Venture

Yes.

As it happens I anticipated this complaint. I am retiring this thread and starting a new one:

Venture's Reviews IV: The Search for Part III

The new thread has a policy change I expect to be controversial.

I consider this thread retired and will no longer post reviews or commentary to it.

Arc #108375, "Crawling From The Wreckage"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: poor dialog, typos, canon errors, no souvenir

Reviewed on: 7/1/2009
Level Range: 1-10/10-16/8-20/20-29/25-29
Character used: Amy Sunflower/Virtue

I don't have the usual blow-by-blow on this one because if I did that I'd really have to tear the arc up which isn't really fair. It's obviously the work of someone fairly new to the game in general and AE in particular.

The arc is an "origin story": you and four friends are abducted by the Rikti, experimented upon then escape when heroes attack the Rikti ship. You all get superpowers as a result of the ordeal and briefly form the "Fearsome Foursome". Unfortunately, personality clashes and problems with your friends coming to terms with their powers tear the team apart. One becomes a supervillain whom you have to take down. Another is attacked at work by Warriors and then teleported away by the Rikti when you rescue him, leading to a showdown and re-unification of the team. The dialog is poorly written, there are a lot of typos (I stopped trying to list them all) and there are problems with the canon, chief amongst them it being apparent that the Architect thinks the Rikti are traditional space aliens.

It's not the greatest story or theme in the world but at least the arc has one. I just can't give it a higher rating in good conscience. Hopefully the Architect will continue to improve his skills.

Between crossing the 100 review mark and some recent lossage in the signal-to-noise ratio I decided to start a new thread for my reviews. The previous thread is considered retired. Old reviews can be found here:

Arc Reviews
Venture's Reviews II: The Nightmare Continues

I remind readers that I am not taking requests at this time. There will be a copy of the queue included below.

I am instituting a policy change with this thread that I expect will go over like a lead balloon but I've thought about this and feel it's necessary: I will no longer respond to or even read responses to my reviews posted in this or any future review threads. I will be happy to follow up, within reason, in the Architect's own thread but there's just been too much random clutter. Obviously I have no ability to restrict what people post here, but if you post a reply to a review here I won't be taking part in any following discussion of your post. Take it to your arc's discussion thread (start one if you haven't) and feel free to post a pointer to that.

[u]Current queue[u]

*Hero: 57352, 149323, 137705, 171149, 161797, 179354, 59147, 15988, 1036, 55715, 37636, 17006, 174368, 60280, 178774, 100306, 181244, 91644, 167493, 149765, 191775, 4824, 171031, 242442, 227331, 41646, 77311, 81043, 67087

Villain: 113954

Neutral: 156389, 143017, 177826, 67356, 1296, 176180, 215257, 207827

Hero 15-20: 195149/225334, 185895

Villain 15-20:

Neutral 15-20:

+Rerun: 106553

Was just about to look myself, only to find unannounced downtime.

Pistachio was not an "ego-driven insert". There is nothing wrong with using your own characters as long as they are only putting in a cameo or guest appearance. It's when they start hogging the spotlight that you start drifting into Mary Sue territory.

Likewise there was nothing bad about having "everyone fight everyone" on the last map in and of itself. The problem was the story that brought it about. I have similar scenes in "Blowback" and "Two Households Alike" which I've gotten a lot of praise for.

"Lemon", it should be noted, is Johnny Sonata, presumably on assignment "deep undercover" in St. Martial. Try to imagine Frank Sinatra being revealed today as actually an FBI Agent in the 1960s, reporting directly to J. Edgar Hoover while palling around with the mob -- wouldn't that have made him the greatest "double agent" in all of history? That's my idea for Johnny Sonata.

I'm guessing you haven't played his arc.

Due to file size limitations, I was able to pack only 12 characters into my custom-made group "Malta Prisoners". But, oh what characters they are: "Sunshadow" a Nictus Melee/Nictus Aura Warbringer..."Kid Chernobyl" a Radiation Debuff/Radiation Emission Tank..."Atlantic Bob" a Water Blast/Water Manipulation Blaster...etc, etc...all in all, the "ten new powersets and two new EATs" promised on my Mission Profile page, ALL "impossible" new power combinations -- the idea being, there are dangerous new power combinations emerging in both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles...and the Malta Group has taken it upon themselves to police their emergence...

There's a quote from one of my best friends' mentors I pass on a lot: "You can glue feathers on a rat but that won't make it a swan." Calling Dark Melee "Nictus Melee" doesn't make it so. These mobs weren't even "characters", they were just video game enemies. Basically you did the one thing that is probably least likely to impress me in an Architect project: you mistook costumes and FX for actual story.

