londerwost

Which means nothing is set in stone and anything goes. If you don't strickly follow the story then you can't complain about others who don't follow the story.

Thanks for this awesome in character review of my hellion arc! It made me lol!

I think most of the issues you braught up are things I wanted but was unable to due to MA limitations. I actually created and detailed two funny raver hostages that were going to educate Hellions on rave culture in a humorous way. Unfortunately, the party map didn't have the room. I was also disappointed to find that clues attached to objects drop on the first glowy by design. I can't change it. Might be able to re write the clue to fit better.

As far as the funny Ms. Liberty goes, it was suposed to be the drum hit joke ending after she's belittled your character. I originally didn't spell it out but some people didn't get it so I felt I hadn't done a good enough job on detail. Damned if ya do and all that.

Thank you sooo much for doing this!

All this crazyness is the main reason why I waited to post my arcs here and then with trepidation. Nothing good comes from a critique of, "I don't like it. Remake it to my own liking." A previos post said it best; this is a game. Why can't we just be stoked that someone did something new and unique is stead of all this unnecessary negativity. This is absolute madness.

It has already been posted that no one asked venture to give his critique but after seeing all the positive posts, he felt he had to post.

Witch Engine didn't half [censored] this arc. He has a well writen, polished arc that has a unique plot twist that offends the sensibilities of some of the forum elite. Get over yourselves and let the guy have his 15 minutes for gods sake.

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Might I suggest a little bit of fun?

City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon
Arc ID: 18775
Levels: 5-20
Length: 3 missions. Timing may vary; they're on small maps.
Description: Experience the origin story of Tubbius Claus of Paragon City, a hero claiming to be old Santa himself, on vacation from his duties in the North Pole!

I'll see what I can do about playing one of your arcs tomorrow (today, whatever, as it's after midnight already!) as time permits.



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Rated 3 stars.

Played with level 14 enrg/enrg blaster and 14 arch/mental blaster on easiest diff.

I was ready to give this arc 4 stars after the second mission. In fact, I think this would have been a decent quick lowbie arc if you had stopped at the second mission.

Personally, I feel that the third mission seems random, does not add to the story, and actually was quite frustrating. We run on easiest diff to get a feel for how well we would be able to adjust our play style to arcs and this one was not very friendly. Spawning elemental boss groups for lowbies is kinda mean and I would hate to see how that would play out at level 5.

In each mission we skipped over claus to stealth to the other objectives and then come back otherwise we would be forced to kill all by the nature of having an aggressive ally (he seemed to attack anything in sight). We had no issues up until the last boss, mainly because the main boss would spawn leut level. The last mission, as I said, had boss level general mobs which we tried to skip, a leut final boss, and then had an ambush with 5 (counted five) lieutenants which royally kicked our [censored]. Sure we could have survived with claus tankin. But I also believe that if this main boss had been going after claus in the last mission, then claus should have been closer to the boss and not at opposite ends.

On a more nit picky side, I noticed problems with the writing that might need some smoothing out. Here's some examples:

[ QUOTE ]
But the next thing that went wrong was a horrible blow.

[/ QUOTE ]
I do not think that is what you meant to say. The way that you wrote this, "blow" is the subject of what went wrong.

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I have bills to pay, you know, and my work at the North Pole doesn't pay save in joy and smiles and warm, happy feelings.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bare minimum this needs a coma but I think it needs more, maybe break it into two sentences and clarify, "pay money" and "only pays in joy...etc"

These are only examples but I noticed this throughout. It's minor but if you can get another person to read over your stuff or simply read it out load yourself, I think you'll find were the problems are.

I think this arc suffers mostly from mechanics. But the last mission either needs more story or it probably should be removed. Doing stuff for the hell of it doesn't really help your story and having the villain break out for a rematch is a little weak. At least that's how it feels when I play it.

tl:dr

• Think long and hard about how you want the last mission. I think it takes away from the story. It also ruins the mood by being frustrating while the first two missions were easy going.
  
