Talen Lee

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I don't care about your character. Or your friends. Or your friends' friends.

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I feel I should respond to this. While I agree with the sentiment, I should point out that these arcs are naturally going to involve characters you've never heard of, so there's nothing really wrong with using your own characters for those spots. After all, you should write what you know. As long as they don't dominate the story, I see nothing wrong with using them.

[/ QUOTE ]Ah, so here we draw me out to expand on them.

By and large, most players in role playing games don't actually make interesting characters. They make enjoyable ones. Most of the time, the characters lack the kind of engaging hooks or the depth of a proper literary character, especially since they're components of a 'game' that has success and failure mechanics. With that in mind, it's actually very possible to make a good, fun, RPG character, who is utterly unengaging in an actual story.

So, if your arc is 'Beat up guys with my character,' or 'help my character through his origin story,' or worse, 'Watch my characters' important story arc where you help out despite having never met him before,' it's going to almost certainly suck. I know I'm playing cynically here, but it's something I find infinitely more likely than stumbling upon the next work of distilled genius here. if you put your friends' characters in a story because they are your friends then they might as well not be there. An NPC in a story arc should be there to facilitate the story. If they're there to facilitate the badly-designed enemies, you probably have a problem too - it's a sign that you've probably made the arc or the enemies badly.

Arc 3615 - Dark Dreams
Rating: ** - Corrected error

This is the first arc I've been asked to review, which automatically puts me on the backfoot, slightly cautious. After all, what if I think it sucks? I'm going to have to tell someone who asked me my opinion that they've made what I see as a big gift-wrapped turd. I resolved to steel myself and continue as I have, so, here we go:

First thing first, I like the map - it's one I know, the 'infested office.' Then I find I have to rescue a hostage... and I have a named character to rescue nice and early in the map. I consider this to be a typical example of a player creating an arc where you get to meet his character... and I'm a little worried about that. It often doesn't feel like anything but an addition for addition's sake. So, I shake him off and go looking for the mission objective.

The enemy group was solid but unimpressive, but they don't seem to be grotesquely unfair. Sonic blast and dark armour appeared to be part of it, and they were semi-transluscent, which is neat, when you have glowing eyes to go with it. They remind me of a less-elegant version of the Isz, from the Maxx, possibly because they're dark, small, and expectantly menacing. Since it's a hero arc, the fact these guys are pretty much murder on any dominator is probably less of a problem.

Between the opening of the first mish (get hero really early on) to the conclusion there's a big stretch of Nothing. There's a few patrols of the custom enemy that don't do anything or say anything. Perhaps using a smaller map would be a good idea? Or maybe make more patrols or sighted spawns that do or say things. Then, it's lead the guy all the way back... to fight a boss at the fore of the mish. I dont' dislike the structure, but it feels like a bit of a waste of space.

If you don't find the bad guys themselves interesting and fun to fight, if you don't know and already like the hero buddy, if you don't know the motivation behind the bad guys and if you don't really look for a reason to care, you're not going to find this arc very fun. I didn't get very engaged by it, and therefore, the arc fell somewhat flat. It feels like a 'family and friends' arc - if you know ShockRiot, it's a decent start.

The thing is, the author tells me this is their first arc, and it's something they want to work on. That strikes me as good - it's much better than some 'first offerings' I've seen and there's a much clearer sense of the things the author can do with the tools. The mission is structured well - get a buddy early on (not something I'm overly fond of, of course), fight through stuff, get to the goal, run back and find something new along the way back. Then, you escalate a little, and the next mission fulfills the same process. Get buddies, kill bad guy.

Overall, it's a competent but unexciting arc. It's not bad. It's not like I actively want the author to scrap it and start over. But it's nothing special. Hum-drum. Boilerplate. Exactly the kind of thing you would expect of someone starting out. The plot itself has a good idea - it's just not executed in a hugely compelling way at this point. Absolute best stuff about the arc is the idea behind it, and the map choice. Beyond that, the whole thing feels very rushed, which I don't think works for the style of slightly creepy, comic-horror. It's almost like I feel like I picked up a normal comic book in the middle of a plot arc - everyone else seems to be someone I 'should' know, but I don't.

