PoliceWoman

Torchbearer review (arc 103694)

Premise is that Prometheus (the mythological figure) is trying to take back the Flame of Prometheus. Level range seemed to be 40-54 hero side. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: The mission closely ties the arc to the events of the Top Cow comic book, though does a good job of explaining what the Flame of Prometheus is, and why it's important. The plot to go back in time to "erase the day we took the Flame" is a little confusing though, as is "I learned about the alliance" ... is the "alliance" the Prometheus/Chronos arrangement? And how does this relate to the Nemesis Army in 1937? Time travel changes can get confusing; this plot could be made a little clearer.

Second part of briefing: "he has willfully given his Flame" should be either "he has willingly given his Flame" or "he has given his Flame of his own free will".

Okay, the plan here and how this relates to Nemesis is finally explained near the end of the second part of the briefing; I'm to recreate historical battles of the Freedom Phalanx. The briefing and second part of the briefing explain this in a rather longwinded and roundabout fashion; may want to edit that a bit to make it clearer earlier on in the text.

ParagonWiki claims that Brass Monday was on July 11, 1932 in Steel Canyon, incidentally - not 1937 in King's Row (at least I think this is the map you're using). I think all your "1937" references maybe should be "1932". I haven't read the novel, though, so it may happen differently in there.

Lord Nemesis of 1937 says "I planned for this enevitability, Police Woman." enevitability should be "eventuality".

The "4 canisters to find" weren't really explained in the briefing; may be worth having the contact mention that the canisters of gas need to be gotten too.

The hostages say "nice outfit there, sonny" -- but I'm a female character, so "sonny" probably isn't the right thing to say. Maybe "youngster"?

Should there perhaps be some Paragon Police battling here, resisting the Nemesis incursion?

Interesting clues hinting Nemesis is "cheating" on technology compared to the "historical record". Though ... what IS this mission, really? I'm not time traveling back to when this event really occurred, since the Freedom Phalanx already took care of this. So is this an alternate reality, or a simulation within the simulation that Prometheus is putting on somehow? Plot is a little murky on this.

Debriefing: "You'd have made one heck of a founder of the Freedom Phalanx back in the day" doesn't really make sense as a sentence. Suggest maybe "The Freedom Phalanx would've been proud to include you" or "You certainly proved yourself the equal of the founders of the Freedom Phalanx" or something like that.

"oracle ." has an extra space after oracle.

Mission 2
Briefing: So we're defending against the surprise attack from the 5th Column in WW2. I kind of think Statesman should give more props to Atlas and his last stand immediately before the Freedom Phalanx arrived on the scene; he mentions it casually in the second part of his briefing (where he says only that Schlager killed him) but I think he really would say something more positive about Atlas in the main part of the briefing. Statesman acknowledges the Atlas's contribution on history plaques, such as:

[ QUOTE ]
When the Freedom Phalanx became the first legally recognized Super Group in 1953, Statesman held a conference at Valor Bridge. He said, 'The valiant hero Atlas died defending the city on this very bridge. I do not know how to thank you for your faith in the Freedom Phalanx, except to say that I, too, am ready to die in your defense.'

[/ QUOTE ]

... so I totally believe he would say more about Atlas and his heroic efforts here.

Objectives: "2 Citizens to get to saftey". saftey should be "safety". Strangely, "Defeat Schlager" is not in my objectives, even though Statesman really emphasized it was important to get him. He didn't become an objective until I destroyed a weapon cache, I think.

I got the "Fanning the Flame" clue (saying I got attacked by Prometheus minions) when I destroyed the first weapons cache, but it wasn't until I destroyed the last weapon cache that the ambush of Flicker minions actually was spawned. So the order of these seems wrong. May want to give the clue as a "mission complete" clue, or otherwise make sure the clue doesn't appear before the ambush.

Citizen from 1941 says "Help me! Please!" if I leave her too far behind, then says "Aaiiieeeeeeee!" if I come back to get her. I think maybe you have these messages reversed.

Schlager's description, "german" should be "German".

Mission exit popup: "You have completed the second of Statesman's challenges." Aren't these really Prometheus's challenges?

Debriefing: "Altas" should be "Atlas". Statesman says "5th were better armed than I recall" but this is never stated during the mission (that I noticed) and I didn't get a clue to that effect, unlike the previous mission. I did get a clue about the fire elemental things attacking though.

"Chronos seemes to be allowing for these "anomalies"" ... maybe "allowing for these" should be "allowing these".

Mission 3
Briefing: "Hero-1" should be "Hero 1". "Omega Squad" should be "Omega Team".

Second part of briefing: "suffered 80 loses that day" should be "suffered over 800 casualties that day".

Mission entry popup: "rikti" should be "Rikti".

Flicker's description: "they have master and control over fire" should be "they have mastery and control over fire".

I really picture Alpha Team's assault on the Rikti portal to be a lot more dynamic; I mean, it's supposed to be over a thousand heroes launching a suicide run against the Rikti. Consider adding some patrols or battles full of minion-level costumed heroes that are just getting brutally slaughtered by Rikti? Maybe more Rikti patrols or other action.

It'd be cool if there actually were a Rikti portal here, though of course it shouldn't be destroyable by Alpha Team, so maybe that's not possible. I never did see any hero allies either.

Ember of Prometheus description: "emmisary" should be "emissary". "Defeat Prometheus" objective maybe should be clarified as "Defeat Avatar of Prometheus".


Overall
The premise of re-creating the Freedom Phalanx's major battles is interesting, and the writing style is pretty good, but somehow the missions never really *grabbed* me; they could stand to be a little more immersive. The historical background was very nice; but I felt that the framing story of Prometheus setting a series of tests was awkwardly presented and came across as being rather deus ex machina (which, I suppose divine intervention would have to be).

I did like rescuing the hostages in the first two missions; I think maybe you could give them some additional dialog reacting to the current events (the Nemesis attack or the German invasion) to add to versimilitude. The second and third missions both could stand to have more chaotic fighting going on, to better give the feeling that they're both set in "war zones" (against the Germans and against the Rikti).

It was a decent story overall though, and I gave it 4 stars.

-----

@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@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

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


You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:

Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)

The Siphon review (arc 113294)

Premise seems to get power via magical means. Level range was mostly 15-24 red side; I played a 4 ss/will brute, mostly because I wanted to level this character up; I was auto-LK'd up and hoped for the best. (I did find the acc debuffing CoT ghosts were especially nasty for her.)

The contact is just a desk. The arc has the interesting idea that you're really coming up with all these missions from your own plotting.

Mission 1
Briefing: "I" decide to steal some artifacts from a museum warehouse.

Nice description on the book. I thought it was neat that the missing ring triggered having to find a rival thief.

Found Lendaro; as a ruin mage he was really hard for my level 4 brute (my fault - I know this is supposed to be level 15), but I managed to pound him down after being held and immob'd a lot.

Debriefing: very nice debriefing where you puzzle out what all the stuff you stole does. I like it. Of course, the CoT stole the only really good thing already, it seems.

Mission 2
Briefing: so I go to steal the ring from the CoT who stole it. Not a bad briefing.

Having both the mission title and the mission objective be "Find the ring" is a little repetitive; I suggest you mix it up a little. Maybe make the mission title "Steal ring from Circle", while keeping the objective "Find the ring".

Interesting dialog from the CoT where they argue over whether to destroy the ring, or whether the ring will save them all. Oh my, I arrive on the scene and 2 CoT have killed another CoT. I guess their disagreement was violent!

Found and beat up Sardax. His dialog made me think of Gollum; I now have his precious, his "dearest ring".

This mission seemed a little on the simple side, it seems like a stealthy person could've just come in here and beat up Sardax and nothing else.

Debriefing: I like how it references that the CoT were fighting over it. Wow, the debriefing really does make it sound like The One Ring.

Mission 3
Briefing: So now I have a list of ingredients to acquire for a magic ritual. The briefing tries to be cagey about what a "being that feeds on the life of another" is; but wouldn't a Council vampire be an obvious answer? Not sure I buy how the briefing has me wondering what could possibly satisfy this condition.

Found several "Spirit Thorn" glowies with a progress bar with no text on it.

This mission seemed pretty tedious, searching Oranbega and clicking many false glowies.

Cleared everything I could find, clicked every glowy, mission still wouldn't complete. Logged off and reset.

Going back in again, after clearing most of the mission I did find the right glowy to get the "empty thorn". A new objective to defeat Sardax was generated from this, though I'm not quite sure why; Sardax wants to find and defeat me to take the ring, but I don't really have any burning need to defeat him, it seems like I could just leave? Went ahead and found Sardax and defeated him. The new, bearded version of Sardax seems pretty cool.


Mission 4
The desk .. I mean, I... exposition about how a vampire actually won't work for this ritual, and "I" come up with the idea that I need a Nictus.

