest that on Ice Queen's defeat, the player should get a clue to the effect that she heard Ice Queen talking with Wyvern agents (or whomever). This clue could also hint at why it's necessary to "Defeat the ambush leader!" which suddenly popped up as an objective.

It seems like 3 patrols spawn on Ice Queen's defeat; it would kind of make more sense for these to be ambushes, since this IS a trap. But 3 ambushes would be pretty overwhelming at this level, so maybe have only one (easy) ambush and several patrols? That would let you mix their dialog up a bit more also, as all 3 patrols generate the same 2 lines of dialog when they spawn.

"Ambushed" clue: how can Wyvern have set this meeting up as a trap for me specifically? Only the contact knew I was going here, since he sent me -- did he betray me? He doesn't act like it in the debriefing, though. Perhaps Ice Queen purposely let herself be seen so that someone would be sent after her? But it compromises her connection with Wyvern, and the Freedom Militia was previously established as being VERY compartmentalized, so this seems out of character for their organization. Needs some more explanation for how this happened, IMHO.

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact's description of Agent Williams' interrogation is pretty chilling, but probably fine for a villain contact. Excellent briefing on the why and how of destroying the Wyvern base.

With the graphic description of how the contact wants me to totally demolish the Wyvern base, I'm surprised this mission isn't also a Defeat All. I know people hate Defeat Alls, but the story seems to point towards one, and the base isn't that large. Your call, of course.

I kind of would've expected something more dramatic to happen after "rigging the generator to explode". Ideal would be starting a timer until the base explodes, but I know this isn't possible. Maybe give a clue describing the base is about to blow up, or generate an ambush with Wyvern or technicians running to stop the generator from overloading? Also, if you leave any Wyvern alive, I'd think they could just stop the generator from overloading once you leave.

I clicked the 4 computers; only the first one gave any info, but it gave a laundry list of different things (commo logs, intel, dossiers, Wyvern base locations). The next 3 computers didn't give anything new. You might consider splitting this clue up into 4 different pieces, and having each computer give a piece of it, so that the last 3 computers are more interesting.

OK, I like the mission exit popup, describing the base exploding.

Mission 4
Briefing: I like that your actions in the previous mission have caused Wyvern activity to drop. You might have Cynthia Wong casually mentioned in the dossier clue in mission 3, though, as a sort of foreshadowing. Shouldn't she have a cool codename like Ice Queen and Liberty's Son, also? Also, "commicate" should be "communicate" here. Good plan on kidnapping Liberty's Son's girlfriend, though, to make him come out; seems very villainous!

It's not quite clear what Cynthia is doing in this warehouse; is she hiding out in a safehouse? Planning a Freedom Militia counteroffensive?

It occurs to me that kidnapping a telepath should be difficult as Cynthia should be able to telepathically call for help as soon as she sees me (instead of doing so while in Arachnos custody as the contact wants). She does generate an ambush, though, which makes sense for this.

Mission 5
Briefing: plot seems a little sketchier here; couldn't Cynthia Wong telepathically warn Liberty's Son that he is being lured into a trap? It seems unnecessarily risky to "knock her unconscious and take her to another location" -- if she wakes up early, anyone sees her being moved, or one of the Arachnos personnel gives up this info under interrogation, the motivation for Liberty's Son to attack this base suddenly vanishes. It would make more sense for Cynthia to still be in this base, maybe guarded by the last Arachnos holdouts.

Found Liberty's Son; he has good dialog and a good description, but seemed a pretty straightforward boss fight, which didn't seem exciting enough (IMHO) for the final mission of a story arc.

Debriefing: kinda chilling how the contact describes the plans for the hero's execution, but fitting for a villainous arc.

I kind of think this mission could use more action in order to make it more of a grand finale. May I suggest: Don't have Liberty's Son initially on the map; add a couple Arachnos/Freedom Militia battles. Add Cynthia as a hostage being guarded by the Freedom Militia, who has just barely been rescued by the good guys, but then you show up and beat up the good guys. Cynthia cries out in despair, telepathically calling all heroes in range to come save her. A Freedom Militia ambush shows up to try and save her again, but you beat them up. Maybe you're given the task to extract Cynthia from the base to a more secure location, but then Liberty's Son spawns along the exit path, vowing revenge against you and to save Cynthia, and you beat him up and finish off the Freedom Militia once and for all.

Souvenir: "Public Note of Execution" seems a rather impersonal souvenir and has a rather dry description. I suggest maybe stealing a gold locket or other piece of jewelry from Cynthia Wong, some item that Liberty's Son gave her as a symbol of their love - the love you used to destroy them. (Muhaha)

Overall
I like the premise, the dialog from both Freedom Militia and Arachnos, and the coldhearted yet detailed style of the mission briefings and debriefings. The design of the Freedom Militia enemies is quite nice. I would've liked a few more clues linking the plot together and/or providing flavor text. I liked the gameplay of the first 2 missions, but the last 3 missions were a bit on the mundane side in terms of gameplay, and could be spiced up a bit, especially the final mission. I never had a "wow, this is awesome!" moment. But it was a good arc overall and I rated it 4 stars.

Fighting Freedom (by @LaserJesus) (arc id 177930)

Premise is that you're beating up a team of young heroes, which is nicely symmetrical with one of my blue side story arcs, so I thought it'd be a good one to try. Level range is 21-30 red side. I played a 19 SS/will brute.

Mission 1
Briefing: good explanation of the situation. I'm to go help the Marcones against this Freedom Militia hero group.

Mission objectives: "Save Jummy Velasco", should be "Save Jimmy Velasco".

I rather like the Freedom Militia uniforms. The group reminds me of a more heroic Outcasts group. Nice dialog. I kept thinking the fire blaster girl was my Paris Hilton NPC though; it's the orange outfit.

Anarchist Blaster maybe should be Anarchist Defender with her empathy powers?

I like all the objectives you need to save here (the various drug shipments and labs and the Family guys).

(Leveled to 20 and took Quick Recovery.)

Mission 2
Briefing: contact has me going after a Freedom Militia officer called Ice Queen. I think it would be a little nicer if the player got a Clue about Ice Queen in mission 1; it's clearly from interrogating the Freedom Militia captives, perhaps the boss of mission 1 could give this info?

Ice Queen's description, "She glady helps" should be "She gladly helps".

Ice Queen's dialog seems to show she is talking to someone; I thought maybe another hero, but no one is with her but a Wyvern agent, so maybe she's meant to be talking to him. Regardless, this seems a key point - I suggest that on Ice Queen's defeat, the player should get a clue to the effect that she heard Ice Queen talking with Wyvern agents (or whomever). This clue could also hint at why it's necessary to "Defeat the ambush leader!" which suddenly popped up as an objective.

It seems like 3 patrols spawn on Ice Queen's defeat; it would kind of make more sense for these to be ambushes, since this IS a trap. But 3 ambushes would be pretty overwhelming at this level, so maybe have only one (easy) ambush and several patrols? That would let you mix their dialog up a bit more also, as all 3 patrols generate the same 2 lines of dialog when they spawn.

"Ambushed" clue: how can Wyvern have set this meeting up as a trap for me specifically? Only the contact knew I was going here, since he sent me -- did he betray me? He doesn't act like it in the debriefing, though. Perhaps Ice Queen purposely let herself be seen so that someone would be sent after her? But it compromises her connection with Wyvern, and the Freedom Militia was previously established as being VERY compartmentalized, so this seems out of character for their organization. Needs some more explanation for how this happened, IMHO.