• Fine tune your writing and see if you can have someone in RL go over it with you. If you can't, read your stuff out loud to see if it really makes sense.
  

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1-2 hours

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I am really curious about trying your arcs but I'll be honest. My time on CoH is very limited and valuable. I'm not sure when I'll have time to try a 1-2 hour arc when I'm already spending time reviewing arcs on our own thread.

This is a purely selfish post but I don't think I'm alone when I say that with something as huge as AE, there are a minority of people who have the time or incentive to play multiple 1-2 hour long arcs.

I would highly suggest trying to shrink some of your arcs below 1 hour. I'm willing to bet you'll get more people to play them (like us for example ).

Either way, it's good to see another couple collaborating on arcs. Those tend to be the best ones, amiright?

[ QUOTE ]

So my apologies to folks who had problems finishing the arc over the weekend and thanks for letting me know that the Fortunata didn't spawn at 35.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is all you needed.

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Well, before you took it, it was set to 40-54. Some other folks who were playtesting the arc for me wanted to try it at a lower level so I made it possible for them at level 35 and didn't switch it back to 40-54 before I went away on vacation for the weekend. *shrugs*

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Some guy took a whole team of his friends to spend their time playing YOUR arc, ran into a severe problem that ruined the experience for them and you respond with "*shrugs*."

So this is how you really wanna advertise your arc?

Honestly, I was curious how you went through and changed it and was thinking of running it myself but after this I've lost my interest.

Don't be rude to people who spend their time playing your arc.

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Lowdown – This two mission arc is designed for new heroes levels 1-14 and it stays true to that level range while still being fun and playable (In my experience many that claim to be low level are too hard).

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Finally! Someone who understands! You don't know how many times I've gotten, you should throw in some Vahz, 5th Column, and/or custom mobs, and I've been like "no you can't do that for a true lowbie arc!"

Thanks for the review and the Statesman idea is very, very tempting. Unfortunately, I can't fit any more detail into that map... maybe another clue? I'll have to think about it.

I can't wait for the Con but I am a little sad. Seems like all the CoH community reps I know are gone.

I just hope BAB and Hero One are there. Those guys are cool.

It will be interesting to meet TheOcho. He's got mythos on Victory, the legendary and mysterious mod who really, really hates us.

This is super easy. Basically set all of your objectives to have the same plural nav (ie "kids to save"). If they are all the same, it will show as 4 kids to save, even though there are 4 different objectives with a 1 quantity on each.

Then you can set the single nav to what ever you want, either have it the same for all (ie "save the last kid") or you can set different ones for each. Which ever one is last it will default to that (ie "save chris")

I'm right on the verge of publishing another arc and ran into an issue with custom critters. Basically I've been riding the edge of storage space and seemed to be at or around 95%. I had to remove minion mobs from my groups to get to this. I suddenly reallized my boss mob for my villain group was missing. I figured it's more important to have a boss on the villain group than ally group and both are similar looking so I simply moved the boss from ally to villain group.

Now I'm at 101%! But it was a lateral move!

I went into critter groups and found a duplicate and deleted it. Still at 101%. I went into the actual file folder and found another log for the boss, deteted that, still 101%. Basically it's counting the boss that no longer exists and I don't know how to fix this. I've scoured all my groups and looked at the file folder, to no avail.

I'll now be at 95% with no bosses which is worse than if I hadn't tried to move the boss in the first place. The only fix that I can think of is deleting the group and starting over but that will be huge and not sure if it will work. Any suggestions?

EDIT: After deleting the boss mob from one group, I found that my space was 90% with an error. Clicked on the error and one of my major characters from a group not even associated with the original problem is missing! WTH??

I abandoned changes, clicked on that character directly from the custom tab and ran through the edit just clicking next, next. Went back into arc, now it's at 95% with the mob showing but not attached to the objective. Reattached I'm at square one again. 95% and no bosses.