Found Archon Irohei; he had decent dialog as I pounded him and stole his soul and stuff. Not sure why killing him spawned a "Defeat Sardax to escape!" objective though. Maybe needs more explanation for why. I mean, how'd he even follow me here? The briefing seemed to suggest I thought up this plan on my own, so not sure why the CoT would think to come to a Council base. Do I have to beat Sardax every mission? Or maybe the One Ring "calls" to him somehow.

I had cleared most of the base, and ended up having to search the entire base again to find Sardax, which was a little annoying. Not sure there's a good fix for that though.

Mission 5
On to performing the ritual. I found the place to plant the thorn, which triggered the altars to spawn. When I get close to the altar, the mob guarding it says "We must keep Mega from completing his ritual..." but Mega is a female character; use $hisher.

Destroying the first altar gave me the "A blockage!" clue, which says "Though you have destroyed all the artifacts...Someone is blocking it!" But I haven't destroyed all the artifacts, I've destroyed only one, and I don't have a mission objective for defeating a new mob. I think you wanted this clue to be awarded after destroying the LAST artifact, but it was given on the first one. You can maybe work around it by chaining 3 destroy objectives together instead of using one objective with a count of 3, though that would mean the player having to do more searching.

Destroying the third altar did give me "Eliminate the interference!" as a new objective. I beat up Carthix and got the "Stupid mage" clue, which has a great name. "the rewards too great" should be either "the reward's too great" or "the rewards are too great".

Booo, smashed the spire and still didn't get the promised cosmic power. Now I have to search for what happened to the energy.

Although the linked objectives are cool, the size of the map makes it kind of annoying to have to search over and over again for the next objective each time.

Found the Demon Manifest, after clearing most of the map. He was actually quite hard to notice. Can you maybe make him more visually distinctive? As an EB I think he should be easier to notice; perhaps consider making him taller, or giving him a glowing or fiery aura?

Demon Manifest beat me up on my first solo attempt, but it was a close thing, and I managed to get him on my second attempt (it helped that he was still wounded from my first try). His dark debuffs and dark heals were quite nasty for me, but I *did* manage to get him, as a level 6, so his difficulty is probably fine.

Debriefing: Well, seems I didn't get the cosmic power I was promised, but did get "some" of the power. I guess that'll have to do.

Overall
It was a decent story arc, with good writing style and good use of clues. There were very few characters though, aside from the Gollum-like Sardax, who was decently portrayed. Gathering the various ingredients for the ritual was a little less exciting than I would've liked; it felt more like filling a shopping list or scavenger hunt. The triggered objectives were implemented well but I found myself re-tracing my steps a little too often on maps; perhaps use smaller maps, or otherwise try to set up objectives so the newly spawned ones aren't far from where you trigger them? It was a little disappointing that the ritual never delivers on the promised "ultimate power", though I suppose it would be pretty hard to portray that in MA. Overall I felt the story was good, but never fully grabbed my attention and there wasn't ever a crowning moment of awesomeness. I gave the arc 4 stars.

The Siphon review (arc 113294)

Premise seems to get power via magical means. Level range was mostly 15-24 red side; I played a 4 ss/will brute, mostly because I wanted to level this character up; I was auto-LK'd up and hoped for the best. (I did find the acc debuffing CoT ghosts were especially nasty for her.)

The contact is just a desk. The arc has the interesting idea that you're really coming up with all these missions from your own plotting.

Mission 1
Briefing: "I" decide to steal some artifacts from a museum warehouse.

Nice description on the book. I thought it was neat that the missing ring triggered having to find a rival thief.

Found Lendaro; as a ruin mage he was really hard for my level 4 brute (my fault - I know this is supposed to be level 15), but I managed to pound him down after being held and immob'd a lot.

Debriefing: very nice debriefing where you puzzle out what all the stuff you stole does. I like it. Of course, the CoT stole the only really good thing already, it seems.

Mission 2
Briefing: so I go to steal the ring from the CoT who stole it. Not a bad briefing.

Having both the mission title and the mission objective be "Find the ring" is a little repetitive; I suggest you mix it up a little. Maybe make the mission title "Steal ring from Circle", while keeping the objective "Find the ring".

Interesting dialog from the CoT where they argue over whether to destroy the ring, or whether the ring will save them all. Oh my, I arrive on the scene and 2 CoT have killed another CoT. I guess their disagreement was violent!

Found and beat up Sardax. His dialog made me think of Gollum; I now have his precious, his "dearest ring".

This mission seemed a little on the simple side, it seems like a stealthy person could've just come in here and beat up Sardax and nothing else.

Debriefing: I like how it references that the CoT were fighting over it. Wow, the debriefing really does make it sound like The One Ring.

Mission 3
Briefing: So now I have a list of ingredients to acquire for a magic ritual. The briefing tries to be cagey about what a "being that feeds on the life of another" is; but wouldn't a Council vampire be an obvious answer? Not sure I buy how the briefing has me wondering what could possibly satisfy this condition.

Found several "Spirit Thorn" glowies with a progress bar with no text on it.

This mission seemed pretty tedious, searching Oranbega and clicking many false glowies.

Cleared everything I could find, clicked every glowy, mission still wouldn't complete. Logged off and reset.

Going back in again, after clearing most of the mission I did find the right glowy to get the "empty thorn". A new objective to defeat Sardax was generated from this, though I'm not quite sure why; Sardax wants to find and defeat me to take the ring, but I don't really have any burning need to defeat him, it seems like I could just leave? Went ahead and found Sardax and defeated him. The new, bearded version of Sardax seems pretty cool.


Mission 4
The desk .. I mean, I... exposition about how a vampire actually won't work for this ritual, and "I" come up with the idea that I need a Nictus.

Found Archon Irohei; he had decent dialog as I pounded him and stole his soul and stuff. Not sure why killing him spawned a "Defeat Sardax to escape!" objective though. Maybe needs more explanation for why. I mean, how'd he even follow me here? The briefing seemed to suggest I thought up this plan on my own, so not sure why the CoT would think to come to a Council base. Do I have to beat Sardax every mission? Or maybe the One Ring "calls" to him somehow.

I had cleared most of the base, and ended up having to search the entire base again to find Sardax, which was a little annoying. Not sure there's a good fix for that though.

Mission 5
On to performing the ritual. I found the place to plant the thorn, which triggered the altars to spawn. When I get close to the altar, the mob guarding it says "We must keep Mega from completing his ritual..." but Mega is a female character; use $hisher.

Destroying the first altar gave me the "A blockage!" clue, which says "Though you have destroyed all the artifacts...Someone is blocking it!" But I haven't destroyed all the artifacts, I've destroyed only one, and I don't have a mission objective for defeating a new mob. I think you wanted this clue to be awarded after destroying the LAST artifact, but it was given on the first one. You can maybe work around it by chaining 3 destroy objectives together instead of using one objective with a count of 3, though that would mean the player having to do more searching.

Destroying the third altar did give me "Eliminate the interference!" as a new objective. I beat up Carthix and got the "Stupid mage" clue, which has a great name. "the rewards too great" should be either "the reward's too great" or "the rewards are too great".

Booo, smashed the spire and still didn't get the promised cosmic power. Now I have to search for what happened to the energy.

Although the linked objectives are cool, the size of the map makes it kind of annoying to have to search over and over again for the next objective each time.

Found the Demon Manifest, after clearing most of the map. He was actually quite hard to notice. Can you maybe make him more visually distinctive? As an EB I think he should be easier to notice; perhaps consider making him taller, or giving him a glowing or fiery aura?

Demon Manifest beat me up on my first solo attempt, but it was a close thing, and I managed to get him on my second attempt (it helped that he was still wounded from my first try). His dark debuffs and dark heals were quite nasty for me, but I *did* manage to get him, as a level 6, so his difficulty is probably fine.

Debriefing: Well, seems I didn't get the cosmic power I was promised, but did get "some" of the power. I guess that'll have to do.

Overall
It was a decent story arc, with good writing style and good use of clues. There were very few characters though, aside from the Gollum-like Sardax, who was decently portrayed. Gathering the various ingredients for the ritual was a little less exciting than I would've liked; it felt more like filling a shopping list or scavenger hunt. The triggered objectives were implemented well but I found myself re-tracing my steps a little too often on maps; perhaps use smaller maps, or otherwise try to set up objectives so the newly spawned ones aren't far from where you trigger them? It was a little disappointing that the ritual never delivers on the promised "ultimate power", though I suppose it would be pretty hard to portray that in MA. Overall I felt the story was good, but never fully grabbed my attention and there wasn't ever a crowning moment of awesomeness. I gave the arc 4 stars.