While the first mission attempts to stretch too little stuff across a big map, the second mission tries to cram too much stuff in one spot. This is made worse because the map is awesome, but it's very tedious to hunt around it, looking for stuff to actually fulfill the mission objectives. After an hour of searching, I quit the arc and gave up. I'd done all the objectives, but one, but I just couldn't find it - despite having killed everything in the map!

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An Aside: This is one of the problems of 'custom factions,' and part of why I'm so dubious about their purpose in an arc. To make them diverse and interesting, you wind up eating a lot of space, and a lot of mental time. Once you've got your custom faction designed, it seems the creative juices peter out - leaving people without the stamina to go out and make the full story.

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The maps are good but not for what they've been asked to do, the enemy faction is well-constructed but nothing interesting is done with them, and the NPCs are present but oddly extracted from their environment. Then, possibly due to bugs, it all ended in frustration.

At least right now I am.

So what you're saying is people should like things they don't like because you don't like not being liked?

Arc 33034 - The Descender
Rating: ****

I've done this arc before - I did it on D-38, my SS/Fire brute. Knowing that this arc is 'supposed' to fit in the level 20-30 range, I instead changed to Operative Gallows, a Bane spider. Gallows is in the right range to earn XP for the arc, and more importantly, isn't actually well-built. He has a knockback protection IO and a bunch of commons. And that's all. So I wanted to attack this arc on its own terms.

Originally, the arc was good on a conceptual level, but lacked punch to make it enjoyable as an arc in its own right. There was also something that really bothered me in that the arc used Captain Mako as its contact, and then failed to really capture the Mako-ness of Mako. The actual real Mako, as it were. I then said so in Venture's thread, and made myself feel like an idiot for realising it wasn't a 'everyone review stuff' thread, and that's why we're here now.

So, the author, good sport that he is, went back and took what I said to heart, and now this is his second run at things. So let's see what's what.

Now, the first good thing this arc does is tie itself to the canon. Mako is shameless about the Leviathan, and is equally shameless about the fact you're dealing with his patron arc. There is a brief moment of worry in my mind - this character is 20-30, but is chasing someone in the 40-45 range? - but I have a suspicion about how things can go. So we'll see what we see as the arc unfolds.

The arc has what I think a good concept behind it. It deals with the clean-up of a 'third option' conclusion to the Mako Patron Arc (where the Destined One, rather than just kill or be killed by Mako, ran away). It's mostly good - there's still some polish necessary, though!

Some minor details: Mish 2, because the arc is limited to 20-30, is now against Thorns in that dread range. If you're bad against Spectral Demons? You're going to hate this. That said, it's one mission, and it's not a whole arc. Plus, the mission is stealthable.

There's a nice turn, which I won't give away. This works out really well for the feel of the arc, like you're skulking around and hiding your true intentions. How this eventually works out gives a nice feeling of verisimillitude.

The latter part of the arc was very frustrating but only because I kept crashing - nothing to do with the arc itself. In the fourth mission, there's fighting going on, and not just in one or two places, but in dozens and dozens of bursts. This is really good, since it means that you don't have a big, open-air space where people are quietly standing around waiting for a plucky villain to come along and boot them in the face. This gives the place a feeling of dynamic reality. There's a real feeling of an event rather than just a place. And of course, the dialogue furthers the storyline - in the fourth mission, more information is brought to light, and I found myself eager to see how the conclusion runs.

Mish five is the one that I find the most awkward. Because, the thing is this arc can't really be fit into the continuity of a character. This arc ends the career, this arc concludes very finally with a clear... well, it's a conclusion.

