Talen Lee

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Here's one for you to chew on:

36861
Heroes No More?
Level range: 1*-50 (*:later missions cap at 45-50, but mweh)


Thing is, it has everything you despise (Hero-lopsided, Arachnos, Ritki, Mary-sues, and a defeat-all final mission), but I'm hoping the story will be decent enough to warrant a balanced review.

or not, *shrug*

[/ QUOTE ]Hey, being fair, if I say I didn't like it and it sucks, that doesn't mean my review was unbalanced.

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So I'm going to rework Mission 1 and take that guy out. It was really just a complete mess up including him in the first place. I'll find a way to still cap it properly but without resorting to such ham-handed measures.

[/ QUOTE ]I have only done a little bit of gating work myself - Hopeless features an NPC who's only in his mission for that reason - but might I suggest that you have the Council analysing a Devouring Earth of the appropriate level range? That ties it to the rest of the arc better, too.

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Arc 1472 - Hearts on Fire
Rating: *****

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I'm about halfway through this arc right now, and was taking it pretty seriously. Until the point at which I realized it was in fact about LESBIAN HELLIONS. Hopefully it can take this tired meme and give it some impact.

[/ QUOTE ]You know, I've known the character Salamander for about... what, three years and I only just got that joke. In my defence though I didn't find Salamander's sexuality particularly noteworthy, and more served as a solid indicator of the futility of Epitaph's aims... and he's the idiot, not you.

Arc 5073 - The Bravuran Jobs
Rating: ****

Before I started this arc my first check was to see the level ranges it went over. And trust me, this arc goes all over the bloody place. Doing it with Operative Gallows means that I'm going to be getting XP for the whole thing, and at no point am I likely to be jerked resoundingly from one level bracket up too far into another one. This does however, already put me on the back foot - I like the idea of level ranges as representatives of what characters do and are capable of doing, and while some arcs - like the Descender - can play with that concept reasonably well, I find that more mundane arcs (which I do honestly prefer) are going to have to do something to explain my character's capabilities jumping around.

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An Aside: The nature of a level range is that it says something about the character. It makes a difference whether it's a problem for a 1-10 character or a 40-50 one. 40-50s should be taking on demideities, punching the face of god, breaking the unbreakable and effing the ineffable. 1-10s should be nipping minor problems in the bud, picking up books of power from people too stupid to properly hide them, pushing back gang activity, being menaced by big gatherings of methane-cookers with guns. Now, this delineation is entirely flavour-based... but for that reason I would very much prefer if the arc respect that, since arcs themselves are all about sampling flavour. Hopefully it'll go better than I'm thinking right now.

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Oddly, the first mission immediately strikes a chord with me by both including a Contessa, and by implying that my character is something worth noticing. Oh, sure, it's a typical escort mission, but the tone and manner paint my character as someone legitimately interesting to a tin-pot dictator and their family, and gives me a reason to want to do well. The arc also takes the interesting step of explicitly telling you to look for things in the arc and making it clear how they connect to one another. I'm not sure how keen I am on that - I think a well-written arc could smoothly eschew such things and lean on the flow of the story to connect points. On the other hand, the information was presented up front - so it's not like it breaks flow, since I haven't done anything yet.

I find myself further enchanted by the map usage. I might be easily entertained, but the wealth of maps available in this game has been something I've missed in the years of running paper missions and repeating the same plot arcs. It also uses an enemy group I like - Wyvern are one of my favourite groups for mid-level villainous fun because they're scummy good guys with an overinflated sense of the longbowish 'might makes right' attitude. Plus, I don't like Manticore. It's complicated. The thing is, I finished the first mission and found myself with only one clue... figuring the other mentioned clues would show up in the other missions, I moved on. Hope that's not a mistake.

The whole arc is done in a much more sedate, personalised pace than most. There's not a sense of urgency about it, which in retrospect is at odds with the way your character heads out of at least one briefing ahead of time. All of it works fine enough for most folk, and if not for Gallows' unfortunate tie to Arachnos it'd have worked really well. Plus, there's good use of colour in the briefing text, and a good, conversational tone. So far, my fears about the level range jumping has become a minor worry in the back of my mind.