Why Do Bad Girls Like Bad Boys? review (arc 63910)

The premise is that you are helping a financial guru and master criminal with his girl problems. It's labeled as heroic, but not quite sure why, if you're helping a criminal. Levels seem to be 50, 47, 45, 50. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Love the contact's costume. Looks perfect for a Latin lover, which I assume his name is a reference to.

Mission 1
Briefing: OK, so he wants me to steal a diamond from his ex-girlfriend. LOL, this should totally be a red side arc, or at least neutral. "re-aquire" should be "reacquire". Very fun briefing which helps establish the character of the contact.

I think "Broken Hearted" maybe should be "Brokenhearted", but not absolutely sure.

I found Mistress Stella. I love her dialog! Rescuing the innocent bystanders was fun, too, and I liked the battle dialogs. I never did see Carnie Helen, thoguh.

Exit popup helps clear up slightly why a hero would want to do this, but it still seems borderline.

Good debriefing.

Mission 2
Briefing seems well written and fun. Second part of the briefing, "I LOVE it! heh heh I'll join you there directly" should be "I LOVE it! Heh heh. I'll join you there directly."

Criminal documents clue: "The District Attorney will love to get" should be "The District Attorney would love to get". Or perhaps "will love getting".

I found Carnie Helen standing on a crate holding an assault rifle, which is kinda weird for a Carnie. Apparently, "Apologize to Carnie Helen" involves beating her up, which is kinda funny; but maybe needs to be better explained, since these don't seem consistent.

Carnie Helen's middle management-speak dialog seems pretty out of character for a Carnie; I don't think they really have a "Carnie C.E.O." or "Carnie management". Would make more sense for a female Crey agent or something though. I do like how all the women utterly trash talk Latin Lava though; he seems like he deserves it.

I rescued Latin Lava, and he was an elite boss ally (my difficulty was on heroic). This seems rather overpowered as helpers go.

Hilarious debriefing though.

Mission 3
Briefing: Fun story, but this mission appears to be just to go to a bar and drink some beer with the contact? I guess we'll see what really happens.

The mission title, "Save Latin Lava from Scorned Females" is pretty funny.

Inside the mission, it's not a bar at all! It's another outdoor map. That seems a little bait-and-switch, but the premise seems interesting.

I rescued Latin Lava from some KoA, but ironically even after I defeated the KoA, the caltrops they dropped kept him prisoner for a couple minutes before they faded.

Latin Lava is again an EB, which seems awfully powerful for an ally. I could probably just drag him around and have him defeat everything without my firing a shot.

Helen is still talking corporate speak, LOL ... I guess that's just her personality.

Mission 4
Briefing: "giving you exactly what you deserve" certainly sounds ominous. But then based on his modus operandi so far, what is he going to do, dump another ex-girlfriend on me? His final "hahaha" shold perhaps be capitalized and have a period at the end. And what happened to building a case against Latin Lava?

"Get What's Coming To You" as a mission title definitely sounds ominous, LOL!

Mission entrance popup: says I have "enough evidence to arrest Latin Lava for multiple crimes." When did this happen? Was it all in the "now to build a case against Latin Lava"? I think it would help if I had gotten more clues along the way to make an ironclad case against him. As it is, the "Criminal Documents" clue I have only implicates the Carnies.

Mission objective: "Defeat Carnie Helga" seems new. Helga hasn't been introduced yet, not sure what my motivation should be for defeating her? Based on the events so far, my real objective should be to arrest Latin Lava, no?

Found Carnie Helga kneeling behind a counter holding an assault rifle, which seems a very weird animation for a Master Illusionist.

Haha, love Helga's dialog. Looks like Latin Lava wasted no time finding a new True Love.

Latin Lava's background info is terrific, too. I'm kinda relieved that he's only a boss now instead of an EB as before. In his dialog, "I must silence anyone who has seen me at the most embarrassing point. of my life" needs to move the period from after point to after life.

Not a bad debriefing. No souvenir though? Consider adding one.

Overall
Well written and fun. Really liked the characterization of Latin Lava and Stella, their personality really shone through. I thought it was weird that Helen was so into managementspeak, being a Carnie, but at least she was consistent about it.

I think maybe you need to explain the hero's motivation for helping Latin Lava a little earlier (it didn't make a lot of sense until after the first or second mission), and I would've liked to get another clue or two as part of "building the case" against Latin Lava.

Nevertheless, it was fun, had a neat story concept, and had good writing and characterization. I gave it 5 stars.

------

I owe a review to:

DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@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

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


You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:

Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)

More on the Roots of Domestic Terror

[ QUOTE ]
In Mission 1, the "prison" is actually supposed to be agovernmental "holding base" like Guantanamo, which is why a paramilitary group like Gregg's Guerillas (or Blackwater) is in charge of security there. I'll make that more clear in the write-up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, that would make a ton more sense; I thought I was literally breaking someone out of the Zig. If you make it more clear that you're breaking into Abu Ghraib or someplace awful like that, it would work a lot better I think. Might want to add a few more wild eyed terrorist prisoners in the other cells (that aren't important to the plot) for versimilitude.


[ QUOTE ]
I think I'll also take your suggestion to kill the terrorist on-screen rather than off. I wasn't sure if I could kill a "rescued" person in a mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

A way to do this is to make the terrorist a "boss" but give him a "captured" animation and his surrounding group would be Gregg's Guerillas in a "guarding" animation. Then trigger a clue off the death of the "boss".


[ QUOTE ]
Gregg's Guerillas is actually based on GI Joe (as you noted) and I wanted all branches of the service represented here. Their costumes are a little colorful, but I ended up liking this look better than an a standard uniform look. I thought it would differentiate the enemies a little.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's fair. You might consider giving all your guerillas "special forces" type uniforms though. For example, have the Swabby in a Navy SEAL uniform instead of the sailor suit he's currently in; give the Air Force guys flight gear and goggles or LRRP commando uniforms, instead of dress uniforms. Or take a look at images of Blackwater mercenaries. It's up to you, of course, and by all means stick to your vision; but I think more operations-oriented costumes would better support the terrorist theme that your story arc is going for.


[ QUOTE ]
Mission 3 is where things turn ugly. I agree that I should keep the tone evil for all 3 diplomat deaths. I seemed to be trying to "lighten" the mood, even when I didn't want to!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I think you need to decide on the "tone" of your story arc, then stick with it. Your intent seems to be for your story to be very grim and gritty, so go with that as much as possible. Any jokes you want to insert should be very black humor, highly cynical and/or based on schadenfreude.

5/14/2009

My blue side marketeering has been going really well; Police Woman just crossed 600M infl as a result of day trading on salvage. Eventually I will need to spend some time figuring out what I can actually buy with all this; I suspect the cost of purple recipes has been increasing faster than my bankroll has.

I spent an extensive amount of time reworking my Axis and Allies arc, in response to several detailed feedback messages I'd gotten.

Some people complained of too many masterminds, which was actually true; I do think it makes sense for enemy bosses to be mercs MMs, but having some lieutenants that were also MMs was probably overdoing it. I changed both my French lieutenant and Soviet lieutenant from being mercs or thugs MMs to being just plain assault rifle.

I added some spiffy looking "mission titles" to every mission, naming them after the WW2 German military campaigns connected to each scene; so this was "Operation Valkyrie" for when you kill Hitler, "Case Yellow" for the invasion of France, and "Operation Barbarossa" for the invasion of Russia. I don't think the Wehrmacht actually had a war plan for invading America in their wildest dreams, though; I ended up deciding to name that mission "The Eagle Has Landed". (Yeah, I know that book/movie was really about taking out Churchill, not Truman. The title still sounds cool.)

Someone told me she thought capturing the President should be more dramatic, or at least give a clue; so I added a clue which the President coughs up as you catch him. Terence Stamp screaming "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!" still really sticks in my mind after all these years, so I made this clue an homage to when General Zod captures the President in Superman II.

After republishing the story arc, I ran Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) through a test run of Axis and Allies to make sure everything worked, and cackled gleefully when I got the "Kneel before Spy Girl!" clue.

My main brute, Mega (50 SS/elec brute) used to be one of my favorite characters, but has been pretty idle for several months now; I'm thinking it's because I've become disillusioned with electric armor, which seemed awesome several issues ago, but feels underpowered now. I decided to restart her as a SS/will brute to see if that felt better (though I transferred the SS/elec version to Triumph server first; it feels worth $10 to not delete a level 50) and got the new version of Mega to level 2. I could've easily played her more to level her up, but then I thought I may as well let her build up some patrol exp first.

So I ran Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) through the Blondes Revenge story arc, where I fought blonde terrorists who were planning on taking over the power grid as revenge for blonde jokes. This arc sadly was not as funny as it sounds, and I ended up rating it 2 stars.

