PoliceWoman

BluDeth review (arc 126908)

Premise of this story seems to be to investigate prehistoric virii or mitochondria or something.

It's a neutral level 40-54 arc. I tried soloing on a 50 mind/rad controller.

Mission 1
Briefing: There is a "00" followed by a long ellipsis at the top of this briefing; so this is either chapter 0 which is named "..." or it's a typo.

Longbow are holding down a building near the Red Line? Wasn't the Red train line destroyed?

It's an interesting set up; seems to be a turf war between Longbow and Vanguard and they can't figure out what to do so they're throwing some heroes at it. Specifically, me. This sounds quite different than the premise as described in the story arc description, but maybe I haven't gotten to the part with prehistoric virii yet.

"There's a Longbow agent - the main reason Longbow are paralysed." I think maybe she should more clearly say that "There's a Longbow agent already on the scene who has been captured/who we've lost contact with" or something like that.

I like the mission title, "Be the Third Option".

Mission objectives: "Rescue the Longbow Covert" should maybe be "Rescue the Longbow Covert Agent"? "4 Signal Emitters" maybe should be "4 Signal Emitters to disable"

The contact seemed certain the signal wasn't Rikti, but there's Rikti all over this mission. I guess they also deployed a team to take control of the signal?

It seemed like some Rikti were fighting each other ... even when I hadn't confused them. Puzzling.

Found some Crey fighting Rikti... they made some very disturbing sounds before dying.

Debriefing: Decent debriefing, with some green text inserted making me think that I'm starting to hear things as a result of being exposed to the weirdness in the first mission. Interesting.

Mission 2
Briefing: OK, more weird markings at the top of the briefing, so the 00 ellipsis wasn't some kind of typo. Now it's "10 .a..l..e.." ... are we counting in binary? No, it should be 01 then. Are we playing hangman in the rest of the text? The main text of the briefing hints at its nature: a (meaningless) binary signal.

I wonder if "Reds and Whites" should be just "Red and Whites", since this is referring to a single Red and White group (Longbow), not a group of Reds and a different group of Whites.

I do like the tension between Vanguard and Longbow that the contact portrays.

Entry pop up: "there's" should be capitalized. I'm inclined to say drop the leading "..." ellipses, but maybe you want them there for flavor.

Found some Longbow battling other Longbow, with only ellipses for dialog. I'm tentatively assuming this is working as intended, showing that the "signal" is slowly driving people mad.

Found Subject BMT-0034 that also talked only in ellipses. I kind of think you ought to give this NPC a description beyond the default boilerplate, describing what the player sees.

Likewise for Subject BMT-0033.

Research Data Terminal's progress bar says "Attempting FAT structure", which is kind of odd; am I really accessing the file attribute table here? I'm not really sure most people would know this expression, may want to just say "Hacking Terminal".

I got a "Lab Code" clue that basically says nothing because apparently someone garbled everything on the computer. Though right now I feel like there's a pretty fine line between whether the author is portraying some sort of Tower of Babel allegory, or whether he simply didn't feel like writing any meaningful dialog or clues.

Thankfully the "Research Papers" gave a more informative Paper Records clue. Though I think a bulletin board is an odd graphic to use for "Research Papers". I might suggest a file cabinet, a desk, or maybe a whiteboard with drawings on it.

I like the mission exit popup, and the debriefing. It's definitely building up that this "signal" is driving the player mad. In the debriefing, "useable" should be "usable", and "alright" should be "all right". I'm trying to divine some meaning from the lime green "madness-speak" but so far cannot make anything out.

Mission 3
Briefing: I like the briefing and how the contact tries to take "my" complaints of hearing things seriously. I'm...starting to see patterns in the green text. The hangman puzzle at the top of the mission briefing is starting to look like it has meaning. Maybe it's just my imagination though.

"bio-modem, - the techs" looks weird, and uses "the techs" twice in the same sentence. I think it should just be "bio-modem - they". Though considering my character's capability of understanding language is being either destroyed or transfigured, maybe this isn't a reliable comment....

The last sentence, "Maybe we could try a protracted exposure to the signal, see what that gets us?" I have to think, wow, that seems like a REALLY bad idea if my exposure to the signal this far has messed me up this much. I should think it would be smarter to avoid any future exposure to the signal and hope it goes away. It's a little crazy for my character to agree "I'm willing to try that", as portrayed by this mission.

Mission objectives: Find BluSkrene wasn't what the Colonel asked me to do at all (but IS what the green text asked), so I can only assume my character has been totally compromised by the alien mind control or something like that, and is now doing what the evil green text says instead.

Ran into lots more characters with only ellipses for dialog. I really don't like not knowing what is going on, but it's clearly part of the mood the story is trying to set.

I spent quite some time flying around this outdoor map trying to "Find a way to contact BluSkrene" but nothing really presented itself; I was figuring there'd be a glowy or something; now I'm wondering if I'm supposed to flip out and defeat all the Freakshow partiers. Maybe clearer directions would be helpful here.

I eventually popped out of the mission and checked the arc description to find it says "Contains Collection", so I guess there's just a glowy that I'm missing.

Finally found a little trash can to click (after much searching - this is a big map), which triggered a new objective, "Deal with BlueSkrene's investigator." I see a "BluSkrene's Messenger" mob spawned near me also though, so checking it out.

BluSkrene's Messenger definitely needs a special description.

Mission exit popup: "Bluskrene" should be "BluSkrene" (based the capitalization presented so far). Not sure why he cares about the Freakshow holding block parties, I would've thought he was transcendental enough to not care about such things.

Debriefing: "You were pretty roughly beat up when we found you" seems awkward, especially when nothing actually beat me up ... suggest you reword this to "You were in pretty rough shape when we found you".

Mission 4
Briefing: Interesting construction for this briefing where BluSkrene interrupts the contact. It does make sense that he talks in blue text; where did all the green text in earlier briefings come from? Was that random noise? I wonder if that should've been blue too.

This briefing, both the white text and the blue text, tells me nothing about what I'm about to do. "You'll know where to find it" doesn't seem enough, to me. I think some idea of what to expect should be provided .

Second part of briefing: well written, but basically comes down to "You're a loose cannon, I may have to disavow you." Fine.

Mission entry popup finally explains where I am going, thankfully.

Mission title is "Explain BluDeth" and the mission objectives includes "Find BluDeth's Origins", but the term "BluDeth" has not been used before (except in the story arc name, I guess) so I'm not sure what it is I'm explaining. Is BluDeth this connection that BluSkrene has established? I just don't know.

"Find the Crippington Report" is also referring to something that hasn't been introduced yet. I suggest you make these two clues something like "2 clues to find", or if that sounds too boring, something evocative sounding, like "The Truth is Out There" and "I Want to Believe", rather than mentioning things that haven't been described yet.

Wow, it doesn't take long between Vanguard disavowing you and Vanguard putting you on their death squad list!

Clicking the bookshelf I get the progress bar "Staring at goats?" which makes no sense in this context.

"The Crippington Report" clue, "fundamentla" should be "fundamental" and "biomodem" should be "bio-modem" (everywhere you've mentioned this object prior to this reference, you've hyphenated it, so I suggest you stay consistent). It's a very cool clue though. I seem to be in a Neal Stephenson novel!

"BluSkrene's information" clue wants to motivate me to save the BluDeth virus from the mean old Vanguard who are planning on purging it, saying "I think we owe it to the AI to give it the freedom to live." This is morally questionable to me; the BluDeth virus is infecting people and making them kill each other. If we were to substitute, say, the smallpox virus, which also infects people and kills them, do we really "owe" it to the smallpox virus to let it live? As a hero, I don't think so; though this is a "neutral" arc, so a villain could play it too, but I don't see what a villain's angle would be, either.

I like that there are Rikti investigators here too, since this is a pretty serious threat.

Possible continuity error: I thought the BluDeth virus destroyed my ability to comprehend language, so I see everyone's text as just ellipses. But the Vanguard guarding the Vanguard HVAS? and the Rikti Investigator both spoke intelligibly.

Also, to be consistent with the third mission, maybe Vanguard HVAS? should also be named "BluSkrene's Messenger"; but the Vanguard treating it like a malfunctioning HVAS would still be fine.

"BluDeth.Source" clue: "sourcecode" should be "source code". "network born" should be "network borne". Not sure why it wouldn't be useful against Rikti, as stated here; I got the source code off of an object that looks just like a Rikti computer. Maybe explain WHY it wouldn't be useful against Rikti, and use a more conventional looking computer in that case. Also, not being useful against Rikti seems to be contrary to earlier info that the Rikti were detecting the psychic signals in the early missions.

Exit popup presents me the choice of walking away and letting Vanguard wipe out the BluDeth virus, or doing something about it for my own reasons.

Mission 5
Briefing: The hangman puzzle is finally solved, and is kind of a cool result. The "line numbers" in the hangman puzzle now make me think that BluDeth must've been programmed in BASIC.

I can understand Colonel Knight again and there's no evil green text OR evil blue text. I think ellipses are overused here, along with broken sentences.

The contact says that if I just walk away now, I should be fine. Vanguard will wipe out BluDeth if I just leave it alone.

Second part of briefing: "Warzone" should be "War Zone". Her very last sentence should end in a period, not a comma. (Oddly, when I review the mission briefing inside the mission, this text ends correctly with "stole them, alright?" but the actual briefing seemed to end in "stole them," ... not sure what happened there.)

I actually think my character would walk away at this point, and let BluDeth be destroyed. Am I really obligated to save a malignant virus?? There is no obvious way to actually walk away, except quit the story arc, though. I considered doing this, but decided to see how it ends.

Mission entrance popup: "biomodem" should be "bio-modem".

I like the random dialog from the Vanguard patrols chatting about the virus. They overuse ellipses somewhat. I tend to agree with what they say, though; the virus SHOULD be destroyed.

I'm a little unclear on what establishing the satellite uplink is doing. Is "my" plan to broadcast BluDeth into space where it will be "safe"? Also, should the satellite uplink be another Rikti computer, and not an Arachnos computer, as currently depicted?

Clicking the satellite uplink causes 3 Signal Jammers to spawn; this is neat gameplaywise, but storywise I am not sure it makes sense; the Signal Jammers would've needed to be in place before the satellite transmission, in order to stop them, and logically it would be just as valid to destroy the signal jammers first, THEN attempt the satellite uplink.

Destroying the 3 Signal Jammers suddenly triggers a new objective of "Stop the repairs!" but I think you need some explanation for why this has suddenly become necessary. Stop the repairs to what? The jammers? Not the satellite uplink, surely?

Bettie Mae's dialog "find out what's wrong" needs a period at the end of it.

Bettie Mae does give a clue explaining the next task, to destroy a kill switch server. I kind of thought Bettie Mae worked for my contact in Vanguard Shield, not Vanguard Sword; but maybe I got mixed up.

I like all the dynamically generated objectives, but on this fairly large map, it is requiring a LOT of backtracking and searching over previously searched ground. A smaller map would be nice if it is at all possible.

Finally found Storage BD-001 and destroyed it. In its description, I think "susceptable" should be "susceptible". I'm a little skeptical at the idea that destroying the original hardware would actually stop Vanguard from destroying BluDeth; why would the shutdown antivirus, if already creatd, need the original hardware or even the original source code? But oh well, it's comic book science.

Mission exit popup: "As your biomodem space fades" should maybe be "As your bio-modem connection fades away". The fact that BluDeth is now far away in space makes me feel a little better about letting it live. Of course, now I've probably inflicted BluDeth on some other innocent spacefaring civilization. Oops. Also it's final "Goodbye" .. should it be in dark blue instead of lime green? Or maybe all the lime green is BluDeth and all the dark blue is BluSkrene.

Debriefing: biomodem should be bio-modem, throughout. (Or if you'd rather use biomodem, change all earlier references; just be consistent.) Every security recording was replaced by a TV show? When/how did this happen?

I thought the player's having attacked Longbow, Vanguard and PPD throughout this story arc was all handwaved away a little too easily, but "I was mind controlled" kind of IS a free pass in comic books, so I suppose this was okay.

Loose ends: BluDeth is gone now, but isn't BluSkrene still at large? I think he created BluDeth, but he kind of dropped out of the story entirely midway through.

Possible plot hole: Since BluDeth can infect humans, why isn't it able to subvert all the humans that are going after it in this mission? The Signal Jammers, maybe - but after I destroy the Signal Jammers, the Vanguard should all be vulnerable, and BluDeth could easily have jumped to them then.

Overall
I like the writing style, the Vanguard vs Longbow set up, and the concept of a computer virus that is able to infect humans. But I had a hard time understanding why I should want to save BluDeth instead of destroy it; BluDeth was established early on as malignant, when it forced humans to shoot each other. There were no instances that I can recall where BluDeth was portrayed as a sympathetic character, so I felt like I had no motivation to save it. "It's alive and deserves to live" is not enough for me; BluDeth as depicted is more like the bubonic plague than it is like a human being. I seriously considered taking the contact's advice and "walking away" from the Vanguard closing in on BluDeth to erase it, but there was no way to do this except quit the story arc.

So while I found the earlier part of the arc where I'm slowly being corrupted by BluDeth to be pretty involving, the later part of the arc where I'm apparently moved to rescue BluDeth (and end up fighting three factions of "good guys" while doing so) left me a little cold. I think you can maybe mitigate this somewhat if you can provide a few moments where BluDeth's essential "humanity" shines through so that the player has some reason to believe BluDeth is a sympathetic sentient being; as presented, however, I viewed BluDeth as a hostile and virulent disease that should be eradicated.

I liked the writing style, though, and I liked the motif of the "hangman" puzzle, and BluDeth's parting signal was nice (probably the closest BluDeth shows to humanity).

I gave this story arc 4 stars.

[ QUOTE ]
I must admit that I felt tricked by this post. It sounded like "lets take a scalding look at reviewers who have nasty cracks about everyone else but who do crap work themselves."

I liked that idea.

But it soon appeared that this was really a "why are people playing more of the arc of us tireless, helpful community reviewers."

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I'd love to find that certain reviewers "have nasty cracks about everyone else but do crap work themselves." I enjoy schadenfreude as much as the next person -- probably more! But honestly I'm probably not mean enough to write anything really nasty about people whose arcs suck. I generally prefer to offer constructive criticism.

But I thought it would be a fun use of my time to see what sort of material the "critics" are themselves publishing. Especially the ones who are too stuffy to outright ask people to run their story arcs. I figure either the story arcs will be pretty good because they can actually write; or else they'll be dreadful and I can be amused at the hypocrisy. Either way, I have fun.

If you don't like that, that's fine. It's MY time that I'm spending though.

Hunters of Beasts: It starts with a riot... review

The premise of this arc seems to be dealing with a riot in King's Row.

Level ranges seem to be mostly 5-14 hero side. I played a level 9 MA/regen scrapper on heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing: I guess as a hero I automatically like classical music? The character I am playing is kind of a para-military martial artist. I suppose it is possible she likes classical, but it seems a lot to assume.

Should "Victoria Stnad" be "Victoria Stand"? Not sure though, Stnad could be a proper name of some sort.

Second part of briefing: "piece and tranquility" should probably be "peace and tranquility". "Witches Sabboth" should perhaps be "Witches Sabbath".

Mission objectives: "2 Find Clues" should probably be "2 clues to find". I kinda think "Quiet the riot" should be "Quell the riot", but I guess Quiet works also. It just reminds me of a band. Not a classical one, though.

As this is a very low level arc, you might need more pointed directions for what needs to be accomplished to "Quiet the riot". My first guess would be that it's a Defeat All in King's Row, which would be ... a lot to ask. I suspect it's something less than that though.

I do kind of like the random hostages I'm saving on the streets here. Haven't seen any of the gangs actually fighting, though I did see some Skulls and Hellion patrols that were trash talking as they were moving, and some patrols that showed up wounded as if they had fought someone.

Found a hostage called "Lost Victims", should probably be just "Lost Victim". Also found a hostage called "Vahzilok victims", should be "Vahzilok Victim". Or you could just call them all "Victim"; a "Vahzilok Victim" might be misinterpreted as being a victimized member of the Vahzilok. My guess is that you have multiple hostage situations so called your encounter "Lost Victims" for that reason, but this name got reused as the hostage names.

Lost Victims also says "I...willl...be..." and has an extra 'l' in "willl". Unless you intend for the word to sound dragged out.

The rescued hostages just kind of stand up and stay where they are once rescued; not sure if this is the intended behavior.