I meant this mission to be largely a smash-the-five-computer-terminals-and-then-get-out stealth operation. The Mission Info even says "Avoid the Malta Prisoners." Should I have highlighted "Avoid the Malta Prisoners."? I thought the fact that they spawn as Lts./Bosses would be enough of a deterrant from engaging them in combat...

Since you don't control where things spawn (especially on an outdoor map, where regardless of what the editor says all points are Front) it is entirely possible for a detail to spawn too close to mobs to be clicked without combat. Consider also that some builds won't have either stealth or flight.

On the other hand, some builds just won't be deterred by spawns full of Bosses. The character I used for this has passed the RWZ Challenge (three +4 Rikti Bosses plus attendants, no inspirations used). It wasn't that I couldn't deal with the spawns, it was that it was much more tedious than the story warranted for me to want to do so. In fact, it's entirely possible this mission would make a good farm, doubly so since it's the first in the arc so you could clear it and reset quickly.

Edit: furthermore, the fact that people can and will take down these "level 51" supers with "new and dangerous powers" even en masse subverts the entire claim that they're so dangerous in the first place. If Malta and the Phalanx think these guys are such a threat and I can defeat one, never mind swat them four at a time, why aren't they after me?

When's the last time you saw a group of heroes in the Hive? That's where I'd go to hide out if I was involved with a top secret conspiracy -- in one of the most dangerous places in the world!

On Virtue? Twice a week at least.

Whether or not there are heroes isn't the point. What's the solution to the "giant monsters stepping on your base" problem? This is like hiding from the Army on a firing range. "Ha, they never send patrols out here! Hey, what's that noise?"

I figured, defeating "Delta 4-51" in less than ten minutes could be tough,

Anything this side of the near-mythical Pure Empath should be able to defeat a Boss in less than ten minutes. Finding it is another matter, and an ally is counterproductive in that pursuit.

Most people think "Area 51" has something to do with aliens. The Secret of "Area 51"? "Area 51" actually has nothing to do with aliens, but as a prison site, has something to do with all of us being unable to attain that last single XP point we need to hit "Level 51" in-game...thank goodness for that!

Yes, I got that, the problem is that it isn't as funny or clever as you seem to think it is.

But...Malta IS a top secret quasi-governmental security organization with "unlimited resources". Like, the CIA hasn't been flying terrorist suspects out of commercial airports for the past 30 years, albeit on their own airplanes?

Malta is an illegal conspiracy that has to operate in secret. Whatever you may think of the CIA's activities it is a legitimate agency of the federal government that operates openly with the power of the law. CIA agents with the right piece of paper can walk into Newark Airport and put a terrorist suspect on a plane to Cairo. Malta can't do that, especially on a daily basis. They'd get noticed. Of course, your arc goes on to state that Malta is working with the Freedom Phalanx (and thus Longbow, which is a division of the Phalanx, which means Lemon's involvement in this is problematic) thus implying at least silent complicity by the government and invoking a level of Canon Defilement that I can't properly describe without getting modsmacked. (It would involve at least a case of roofies.)

Which is why I very deliberately included potentially 60 allies (20 separate spawns of at least three "Malta Prisoners" defeating Malta Group hostiles on an outdoor map) to help take down Synapse...and, if you gotta pull a member of the Freedom Phalanx into a friendly mob for help, wouldn't it be best to pull superspeedster Synapse after you, rather than Statesman or Manticore or somebody else who just jogs along after you?

This is kind of like asking if you'd rather be murdered by Ted Bundy or Charles Manson.

I didn't even realize the Malta Prisoners were set to Ally. The last time I saw them they shot at me. I assumed they were on Rogue.

The theme I was trying to develop with this story is, Things are often not what they seem when you scratch beneath the surface of any given situation, you may think you're the good guy, but maybe you're actually the bad guy when two worldviews come into conflict... OK: I was going for the twist ending!

Since practically nothing about the arc makes any sense what you got was a Wall Banger.

THEN, on a rather downbeat note, "Lemon" concludes, "Venture, I advise you to forget what you learned today, etc..." which the player can take any way they want, but which I HOPE they recognize as food for thought, sort of an ironic send-off from any "authority figure" such as a Longbow Intelligence chief.

As noted above, Longbow is part of the Freedom Phalanx's organization so Lemon has just had you investigate his own employers. The only way to even try to make sense of this is to assume he didn't know about the "Area 51" operation and inadventently stumbled upon it. The problem is that the resolution of the arc means both you and he now Know Too Much, and things just go downhill from there.

And the gold standard for reviewing ANY artistic endeavour is: What were they trying to do? How well did they do it? And, was it worth doing in the first place? How would you score me on those points, then? Still 1-star?

Yep.

I'm not sure what difficulty level you played at because many of the things you are describing NEVER happened in over 50 test runs of the mission. (I've only tested at lvl's 1-4 difficulty).