Then I ran Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) through The Roots of Domestic Terror where I tortured a terrorist into giving me his high explosives, then I used these to set bombs all around a diplomatic summit. After exploding the building, I went back in and dragged the surviving diplomats out and executed them in front of the press. This story arc was trying to be really evil and terrorist-like, but kept inserting humorous bits that broke the mood. The uneven tone, plus some hard-to-believe plot points, caused me to rate this arc 3 stars.

Thanks a ton to Sakura Kishi for her detailed review of Axis and Allies; here's some changes I made last night:

[ QUOTE ]
So I find the first general, and I'm so tired of Master Minds at this point...
....all the master minds really ticked me off, though I understand thematically why they fit

[/ QUOTE ]

* French lieutenant changed from Mercenaries primary to Assault Rifle primary.
* Soviet commissar changed from Thugs primary to Assault Rifle primary.

[ QUOTE ]
Kinda expected something more out of Truman then "statesman where are you?" I mean I just captured the President of the United States... I was expecting some cool clue off of him.

[/ QUOTE ]

* Added clue to mission 4 which you receive when you capture President Truman. The clue contains the radio address you force the President to issue after you capture him; shamelessly stolen from the speech in Superman II where the President surrenders to General Zod. (To address player feedback saying "capturing the President needs to be more cool")

I also found that you can use $name substitution in clue names, which is awesome. I ran a test run with my 33 MA/ninj stalker, Spy Girl, and I have to admit I totally giggled when I got the clue for capturing the President: "Kneel before Spy Girl!"

[ QUOTE ]
get back to the start of the map where Maiden Justice spawned... snipe some privates near her that could get involved in the battle. (I really have fun using the trees for cover sniping and ducking behind till they get close enough for Shaudenfrued and the panzer General to finish off)...

Almost kill her but forgot to use my radiation toggles and she finnishes off the three of us... (been so long since I played as a corroptur)... just couldn't beat her on my own at level 19 a Rad/Rad just couldn't handle it....

[/ QUOTE ]

19 is admittedly a little low to be fighting Maiden Justice, but I'm afraid I can't take responsibility for your choosing not to use the radiation toggles.

Made a bunch more changes to generally polish up the story arc too. Thanks a ton for your feedback!

The Roots of Domestic Terror (arc 103955)

The arc description is that it's an episode of "24" except no hero saves the day, and warns that extreme villainy and murder is involved.

I played on a 33 MA/ninj stalker.

The contact seems to be some sort of demonic creature, but identifies himself as a plant elemental.

Mission 1
Briefing: Pretty good briefing, well written. The contact wants me to extract some mad bomber who is about to go on trial, and find out where his stash of bombs is hidden (presumably so we can do something bad with them). Although ... who is this Nature Kilz plant guy and why is he so interested in bombs? I think he needs to spend at least a little time introducing himself and explaining his angle.

Inside the mission I find it's a breakout from the Zig. The courtyard is filled with "Gregg's Guerillas", a custom faction of mercenaries doing security. I have to say that their varied uniforms (I saw a soldier, sailor, and a pilot) made me instantly think of the Village People.... I totally thought they were going to break into a rendition of "In the Navy" or "YMCA". This might not be the reaction you were hoping for. I kind of think the group should have more of a common uniform, maybe all the same color at least. And why are there pilots being sent to do guard duty in a prison? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe all the non-army guys should be left out of this guard detail?

Thinking about it, I'm not sure it makes sense to have mercenaries guarding the prison; unless this isn't actually the Zig, but is meant to be some kind of secret prison in a foreign country. If it IS the Zig, having police or Longbow present would make more sense. Also, maybe there should be other prisoners present too?

Shortly after I wrote that comment, the Guerillas actually DID break out into song, which made me pause in startlement. It was a Manfred Mann song, though. This tone seems somewhat at odds with the "extreme villainy" and "you WILL commit murders" of the arc description.

Found the hostage and broke him out of jail. But I think if you are actually torturing him to death (according to the story I got from the clue), I think it would make more sense if he were simply an enemy in mission 1 and you kill him right then and there; you can still get the clue from him, just on his death rather than on his release, and you'd give the player more of a sense that she killed that guy.

Mission 2
Briefing: not a bad briefing, though he talks about "Law enforcement is on high alert now that they've lost their prisoner"; kind of a continuity error if Gregg's Guerillas were guarding the prisoner, since they're clearly not "law enforcement".

The mission title, "Kill All International Diplomats" makes this mission sound like a Defeat All, which I don't think it is. Maybe it should be called "Bomb the Negotiations" or something like that.

I understand the "6 Bombs to Place" objective, but why "3 Paintings to Steal"? The contact only asked for the place to be bombed. If the stolen paintings are for personal profit, maybe they should be made optional objectives that the player can decide to take, or not.

More Gregg's Guerillas here; I don't actually think they logically make sense as guards for international diplomats, but maybe they are meant to be like GI Joe or something.

Searched this whole mission; I didn't actually see any International diplomats in the building. Maybe there should be.

Debriefing: The contact is yelling at me because the building wasn't fully destroyed. I did everything that was asked for, so there was no way to do better. So basically the story has scripted that the player must fail here, which is seems rather unfair.

Mission 3
Briefing: OK, so now the contact wants me to go back to the exploded building and kill all the survivors and drag out some people to be executed on TV. Seems pretty bloodthirsty, which is okay; but also kind of implausible, since if a US/Russian negotiation were really attacked like this, the place should be crawling with police, FBI, etc. after the bombing. As a result, returning to the scene of the crime seems extremely dumb.

The objectives, "Grab Diplomat #1" "Grab Diplomat #2" "Grab Diplomat #3" should probably be aggregated into "3 Diplomats to execute" or something similar.

The "Dogface" lieutenant seemed extremely hard for his level; my attacks barely hurt him, but most of his attacks could hit me (despite my defense) and hit pretty hard.

The desperate pleading of the various diplomats asking you not to kill them was pretty well written.

Diplomat #1's clue after you execute her is pretty good, but the clues for executing Diplomat #2 and Diplomat #3 are kind of silly; "Your fame increases by 25" and "infamy will make you B.M.O.C" don't fit the tone of this story arc and seem distracting.

I'm a little surprised that there aren't ambushes of Guerillas, police or Longbow as a result of my executing the diplomats; I think if someone really did a crime like this, you might get away with killing one of them, but then there'd be police snipers everywhere trying to take you out.

Although the contact said to "kill all survivors", it wasn't actually a defeat all mission. I don't think you want to MAKE it a defeat all mission though, just fix the briefing to clarify what's required.

Overall
The arc has an interesting premise, but has difficulty maintaining a serious and uberviolent tone. There's nothing wrong with comedy, but I don't think it mixes well with the dark nature of the terrorism and murder that your arc portrays. Although some of the dark bits were pretty well written, the uneven tone kept me from really being immersed in the plot.

I found the use of Gregg's Guerillas for security at both the jail and at the diplomatic summit a little hard to believe; I think you need either more exposition explaining why a mercenary group was hired for security at both these places, or else maybe to replace them with more standard law enforcement. The presence of pilots and sailors in the Guerillas was also very distracting; it didn't feel like it made sense for them to be there.

I really didn't like the contact berating me after mission 2 even though I succeeded at everything that was requested. I don't really think most players will like getting yelled at by their contact for (essentially) no reason. Consider rephrasing it so that the contact is happy that the building is blown up, but he'd just like you to do a little mop-up....

I rated this 3 stars.

------

I owe a review to:

GGG247 - Why Do Bad Girls Like Bad Boys? 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@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

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


You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:

Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)

Blondes Revenge (arc 150638)

The premise is that a group of blondes get sick of being the butt of blonde jokes and decide to take over the city.

Naturally, it made the most sense for me to play Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) for this arc.

The contact looks like Ms. Liberty, but has no name, instead defaulting to "Contact Hologram". Should give her a name.

The story arc "Blondes Revenge" should be punctuated "Blondes' Revenge" or "Blonde Revenge", or maybe "Blonde Vengeance".

Mission 1 (the only mission)
Briefing: Needs paragraph breaks. "dont" should be "don't". "Nevermind" should be "never mind". "randomsome" should be "ransom". "powersource" should be "power source". "officebuilding" should be "office building". "Paragons' reactor" should be "the Terra Volta reactor".

Ms. Liberty (or Contact Hologram) wants me to take out a bunch of power generators because the blondes are conspiring to build these power generators, then knock out the Terra Volta reactor and corner the market on energy.

This plot has several holes. First, you have to believe that blondes have the technology to construct power generators. Second, even if you assume that they can build them, wouldn't it be more correct for me to stop them from attacking the reactor? After all, it's not illegal to build a power generator; while it IS illegal to attack a nuclear power plant.

Second part of the briefing: "Save us from the Blondes" seems a little too short, and also doesn't make sense since Ms Liberty is herself blonde. Though, this does put her on my suspect list; it seems entirely possible she may be planning to betray me to the blondes.