Found the two bodies, though this map is quite large for searching for glowies while pre-travel power; but it IS King's Row so makes sense for a King's Row riot. "Burned Body" sounds especially grisly, though the staked goth kid sounds bad too. "affire" should be "afire" in the Burned Body clue.

After getting the two clues and freeing most of the hostages, the mission still didn't end for me, so I popped out of the mission and checked the Architect Entertainment console and found that...wow, this actually IS a Defeat All Enemies in King's Row mission.

I thought I had cleared enough that I would go ahead and complete the defeat all, but it took longer than I expected, I finally had to click on my raptor pack temp power and fly around looking for mobs. I found my very last mobs, a couple roaming Hellions that had somehow climbed up on top of the power lines and were walking on them. This mission took me a really long time to finish, and I probably wouldn't have done so except that I didn't realize it was a defeat all until after having cleared most of it anyway. With this map being so large, and also several roaming patrols (some of which jump up onto fire escapes, tops of trees and power lines), doing a defeat all in this mission is quite a big undertaking. I think you will have a lot of players give up before completing this mission. You may want to reduce this to rescuing a certain number of hostages.

The "Anomalous Murders" clue at the end of the mission is very nice and detailed, though. I think "how the skull made identification" should be "how the Skull made identification" though. The description of the murders is quite gruesome; although that is okay, if that is the intended tone for your story arc.

The popup on exiting the mission, I think "still lived to hunt" should be "still lives to hunt"; since the killer is still at large, after all. Also, this popup seems to imply there is only one killer. There were two bodies, murdered by different methods; isn't it too much of a leap to assume there's only one killer? It actually seems more probable that the Hellion was killed by a Skull, and the Skull was killed by a Hellion.

The fact that the victims were described as being killed near a convenience store and a bank immediately makes me think there should've been security camera footage of their deaths, since both those types of buildings usually have constant camera surveillance. I actually think that would be a more logical next lead on these mysterious murders.

My scrapper leveled to 10 during this mission and trained in Dull Pain.

Debriefing: nicely written, kinda moody and cynical.

Mission 2
Briefing: The briefing is nicely written and rather moody, but it seems to be irrelevant to solving the mysterious murders. Instead the mission suddenly tells me that I want to stop some random thugs doing a breaking & entering. I don't see how this is really connected to the previous mission, so this doesn't seem strongly motivated; it's just a random event. Also, the contact is still a radio, and yet no part of this briefing is played over the radio -- seems inconsistent.

After defeating the Boss Thief, I got the "Thugs seeking escape" clue, which says the thugs weren't responsible for murdering the woman who lives in the house. But I haven't found the woman who lives (well, lived) in the house yet, so this is a puzzling clue. Also, I think this clue should mention why I think the thugs aren't responsible - perhaps one of the thugs blabbed this so I'd go easier on him, or I observed them and decided they don't have the manner of killers, or something. Basically there needs to be some reason why I think this.

Mission completion clue, "You didn't take much time to leave the crime scene in the hands of the police before checking...." sounds rather awkward. Maybe should be "You quickly turned the crime scene over to the police, then went to check..."

"Indeed, she had not long before been there" should probably be "She had indeed been there shortly before."

"she had waited patiently for the maintenance guy to finish fixing the machine" ... no machine was mentioned in the "Follow-Up" clue before this. You should say what machine; probably "ATM machine" based on context. ATM machines also usually have camera surveillance, incidentally.

Mission exit popup: "nowhere near by" should be "nowhere nearby". I don't think "You've failed to save her" is a fair statement - she was clearly killed before the player arrived on the scene, so there was no opportunity for the player to even be aware she needed saving.

Debriefing: again, has no radio transmissions despite being conveyed by the radio contact. "Only this time, the victim was no dyed in the wool killer" ... this seems a misleading statement; the last victim was the brother of a Hellion, that hardly makes him a killer! Just related to a thug. I'm also not sure why you hyphenate "college-student" but don't hyphenate "dyed in the wool"; I'd probably write "college student" and "dyed-in-the-wool", but that's just me.

Mission 3
Briefing: again, makes no sense why this is coming from the radio. All the briefing/debriefing text seems to now be inner monologue; I will stop repeating that comment, it seems to be true for all remaining missions. I do think the tone of voice the inner monologue takes is very interesting and moody though, and sets a good tone for tracking down a psycho killer.

The mission the briefing sends me on again seems to have no obvious connection to the serial killings, though. Attend the police department combat training shoot? That's....very random and seemingly unrelated to this investigation.

Second part of briefing: Very cool and moody inner monologue. (I feel like the contact should be replaced by a fedora hat, or a Mickey Spillane novel ... whups, I said I would stop remarking on that.) A femme fatale is introduced. I guess "Stnad" WAS an intentional spelling. Although the sentence fragment "turns her ears towards you and then looks your way" is very strange, I think you may want to say "turns her face towards you, looking".

"Combat town" is a rather unusual expression; it makes sense but you may want to use a more common expression like "combat training exercise".

Objectives: "2 Rescue Hostages" should be "2 hostages to rescue"

A lot of dialog messages played instantly as I entered the mission, but probably should've been displayed when I got close to the mobs; this seems a common MA problem though.

If this is a real combat exercise, shouldn't I have some friendlies on my side? It seems a bit lopsided for it to be me versus the whole police department.

Dr. Futz says "that was an intersting entertainment" ... should be "that was an interesting entertainment".

Got a clue describing Dr. Futz as being old, but I'm not quite sure why this should be a significant clue.

Ms. Stnad goes into a cowering animation when I rescue her, which seems a little odd. I like her description in her info, I had been wondering whether the dark glasses meant she was blind; good job on her costume, which really conveys that well.

Victoria Stnad's clue was interesting. It seemed as irrelevant as Dr. Futz's clue, but perhaps is meant to just set up a sense of ominous foreboding.

This map is pretty unmistakably the 5th Column Headquarters, so I'm not sure whether it makes sense as a site for police training exercises. This is admittedly nitpicky.

"Defeat Boss" seems such a generic mission objective; I think you could say "Defeat Opposing Force Commander" or something similar, with more detail. I eventually found this was a "Vampyr Defector", which was rather startling; seemed a bit weird, but made some more sense upon seeing his info and his faction as a Police Trainer.

"Words from the Vampyr" clue should totally be named "Interview with the Vampyr" Also "I do not much get out" should perhaps be "I do not get out much" unless you purposely are having him speak awkwardly, which is possible since he's meant to be foreign. Also his "accent" slips in a few places; he says "vorst" instead of "worst", but he pronounces his W's when he says "what I hear" and "weak and vulnerable" and "this will be a rare treat".

"A common thread" clue: "dressed in gothic style" should be perhaps "dressed in the goth style". "atm" should be capitalized "ATM" throughout.

I think some of the police and the vampyr, on defeat, should mention in their defeat dialog that they're willing to talk about the case (a reminder to check the clue journal).

Debriefing: "the young woman that the media was touting with on this Cultural Festival" sounds awkward. Maybe you mean "the young woman that the media was touting as the star violinist of the Cultural Festival"?

Mission 4
Briefing: "mainenance" should be "maintenance", "atms" should be "ATMs". I like the briefing and its writing style, but it doesn't seem to explain the mission at all; "Investigate the old hospital" is not mentioned at all by the briefing.

Second part of briefing: OK, the old hospital is mentioned here. The ordering of the text is confusing. You should mention the old hospital before the player must accept the mission "Investigate the old hospital". Either that or change the mission accept notice to something like "Check out what's behind Cullen's apartment", THEN the second part of the briefing leads to the hospital, and the mission is in the hospital itself.

Also, "outer layer of thrush" should be "outer layer of brush"; a thrush is something very different.

"Following it quietly you come quickly to an old hospital" ... suggest you reword as "Following the path, you soon come to an old hospital".

"but it has been broken, recently if you are any judge" should maybe be "but it has been broken. Recently, if you are any judge."

"the scene had yet again" should be "the scene has yet again"

I really like the mission entrance popup and the recurring violin music theme. Definitely sets up an eerie ambience, especially in concert with the spooky hospital map.

Quite a lot of dialog messages popped up as soon as I entered, again.

Mission objectives: "4 Seek Clues" should maybe be "4 clues to find".

Scattered pamphlets: "You gather all the pamphlets" should have a period at the end.

I like the "Rock of Ages Website" and "Familiar Icon" clues and how they help form a picture of the killer's motivations.

"Curious Notice" is a peculiar clue; I don't think the name makes sense, it should perhaps be "Decapitated Reaper" or something similar. "these vahzilok corpses were" should perhaps be "this corpse was", since I only found one corpse that gave this clue (the other corpses all give the "dismembered and covered in Vahzilok compounds" message which I assume are red herrings). I like the fact that the killer is becoming more proficient with his decapitation/staking kills, it definitely shows his "progress", so to speak. Oddly, though this glowy gave me a Clue for my clue journal, it did not decrement the "Seek Clues" counter.

OK, found a second "Vahzilok doctor staked and beheaded" which makes the "Curious Notice" clue make more sense in context, but the clue should really make sense for the FIRST body I find, in my opinion.

Finally found the bulletin board with the "Next Target" clue, which completed the mission; this was a good clue.

Debriefing: Nice, very moody. I like how this fits with the violin playing at the beginning of the mission; I think this means to convey time passing and the fact that Miss Stnad will be leaving the performance hall soon.

Mission 5
Briefing and mission entrance popup message both do a good job of setting the mood.

Found Dennis Hallen. Hey, didn't I rescue this guy in the orange jumpsuit in mission 1? Nice foreshadowing. In his description, "top-knotch" should be "top-notch".

I love his deluded psycho dialog as you fight him, and how he thinks he's really a hero. As an axe brute, though, he hits my level 10 scrapper like a truck! Ow. Didn't die, but came close several times.

[spoilers]

"You've taken down the Fearless Vampire Hunter" and "You have come to the sad conclusion..." should both have a period at the end.

I'm really rather bothered by the "A Sad Waste of Life" clue, I'm quite dismayed that it wasn't possible to save her. Some problems with the clue though: she is decapitated, yet I can see holy wafers stuffed in her mouth? I kinda thought the other bodies were headless, but this seems to imply her head is nearby. "a stake driven her chest" should be "a stake is driven through her chest". "her heart is missing" seems inconsistent with being staked, though, so that's...weird.

Souvenir: pretty nicely written souvenir. "Eastern European roots and were unable to reach her before the killer" should maybe be "Eastern European roots, and you were unable to reach her before the killer".

Overall
The story arc does quite a good job of setting a suspenseful mood for most of it (all but the first mission, which seems to be just a lot of fighting). The feeling of pursuing a psycho serial killer was definitely conveyed.

However, the initial riot scene requiring a defeat all on a huge map is a dealbreaker as most players will be unwilling to get through that, and as a result will never reach the more thoughtful, investigative parts of the story. The mob violence of the King's Row riot was also quite at odds with the eerie, suspenseful mood of the rest of the arc, as well.

I also thought the hook that started some of the missions (especially #2 and #3) was pretty thin and early on it felt like I was just having random events happen to me, rather than actually pursuing a proper investigation.

I was rather dismayed that the final mission ends with the killer being captured, but the girl dies. It's very unsatisfying for me to do everything I can, and it still isn't enough. I do recognize that a lot of serial killer movies end this way, so I'll cut some slack for that reason; but it's still a terrible anti-climax in my opinion.

Although I love the moody ambience of the later parts of this arc, with the other problems I felt I could only give this 3 stars. I hope you think that is fair!

[EDIT: Victoria Stnad's virtual death is really bothering me, which maybe means I should increase my rating, as I am trying to generally give higher ratings to things that "move" me. But I do think there are other problems, so I'm sticking to what I put for now, and will simply add the comment that I found the depiction of Victoria Stnad as a character to be quite effective.]
------

I owe a review to:

@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 153654
@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

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)

Two Households Alike review

Premise appears to be a remake of Romeo and Juliet, recast as a Family mob drama.

Stated level range is 20-29 hero side; I played a 28 elec/inv brute (villainous, but right level range)

Possible spoilers ahead.

Mission 1
Briefing: I'm almost surprised that the contact isn't Commissioner Escalus or Police Captain Prince or something. The two households alike in dignity are the Bianchis and Polettis, so it seems we aren't trying to make the names too similar.

"There have been occasional clashes in the past but the violence just spiked." I think this would be better rephrased as something like "There have occasionally been clashes in the past, but just recently there's been an unusual spike in the violence."

"Where they're only shooting at each other, we contain them and mop up afterwards. I've got a report just in of a skirmish breaking out in an office with some innocent bystanders caught inside, though." sounds rather dry - think it would sound a little better as "Where they're only shooting at each other, we contain them and mop up afterwards. But innocent bystanders are being caught in their latest skirmish."

I like the mission title, "Break Up Family Violence", but it doesn't quite align with what the contact asked me to do, namely, get the bystanders out as my first priority.

I like the mission entrance popup and the tone it sets.

Bianchi Capo's description: "benefitted" should be "benefited".

Was it really necesary to make all custom mobs for the Bianchi Family faction? I'm wondering if you could've made one custom Bianchi Family faction and one custom Poletti Family faction, then repurposed a bunch of generic Family and Mook mobs by including them in both?

I remember reading that you tried using standard Family mobs but had some trouble, so I created a quicky test mission to see if this would work. I made two new custom factions, "Capulet" and "Montague" and added to each of them the "Random Family Minion", "Random Family Lieutenant" and "Random Family Boss", then authored a test mission with a boss objective and 3 Battles between Capulet and Montague. Going into this in test mode, I was able to get the generic Button Man Buckshots and Gunners and Muscle to shoot each other, because some were then Capulet and some were Montague. The only problem I found is that the mob names aren't changeable, so there's some potential for confusion because both sides will have guys named "Button Man Xxx". But, each WAS correctly labeled for which faction he was in, so it's doable.

If you do stick with custom mobs, I suggest that you make the respective Families more visually distinctive from each other; perhaps have some wear suit jackets and others use dress shirts, so there are more visual cues to distinguish them. I see the Bianchi foot soldiers have dark purple suits and the Poletti foot soldiers have dark maroon sutis, but bosses of both families have black suits and they're all dark suits that look similar enough in tone that they aren't that distinct. Maybe dark purple versus pure white suits would also give some contrast? Admittedly a minor nitpick, but it'd be nice to be able to instantly distinguish the two factions by sight.

I found Rollo Poletti, who was labeled as just "Family" - should maybe be "Poletti Family". Oddly, he was with Bianchi Family soldiers, and the Bianchi Soldato helped him attack me. I would've thought they would be fighting.

I defeated Rollo, but didn't get any sort of clue from him; based on what the contact said, I would've thought he'd tell me something about what's happening.

I found Sammy Bianchi; though it was odd that he had a black suit when all his men have purple suits. I thought it was odd that he didn't give a clue either, but upon completing the mission I got a "Settling Accounts" clue that nicely explained things. I'm not sure why defeating the two underbosses was listed as even an optional goal, though; they didn't seem to give any additional information beyond what was presented.

I never actually saw any Bianchi and Poletti fighting; not sure if you had some battles set up or not, maybe they ended before I got to them. If you have room, consider adding a couple patrols of Bianchi and Poletti family that are hostile towards each other; I've had good luck using this technique to set up a chaotic firefight situation.

Good debriefing for this mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: Not sure what the acronyms OCB and DC mean in this context; I suggest you use more common terminology. Otherwise a good briefing.

I thought the Freakshow and Tsoo made sense, being additional rival gangs, but the Banished Pantheon seemed a little out of place in this mission. Maybe use some Warriors instead? (Unless I missed them somewhere.)

Enrico's background story is great. But "he like Kelly Clarkson" should be "he likes Kelly Clarkson".

Louie's background story calls him "Leo" but should call him "Lou" or "Louie" ... Also "monicker" should be "moniker".

"A Complete Mess" clue has the Polettis and Bianchis pointing fingers at each other. I think it would be helpful if you also had the various underbosses reinforce this in their dialog; maybe saying stuff like "Why're you bustin' me? It's those Bianchis who are to blame!" I saw a little bit of this when Sal says "They ain't gonna disrespect Leo like this!" which I liked, but I think you need more.

"Don Vittorio" is mentioned in "A Complete Mess" and either hasn't been introduced yet or I missed it in one of the earlier briefings. I'm guessing he is Vittorio Bianchi? Player needs a reminder here I think.