I played the arc with Agent Cerulean on Justice, a level 36 (now 37) SoA specced as a Huntsman on CL2. His build on my web page is current, if you have Mids and want to see it.

I thought warning people BEFORE they play a mission was the correct thing to do?

The problem is that the warning was necessary. It's basically advertising that the arc's difficulty is over the top. I've squishy-tested all of my arcs (well, "Why We Fight" hasn't been squishy-tested yet but despite what the nav bar says at times there's nothing bigger than a Boss in it) and in some cases I've run them with characters below the intended level range just to be sure. I ran "Blowback" (e.g.), a level 41+ Malta/Rikti arc, with a level 32 EB/Dark Corruptor successfully, without extreme set slotting, Shivans or any such advantages.

While I don't expect Architects to cater to the lowest common denominator in terms of mob strength (making arcs suitable for the near-mythical pure Empathy Defender, for instance, or eschewing all use of AV-level mobs because of Controllers and PToD issues), there is really no reason to turn it up to a point that the Architect feels non-melee builds need to be waved off.

Well Mistress was wearing a full body dress (yes a sexy one), so I fail to see the problem here. Women have different sizes and shapes, she represent one of them. You seem to be misrepresenting what her "special gift" was (although you don't find out what that gift is until the end of the arc)... immortality.


If you put the character's sexuality out front that's what people are going to respond to. (On a related point, an open dominatrix calling me "darling" is not comforting. It is a cause for great concern.)

In case you missed it ... " I have observed you for a long time and I think you might be someone I can work with" , she was looking for someone she could trust and had a similar morality. She was recruiting for the Order ultimately.

I saw the line but that's not what it said to me. To me it just looked like she thought I'd make a good mercenary sub-contractor. A lot of your response to my review is coming from the fact that things that are obvious to you as the Architect are going to be interpreted in vastly different ways by the player, who does not have access to all the assumptions and axioms that you left unstated.

As for typos... you didn't point any out and I had hoped I had caught all of them. I apologize for any that slipped through. I'll have to double check. Also are you thinking that some words are spelled incorrectly? I'm Canadian and we tend to use British spelling.

I somehow managed to lose my notes (which is why I didn't list them in the first place), but off the top of my head I'm pretty sure I saw more than a few cases of "your" being used for "you're".

KillerBunny is supposed to be tough, but I had lowered her SR to below ELUDE level so she shouldn't have been that hard to hit. Also her attack was on STANDARD. She is the only custom enemy you need to face in the arc. Every other enemy is stock COV.

Claws (particular on a custom mob) is a high-DPS melee set, and she was an EB, meaning she had inherent resistance to Immobilize, plus Quickness, giving her extra running speed and resistance to slows, and in a tight indoor map with no way to fly overhead and limited roon to kite. These factors make her a more difficult kill than you might think for builds that rely on keeping mobs at a distance.

Mistress determined that KillerBunny knew nothing of the Order and changed her memories so that she wouldn't remember who defeated her. Is that not a smart move for her to do rather than kill a superhero and have KillerBunny's SG out looking for her killers?

I didn't complain about that, but since you ask it's kind of a toss-up. If for any reason Bunny gets suspicious about the mindwipe there are potentially plenty of folks with superscience or magic that could undo it, or divine what really happened in some way. Getting ahead of myself, this is the kind of thing that could lead to the exploration of a theme, as the Order would have to deal with the consequences of their choices.

As for the werewolves, well depending on your toon's powers you could just "stealth" and just kill the werewolf leader and click on the box.

And get next to no reward for the mission. Rewards for arcs come entirely from fighting mobs, so making maps that are so difficult or tedious as to encourage people to avoid fighting and skip to the end is counterproductive.

But until the Mission editor will allow us to group 4 captives into a single rescue objective (thus leaving only 4 rescues needed), I'm stuck at 16.

Well, you decide how many hostages there are to rescue. That's not the system's fault. If implementing the story results in a nightmare of tedium then the story has to be rewritten.

My testing (except for lvl 4 difficultly) NEVER had more than 3 people guarding a captive (1Lt, 2 minions at the worst). There were no bosses to fight in any group.

The most common spawn pattern on CL2 or CL4 is one LT and four Minions. Spawns with fewer mobs will be one level higher than the base for the map. As of i15 it is now possible for a CL2/CL4 spawn to have one Minion and one Boss, too. I don't know if this is a bug or an intended change in the rules (yes, I bugged it in beta). Because captive/escort details spawn in addition to regular map spawns it is easily possible for their guard mobs to overlap a map spawn (or even another detail). As a result between overlapping spawns and the size of the spawns I often had to deal with two or three spawns at once when freeing hostages. This meant sometimes having five or six debuffing zombie-summoning Shaman to deal with at once. It also meant that sometimes I had to peel away surrounding spawns so I wouldn't be dealing with four or five spawns at once.