Mission 3
Briefing: the contact's description of Agent Williams' interrogation is pretty chilling, but probably fine for a villain contact. Excellent briefing on the why and how of destroying the Wyvern base.

With the graphic description of how the contact wants me to totally demolish the Wyvern base, I'm surprised this mission isn't also a Defeat All. I know people hate Defeat Alls, but the story seems to point towards one, and the base isn't that large. Your call, of course.

I kind of would've expected something more dramatic to happen after "rigging the generator to explode". Ideal would be starting a timer until the base explodes, but I know this isn't possible. Maybe give a clue describing the base is about to blow up, or generate an ambush with Wyvern or technicians running to stop the generator from overloading? Also, if you leave any Wyvern alive, I'd think they could just stop the generator from overloading once you leave.

I clicked the 4 computers; only the first one gave any info, but it gave a laundry list of different things (commo logs, intel, dossiers, Wyvern base locations). The next 3 computers didn't give anything new. You might consider splitting this clue up into 4 different pieces, and having each computer give a piece of it, so that the last 3 computers are more interesting.

OK, I like the mission exit popup, describing the base exploding.

Mission 4
Briefing: I like that your actions in the previous mission have caused Wyvern activity to drop. You might have Cynthia Wong casually mentioned in the dossier clue in mission 3, though, as a sort of foreshadowing. Shouldn't she have a cool codename like Ice Queen and Liberty's Son, also? Also, "commicate" should be "communicate" here. Good plan on kidnapping Liberty's Son's girlfriend, though, to make him come out; seems very villainous!

It's not quite clear what Cynthia is doing in this warehouse; is she hiding out in a safehouse? Planning a Freedom Militia counteroffensive?

It occurs to me that kidnapping a telepath should be difficult as Cynthia should be able to telepathically call for help as soon as she sees me (instead of doing so while in Arachnos custody as the contact wants). She does generate an ambush, though, which makes sense for this.

Mission 5
Briefing: plot seems a little sketchier here; couldn't Cynthia Wong telepathically warn Liberty's Son that he is being lured into a trap? It seems unnecessarily risky to "knock her unconscious and take her to another location" -- if she wakes up early, anyone sees her being moved, or one of the Arachnos personnel gives up this info under interrogation, the motivation for Liberty's Son to attack this base suddenly vanishes. It would make more sense for Cynthia to still be in this base, maybe guarded by the last Arachnos holdouts.

Found Liberty's Son; he has good dialog and a good description, but seemed a pretty straightforward boss fight, which didn't seem exciting enough (IMHO) for the final mission of a story arc.

Debriefing: kinda chilling how the contact describes the plans for the hero's execution, but fitting for a villainous arc.

I kind of think this mission could use more action in order to make it more of a grand finale. May I suggest: Don't have Liberty's Son initially on the map; add a couple Arachnos/Freedom Militia battles. Add Cynthia as a hostage being guarded by the Freedom Militia, who has just barely been rescued by the good guys, but then you show up and beat up the good guys. Cynthia cries out in despair, telepathically calling all heroes in range to come save her. A Freedom Militia ambush shows up to try and save her again, but you beat them up. Maybe you're given the task to extract Cynthia from the base to a more secure location, but then Liberty's Son spawns along the exit path, vowing revenge against you and to save Cynthia, and you beat him up and finish off the Freedom Militia once and for all.

Souvenir: "Public Note of Execution" seems a rather impersonal souvenir and has a rather dry description. I suggest maybe stealing a gold locket or other piece of jewelry from Cynthia Wong, some item that Liberty's Son gave her as a symbol of their love - the love you used to destroy them. (Muhaha)

Overall
I like the premise, the dialog from both Freedom Militia and Arachnos, and the coldhearted yet detailed style of the mission briefings and debriefings. The design of the Freedom Militia enemies is quite nice. I would've liked a few more clues linking the plot together and/or providing flavor text. I liked the gameplay of the first 2 missions, but the last 3 missions were a bit on the mundane side in terms of gameplay, and could be spiced up a bit, especially the final mission. I never had a "wow, this is awesome!" moment. But it was a good arc overall and I rated it 4 stars.

I tried starting Game of Knucklebones (#35280) but it wouldn't start for me. Probably broken by a patch.


Tidebringer (by Col_Blitzkrieger, arc #12590)

Stated level 40-54 red side, marked as "hard" in description. I tried playing my 50 thug/TA mastermind on Ruthless.

Mission 1
Briefing: contact seems pretty rude, but that's pretty reasonable for a villain contact. Good description of the problem.

The mission turns out to be a defeat all, which is annoying but makes sense the way the problem is presented (clear out a ghost infestation). Thankfully the map is pretty small.

I like the dialog the ghosts have. Though "Yarr, he seems like an honest man, he seems" ... I think the second "he seems" would read better as "he does".

Good use of clues in this mission. "Mention of an Admiral" clue is rather awkwardly phrased; suggest you rearrange so that the most threatening statement, "The Admiral cannot be stopped" is the last thing said, rather than "Stop botherin' us!" which is much less ominous.

Mission 2
Briefing: another good briefing, very descriptive of what needs to be done and good characterization for the contact.

Seemed a decent mission, good use of clues. "Agent Denmaku's information" sure portrays the Agent as quick to give up the Admiral's location; the clue justifies why, but it surprised me a little.

Mission 3
Another good briefing; this time the contact sends me after the Admiral.

I like the ship full of ghosts; the dialog between the ghosts arguing over whether to follow the Admiral was a nice touch.

Underestimated the Admiral though; he spawned as only an EB, but he hit me for 1400 then 1200 which I couldn't handle even in bodyguard mode. Second try I was more careful, cleared the pirates around him and then stayed out of melee range and let the pets and TA debuffs take care of him.

Mission 4
Ok, this time we're off to "Cap'n Mako's nautical museum", a location that is both funny yet believable that it might exist.

I'm not really sure if these Spectral Pirates are custom characters or not, so they seem pretty good to me. If they are custom characters (and I kinda think they are, doubt the Port Oakes pirates go to 50), the lieutenants having build up is quite nasty, might want to tone them down.

It's cool running into Jenkins again, though a level 50 arc seems a bit high for him to be around in.

Does this museum have an actual staff? You might consider adding "museum curator" or some other random hostages as staff. They wouldn't need to be required objectives (villains don't care, after all), they'd just be for color.

This map is wonderfully moody with the funny green lighting and the moss and water everywhere, but it is also insanely large. I must have taken 3 elevators by the time I wrote this. Consider using a smaller map (though I am not sure if a similar map exists in smaller size) or adding more stuff? I guess I did click a couple false glowies and rescued Jenkins already, but maybe a little more to do would be good. Perhaps more ghosts with dialog would be nice also?

One technique I've seen used is to give all false glowies a unique name and (usually funny) description, to make them more interesting (even if not relevant to the plot). It's not really vital, though, and the extra text can take a lot of space.

Doh, finally found Tidebringer's display case (after clicking many false glowies) and now it's spawned the Admiral somewhere and I have to get him ... unfortunately the map is huge so this is an extensive search. Finally found Red Terror on the first floor, another +1 EB; I'm afraid of the pirate cutlasses now so I keep well back and debuff while the pets get him.

Mission 5
Briefing: How did the contact suddenly decide that the Admiral is out to awaken the Leviathan? I mean, it's a good plot, but we don't have clues pointing in that direction. I suggest you have Red Terror gloat about the Admiral's plan to go after Leviathan (giving him a clue on defeat) and the player and the contact find out about it that way.