"A Complete Mess" specifically has "The Butcher" give one particular clue. This actually makes me think you should split this clue into four clues, one for each of the underbosses - each of them could give you one piece of the story (based on THEIR viewpoint) and a savvy player would be able to puzzle out what's REALLY going on once they try to fit the pieces together, while a less clue oriented player would just get told by the contact in the debriefing.

I think Sal's dying message, "my boys will get you" should be changed to "Diablo Navarra will get you" (or something similar) to reinforce the clue which says that, well, Sal tells you about Diablo Navarra is being called in. This then makes the debriefing make more sense.

Debriefing: at first this didn't make sense to me because the contact immediately starts talking about Diablo Navarra, and I didn't see the clue (which I think was awarded on mission complete) until after I started the debriefing.

"If he gets involved there is no limit to the body count" is kinda dry sounding, maybe "If he gets involved, we'll be wading hip deep in blood" or something similar.

It would've been nice if the player could find the "lead on Nicia's whereabouts" (maybe by finding a clue during the street fighting) instead of having the contact feed it to you.

Mission 3
Briefing is terse but the reason why seems sensible. Second part of briefing: "just stop the shooting" should maybe be "just to stop the shooting".

Nicia hasn't technically broken any laws that I'm aware of, so maybe "Take Nicia and "Friend" into custody" should be "into protective custody".

An immense number of dialog messages spouted off as soon as I entered the mission; not sure if this was intentional, probably should've generated the dialog when I got closer.

Popup message on entry immediately tells me soldiers of both Families are here already; I think maybe just a little exposition about how they got here before the player did would be helpful, since the informant reported only Nicia and "friend".

The mission objectives immediately include "Rescue Darrin", but Darrin has not been introduced yet. I suggest you change this to "Rescue Nicki's friend" or something similar.

Nice dialog and background info on Nicia Bianchi and her guards. Her clue is great. I like that she mentions she has a good lawyer.

The custom Family soldiers are surprisingly deadly; despite being an invuln (nominally very strong against lethal) they managed to beat me up once. Though I was being careless.

Darrin says "Hey, Millie Volt! Nicki's here somewhere!" on seeing me, and "You've gotta find her" after I rescue him, but in fact I've already freed Nicki (err, taken her into custody). I suppose he doesn't know that, though.

Darrin's Story begins "Darrin isn't quite as articulate as Nicki" ... which wouldn't make sense if I found Darrin first. Maybe should rephrase it so it makes sense regardless of which order you find them.

Debriefing: Very good explanation of the situation as it stands. I wonder why we can't just fly them out of the country or something though?

Mission 4
Briefing: very well written. You have an extra period after "Talos", though. And on thinking about it, why would Federico Poletti attack the Wavecrest? Don Vittorio wants Nicia to marry Leo, too, so I'm not sure why the two families would still be fighting. The only ones against the marriage are Nicia and Darrin themselves. It seems like it would be more logical for Vittorio to agree to the "shotgun wedding" that is being proposed.

Second part of briefing: "Commander Baker" is mentioned here but hasn't been introduced, so I have no idea who that is. Needs some background, or else you can just refer to him as "a police profiler" or something.

I'm not sure why getting touch with Wyvern is the key to finding Diablo Navarra, also. I guess because they are based in the Rogue Isles, where Navarra is from?

"coud" should be "could" in the last sentence.

Entering the mission, I'm quite puzzled why my objective is "Find Vittorio Bianchi" and not "Find Nicia Bianchi", which is what the contact asked me to do. Unless she's been killed already or something, but having her not among the mission objectives in that case would be a possible spoiler.

"Federico Poletti: It's gonna end here, one way of the other." .... "of the other" should maybe be "or another".

I thought it was pretty weird for Federico to be a robotics mastermind, it's rather out of theme for this mafia drama. Especially when Federico is labeled as the "Old School" don. Maybe he should be a thugs MM?

The amount of web grenade the Polettis put out is pretty ferocious, had my recharge floored at one point.

I like the clues that Federico and Vittorio both gave up. Found that Nicia had already taken off though... now how on earth did she slip away from an army of Polettis when every single other Bianchi was captured or killed, and the Polettis came here specifically looking for her? That seems to be a bit of a stretch; she's not a ninja or anything.

Vittorio saying that Darrin wasn't the only reason the marriage wouldn't happen is...interesting. Hope we find out more.

Mission 5
Briefing: Well, this sounds grim. Knowing the end to the play this is based on, I fear the worst. Good briefing though.

Mission title: "Defeat Diablo Navarre" should be "Diablo Navarra" based on every other reference to him so far.

The burning office: excellent map selection for this.

"Hector Bianchi: He's ours!" ... kind of ambiguous, may want to outright have him say "Get lost! Navarra's ours!"

I found Diablo Navarra and managed to solo him (as an EB), though he was pretty tough; willpower secondary is nasty on an EB. I think I only got him because I drained all his END from elec melee. Probably appropriate difficulty for the end boss of a story arc though, and there was immense foreshadowing for Navarra being a badass, so I think it's fine. His mocking dialog made me hate him; by which I mean, his dialog was very good.

I searched the rest of the bodies with heavy heart; I was so hoping that it would turn out differently, but ultimately Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, so although I wasn't happy about it, I can't say I was surprised at the ending.

Debriefing: excellent debriefing that does remind the player that she accomplished something, even if it wasn't a total victory.

Souvenir: OK, I just read the souvenir. All I can say is YOU B@$+@RD! It's a really well written souvenir, though.

Overall
It was a good story overall, with good writing and dialog. The mission gameplay was okay but nothing too remarkable, I thought. The final mission was really good at setting a mood though; I really felt awful while the AV was taunting me and especially searching through the dead bodies afterwards, and talking to the contact at the end. For most of the story arc I was thinking it was around 4 stars-worthy, but the final mission and the souvenir pushed the story over the top for me.

I gave it 5 stars.

Two Households Alike review (arc id 126582)

Premise appears to be a remake of Romeo and Juliet, recast as a Family mob drama.

Stated level range is 20-29 hero side; I played a 28 elec/inv brute (villainous, but right level range)

Possible spoilers ahead.

Mission 1
Briefing: I'm almost surprised that the contact isn't Commissioner Escalus or Police Captain Prince or something. The two households alike in dignity are the Bianchis and Polettis, so it seems we aren't trying to make the names too similar.

"There have been occasional clashes in the past but the violence just spiked." I think this would be better rephrased as something like "There have occasionally been clashes in the past, but just recently there's been an unusual spike in the violence."

"Where they're only shooting at each other, we contain them and mop up afterwards. I've got a report just in of a skirmish breaking out in an office with some innocent bystanders caught inside, though." sounds rather dry - think it would sound a little better as "Where they're only shooting at each other, we contain them and mop up afterwards. But innocent bystanders are being caught in their latest skirmish."

I like the mission title, "Break Up Family Violence", but it doesn't quite align with what the contact asked me to do, namely, get the bystanders out as my first priority.

I like the mission entrance popup and the tone it sets.

Bianchi Capo's description: "benefitted" should be "benefited".

Was it really necesary to make all custom mobs for the Bianchi Family faction? I'm wondering if you could've made one custom Bianchi Family faction and one custom Poletti Family faction, then repurposed a bunch of generic Family and Mook mobs by including them in both?

I remember reading that you tried using standard Family mobs but had some trouble, so I created a quicky test mission to see if this would work. I made two new custom factions, "Capulet" and "Montague" and added to each of them the "Random Family Minion", "Random Family Lieutenant" and "Random Family Boss", then authored a test mission with a boss objective and 3 Battles between Capulet and Montague. Going into this in test mode, I was able to get the generic Button Man Buckshots and Gunners and Muscle to shoot each other, because some were then Capulet and some were Montague. The only problem I found is that the mob names aren't changeable, so there's some potential for confusion because both sides will have guys named "Button Man Xxx". But, each WAS correctly labeled for which faction he was in, so it's doable.

If you do stick with custom mobs, I suggest that you make the respective Families more visually distinctive from each other; perhaps have some wear suit jackets and others use dress shirts, so there are more visual cues to distinguish them. I see the Bianchi foot soldiers have dark purple suits and the Poletti foot soldiers have dark maroon sutis, but bosses of both families have black suits and they're all dark suits that look similar enough in tone that they aren't that distinct. Maybe dark purple versus pure white suits would also give some contrast? Admittedly a minor nitpick, but it'd be nice to be able to instantly distinguish the two factions by sight.

I found Rollo Poletti, who was labeled as just "Family" - should maybe be "Poletti Family". Oddly, he was with Bianchi Family soldiers, and the Bianchi Soldato helped him attack me. I would've thought they would be fighting.

I defeated Rollo, but didn't get any sort of clue from him; based on what the contact said, I would've thought he'd tell me something about what's happening.

I found Sammy Bianchi; though it was odd that he had a black suit when all his men have purple suits. I thought it was odd that he didn't give a clue either, but upon completing the mission I got a "Settling Accounts" clue that nicely explained things. I'm not sure why defeating the two underbosses was listed as even an optional goal, though; they didn't seem to give any additional information beyond what was presented.

I never actually saw any Bianchi and Poletti fighting; not sure if you had some battles set up or not, maybe they ended before I got to them. If you have room, consider adding a couple patrols of Bianchi and Poletti family that are hostile towards each other; I've had good luck using this technique to set up a chaotic firefight situation.

Good debriefing for this mission.

Mission 2
Briefing: Not sure what the acronyms OCB and DC mean in this context; I suggest you use more common terminology. Otherwise a good briefing.

I thought the Freakshow and Tsoo made sense, being additional rival gangs, but the Banished Pantheon seemed a little out of place in this mission. Maybe use some Warriors instead? (Unless I missed them somewhere.)

Enrico's background story is great. But "he like Kelly Clarkson" should be "he likes Kelly Clarkson".

Louie's background story calls him "Leo" but should call him "Lou" or "Louie" ... Also "monicker" should be "moniker".

"A Complete Mess" clue has the Polettis and Bianchis pointing fingers at each other. I think it would be helpful if you also had the various underbosses reinforce this in their dialog; maybe saying stuff like "Why're you bustin' me? It's those Bianchis who are to blame!" I saw a little bit of this when Sal says "They ain't gonna disrespect Leo like this!" which I liked, but I think you need more.

"Don Vittorio" is mentioned in "A Complete Mess" and either hasn't been introduced yet or I missed it in one of the earlier briefings. I'm guessing he is Vittorio Bianchi? Player needs a reminder here I think.

"A Complete Mess" specifically has "The Butcher" give one particular clue. This actually makes me think you should split this clue into four clues, one for each of the underbosses - each of them could give you one piece of the story (based on THEIR viewpoint) and a savvy player would be able to puzzle out what's REALLY going on once they try to fit the pieces together, while a less clue oriented player would just get told by the contact in the debriefing.

I think Sal's dying message, "my boys will get you" should be changed to "Diablo Navarra will get you" (or something similar) to reinforce the clue which says that, well, Sal tells you about Diablo Navarra is being called in. This then makes the debriefing make more sense.

Debriefing: at first this didn't make sense to me because the contact immediately starts talking about Diablo Navarra, and I didn't see the clue (which I think was awarded on mission complete) until after I started the debriefing.

"If he gets involved there is no limit to the body count" is kinda dry sounding, maybe "If he gets involved, we'll be wading hip deep in blood" or something similar.

It would've been nice if the player could find the "lead on Nicia's whereabouts" (maybe by finding a clue during the street fighting) instead of having the contact feed it to you.

Mission 3
Briefing is terse but the reason why seems sensible. Second part of briefing: "just stop the shooting" should maybe be "just to stop the shooting".

Nicia hasn't technically broken any laws that I'm aware of, so maybe "Take Nicia and "Friend" into custody" should be "into protective custody".

An immense number of dialog messages spouted off as soon as I entered the mission; not sure if this was intentional, probably should've generated the dialog when I got closer.

Popup message on entry immediately tells me soldiers of both Families are here already; I think maybe just a little exposition about how they got here before the player did would be helpful, since the informant reported only Nicia and "friend".

The mission objectives immediately include "Rescue Darrin", but Darrin has not been introduced yet. I suggest you change this to "Rescue Nicki's friend" or something similar.

Nice dialog and background info on Nicia Bianchi and her guards. Her clue is great. I like that she mentions she has a good lawyer.

The custom Family soldiers are surprisingly deadly; despite being an invuln (nominally very strong against lethal) they managed to beat me up once. Though I was being careless.

Darrin says "Hey, Millie Volt! Nicki's here somewhere!" on seeing me, and "You've gotta find her" after I rescue him, but in fact I've already freed Nicki (err, taken her into custody). I suppose he doesn't know that, though.

Darrin's Story begins "Darrin isn't quite as articulate as Nicki" ... which wouldn't make sense if I found Darrin first. Maybe should rephrase it so it makes sense regardless of which order you find them.

Debriefing: Very good explanation of the situation as it stands. I wonder why we can't just fly them out of the country or something though?

Mission 4
Briefing: very well written. You have an extra period after "Talos", though. And on thinking about it, why would Federico Poletti attack the Wavecrest? Don Vittorio wants Nicia to marry Leo, too, so I'm not sure why the two families would still be fighting. The only ones against the marriage are Nicia and Darrin themselves. It seems like it would be more logical for Vittorio to agree to the "shotgun wedding" that is being proposed.

Second part of briefing: "Commander Baker" is mentioned here but hasn't been introduced, so I have no idea who that is. Needs some background, or else you can just refer to him as "a police profiler" or something.

I'm not sure why getting touch with Wyvern is the key to finding Diablo Navarra, also. I guess because they are based in the Rogue Isles, where Navarra is from?

"coud" should be "could" in the last sentence.

Entering the mission, I'm quite puzzled why my objective is "Find Vittorio Bianchi" and not "Find Nicia Bianchi", which is what the contact asked me to do. Unless she's been killed already or something, but having her not among the mission objectives in that case would be a possible spoiler.

"Federico Poletti: It's gonna end here, one way of the other." .... "of the other" should maybe be "or another".

I thought it was pretty weird for Federico to be a robotics mastermind, it's rather out of theme for this mafia drama. Especially when Federico is labeled as the "Old School" don. Maybe he should be a thugs MM?

The amount of web grenade the Polettis put out is pretty ferocious, had my recharge floored at one point.

I like the clues that Federico and Vittorio both gave up. Found that Nicia had already taken off though... now how on earth did she slip away from an army of Polettis when every single other Bianchi was captured or killed, and the Polettis came here specifically looking for her? That seems to be a bit of a stretch; she's not a ninja or anything.

Vittorio saying that Darrin wasn't the only reason the marriage wouldn't happen is...interesting. Hope we find out more.

Mission 5
Briefing: Well, this sounds grim. Knowing the end to the play this is based on, I fear the worst. Good briefing though.

Mission title: "Defeat Diablo Navarre" should be "Diablo Navarra" based on every other reference to him so far.

The burning office: excellent map selection for this.

"Hector Bianchi: He's ours!" ... kind of ambiguous, may want to outright have him say "Get lost! Navarra's ours!"

I found Diablo Navarra and managed to solo him (as an EB), though he was pretty tough; willpower secondary is nasty on an EB. I think I only got him because I drained all his END from elec melee. Probably appropriate difficulty for the end boss of a story arc though, and there was immense foreshadowing for Navarra being a badass, so I think it's fine. His mocking dialog made me hate him; by which I mean, his dialog was very good.

I searched the rest of the bodies with heavy heart; I was so hoping that it would turn out differently, but ultimately Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, so although I wasn't happy about it, I can't say I was surprised at the ending.

Debriefing: excellent debriefing that does remind the player that she accomplished something, even if it wasn't a total victory.

Souvenir: OK, I just read the souvenir. All I can say is YOU B@$+@RD! It's a really well written souvenir, though.

Overall
It was a good story overall, with good writing and dialog. The mission gameplay was okay but nothing too remarkable, I thought. The final mission was really good at setting a mood though; I really felt awful while the AV was taunting me and especially searching through the dead bodies afterwards, and talking to the contact at the end. For most of the story arc I was thinking it was around 4 stars-worthy, but the final mission and the souvenir pushed the story over the top for me.

I gave it 5 stars.


[Edit 5/11: added the arc ID number]

WHO REVIEWS THE REVIEWERS?