Adamastor should have been relatively easy to kill with your ally's help. (personally I never needed the ally's help).

As I said, I did not release the ally until the end of the mission. The ally would have made things much, much worse.

Has the Mistress lied to the character at any point?

Technically the player has no way of knowing if she's lied at any point.

What part of her actions would lead you to believe that she might be lying (which she isn't)?

Villains are naturally suspicious. Furthermore, none of the people the Mistress (allegedly) displayed mercy towards had the kind of information on the Order the player is about to have.

Also no bosses spawned during my tests, no group was larger than 3 or 4, only the final Boss Gunslinger group had a sapper spawn. I didn't find it that hard.

The final Gunslinger spawn had the Big Bad and two LT Gunslingers, plus a few other mobs. I knew I'd never survive all of that (all three Gunslingers effectively ignored my defenses) so I concentrated on taking out the LTs before I got killed so I could get the Big Bad on the rematch.

The Arch-Magi are as the developers designed them, I'm sorry you find them so boring. But they are part of the cannon mobs in COV, so deal with them.

I'm aware they're standard mobs. As I said I used them myself. But "they're canon so deal with it" is not a valid answer. That's why I stopped using them and invented custom CoT Bosses instead. They're poor designs. Essentially they are lower-level mobs artificially scaled up to higher level by tacking on a 75% resistance to everything. The Arch-Mage of Death is particularly odious as he stacks -ToHit and -Damage on top of that, and then adds a powerful self-heal. None of them have attacks powerful enough to make them likely to win, it's just that you'll spend all day whittling them down. They're no fun to fight.

The ally spawns in the MIDDLE, not the back and you must pass her on the way so you should not be able to miss her.

If by "middle" you mean "the room before the last one" you're right. That's where she spawned. She was behind all four of the Arch-Magi and one room ahead of Baphomet, who spawned in the very last room. Unfortunately the system has pretty silly ideas about what "front", "middle" and "back" mean. If you want to ensure one detail can be found before another you need to choose your map and spawn regions carefully.

Your ally flys, so she should not "fall" into anything.

Mobs that can fly don't always do so when it would be useful. Furthermore, the ally's pet did not fly and would fall into pits or get stuck. One one occasion it fell into a part of a room I hadn't bothered to clear and agroed more mobs, so the ally suddenly reversed course and ran back to help it. Allies and their pets are basically morons that often behave in frustrating ways.

You apparently didn't read the clue for the defeat of the Archmage Of Death.. it said you recovered the files from him.

If that's what it said then mea culpa but as others have already noted, the clue spam had already convinced me long before that point that the clues weren't worth close examination. It looked like another "you have just done that thing you did" clue.

The contact was honest and straightforward with the character the entire arc. She was looking for someone who could kill when needed, show mercy when appropriate, could follow orders, and was trustworthy. Characteristics that your character shows to her during this week.

None of this was really impressed upon me at any point.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ilHasStandards

All throughout the arc the contact has been advising you not to kill innocents. The Order is devoted to peaceful coexistance between humans and vampires. All of these are moral choices. So I think your way off base on that statement.

Tropes are not themes. What you are describing is just a trait of the Order. It could lead to the exploration of a theme, but that's not what you did. I'm standing by this charge: if you meant for the arc to have a theme you failed to develop or convey it adequately.

I'm going to take as read you saw no issues with act 1, unless the Freakshow 101 comment meant that it was a little too remedial to require explanation, but as a school teacher I know that the average person is not the brightest person. Better to spell it out sometimes, and introduction is the best place for exposition.

It comes off as condescending more than anything else. Players probably know basic facts about the canon. If they don't know they can look it up. If they can't be bothered to look it up they probably don't care they don't know in the first place.

Act II, it is mentioned in the intro that the nano-tech is neutered.

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure I was only told O'Leary's nano wasn't weaponized and only told that after the mission.

Act III, is it clear by now they needed the excelsior so that the effected would survive transformation?

Nope, didn't get that.

'm going to change Act IV so that destroying the computer spawns the bombs. Without the control signal from the computer they're useless and inert. I'll also make that clear in the debriefing.

And if someone comes along later and re=broadcasts the signal, perhaps from a backup computer the cops didn't know existed? The kind of weaponized nanotechnology you're postulating is far too dangerous to just blast out into the environment no matter how "neutered" you think it is. Better to say the bombs are confiscated for safe disposal later, or narrate the player being given some blue goo to use on the bombs.

The theme itself is this villain presenting a lose-lose situation to the player. Allow Faraday to win, and doom Paragon City, or defeat him and allow him to sacrifice himself, furthering his deification among his followers.

A literary theme is some kind of statement or question about the human condition. I don't see how this qualifies. It looks liks just a plot development to me. Obvious themes I could see being developed in this arc are what drove Faraday to become a doomsday prophet and/or why people were willing to follow him once he did.