As far as map choices go, a good map will ideally be something that serves the tone of the story, be fun to play on, and resembles the place it's supposed to be. A case in point would be the rave map, which was used in Burning Hearts to represent, quite well, a rave. In this case, the second mission hits the first two notes well, but unfortunately, it's a map I'm well acquainted with and finding it has seven objectives and change on it just makes me sigh. I don't expect it'll take too long, but it's still a certain hopeless feeling. Character info was handled well, enemy groups were depicted well - I especially liked the way the Legacy Chain were willing to endure a little suffering for a better tomorrow - and I actually found most of the NPCs selfish and mercantile while still being quite enjoyable. Of special note is the combat pet in the second arc, who I ditched because he interfered with my stealth, but his comment actually made me feel bad about it.

The tone and voice of the mission is also quite distinct, and doesn't make me think I'm dealing with some mustache-twiddling Strangly Villainside sort. Honestly, listening to him I wouldn't be surprised to see the Comedian from the Watchman doing this plot arc. Though even the Comedian was at least patriotic. Anyway.

Now we hit mish 3, and I'm getting thrown astride the 2-level bump. I'm trying to work out why, if there's a custom enemy group that the level range goes so oddly in this arc - 20-30, 20-30, 30-54? But we'll see. There are ways to limit a level range (like hiding a single Legacy Chain Kaolin, for example, somewhere on the map). The enemy group introduced looks pretty neat, has a distinct theme in names and powers, and overall, remind me a lot of Crey. It serves you well to know who does what, but at the same time, you don't get the feeling they're all handcrafted snowflakes designed to look unique. In fact, the designer has hidden their faces in many cases, which reduces the jarring effect of an army of identical twins. While I was warned about such things going in, I actually found one of the mobs a bit too rough, and saw the tell-tale sign that it'd be even rougher for a dom or controller - he was toting a damn shield. Being a dirty [censored], I came back and mugged him with inspirations running. This just served to play into the theme further. But then, I died again at the next time one turned up. Then again. Then again.

Now, I'm up late right now and I feel like hell warmed over, but come on. Gallows is a Bane Spider, so he's no scrapper or tanker, he has only common IOs (and a lone KB Protection IO) - he is in essence, very close to the baseline performance, and he's getting two-shotted by a lieutenant type. What can you do? Buy inspirations and come back. Testament to the arc, really - I'm three missions in, I encounter a roadblock like this, and my native response is not to just say 'Stuff it,' and move on. One more and I think I will, though, which would be a damn shame. It's not even a type of guy you can avoid, an optional badass. You need to off some of them for a mission goal. Eventually, huffing enough inspirations carried the day, though it really did feel embarassing to need to for a +1 lieutenant... multiple times. The third mish has one thing I've become fond of - an enemy spawning based on something else happening. The problem is, the hint for where to find the newly-spawned badguy is totally unhelpful because it seems to be wrong.

In the end, what did I think? Well, great dialogue, and a story that covers a range of interesting enemy groups and only really gets weird when you have to deal with the level range issue. Surely there's some way to redeem that, but in my sleepless state right now, I don't know it. No, instead, I've just got a fun little arc that happens to get a bit weird when you look at it too hard. The crazy little tin-pot nation of Foreignania is a long-standing trope of comic fiction. To avoid seeming politically incorrect, comic authors would often create a functional copy of a real place, then proceed to fill that fictional country with every last politically incorrect stereotype they could. This means that some places, like Latveria and whatever tiny country Storm's husband supposedly ruled, tend to be thin parodies that nonetheless are full of jet-setting bond-esque intrigue and fun. This arc really did make me feel like a Bond villain exploiting another bond villain's misfortune - and okay, a few people got greased in the wheels along the way, but who cares, right? The priority is me.

A very strong four. Recommended to anyone in the level range - whatever that is.

Curiously, I'd already formatted those ones up - and ta for doing so - and am running the Bravuran jobs on Gallows.

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Yes, I addressed that.

[/ QUOTE ]So the arc's just bad?

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1992: A Hero's Halo - 3 missions, story driven, light comedy

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How to stay at 4.5 stars...

[/ QUOTE ]Write an arc that isn't [censored]?

Alright, so as to provide detail as to what's going on? First, I'm going to go to bed. If you really need me-related entertainment until I wake up, you can give arc 29262 a shot and tell me what a horrible person I am and how paraphernalia has only got three a's. Then I'm going to look at this list of arcs and see what I find interesting.