It's becoming more and more prevalent. You pour your heart out and write your dream story arc in the Mission Architect. Then suddenly, and without warning (well except the fact that you asked them to), some high handed, judgemental critic runs through your story arc and skewers your innocent missions with incisive comments and critiques.

These so called reviewers have been running roughshod over the hapless authors of story arcs for too long. Nothing has been holding them accountable for their actions! NOTHING!

Well, NO MORE!

WHY I'M DOING THIS

[ QUOTE ]
I don't ask that people play my arcs in exchange for my reviews of theirs. It would be nice if they did, but I don't ask it. Venture (5/7/2009)

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
This is only the third time anyone's reviewed any of my arcs. You'd think people would be lining up to seek revenge. Venture (5/7/2009)

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess my only reason at this point for not doing it [requiring quid pro quo on reviews] is ego. It sounds very self-serving to me. Talen Lee (5/8/2009)

[/ QUOTE ]

Motivated by these passive-aggressive comments, I now throw down the gauntlet: I will challenge the other reviewers on this forum by forcing my unsolicited reviews upon them!

MY RULES

1. This is kind of a side project of mine, and will have a separate queue of story arcs from my regular review thread. You cannot join the queue for this thread; I will be using the official stickied Reviewer List to select targets.

2. I'll attempt to alternate between my main queue and the reviewer victimization queue. I mean, the reviewer review queue.

3. Reviewers will be prioritized in chronological order of the original post in their review thread.

4. If a reviewer comes up in my queue and at that time has published fewer than 5 actual story arc reviews, there is still some chance of redemption for them, so I'll show leniency by passing over their name. Hardened, repeat offender reviewers who have published 5 or more arc reviews will be specifically targeted by this initiative.

5. For the sake of karmic justice, I will post my review both in this thread, and also either the comments thread for the specific story arc, or the review thread of that reviewer, and inflict my own opinionated review of their own material upon them.

6. Also for the sake of karma, I will set exactly the same expectations as the reviewer that is being targeted. Namely, my reviews for non "quid pro quo" reviewers will be pro bono. My reviews for "quid pro quo" reviewers will be treated as "quid pro quo".

7. Other people who want to join in the fun by reviewing the reviewers are welcome to do so!

THE QUEUE

Venture (4/9/2009)
Policewoman (QPQ) (4/10/2009) [I'll skip my own]
Talen_Lee (4/12/2009)
Dragonslay (4/13/2009)
HolyEvilAoD (4/14/2009 12:28 AM)
Lazarus (QPQ) (4/14/2009 06:15 PM)
DeviousMe (QPQ) (4/16/2009 11:55 AM)
Bubbawheat (QPQ) (4/16/2009 06:36 PM)
Col.Blitzkrieger (4/16/2009 09:10 PM)
LaserJesus (4/23/2009 08:47 AM)
Leese (4/23/2009 11:55 AM)
Peacemoon (QPQ) (4/29/2009 08:04 AM)
Master_Zaprobo (4/29/2009 11:56 AM)
ridiculous_girl (QPQ) (5/1/2009)
Rapulis (5/3/2009)
Bayani (5/5/2009 10:53 AM)
Sooner (QPQ) (5/5/2009 1:08 PM)
Dominemisis (QPQ) (5/5/2009 8:23PM)
Misho (QPQ) (5/6/2009 2:18 PM)
Stomphoof (QPQ) (5/6/2009 10:45 PM)
Burning_Brawler (QPQ) (5/7/2009)


[Edit 5/11: inserted LaserJesus; fixed sorting for reviewers whose OP were on the same day]

Childhood Horrors review

Premise seems to involve a plot by Lord Recluse against Ms Liberty and Statesman.

Level range looked to be 45-54. I played a solo 50 AR/dev blaster on Heroic.

Mission 1
Briefing: Ellipses overused, maybe replace some of those with just regular periods.

"One such case, is Herbert, who was just trying to start a spy-network, you know, to work the streets and get the news back to the Heroes!" This sentence seems very awkward to me; partly because it is oddly punctuated and partly because saying he was just an innocent guy starting a spy network sounds weird. Also, I think Ms Liberty should say who "caught [him] during his first 'raid'". (And is Herbert really raiding stuff? It sounded like he was just spying.) Maybe rephrase to something more like:

"Herbert was once rescued from the clutches of the Lost by heroes much like yourself. In gratitude, he wanted to do something in return, and he was working towards setting up a street level network of informants to help out other heroes. But [villain group] found out about about this, and now Herbert's in trouble."

Second part of briefing: It's not til nearly the end of the second page of the briefing that Ms Liberty finally indirectly mentions that Herbert was trying to spy on a Council base. I think maybe this should've been stated earlier in the briefing.

Entry popup: I like the way you have the "scanner gadget" beep and reveal the data terminals, it makes the "3 Data Terminals to hack" goal seem much more logical. (Still overusing ellipses though!)

Herbert's captors' dialog: "Come on Herbert, just spill the beans already and tell us why you're here?" This sounds like his captors are pleading with him, but I think you actually want them to be interrogating him, so maybe this should be "Herbert! Just spill the beans already! Tell us why you're here!" Or if you don't mind using a more stereotypical villain line, "We have ways of making you talk, Herbert! Tell us why you're here!"

"get them both guys!" initially made me think they were going to get "both guys". Suggest you rephrase to "Get them! Get them both!"

"Herbert's tale" clue: I like this clue, but again too many ellipses. Maybe it should explain more about who the Overseer is (if Herbert knows), or if not, make it clearer that Herbert doesn't know who the Overseer is because he just overheard them talking about this mysterious figure.

Herbert takes off after you rescue him, which makes sense for a typical hostage, but Ms Liberty said Herbert was trying to help heroes, so this doesn't seem consistent with his earlier motivations. I don't think you ACTUALLY want him to turn into an Ally, though, so maybe you should have Herbert's dialog as he leaves say something abut how he'll leave this up to the professional heroes.

"Encrypted Data files" clue has yet more ellipses. The way the clue is written, it makes it sound like the player is supposed to suddenly think of this EaglesEye Branigan character, but since this character has not previously been introduced, I don't actually know who this is, so it doesn't quite work for me.

I suggest that maybe you get "EaglesEye Branigan" as a name on a plaintext email that's mixed in with the encrypted files (maybe one of your three glowies could give you this as a separate clue, even) and this clue maybe would let you think he has the cipher key.

EaglesEye Branigan's description has more ellipses; also "Cypher" should be "cipher key" based on the terminology you've used so far. I like his dialog and how he berates the other Council for leaving their computer terminals unlocked though.

"Guys! Some help here? someone get Police Woman off my back?! Sheesh!" ... "someone" should be "Someone". Maybe "Guys!" should be "Umm, guys?" based on the tone of this dialog.

"Help Boss Branigan, Police Woman must not obtain the Cipher!" sounds awkward, suggest you rephrase to "Archon Branigan needs our help! The cipher key must not fall into Police Woman's hands!"

"It's bigger than you, Police Woman, give up now and maybe you can keep your Mind!" should maybe be, "This is bigger than you, Police Woman! Give up now, and maybe you can keep your mind!" (or maybe sanity instead of mind - not QUITE sure what he's talking about.)

All these references to "The Overseer" is starting to make me think the Council are being controlled by a rogue Rularuu.

"Branigan's Cipher Disc" should maybe be "The Cipher Key" for consistency. Also, the clue says it's all I need to decipher the data file fragments; if this is true, I should immediately be able to read the secret communique. But Ms Liberty ends up taking the cipher key and the data file fragments to Positron to decode. I think this is an inconsistency; either the cipher key is all you need (and you should be able to decode it yourself) or it's still encrypted (and you need help from Positron). At some point, I did get a "Secret Communique" clue, though; not sure if this was at the end of mission 1 or the start of mission 2.

Mission exit popup: "Chipher Disc" should be "cipher key". "data file" should be "data files" (since you found a bunch on multiple terminals).

Mission 2
Briefing: "I actually fear He's in over his head" seems an odd thing to say, considering Positron is a member of the Surviving Eight and a level 54 AV and stuff. What makes her even say that? All the info we have up to this point is that it's just a Council plot, right? So I don't see why Ms Liberty would be concerned. Also "He's" should be "he's".

Second part of briefing: OK, now Ms Liberty expositions some about why she thinks Positron is in trouble, which helps explain why she is worried about Positron.

"You know how Positron is, always displaying bravado" -- not sure this is supported by the canon; Positron is the scientific guy, not the loose cannon guy.

"defeat may become a very permanent future!!!" is oddly phrased. Maybe you want to say "defeat could have fatal consequences!" or something similar.

Map choice: The briefing said the dampening devices are being set up around hospitals, but the map is the northern part of Steel Canyon which is nowhere near the Steel Canyon hospital.

The Secret Communique says that the Council set up these Dampening Devices, but this map is full of Arachnos, which seems inconsistent.

"Defend the devices, Police Woman cannot be allowed to foil the Overseer's plans for revenge!" is awkwardly phrased. Should maybe drop "for revenge" or rephrase this to something like "It's Police Woman! Defend the devices! The Overseer must have his revenge!"

"Ignore everyone else who enters, we must not allow Police Woman and Positron to destroy anymore devices!" This seems like a very weird thing to say, the "Ignore everyone else" part anyway. Also, "anymore" should be "any more".

Positron's dialog, "embrrassing" should be "embarrassing".

"Police Woman is here, if she joins forces with Positron... the Overseer will not be happy!!" is awkward sounding. Maybe rephrase to "Stop Police Woman! Don't let her join forces with Positron!"

"Positron: Finally, Police Woman, I thought you were a no-show and that's after Megan talked so highly of you!" This seems a very rude thing to say when I've just rescued him from Arachnos, and out of character for Positron. Suggest you rephrase this so that Positron seems glad to see the hero.

"lets find this Overseer fellow" should be "let's find this Overseer fellow".

I like the dynamic way the objectives are set up, with destroying the third device causing Positron to appear, and then rescuing Positron causing the Overseer to appear, but this outdoor map is a little large to have to search once for devices, then search a second time for a hostage, then search a third time for the big boss.

Positron spawned as a level 50 EB for me, which is a bit overpowering for an ally and makes me wonder how on earth he got captured by the level 50 minions that were guarding him.

Found the Overseer ??? and thought it was odd that he was just a lieutenant; the Positron EB and I stomped him awfully quickly. I like that his name and description seems to imply that this isn't REALLY the Overseer.

Overseer's dialog: "This is who they send against the mighty Overseer.... Police Woman? If I defeat you, don't come back, ok?!" This sounds awkward. I suggest you drop the last part "If I defeat you, don't come back, ok?!" Maybe this is meant to threaten that the hospital is disabled in case I die, but I don't think you're able to REALLY stop the player from going to the hospital, so that would be an empty threat.

With the Overseer being just a lieutenant and being attacked by both an elite boss and a player, he spat out all five or six lines of his dialog in the 2 seconds it took for us to defeat him. If these lines of dialog were spaced out over a longer fight, it would be fine, but as it is I think you might want to drop some of the middle lines that are just posturing. For example he says "You are stronger than the other failed ones, but not strong enough Police Woman..." and a fraction of a second later he says "I cannot believe I underestimated you like this!" because of the rate we're damaging him.

I like the "It's too late, Police Woman, we captured your friend and she has alarming news for you... Ha ha ha!" message, it's very villainous. Though it's triggered another dynamically spawned ally, so I have to search this map a fourth time, ouch. I love all the dynamically spawned encounters, but is there any way you can do this on a smaller map so there isn't as much search time? While dragging Positron around and having him aggro on stuff, I ended up having to defeat nearly everything on this outdoor map. Having an EB ally admittedly helped for this, though.

"Fake Overseer Defeated" clue says I learned of yet another ally who has been captured...shouldn't this clue, and the mission objectives, say who this other ally is? Or if it's intended to be a surprise, maybe use language telling the player that you don't know who it is, but you know they're in trouble.

The message Positron says when I leave him, then rejoin him: "Wonderful Police Woman, now lets get going shall we?" should be "Wonderful, Police Woman! Now let's get going, shall we?

"Fortunata: It's Police Woman... quick, stop her now, she must not leave here alive and foil our plan again!" ... this is really awkward sounding, I have a hard time picturing someone saying that in a fight. Maybe have them say something simpler, like "Oh no, it's Police Woman again! Stop her!"

"lets hurry, Ms. Liberty needs our help!" I think it would make more sense for Sister Psyche to say this after being rescued, instead of the nearly inarticulate "Megan... she... no, not here... lets go!" Also "lets" should be "let's" in both lines.

I'm not quite sure why Sister Psyche needs me to walk her to the exit - she's not exactly a helpless hostage, and nothing here is likely to be able to stop her.

I like that Sister Psyche says "Ok... so Megan is in a coma, at the Founder's Falls Hospital.. and only you can save her!" as I get her out, but I think you can drop the "Ok.... so" part to make this line a little stronger. And I like the idea that only I can save her.... but why can only I save her? Sister Psyche is a super-telepath and probably better at mind affecting stuff than I am. Maybe needs some explanation.

Sister Psyche's bad news clue: "when Ms. Liberty met with terrible forces that defeated her" is pretty vague. I think it might sound stronger if you say that she was ambushed by a specific villain group, then the hospital transporters tried to snatch her to safety.

Mission exit popup: some nice info here, but it's 7 lines that are all one very long run-on sentence; I think you should break it up into several sentences. Also "cowerdly" should be "cowardly".

Debriefing: I like the debriefing and how it explains why "only you" can save Ms Liberty (presumably getting Positron and Sister Psyche out of the picture). It's kinda comic book pseudo-science, but I can buy that. However, this story explanation will have some plot holes if the player is actually on a team, since the other teammates presumably won't already have been subjected to the mental-lock.

Mission 3
Briefing: seems like a very cool setup. "conciousness" should be "consciousness".

Second part of briefing: "errected" should be "erected".

I like the popup message as you enter; I thought an Arachnos base was a weird choice, but the popup message helps set the stage for why we're here and gives a good sense of ambience. (Still overuses ellipses though.)

Okay, the Vampire Rabbits and Vampire Bunnies are just...weird. Are they supposed to signify something in Ms Liberty's psyche? Was Megan savaged by a rabbit at an early age? (Later I found more info that explained them. Still not sure why the rabbits know martial arts though; I guess rabbits kick?)

Found an altar labeled "Megan's mind", which is kind of odd; shouldn't it just be "Stone Altar" or do I somehow recognize it as more significant than that? "Stone Altar of Beginnings" clue says "After you examined it, it disappeared" ... but the altar is actually still there. Also in this clue "Alter" should be "Altar".

"Toys" clue: ok, this mutilated stuffed rabbit toy is pretty creepy. Very nice effect.

Several minutes after I rescued the Fluttering Shadow, she had additional dialog.... that totally surprised me. I eventually figured out that it was her dialog for me leaving her and returning. Was a neat effect though.

Only the first "scrolls" glowy and the first "toybox" glowy seemed to award the "Book of Vampires" and "A dusty stuffed rabbit toy" clues; this makes the additional "scrolls" and "toybox" glowies somewhat redundant. You might consider reducing the number of glowies to just one "scrolls" and one "toybox".

I found a "Liberty's Mind" ally that I rescued. I'm not sure it makes sense for there to be both a "Liberty's Mind" ally and a "Megan's mind" glowy. Though, I also have a "Liberty's Mind" clue now that suggests that clicking that glowy caused Liberty's Mind to appear. The clue also says that getting Liberty's Mind out of here would cause Ms Liberty to regain consciousness; this seems to suggest I should lead her out of the mission, but I don't think that is your intention.

Liberty's Mind has dialog that is totally inarticulate. This might be intentional though, since she is probably all mixed up.

In the mission objectives, the two "Find out who gave Megan" objectives should drop the trailing "..." ellipses, because these don't look right with a comma after them.

Giver of the Book and Giver of the Bunny are both quite disturbing. (Good job)

Ironically, Liberty's Mind got stuck on a piece of geometry while I was walking her through the mission. I felt bad at her pleading as I had to leave her behind. I ended up pulling Liberty's Shadow to where Liberty's Mind was located, while the Statesman and Sister Psyche echoes were wandering around while we all fought...it was pretty surreal.

What does Liberty's Shadow signify, anyway? Should she maybe be "Liberty's Subconscious" or "Liberty's Fears"?

In the "Liberty liberated" clue, "Ms. Libertys' fears" should be "Ms. Liberty's fears" and "conciousness" should be "consciousness".