I guess I want to know what you'd want from this arc to call it 4-5 stars.

Development of a theme and fixing the typos and plot issues.

"Blowback" (4643), "Chains of Blood" (4829) and "Two Households Alike" (126582) have all been updated for i15.

The changes from Test have been propagated to the Live version. I'm still on the fence about the imps; they're in for now but I may still remove them.

Feedback welcome.

Where's the trailer for I-15?

You haven't made it yet!

All of the above changes have been propagated to the Live version.

Feedback welcome!

The changes listed above have all gone live now, plus:

<ul type="square">[*]Neutralizers are now Electric Assault/Kinetics. They have Transference, which is a big END drain but it's on a long delay. I'll be keeping an eye on how these work out...in testing they seemed less annoying than Sappers.[*]Acts IV and V now take place on maps set to Empty and stuffed with battles and (V only) patrols. This should help ensure that mobs that are supposed to be hostile to one another will actually fight.[/list]
As always, feedback welcome.

Despite only having one new arc ready to roll I went to buy the 5-slot package...only to have it say on the final confirm screen that I was being billed $20 for one slot.

I wasn't sure that was just a text error so I backed out.

This however, is NOT dependent on the sexuality, or sex of a player character. Switching genders or bodytypes is not inherrently sexually related in that sense. Therefore, there is nothing about switching gender that is covered in your definition of "mature"

This is a canard, and everyone knows it. For everyone that does something like "petite woman in huge battlesuit" there will be ten others using gender-swapping for ERP.

Issue 15 has done more to slow review progress than the recent ranting. I like doing reviews and I consider reviewing to be a service to the MA community as it promotes both the arcs themselves and the improvement of standards. Polishing my stuff for the upcoming changes to the system does tend to come first though. I had hoped to write some more arcs on Test thanks to the increased slot availability but with i15 "on deadline" it's probably best at this point to wait for it to go live.

Edit: which wasn't much of a wait, was it.... I was expecting another week, frankly. Had hoped to check characters for freespec use today...drat.

I don't mind people defending their work (I just did in MCM's thread but that was because he posted a personal attack described as a review). By my count I owe three people replies, which I hope to get to today. But there is a limit to how much time I am going to spend on one person's work, especially with so many waiting for reviews, and that limit will be hit quickly if I feel people are just retreading the same points or taking comments on their work personally. In such cases I'm just not going to reply.

She was not mind controlled. She was manipulated into consenting to work for Malta (including accepting the pain implant) but she did consent. An unfriendly DA could have built a case against her and an unsympathetic jury could have convicted her.

Ultimately, as the souvenir says, she was not charged. She testified against Malta and was placed into WitSec (with an easter egg). Crimson is a spy, not a prosecutor, and couldn't foresee that she'd be able to get a deal. Her fate counterpoints Enigma Silver 6-3's: they both knew they'd crossed the line but while he couldn't face what he'd done she could. He tried to run from the consequences of his actions but couldn't. She faced the consequences and received forgiveness.

I did put a note...in orange, actually, in the acceptance text. Hate to rub salt in the wound but it's really hard to miss.

That map will be gone in i15 though. It's rapidly becoming overused and there were some spawn issues. In the new version the arc ends (almost) where it began in Steel Canyon.

Some administrative notes:

First off, be aware that issue 15 is now "on deadline", per the recent use-your-respecs warning. It contains a considerable number of changes to the MA system. If you have requested a review it is up to you to make sure your arc is up to i15 spec if i15 has gone live before I get to it. The live database has been copied to Test so if you haven't already I suggest you hop over and see how it plays under the new rules and/or if you want to make changes to take advantage of the new features.

Secondly, I had previously announced that I was not taking any more Heroic arcs over level 20. I allowed one more in because the Architect reminded me that I'd said I would review it. I have since decided that I am not accepting any more requests at all for the time being. The line is too long, I've got to clear it out a bit before I take on more.

Third, if I have counted correctly, I believe the last review posted is my 100th. That is counting one arc I did not rate (#32865, a blatant political rant using real-world people, which amazingly is still in the system).

Finally, an update on the queue:

---

Hero: 57352, 149323, 137705, 171149, 161797, 179354, 59147, 15988, 1036, 55715, 37636, 17006, 174368, 60280, 178774, 100306, 181244, 91644, 167493, 149765, 191775, 4824, 171031, 122569, 227331, 41646, 77311, 81043, 67087

Villain: 113954

Neutral: 156389, 143017, 177826, 67356, 1296, 176180, 215257, 207827

*Hero 15-20: 108375, 195149/225334, 185895

Villain 15-20:

Neutral 15-20:

Rerun: 106553

Arc #175675, "A Princess of Mars"
tl;dr: 1 star. Offenses: no theme, no plot, almost no writing at all

Reviewed on: 6/27/2009
Level Range: 50-54
Character used: Agent Cerulean/Justice

That level range isn't a good sign.