You are no longer allowed to post responses to reviews that are longer than the review itself!

I mean come on, you shouldn't have to justify your arc this much. Plus she gave you 4 stars, dude! It's not like she told you to rewrite the whole thing.

EDIT: Arc was updated and replayed. New review here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=178

[ QUOTE ]
Whenever you can get around to it. I'll try to give at least one of yours a run sometime this week.

Arc Name: BE Prologue: Gangs United
Arc ID: 250480
Author: @Ozzie Arcane
Morality: Heroic
Length: 4 Missions
Level Range: 10-20
Enemy Groups: Hellions, Trolls, Vahzilok, Custom
Description: An evil organization plots to bring several gangs together under their banner. Introduces a villain group I intend to use in future story arcs.

Should be able to solo or duo it with most ATs. I soloed it with my level 15 Trick Arrow Defender and went through it with a scrapper, defender, controller trio around level 19. If you do encounter any absurd difficulty problems let me know as I'd like to rectify them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Rated 3 stars.

Played with level 13 eng/eng blaster and level 14 shield/fire tank on easiest diff. Game play is excellent, maybe a little challenging (higher rated mobs or groups?) but it wasn't frustratingly hard. Big spider cave map made me groan but it wasn't bad really.

Common thing I see a lot in maps are bosses tied to minions for quest completion. Unless there's a good reason to tie them in, you really should set it to boss kill only, especially on large maps, like the spider cave. I actually think it might have glitch'd and spawned his minion on the other side so it didn't count till I cleared a different hallway.

Now that I got the technical stuff out of the way, I'm going to dive into story structure.

Let me start with this:

You are an excellent writer. You should write more!

Which is why it was a little jarring to see crude internet/gaming humor dumped in almost randomly in the first map. It kinda broke my immersion into your story. Unless you are writing a comedy, I wouldn't do this to your story.

One of my biggest pet peives in AE arcs is not seeing any clues or mission popups AND the story seems to fall apart at the end. Now it's not that bad but the plot gets shakey at the end, seems a little random. Let's say I had more questions then answers before and after the last mission when really this should be the time it's all getting resolved.

If you have a good solid story, you might be able to get away with no clues, mob descriptions, or popups. Even then I would suggest them simply for backup to the player. They are like a life line. Player enters a mission and thinks "WTH? WHAT ARE 5th COLUMN MOBS DOING HERE?" and there's a popup that says These soldiers are dressed up in familiar outfits but each has a patch on his shoulder that clearly has the word EVIL. Then the player goes "ooohh..."

The other thing I'm concerned about with this arc is that it goes in a lot of directions that don't really tie in at any point. I'm left wondering why I did the first two missions. And it doesn't make it better that the contact reveals all these important details right before the last mission. Really this should be the players job to find all these facts (CLUES? *nudge-nudge**wink-wink*).

I want you to know that the only reason I gave you 3 stars is because you have a combination of not utilizing tools of the arc and the story doesn't flow smoothly. I think this arc could easily get 4 stars if you did one or the other (clues would help the flow, if it flowed smoothly, you wouldn't need clues). You have a very manicured way of expressing yourself through writing, now you just need to pick out what is important and put it in order with more details. Don't leave anything up to assumption.

tl:dr
You write very well but need to prioritize facts and details and how they are revealed.
Smooth out the plot.
Utilize the tools available to help you and the player (ie clues).
Don't make geeky gamer jokes unless your whole arc is about Mario Brothers.

Oh and Good job! It was fun and I think it will be an awesome arc once you smooth it out.

In the Shadow of the Towers, arc # 1402
(is this a reference to the twin towers by any chance?)

Rated 4 stars.

Played on a level 13 eng/eng blaster with level 13 arch/mm blaster on easiest diff.