Debriefing: Much, much too short for the wrap up of your story. I think you need more writing here; maybe Ms Liberty or Sister Psyche could explain a little more about all the childhood fears and neuroses that caused Ms Liberty to become trapped.

Nice souvenir. "conciousness" should be "consciousness" though, and "Duncans childhood" should be "Duncan's childhood".

Loose ends: Whatever happened to the Mind-Web Virus? We never got it out of the system, so won't it still be out there waiting to trap Ms Liberty or other heroes?

Why were the Council and Arachnos working together on this? They are traditionally rivals and it is never explained why they are both serving the Overseer.

Who or what is the Overseer? We defeated the Fake Overseer but we never found out who the real Overseer is and arrest him.

What did the Mind-Web Virus have to do with what happened in Ms Liberty's mind? From what I found in the third mission, it seemed like everything there holding Ms Liberty's mind trapped was stuff in her own back story; not quite sure how the Mind-Web Virus was involved at all, except as a McGuffin to get the player into the last mission.

Overall
I really liked the creepy mood of the last mission, it was very disturbing. I also really liked the dynamic way the objectives were chained to each other, making each mission feel very cool and unique. The middle mission felt a little long due to having to repeatedly search Steel Canyon for the dynamically spawned objectives, but I do like the way they were connected together.

I think the dialog could use some work though, some of the things the NPCs said felt very stilted and unnatural. Also I thought there were a lot of loose ends that were never cleaned up. The plot was a little murky; since we never actually find the Overseer, we never figure out what his motivation is for hurting Ms Liberty. The description of the story arc seems to tell us the most about this; it is never actually explained in the story itself. As a result it seems like it is mostly a set up to get into the last mission in Ms Liberty's mind.

But the gameplay of each mission is pretty cool, and the ambience set up by the last mission was terrific.

I gave this story 4 stars.

------

I owe a review to:

@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 153654
@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

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 ]
[ QUOTE ]

For your consideration:

Axis and Allies (arc id #1379)
Go back in time, assassinate Hitler, and take his place. Lead the Axis powers to victory in WW2, crush democracy, and Conquer the World.

[/ QUOTE ]

Any arc that has you assassinate Hilter, puts you on the Hero side. I don't care what you do afterwards.

[/ QUOTE ]


I have to admit, I really really enjoyed testing Full Auto, Headsplitter, Knockout Blow, and various other attacks on my Hitler-analog mob.

There's just something awesome about being able to punch out Hitler, IMHO.

My review thread has been marked "quid pro quo", which isn't language I would've used, but in fairness is pretty much accurate.

Quite honestly, my inspiration for starting a review thread is the Dev's Choice: Becoming the Chosen One! post, which says:

[ QUOTE ]
But to give you some guidelines of things that can help you get noticed, we recommend the following:

* Get people to play your story – offer to play their story in exchange.

* Humbly solicit feedback and implement changes based off of what other players are saying about your content.

* Play, rate and comment on other’s stories, this helps build a community of authors.

[/ QUOTE ]


I definitely hoped to promote my arcs enough to be considered for Dev Choice, and so my motivation for starting a review thread was essentially self-serving; I figured that a review exchange thread would accomplish all 3 of the above points simultaneously. I did set the ground rules for my thread that I'd ask them to play my arc in return for my playing through and reviewing theirs; I hoped this would both increase the visibility of my story arcs, and throttle down the number of review requests I get (since I could already see the other reviewers were prone to getting swamped by review requests). I don't think it's any different than the countless people who arrange "Do my arc, I'll do yours" trades; but yeah, it's still self-serving.

Over the course of doing twenty or so reviews, though, I've found that my review style has gradually morphed away from simple play-throughs and more towards brainstorming sessions about how each author can make their story arc more cool. Even for the arcs I give the lowest ratings (in fact, especially for these), I try and offer as many suggestions as I can to try and make it a better story. I actually hope my comments will help the author improve their story arc, and increase the number of good stories that are out there to play. This may all be a rationalization on my part, but it's my hope that I'm providing a useful service to the Mission Architect community as a whole.

I feel it's worth stating that my ground rules don't require someone to play my arc before I'll play theirs, but do state that I'll give higher priority to people who do.

So far, my "higher priority" queue has never been empty. But on the flip side, my queue has never been completely overwhelmed, either.

So from my point of view, this arrangement has been working out pretty well.

Yellow Submarine-Save Pepperland

The premise is to save the Beatles from the Blue Meanies who have taken over Pepperland.

Level range was 1-54 heroic, so I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: I'm afraid I don't know who the contact, Old Fred, is; looking up "Yellow Submarine" in Wikipedia, I find that he is a character from the movie who recruits Ringo to save Pepperland. But, for people who don't know this, he should really introduce himself in his initial briefing.

"We need your help Police Woman" should have a comma after help.
"caputered" should be "captured"
"dasterdly" should be "dastardly"

Some explanation of who the "Blue Meanies" are, what "Pepperland" is, and who "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" would be helpful, for people who aren't intimately familiar with Beatles mythology.

The popup message on entering the mission needs a period at the end of the sentence. Why is it that I think Pepperland is no longer a paradise? The map isn't ruined or on fire or anything.

The mission is to "Free John"; you may need to explain who John is (sorry, I know who you mean, but some players won't have even been born yet when this movie came out).

The mission objectives "Find John" and "Free John" seem a little redundant.

I need to destroy 12 Stone Flowers for this mission, but they weren't mentioned in the briefing. I think you need some explanation of what the stone flowers are, and why they need to be destroyed.

I encountered Mr Blue Meanie 34 and Mr Blue Meanie 89; both had the default minion description, but could probably use some explanation of what Blue Meanies actually are. I thought the Blue Meanie and Stone Flowers dialog was cool though. But it's a little odd that I "pick" the flowers by destroying them; not sure how else you'd get the flower dialog, though. Maybe you could have a custom "flower" character that is held hostage, but freed when you beat the Blue Meanies guarding the flower hostage?

I like the "Flowers flowers everywhere!" clue, it's very 60s. Maybe the "12 Stone Flowers to destroy" should be "12 Stone Flowers to pick" though. Also, I think 12 is a LOT of objects to destroy; you could probably do fine with just 6, or even 3 or 4.

"Once we are out the Meanies wont stand a chance!" should be "Once we are out, the Meanies won't stand a chance!"

Found John. He does have a description, but I think he could use a longer one explaining more about him; "Pretty much the egghead of the Band" doesn't say enough, IMHO. Defeating his guards completed the "Find John" objective, but not the "Free John" objective, which is odd. Not sure what it takes to "Free John"; he is following me around now though. I kind of think John should be sonic blast, not mind control; his empathy secondary makes sense.

John says "I could be handy mending a fuse when your light have gone." ... I think "light" should be "lights". And he also says "Sunday mornings, go for a ride" ... should have a period at the end. Actually I think it would scan better if he said "You can knit a sweater by the fireside. Sunday mornings, go for a ride." (i.e. filling in the missing line between the two dialogs)

John also says "I believe The Dreadful Glove Knows where they are". This seems capitalized oddly, not sure if that is intentional. Shouldn't this trigger a new objective of "Defeat the Dreadful Glove"? Or maybe it should award a clue suggesting the player find the Dreadful Glove.

Also, the mission title is "Free John" but even after I've found John and set him free from his captors, the mission doesn't end because I still need to fight the Glove and the stone flowers.

I found "Dredful Flying Glove"; I think Dredful should be "Dreadful". And John called him just "Dreadful Glove", should his name be Dreadful Glove? Or John could call him Dreadful Flying Glove.

"Free John" objective was rather unintuitive; I first tried to lead John to the exit of the mission, but that didn't work. I eventually defeated Dredful Flying Glove, which apparently was the actual trigger for "Free John" becoming complete. I think you should maybe change "Free John" to "Defeat Dreadful Glove" or maybe "Defeat Meanest Meanie".

Dredful Flying Glove's dialog: "Awww...Come one" should be "Awww...Come on".

Upon defeating him I got the "Where is the rest of the Band?" clue, described as "a scrawled note pinned to the back the Dredful Flying Gloves' back" which doesn't quite make sense. I suggest you make this clue titled "Note found on Dreadful Glove", then the body of it be, "Paul is at the circus." Maybe with a little more text though giving more details.

Debriefing: seemed very thin, would be nice to have some more text here than "You freed John? Thank goodness."

What exactly was the Blue Meanies' motivation for capturing John and either building or capturing 12 stone flowers? What is the significance of destroying the stone flowers and setting the flowers "free"? I think there needs to be more meaning here.

Mission 2
Briefing: Some explanation of who Paul is would be helpful. Also, if you are trying to duplicate the events of the Yellow Submarine movie, it sounds George was actually next after John.

Found a Miss Blue Meanie 75; she could use a description (currently she has the default lieutenant description).

15 Little Loves to collect seems quite a lot for someone to collect; could probably set this number to something less, like 6. Also, the mission could use some explanation for why collecting 15 Little Loves is a required objective.

Collecting a Little Love, I got the clue "Lot of A Little Love", which makes no sense; should probably be either "A Little Love" or "A Lot of Love". In the clue text, "You found a load of love. You like the way they make you feel. All tinlgy all over. You best keep these" .... I think "they make" should be "it makes", "tinlgy" should be "tingly", and "keep these" maybe should be "keep it all" (referring presumably to the "load of love").

Paul's description, "He just loves to sing", needs more text and description in it. I'm not sure why he's kinetics; wouldn't sonic make more sense? After freeing Paul, the mission does not end, despite the mission being named "Free Paul". I suggest you name the mission something else that will make sense even after Paul has been freed.

Some of the meanies seemed quite powerful, maybe due to build up; the spines lieutenant was particularly dangerous and managed to kill me.

Miss Meanie Blues says "Nothing you can can that I can't scream" -- I am not sure what you mean to say here, but that doesn't sound right. She has a little bit of description in her info, but she can really use more (since she seems to the the "big bad guy" of this arc).

She also says "No one can be save that can't be shaved?" which doesn't really make sense. Maybe you mean "No one can be saved that can't be shaved?"

The exit popup, "You found Paul and defeated the Meanies but there is still more to come" seems to suggest that there's more; but it's actually the end of the story arc, so this doesn't quite fit.

The mission debriefing suggests you need to go after Ringo now (note: "RIngo" should be "Ringo") but in fact the story arc ends right then and there.

Overall
This story arc felt incomplete. You rescue only 2 of the 4 Beatles, and the last mission even says that you should go on another mission to get the next one, but then the arc ends. Plus, both enemies and allies were not very well described (either no description at all, or a sentence fragment) and were not explained to the player very effectively. If the player is a huge Beatles fan, she will know all these people, but I think your story needs to communicate who John and Paul are, what Blue Meanies are, why a Dreadful Glove is the big enemy of the first mission, and where Pepperland is supposed to be, so that people who are not as familiar with the Beatles will be able to understand what is happening.

The motivation for why the Blue Meanies are attacking Pepperland and capturing musicians is very unclear also; all I got from their dialog is that they hate everything. Perhaps this is true to their nature in the Yellow Submarine movie, though; I'm not really sure.

The gameplay was okay, but I felt there were too many objects you needed to destroy in the first mission, and too many glowies you had to click in the second mission. The missions did not really explain why these objects needed to be destroyed or clicked on, also.

I get that you are trying to give the story the "feel" of the Yellow Submarine movie, but I don't think that fully shines through. The dialog for the characters and the objects is pretty good at supporting this (it all sounds very groovy 60s), but I think you also need to carry this through to the mission briefings, the descriptions of the characters and the clues that the player finds. If you put some more flavor text in these areas, it would help the story communicate more of the feeling you are going for.

I think you may also want to add more missions to this story arc to make it more of a complete story, as right now it feels like it's cut off in the middle. I would think you should have room for more, since it's only 2 missions long right now.

As it currently stands, the story felt both confusing and incomplete, and the missions seemed tedious due to the large number of objects that had to be destroyed or clicked on in each mission. As a result, I felt I could only give this story arc 2 stars. I hope you think that is fair.


------

I owe a review to:

@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 153654
@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

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 ]
Then there's the kind of REALLY BAD I like to play, which I guess you could define as TOTALLY RUTHLESS. I am bad, I want to take over the world and rule it with an iron fist, and I will squish any insignificant peon who gets in my way. That's the kind of bad I want to see more of, because there is practically none in dev-created content.

[/ QUOTE ]


For your consideration:

Axis and Allies (arc id #1379)
Go back in time, assassinate Hitler, and take his place. Lead the Axis powers to victory in WW2, crush democracy, and Conquer the World.

[ QUOTE ]
Pro Payne is at 16 right now, and I want to keep him moving forward

[/ QUOTE ]


Sounds like you are getting into a good range to play Teen Phalanx Forever! (arc id 67335) The premise is that a teen version of your character joins a teen superhero team, and has adventures and melodrama. The missions are 15-20, 20, 20-25 and 25-29 (the level ranges intentionally ramp up to give you the sense that you are "leveling up" between missions), using mostly standard PvE enemies, so should be quite doable for a lowbie (I've gone through it on a 7 scrapper). There are AVs in it, but not crazy-hard ones; I tried to balance it for soloability.

Feel free to post a review if you like. I'm pretty open to constructive criticism.

Some additional thoughts on Escalation after sleeping on it....

One of the problems I had was that there are an awful lot of Lashion robots but it didn't feel like they really did much except act as speed bumps on the way to the main event, facing off with Lashion/Escalation. You do have a few robots guarding hostages in the bank mission and the final Atlas mission; I think it would help to give them a little dialog, albeit in robot-speak. Maybe a patrol here and there with more robot-speak; in later missions they can say something that implies that Lashion has specifically programmed them to search for and beat up the player. Just something to make the various non-Lashion mobs seem a little more lively.

I very much liked the idea you had for the optional glowy poster board with defaced pictures of the player on it, to show how much Lashion really hates the protagonist. This whole arc is really about Lashion's grudge match with the player.

I kind of would've liked the player to have some hand in locking Lashion in her last body, preventing her escape; maybe having discovered a "De-Escalation" chemical or something. But having Escalation defeated by her own hubris is also very classic, so that works too.

Finally, I think you need a rad/rad version of Dr. Lashion somewhere named "Nuclear Escalation". She can exposition that she got these radiation powers after a respec (err, radiation exposure) in Terra Volta.

Some additional thoughts on Escalation after sleeping on it.... (spoilers)

One of the problems I had was that there are an awful lot of Lashion robots but it didn't feel like they really did much except act as speed bumps on the way to the main event, facing off with Lashion/Escalation. You do have a few robots guarding hostages in the bank mission and the final Atlas mission; I think it would help to give them a little dialog, albeit in robot-speak. Maybe a patrol here and there with more robot-speak; in later missions they can say something that implies that Lashion has specifically programmed them to search for and beat up the player. Just something to make the various non-Lashion mobs seem a little more lively.

I very much liked the idea you had for the optional glowy poster board with defaced pictures of the player on it, to show how much Lashion really hates the protagonist. This whole arc is really about Lashion's grudge match with the player.

I kind of would've liked the player to have some hand in locking Lashion in her last body, preventing her escape; maybe having discovered a "De-Escalation" chemical or something. But having Escalation defeated by her own hubris is also very classic, so that works too.

Finally, I think you need a rad/rad version of Dr. Lashion somewhere named "Nuclear Escalation". She can exposition that she got these radiation powers after a respec (err, radiation exposure) in Terra Volta.

[ QUOTE ]
"Ouroboros, MAGI, Midnighters, their views of the time stream are far too grand, far too encompassing. They'll never see the tiny imperfections... Imperfections like you.

They'll never know, and even if they somehow did, I can always rewind! Face it $name, I'm your only way out of this!"

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm, I don't think I got this clue (and I thought I was watching for them). But possibly I missed it as the game doesn't always seem to say when you get one now.

[ QUOTE ]
As for grammar/spelling corrections, those are always welcome! ...as soon as I figure out the Unicode for accents.

[/ QUOTE ]

The way I figured out how to do this is to open Accessories -> System Tools -> Character Map, then pick characters out of there to cut & paste into the editor. In this way you can say something like: "déjà vu". Most people won't miss the little accent marks though so it's not a hugely big deal.

I had the choice of Amazon-Avatars or Escalation; I tried Escalation since it had fewer plays.

Escalation review

Played with a duo of 50 tanker and 50 blaster (I was the blaster).