The browser entry is, I'm pretty sure, part of the opening from eponymous Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Befittingly the Contact is John Carter. The entire first mission briefing: " I am trying to find clues on the location of Dejah Thoris. I believe she has been captured by the Jeddak of the green warriors of the Warhoon tribe." The terseness is also not a good sign. The mission takes place on the Thorn Tree Oranbega map; your objectives are to find Deja Thoris' water jug (which has a note inside it but no Clue; pickup message says we know where she is now), meet up with Carter and take down Tal Hajus, a Katana/Energy Aura Elite (info lifted right from Burroughs) who dropped me instantly thanks to BuildUp. Carter himself appeared to be a Dual Blades/Willpower Elite with a gargantuan agro radius. The enemies are a custom Martian faction (alas, with but two arms.) At the end of the mission, either from defeting Hajus or as an end clue, I got a "A kiss from Dejah Thoris" clue saying I had received a kiss from a Martian princess...whom we have yet to rescue.

Act II: "Rescue Kantos Kan before he is led to the arena." That's it. Acceptance text says to hurry because he might know where Dejah is. Um, didn't we find that out before...oh, whatever. The mission, which is also a defeat-all, takes place in a Cimerora cave map. Kan says he knows where Dejah is when rescued but doesn't elaborate in a clue.

Act III: "Rescue Dejah Thoris". That's it. Another Cimerora cave map, this one filled with Cimeroran Traitors instead of Maritans (didn't even bother to stuff them into a custom group so they could be labelled "Martian Soldiers" or such). You hook up with Carter, who Leeroyed the overlapping spawns of Dejah's guards and Sab Than (Katana/Dark Armor Elite Boss) getting us both killed. I was far enough away to combine some insps and rez, then kited him down for the win.

The arc has no plot, never mind a theme, and is less than three newspaper/scanner missions strung together. There's no reason at all to play it, not even for the Burroughs nostalgia.

Arc #153720, "A Week in the Life of a Villain"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", very tedious, typos, too many useless Clues

Reviewed on: 6/27/1009
Level Range: 40-54/45-54/40-54/41-54/40-54
Character used: Agent Cerulean/Justice

This one comes with a "no squishies" warning in the browser entry. That's seldom a good sign.

The Mistress of Pain or Pleasure, a lady with the Most Common Superpower, wants your help dealing with KillerBunny of SAFE (Superheroes Against the Forces of Evil). Bunny is harassing a business concern of "the Order" and Missy is willing to pay top dollar for you to stop her. Oh, and she may throw in a "special gift", If You Know What I Mean. The job takes place at a convention of sorts where representatives of various criminal factions were to meet with an Order representative (who now will not be showing up). Heard at the door:

[NPC] Lancer: I'm lonely!
[NPC] Lancer Surgeon: Well ask one of the hostesses out on a date. They're hot!

Yeah. The arc is filled with this, and single entendres, and a fair number of typos.

You have to rescue several BunnyGirl hostesses to trigger the spawn of KillerBunny, a Claws/Super Reflexes Elite Boss that was a real pain to bring down. You deliver her to the Mistress for interrogation, If You...eh, I'd have to say that way too often in this arc.

The next day, after the Mistress has determined KillerBunny knew nothing of the Order then magically erased her memory and released her, you are asked to head out to a cargo ship. An "old enemy" of the Order is intercepting an important shipment. They want you to intervene. On acceptance, you're told the ship is being attacked by werewolves and the Mistress wants the lead werewolf dead as revenge for their last encounter. You're also to retrieve the one important crate without looking inside. (There's a cute clue/message on thsi one.) You just have to gun down most of a ship map full of Werewolves, which is fairly tedious for a build that often relies on Wide Area Web Grenade to keep mobs at range.

Your next Herculean labor involves stopping a Banished Pantheon ritual. They are going to sacrifice four sets of identical quadruplets (that's sixteen hostages, for those keeping score at home) in a cemetery. You have to rescue them. Oh, and there's this Adamastor thing in the way, it has to go too. And you have to destroy the cauldron they're using for the ritual. Egads. The only good thing I can say about this is at least it's not the fogged-over graveyard map. I almost quit the arc at this point. Between overlapping spawns, the large guard parties on each...single...one...of...the...sixteen...hostage s...and the tendency of Banished Pantheon maps to spawn extra Bosses, I ended up with 771 bonus tickets for this mission. That should give you a hint as to how much I had to kill. You do get an ally (Jacklyn, a Claws/Regeneration Boss or Elite Boss, I forget now) but you'd have to be insane to try to drag an ally all over this mission so I saved her for last. The Mistress tells you to get some rest afterward since she expects to have a job for you tomorrow.