Overall: Good use of maps, clever use of the mechanics for the game, and decent dialogue plagued by editorial errors and a story that might not make a huge amount of sense at the end, since it has to fall under either All Just A Dream or you retiring the character outside of its level range. Good story with a lot of scope, but unfortunately, seems to push a bit too hard at what this architect can be used for. A good story in its own right, and well-enough executed... but not something you can weave into part of the life of a character, really. Probably works much better if you're already level 50 (though it asks the odd question of why you're downlevelled for the early half of the arc...)

Also, the souveneir is a gigantic wall of text.

Arc 1814 - Science is a Harsh Mistress!
Rating: ****

The arc starts by using an established NPC and throwing out the comical premise of Go, Hunt, Kil Mad Scientists. I love me some Morally Ambiguous Doctorates, so I loaded it up and gave it a run.

It's a simple, one-mission collect-em-up, and everyone in it is different and interesting. It's a fun arc, it's funny, and it's worth the time it takes to do. It's not a repeater - not something I'd be doing regularly for tickets - but it's a real laugh and worth the time to focus on.

Most significantly, however, the arc contains something I want to steal. Not a big deal, but I think it's a mark of a good piece of architect design should inspire those who create to steal. It's not a big deal 5-star everyone-should-try style mission, but it's a real laugh to the fans of Mad Science.

Something that this arc does really well, and that I'm very happy about is that the arc packs a lot of character ideas, with clear and distinct personalities into one mission. There isn't any filler here - there's just things to do. This mission, in one mission, succesfully compacts the kind of collection story other writers would try and do in four or five missions, and instead does it all in one.

This is a very well-crafted arc and eschews the pitfalls of an arc that could just be about 'look at my stuff.'

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

First and foremost, I did this arc on a non-50, non-purpled brute. If I was in the 10-15 range, though, I'd have done it for the XP, not just for the sake of reviewing. Why? Because it's a bloody good arc.

This arc is gated to be the kind of thing you would actually encounter in a low-level villain range. The individuals involved are reasonably accomplished (10-15) members of low-level street gangs. If I found this arc as a little unlockable character amidst Port Oakes' bevy of repeated stuff, I wouldn't be surprised. The arc calls you a hero at one point, which, upon completion, makes more sense. Despite being basically an origin arc of a villain, the arc steers mostly clear of mary sue-ism. As a hero, however, you do arrive pretty much constantly too late to 'do anything.' I did it with a villain, which to me puts a nasty cast on events - letting two gangs destroy one another with minimal influence seems very appropriate to me.

The arc is clue-light, and by that I mean, like, two clues. That's actually not a problem - the story is told very succinctly through NPC dialogue and made very clear without a clue to beat you over the head. It's also quite short - pleasantly so, there's no real dicking around to get to the point of the plot.

I could go into in-depth analysis, but due to the arc's short, sweet nature and low level range, it doesn't need it. Just run it. Any character with a big inspiration tray can solo it quickly and enjoy the dialogue. Like an afternoon special or an anime OAV, it's easier to experience it - and I recommend you do. And like most of the anime I like, there's a rather bitter darkening of tone, but not one you weren't warned about. The arc deals with themes that an adult will recognise and understand as will a younger player - without making anything too explicit.

Balance-wise I'd say the arc is pretty much perfect. There's nothing in this arc that pulls it out of a level range, there's no unreasonable NPC additions, and well, they're hellions. Everyone deals with Hellions. It reacts to the difficulty as you'd expect, and there's no massive sprawl of bossery to deal with.

Since it works so well for Venture and I honestly want something to keep track of what the hell I'm doing, I figured I'd start one of my own threads rather than kludge up other people's.

Here's a short list of things to bear in mind when you read my reviews; specifically, the ideas I have behind my opinion of arcs...

• There is (Almost) Never a good reason for a defeat all.
• There is no excuse for not using a spell-checker.
• I don't care about your character. Or your friends. Or your friends' friends.
• There are other archetypes than scrappers.
• There are enough arcs where the player is presumed to be stupid.
• Custom monsters are not necessary for a good arc
• Level ranges are good things.