Here, incidentally, is how I'm formatting arcs in the text file I use to write the reviews:<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Author:
Level Range:
Subject:
Arc # - Name
Rating:

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</pre><hr />If you punch the thing in that, it'll be easier for me to add to the queue. Also, I'm prioritising people who have a clear story direction, who avoid too-common enemy groups and, this being the big one, people who have very few reviews so far. Part of this is because I like feeling like a giant jerk when I give someone one star and see their 5 drop down to a 3 on average, but mostly it's because the kind of people who push for lots and lots of feedback are going to get it anyway, by dint of their constantly pushing for it. I might as well be more discerning.

Also, if anyone thinks that my review of Hero's Halo was a bit off, bear in mind that's pretty much how I expect a lot of reviews to go. I deliberately started this thread once I had some really good, positive stuff to hold out as examples, and I will continue to search for that stuff and try to bring it to light, because I feel the actual ranking system that exists is absolutely [censored], puttin the power of judging art in purely democratic hands, then giving that democracy the incentive to lie. Without that system that strips away 'good' and 'bad' in the face of 'popular,' I would have more faith in the ability of people to find good arcs.

So keep suggesting your arcs to me. I'm really happy to offer advice and I send a PM to every person whose arc I review to draw their attention to the thread, often with more advice and direction for things to do. Feel free to ask and see if I've done such a thing. But if you just want another set of opinions alongside your consistantly 5-starred-by-all-your-friends arc... wellllll... don't expect me to bother too much. For now, this thread is my buffet cart and I intend to use it to sample what I do and don't like.

The problem is, I do (though primarily due to 'The cat's in the bag, and the bag's in the river.')

And I know who Benjamin Disraeli is.

I fear that by being an Australian-born male in his mid 20s with his birthday in the latter part of April who is loud, talks fast and is opinionated while wearing glasses and toting an accent that makes me seem British, people might think I'm the other half of Yahtzee that's wandered off.

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There is (Almost) Never a good reason for a defeat all. - On this I agree On test I ran into one arc after another on huge outdoor instance maps where some writer obviously thought he was doing us all a favor by let us roam for an hour searching for mobs so we could finally finish up. On a short map with a short arc (1 or 2 stories) I suppose it not unreasonable but I definately agree that on huge maps and long arcs defeat all will see me DEFEAT ARC and quit before I am done.

[/ QUOTE ]The thing is, 'defeat all' is a very clear and obvious time sink that begs askance of how well-resourced you are as a character. For villains it's especially weird - why not just drop nerve gas on the place? Why not just firebomb it?

It's a game mechanic concern that makes defeat alls happen. If players want to run around killing huge gangs of guys, okay, let them and I'm fine with that, but forcing them to do so isn't cool. At best, players will be ambivalent because you're encouraging them to do something they would have done otherwise. Cleaning up individual mobs is the kind of thing I expect of the PPD or Longbow troops - not of me as an individual.

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There is no excuse for not using a spell-checker. I am a typo queen but agonize over any mission I publish checking and rechecking for errors. Agreed.. Oh occasionally 1 or 2 may escape me but that's what FEEDBACK is for and I have been very lucky and gotten good feedback from people that have played mine and gone in and editted and republished after making things right.

[/ QUOTE ]I heartily recommend OpenOffice as a way to spellcheck text before you paste it in.

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I don't care about your character. Or your friends. Or your friends' friends. - Define MY character for me please.

[/ QUOTE ]If you don't have a character you think of as 'your character,' this advice is totally unnecessary. If you've already got that disconnect between your character as an avatar of yourself and your character as a character to use in a story, you're already ahead of this step. Hanging around as I do on Virtue... this is not what I deal with regularly. I instead deal with people who think of their character as an extension of themselves, and who genuinely feel slighted when they're not the center of attention. You can tell these characters on sight, mostly - they tend to be the angel vampire haitian nazi freedom fighting Jew demons and they tend to have all the depth of a wet pavement. If your story is about how awesome your guy is... I don't care.

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There are other archetypes than scrappers. - Oh LORD signed. Every other arc I have played seems to be written by a fencing instructor. Granted Scrappers and Tankers hold up a bit longer in combat than a Blaster but come ON people you can pick and chose powesets here. So what's wrong with an Archery Blaster than has Willpower as a secondary? Won't do as much damage but has better defense.