This was an interesting idea for an arc and has some nice build up in some of the action near the end. There is obvious effort in the writing and the game play was pretty good. Nothing too difficult.

Overall, I think this is a decent enough story for four stars but there are some things in the writing that could be improved. I noticed some run on sentences and a few vague statements. You mention "cells" but didn't really mention that there were secret cell groups established before using the word. So it kinda comes out of nowhere without any reference to tie it to. This is just an example but I think the writing needs a good going over, maybe with a friend who can give suggestions.

Be careful with big leaps in the story that don't directly effect the overall plot. For example, you say there's a list of addresses that might possibly have explosives and then say it is unimportant that we find them all. You can simplify this down to: "We have one address. We know the explosives are there but need your help." Then you don't have to put so much effort into covering your tracks on something unimportant to the over all plot.

Also, and this is just being nit picky, I wouldn't put TNT, ammonium nitrate, AND C4 in the same box unless you are going for the absurd factor. If that's the case than kudos! Otherwise you're going to have enough fire power in that one little box to kill you, all the skulls, people on the street outside, the fruit seller across the street, and anyone left in the building. I would pick one, ammonium nitrate has a nice ring to it, and use that.

I also notice at one point you had "theres" and "weve" in the same sentence. That will need to be fixed when the apostrophe key on your computer is working again.

tl:dr Good job with this arc! But you have a lot of room to improve it and have it flow more smoothly. Go over your story a few more times and rewrite where you think you can make it flow better.

Nice work!

[ QUOTE ]
I now suspect Ms. Liberty may have had a hangover, or ate the wrong prawns, rather than getting poisoned by this lot.

[/ QUOTE ]



That's a good idea! Why didn't I think of that??!!

FAKE EDIT: I'm so adding this to my arc.

Clue: Ms. Libery's Sick
Wow! For someone who's drugged, she sure did run fast to the bathroom. You kinda doubt she would let the Hellions poison her. You suspect Ms. Liberty may have a hangover... or she ate the wrong prawns.

[ QUOTE ]

I can't speak for Londer, but I believe there is intentional absurdity in this arc, designed to poke some fun at the sense that low level heroes may be treated a bit like kindergartners in the normal game content. Level disparity in and of itself is kind of a weird thing for the superhero genre, although it makes sense from a MMO mechanics standpoint, of course.


[/ QUOTE ]

This. Pretty much I want this to be as simplistic as possible, yet interesting, or funny enough, for a hero fresh out of Outbreak to enjoy. My requirements for this was to have one group of non-custom mobs. Hellions seemed like the easiest and even then I was torn about putting fire damage on the boss.

I appreciate you taking the time to play and review my arc. I don't think there's anything that I can change from the review without having someone say it seems weird the other way. It's a quirky arc that will probably never reach 5 star status but I'm okay with that.

Thanks for playing it and I'm totally stoked with the rating you gave it!

EDIT: Plus all the Longbow were hanging out in Kings Row camping The Paladin.

[ QUOTE ]
It'd be even easier if the name was in the post.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's easier for you to type @username than it is to copy and paste the arc id number?

You know if it's such a big deal for you, you could quote him and write in the usernames yourself. I'm just saying, it's easy to tell someone to do something but doing it yourself often changes your perspective.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for putting this together. I think your description of us is pretty right on:

(except you misspelled "Londerwost")



[/ QUOTE ]

Whoops, was going mostly from memory and always think of it as "Wanderlust" with the L and W swapped. Fixed now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I really am just "lost."

I got my handle from a dyslexic guy on crack reading poetry on open mic night at a frat house in San Diego. He spits out "LONdeeer... WAAAAAST!" and I'm like brilliant, londer wost... londerwost. and it stuck. That was like in 1993 or 1994, I can't remember.

[ QUOTE ]
Another new arc. Probably not my best work but figured I'd let everyone else judge it. I always thought that the game was lacking in Banished Pantheon arcs so I gave it a try.