Sure enough, Malta goons have broken into an Order base and raided the files. Most of the files were destroyed by booby traps but they did get away with four partial files. You're to retrieve them and kill anyone who has seen them like the raid leader. You're smart enough to ask what's going to happen to you after seeing the files...the Mistresses promises you're safe, no, really, cross her heart, etc. OK.... You have to hit four glowies (with clues that reveal "the Order" to be a vampire clan) and take out a Master Gunslinger...with a large guard party. Ouch. Unfortunately for the Order, the Malta leader sent a copy of the files to the Circle of Thorns.

The briefing for Act V has some reveals in it, basically fusing White Wolf and CoX canon. It seems the Order fought on the Mu side in the Mu-Oranbega war and as a result the Circle has it in for all vampires (meaning they're going to be very busy on Virtue). So, you have to go in to retrieve the files. The Mistress and Jackie have to contact the Order's leaders, but the Mistress is sending a "Lady Carmela" to help out. Your goals are to find her and kill the four Arch-Magi. Having used them myself in the first version of "Chains of Blood" I know exactly how tedious this is going to be. Just to extinguish any lingering hope that this won't be like kicking dead whales down the beach, Baphomet spawns when you wax the first Arch-Magi and he has to go too. I couldn't even dent the Arch-Magi (which all spawned at +1) so I had to pick up the ally (which I usually skip; also she's on the SAFE faction). She spawned in back, so I had to run all the way to the back to get her, then backtrack to take out the Arch-Magi, then find where Baphomet spawned which turned out to be even further in back resulting in running over the map three times, mostly dragging a mob that kept getting stuck on the geometry or falling into pits. I finally downed Baphomet and ended the mission. Despite the mission briefing and title saying you have to recover the files you never actually do. The exit pop-up says " Ok this week sucked! Who didn't you fight this week? Council, Carnies, Freaks, Nemesis, Werewolves, Pantheon, Malta, the Circle, Demons, Spectres, a hot Bunny and even a crazy pot! Sigh... You need a vacation!"...really not a good idea to lampshade your arc's tedium. In the debriefing the Mistress offers to make you a vampire. Um, no.

The arc has no theme. It is very tedious, particularly in acts III and V. The arc had, by the end, I think 26 clues, the vast majority of which just told you that you did something you just did -- i.e. you'd kill BOSSNAME and get a clue saying "You have killed BOSSNAME."...um, yeah? Finally (and I didn't really deduct for this but it's worth noting), there is really nothing villainous about this arc. Granted that's a complaint that can be leveled at a lot of the CoV content but since the mistake's already been made repeatedly it should be easier to avoid. The player spends this whole arc rescuing people or protecting what's described as a benevolent order of vampires. The arc should have its morality reconsidered or its action edited to match the villainous intent. Somewhere under here there's a decent story trying to get out, but it's going to take some effort to do that.

Thanks for the review and the typo catches. I imported an old version of the local file and thought I'd re-caught them all.

Curiously, two of the hostages were tattoo artists. Those guys really should get out less.

The "random" option on Civilian hostages isn't very random and overly draws from models that should be in a Unique pool. My options at this point are to use four of the exact same model, keep it as is or have no hostages at all. I don't have space to create four individual Release Captive details.

Enrico's description echoes the author's opinion too aggressively.

It stays, this is my soapbox. Hannah Montana's fans can get their own. :-P

Neil: couldn't let -&gt; couldn't you let

Colloquial speech.

Mish 2 exit pop-up: reduce elipsis to 3 dots...

Three for an ellipsis in the middle of a sentence, four for one at the end.

The imps were a bit cliche-custom-critter - pity you can't get Bat'zuls to cover the level range, or something else un-human.

I'm about 75% certain I'm going to delete the imps and go with an empty map.

Edit: you asked for ideas for more unusual endings:

"The ending sucks" is a reference to the original version. I'm satisfied with the arc's ending.

It's all a trap to kill Diablo, room is full of destructibles, which must be destroyed within an (almost unreasonable) time limit, else everyone blows up. Hero is inclined to prevent the explosion because Darrin and Nicky are unwitting bait. Indeed, one of the destructibles (all identical) contains the unconscious couple.

This is a cute idea, though it would pretty much mean Vittorio was running a Xanatos Roulette. It's not the way I want to go with the story but it could work.

The hero is Diablo. There is no real Diablo, it's a useful boogieman, but since the situation calls for Diablo to turn up, the bad guys circulate yon hero's picture around with a Diablo label. Wackiness ensues.

I could see this working too in a way for an episode of The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt or such, but I'd never do it to a player character.

OK, need some feedback from those who have played this either on live or Test.