I do like how this escalates the plot to threaten the whole Rogue Isles. Though I have to wonder - won't (effectively) nuking Sharkhead Isle, most of the rest of the Rogue Isles, and all the people on them, be somewhat unheroic for a "hero" like the Admiral?

Found and freed Brick and Veluta, nice dialog on their guards.

Went after the new Admiral Darkwater; still an EB, but with hurricane this time. I was doing pretty well against him, but then a bunch of ambushes showed up - both Arachnos and Longbow, I think, with the Longbow as enemies. I got mega slowed by the Admiral's debuffs (snowstorm and/or freezing rain, I think) which stopped my ability to Aid Self and the Longbow managed to get me. I like how Longbow wanted to arrest both the Admiral and me, though; it makes it clearer that the Admiral's crossed the line, addressing my earlier complaint that this was an unheroic plan. But it's pretty well established that he's laboring to end Blackbeard's curse, so his motivation remains believable.

Refilled on inspirations and went back in for a second try. This time Darkwater 2-shotted Veluta, but Brick and my pets managed to do some damage to him while I debuffed with trick arrows, albeit slowly due to hurricane debuffs. A third ambush spawned when I got him down to 25%, this time of pirates. 3 ambushes in an AV fight is pretty ferocious; still, it's the end boss of the arc, the mission has countless warnings about how badass the final encounter is, and I think one of those ambushes might've actually been friendlies (it was pretty chaotic), so it's not completely out of line. I finally managed to beat the Admiral down to 0 health on this try, but it took awhile.

Debriefing: the contact says the magic sword shattered, but I don't remember getting a clue or message to this effect. Maybe should add one.

Overall
It's a well-crafted arc with a decent plot and a logical sequence of missions that further the plot. The dialog and clues were well written. I think the pirates with build up hit a little too hard and mission 4's map is overly long, but these are minor nitpicks. I do have to say I never got blown away by any single moment of awesomeness, or ever got fully immersed in how cool the story was, so I can't overwhelmingly enthuse about it. But it's a well written and polished story arc and I did think it deserved 5 stars.


Note: I don't seem to be able to post on the UK forums, so can't actually post this in Col.Blitzkrieger's thread there. Feel free to post a link to this review there if you have access.

5/29/2009

Wednesday night I started off playing Mega (16 SS/will brute) testing and re-testing my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc as I made minor tweaks as a result of player feedback; the major one was I nerfed one of my super strength allies to no longer have Rage, to cut his DPS a bit since he seemed to hit too hard. A couple other players wanted to join me and I ended up leading a 3 player villain team through a Skyway City mayhem.

After that I played Primadonna (39 sonic/kin corr) on an Ice Mistral SF, with a team mix of

3 fortunatas (only 2 had buffs)
1 kin corruptor (me)
1 claw/ninj stalker
1 dark/fire brute

We did fine on the SF, getting through in 1hr 25mins, only wiping out to ambushes after we had beat the AV and already won the TF. This got Primadonna to level 40 and earned 25 merits (17.65 MPH).

Switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and earned the Commuter day job badge, and ran through a story called Kidnapping an Idol where you rescue (I think) a teen J-pop singer who gets kidnapped by a rival record label. The writing was uneven but the plot and mission design were pretty good, and I gave this arc 4 stars. I also earned the (soon to be meaningless) Escapist and Mission Engineer badges.

I was sick at home on Thursday and spent most of the day on City of Heroes. Started off playing Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a Recluse SF with a team mix of:

3 rad corruptors
1 cold corruptor (me)
1 ninj stalker
1 invuln brute
1 shield brute (linkdead most of the time)
1 kin corruptor

With the insane amount of buff/debuff we had, even with one person mostly linkdead we sped through the RSF and easily manhandled the Freedom Phalanx (we did have some deaths, but battle rez'd and beat them on the first try). Finished in 43mins 23sec and got an Endoplasm SHO.

After that I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on another Ice Mistral SF, this time with a small team of

2 rad corruptors (me, and a 2-boxed character who never entered missions except the last one)
1 ninj stalker
1 SS/shield brute

I'd never seen a SS/shield brute in action before; he seemed to do insane AOE damage between Rage, Fury, Foot Stomp and Shield Charge. With a small team, even with one character basically not being played, we were able to very quickly move through the SF, finishing in a speedy 43min 55sec for 25 merits (34.15 MPH).

Recipe prices seemed lower than usual at the Black Market, and after the SF, I had Indigo buy, craft and slot a fifth Positron's Blast in Fire Breath (+6.25% global recharge) and a fifth Decimation in Blaze (another +6.25% global recharge). This puts her total global recharge at 66.25%.

After that I played Mega (17 SS/will brute) through the Time Loop story arc, in which you fight with Wyvern and unwisely meddle with time travel, getting stuck into a "time loop" where you repeat the same actions in each mission (with minor changes). This was a neat idea with decent writing, but I felt it had some plot holes and some elements that didn't make sense. I ended up giving it 4 stars.

A friend on a 50 thermal corruptor wanted to join me as a malefactor, and we played through the last part of Time Loop together, then I dragged her through the first mission of Celebrity Kidnapping. This got Mega to level 18, where I took Super Jump; not strictly necessary, but I was tired of relying on jet packs and jump packs.

I tried soloing Mega through the Fine Literature story arc, which was a fun story where an insane and insanely bad author tries to force publishing houses to publish her books, or else. Particularly fun are the villain's custom henchmen, who are all given the names of literary personalities. Custom mobs were too rough for Mega to handle at her low level (curse you, Jane Austen and your empathy heals!!) and so I ended up switching to Blond Justice (50 bs/shield, soft capped defense) who had a much easier time with it. The story was short and fun but needed a little more content to really be awesome, I thought; I gave it 4 stars.

Teen Phalanx Forever! was at 5 stars and made it to the front page of the Architect Entertainment default search for most of the day Thursday, which caused a lot more people to notice and play my story arc, providing a steady trickle of ticket awards and feedback tells, which was really awesome. Alas, it could not last, as I eventually got a low rating with no feedback (presumably a grief vote) which pushed my story arc off of the front page. Nevertheless this all got my arc up over 300 votes, which was quite nice.

Joined a hero-side 2nd respec trial on Samurai-ko (38 katana/will scrapper). Our team mix was:

1 shield tanker
2 will scrappers (including me)
2 dark armor scrappers
1 ice blaster
1 rad defender
1 rad controller

We had a bad spread on level range, with too many lowbies and not enough mentors. We ended up with 3 sidekicks and 3 mentors, me running unSK'd at 38, and the blaster had to quit due to lack of a mentor (I tried SK'ing him but this didn't raise him high enough to get exp). Being unSK'd at the low end of the 38-43 range got me killed a couple times, but overall it went well enough and we finished in 1hr 31sec. Samurai-ko got to level 39, and I chose to take the respec and the badge (rather than merits); I didn't really need a respec, but thought I'd bank it for a rainy day.

After that I played Schadenfreude (44 AR/pain corruptor) on a 5-player LEGION villain team that mostly beat up high level Snakes, along with a few Crey and Longbow. This got Schadenfreude to 45. I also had someone tell me that one of the I15 TFs has a 5th Column vampire NPC named Schadenfreude, too; not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand I think it's an awesome name for a 5th Column boss (obviously); on the other hand, I've had this character name since CoV came out. Hopefully it won't be a problem for me to keep it.