Arc ID: 261148
Arc Title: All Consuming
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 Missions
Level Range: 20-25
Description: It began when a derelict ship was detected heading for Paragon City. Who would want to
bring the Shivan here and for what purpose?

[/ QUOTE ]

Reviewed here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....ue#Post13757087

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2180 is workable with lowbies of any level.


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5 stars. Highly recommended.

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1874 is for anybody who can handle Tsoo.


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5 stars. Highly recommended.

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5073 is designed for 20-30 villains.

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5 stars. Highly recommended.

What more do you want?

I believe we played all of these arcs with lowbies arond level 10 and didn't have issues with them, even the scaling up.

[ QUOTE ]
Well here are a couple for your next batch. I don't see any of these taking over an hour to complete.
* "All Consuming" (#261148) is levels 20-25 and heavily features the Banished Pantheon.
* "The Amulet of J'gara" (#1709) is levels 25-33 and is split between Circle of Thorns, Tautha de Dannan, Fir Bolg, and a custom group of my design.

All my other arcs are level 35+.

[/ QUOTE ]

All Consuming, arc ID: #261148

Rated 4 stars.

Played solo with level 28 WM/Shield Brute. Scaled down to level 25 which is good for easiest diff. Almost too easy but that's fine, means a lowbie or squishy would be able to handle it.

This map is loads of fun to play but had a few minor story, finishing issues that might need to be address for this to be a true 5 star arc.

Clue 1, map 1, Sky Raider says "We knew that this ship was involved in smuggling so we decided to raid it en route from the Rogue Isles."

This seems to conflict with Clue 2, map 1: "...the Sky Raiders had smuggled out of Bloody Bay."

We find out who actually is doing the smuggling later so the second clue might need a slight adjustment.

I was confused about the canon regarding shivans and how they relate to the husks but I think that was cleared up to some extent later on, at least to the point were it seems like a moot point by the end. May want to customize some of the mob descriptions just to make it relate more directly to your story. But that's just a suggestion, the original descriptions will work with the story.

Map 2: One of the glowies says "You examine look inside" which is just a minor error.

Map3: Clue is awkwardly worded "O'Malley was looking at it when he looked at her and she just stared into his eyes." This along with the map 4 accept:

"Now we have some more injured officers and she's vanished into the fog.

"It gets worse though, everyone's heard about the incident... and word about the... being involved got out. Now we have... heading into Dark Astoria as well and I don't know how helpful they will be."

Not sure if you want to change this but if you say all this out load it sounds really awkward and I think it can be smoothed out. There's a lot of 'and's that are connecting sentences that have different subjects. There's also a comma that might want to be a period or a semi colon. Maybe break up some of the sentences. Reword how you want it. Just to make it sound more smooth and free flowing.

Map 4 was loads of fun and really did it's job to drive home "the plot thickens!"

Map 5, BP spawned minion zombies to cast on the husks. This wasn't a big deal and doesn't effect the rating but would be a nice fine tune to create some custom caster BP shamans just for the husks.

I'm also not sure if I missed it but it was a little muddy exactly how the shivans are connected with the husks and what the objects actually do. Do they make shivans? Do the husks make shivans? Also I don't think the issue with the Sky Raiders was ever cleared up even though the dialog mentions looking into it in the beginning.

This story/plot is good enough to carry this story even with the little holes but you could easily get this to sparkling perfect 5 star arc by fine tuning and buff job on the story.

Great job man! You make good arcs!

[ QUOTE ]
If you republish your arc ... you need to wait until you see the message "So-and-so has been republished" *then* refresh the search list before you make any more edits.

If you don't do that, and you make more changes ... you'll be editing from your original, unedited version. So any changes you originally made will be lost in the second round.

Let's put it this way.

You have a published mission. Let's call it Mission A.

You spot a few errors. You edit it and republish it. Now let's call it Mission A1.