I'll expand more on these if people wind up giving a damn. In the mean time, on to the reviewing process. By and large, I'm doing these reviews on a character I want to earn XP on, killing two birds with one stone. At this point, that character is a SS/Fire brute. I did some arcs on my soft-capped night widow, but his general imperviousness meant that I sometimes felt like I was ignoring elements of the story.

By and large I'm not in this for challenge. I'm looking for story, for narrative, and for character. I'm interested in exploring the established lore, of seeing new directions for the content we have. There's going to be a bias, of course.

I have played a lot of City of Heroes in the past three years. I have fought Longbow regularly. I have fought Arachnos regularly. The later game have been in my experience, a cavalcade of rikti, longbow, and arachnos, with the devleopers creating whole arcs that seem to do nothing but fixate on these pet groups in that level range. Therefore, if your arc is about Longbow, Arachnos, or the Rikti, it had better be a very interesting very new take on things.

On the other hand, I've also dealt with too many players who think 'It's a nemesis plot,' is an actual plot. The Xanatos Gambit is a difficult thing to write well, and more often than not, it requires the protaganist to be an *****. Some peoples' characters are idiots; mine aren't, most of the time, so I feel quite incensed when the game forces them to be so.

So. I'm looking for story driven stuff; I'm looking for conceptual stuff. Ideally I wanna see old friends and other enemies used well, I want to see character and creativity. And if it gives me stuff to fight that are good and enjoyable? All the better. We'll see how we go.

I'll be favouring villain content where I can because I think that villains are harder to write for, and therefore, you're more likely to see well-formed ideas there.

I'll also be trying to produce advice or suggest changes or improvements if I think they can be useful. My general scoring system is thus:

***** - This arc is of the quality of the better arcs in the game itself. Not too short or too long, uses something creatively, makes the enemy groups feel appropriate. Motivations and character voice are both clear and engaging. Good use of maps, well-balanced content. This is the kind of arc that doesn't just leave me with a big smile on my face but makes me want to play it again.

**** - Good, but obviously, not great. Something's off - an established character doesn't behave properly. Maps are repetitive. Motivations are a bit daft, players have to be a bit stupid. 4 stars typically means it can be easily shifted to a 5 star with refinement.

*** - A solid, workhorse arc. The problems that most readily keep an arc from going past this point is being a tired concept, or being repetitive. If your arc could be three missions, and instead, it's five? If there's a lot of stuff that Just Happens? If you rely on treating my player character like a tool? This is probably the best you can hope for.

** - Ugh. This is where the edge of suck comes in. This is when you blame it on a nemesis plot. This is when you make your self-insert character my constant companion. This is when the focus of the plot is something other than the person playing it. This is when you make greivous assumption about characters, use existing characters badly, or waste the player's time with plot cul-de-sacs.

* - See me after class. This would indicate spelling errors, bad grammar and formatting, terrible dialogue and just generally a sucky arc. Ironically, such arcs can be quite fun if you ignore the text. I wouldn't be surprised if the arc was a hoot to play, smashing faces and whatnot - but I'm here for story arcs, not for shooting galleries.

No Stars - This arc isn't complete, isn't formatted properly. Note that this is a mark I reserve for arcs that are incomplete. If an arc is bad, it warrants one star.

So. I'm not going to be fair and I don't intend to be meek. I'm going to tell you what I think and I'll try to not belabour that. If your arc sucks, I'll try to tell you why. On to the reviews.

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Now my arcs are getting voted down without comment. Of course, maybe they deserve to.

[/ QUOTE ]This right here is why I value a review infinitely more than I give a damn about a rating.

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'Far' too few?

One less than everyone else?

Poor scrappers. 'Far' too few indeed.

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If we're talking APPs rather than any of the Epic Power Pools (re: blueside only), it's not 1 fewer. It's 2 fewer than Blasters and Defenders and 1 fewer than Tankers and Controllers, which is more than "One less than everyone else?" especially when that 1 accounts for a 25% reduction in options (or 33% increase depending on your vantage point).