Mission 1
Seems a straightforward villain bust. A lot of background info about this particular quirky villainess is given, which is nice.

Second part of briefing : "every times she is defeated" should be "every time she is defeated"

Lashion Minion Bot description: "minon" should be "minion"

Lashion ArtilleryBot description: "mid-teir" should be "mid-tier", "airel" should be "aerial". Also, why is ArtilleryBot one word, but Minion Bot and Combat Bot are two words? They should have a similar naming scheme.

Lashion Support Bot description: "expensvie" should be "expensive"

Dr. Erica Lashion: Just a minion? Seemed awfully easy. It makes sense based on the background info, but she didn't even have time to summon bots before we dropped her each time. This may be intentional, though, as the detective really plays up how easy she is.

I like her dialog where she's talking about coming up with a villain name; I had just been thinking she needed a snappy code name.

Good dialog on the clone. I like the "backup of the backup" as an objective. The body jumping schtick is a very cool idea.

In the last clone's dialog, "withdrawl" should be "withdrawal".

One question I have, though, is what is Dr. Lashion doing in Atlas Park in the first place? She isn't obviously stealing anything or robbing a bank, so what is her motivation for being here?

All the robots (aside from Lashion herself) seem rather static, and there's a lot of them due to the size of the map. It would be more interesting if they were doing something. Maybe they can be mugging Atlas citizens or guarding piles of loot stolen from city hall or something, which would help give Lashion some reason to be here.

Mission 2
OK, another seemingly straightforward mission where I stop a bank robbery.

Popup as I enter: "suprise" should be "surprise"

Goals: "Rescue the other bank teller!" should drop the exclamation point, looks weird with a comma after it.

The new Dr Lashion was a lieutenant, so a little more dangerous but still awfully easy. This may be my fault for being on heroic though.

I like that she has a new gizmo (the electro gauntlets) this time. It's a very mad scientist thing to do for her to come up with a new gadget or a new trick each time, that she's absolutely sure will work.

Mission 3
Popup as I enter: "she just keep changing bodies" should be "she just keeps changing bodies".

Yay, she picked a villain name. Still a fairly easy lieutenant, but I can see what the pattern is now and why she started out as a minion (err, 4 minions) in the first mission.

We noticed her models are getting taller each time. ... or was that our imagination?

Both this mission and the previous one were over very very quickly, though maybe this is okay considering it's a 5-mission arc.

Mission 4
The clone army is great! I really think they should have more dialog, though, since they are all Dr. Lashion, after all. Perhaps consider adding some patrols, ambushes, or nonrequired boss spawns (all named Dr. Lashion) so they can monologue at you about how they're totally going to wreck you this time? With the premise you have, you could easily have ten times as much evil mastermind dialog than a regular evil mastermind gets, since they're all really the same person!

Since this is Dr. Lashion's lab, I kinda think there should be a lot of tech gizmos, like nutrient baths for clones or workbenches for robots, that potentially could be destroyed or confiscated.

Escalation 2.0 is a decent upgrade from the last one; finally a boss this time. I actually think we could've handled the last Escalation upgrade (in Mission 3) being a boss (or EB on a bigger team) too.

Mission 5
Showdown in Atlas Park! I do like how Escalation specifically calls you out each time, and the police go along with it. It's very comic booky.

I like Jaded Captive's dialog when you free her. She should have some jaded remark she says before you free her, too, something like "Oh no, not again. Can we hurry it up? I'm late for my hair appointment".

I love the laundry list of pseudo-scientific ingredients Escalation Extreme says she included in her current clone.

Escalation Extreme says "I'm stuck!" right before she goes unstoppable, which is a little weird since her dialog suggests she's in trouble, but really she's about to become as tough as she ever gets.

Her death message is "I let myself get too attached to this clone, to comfortable"; in this, "to comfortable" should be "too comfortable".

Love the "Hate Letter from the Zig" souvenir!

Overall
The concept for Dr Lashion/Escalation and her body-hopping was actually pretty cool. Her personality really showed through her dialog and the various challenges she kept issuing through the contact. But, the missions seemed pretty straightforward and it felt like there wasn't that much to do in each mission except for the part where you interact with Dr. Lashion/Escalation; I think you could stand to add a little more material in those areas. Her robot army was a little bland, perhaps more could be done with them; maybe give them some robotic dialog or stuff to do (guarding hostages or items or something).

My teammate thought the arc could use some more clues; I think the briefings are pretty explanatory of what's going on, but perhaps a clue after the first upgraded Dr Lashion explaining the cycle of escalation would be helpful.

I thought it was witty and fun though. I gave it 4 stars.

------

I owe a review to:

Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780 [broken arc?]
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349 [broken arc?]

@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 153654
@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

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887

I tried starting Yellow Submarine 92780 but it wouldn't start - probably bugged by the last patch.

Childhood Horrors 5349 would not start for me either.

A Tangle in Time review

Played a 50 AR/dev blaster on heroic.

The arc description says that I'm apparently messing around with some sort of time traveling magic artifact. Azuria does seem like a good choice of contact for messing around with magic artifacts.

Mission 1
Briefing: well written and explains what I'm doing, so I like it. I do think it is odd that the PPD would be guarding this Oranbegan ruin, and not some kind of professional magic organization like the Midnight Squad or the Legacy Chain. But then my character is a police officer who is meddling with this stuff herself, so I guess that works.

I like the roaming PPD patrols that make the mission more dynamic.

I was very puzzled by Officer Riley's leafy arms until I read his description, which says he's some kind of mutant. The vine cages the bad guys are caught in make sense now too. Riley's animations and dialog are terrific though.

I love how Hanson seems to be about to punch out these surrendered CoT that are technically guarding him.

Clicking on the glowy it says "Don't you dare do this Police Woman, I'm warning you!" on the progress bar... but who is saying this? And I kinda thought something would happen after the glowy was fully clicked. I got a message in my chat log, but you might want to add a clue to the clue journal; if you have a team, this would let people other than the person who clicked the glowy know what happened.

Mobiosea has some interesting dialog, warning of unspecified ominous doom. Hopefully I'll find out what he meant soon.

Debriefing: Azuria says, "Greetings, I look forward to working with you"? So she's forgotten me? I'm assuming this is intentional.

Mission 2
Briefing: Identical to the first mission ... hmmmm ... but clearly intentional since my accept message is "Wait a minute. I just did this!"

Second part of briefing, should either change the semicolon to a period, or change Surely to be lower case.

I like the new mission title, "What's going on?"

I think this is a clever idea but will give some players a headache.

Time stream glowy in this mission didn't have a progress bar for clicking it at all, which made me wonder if it was bugged; maybe give it a second or two just to make it look like something is happening. I'm not sure whether it was actually listed as a required objective, either, but don't want to go back to check right this moment.

Mobiosea's dialog: "Look, here She comes..." I think you need to change $Heshe to $heshe (lower case).

Some minor punctuation stuff: I don't think there is a hyphen in "deja vu", and Mobiosea's dialog overuses ellipses.

I really think defeating Mobiosea in the second mission or completing the second mission should've given up some sort of clue to what is going on; though it may actually be your intention for the player to be very confused by the temporal paradox at this point.

Debriefing: Gah, back where I started with another "Greetings" from Azuria.

Mission 3
Briefing: Love this one! The part where the player tries to tell Azuria something's wrong and Azuria blows you off and insists you do the mission (again) is hilarious.

So in this mission I have to kill the police and the CoT are my friends? I'm kind of uneasy at this since my character is a police officer, but going to go with it.

Mobiosea's dialog trails off after "But I'll get away with it, want to know why?" I do want to know why, but he doesn't say anything more. Should there be some sort of Clue awarded at this point, perhaps with a partial explanation?

This mission doesn't appear to have clicking the time stream glowy as an objective either, not sure if that is intentional.

I like Mobiosea's whole arrogant attitude, and the dialog he has when I try to ditch him, then come back for him.

Officer Riley's dialog as you attack him is terrific. Hanson's isn't bad, but Riley's is terrific.

Time Stream again had no progress bar for clicking it, and wasn't a required objective. Though I can see why it's not a required objective at this point.

Even though I helped Mobiosea this time and completed the mission, he didn't actually tell me anything; not sure if this was intentional or not.

Debriefing: whoa, finally something has changed! Azuria's "I only gave you one amulet, how did you end up with all these?" is kind of weird. I think it would've been helpful to have a clue saying you had multiple amulets or one for each amulet, to foreshadow this; as it was, I hadn't realized I was accumulating multiple magical amulets. It's also rather paradoxical; where did the extra amulets come from? But this paradox is not a big deal, because the result is cool.

Mission 4
Briefing: "but it seems that Mobiosea has already bound himself" ... has should be had.

"I eventually heard that they invaded the ruins, but by then he had you by the strings" ... I don't understand this sentence at all. The CoT invaded? The PPD invaded? Needs clarification.

Azuria now wants me to beat up Mobiosea, but I don't understand how this will help, because I already beat him up in missions 1 and 2 and it didn't seemed to help; instead, it only perpetuated the time loop.

Her final sentence, "No matter what I say, no matter what the reason, promise me that you'll destroy that pedestal" does not seem to fit with the rest of her briefing, where she just asked me to beat up Mobiosea. If the pedestal is the real objective, she maybe should have said that first, rather than ask me to beat up Mobiosea. Also won't destroying the pedestal prevent me from time traveling back to fix my original problem?

Also it seems like I could've avoided the "criminal record" that Azuria threatens me with here, by simply refusing to attack the PPD officers. But the structure of the mission forces you to attack the PPD officers, so this is a little unfair.

So now I enter the mission and it's the Oranbega map. How did I get out of the time loop? Did Mobiosea actually let me go, or the act of shooting the cops broke me out of it? Maybe needed some more explanation in mission 3.

Mission title and mission objective are both "Defeat Mobiosea!" which seems a little redundant. And why isn't "Destroy Pedestal" a required objective? Azuria seemed very adamant about that. (Later I found that this pedestal is actually in mission 5, but the way Azuria told me to destroy it in mission 4's briefing was kind of confusing.)

Found a prisoner in this mission; but he's doing some kind of strongman flexing animation, which is kind of odd for a captive.

Wow, the prisoner's dialog, "This is the 213th time I've seen you, Police Woman, and you'll fail! YOU'LL ALWAYS FAIL AHA HA HA HA HA!" is awesomely terrifying.

I tracked down Mobiosea and beat him up, but not sure it did any good. He seemed supremely confident even in "defeat".

Debriefing: Aaiiigh! Time loop!

Mission 5
Briefing: I love the huge pseudo-scientific rant that Azuria goes into when I say that I'm going to destroy the thing, and how despite the fact that she is flatly forbidding me from destroying it, the mission title pops up as "Destroy the gateway!"

Terrific mission entrance popup. I like the part where you throw the amulets to the ground and say to hell with Azuria.

Mission goal: "Find the Thorns Leader!" maybe shouldn't have an exclamation point, because it looks odd with a comma right after it.

Mobiosea's dialog as you fight him is very amusing.

I love the tattered, shaggy versions of Officer Riley and Sergeant Hanson that apparently have been trapped in their own time loops forever. Their dialog is great. So defiant initially, then really rather sad at the end. I actually feel bad for having to beat them up; I hope I get to save them in the end.

Destroying the actual pedestal was a little anticlimactic; I kinda think something more dramatic should've happened after you blew it up. Maybe link a clue with some exposition about how the time stream suddenly snaps back to a stable configuration?

Debriefing: Yay, the two officers got freed.

Overall
The premise was very clever and well handled; Mobiosea's use of time travel to imprison people in time loops to force them to do his bidding was brilliant. The before/after models for the two police officers were great. Outstanding dialog. Despite the briefings intentionally being repetitive, they actually worked really well. Azuria admitting fault at the end for wanting this artifact in her vault was a nice parting touch as well.

The only things I'd suggest would be to add a few clues to help the player understand what is going on; the time loop could be very easily confusing to many players and some exposition would be helpful. Adding a souvenir would be nice, also.

I gave this arc 5 stars.

------

I owe a review to:

Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 153654
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887

5/6/2009

On Monday night I mainly solo'd Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through AE story arcs. I finished Shift Awesome!, a story arc where you explore an alien ship, learn a little about them, then decide to kill 'em all. The feel of exploring the alien ship was really cool, but was partially dispelled by one mission where you're randomly fighting Crey on the streets. I also felt the alien race needed more back story and the act of destroying their ship wasn't quite dramatic enough (you just click a glowy and are told it gets destroyed). I ended up giving that story 3 stars.

After that I went through The Once and Future King Sac, which is a story all about the author's hero and time traveling aliens who try to screw up the author's back story. The player is tasked with fixing the timeline so the author's hero can become the inspirational figure that he will be in the future. If you can get past the fact that it's all about this other hero and not so much about you, there is some decent writing and plotting. Though I did feel there were some balance issues in that a lot of the enemies were buffers/debuffers, and all the allies seemed to be Elite Bosses. I gave this story arc 3 stars.

I finished Monday working on making another story arc; I don't actually have the ability to publish a fourth arc, but am hopeful that someday I'll either qualify for one, or else there'll be a way to buy or unlock additional story arc slots. Since I was worried that some of my friends are annoyed at me because I don't like boring farm missions, I decided to try and make a farm mission with some story behind it. I had been kicking around ideas for a samurai epic story arc, and this kinda works for farming because I can use big open maps (representing field battles) with lots of dual blades and katana guys. I promptly screwed up the farmability of my mission by adding an AV to be the boss, some samurai archers, and Oriental wizards throwing fireballs and hurricanes. Oh well, so it won't be a very good farm. But the pseudo-Japanese fantasy army sure looks cool in test mode!

On Tuesday, there was a big patch that changed a lot of architect stuff around, mostly to address farming, I think. Many people seemed very upset by this and were crying DOOOOOOM, but, c'mon, surely people had to know this was going to happen.

I also found that the patch broke my most popular story arc, Teen Phalanx Forever!, so I very quickly had to edit and republish it. The AE console user interface didn't tell me that the story arc was broken, but if I tried to play it, it would simply fail to start. Going in and editing the story arc showed that I had 2 new errors, though; these turned out to be that the descriptions for the hostages in the first two missions exceeded the 300 character limit. Ironically, I had not changed their descriptions, but was directly using the default description for Maemae von Whooters (hostage #1) and Penelope Yin (hostage #2). I trimmed both of their descriptions to be under the limit, and after that the story arc seemed to be happy again and could be published and played.

The patch did fix some of the Architect badges that weren't awarding, and over the course of the night I got the badges:

Builder (an arc earns 5 votes with average 3.0 rating or higher)
Constructor (arc earns 10 votes, average 3.25 rating or higher)
Engineer (arc earns 25 votes, average 3.5 rating or higher)
Designer (arc earns 50 votes, average 3.75 rating or higher)
Master Builder (arc earns 100 votes, average 4.0 rating or higher)

I didn't get all of these when logging in, I think they only updated once someone new rated one of my story arcs.

Police Woman's market manipulation has been going really well; I stopped reporting my purchases and sales here because it's kinda boring, but her cash reserves crossed 500 million influence for the first time last night. Some of this was earned the "real" way (killing mobs!) but the great majority was from Wentworth's. I lost a fortune investing in ~40 Deific Weapons at 3M each before I14 (now they are like 300K each or less) but made it all back day trading on medium rare salvage, whose prices have been going crazily up and down for weeks now.

I played Primadonna (36 sonic/kin corruptor) on a 5 player LEGION SG villain team doing Ambassador Kur'rekt's missions, which got Primadonna to 37. Then after that team broke up I solo'd my way through the Midnight Squad story arc; one of these missions, "Collect the Amulets of Corax", was particularly frustrating for me as I searched back and forth through Oranbega for the last Guardian of the Amulet for half an hour before finally figuring out I needed to kill some random CoT minion (who was part of the spawn for one of the Guardians) to complete the mission. I got through the story arc eventually, unlocking Cimerora and getting 5 reward merits.

I popped over to Triumph server briefly, playing Alice Slaughter (31 db/will brute) on a 3 player Demolition Girls SG team doing regular missions for Psymon Omega. As a brute, I was teamed with a crab and a pain MM; this was a surprisingly well balanced team for red-side. This got Alice to level 32, where I took Swift because I thought the animation for One Thousand Cuts is kinda dumb, but I really miss Swift on characters that don't have it. (With Quick Recovery in her secondary, Alice hadn't gotten around to taking Stamina.)