However, if you don't refresh the search list, then it's still showing Mission A. So if you spot some more errors and make some more edits, you're still editing from Mission A, not from Mission A1. Therefore all of the changes that were in Mission A1 will be lost.

Yes, it's annoying.

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I made over an hour worth of changes when the MA glitch'd up and added spaces to the color tags, rendering all tags visible. After reloading the map, it did exactly what you said, resetting all the changes I made. Luckily I had most of the big changes saved in google docs so I just cut and pasted over. It's all the small changes I made that I'm sure I missed on the second edit. Soooo frustrating.

[ QUOTE ]
I would like to put my arc in the queue please.

The arc is 5 missions but you should have no problem running it in well under an hour with a small team.

It's meant for villains level 22-32 and its difficulty is meant to be on par with regular storyarcs that level. So set your difficulty as you would outside AE.

I was able to solo it without any problem on my 18 MM. I also experimented and put together an 8 man team that was half PuG half SG. Some of the bosses were rough but we didd'nt wipe till the last room, where some members weren't on board with the pulling concept

I understand you may not get to me for a bit.

I will likely start a thread for it before long but want to get a couple of reviews to tweak it first.

I have reviewed a couple now in the critiques thread and I'm enjoying MA a lot lately. I will likely check out one of your arcs tomorrow, and try to find the appropriate place to let you know how it went.

Thanks guys

-Feiz

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Mecha Mutiny: Quatrexin's Quandary, arc #246604

Not rated, see below.

Played with level 13 elec/elec Brute teamed with a 13 dm/fa Brute.

I enjoyed the arc, thought the story was good, the writing was decent. You need a spell checker. Type your stuff up in Word or google docs before you put them in the editor.

I don't think I saw any clues. Maybe one popup. Non of the mob descriptions were changed which was ok but would have been nice to make them custom for your arc. I think the mission description was good enough to carry the story but I would suggest utilizing clues. They are always helpful and nice to give to your players.

I usually don't have an issue with bosses having the mission complete tied to the boss group rather than the boss himself so long as you reflect that in the nav, mission goal. We went to get the last boss at the end, pulled him off the scaffolding (we were over an hour as it was and I wanted to move on) and then found that defeating him did not complete the mission. This was disheartening since we knew that in order to complete this, we were going to have to clear our entire way up. So we quit out early.

I figure this will give you an opportunity to fix the things the obviously need fixing and spend some time on throwing a few more details into your missions. I think with a little bit of touching up, I could rate this at 4 but as it stands, I'm just not going to rate it right now.

The robots were loads of fun and the concept is very creative.

tl:dr

*Spellchecker, text is spotty with obvious spelling errors (how did you misspell 'heroes?' It's in the game title! ).

*Add some clues to help the player, maybe popups too.

*consider removing the requirement for boss group and limit mission complete to just the boss defeat or change the nav text to reflect it. (example: "Defeat boss and his soldiers")

[ QUOTE ]
Well here are a couple for your next batch. I don't see any of these taking over an hour to complete.
* "All Consuming" (#261148) is levels 20-25 and heavily features the Banished Pantheon.
* "The Amulet of J'gara" (#1709) is levels 25-33 and is split between Circle of Thorns, Tautha de Dannan, Fir Bolg, and a custom group of my design.

All my other arcs are level 35+.

[/ QUOTE ]

I played The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709 solo.

5 stars.

Played with a level 13 elec/elec brute solo on easiest diff.

This arc was challenging but fun, solid and entertaining. I knew I was taking a risk using a level 13 for level 25 arc but it actually worked just fine. The main boss spawned as a lieutenant first, than elite boss at the end. I was able to handle both just fine.

The story writing is solid, smooth and clues, mob details kept me up to speed on everything going on, but the story itself was enough to keep my interest going.

The twist in the story was awesome and creative.

I only found one minor issue with a sentence in the map 1 follow up. "I wonder what the Circle of Thorns were doing the there to begin with."