[/ QUOTE ]The other side of the coin; just because you can solo your arc on a scrapper doesn't mean it's fair for tankers, or blasters, or brutes, or dominators. Some bad guys are positively brutal against dominators, for example - and I use them because I know them best. Dark Armour stalkers come up out of hide with a stun aura on. What the hell do you do about that? If you're a scrapper, you kick 'em in the junk. Dominator? Die.

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There are enough arcs where the player is an idiot. - I am not sure what you mean by this. In several of my arcs the Villains insult and belittle the hero upon seeing him/her. Seems natural they are enemies so when 1 hero shows up to battle a warehouse filled with villains why wouldn't they be overconfident and taunt the hero assuming they are about to kick butt.

[/ QUOTE ]"Ah, $NAME. It's good to see you. Seems that a Mr Drol Sisemen has sent you an anonymous tip suggesting that if you murder all your best friends, you'll stop all crime in the universe everywhere for good." - it's not just a bad twisting of Brothers Karamazov, it's also really annoying. It's most evident with Nemesis, but there are some really obvious times when the arc presumes the character doing the arc is unable to put two and two together - either by over-explaining everything to them once or twice, or, more annoyingly, having the character go a long circuitous route to a conclusion that the player could have circumvented by just going 'He's talking about his sled, duh.'

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Can I add a few to your list?

[/ QUOTE ]I suppose? I mean, I'm always going to judge based on my list, but if you want to add general good-advice for arc-builders, go ahead. Hopefully, they're the kind of people reading this thread as well.

Just a warning, as I add you to the list, I don't know if there's much advice I can offer on a technical level. I'm much more about story and character.

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So if you had trouble finding it, it may be because it wasn't Live until 12-13 hours ago.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, well, that explains the hell out of THAT!

I feel suspiciously like I'm standing at the front of a classroom. You don't need to be afraid of custom enemies and defeat alls inherently, you just need to give me a good reason for either of them. And neither of them should serve as a purpose unto themselves - a defeat all is not justified just by being a defeat all, you need to give me a reason I'm rooting out everyone. And a custom enemy group is fine as long as it has a purpose that is not simply 'look cool and be hard to kill.'

Plus, as needs to be borne in mind, this is just my opinion. I can justify it and I can explain it, but nobody has to take it as fact. No matter how dogmatically I state that someone's arc is a turd sandwich in a soggy paper bag, they don't have to agree with me, and as long as they're having fun, good for them.

Funnily enough, Toypocalypse was on my list, but I think I was spelling it wrong. Thankfully, a ref number helps a lot.

Also, I've been running hero and villain arcs on my villain characters and trying to disinvolve the character of my character from the arc itself. Gallows is worth noting because he uses common IOs, swivel will be using SOs (unless I get bored), and D-38 is using a heavily IO'd build with multiple sets. If something is too hard for Gallows (and curiously, nothing has been so far), I break out D-38. If something's too hard for D-38 I toss it in the scrapper, because I'm not looking for The Next Scrapper Challenge, as 'twere.

Arc 1992 - A Hero's Halo
Rating: *

Alright, comedy is not usually something that lands with me. It might be because I'm a bitter, humourless shell of a man, it may be that I grew up in a religious environment that means only the most absurd or ironic humour is going to hit the crux that earns my normally mirthless smile. I've found a certain transatlantacism, where I merit wordplay and cunning linguistic over shall we say, slapstick, or scatology. So it was with no small amount of trepidation I booted this arc up because it says right on the tin, 'comedy arc.' What that typically means is 'sucks, but we'll call it humour, so people can't complain.' You know what they call unfunny comedy? Crap.

So! My immediate concerns arise when the contact looks suspiciously like the author's forum avatar. What, I wonder, might the purpose of this be? Am I going to be called upon to save the hero's custard pudding from his evil nemesis, the spoonman? What's going to happen? Reading the synopsis bothers me, too - someone trying to explain or justify something that everyone else in the game has every day. I really do despise when people try to tie cosmetic or unmechanical elements of the game to some in-universe story, which is why powerset proliferation made me want to hit Doc Brainstorm's supposed-writer with a hammer, compounded when I got to the end of the VEAT arcs and got to watch Statesman make the same idiotic statements in universe. So because I bought a halo last year at winter - which, funnily enough, I didn't! - there's some conspiracy plot towards the Shadow Shard? Well, that sounds ... pretty much nothing like the Shadow Shard I've dealt with, but what the hell, it's comedy right?