I had been toying with the idea of starting a super reflexes brute for most of the day, and late that night I finally broke down and did it, starting an SS/SR brute. After exhaustive trial and error on trying names at the character select screen, I finally settled on the name Sabine; I was vaguely thinking she'd be from the Cimeroran period, maybe from a rival people (to mirror the historical Romans and Sabines), but ended up giving her a background story that she was a hero that crossed the line into killing people, and got sent to the Zig as a result. Figure she might be a candidate for "going rogue" when that happens. Still tweaking her costume (currently a sort of blue jump suit with white boots); already did one run to Pocket D's tailor to make a costume change, and expecting to do another one the next time she gets played. I ran Sabine through Kalinda's first story arc, getting to level 4, then did the Dr. Geist and the Scientific Method story arc, which is a really wonderful mad science story for lowbie villains. I gave it 5 stars. This got Sabine to level 5 before i called it a night.

Changes made as a result of player feedback:
* Nerfed Back Alley Boy from Extreme Superstrength to Standard Superstrength. This drops Rage from his powerset, reducing his DPS so he isn't quite as overpowering.
* Reshuffled spawns in mission 3 so that it is less likely the final AV will spawn directly on your head; the penultimate encounter is now "Back" while the final one is "Front".

Fine Literature review (arc 136522)

Premise appears to be to fight a crazed writer that is sick and tired of getting her manuscripts rejected. Level range is 1-54 neutral. I played an 18 SS/will brute on Malicious difficulty.

I wonder if you want Officer Dickson to maybe be Officer Dixon instead?

Mission 1
Briefing: The captions for the mission briefing, "Fine Literature" and "Freeing the Publisher" maybe should be in a larger or bolder typeface, to stand out more.

"offcers" should be "officers". Dickson asks me to "discover Literatura's plans", who I assume is the "crazed villain" described in the first paragraph, but you should maybe make that explicit, e.g., "She's calling herself Literatura now, and has taken hostages" or something.

With the goal being to stop a new villain, I kinda think this should be a Heroic arc, not Neutral.

Second part of briefing, "Thanks for helping" seems much too short. Maybe have him give some extra background info on either Literatura or the publishing group. If Literatura has actually been submitting manuscripts, it seems like the police would at least know her name (or pen name) and a little history for why she's snapped.

Love the famous authors as henchmen concept, it's very fun. Though I think "Literary Heroes" is not a good name for their faction, since they are clearly bad guys, not heroes. Maybe "Literary Greats" or "Notable Authors"?

Found a police officer hostage and freed him; not sure why he isn't a required objective.

Jane Austen was an empathy minion; she's one of many minions, so maybe this is okay, but dangerous in large numbers.

I don't get why John Milton has electric and energy attacks? He's just supposed to be a thug dressed up in costume, right?

A Shakespeare/Milton/Austen spawn beat me up; a combination of Jane Austen's heals and John Milton's END drain did me in. Curse you, evil authors!

Freed PageWorks Publisher and he gave me the "Tip-Off" clue. "over-heard" should be "overheard".

I like Literatura's costume. "Lewis Caroll" in her description should be "Lewis Carroll". She has an excellent back story, but how did such a bookish girl happen to gain superstrength? She hits very hard - she spawned as a Boss for me, and even after I beat up all her supporting minions, she managed to KO Blow me out.

At this point I decide I'm playing too low level of a character for this story arc (I should really know better...all custom mobs is always harder), so I switch to a level 50 broadsword/shield scrapper with soft capped defenses, and I restart the arc on Unyielding difficulty. My 50 scrapper had no problem defeating Literatura (again a boss) and friends, so I think level and slotting was my issue.

Debriefing: Seems very short. Contact says "I'm grateful you've freed the warehouse" ... this doesn't seem consistent, I thought I rescued the people in an office, and the publisher warned me that a warehouse is being attacked.

Mission 2
Briefing: good setup for the next mission.

Second part of briefing seems way too short ("I thank you!") ... maybe add some extra background info here.

Mission objectives have six different flavors of seizing books; you might consider merging them all into "6 piles of books to seize", unless you feel it's particularly fun the way you have it split into 6 objectives.

I like the awful book titles that you find in this mission. You might consider having each book award a clue that is an excerpt from that particular book. This would be both fun and help establish why Literatura must be stopped from publishing her work at all costs. And I really want to read some of "Snide and Prejudiced"! The description in the progress bar is very fun, but is so small and on the screen for such a short time.

I think this mission could use more dialog, considering all the mobs are highly literary people who I would picture having stuff to say. You might consider adding a couple patrols or non-required bosses for the sake of adding some dialog. They could either quote literature, or comment on how crazy their boss is for making them dress up like this.

Literatura has pretty much identical dialog in this mission as in the last, except for saying "Chapter 2". I think the famous quotations theme is good, but she should use different ones in this mission. "Poor Kiping" should be "Poor Kipling" though.

That seems to be it for the story arc. Debriefing was okay, but a little anticlimactic; though stopping crazed writer isn't quite the same as saving the world. I like the "Very Bad Novels" souvenir, though. "siezed" should be "seized" in the souvenir.


Overall
Fun theme, a neat new villain and nice costumes and concepts for her henchmen. I think it needs a little more content though; no need to increase the length (2 missions seems fine for the plot), but maybe add some additional supporting dialog from her henchmen, and/or additional clues (such as from collecting the books) to help support the literary theme. Literatura's dialog in mission 2 should definitely be changed from mission 1; maybe she can go into Mercutio's death scene upon defeat, or something.

Some of the powerset selections were rather weird; I still don't get why Literatura would have superstrength or why any of her henchmen should have energy/electric blasts. I can maybe believe Jane Austen would have empathy. You might consider changing them to have more "normal henchmen" type powers, like weapon sets or martial arts. The minions and lieutenants seemed a little on the tough side also; they were fine for my 50, but really hard for my 19. You might consider giving the low ranked ones easier secondary powers, to make them more fodder-like. Up to you.

I like the concept and the enemy costumes looked great; it was fun hacking my way through notable authors, even fun being defeated by them. I was thinking I would rate this a high 4 or low 5, but I do think there needs to be a little more dialog and supporting background, so I settled on 4 stars.


-----

I owe a review to:

@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@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

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

Here's my review of Time Loop. Enjoy!

Time Loop (by @Bubbawheat) (arc id 137561)

Premise is that you're stuck in a time loop and can't escape. Stated level is 15-30 with neutral morality. I played a 17 SS/will brute on Malicious difficulty.

Mission 1
Briefing: Not really clear why the first sentence is in green text, it doesn't seem to be a key phrase.

Foreshadow seems to want me to steal something from Wyvern for their own good? Seems odd. He also says "Wyvern is not taking my warning seriously", but does not explain what his "warning" actually is; I think this maybe should be made more clear. (I already anticipate that I'm going to run smack into whatever he warned Wyvern about. Foreshadowing, so to speak.)

"aquire" should be "acquire" in the briefing.

Foreshadow says "retrieve the anomaly" and "get what you need", but is very vague about what I'm actually getting for him. Some more info would be nice. How am I supposed to recognize it? (I mean, aside from it being a glowy.)

The mission title, "Investigate the disturbance" and objective of "Find the disturbance" doesn't seem to match what Foreshadow asked me to do. Maybe need to reconcile those; either have Foreshadow ask me to "investigate" or change the mission goal to "Retrieve" (or "Steal") the anomaly.

As a villain I have no problem breaking into the Wyvern base and stealing stuff; kinda think heroes might have issues with this though, as Wyvern is a heroic group. Maybe this is okay for a neutral arc, but you might consider using a more shades-of-grey faction as enemies.

Found a Computer and clicked on it and it seemingly did nothing; did find a message in my chat tabs for it though. You might consider adding a progress bar and a slight delay; maybe you intentionally set it to 0, but its absence made me wonder if it was broken.