Finished the night back on Liberty server, where I played Adventuress (7 MA/regen scrapper) on a 3 player Liberty Force SG team doing lowbie architect missions. I joined in at the tail end of Murder in Triplicate which actually looked like an intriguing murder mystery. The last mission was a very short timed mission where you're supposed to arrest "the killer" but have many named enemies that are "suspects". But my teammates admitted they hadn't bothered puzzling through all the clues so we just attacked everything we could find, and consequently time ran out before we found the right guy. I ended up not rating this arc, since it looked kinda cool but I didn't get to see most of it.

The team leader volunteered to run us through Teen Phalanx Forever! without me even goading the team into it, which was pretty awesome. The other two players hadn't done this arc before, but seemed to like it, especially the final AV, who got a lot of laughs. This also got Adventuress to level 9, and I took Crane Kick for my level 8 power to give me a third attack.

[ QUOTE ]
Just for fun, I'll point out that McArthur was the commander of troops in the Pacific Theatre of Operations in WWII.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, this is true. I kind of figured that if Germany was invading the United States, most or all US Armies would've been recalled to defend the homeland. I did consider using Eisenhower but thought MacArthur and Patton were both better known as WW2 generals. Yes, I do know Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander and became president and all, but he just didn't have the same panache as MacArthur and Patton.

[ QUOTE ]
Today, I tried to find mission #1992 A Heroe's Halo and it just isn't to be found my that number. Where did it go?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think Vanden actually took that down to put up a different story arc, Knights of Rularuu.

With yesterday's patch breaking a lot of story arcs, I ended up not doing any formal reviews yesterday, figuring I'd better wait until people got a chance to straighten things out if their arc got broken. Will resume soon though.

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

The Once and Future King Sac review

The premise of the arc made me kind of uneasy as it's clearly a vanity arc centered on the author's character. Based on the arc description, I am not sure why a player who did not know the author would want to try this arc; I think the premise needs something more in order to hook people into trying the arc.

Anyhow, giving it a try with a 50 AR/dev blaster.

Mission 1
Briefing: So the avatar of King Sac has come from the future, where everyone worships King Sac, to ask the player to help fix some mysterious temporal anomaly that threatens the good legacy of King Sac.

In this briefing, King Sac is referenced 8 times.
My character's name is mentioned 1 time.
What the contact actually wants me to do is not explained at all, aside from describing it as an "anomaly" that occurs 20 years in the past.
Some additional explanation of the nature of the anomaly, or at least why the Avatar thinks it is a problem, would be very helpful here.

Entering the first mission, I find my objective is to Rescue Christopher Bibby. But, Christopher Bibby has not been mentioned up to this point, and so I'm not really sure who he is or why he needs to be rescued.

In the mission there are mobs named "Rszkrn", "Zwog", "Flwqiws" and "Pyrtin", that basically look like they were named by randomly mashing keys. They belong to a faction called "The Entropy" and actually have descriptions mentioning they spread chaos and disorder, so I'm initially taking the assumption that they've been intentionally given random looking names.

In the description for "Sienkwrit", "Its soul purpose" should be "Its sole purpose".

In the description for "Zwog", "Its soul purpose" should be "Its sole purpose".

I found Christopher Bibby, and his info finally tells me that he will grow up to become the hero, King Sac. He is in the King's Legacy faction, which I'm not sure is strictly correct because the King's Legacy is apparently a futuristic organization that was inspired by King Sac's doings, so probably would not actually include King Sac himself.

I ended up rescuing Christopher, and the Entropy and Christopher both had pretty good dialog; the Entropy were trying to capture Christopher to keep King Sac from coming into being, whereas Chris had no idea what was going on, which made sense.

The mission immediately ended after I rescued Christopher, who was the only objective on a largish map. It felt like this mission needed more stuff to do on it. Maybe the Entropy could be holding a few more hostages, civilians with retro 1980s outfits, and questioning them to make sure they aren't Christopher Bibby (kinda like when the Terminator is looking for Sarah Connor). Or alternatively you could put this on a smaller map.

Debriefing: Decent explanation of who the Entropy are. You have an extra space after "sworn enemies of the King's Legacy".

Mission 2
Now we're going back in time to rescue a slightly older, teen version of King Sac. Okay.

The mission popup as I enter states that the Entropy's native language is "unintelligble"; should be "unintelligible". Also, this is a slight continuity error as the Entropy in mission 1 spoke in perfectly clear English.

I found Kid Sac and his dialog is "I beat you monsters last time without any powers", followed by "Thanks for the assist, fellow hero! Have we met? You seem familiar..." What, he's completely forgotten that I saved him earlier, and he now thinks he did it all on his own? That seems rather rude.

Kid Sac spawned as an Elite Boss for me (on heroic difficulty). This is probably too strong for an ally; he basically one shots everything I encounter, without needing me to attack at all. This is kind of reinforcing the idea that King Sac is the hero of this story, not the player.

I think it would be nice for the story if Kid Sac also told the player what he was doing in this dingy warehouse and how he managed to be captured by the Entropy (who he can 1 shot after all). It kinda makes sense that Christopher Bibby might be in a park area, but being in an old warehouse requires some explanation. Maybe give a clue, "Kid Sac's story" or something similar.

The clue is intriguing, and is played just mysterious enough to make you think the Entropy are up to something but you've managed to stumble across it.

Mission 3
Yet again we go back in time to help a yet older version of King Sac.

I found an optional glowy, the Entropy Computer, which in my message box says "You found information about a clone of Kid Sac in this facility". But if I had teammates, they wouldn't have gotten to see that message; you should make it a Clue that is received after clicking the glowy. Also, I already had "Defeat Kid Sac Clone" in my mission objectives, so I actually already knew about this clone. You may want to have accessing the Entropy Computer as a mission objective initially, then have "Defeat Kid Sac Clone" be an objective that is triggered by learning this clue.

King Sac is again an elite boss, which is probably too powerful to have as an ally.

I finally fought some of the Entropy long enough for them to fight back some, and I noticed the Pyrtin minions were doing empathy heals, the Rszkrn minions were doing rad emission debuffs, the Flwqiws were doing pain heals, and the Sienkwrit lieutenants were doing kin buffs. You should consider removing the buffs/debuffs from all minions (reserve for lieutenant and above); if anyone fights a medium to large group of Entropy, the synergy between the mobs buffing and debuffing will make them extremely hard. I was able to fight through them all solo, but I suggest you try a test run with a medium to large team sometime and I think you'll see what I mean.

I like the Kid Sac Clone's dialog and how it kinda trails off as he dies.

I'm a little puzzled as to why the Entropy would want to clone King Sac, though; making carbon copies of something or someone doesn't seem true to their "chaos and disorder" philosophy.

Mission 4
The clone madness continues as the contact now sends me to destroy a cloning facility where they are apparently gearing up to churn out more King Sac clones.

This mission is full of more Entropy critters with hard to pronounce names. I actually think it would be significantly more funny if you made a separate custom faction of "Clones" which had nothing but minion level Kid Sac clones and maybe lieutenant level King Sac clones. Then fill this mission with "Clones" instead of "Entropy" and the player would have to wade through an army of Kid Sacs and King Sacs to finally achieve the goal. This would be a little surreal, but it IS a cloning facility. It would be pretty self-centered to have an army of clones of your character, but this arc has been completely King Sac-centric so far, and at this point you have nothing to lose by pushing it to the next level!

I clicked the computer in this mission and got a message saying "You found important information concerning the Entropy!" I think this computer should really generate a Clue that describes this information; currently, it doesn't.

King Sac Clone I has the description "The Entropy have created this clone of King Sac wearing his Mark III armor." Um, they cloned his armor? That doesn't really make sense. Also I'm not sure he really needs the "I" designator; wouldn't it make more sense just to call him "King Sac Clone"?

Debriefing: The contact says he hopes the clue I found will lead to the Entropy leader. This makes me really think that I should've gotten an actual Clue.

Mission 5
OK, still more clones of King Sac to fight, sheesh. And the Entropy leader. Thinking about it, it is kind of weird for the Entropy to even have a leader; after all, they are supposed to represent chaos and disorder.

Entering this mission, I find my goals are to "Destroy the 2nd King Sac clone." (note: you need to remove the period from that goal, as it doesn't work well with the comma right after it), Defeat the Entropy leader, and 5 Cloning tanks to destroy.

Considering I just destroyed a King Sac cloning facility which had a King Sac clone in it and 5 destroyable objectives, this mission feels like something of a rerun. A clone, as it were. Especially considering the contact just told me that the Entropy shouldn't be able to create any more clones.

I think you should consider merging the last two missions together, trimming your arc from 5 missions to 4 missions, but having the last mission of your story arc be in the cloning facility and have all the stuff that is in your last two missions (minus things that are duplicated): it could have the Entropy leader, a fistful of King Sac clones (maybe a whole army of them as I suggested earlier), and the various cloning devices to destroy. This would tighten up your story line, and give you a fairly dramatic finale.

Ursekrz's info says "His hatred of King Sac stems from his inability to live up to his hero's ideas." I think "ideas" should be "ideals" here, and you also need to do some foreshadowing to explain why Ursekrz feels this way. It sounds like Ursekrz regards King Sac as his hero? Or perhaps you mean "the hero's ideas" and not "his hero's ideas".

I actually rather like Ursekrz's dialog, especially "The values that King Sac strived for are unrealistic!" and "You have no idea how hard I tried to live up to King Sac's ideas." It gives me some idea of why Ursekrz is doing what he is doing. However, one major flaw in this is that, why would this Entropy guy want to follow King Sac's ideals in the first place? It would make more sense if he were a failed hero or a sidekick that never quite made it or something - not a weird alien being.

I fought King Sac Clone II, whose info said he was a level 40ish King Sac, but he didn't seem substantially different to fight than the last King Sac Clone. He triggered a third King Sac clone to spawn, though, which was kind of annoying because now I have to search the entire facility to figure out where the new clone is.

I ended up running through all the elevators twice before I finally found King Sac Clone III in a place I had run through before. He spawned as an elite boss for me, and I found I needed to eat a bunch of inspirations and hit Eye of the Magus to survive long enough to kill him; it really hurt that he spawned with a minion that was doing rad emission stuff too.

King Sac Clone III's info said he was so powerful because he was a clone of King Sac after he had been exposed to Rikti and gained cosmic powers. This actually doesn't make logical sense because the Entropy never captured that version of King Sac (at least in this story arc) and so should not have been able to clone him.

For completing the mission I got a clue called "Ursekrz's cape" -- this really should be a souvenir, not a clue.

Debriefing: I like that the contact says "What Ursekrz did not realize was that one only has to do their personal best, and that is enough." Considering how influential King Sac supposedly is towards the King's Legacy, there isn't enough info about his ideology and beliefs that supposedly shaped the world to come.

Also in the debriefing, "The King's Legacy is forever ingratiated to you" should be "is forever grateful to you".

Overall
Well, this arc is extremely self-centered, focusing entirely on the history (and the future) of the author's hero, and as a result, I am not really sure why players who don't already know King Sac would want to play it. I think it's really pretty hard to get people to want to play a story where they aren't the hero, but instead the author is. However, since the entire premise of the arc is fixing the timeline so that King Sac can inspire future generations, it's not really possible to remove this concept without severely impacting the story. I don't have a good suggestion for this; essentially, the player must accept the idea that they are in this extremely King Sac-centric world in order to buy into the story presented here. Some players won't be able to do this and will be driven away from this story arc as a result.

If you can swallow this idea, though, some of the writing and dialog in this story arc is fairly good, and time travel is used in a pretty reasonable way to move the story forward. I feel that the characterization could be improved, however; ironically, despite being the central figure of this story arc, King Sac is not sufficiently developed as a character, IMHO. You are told King Sac has done many heroic deeds and inspired an entire legion of admirers in the future, but this is never shown in the story arc. I think you need to have the contact frequently quote King Sac's ideals and principles to make key points (demonstrating how much King Sac's philosophy has influenced his thinking) and have some of this idealism show through when you encounter the living versions of King Sac. Maybe there could be clues and/or dialog hinting at great victories King Sac has won ("Thanks for the assist, $name! Those Entropy caught me when I was weakened and off guard, right after I finished defeating the Teal Serpent.") or beliefs that King Sac espouses. You never really get a feel for what sort of person King Sac is, except for the fact that he kept forgetting I had saved him in the immediately previous mission, which didn't really make me feel like he was as inspiring and wonderful as the contact was trying to make him out to be. He could use some dialog or background to help give him more personality.

The character of the antagonist, Ursekrz, has a little bit of development but could use some more. In particular it is bizarre to me that Ursekrz could've attempted to follow King Sac's ideals when he's...well, some kind of alien that probably wouldn't have heard of King Sac until coming to earth. I do like that you did make an attempt to provide some motivation for the main antagonists of the story.

I also think there are some balance issues with the mobs. Specifically, there are too many enemies with buffs and debuffs, which will give them too much synergy against a bigger team, and the fact that you are given an Elite Boss as an ally in a couple of the missions is much too overpowering.

Finally, I do think the last two missions are redundant with each other and could stand to be merged into one bigger mission to serve as your grand finale.

I wanted to give this arc around 3.5 stars and waffled between treating it as a high 3 or a low 4; despite the extreme self-centeredness of the arc, it does have some good stuff in it. However, having to run all over the last mission looking for the third clone, then finding him and discovering he was an EB with a rad support minion, and his background didn't really make sense, pushed me over the edge to rate this 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

------

I owe a review to:

@jjac - A Tangle in Time 2622
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 - The Shiny One Cometh 120626
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887

Shift Awesome! review

Arc description is a little short, but kinda intriguing too; the premise seems to be investigating a spaceship in orbit.

I played a 50 AR/dev blaster for this.

Mission 1
Briefing: "The rest of my team is headed to the moon base to check on some possible Aracnos trouble. On route they have discovered what appears to be an alien ship in orbit."

Since I have no idea who Markus is, I think he should introduce himself and explain what team he's on, to give some context here. Also, "my team is headed" should be "my team was headed", "Aracnos" should be "Arachnos" and "On route" should be "En route".

Second part of briefing: I like that you explain a little about how the player is expected to get to the alien ship (my character does not herself own a spaceship or have the ability to fly into space). But I think "direct transport" maybe should be "direct teleport" or "direct mattermission" or "direct transporter beam" or something like that. Also, "intensions" should be "intentions"; "And they are not responding to any of our communications attempts" should maybe be "The aliens have not responded to any of our attempts to communicate with them so far".

I like the mission title, "Gather as much information about the aliens as possible". Sounds very neat. Very nice popup as I enter the mission, too; I like how it describes the atmosphere and helps set up the scene. I like the map choice also, the dingy science lab looks perfect for an "Alien" style spaceship.

KalKak droid's description: "deffend" should be "defend".

The KalKak dialog is incomprehensible (intentionally, I'm sure), but looks kinda interesting.

The Male KalKak Aliens and Large KalKak Aliens both have mez resistance, which may be very frustrating for controllers or other squishies that rely on mezzes to survive. You might consider cutting back on mez resists.

Clicking on the "Computer Data" glowy, there should probably be a message on the progress bar for clicking it.

The mission ended after I clicked the one glowy; clicking a single glowy doesn't seem to match "Gather as much information as possible" though. I kinda think you may need more to do in this mission; perhaps several different types of glowies, each giving a different clue, which would all contribute to "Gather as much information as possible". For example, in addition to hacking the alien computer, maybe the player could take a sample of the alien atmosphere, take some of the food the aliens eat, and maybe pick up an alien artifact, machine or piece of abstract art.

It would also be nice if the clue said something more than "Bring it back to Markus and maybe we can figure out what is on it"; if you gave it a little more description, maybe it would give the player enough information to make some guesses on her own.

Mission 2
Briefing: Syxxblade is first mentioned in this briefing; he is sorta casually referenced in the debriefing of mission 1 (at least I assume that's what the contact is talking about) but I think you should have the contact explain why Syxxblade is the guy to go to about alien artifacts (and not one of the more standard science contacts like Steven Sheridan or Jonathan St John Smythe).