I must say, I didn't find the first NPC's outfit all that special, though also seeing that she was lieutenant put her somewhere in the realm of 'combat pet' to me. She's not here to upstage me while pretending to be here to advance the story. One mission down, though, and I'm looking for this mentioned comedy. As it is, so far, it seems a hero has entrusted me to investigate a piece of forehead oriented bling that doesn't seem to actually mean or do anything... and I've not heard anything that I can identify as a joke. Is this like a shaggy dog story? Gunna unveil at the end a two-line joke and leave me going: Oh god?

Okay! So I'm looking to help solve a hero I've never met before's fashion concerns and he wants my help for... some reason or other, okay, whatever, I can grab my gourd and hold my breath until this pays off... You know, the more I get into this arc, the more I think that it really doesn't merit the comedy tag? It's not funny, it doesn't appear to be dealing with a particularly comical idea... it's just, you know, an arc? It would seem like, well, a pretty standard arc if not for the fact that the last mission is an obligatory 'Team Up With Me.' Without the mission loaded up, I'm expecting to see a super-strength/invulnerability super-tanker boss character who's going to tag along behind me and annoy me by hoovering up the tickets...

... and I am pleasantly surprised. Restraint! Restraint! My god, what a strange beast it is to see it, but the author has managed to keep himself from Mary-Sueing it up with his character chasing me around one-shotting things; instead I have a handy lieutenant target. I mean assistant. Nonetheless, I quickly ditched him to go on and do the whole 'kill lots of stuff and see characters I wouldn't know from a milk carton' thing. Striking out in pursuit of a punchline, I chased around and found... well, nothing. Just the rest of the mission. Oh, and remember that restraint I thought I found? Turned out it wasn't. No, at the end, you have to face down a boss-class enemy who pasted me twice through demonic, has an armour set so he's basically uncontrollable, and wore the face of the contact. Gee bloody whiz wow. What a shock and surprise. And you know what? He was a super-strength/invulnerability super-tanker boss character who decided to tag my chin. What a merry coincidence that the character offering the arc, and the creator of the arc, happens to be the most powerful of all the bad guys. Wow. I did not see that one coming.

I quit the arc at that point. Hell with bashing my face against a brick wall. Death through capped s/l resists seems a perfectly good reason to stop wasting my time. I'm here for story and I sure didn't find any of that. If the last story dialogue made it all make sense or delivered the joke or somehow made the whole situation feel less like self-glorfying [censored] then I'm afraid I missed it. Terribly sorry.

Surveying from the end, the arc left me with the impression I'd walked into a party where I not only didn't know anyone, I hadn't been invited. The comedy-drive fell flat because I had no idea what, exactly, was supposed to be funny, the motivation was thinner than tissue paper rolled out under a hammer press, and the whole arc's underpinning plot seemed to not even be noticed by its author - that is, an alien invasion of soul-sucking monstrosities has a fantastic chance of achieving what it's after if it just preys on the ignorance and vanity of our supposed defenders, which is then emphasised on a meta level when the most powerful and most obnoxious foe in the whole arc happens to be a torqued-up version of the author's avatar. Is that the joke? Is that, the uh, the funny? What, I have to ask, am I missing? Because it doesn't sound like comedy to me. It sounds like, well... unfunny comedy.

Arc 1579 - Council's Long Con
Rating: ****

We bust out Operative Gallows again. Again; a stealth-enabled Bane Spider, he's got nothing but common IOs and a single Knockback Protection IO, is level 28, and is a sour little [censored] of a man. The tone of the contact - an original character, obviously - is quite appropriate and befitting a Council organiser. I'll admit, and this is going to sound perhaps creepy, but I was kinda hoping that the contact would be one of your sexy spy double-agent super-soldier womenfolk, something that, for some reason, I long for in the Council. I feel the whole organisation under-represents women.

The arc starts out solidly, with a stealthable mission with a clear purpose, a sensible ideal behind it. It's well-handled so far, and while there's an element of 'flunky,' the arc writing then projects the specifics of the plan onto you. You then go on to do something that is - quelle surprise - smart. You know, the kind of thing you'd expect of someone who's accomplished an existence in the Rogue Isles, someone who's hovering around their mid to late level 20s.