Found Agent Marx and fought him. He has dialog strongly suggesting it would be a bad idea to take the item from him; it seems necessary for the plot for me to do so, though, so I beat him up, causing him to accidentally trigger the device everyone thinks is dangerous.

All the info up to this point makes it sound like a really bad idea to do this. The plot seems to depend on the player doing it anyway, in order to set up the "time loop". I don't think it's good to force the player into doing something that the story clearly shows is a bad idea; I suggest you consider reworking the plot so that it doesn't require the player to do something dumb in order for the story to work. Perhaps Marx or Wyvern scientists could have already tried playing with the device before you got there (which would fit with Foreshadow's warning that Wyvern didn't know what they were doing), instead of having the player herself trigger the paradox.

Marx's artifact clue: should this really be called Marx's artifact? Though I got it from him, it's clear that he wasn't the original owner, since they confiscated it from an unnamed evil scientist. You might give this evil scientist a name and call it his artifact. Also, the description of the artifact is very dry ("small round metal sphere with one button that has been pushed"), making it a little too obviously a plot device; you might consider making its description a bit more mysterious and enigmatic.

Foreshadow's briefing says there is both research and lab equipment being kept at the base, but I didn't see anything like that; just an empty computer glowy and then I got the "device" by beating the boss.

Debriefing: OK, I see now why the first sentence of the original briefing was colored green, as it is repeated here. But the rest of the debriefing is empty; should really put some text here. Maybe repeating what he said before, with some deviations because the player protests that she's already been doing this.

Mission 2
Briefing: exactly the same as the first briefing. Which maybe makes sense for a time loop.

Second part of briefing: OK, glad that I was able to tell Foreshadow I've already done it, so as to change his dialog, but now he asks for the artifact and acts like I don't have it. But I clearly have "Marx's artifact" my clue journal and have no new clue or other text telling me that it vanished. I can perhaps infer that it has vanished from Foreshadow's dialog, but I feel this isn't made clear enough.

Mission popup: it reminds me that there was a computer and an Agent Marx, which is good. But why would I think the computer or Agent Marx know anything more? I already checked both of them in the last iteration of this time loop.

"Investigate the disturbance" still not an accurate description for this mission. I suggest something like "Figure out what's going on" or similar.

Computer: this time there's a progress bar. Looking in my chat log, I see that I found an "encrypted folder". This seems strange; this folder wasn't there the last mission, and if this is really a time loop, where did it come from? I also suggest you add a Clue for "Encrypted File" or similar, because if this arc is played on a team, only the person who clicked the computer would see the message you currently display, and that message isn't very visible to begin with.

Marx's dialog is subtly different between mission 1 and mission 2. (In this mission he mentions getting a promotion and Steve not getting one.) The differences between the two missions makes me think this isn't a "true" time loop; unless there is some cause for these differences that is not yet apparent.

Marx remembers fighting me before! Now, why would he remember that? Is the artifact putting *everyone* in a time loop, not just me?

The new "Marx's Artifact" clue is capitalized and punctuated differently than the previous "Marx's artifact." clue. Not sure if that is intentional or not.

After defeating Marx and getting the code from him, it triggered a new objective of "enter the code into the computer". This is awkwardly handled because it actually spawns a NEW computer, different than the one I checked before, so it's in a different location. I actually think it would be sufficient to have the Encrypted File from the first computer and Marx's cipher key to be able to get the data; not sure the additional computer is necessary. I think the current structure would be especially puzzling to the player if, for example, I stealthed to kill Marx first, then came back to click on the first computer (having already gained the cipher key) and had the computer tell me I need a key.

The new computer is guarded by Wyvern with interesting dialog; they ALSO remember previous iterations of the time loop, so definitely this time loop doesn't work the way I would've expected. Also, the new computer is named "Wyvern Computer- right click to access information", but the mission ended as soon as I defeated all the guards.

There is some data you can get by pulling up the "info" on the computer; this is a nonstandard method for giving the player data, so some players will almost certainly miss it, especially because people tend to punch "exit" as soon as they get Mission Complete. I recommend you put this information in "clue" format instead, then award it on completing the objective, or on completing the mission.

In the second computer's info, it says it's the same computer I checked earlier (despite being in a different location) and it says there are two major artifacts in the base. It looks like I am forced to start a new mission to get them. But I'm already in the Wyvern base, why couldn't I get the two major artifacts now? Seems a logic problem.

Debriefing: again too short, but follows the pattern set so far.

Mission 3
Briefing: repeats previous information; makes sense story-wise but not that interesting as a result. Second part of briefing is better since you interrupt Foreshadow with new info and change his dialog.

Inside the mission: why are there 15 possible artifacts to search now? Why weren't these in previous runs through the time loop? The logic of how this time loop works is very confusing.

Found a computer and clicked it; for some reason I "rip it up" which is a description I'd usually reserve for tearing up paper or something similar.

The 15 artifacts all have a little text in a clue; I like that they're all different, but I would suggest you make them seem a little more cool, even if they are not necessary for the plot. "A garbage can" and "you don't know what this is" is info but kinda boring. I like the Harry Potter book clue though.

-- a thermal corruptor wanted to join me at this point; being on a team, I end up needing to move faster, so may be less detailed from here on --

Mission ended abruptly after defeating Marx; what happened to finding the second artifact? It's not clear why I can't just find the other artifact now instead of having to exit the mission.

Mission 4
Briefing seems unnecessary now...at least the story seems to recognize this and cuts it short.

"Investigate the disturbance" still seems a bad title. Maybe "Break the Cycle", or "Escape Time Loop".

Inside the mission, I find it isn't the same warehouse! The mission entry popup alludes to this. I'm even more confused by this time loop.

I initially thought the mission objective of "Find artifact from second Wing Talon Agent" should more properly be "Find artifact from Agent Steve", but the way Steve shows up and his description and dialog were actually quite funny just as they were.

I started looking for Marx to get the other artifact, when I suddenly ran into Time Shifter, a boss surrounded by weird critters (mix of ghosts, shivans and hydra). Aha, this guy must be behind everything that happened! But after defeating him, I find that he's actually the weird artifact that Marx had, only transformed into an actual enemy. This was pretty weird but is a neat idea; although there's some ground work laid for this (in that the artifact is described as slightly larger each time), I think some extra foreshadowing of this would be helpful to set up this big reveal.

Debriefing was a little anticlimactic; Foreshadow seems mildly pleased that I solved the temporal disturbance problem. For the sake of closure, I think it would've been nice to know a little bit more about Time Shifter and its origins, and what ended up happening to Marx and Steve after the story ends.

Decently written souvenir. "A molten lump of metal" is kind of an uninspiring name for a souvenir, though; maybe "Agent Steve's Wyvern ID Card"? Though that's not quite as central a story element.

Overall
Neat story overall, with some good writing. However, I felt there were some logic issues with how the time loop worked; the fact that the Wyvern base changes each mission, and stuff appears that wasn't there before, was rather disconcerting. The plot seemed to force the player into certain key actions (beating up Marx and starting the Time Loop in the first place; learning Steve has the second artifact in mission 3, but being unable to look for Steve even though he's presumably somewhere in the base, until mission 4).

In a true time loop I would expect everything to be exactly the same each time, except for changes that the dis-entimed person makes. I thought that it was particularly weird that the contents of the computer changed from one loop to the next, and one loop had 15 artifacts and others had none. I can see that for your plot, you NEED stuff to change each time, but I feel like the story would benefit if you better describe why/how this is happening.