I actually forgot to keep notes because I was having such a good time. Great job!

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, it is meant for 20ish lowbies. Like I stated in my post and on the page.

Hmmm, ok. I guess I assumed most people had played through the Faultline arcs and knew who Castillo was. After looking at it I realized it would be really, really confusing if you don't know he's a higher-up in the Sky Raider food chain. I fixed some text to relay this information.

I think the mission popup which explains the 'search the first base' confusion had its lines cut. Thanks for the heads up on that.

The clue says Durray is Castillos boss. This is why he has contact information.

As for manticore, the allies you pick up in the Castillo mission say they are there on Manticore's orders.

I used paragonwiki for all of my lore information. Am I missing something?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know what to tell you. We didn't rescue the hostages in the mission where he tells you about his boss. And if this is all canon lore, then it has barest of ties to your story.

I would seriously think hard about the contact's dialog and whether or not you are getting across what you want with him just saying "I hate my boss, I have trouble communicating, do this next." Go Hunt Kill Skuls usually doesn't work well as a means for story telling for a multi mission story. There are tons of clues, popups and details you could be adding as well, to help the player along.

EDIT: Ok this is a LONG edit.

I went through and played Wings of Deception a second time, this time with a level 50 solo. I wanted to be sure of what I felt with regards to this arc and to find some more specific points where I got confused.

First thing I found was that there probably needs to be some kind of level cap on this mission. Unless you only want level 20s playing it in which you are going to have a VERY small audience. Personally I believe that any map that is rated for level 20 or level 30 etc should be playable with a level 50. I digress, map 1 spawned level 43 mobs and level 35 boss (gray) while I was level 50. Map 2 spawned level 35 mobs while I was level 35 which might be a bug because i was on Unyielding (second to highest diff). Map 3 scaled to level 28? with me at 28. Final map is level 51 with me at 50.

Given what i15 put out I truly think there needs to be a constant level cap throughout this. The final map really is not bad, I had no issue with a level 30 sk'd up to 50, but it's lacking for continuity.

Contact:

Who the hell is this guy and why am I helping him? This guy is the weakest character in the arc and he should be the strongest since he's the contact. If he's supposed to be mysterious, then make him more mysterious. If not, tell me about him. There is nothing in his "about this contact" detail. Also noticed (minor error) "I gives me heartburn." in send-off text for second mission.

Map 1:

Robots? The contact says about financial and then check this out. I really wish I had a popup to gently guide me into this shocking detail. And why am I taking on these robot supervisors. There is nothing in the mission details or clues to explain why I'm doing the things I'm doing. Doing things 'because' is not a good plot device. Clues? Popups? Mob details? Nothing tells me why I'm doing this stuff in the first place. Glowy at the end gives me two clues but only one is useful. One tells me robots are building jetpacks. The other tells me the council robots are slaved to the skyraider jumpbots which seems like a small detail which is only useful in explaining why council robots would hang with skyraider jumpbots. Couldn't this have been explained in the mob details? Over all, mission has 2 clues, only one is useful, and no popups.

Contact explains and suddenly the story gets interesting. Alright, i like a good mystery! I'm still not sure why I'm helping this guy but this part is great lead into the story.

Map 2:

Contact clearly says he wants me to check out delivery points but then my first and only popup tells me I'm heading for a base? Nav says "Search first base." Wait what? Where did this base come from and why am I searching it when my contact told me to check delivery points? And after getting over that confusion, I'm smacked with another. I'm destroying the deliveries? Why? Contact never mentioned that I needed to destroy them. He said to check them. Is there a clue to fill in this lost detail? No clue. Detail on Special Shipment says "The contents of this crate must be destroyed!" Why? I'm a confused player and you're not throwing me a bone here. I really think you need to add some more to the story here.