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An Aside: Now, something that's a pleasant little side-effect of the Mission Architect system is that the first missions in the arc are the ones you want to hurry through, because the later missions are those that reward the better merit awards. If you're building and you need a time-sink mission in the arc somewhere, I advocate putting it towards the end - and don't be too petty about letting people stealth the early missions.

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Onward through the arc, I found the next mission to be quite dense on its priorities... and yet, it eschews the 'defeat all' angle. Thank god. If you're looking for tickets, this is a good avenue - the density of the mission means that you'll have lots of stuff to do, and while some if might feel repetitive, you can still scream past it - destroying objects, and a handful of bosses (yes, I know). It's not just good for tickets - it's handy for badges, too. This might be a mercantile reason to enjoy the arc, but if I'm being sent to do something, it's nice to know the gaming aspect isn't suffering. Also? There's lots of dialogue from the various enemy groups around, and I found it... well, remarkably charming. It wasn't the edgy, gritty comic book seriousness I've been hankering for - it makes them come across as kinda personable and makes you feel a bit mean to beat them up (though, you know, we're talking about a villain arc here). So overall, a net plus.

So with all this, I feel hard-pressed to complain about a smidgen of the dialogue. I've PM'd the author about it, but unfortunately, as it is, your contact says something that is, well, blitheringly stupid. And the funny thing is, that one line really broke the flow of the whole arc for me, because I was up to that point quite enjoying the sense of escalation wedded to the tone of the event. The protaganist in this arc isn't a mustache-twiddling, gleefully barmy jackass, he's doing a job to get paid by someone with a lot of money to spare. With that reptilian behaviour in place, hearing an odd line that seeks to sweep a problem under the rug stood out like a rusty nail in a chuck-e-cheese ballpit. Then? A suitable follow-up, and a conclusion that feels, honestly a bit weak.

The very end of the arc is the weakest point. It's a mission type that's annoying to do, and due to the semi-random way the mission type executes, it can be quite short. After facing down a big bad boss (who I solo'd very quickly through the use of inspirations), it felt a bit of an anticlimax to get the fourth mission I did.

I'd recommend this arc to a character of a scientific or technological bent.

It's handy as a way to keep things straight, to be honest. And if you're an arrogant blowhard like me it lets you pass your opinion and people will come to you to ask you to tell them what you think.

Arc 3291 - Romio and J'Let
Rating: ***

I'd like to hold up a tiny little flag of semiprofessionalism that I did try to go through things methodically and not let people jump the 'queue' of sorts I had. But unlike Venture, I'm doing this to earn XP, to accrue stuff on my alts. So I let the character I want to earn XP on factor things - and tonight, I was hoping to get some XP on D-38, who's a level 46 SS/Fire Brute. What that means is that YanYan, who had the first visible arc in the right level range, gets to jump the queue. Oh well. It's not like people need to hear me complaining about their arc.

So! Romio and J'Let. I haven't even pressed the 'Play' button here, but I'm going to assume, based on the name, that I have an idea of what's going to go on in this arc. The story presents itself as a fairly fanciful bit of probably-not-actually-happening. There's a really pleasant storybook angle to it. Not too amazing, but at the same time, not bad at all.

The arc does feature an escort, but it does, mercifully, refrain from putting him back in the [censored]-end of the mission, or make you rescue the whole scooby squad. The establishment is a bit bland, the development uninspiring, the resolution simple. All told, not an arc I found myself particularly excited to experience.

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An Aside: I was actually under the impression that the nemesis soldiers, the tiralleuers and all, were clockwork and autamatons. Is this not the case?

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In the end, while I thought the arc concept is cute, it doesn't really do anything I wouldn't expect, given that I've finished high school. I didn't notice any truly brilliant writing, and there are some minor spelling errors. A cute little outing, the arc is a fun diversion if you're not already fed up to the back teeth with Rikti and Nemesis and don't mind seeing a remarkable classic story redone in dialogue options slightly less primitive than lolcats pictures. A thin tribute, a thinner parody, it fails to be funny or poignant to me. I wasn't a fan, but I did like the framing mechanism of the book. A weak three, it maintains its three status by not being actively bad. Just boring.

I've got nine outlined. The trick is: Which do I publish?!

Way back in the wee years of Usenet, some interfaces couldn't actually handle deleting things. Attempting to use the backspace key to delete things would input the key ^H (which is 'control-H', typically). Some parsers got clever and would show the person in question the ^Hs as deletions - ie, you would see [ QUOTE ]
You Suck

[/ QUOTE ]and you wouldn't see [ QUOTE ]
Your Mom^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hYou Suck

[/ QUOTE ]So now you know.