I also felt that the contact, Foreshadow, was very underused - he basically gives the same canned speech every time, and while I understand why the time loop forces him to do it, you really don't get very much out of the briefings/debriefings as a result. The bits where you interrupt him and he changes his speech are the most interesting parts of the briefings. At the end of the arc, it would be nice if he helped provide more explanation to neatly tie things up; as it currently stands, a lot of weird stuff happens and while it is neat, it's not at all clear why it's happening.

Anyway, some of these plot issues left me confused at times, but I enjoyed it overall. I gave it 4 stars.

Kidnapping an Idol review (arc id 136188)

Premise is that a teen idol has been kidnapped and needs to be rescued. Level range was 35-50. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster on heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing title: Minor nitpick, but I suggest you capitalize "Idol" and maybe make the briefing title either bold or a larger font to stand out.

Briefing: The contact says Shota is his agency's "top model and idol singer", but at the same time says "His debut concert is tonight!" I'm not sure it makes sense for the agency's top singer to be doing his first concert; possibly Shota should either be a promising new singer who is doing his first concert, or else he can be the top singer and it's not his debut (maybe he's doing a benefit concert or something).

Second part of briefing: "Shota had not filled out the final paper work to sign with us" -- this definitely contradicts Shota being their "top model" if they don't even have a contract with him. As a hero I'm a little uneasy at his suggestion that I should make any Agency contracts I find, disappear; that sounds rather villainous. (Granted, it is labeled a Neutral arc, though.)

Mission entry popup: "Aside from all the good looking people, it seems quite harmless." But I can see an enemy Idol Singer and Idol Manager in line of sight from where I entered, so this text doesn't seem right. Also "afterall" should be "after all" in this popup.

Mission objectives: "Defeat Yuto Nakajima" is among my objectives, but has not been introduced as a character yet. Consider either having the contact mention this guy's name, or rephrasing the objective to be "Defeat Agency manager" or something similar.

Idol Manager's description: "possesive" should be "possessive". They also seem to be sonic blast/martial arts with build up; this might be a little too dangerous a combination.

Does it really make sense for Idol Singer to be a minion? I'm not sure Idol Singers should be so common, maybe they should be a boss or lieutenant. The Idol Wannabes and Backup Dancers make perfect sense as minions though.

Backup Dancer has sonic powers, which I'm not sure makes sense since they aren't singers. Maybe they should be Martial Arts or Dual Blades, to look more acrobatic. Also, Backup Dancer's description, "dancer's" should be "dancers".

I found a glowy desk which was named "Looks for Clues" .. probably should have a more normal name like "Desk". I got "A fortune cookie" as a clue, but the text of the clue says nothing, just that it's "A fortune cookie from the Lucky Dragon." I think you should add some text to this clue, explaining to the player why she thinks this fortune cookie is important enough to treat as a clue. There needs to be some reason why this cookie is particularly suspicious.

The mission exit popup does touch on the cookie possibly being a lead. Perhaps move some of that text to the clue.

You might also want to add a clue from defeating Nakajima, saying that he confessed to kidnapping Shota.

Mission 2
Briefing: Neat briefing about why the Lucky Dragon is a likely place to investigate. "Lucky Dragon is notorious" should probably be "The Lucky Dragon is notorious". "waiters teeth" should be "waiter's teeth" or maybe "waiters' teeth". "I don't like it when people take my idols" should maybe be "I don't like it when people take my people".

"Shota belongs to Rocket's" -- this contradicts his earlier statement that Shota hadn't actually signed on with his firm yet. Though, maybe the contact actually does feel this possessive about Shota already; if that's your intent, this is fine.

Second part of briefing: "i" should be capitalized "I". "calibur" should be "calibre" or "caliber". "notorious for it's ninjas" should be "notorious for its ninja", or maybe better would be "notorious as a ninja hangout".

Mission entrance popup: "chinese" should be "Chinese".

Mission title, "Go General Gau's at the Lucky Dragon" doesn't quite make sense. I suggest maybe "Get Takeout at the Lucky Dragon".

"Lucky Dragon Ninja" minion needs a description.

I'm not sure why "Water Girl" or "Lucky Dragon Ninja" have energy melee; maybe worth mentioning in their descriptions. Martial arts, katana, or dual blades would all make sense without needing explanation.

You could also probably re-use some of the Tsoo minions for this mission if you wanted to save space, though this might lower the mission range unacceptably.

Got the "Credit Card Receipt" clue; this clue seems awfully short. "Ageny" should be "Agency" in this clue. It mentions "There is an address on the back", but usually you don't write your address on your credit card receipts, so this is kind of strange.

Mission exit popup: "Talent Scouts" should be "Talent Scout's".

Mission 3
Briefing: This briefing seems awfully short. I'd suggest you at least repeat what the address is (an old warehouse) and give a hint as to what opposition the player might face there.

Mission objectives: I love the "3 compromising photos of Shota to locate" objective. They should totally award a clue when you take them, though, with some description. This wouldn't be a clue that is important to the plot, just something amusing that the player could enjoy reading.

I think the Agency minions overdo it a bit on sonic blast; that's a LOT of stacking sonic debuff. It does make sense the Idol Singers and Idol Wannabes sould be sonic blast, but you might consider bumping the Idol Singers to lieutenant or boss, and maybe adding junior level Talent Scouts or Talent Agents who use some other power set.

Shota's description is just "Take Shota to the exit" which is the same as the objective; I think his description should be more descriptive of why he's such a superstar teen idol. His costume is kinda weird (just in his underpants?) and his captors are taking photos, which is pretty funny (and explains the compromising photos).

Shota says "How embarrasing!" when rescued; should be "embarrassing".

Found that Backup Dancers have empathy powerset; this would make a large group of Backup Dancers really hard to kill, so I suggest you cut empathy from minions and maybe reserve it for lieutenants or higher.

When you leave Shota, then come back for him, he says "It's about time someone came for me" -- but he actually has seen me earlier, when I rescued him, so this is a little bit of an odd thing to say.

Mission exit popup says I "recovered" revealing pictures of Shota, but when I actually clicked on the glowies in the mission, it said I was "deleting" them; this seems inconsistent.

Mission 4
Briefing: This mission actually sounds rather villainous; it sounds like we're being hired thugs smashing up the rival agency. Maybe that is okay for a neutral story arc though. You mention it a little, but maybe highlight more that the Agency is responsible for a lot of criminal misdeeds, so a hero player will feel better about taking them down.

Mission title: "Defeat The Agency Boss" doesn't seem accurate, as defeating the Agency Boss is only one of many objectives listed. Maybe it should be "Destroy the Agency" or "Put the Agency out of Business".

Mission objectives: After destroying a backup computer, "2 Backup Computers to Destroy" turns into "Backup Computer to Destroy"; probably should be "Destroy the last Backup".

"Agency Contract" has no message on the progress bar when you click it. It maybe should award a clue of "Shota's Contract" when you complete it.

I like how the Idol Singers actually sing and dance in this mission; I think they needed to do this more in earlier missions to give more of a feeling that they are singers.

The Agency Boss's description: "originally one of Rocket's idol or was rejected from the start" should be "originally one of Johnny Rocket's idols, or perhaps he was rejected from the start".

Nice debriefing I like how Shota gets a sudden crush on you for rescuing him; the way he's portrayed, I think this works even if the player is on a male character. "With a face like your's" should be "With a face like yours".

Nice souvenir.