The most recent version of i15 allows us to select "Empty" for map spawns and for Boss guards. This means, and I've tested to confirm it, that I now can spawn act V's map with just the Bianchi party on the first floor and Diablo alone upstairs.

So, imps: keep 'em, or feed 'em to the fishes? I'm not all that happy with the imps but people seem to like them. If I scrap the imps I should have enough room to give the Polettis their custom LT back (though it probably won't be the Crollo) and maybe give each faction one more custom mob each. It also occurred to me that I could have Diablo spawn alone but call imp ambushes during the fight, but I think he's a tough enough nut to crack without that.

‘But that map’s got just one room!’ I hear you splutter. It doesn’t matter.

Well, yes it does, because proving a degenerate case doesn't prove the actual point.

It IS possible to produce a map with a consistent sequence of objectives, and I’m not even talking about chaining them, necessarily. If they are for example in a fairly linear map and obvious to see or highlighted in some way – the glowing green gas cloud being a good example (and no, I'm not suggesting using this ALL the time) – then players are quite likely to do them in the intended order.

"Likely" is not good enough. As we have seen, as I did place the clues in Act IV in a straight-line order, and you missed one. Players are not, in fact, likely to do things in the intended order because players as a rule are an ornery and sometimes even (intellectually) perverse bunch. Some of them are always looking for short cuts and a significant minority will try to do things in unusual ways just to see if anything breaks. The result is that if it is physically possible for a player to complete Objective 2 before completing Objective 1 many players will find a way to do it even (or in some cases, especially) if that breaks the plot.

Now add the fact that spawn point selection and clue order are different goals determined by the same thing (order of detail creation), the fact that if you're making changes on a mission with a lot of details preserving the clue order may require deleting and recreating almost all of your objectives (since you can't change their order any other way) and the fact that limiting yourself to linear maps for any mission with clues means ignoring the great majority of the indoor maps and all of the outdoor ones (which, despite their labels, treat everything as "front"). This is an unreasonable amount of work and limitation for something as minor as what order the clues appear in, especially since the number of current critics who have made any note of it at all can be counted on the thumbs of one hand.

Stop banging on about whether or not she’s IC or not lol. She sounds like an eighties 16kb chess computer in your arc.

Whether or not the canon characters are written correctly is exactly the point. If they are, your complaint can only be "I don't like them so you shouldn't have used them", which is an aesthetic matter. It is your prerogative not to like them, but as a criticism that carries little weight.

If I put ‘This office building is empty, silent’ as the entry popup in a cave map, you’d rightly lambast me for bad writing because I’m not in an office, I’m in a cave.

Only because you could have chosen an office instead of a cave. If all the game had was cave maps we'd have to either accept that all of the action takes place underground or allow rather a lot of wiggle room in text descriptions. Of course, in such a restrictive and contrived scenario I suspect most of us would Take a Third Option: play something else.

As far as I’m concerned™, these sorts of RP are absolutely fine.

Sauce for the goose, then -- if players can play loose and fast with textual depictions to cover the lack of visual ones, why not Architects?

You sound much more human when you’re exasperated, Venture. I think it’s the contractions thing. Add a few contractions to Azurias dialogue, and she won’t sound so much like HAL before his meltdown.

She does use them. You just ignored them.

Yes. You missed the most important thing of all. I think Chains of Blood is horribly, terribly, painfully dull. It is a flat arc, it has no soul.

It is your prerogative not to like the story, but that is not a technical flaw. It carries very little weight as a criticism. If the majority of respondents said the arc's story was dull that would be one thing, but even people who have complained about the difficulty (in earlier versions using the Arch-Magi instead of the custom Redeemers) or about the mission not having lots of custom mobs (which I find no more interesting than the existing mobs) have said things like "the story is a blockbuster". You are perhaps the third person out of dozens of reviews and comments to not like the story (and one of the other two said something like "nice farm but kind of dull"...the hell?!)

When I review an arc I address the technical details. In the general case my aesthetic response to the arc is at most a small factor; if I liked or disliked it might tip the scales if I'm stuck deciding between X and X+1 stars. The only exceptions are arcs that rely entirely on comedy, in which case since there's nothing else to criticize it's all going to come down to whether or not I thought it was funny, which is entirely subjective. If an Architect puts all his chips down on "funny" and spins the wheel (asks for a review)...well, what ya get is what ya get. That's why I tried to aim a little higher with the comedy I'm developing on Test (#225399 "Why We Fight", feel free to review it, I could use the input of someone who will find all the insignificant problems no one else in the universe cares about). All I'm getting here is whether or not you liked the material, which is an outright laughable approach to reviewing given your signature quote. Frankly, it looks to me like you "review" arcs by forming an aesthetic judgement and then nitpicking them to support it, which is no way to do things.

And that's all I got to say about that.