"Syxxblade has been having a fair amount of trouble with Crey Industries of late. I think he is down town on a stake out. . He's not answering his comm, you better go find him, and get him to figure out what is in this data storage device." is a little oddly phrased, in that it seems to explain Syxxblade is fighting Crey, but then LATER it explains we've lost touch with Syxxblade. I'd suggest that you rewrite it something more like this:

"I think we should consult Syxxblade about these alien artifacts [with some explanation of why he's the alien expert]. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reach him via his comm unit. I know he was staking out a Crey Industries office downtown; he might have gotten in over his head. Can you find him, make sure he's okay, and ask him to look at the alien artifacts?"

You don't have to use these words, of course; but this would first explain why consult Syxxblade, then explain why Syxxblade isn't just a phone call away, and then finally that he might be in trouble and the player should help out.

I also think it's a little weird to jump from investigating an alien spaceship to fighting Crey on the streets. The second mission has a very different feel than the first.

Entering the mission, the popup message needs a period at the end of it. You might also have the popup describe the situation a little more, perhaps mentioning that this neighborhood seems heavily patrolled by Crey.

Found Syxxblade. His info is rather poorly punctuated and spelled; "the Vahzilok" should be "The Vahzilok", "embeded" should be "embedded", "forarms" should be "forearms".

I don't get the dialog of Syxxblade and his guards. His guard says "Computer, analyze the crey defenses" -- but the guard is himself Crey, and planning on fighting Syxxblade, who is labeled as being in "Heroes of Marakest". Then Syxxblade says "Computer what is the potential power output on the Crey Tank?" His bio doesn't say he has a built-in computer or anything, so this just seems odd.

A KalKak alien ambush showed up while I was freeing Syxxblade, I'm not quite sure why. I dunno why they would even show up here; perhaps they are somehow able to track the alien hard drive I stole. Hopefully this will be explained later.

After having rescued Syxxblade, the mission doesn't end; instead, the objective changes to "Better bring this back to Markus" which sounds kind of strange. Maybe this should just be "Lead Syxxblade to the exit".

Also, the mission title is "Contact Syxxblade", which I've now done (since I've rescued him), but the mission is still going. As a result you might want to change the mission title that is accurate throughout the whole mission; maybe "Extract Syxxblade".

Syxxblade spawned as a claws/invuln elite boss for me (on heroic difficulty). This is pretty overpowering compared to the regular mob spawns; I hardly have to fight now, I can just lead Syxxblade into aggro range and he can kill everything without my help.

On finishing this mission I found I had two clues, "Alien translation" and "Syxxblade 's report".... they seem a little redundant, and I assume they were both intended to be the result of what Syxxblade tells us. Maybe merge these two clues. Also delete the extra space in "Syxxblade 's".

Even using both clues combined, the info in them seems very terse considering it is deciphered information from an alien civilization. I'd expect there to be more about alien culture, alien biology and science, and so on. Also if they are kidnapping humans, I would think this evidence maybe would say what the humans are being kidnapped for.

Debriefing: I like that the contact has Syxxblade give us a language translator; presumably we'll understand the aliens after that. A suggestion: maybe add some kind of threatening message from Crey here for spoiling their ambush of Syxxblade. Perhaps Countess Crey threatens a lawsuit or something. It would just be flavor text though, reminding you that Crey holds grudges.

Possible logic problem: If the aliens are abducting humans, why were there no human prisoners on the spaceship we explored in mission 1? Maybe there should be one or two human hostages on the ship (in mission 1) that are optional objectives, that the player might stumble across while looking for clues.

I also think there needs to be some info on why the aliens are abducting humans, and what sorts of experiments are being conducted.

Mission 3
Briefing: "Destoy the ship" should be "Destroy the ship".

"Syxxblades data drive" should be "Syxxblade's data drive".

Steering the alien ship into the sun and killing them all seems pretty hardcore for blue side. Some players might go for this, but a lot of the more "heroic" characters wouldn't kill for any reason. You may want to adjust your plot so that there's still a way forward for heroes who have a code against killing.

Mission title: "navagation" should be "navigation".

Popup as you enter mission: "navagational" should be "navigational".

Mission objectives: "Controler" should be "Controller".

Shouldn't there also be some mission objectives for rescuing captive humans?

I found the navigation console quite close to the mission entrance (not sure if this was intentional or accidental) and clicked it, but nothing seemed to really happen except that it was removed from my mission objectives. I think you might want to link a clue to the console saying that you've reprogrammed the ship to go off course. Maybe would be worth having an alien ambush attack the player here too, yelling something about intruders or the ship going off course. I just feel like something more dramatic should happen here, since you've just reprogrammed their computer to fly into the sun. Best of all would be for the "ship" to start shaking and aliens to start screaming "we're all gonna die!" but of course you can't do that, so you may need to get this idea across via clues and NPC dialog.

I've now successfully reprogrammed the navigation computer (I think?), so it feels like I've achieved the title of the mission ("Re-program the navagation computer") but the mission is still going because I still need to defeat the KalKak Controler (sic). I think you need to make it clearer why the player needs to defeat the controller. Maybe this is the alien computer tech or navigator who would fix the navigation computer if you don't get him?

I have yet to see a female Kalkak Alien, so I am not sure it helps to have some of your guys named "Male KalKak Alien" Even if you did have Female KalKak Aliens, I dunno if the player would really care about their gender. I suggest you rename them to just be "KalKak Alien" or "KalKak Drone" or something similar.

This map is quite huge for the 2 objectives you have; you might want to either use a smaller map or put more stuff in it. One idea I'd like to suggest: maybe put a handful of false glowies (not TOO many, just a few) represented by weird looking gadgetry. Have only one of them be the navigational computer, but since the player maybe doesn't know what the alien computer is supposed to look like, you could give the false glowies clues like "On closer inspection, this isn't the navigation computer; it's actually an alien food processor" or "alien table saw" or whatever.

I found the KalKak Controler, and he too should be spelled "Controller". Though Controller is the name of a CoH AT and consequently maybe isn't a word you want to use. I think it's very interesting that his inactive dialog expresses that he's mad at the Rikti for some reason.

Killing the KalKak Controler generated mad ambushes; I think it maybe spawned an "Unknown" hostage near me, too, that was represented by a Banished Pantheon zombie, and I suspect its guards aggroed on me at the same time. This was kinda cool and made me stay to fight the ambushes long enough to get killed; unfortunately I wasn't able to rescue the zombie as the mission completed after I killed the Controler, so hospitaling would end the mission and I couldn't awaken because the ambush was parked over me.

"Unknown" is not a very good name for a mob, maybe it should be an "Unknown Humanoid" at least. Also in Unknown's description, "These poor soles are barely alive" should be "These poor souls are barely alive".

As I exit the mission, the popup tells me that the ship has been incinerated by the sun. This might cause morality problems for some heroes, because all the aliens and probably some hostages are presumably killed by this.

In the mission debriefing, again "Destoy" should be "Destroy". The contact reveals that the KalKaks were planning on attacking the Rikti; I kind of think you should move this to a clue that you discover after killing the KalKak Controler. Also, this subplot is not developed enough; the player never finds out why the KalKak hate the Rikti. Maybe there should be some clues somewhere for that.

The contact also says "we got everyone out of the ship" but this is never shown during the mission; there was a zombie looking hostage, but I never was able to rescue him. I think you maybe should have some hostages that you rescue and lead out as a required objective.


Overall
I liked the KalKak aliens and the feeling of exploring their alien ship; the map choices for the alien ship were very good. I think the ship itself maybe needed to be more developed; learning all about the aliens by clicking one glowy wasn't real believable to me. Likewise being able to steer the ship into the sun by clicking one more glowy didn't seem dramatic enough.

I felt that saving Syxxblade from the Crey had a jarringly different tone than the other missions, which all involve interacting with aliens on the ship. I think going out and doing street fighting breaks the sense of immersion built up by the earlier mission; I'd suggest you keep your arc focused on the main theme of the alien ship. Perhaps having the middle mission be on a small tech map rather than a big outdoor map would help.

Dropping their ship into the sun sounds like a good climactic moment for the finale, but it suffered from three problems (IMHO): first, some players might not feel right about killing everyone on the ship. Second, the act of actually doing it didn't seem dramatic enough; things should be going crazy inside the alien ship once the aliens realize they're all about to plunge into the sun. And third, what's the stop the aliens from just plain fixing the navigational coordinates after you leave? Surely they will notice that they're about to fall into the sun, before they actually do.

And finally, while the motivation of the KalKak aliens was hinted at (ie they want to use human slaves to fight Rikti), I thought this wasn't explained well enough. Some more development to make sure the player understands why the KalKak hate the Rikti, and so the player can save some of the humans captured by the KalKak, would be an immense help.

Anyway, I thought there were some neat ideas here but also some problems that are holding it back a bit. I gave the story arc 3 stars, I hope you think that is fair!


------

I owe a review to:

@KingSac - The Once and Future King Sac 99394
@jjac - A Tangle in Time 2622
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
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 - The Shiny One Cometh 120626
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015

in queue:

WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887

I'm massively guilty of author insertion into my story arcs, but I don't feel that inserting your character into your story automatically makes her a "Mary Sue".

I try to follow these rules when inserting one of my characters:

* It has to make sense in terms of the story for the character to appear.

* Any character I insert is an NPC, and the NPC should not outshine the player, who is, after all, the protagonist of the story.

I feel that if you follow these rules, or something similar, you can keep your character from being too "Mary Sue".

5/4/2009

Started Friday night playing Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender), joining a 5 player LEGION SG team running the H G H arc, which was basically farming a big map full of custom mobs. I'm kind of uneasy at the farming/PLing that is going around in Mission Architect, and apparently it shows; I'm worried that my attitude towards this may be offending some of my friends, who don't feel the same way. I ended up joining this team because a friend basically said "You wouldn't like this" and I said "I can handle it for awhile" and I spent some time SBing and Fulcrum Shifting to help out. It was some decent tickets, and I had Linda's combat exp turned off (since I want to stay level 33 for recipe rolls), which helped relieve me of any guilt about getting PLed.

I took a break for a bit after that, then later that night I played Tehuantl (18 widow) on a 6 player all-VEAT team doing story arcs. We first did Vanguard Performance Appraisal and Development Plan Review, which was about a live fire test of some security robots that some subcontractor was trying to provide to the Vanguard organization. Naturally, the robots went rogue and tried to kill us, a lot. I found the corporate speak and software development jargon especially funny, mostly because the story arc was using language exactly like the way people at my work talk. I found myself saying, "The robots work as designed! It's the requirements that were bad!" which made the mission author laugh and say "That's just what a developer would say." I ended up giving this arc 4 stars.

From there we went into my Celebrity Kidnapping arc, which I really enjoyed as a 6 player team is the biggest I've taken into that arc. As a result, the ambushes were fairly big, and I gleefully waded through a horde of Paparazzi enemies. I was a little shocked at how well my Police Woman avatar did; she's just an AR/dev boss (not even an EB), but somehow managed to kill 4 of my teammates. I think Smoke Grenade was involved, and despite all 6 of us having the chance, none of us had taken the tactical training that gives the team +acc and +perception. I wasn't sure whether to be happy PW was doing so well or embarrassed that my mission was beating up my team! We managed to battle-awaken everyone, outfight the police and get Paris out safely though.

After that team broke up I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a quick Sharkhead SF organized on Villains of Liberty, with a team mix of:

3 stalkers
2 rad corruptors
1 brute
1 night widow

We blitzed through this in 45mins 33sec for 22 merits (28.98 MPH) and I cashed in 20 merits to get a Stupefy: Chance for Knockback, which wasn't all that exciting.

I did pick up enough salvage to craft a Touch of Death: Chance for Negative Damage recipe, completing a set of 6 for Spy Girl which gave her an extra +3.75% melee DEF, which was kinda nice.

Finished the night playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Prices on common salvage seemed to be going through the roof, so I experimentally tried cashing in some tickets for common salvage and selling them at Wentworth's to see what would happen. I bought 49 common arcane salvage rolls at 8 tickets each, getting:

9 Alchemical Silver (~80K each)
10 Ancient Bone (~20K each)
6 Demonic Blood Sample (~6K each)
7 Masterwork Weapon (~10K each)
9 Rune (~1K each)
8 Spell Ink (~10K each)

Note: these prices were just the last sale price at the time I checked; they were flying up and down non-stop though, so take them with a grain of salt. (I ended up holding the 1K Runes until a later session where I sold them for 20K each.) Nevertheless, this was a total value of 1.115M influence for 392 tickets, or about 2.84K infl per ticket.

Is that good? I'm not really sure. Using these numbers, a 70 ticket Bronze roll needs to yield 200K, a 525 ticket Silver roll needs to yield 1.5M, and a 3500 ticket Gold roll needs to yield 10M influence, in order to equal or exceed cashing tickets for salvage. This makes using tickets for salvage sound very appealing, from a financial perspective, anyway. Two problems with this approach though: first, one trial of 49 salvage might not be a big enough sample size to know anything for sure. Second, getting salvage is a lot more boring than getting recipes.

I then solo'd my way through The Ideality, Part 1 and The Ideality, Part 2. These were two linked story arcs that introduce a new villain group that wants to convert all humans into cyborgs. The writing style was decent, but I felt there were some plot problems that made it difficult for the story to really make sense, so I ended up giving both these arcs 3 stars.

I did get the Marauder (25 objects destroyed) and Businesswoman (4000 items sold) badges along the way, though.

On Saturday, I spent some time editing Celebrity Kidnapping after receiving an extremely detailed review from another player, which I found very helpful. Most of it was fine tuning of words and phrases, but one significant gameplay change I made was to reduce the impact of the Paparazzi ambushes in the final mission, by splitting them up a bit. Not only this reviewer, but a couple other players had mentioned that they had gotten overwhelmed by Paparazzi in the last mission (due to stacking holds and no break frees, I imagine), so it seemed to make sense to change it up a little.

Originally, fighting the Family boss would cause two "easy" Paparazzi ambushes to spawn; I changed it so only one ambush spawns, replacing the other ambush with a second triggered "named reporter" group that is a static spawn near the front of the map. I decided this other named reporter would be "Lois Watson" (one of the hostages you save in heroic radio missions), and gave her dialog really playing up her schtick of being Unbelievable Man's girlfriend. "Freeing" Lois (by beating up her camera crew) then triggers the second Paparazzi ambush. I was hoping that making these changes would let you still fight a lot of Paparazzi (which most people seem to enjoy) while spacing the ambushes far enough apart that they're somewhat manageable.

I did a quick test run-through of Celebrity Kidnapping on Millie Volt (28 elec/inv brute) just to make sure I didn't break anything. Seemed to be okay. We'll see what people say though.

After that I joined friend who was forming a Positron TF. I played Strong Woman (11 inv/SS tanker) and our team was:

2 tankers (including me)
1 emp controller
1 blaster
1 scrapper

The other tanker was in her 20s, exemped down to 15 by the TF and sidekicking me, so I mostly followed her lead, except when she was AFK or scrapperlock took hold of me. We had one wipeout against CoT in the Rollister mission, but dusted ourselves off and kept on going. At one point, the controller had to log for a few missions to get her husband dinner, and a little later the other tanker had to AFK a couple missions to deal with the stray dog her husband had adopted while she was distracted. This slowed us down a little but we were able to keep making progress even so, and we finished the TF in 4hrs 24mins, gaining 64 merits (14.55 MPH). This got Strong Woman to 16, and I took Resist Energies, Fly and Swift, in that order. Taking Resist Energies at level 12 is kind of nonstandard (most tanker builds seem to advocate taking it MUCH later), but I felt like it would be helpful for me versus the Clockworks' energy damage and END drain, and the COT's negative damage.

Late on Saturday night I was fiddling with Mission Architect on Police Woman, working on making a sort of samurai epic story arc, when I accepted a pickup team invite from a stranger. I ended up duoing a level 52 Malta mission with a storm defender; we had one wipeout against a nasty group that included a gunslinger, a sapper and some robots, but managed to get through the mission. The stormy seemed pretty happy with this, having apparently died several times trying to solo this mission.

I was only briefly online Sunday night, but I played Adventuress (5 MA/regen scrapper) for a few missions, soloing my way through Officer Wincott vs the Trolls for 2 reward merits. This got Adventuress to level 7, and I took Quick Recovery as a new power. I also wrote up an origin story for Adventuress, making her an army brat looking for her father, a soldier who served under Colonel Duray, and went missing once the Sky Raiders split off from the legitimate US Army.

I started on the Shift Awesome! story arc with Police Woman, which seems to be a story about a mysterious alien ship that appears in orbit over Earth, and you have to figure out what is going on. I only got partway through the arc before I had to call it a night.