Overall
The plotting and the mission design was pretty good. I think the writing is a uneven though; there are some good bits (I particularly like some parts of the last mission) but a lot of the clues and dialog are too short. It would help to add some more details to the earlier missions to give them more character and build up the "teen idol" theme more; maybe more idol wannabes with dialog and animations. I do like how the clues lead you from one mission to the next, but I think their description should be more detailed, and you might consider adding a few non-plot-relevant clues that just describe things you find and build a sense of immersion in the "celebrity teen idol" world.

I was leaning towards a high 3 or low 4 rating through much of the arc; the final mission with its nice debriefing and souvenir pushed me into giving it 4 stars.

-----

I owe a review to:

@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 163274
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@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 - second arc
@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

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

[ QUOTE ]
for most of the arc the Teens are just too much firepower. ... Both the Clockwork King and Clamor were ZOMGRANGERDOWNPWNED by BABy.

[/ QUOTE ]

I figured out something I could do to help address this! I adjusted Back Alley Boy's Super Strength powerset so that he wouldn't have Rage (needed to drop it down to Standard to accomplish this). That should lower his DPS a good bit. Going to hold off on any more nerfage than that until I see how that turns out, though.

If you get hate emails from BABy for nerfing him, though, you'll know why.

5/27/2009

I logged in to find that my revised Teen Phalanx Forever! arc got a 5-star rating and a positive story arc review from the most established story arc reviewer. He has a reputation for being critical, and his review style is so distinctive that I could almost write my own text for a negative review of my arc in his style -- so I was extremely pleased to get an unsolicited positive review. Yay!

From there I played Fire Emerald (36 fire/fire blaster) on a Synapse TF as part of the Task Forcing to the Top project that is being tracked on this very forum. Our team mix was:

2 emp defenders (including our TF-only character)
3 shield scrappers
1 rad controller
1 fire blaster (me)

We didn't have a proper tank, but had lots of scrappers. Somehow our scrappers and our rad controller shared tanking duties, which had the highly desirable result of them doing most of the dying and me not dying at all (a miracle for a fire/fire blaster). We all yelled at our hapless empaths because neither of them had either Fortitude or Recovery Aura. Well, we weren't really that obnoxious about it, but this did eventually guilt trip one of them into taking RA as a power pick after leveling.

We didn't really have a stealther so we fought through most everything; we did try stealthing two times that I remember, one of which ended in tears (all the "stealthers" dying and the rest of us coming to rescue them) and the other time seemed to succeed, teleporting us to the end boss. We beat up Babbage with no problem and a minimum of outside help. We did have some problems with AFKs; one scrapper had to AFK for 3 or so missions to pick someone up at the train station, then in the last mission one of our empaths went AFK and never came back, even after we beat the Clockwork King and got the "Task Force Complete" message. Unfortunately that defender idling inside the mission kept us from actually being awarded the merits for the TF, so no one wanted to actually quit the TF until that happened. We didn't really want to kick the AFK defender at the very end of the TF either. The team leader came up with a compromise solution, that we would wait 10 minutes for the defender to come back, and if she didn't get back, she would get kicked at that time so we could move on with our lives. In the intervening 10 minutes we wandered around Skyway City stirring up trouble, and helping to beat down the Babbage generated by another Synapse TF; ultimately the time ran out and the team leader reluctantly kicked the AFK defender, causing the TF completion dialog to pop up with 2hrs 58mins as TF time, earning us 61 merits (including 2 Babbages; 20.56 MPH). This was also the last TF that Fire Emerald needed for the Task Force Commander accolade.

After that I played Schadenfreude (43 AR/pain corruptor) on a 5-player coed hero and villain team in Rikti War Zone doing the "Save the World" mission. The Rikti were very harsh on the squishy members of our team, with hordes of ambushes smashing us repeatedly, while our stone tanker merrily chugged away tanking first Hro'Dtohz AV and then ambushing Nemesis AV. Nemesis had nasty AoEs that again blasted the squishy members of our team while leaving our stoner unhurt. After several runs back from the hospital we eventually recruited 2 more players who finally gave enough DPS to beat the Nemesis AV. Whew! This got Schadenfreude to level 44, where I gladly took Vengeance as a power pick. After finally beating that mission, the team broke up and I called it a night.

Thanks so much for the kind words!

Regarding the overpowered ally issue, the allies are defined as Bosses, while the level boss for each mission is defined as an AV. As Boss allies against an AV, they seem about right. On Heroic as a soloer, the allies downgrade to Lieutenants and the AVs downgrade to EBs, which also feels about right.

Unfortunately, there are a few mid-range difficulty levels where the allies stay Bosses but the AVs downgrade to EBs. In this case, I agree the allies are much too powerful. I suspect this is what happened on your run. I am not sure what I can do to address this problem, though; I am hesitant to lower the allies too much in power, for fear that it will make the AV/EBs unsoloable, which I think would be a worse problem than the AVs/EBs being a little too easy. The ideal solution would be for AVs to downgrade to EBs exactly when EBs downgrade to Bosses, but for reasons I don't understand, it doesn't work that way.


Regarding the story dissonance when the player character is already a teen hero, I agree this is a problem, but unfortunately I have no good solution to this with the tools that we are given. Currently I always just use "Kid $name" whenever I'd normally use "$name" to signify your "teen" status, but this doesn't always work (especially if your toon is already named something like Kid Valkyrie). The ideal solution would be a $teenname substitution, which would convert your hero name into Teen Name form (possibly leaving the name alone for certain characters, like Ursus Minor) but alas, no such substitution currently exists.


Thanks again for the run through Teen Phalanx Forever! I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

5/26/2009

Spent much of the weekend reworking my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc. I had two people say the first mission against the Vahzilok felt too "been there, done that", and one that said likewise for the Clockwork mission. I had patterned these missions closely after the "official" missions where you fight Dr. Vahzilok and the Clockwork King; originally I thought this would add to the immersion as you'd be "doing" the canon story arcs with the team, but in hindsight I can see how some players might get a "same old, same old" feeling from it.

So I started adding stuff. The baseline Teen Phalanx story arc started at a trim 59% disk usage, because despite writing reams and reams of dialog and clues, I only had 4 custom models in the whole arc, and custom models really take the most space.

I promoted the "Vahzilok Mail Order Bride" plot from my "test" arcs to my "live" arcs, extensively rewriting mission 1 as a result.

I also pushed the "World of Clockwork" plot from my "test" arcs to my "live" arcs. This idea wasn't nearly as well thought out initially, so I spent a lot of time polishing it; finetuning costume details on the clockwork LARPers and giving them Everquest/World of Warcraftish dialog. I originally wanted a handful of "beta tester" hostages being guarded by clockwork LARPers, but the Clockwork King's headquarters only allows for 6 "rescue/ally" spawn points, so I could only squeeze in a couple. I added lots of fun clues and dialog. I'm particularly proud of how squicky the "World of Clockwork" promotional poster came out.

Finally, I decided the final boss, Citadel Vista, would be so obsessed with replacing Citadel XP, that he not only would try to defeat the Teen Phalanx, but he would also try and replace the Teen Phalanxers with robotic duplicates! So I changed the final Robots ambush to be Robotic Teen Phalanx attackers, re-skinning a couple of my teen heroes with gunmetal and red LEDs to make them look sorta cylon-ish.

With all these changes, I've managed to fill up my story arc's disk usage to 97% percent, but I feel like I added a lot of content. I'm starting to think that for future story arcs, making the first draft come in at around 50-75% disk usage is going to be better than starting at 99% disk usage; both Celebrity Kidnapping and Teen Phalanx Forever! followed this model, and this has allowed me to add immense amounts of improvements and additions as a result of feedback since their original publish date. My Axis and Allies arc was bloated from the start due to the number of custom models, being at 99% on test and 103% on live, forcing me to remove story elements to republish on live; and any new changes I make, require me to remove something else. As a result, I feel like Axis and Allies is the least polished of my story arcs now. (Though part of that is because it was the first one I wrote.)