[/ QUOTE ]I'm too used to the redside. In which case, of fourteen ATs, two have two more, ten have one more, and two have none at all.

I dunno, doesn't feel like the 'far too few' is warranted. It's just ONE POOL.

Spinomania - you can. There's an inspiration store right by the datastream.

Aren't there enough arcs where the player is a complete blundering idiot?

'Far' too few?

One less than everyone else?

Poor scrappers. 'Far' too few indeed.

Aye, I don't mean to sound like I'm a stuck record. Hence why I just highlighted the sentence.

The point being that your testing spectrum is inappropriate. Just because a regen scrapper can solo it doesn't mean lots of other people can.

THE COMPLAINING: One of the vices of using established characters in this game is that you run the risk of putting words in their mouths that aren't really the way they'd say them. This is especially true of memorable characters like The Wretch and Fusionette or yes, Mako.

This arc's biggest vice is that Mako speaks nothing like Mako. He's got some good lines, but they're not Mako's lines. They're the kind of line you get from someone writing almost a generic badass. These lines could come well from someone - but not from Mako.

The whole of Not-Mako's plan seems fairly familiar - I mean, it's basically the Leviathan. Something to consider is that Mako already tried this plot and had no problems lying then and lied, in fact, very well by being honest with the player, so Not-Mako being a bad liar is a bit transluscent.

There is (almost) no good reason for a Defeat All.

There's also some grammar issues (its/it's, run-on sentences, bad use of punctuation). No need for .s at the end of mission objectives.

Why do the Virtea have horns and wings as underwater species? Not that they're bad, I suppose, but it doesn't seem right to me and it feels kinda 'weird for the sake of it.' Their face and eyes and smooth bodies work well, though.

The prophecy itself is bad. It's just very generic, there's none of the eldritch creep that makes such things potent, that shake people as people. It'd be like reading a prophecy of 'And lo, Edgar went down to the store for some milk and eggs, but returned home to realise he had forgotten the eggs.'

Not-Mako doesn't appear to double check anything you say or do. 'Crazy Zappy Guns' indeed... that's not Mako. It really, really isn't Mako. Eisenzahn could regale you in proper Mako-ology, I think.

Why did mish 3 downlevel you?

I was honestly glad for Mish 3 since it meant I didn't have to hear Not-Mako talking. Though I find myself wondering why I waited until after Mish 2's not-briefing with Not-Mako to not-do what Not-Mako didn't not-tell me to do. I think. Either way, if Mako is just there to instigate and send you out on the arc, why do you need the Malta mention in Mish 2? Not-Mako becomes more and more stupid as the plot goes on, his dialogue degenerating further and further. If anyone holds an idiot ball in this plot, it's Not-Mako.

Thanks to a crash, and my bed time, I've actually not finished the last mission, which is probably for the best since it just isn't as much fun after running around footstomping big gangs of guys to spend my time single-targeting my way through three copies of one Elite Boss who I already killed. There has got to be a better, more interesting application in this final mission. Might I suggest using a custom enemy to create a huge model, aura-laden creature that represents the Leviathan's senses? Such a vast creature would not be able to look and react in time to the scale of us, so maybe it has magical 'feelers', represented by individuals.

My main reason for wanting that is it means the level-gated Calystix doesn't have to show up. I beat his [censored] down when I was level 25, if I'm fighting for Mako himself, I would rather move on to something relatively new.

THAT SAID, THOUGH: There are some good ideas in this arc! First and foremost, it's very nice when the story lets you completely ignore the mission you're assigned by Not-Mako to go study the stuff you WANT to study (though that leads to its own problems later on).

The war between the Virteans and the Corollax was fun! The boss-level Virts look pretty good, though the fourth mission in the arc really did feel like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. With three bosses, no real encounters and a gang of yellow Corolax to fight, it was a bit of a walk.