The mission title is "Take out 4 generators." which seems awfully dry. Also, I'm able to take out all 4 generators and the mission still won't complete, since the Sheriff is needed also, so this title is inaccurate sometimes. I suggest you rename it to "Stop the Blonde Conspiracy" or something similar.

The mission objectives are just "Sheriff" and "4 Generator". I think these should be "Defeat Sheriff" (or "Rescue Sheriff" if appropriate) and "4 Generators to destroy".

All your mobs are in a faction called "Blonde 2" which doesn't really make sense. I suggest you name their faction something more descriptive like "Dumb Blondes" or "Blonde Rage" or "Blonde Leading the Blonde" or "Blonde Ambition" or something like that.

The description of the various mobs seems to have dialog instead of info about them; I think you should rephrase their info to describe who they are, then change some of the blondes to SAY the stuff you have in their info right now.

I don't get why the Librarian has archery and the Investigator has electric blast. The Investigator's info has "takeover", which should be "take over".

Singer Star has a cool bio, but should maybe be named either "Pop Star" or "Singer Songwriter".

Why is Biker Girl a gravity controller? I think it would make more sense if she tried to stab me with a knife or hit me with a baseball bat.

I found a male Blonde! He was a police deputy. I think it would make more sense for male Blondes to be either surfer dudes or frat boys.

In Teacher Lady's description, "Benjamin Franklins'" should be "Benjamin Franklin's". Also, not sure it helps your story to have her talking about Benjamin Franklin's key experiment. Suggest you come up with something funnier.

Sheriff says "Its time you dyed your hair Blond Justice". "Its" should be "It's". And, well, my character IS blond already.

I think "I should have dyed my hair red" is kind of a sad thing for the chief blonde to say as she dies.

Debriefing: Really doesn't say much. The contact should really say more here, maybe say something about the aftermath of the blonde attack. "Blondes are bad" really isn't sufficient.

Overall
This is clearly meant to be a comedic story arc, but...I'm afraid it just wasn't very funny. I think you need to add more jokes to your story if you want it to be comedic. None of the blondes had dialog except the final boss; I'd suggest you add a lot more dialog, maybe containing some of the stuff you embedded into their descriptions.

The plot itself, to replace the city's power supply, is not very funny, doesn't make much sense, and does not really add much to your story, which seems to be about angry blondes. I'd suggest that you replace this plot with something more closely aligned with the blonde anger idea; like maybe have them holding a lot of brunettes hostage, with the idea that they will forcibly bleach blonde them. For each hostage, the blonde guards could say stuff like, "Prepare to dye!" "Gentlemen prefer blondes!" "Now you'll get to see that blondes really DO have more fun!" If you want destroyable objects, maybe you can use some of those toxic waste drums to represent huge barrels of peroxide or something.

I think you should make your blonde NPCs play up the blonde stereotype, and get rid of all the blondes in intellectual professions like teaching, lab assistant work, investigating, etc., and replace them with things that fit the "dumb blonde" meme, like cheerleaders, sorority girls, spokesmodels, ski bunnies, beach bunnies, and so on.

Alternatively you could avert the "dumb blonde" trope by making ALL of your blondes into very highly intellectual characters, like nuclear physicists, college professors, psychologists, economic advisers, etc., and have them all speak extremely brainy dialog about how angry they are because the world stereotypes them as being "dumb" simply for being blonde.

Anyway, as it is, I didn't feel like this story arc really worked, and I felt I could only give it 2 stars.

Blondes Revenge (arc 150638)

The premise is that a group of blondes get sick of being the butt of blonde jokes and decide to take over the city.

Naturally, it made the most sense for me to play Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) for this arc.

The contact looks like Ms. Liberty, but has no name, instead defaulting to "Contact Hologram". Should give her a name.

The story arc "Blondes Revenge" should be punctuated "Blondes' Revenge" or "Blonde Revenge", or maybe "Blonde Vengeance".

Mission 1 (the only mission)
Briefing: Needs paragraph breaks. "dont" should be "don't". "Nevermind" should be "never mind". "randomsome" should be "ransom". "powersource" should be "power source". "officebuilding" should be "office building". "Paragons' reactor" should be "the Terra Volta reactor".

Ms. Liberty (or Contact Hologram) wants me to take out a bunch of power generators because the blondes are conspiring to build these power generators, then knock out the Terra Volta reactor and corner the market on energy.

This plot has several holes. First, you have to believe that blondes have the technology to construct power generators. Second, even if you assume that they can build them, wouldn't it be more correct for me to stop them from attacking the reactor? After all, it's not illegal to build a power generator; while it IS illegal to attack a nuclear power plant.

Second part of the briefing: "Save us from the Blondes" seems a little too short, and also doesn't make sense since Ms Liberty is herself blonde. Though, this does put her on my suspect list; it seems entirely possible she may be planning to betray me to the blondes.

The mission title is "Take out 4 generators." which seems awfully dry. Also, I'm able to take out all 4 generators and the mission still won't complete, since the Sheriff is needed also, so this title is inaccurate sometimes. I suggest you rename it to "Stop the Blonde Conspiracy" or something similar.

The mission objectives are just "Sheriff" and "4 Generator". I think these should be "Defeat Sheriff" (or "Rescue Sheriff" if appropriate) and "4 Generators to destroy".

All your mobs are in a faction called "Blonde 2" which doesn't really make sense. I suggest you name their faction something more descriptive like "Dumb Blondes" or "Blonde Rage" or "Blonde Leading the Blonde" or "Blonde Ambition" or something like that.

The description of the various mobs seems to have dialog instead of info about them; I think you should rephrase their info to describe who they are, then change some of the blondes to SAY the stuff you have in their info right now.

I don't get why the Librarian has archery and the Investigator has electric blast. The Investigator's info has "takeover", which should be "take over".

Singer Star has a cool bio, but should maybe be named either "Pop Star" or "Singer Songwriter".

Why is Biker Girl a gravity controller? I think it would make more sense if she tried to stab me with a knife or hit me with a baseball bat.

I found a male Blonde! He was a police deputy. I think it would make more sense for male Blondes to be either surfer dudes or frat boys.

In Teacher Lady's description, "Benjamin Franklins'" should be "Benjamin Franklin's". Also, not sure it helps your story to have her talking about Benjamin Franklin's key experiment. Suggest you come up with something funnier.

Sheriff says "Its time you dyed your hair Blond Justice". "Its" should be "It's". And, well, my character IS blond already.

I think "I should have dyed my hair red" is kind of a sad thing for the chief blonde to say as she dies.

Debriefing: Really doesn't say much. The contact should really say more here, maybe say something about the aftermath of the blonde attack. "Blondes are bad" really isn't sufficient.

Overall
This is clearly meant to be a comedic story arc, but...I'm afraid it just wasn't very funny. I think you need to add more jokes to your story if you want it to be comedic. None of the blondes had dialog except the final boss; I'd suggest you add a lot more dialog, maybe containing some of the stuff you embedded into their descriptions.

The plot itself, to replace the city's power supply, is not very funny, doesn't make much sense, and does not really add much to your story, which seems to be about angry blondes. I'd suggest that you replace this plot with something more closely aligned with the blonde anger idea; like maybe have them holding a lot of brunettes hostage, with the idea that they will forcibly bleach blonde them. For each hostage, the blonde guards could say stuff like, "Prepare to dye!" "Gentlemen prefer blondes!" "Now you'll get to see that blondes really DO have more fun!" If you want destroyable objects, maybe you can use some of those toxic waste drums to represent huge barrels of peroxide or something.

I think you should make your blonde NPCs play up the blonde stereotype, and get rid of all the blondes in intellectual professions like teaching, lab assistant work, investigating, etc., and replace them with things that fit the "dumb blonde" meme, like cheerleaders, sorority girls, spokesmodels, ski bunnies, beach bunnies, and so on.

Alternatively you could avert the "dumb blonde" trope by making ALL of your blondes into very highly intellectual characters, like nuclear physicists, college professors, psychologists, economic advisers, etc., and have them all speak extremely brainy dialog about how angry they are because the world stereotypes them as being "dumb" simply for being blonde.

Anyway, as it is, I didn't feel like this story arc really worked, and I felt I could only give it 2 stars.