I was a little uneasy about modifying Teen Phalanx Forever! since it had gotten a lot of positive feedback so far, and the new story elements are a little on the silly side as I'm trying to keep the story light-hearted in tone. But I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out so far, and find myself playing my own story arc and laughing at my own jokes (a bad sign...I'll need a straitjacket and padded room soon). I'm hoping other players will like it too.

In non-architecting news, I played Kashira (19 dual/ninj stalker) on Friday, joining a 4 player Fallen LEGION team doing Marshal Brass's missions. A teammate complimented Kashira's costume (which is basically a maroon martial arts outfit with tall stockings, hair bandana, fist wraps and Japanese swords), calling it a "cute ninja girl outfit...when she's visible", which was nice. We had one team wipe early on, and another near-team wipe a bit later against Arachnos while rescuing Amanda Vines, where everyone else but me died and I managed to pop a purple and lead Amanda Vines through a gauntlet of enemies, finally reaching the mission door to win the mission. That felt pretty cool. This all got Kashira to level 21 and Stamina.

I solo'd Mega (10 SS/will brute) through Dr Shelly's Midas Touched story arc, getting 7 reward merits and level 11. Then I ran through Pretenders to my Hobo Throne, which was a lowbie villain story about helping a professional beggar fight off some rival hobos; this seemed mostly okay but had some odd mission choices, like kidnapping the Icon tailor and Facemaker tailor to help make the hobo a new outfit. I gave that story arc 3 stars.

Some friends started joining me and I ended up leading a 4 player team through a run of Escalation, a story where you fight a villain who respawns with a new clone body every time you defeat her; only she gets mad that you keep beating her up, so she starts amping up her clone bodies with additional super powers each time, until you finally face an AV/EB in the last mission. We had one team wipe while facing a massive clone army and attendant robots. I had run through story this once before and kinda liked it, but there were tons of improvements this time through, so I gave it 5 stars. This also got Mega to level 12.

Late Friday night I played Adventuress (16 MA/regen scrapper) on a Synapse TF. Our team mix was:

dark scrapper
SR scrapper
regen scrapper (me)
fire blaster (had to quit about halfway through)
AR blaster
sonic blaster
FF controller
peacebringer

Despite having no proper healer, the controller kept us in force fields, and that was plenty enough for the scrappers to tear up the clockwork without serious problems. We had no stealther or TPer so ended up fighting through everything rather than sneaking through the few missions that you can. We beat up Babbage (with outside help) and ended up finishing the TF in 3hrs 15mins for 59 merits (counting Babbage's award; 18.15 MPH). This got Adventuress to level 20; I took Swift and Hurdle at 18 and 20. Not that I really need Stamina (since she already has Quick Recovery), but I really like moving faster and jumping higher. While visiting Wentworth's after the TF, Adventuress (whose costume is khaki shorts, white tank top, combat boots and a good tan) got a costume compliment from a passerby, which was nice.

On Saturday I played Millie Volt (30 elec/inv brute) on an 8 player Fallen LEGION team doing door missions that mostly required fighting Longbow. We started off having buggy missions where some people would zone into one instance and the rest of the team would zone into another; this was due to having some people on AE story arcs when they joined the team, I think. We kept trying to go in/out the mission to get people in the same place, having people quit the team and rejoin it, and having people log off and back on. Nothing worked until we completely reset the mission and re-entered it.

I think we were kinda light on support (we were a mix of brutes, stalkers, doms and VEATs) and we had three straight team wipes against Longbow, then beat an Infernal AV with great difficulty. I did a lot of pulling to corners to mitigate aggro, earning me the comment "You're the most pull-y brute I've seen"; I did try running straight into mobs a few times instead of pulling, but with our limited support, usually this didn't end well. Despite these problems, we did complete a lot of missions and got Millie to level 33. I took and slotted Lightning Rod, which is an INCREDIBLY COOL power ... I love the crack of thunder, the lightning special effect, and the enemies falling down! The only downside is that you can't use it while hovering, which is kind of a downer as Millie uses hover/fly for travel.

Since the "over the cap" badges are mostly going away, I decided to start claiming tickets from the reward pool. Millie claimed some of these and spent 3700 tickets each on 2 Gold reward rolls, getting a Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) and a Devastation (Chance to Hold), both of which are quite delicious.

After that team broke up I solo'd Mega (now a 12 SS/will brute) through the Freaks and Geeks story arc, which was about a Freakshow plot to kidnap nerds and turn them into Freakshow. This was technically a level 20-40ish heroic arc, but I kinda wanted to get Mega more exp, so I played her through it anyway. The first mission was funny and charming, but the later two missions weren't nearly as fun, and I ended up giving this story 3 stars.

On Sunday I played Strong Woman (25 inv/SS tanker) through a Citadel TF, with a team mix of

1 rad defender
1 cold defender
1 inv tanker (me)
1 shield tanker
1 kin controller
2 shield scrappers

The team seemed to be okay with 25-26s running unSK'd since we were pretty strong, but I insisted on an SK as I wanted to be tankish, running around aggroing stuff and punching them in the face. With good buffs and good DPS we had no problem smashing our way through this TF, finishing in 1hr 31mins for 40 merits (26.37 MPH). This got Strong Woman to level 27; I took Tough Hide at 26.

I playtested some of my story arc changes some with Mega, which got her to level 13.

Monday was a holiday and I started the afternoon playing Mega as a lackey on a 4 player LEGION villain team, doing 47ish missions in Grandville. This got Mega to 15. We had one team wipe against Malta who were camping the entrance to a mission and defeated us one at a time as we entered. We had no "healer" type (we did have a traps corruptor, but FF Generator wasn't enough mitigation) which made some missions pretty rough, and eventually motivated me to switch to Schadenfreude (43 AR/pain corruptor) to play "healer". This seemed to smooth things out quite a bit, and we were able to go on to defeat Crimson, Ms Liberty, and then the whole Vindicators team.

Monday night, I played Samurai-ko (37 katana/will scrapper) on a 3-player Sisterhood hero team, running mostly Crey missions. This got Samurai-ko to 38, where I took Stamina (I previously had Quick Recovery, just took Stamina for even more recovery).

I started a newbie ice/emp controller, getting the name "Milady de Winter", and giving her a white lacy outfit with a hint of blue, befitting someone with ice powers. With that name, she really should be a villain (since she's one of the major antagonists in The Three Musketeers); my intention is for this character to eventually betray to red side when City of Rogues comes out. I already have a couple villains that I think will switch to blue side; none of my existing heroes seem like the type to jump to red side, so I thought it might be fun to make a couple that would. Milady solo'd a couple of Azuria's initial missions, then joined a 3-player lowbie team doing street hunting in Atlas Park; that team eventually grew to 8 players and entered the sewers. I was the only support class on this 8 player team, and it was quite lively trying to keep 7 lowbie characters alive using only unslotted Heal Aura and Heal Other. Nevertheless we did fine and Milady got to level 8 before calling it a night.

Finished the night soloing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through Hunting the Dark Dragon, which is purportedly is about CoT summoning dragons from another dimension, but in actual play the dragons are just lizardfolk who apparently got kidnapped from a rock concert. The most powerful lizardman ends up hiring Malta and Space Pirates and manipulating Arachnos into fighting you, and you have to either stop him or let him go. This story didn't really make much sense; I gave it 2 stars.