There are also nice touches in the incidental dialgoue. Things like 'you hate this city,' and 'these books look interesting,' are good despite the fact they presume on the player. They're good because they're non-offensive ways to cast some character on the event, and therefore, give the player reason to consider what their character would do or think differently. I know my reaction to the hatred of Oranbega was amusement - I find the city a lot of fun and don't have the same hate-on for it you folk seem to.

Destroyed St Martial was a very nice use of an old map. Once again, my high-level character got dragged down, which feels remarkably inconsistant and honestly, a little stupid. I'm weaker at the end of the arc than I am at the start? Surely I'm not alone in thinking it ridiculous.

SO AS I WAS SAYING: Overall, the arc has a clear authorial voice, which is unfortunately, the voice of a decent author. The first mark of an author coming into his own is that he will often make every character the author likes speak like a smart-aleck fourteen-year-old boy. This arc reads like it's narrated by same. Mako sounds like same.

Fix up the voice of Mako, tighten up the writing in general, make the whole arc for a corolax-particular level range (even if that means using some lower-level Arachnos flunky to assign the mission, like, say, Barracuda), and clean up the Virtean designs and I think you'd have a real corker of an arc.

A would-be competent arc that schizophrenically tries to do vast things and eschews internal consistancy and the characters of the canon, it's a good idea with some nice tropes that fail to live up to the standards the arc sets.

Two stars, but I would eagerly await seeing any revisions to be made. The writer obviously has good ideas but lacks in the workhorse ways to make those dreams reality. A good editor could really help*.

* Not a good editor**.

** Not volunteering anyway.

Loading it up now. I have my red pen in hand.

The Idiot Ball is a reference to the idea that it's an object that confers stupidity on the person holding it and they will, periodically, pass it to other people, as if it were a sporting event. Typically, if your story requires a character act like an idiot for any length of time, but then break out into fits of intelligence while someone else stands around acting like an idiot, you've shown someone passing the idiot ball to someone else.

Never. Ever. Ever. Make the player hold an idiot ball. The player is a protaganist. It is not fun to be told you're a retard. Especially if you agreed to go along with someone else. Making a story that makes the player the idiot is not only not very useful storytelling it's self-aggrandizing as a writer in the most pathetic fashion possible.

NPCs holding the idiot ball is unrealistic; people should be consistant in their behaviour and reliable. But at least passing the idiot ball around amongst NPCs doesn't make the player feel like they travelled a distance and did some work just so you could call them a moron at the end of it.

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I was able to successfully solo this on my regen scrapper.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm going to leave this sentence here until you've read it a few times.

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Yer mish is OBVIOUSLY good enuff fer the devs, that makes it more then good enuff fer the unclean masses.

[/ QUOTE ]Wow, I can't imagine how this attitude could be bad.

... Seriously?

You know what else has been done in an MMO?

Hitler.

This is going to be hard to grasp for some people, but 99% of the people who play this game don't give a damn about you. At all. Let's say you have a hundred friends. No, wait, a thousand friends. Who you play with and care about and are close to and deal with on a daily basis. Great. You have one percent of the player base giving a damn about your existence.

Tanker Tuesday generates what, a hundred tanks every month? Two hundred? Three hundred?

Less than a percent?

Sure, it's impressive. I even laud the idea that TT deserves something, sure, something special. But to act like this game needs to follow-the-leader on ego-inflating bling in a competitive, pvp-based game in this, the individuality-driven, small-and-casual creative game is egotistical to the point of irrationality.

Ironically, it's the kind of self-aggrandizing showboating that I've heard experienced players routinely use as their criteria for dismissing tankers - and this event is at last check about tankers trying to increase tanker popularity and 'have a good time' by ignoring everything in the game that isn't a tanker.

I think that's the idea. The tutorial is available in one spot on either side, so making it something you want to do over and over again (because it's primarily meta-information to you the player). The invention tutorial is its own beast - I still don't know why that thing awards a badge for completion.

*looks at the OP's post count*

*sigh*

I remember hearing that these things drop about as commonly as purples.

So yeah, you're probably hosed.