Ok I destroy the shipment and it tells me about this Castillo guy. I didn't play through all the faultline stuff or maybe he's just a very forgettable character but I don't know who he is. I wouldn't call myself a nub, I've been playing for 5 years and have 7 level 50s. If I hadn't heard of him, chances are there are others as well. You might wanna clue those players in so they don't feel left out. Mission had one clue and one popup.

Ok, so contact explains this guy's probably stealing money. Not sure how that's connected but I'll go with it. Then the contact seems to change his mind and simply suggest this guy knows who's stealing the money. This was confusing. Is Castillo assumed to be the main guy right off the bat and then switched once you get to him or is it known from the start he isn't and we're still on the hunt?

Map 3: Wyvern?? Why are they here? No clues, no popups, no mob details again. Why should I save this guy? Maybe I won't, he's not required for the mission. So I skip ahead. Another named hostage. No mob detail, I don't know how this guy is connected either. Skip ahead. Get the boss at the end, he says he'll talk but no clue. O mob ported away. Defeat mob, get the clue. Might wanna change the conditions for this to be complete when the boss is killed, not the group. And I'm very confused and a little disturbed by the manic ravings about dancing from this guy. How is this guy connected with dancing? Non of his details explain.

Clue! Ok boss he's never met but he has his phone number and email. Weird. And contact does an email trace? How does the contact have connnection with mail servers? Did he see @aol and think "o I've traced the email?" This is a little outlandish. To fit with the whole mystery thing, might wanna try something like having this boss only contact through another officer or high ranking official. It just seem like such a small, paper thin detail to cover such a HUGE gap in the story. It also leaves me wishing there was more leadup or foreshadowing up to this. And boobytrapped computers? This is also a little outlandish. Who boobytraps computers, even in the comic world? I keep thinking that wooden stakes are going to fly out of the monitor.

I noticed the name of this mission does give some hint about the mysterious contact but I don't think it's enough. I totally missed this the fist time through and probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been ready for it.

Map 4: WHOW! Level 51s! Well, after the initial shock it actually isn't that bad but it might turn some people off who don't know if they can handle it on their sparkling new level 20 character.

And this is where the story kinda falls apart for me. Not sure why i'm clicking on computers and after i do, my chat not seems to echo that with "I hope this triggers something." I get a clue that seems to belong to when I free manticore but I haven't freed him yet. Bug possible. Clue says I rescued manticore's friend. Who? Does he mean that guy I DIDN'T rescue from last mission? No further details other than he's following you and you saved his friend. There could have been a lead into this, something to indicate you are being tailed or a hero is here. Seems very random and very abrupt.

After I trigger something with the last computer, bam. There's the traitor and it's certainly not who I expected but I'm feeling empty about it. This is a huge leap and I'm confused. Most mysteries drop little hints or give you a chance to guess, who done it. Plus there's no more clues. The only clue tells me about some random hero who doesn't even show until now and isn't apart of the story. Seems to me the most important, gotcha, character in the story should get the most detail, not the least. Seems to me this would at least warrant a clue "turns out..." This character's dialog seems strange and I'm not convinced this stayed true to canon. The contact, strangely enough, seems to echo this by stating that this villain has actually saved the world time and again.

At the end I'm still left wondering who this contact is and why I did all this stuff for him and why he can chose to hold onto very sensitive information that could ultimately harm the reputation of Vanguard. I don't get the feeling he's an important enough person to be in charge of that kind of power.

CONCLUSION:

Second time through I still got the same feeling from the first. The arc doesn't seem complete and needs some work. It leaves the player confused at many points and makes leaps of logic to come to the ultimate conclusion and does not fully utilized clues, popups, and mob details. I would still do what I suggested in my first review which is:

tl:dr

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Make sure your story flows and is something more than paper thin. Try to explain why certain things happen, foreshadowing would be necessary for this arc, which has a mystery feel. Check your arc, play it a lot, just make sure it's smooth before you call it done.

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