You crazy people with three arcs already.

I think it's funny when people ask for hot feet, like they've never tried to melee with it on. It's about as counterproductive as Gale to typical scrapper play. I keep thinking it comes from fire/kin envy. I've got it on my fire/fire blaster, and lemme tell you, if he didn't put things down faster than all but the most ridiculous scrappers, he'd be really, really annoying people. Maybe it's just damage aura envy. People who play Shields and Invincibility wanting a damage aura, perhaps?

And Weatherby, don't you think that that epic has the vice that the power they all want comes early, and the late power isn't exciting?

I have to echo Squid here. Specifically, the upgrades from V.1 of the Descender to V.2 was so distinct I feel that any further refinement will be taken in good faith, and executed well.

Arc 5898 - The Fan Club
Rating: ****

This time, I busted out Operative Gallows. Common IOs with a small quality-of-life bit of power-up. Performance would be slightly better with SOs, but I didn't want to spend my time racing around getting the 'right' IOs. Bought up my standard payload of inspirations - 3 purple shields, 3 greens, 3 blues, and 6 reds - and decided to wade in. One of the reasons I like Gallows is that he can stealth.

First things first, I find myself immediately fond of the contact. A clear, distinct authority figure who's asking you, as someone with the ability to help to do so, I don't immediately suspect I'm going to get dicked over, I'm not being talked down to, and I'm being treated as part of an established, reliable community of crime-fighters with a proven track record. This is what I'd expect, at level 25-35, so it feels good.

Mission one says 'Do A and B' and after doing A and B, the mission doesn't complete. That's a little annoying. Can there be a better way to make it clear that there's more to be done? Well, either way - I dealt with things in a radial circle around the boss and eventually got a mish complete. So far, standard - but there's the seed laid by Goal B. So I'm interested. That's good.

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An Aside: One of the things that I've found is that some arcs start with 2-3 missions that are inconsequential to the plot, so as to provide artificial build-up to Mission 4-5. The problem is, this means the opening of a story is boring and unsatisfying. It's wasting space. this arc is a good example of a solid introduction, even though it does something I don't like, which also relates to pacing.

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An Aside: Mission one features an Elite Boss. To me, Elite Bosses feel like they should be the kind of thing you build up to. Having one straight out of the gates can be disheartening. Now, by the 35-50 bracket, I can see Elite Bosses having a home in everything, being used as big, hard impressive bruisers who lead normal squads... but that's an issue of escalation. So, two steps forward, one step back.

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Mission 2 starts and I find myself briefly bothered. There's no connection to the first mish. The idea of 'here is the stuff that's on my plate, help me with it,' feels a bit skewiff. Now, I assume, ahead of time, that there's going to be a point to it - I make the basic assumption that because this is part of a plot arc, there's a connecting therad between the missions. The problem is, in character Graves is just assigning work that is seemingly unconnected. The question then becomes: Why is he doing that to you? It has the feeling of playing bad-guy whack-a-mole.

This is a minor concern, and it's very much my personal view for how NPCs should view characters as they level up. If it had been five or ten levels earlier I'd see it as very standard operating procedure. By the mid-20s, I'd like to see my character, as connected to the police service, as a specialist called in for 'big jobs' - ie, something that can't be solved in one mission, as it were - or short-term emergencies. If there's emergency upon emergency, it can dilute the feeling of urgency.

Okay, enough [censored] about something meaningless.

The obvious connection shows up and reinforces itself. I find myself, briefly, wondering if the darker assumption I have is in fact, totally justified, and I hope it's not. I mean, not every writer's the kind of [censored] I am, are they?

Mish 3 is a defeat all. I sigh, my shoulders slump, and I resolve myself. It's a shame - if the mission didn't have that darn 'defeat all...' it'd probably be a pretty much flawless arc for me. The small stylistic differences, the manner in which people focus on the characters, it's very interesting. So making a mission tedious - well, maybe it won't be a problem for other people with better, more effective builds, or faster internet connections. I know I found it quite a chore to kill all those DE spawns.

All told, it's a very, very strong four, with just a few things that could easily be put down to personal taste that keep it from being a five. Catch me on a better internet connection day and I'd probably jack it up to a 5.