Some additional changes I made as a result of feedback and my own testing:

* Gave each mission a title in a larger font, to make the briefings look a little more classy.
* Added "Goebbels", an optional 5th Column boss, to mission 1 to force it to be limited to the 35-54 level range. (Previously it was 1-54 and I'd periodically get feedback saying, "Cool story arc but I couldn't handle it on my level 11".)
* Added "Panzer", an optional 5th Column ally, to mission 3 to force it to be limited to the 40-54 level range.
* Soviet commissar in mission 3 no longer has the sonic dispersion field (the graphical effect just doesn't look thematically right for what I'm going for).
* Fixed typos in MacArthur and Schadenfreude's dialog in mission 4.
* Renamed "Panzer General" to "Stormtrooper" in mission 4, because Stormtrooper makes more sense when you don't actually have tanks rolling through Paragon City.
* Added clue to mission 4 which you receive when you capture President Truman. The clue contains the radio address you force the President to issue after you capture him; shamelessly stolen from the speech in Superman II where the President surrenders to General Zod. (To address player feedback saying "capturing the President needs to be more cool")

In response to player feedback, I made the following changes:

* French lieutenant changed from Mercenaries primary to Assault Rifle primary.
* Soviet commissar changed from Thugs primary to Assault Rifle primary.
* Added some patrols with dialog to the Dunkirk and Stalingrad maps to make the battles a little more dynamic.

Thanks for the feedback!

[ QUOTE ]
I hate to admit it (and I apologize for any hurt feelings), but for such a well put together arc, I was rather bored .... I think actually adding some clues and changing some text to “flesh out” the tail-end of an all-new Vahzilok plot would be really neat .... The clockwork mission was a variation from the finale mission in Synapse’s TF, which was good! But, again, I almost wanted more background story in here, to create the feel that I was part of foiling more of a plot ... Basically, missions one and two just didn’t capture my attention as much as I wanted them to.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is actually really helpful input. I mostly set up the first two missions to introduce the player to the team and set up a working dynamic; however, I think you have an excellent point that each of the villains in these missions should have a more interesting criminal plot in mind.

I will definitely try to come up with more stuff to add to the first two missions to make the villains more involving.

Thanks for your run through and detailed feedback!

[ QUOTE ]
too bad you couldn't make the commissars shoot some of their own troops, would have made me feel better...

ah no, a commissar blindsides me while I'm chasing some fleeing Russian troops and kills Paulus... come on, commissar kill the fleeing Russian troops that's your job.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ohh, I so wish I could make the political commissars kill the other Russian troops when they run away. I don't know of a good way to do this though; I could flag the commissars as "Rogue" but then all the other Russians would probably kill them, which wouldn't be quite what I want.

[ QUOTE ]
So I find the first general, and I'm so tired of Master Minds at this point...
all the master minds really ticked me off, though I understand thematically why they fit...

[/ QUOTE ]

Thinking about it, I probably do have too many mastermind mobs. I may scale that back a little bit; maybe change all mastermind lieutenants to just use a normal assault rifle or something. Then reserve mastermind sets only for bosses, which makes more sense anyway. I kinda want the commissar to have pistols, which doesn't seem possible unless he's a thugs MM, but I may have to sacrifice that.

Thanks for the feedback! Will look into making some changes.

Good luck on Invading America.

5/13/2009

On Tuesday night I finished soloing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through the Facing Chaos story arc, which was about a king sending you to battle "Chaos", which required fighting a lot of CoT and miscellaneous monster-like enemies. The story did not really make much sense and there was a lot of weirdness that was trying to convey a "chaotic" feeling but just seemed distracting to me. I ended up rating this story 2 stars.

I did some editing on my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc; I had gotten a couple feedbacks complaining about the middle mission being much lower level than the other two missions (they had a max level of 40, 30, 40), so I decided to try and even this out. The second mission is basically full of vagrants and bums, so it's hard to think of a plausible level 40ish enemy, but I ended up putting in some Freaks, which are kinda on the scuzzy side, so I thought might be reasonable. While doing this, I noticed that the Prisoners faction had been added back to the mission editor, so I happily ditched my custom Convicts faction and put Prisoners back into my "Break out of the Zig" mission.

I republished the arc and did a test run through it with Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker); now the mission levels go 38, 39, 40, which should be a lot smoother for malefactoring high level players down.

Finished the night playing Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) on a friend's 6-player team running Unai Kemen's level 50 missions in Peregrine Island; we beat up a bunch of Hydra and Freaks before I called it a night.

After yesterday's patch I found I could author Prisoners into my story arcs again! I got rid of my custom "Convicts" faction and now once again have proper Prisoners in my "Break out of the Zig" mission.

Just wanted to spread the word for other people who were impacted when they disabled this faction earlier!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


Heheh, you KNOW that snooping in the other kids' stuff is NOT a required objective for the mission ... yet you still did it. *evil grin*




[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, good point.

[/ QUOTE ]

No worries. I originally figured that snoopy players would look in the lockers to see what the other kids had, while some players might decide it would be "wrong" for them to rummage through them, so I wanted to make the mission completable either way. I tried to add clicky messages and dialog to make the player feel a little guilty if they get all snoopy, too.

So far every person I've talked to that went through the mission has looked inside them though.

And regarding how the mobs in that mission are spawned, it's a little bit of trickery where each encounter is triggered off the previous one. It's not too hard to do, but took a little bit of tuning to make it work the way I wanted.

Thanks much for the play-through and the review!!

Facing Chaos review

Premise is that some harbinger of doom is warning heroes of a great disaster that befell his old world and is about to befall ours.

Level range was 41-50. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: "quite possibly no longer exist" should be "quite possibly no longer exists,".

In the second paragraph, at one point you refer to the contact's enemy as a "force" and later as a "creature"; these are conceptually different to me, as the former is a more abstract concept while the latter is generally some living critter. I suggest you decide whether Chaos is more of a "force" or more of a "creature" and then get rid of the other term.

"I beg for your aide" should be "I beg for your aid".

Second part of briefing: "cults place of worship" should be "cult's place of worship".

The contact wants to send me to investigate a chaos cult, though he is very hesitant about it and is sending mixed signals as to what he really hopes I'll find. Perhaps this is just his personality.

The objective "Find Member of Chaos" seems a little ambiguous; I mean, all of the Cult of Chaos faction here are technically members of Chaos, aren't they? But not all of them will complete this objective.

I'm a little unclear on why a separate Cult of Chaos faction is necessary, when they're described as "like the Circle of Thorns" and consist of mostly Circle of Thorns mages.

Clicking on "Pile of stuff", "There are alot of strange notes", "alot" should be "a lot".

The actual "Note of Chaos" clue is kinda humorous, but seems very different in tone than the story the contact seemed to present (where Chaos was a world destroying entity).

Found a boss named "Riki Tiki Tally". He didn't appear to be a mongoose, so I'm not sure why he is named that. His description is a little puzzling, referring to a predecessor who misspelled a word while speaking; this either is meant to be ironic or doesn't make sense.

Defeating Riki Tiki seemed to be enough to finish the mission. Seemed a little too simple.

Debriefing: "indeed apart" should be "indeed a part".

Contact is claiming these guys are "the Shadow of Chaos", but only Riki had that as his faction; the rest of the mobs were all "Cult of Chaos".

"they are lead by a woman" should be "they are led by a woman".

The contact ends up expositioning a lot about the Shadows of Chaos and the woman that leads them; strange that he does not actually give her name. It's good that this explanation is here; would be nice if some of it showed up in clues in the mission before he has to explain it all to you.

Mission 2
Briefing: "The Longbow are aware if a little untrusting thanks to your efforts." This makes it sound like the Longbow are untrusting because of the player, but I don't think that's what you meant. Reword this.

"I heard angry shouting about their numbers just getting up and walking away".... this sentence doesn't make sense to me. Do you maybe mean "They were shouting among themselves and one got up and walked away"?

"preformed" should be "performed".

It's kind of unclear how "Chaos" is making people just get up and walk away. Maybe it's meant to be mysterious, but the connection seems a little tenuous.

Entrance popup: "walking in an almost in a zombie like shuffle" should be "walking in a zombie-like shuffle".

I found a Longbow hostage and freed him, but strangely this wasn't one of my objectives despite the mission being called "Locate Longbow operatives". Also, I ran into a group of Longbow and they were hostile towards me, so I had to kill them; this doesn't really quite seem right. The contact said "please try to find those people" and "search for those missing people", not kill them; though he did mention "they will fight against you". I'm just not really clear on what good I'm doing here. Shooting them for their own good, I guess?

I found a Chaos Vendor who was selling rocks to some of the mind controlled Longbow. She had some peculiar dialog, some of which was nonsense and some of which was breaking the fourth wall. She gave me the "Crazy Lady?" clue after I rescued her from the Longbow who were attempting to buy her stuff. Not really sure what to make of that.

Fought and killed a bat winged lizard named Firada whose only dialog was in growls. This seemed to complete the "Defeat base commander" objective, though how this animal could've been the base commander is a mystery to me. He DID have an ID card identifying him as the commander; I guess he got transformed somehow?

Debriefing: the contact says "They turned into monsters?" But really I only saw one person who was turned into a monster, which is a slight exaggeration. Maybe this would make more sense if ALL of the Longbow had been transformed into monsters. You could perhaps make a custom group of monsters in Longbow uniforms, which would help explain why you have to fight them.

So far this story arc is very confusing. Perhaps that's intentional, but I'm not sure I "get it".

Mission 3
Briefing: This briefing really didn't make much sense to me. The contact wants me to go assassinate the leader of the Chaos cult. The contact thinks I can't handle it, so he's going to send his younger daughter to help me. But his daughter can't fight and he hopes that she will play possum and escape if there's trouble. How exactly is that supposed to help me? It just doesn't add up.

Inside the mission I find a large number of dancing monsters. That's kind of...weird. It's an interesting assortment of monsters from various factions, which is kind of cool. They are just acting very strangely. Some are making chicken sounds or meowing.

I spent some time looking at the weird monsters, then stealthed to the boss and defeated him, which completed the mission. Never did see the contact's daughter. The reason for why we have all these weird dancing monsters is not explained, either.

Debriefing: the contact now says "one thread down leaving use with two more to deal with." First, "use" should be "us". And what's this about two more threats to deal with? I don't think he ever explained there were exactly 3 things to do. Needs more explanation.

The contact also says Longbow helped him seal the next site we're going after. This seems inconsistent with the earlier mission where we were fighting Longbow and some were transformed into monsters.

Mission 4
Briefing: I think most of the first paragraph should be trimmed out, I don't think it makes sense for the contact to be telling you how much he owes you and how he wishes you were in charge of his old world and stuff, right before he sends you to the final mission. Maybe some of that text would make sense AFTER you finish the final mission and Win.

In the second paragraph the contact says "the only chance we have to end this is to strike at the tainted bodies" ... what tainted bodies? Are you talking about the transformed Longbow here, or the Seed of Chaos monsters, or something else?

I think you need some clues that lead up to this final mission; so far it feels like the contact is just telling me "Now you need to go do this!" and I'm not quite sure I understand why I'm doing it, except for the fact that he told me to do so. It would be nicer if the player could clearly see WHY she is doing each mission.

Inside the mission I find my first objective is to defeat Rip Van Twinkle. I'm not really sure why, I guess she is an evil chaos thing. I found her and beat her, she had very random looking dialog.

After that I had to defeat 2 Guard Beasts. I'm not sure why.

I found a destroyable object named Completely Out of Place Object, which I destroyed. The mobs were very insisted on guarding it for reasons unknown.

After beating up the 2 Guard Beasts, suddenly I have to "Defeat Rip Van Twinkle for good" -- now why is it that I have to defeat her a second time? This needs to be explained.

I notice both the first Rip Van Twinkle and the second Rip Van Twinkle have "This is the true body of Rip Van Twinkle" in their description. Yet they are different characters (the first spawned as a boss, second as an EB for me). How can they both be the true body?

I managed to defeat the EB Rip Van Twinkle after popping a few purples and a break free.

Mission exit popup: defeating Rip Van Twinkle makes all the monsters turn back into humans. Now why is Rip Van Twinkle the key to all this? It needs to be better explained, in clues or dialog or briefings or something. Also, "They were going to need" should be "They are going to need".

Overall
I'm afraid I didn't think the story made very much sense. I did not get a sense that each mission logically led to the next mission; rather, each mission was just a new task the contact assigned me, not particularly related to the previous mission. To make this a better story arc, you need to work on establishing some connection between the various missions, basically the way the plot of your story is meant to flow. As it is now, the missions do not feel connected, except that the contact tells you they are all fighting Chaos in various forms. I also think you want to build up your "big bad guy" throughout the story arc, as fighting her is the climax of the story arc -- as it is now, she's really never introduced until the last mission, and is never particularly developed as a character. It would be better if when the player encounters her, the player thinks something like "Rip totally needs to pay for what happened last mission! She's going down!"

What Chaos actually does was never really well explained. In various situations during this story arc, Chaos apparently destroyed the contact's homeworld, caused people to worship it, mind controlled people into coming to join it, transformed people into monsters, sold funny rocks from a hot dog cart, makes monsters dance, caused NPCs to break the Fourth Wall and ask for a date, and placed unexpected objects in missions. Maybe it's too much to expect Chaos to be consistent, but this felt far too random and I found it very distracting. I'd suggest you pick a couple specific things that you want your Chaos effect to do, and focus on those to the exclusion of the others.

I also found the contact's briefings and debriefings to be a bit meandering, using lots of words to say not very much; I think the text could use some tightening up.

The game play of most missions was a bit on the simple side (basically, zone in, find boss, kill boss, mission complete); you might want to add more or different objectives to mix it up a little. The last mission where you beat Rip, then fight two guards, then beat an upgraded Rip, was better about this from a gameplay standpoint, but your story needed to explain why these steps were necessary.

Anyway, with these various problems in mind, I felt I could only give this story arc 2 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

------

I owe a review to:

GGG247 - 2 of 103955 and 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
@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)

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


You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:

Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)

[ QUOTE ]
Mission 3: I know I’m a teenager, but wouldn’t I be too moral to snoop around? I can overlook it, I guess. But I’m glad it served as a purpose.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heheh, you KNOW that snooping in the other kids' stuff is NOT a required objective for the mission ... yet you still did it. *evil grin*


[ QUOTE ]
I really liked this, despite the hairy beginning with the Elite Bosses. It reminds me of Teen Titans/Young Avengers/your standard teen team book. It’s a breezy, fun story with heart.

Five stars.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks, that was exactly what I was going for. :-)

5/12/2009

Last Wednesday night I mostly puttered around in Mission Architect. I set up some of the gameplay elements of my hypothetical fourth story arc and did some self-testing, beating up my various samurai and ninja and stuff. I ended up getting the Virtual Ticket Fiend badge (1000 virtual tickets while in Test Mode).

Enough people played and rated my Teen Phalanx Forever! (arc #67335) for me to get the Renowned badge (1000 stars on one arc). Since I had 223 plays so far, I was able to calculate that 1000 stars meant that my average rating was 4.48 (rounded to 4 stars), just barely below the breakpoint between 4 and 5 stars. This info seems consistent with the conspiracy theory that certain voters manipulate the rating system to knock all arcs out of the 5 star range.

I solo'd Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through a very cool time travel based arc called A Tangle in Time, where an evil mage trapped me in a time loop where it seemed like I was repeating my actions over and over. The time travel aspects were very cleverly handled, there was good dialog and the effects of the time travel loop on the various NPCs was really well done. I gave the arc 5 stars.

After that I duoed with a tanker friend through an arc called Escalation, where I got into a grudge match with a minor villain with an interesting schtick: she had the ability to respawn on defeat into a new "clone" body each time, and over the course of the story, her clones progressively became more and more powerful. This was a cool idea for a villain, and the dialog really showed the villain's personality, and especially her growing obsession with defeating the player. I felt like there needed to be a little more to do in each mission though. I gave the arc 4 stars.

On Friday night I started off playing Tehuantl (19 widow) on an 8 player VEAT team of Demolition Girls SG doing various missions in Sharkhead Isle, which mostly went well except one time where we got utterly stomped by a Night Widow throwing smoke grenades. Despite all 8 of us being VEATs who totally could have taken Tactical Training: Leadership for some extra perception, none of us had, so we were utterly blinded by -per debuffs. We did end up completing the Paragon of Vice badge mission and got Tehuantl to level 23; I took Stamina and Foresight as new powers.

Late Friday night I solo'd Police Woman through Yellow Submarine-Save Pepperland, a story arc in which you rescue members of the Beatles from creatures known only as Blue Meanies. This story arc didn't seem complete (you only got to save 2 Beatles, then the arc suddenly ends without closure), a lot of stuff wasn't very well described, and the plot would be incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't a big Beatles fan. I gave it 2 stars.

On Saturday morning, I played through Childhood Horrors, where you start off saving some random guy, but you end up uncovering a massive plot to hack into the hospital teleporter network specifically to mess with Ms. Liberty's head. Ms. Liberty ends up in a coma and you have to go "into her mind" to try and save her, and while there you find out all about poor Megan's deep seated psychological problems. The last mission had a very creepy and disturbing mood, and the arc overall made good use of dynamically spawned objectives; I thought the dialog was a little stilted and there were some gameplay issues, though. I ended up giving this arc 4 stars.

I got the Allegiant (54 month veteran) badge mid-day on Saturday, then played Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender) on a quick Manticore TF organized by a friend, with a team mix of:

tanker
scrapper
3 blasters
kin defender (me)
cold defender

My friend was 3-boxing the tanker, scrapper and one of the blasters, so most of the time the tanker and the scrapper were essentially AFK (often not even inside the mission), slowing us down somewhat. It was kind of a pain to be a kin for a team with no melee, but the cold shields helped and we managed to get by. A zombie invasion showed up in Crey's Folly just as we got a hunt mission there, which also slowed us down. Nevertheless we finished in 1hr 12mins for 32 merits (26.67 MPH). After the TF I picked up a set of 6 Thunder Strike IOs which I slotted into Linda's Cosmic Burst, getting global bonuses of +4% run speed, +7% accuracy and +3.75% range defense, all of which seem very nice for her.

After that I played Primadonna (37 sonic/kin corruptor) as a lackey on an Imperious TF, with a team mix of

storm controller
kin corruptor (me)
poison MM
3 scrappers
blaster
warshade

We had a few problems; two of the scrappers were very low (a level 46 and her sidekick) so had low DPS and died a lot, and our controller had to take a 20 minute AFK right before the last mission, which caused a lot of people (including me) to get bored and switch to alts til he got back. During this time one of the scrappers wandered off to Ouroboros to sell and consequently got auto-kicked from the TF due to being in a non-coed zone. As a result we had to do the final mission with a team of only 7. In the last mission, Imperious managed to aggro Romulus when we weren't really ready, resulting in a team wipe for us. We regrouped and beat up Romulus, but it was something of a messy process with lots of deaths. Finished the ITF in 1hr 56mins, for 28 merits (14.48 MPH) and got Primadonna to 38 and Fulcrum Shift.

Saturday afternoon I felt inspired to start a new story arc review thread, Who Reviews the Reviewers, where I run through the story arcs of forum reviewers to see whether the critics can actually write, too. Towards this end, I solo'd Millie Volt (28 elec/inv brute) through Two Households Alike, a mafia story drawing a lot of inspiration from Romeo and Juliet. This was a good story overall, with good writing and dialog. The final mission was pretty tough (willpower AV/EB, ack) but I managed to beat it, and the finale and the final souvenir were cool enough that I gave the arc 5 stars.

After that I played Millie on a 5 player LEGION team, running through Looking Back: A Fifth Anniversary Celebration which was a wonderful story arc filled with nostalgia and references to old forum personalities and CoH nerfs and patches. The timeline that was presented reminded me of a lot of old CoH stuff; I'm quite surprised that it's been 4 years since ED already. I still remember when I used to slot all of Police Woman's attacks with nothing but damage. I gave that arc 5 stars.

We also went through a silly story arc called Crazy Ladies on the Loose which seemed to be a farm where you fight scantily-clad fembots. This seemed a farm with no story to speak of, so I gave it 1 star.

The team then fought an extended zombie invasion of Cap au Diable in which we got all 4 zombie badges, then went into a story called Hot Pants where our goal was to find the contact's stolen pants. This was full of double entendres and silly jokes. It was nonsensical, but fun, and I gave it 4 stars.

From there we went into Crimes of Fashion which was an amusing arc where you are basically henchmen/enforcers for the Facemaker, and acquire various fashion accessories from various villain groups. We did have a team wipe during this arc when we grabbed 4 glowies at once, and got flattened by the resulting 4 Arachnos ambushes. It was also silly but fun and I gave it 4 stars.

All these adventures got Millie Volt to level 30, where I took Tough.

Late at night, I solo'd Adventuress (9 MA/regen scrapper) through Hunter of Beasts: It starts with a riot. This indeed started with a riot, requiring me to clear an insanely huge outdoor map in order to stop the riot; but from there the arc suddenly transformed into a rather thoughtful and moody investigation on the trail of a serial killer. The serial killer's final victim still haunts me (especially because I was alone and it was really late at night, I think), so I thought that part was really well done, but grinding through a massive kill-all was awful enough that I could only give this arc 3 stars. Adventuress did get to level 10, though, and trained in Dull Pain.

On Sunday morning, Police Woman got the Architect (AE day job badge), Windfall (10 tickets over cap) and Cataclysmic (destroy 50 things in AE) badges. This puts her badge count at 623.

I solo'd Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) through BluDeth, in which I'm working for Vanguard to investigate some strange occurrences, only to discover it's a mysterious computer virus that's now able to infect people. Vanguard is all set to wipe this virus out, but for some reason the story forced me to want to save the virus (which was actually a computer AI), and so I "go rogue" (start fighting good guys) and end up beaming the AI into space where it won't hurt anyone. The writing style was pretty good but it was awkward how it forced me into saving the virus when I actually thought it deserved deletion. I gave that arc 4 stars.

I received a formal review of Celebrity Kidnapping, which motivated me to make some changes to hopefully improve the story. The main complaint was that the enemies threw way too many holds, which makes sense because I have mad ambushes of Paparazzi throwing illusion control powers around. I ended up changing a Family boss, which was originally a Consigliere that can both hold you and summon a Singularity to also hold you, and switching that for a Quantum Gunner, which sucks for kheldians but is better for everyone else. Unfortunately, those were the only two choices of Family bosses that were at the level 40 range. So I guess I'll just have to suffer from being yelled at by kheldians in feedback; but then kheldians are used to running into quantum gunners everywhere, so maybe they won't notice. Also I changed Paris to have more thermal powers, so she can buff Thaw and hopefully mitigate some of the holds being thrown at the player.

I played Strong Woman (16 inv/SS tanker) as a sidekick on a Synapse TF organized by a friend, with a team mix of

scrapper
tanker (me)
3 blasters
kin controller
cold defender
emp defender

With three flavors of buffs we were in good shape and beat up lots of Clockwork. We didn't have much in the way of stealth capability, so ended up fighting our way through all the missions. Managed to beat up Babbage for 2 merits, and complete the TF in 2hrs 36mins for another 57 merits (22.69 MPH). This got Strong Woman to level 21, and I took Health and Stamina as new powers.

Sunday evening, PhiladelphiaPA named Teen Phalanx Forever! as one of his top 3 favorite Liberty server arcs, which was awfully nice! Thanks!!

Monday night I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a "quick" Lady Grey TF organized on Villains of Liberty channel. Our team mix was

2 fortunatas
rad corruptor
rad defender
tanker
2 scrappers
brute

We were on Vicious difficulty, but nevertheless stomped the TF easily. In the last mission we nearly had the final AV dead before the last team member zoned into the mission, and ended up stalling for a minute so that she could get in before we finished the TF. Even with this delay, we finished in 29mins 15sec, for 39 merits (80.0MPH).

After that I did some market manipulation (prices are fluctuating like crazy, giving lots of opportunity) and fiddled with my incomplete fourth story arc some more.

Finished the night beginning to solo through the Facing Chaos story arc, which seems to be about a harbinger of doom warning that something awful is coming, so I better do something about it. But I only got through the first mission before calling it a night.

This arc is basically my love letter to teen superhero team books.


Arc Name: Teen Phalanx Forever!
Arc ID: 67335
Faction: Vahzilok, Clockwork, Freakshow, Rogue Robots
Creator Global/Forum Name: @PW / PoliceWoman
Difficulty Level: Moderate; there is one (fairly easy, non-customized) AV/EB per mission, but allies are present to help. It should be soloable.
Synopsis: The Teen Phalanx is on a recruitment drive, and they've extended an invitation to a teen version of your hero to try out! Do you have what it takes to join Paragon City's most prestigious teen superhero team?
Morality: Heroic
Estimated Time to Play: 4 missions, estimate 60-90 mins.
Level range: 15-20, 20, 20-25, 29-30 (mission levels gradually increase to "level" you up)

What a cool idea!

Arc offered to which character?: Ana Cruz (based on "fame")
Arc Name: Celebrity Kidnapping
Arc ID: 1388
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global/Forum Name: @PW
Level Range: 20-40
Soloable?: Yes
Length: Medium
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: A celebrity heiress has been sentenced to jail for drunk driving. The plan is to break her out of the Zig with the help of some thugs, then hold her for ransom for immense profit! What could go wrong?
Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 mins

[ QUOTE ]

I have been thinking about that line of reasoning. I wonder if people wouldn't prefer their more played arcs to get even more plays. There does seem to be some incentive for that in game and with how the rating system works.

[/ QUOTE ]

A good question. My personal opinion is that I'd rather get more stars on the popular arc, and more feedback on the less popular arc. Your mileage may vary.

[ QUOTE ]
Just an FYI, you reviewed an arc that was both in beta, and written for a specific audience.

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw you had a couple story arcs published, and basically picked this one to review because it had the fewest plays through. Enjoy.

[ QUOTE ]
Arc# 1288, “Celebrity Kidnapping”
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: aggravating mobs
...
It's a cute arc and doesn't overplay its joke, but the rampant use of control powers is likely to frustrate a lot of squishies.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the review! I'll definitely take steps to mitigate the enemy holds. I don't think I can change the Paparazzi's illusion powers without losing their cool flash effect, but I can make the final Family boss a non-controller and give Thaw to Paris as you suggested.