MA: Opera of the Abyss

Architect is out on the Live servers, so I have returned from my enforced 4+ month's isolation to try CoX out once more.

First thing that hits me is how pretty it all is. (So ATITD isn't the model of a graphics intensive client.)

And that I need to get the upcoming Super Booster pack quite badly because all those magic robes and gowns are something that I would really want for my next music video, I had been at a loss as to how to simulate old time Venician fashion with existing NPCs. :)

And while I was at it, I want the cyborg pack and the valkyrie looks kinda cool if slightly skimpy - maybe the teleport to mission power makes up for it, not sure. Damn, but their microtransaction scheme is working! Anyhow, that's for later. I still have until Apr 14 or so to consider the state of me sanity.

So anyhow, I log in, collect some ancient badges, get some ancient contacts talking to me, score umpteen times over on my one Day Job badge since my scrapper has been buried at the train station for 120 days or so, and make my way over to Architect Entertainment.

I managed to find my way down to the consoles, no trouble, and all the people hovering in front of the panels gave away the controls. The UI for browsing missions looks quite decent. All the dev's choice stuff and 5 star things turned up in front, and one can dig through the others if one were in the mood for potential horrible writing.

As usual, I found my share of "look, free architect badge missions! max everything out here!1!1!!!4lol" missions, in my trawl through the nether regions, but that's only to be expected.

I thought I'd try out one of the dev's choice first. The writing quality all looked quite good. I picked one that looked soloable and threw me back into the past, aka Opera of the Abyss.

First impression, neat, a map that actually fitted, I was able to immerse myself into the mission, surprising Legacy Chain and clicking and destroying objectives that actually looked like actual objectives (not clicking on a crate and seeing -you destroy cardboard boxes- for example).

Then I got grumpy.

Because the boss that I was supposed to defeat (says so on my mission objective), decided to take off on a 50% hp trigger and run. Ok, my scrapper only has one bloody knockdown. Good thing it's ranged. Bad news is that this is a basement map with so many corners and line of sight issues. I get to use it twice, chasing the NPC valiantly.

Ok, fine. I'd resigned myself to being an incompetent fool and braced to "RP" a tongue-lashing from the contact or a 'failure' style mission goal.

Instead, I find myself with the "Defeat Boss" objective erased from my mission objectives, and the mission hanging around in limbo. Huh? I walk around aimlessly on a small empty map for a bit, walk outside to see the Mission Architect building, the contact still tells me "GO! Destroy the Funkily-Named Machine!"

Hello, it's destroyed. The clue I've gotten. But that stupid Arab got away. No tongue-lashing? I'm hanging around in limbo here... *twiddle twiddle* Save vs loss of immersion: failed. Score one for bug or untested combination of events or lack of support of mission editor to handle an escaped boss.

I don't know which it is, but it makes me grumpy because shouldn't the first thing you should test the crap out of is the two possibilities when you have a running boss? Get away or death. Are you assuming that everyone is so uber leet they will destroy the boss before he runs, or has some kind of hold?

So anyhow, I am forced to quit the entire storyline (because I can't find a way to complete or restart a single mission) and take the arc again. (What a goddamn masochist.)

This time, I find the spawns in completely different places which are less immersive (oh, score one for the retarded dynamic spawn placement of CoX). The bugger of a boss surprises me around a corner, and the next thing I know, I'm held.

WTF?!?! I'm playing a major defence scrapper here, why am I held? And slept. Of course I die horribly because I have no break frees in my tray. I'm still fuming over idiots who make nasty hold-equipped bosses, wondering about how squishies handle it, when the second piece clicks into place.

Hang on, I'm a bloody scrapper. Don't I have effective mez immunity thanks to my class? I look around for practiced brawler, and it's there in my tray, and it looks greyed out and fired, since I put it on auto-fire. I obviously don't have the status buff icon anymore since I got slept and killed. And I still don't know what the heck happened.

Now I'm very grumpy. And it's just mission 1.

Anyhow, I go to the hospital and come back, eat a strong luck for good measure and descend on them like a wrathful harpy, hell hath no fury and what not. Now that I am aware of the boss' annoying tendency post-mortem, as it were, I spam my knockdown - he still breaks line of sight fairly easily, and I only manage it in the nick of time. He's got the door open when I hit my spin attack, and just as he's leaving, my attack hits and drops the rest of his hp. He falls down dead.

We now pause for 15 seconds with no objective change happening, and I'm about to fume again, wondering if it was too close and if an open door by an escaping NPC means that the objective was cancelled anyway. Finally, it clicks into place after a long wait - I suppose there was some kind of timed check involved, and the mission eventually realized hey, the boss ain't here anymore, where's he, oh he's dead after all, and checked the victory condition. Or it was lag. Who knows.

Second mission, I read the contact's speech. "So you managed to destroy the machine, but not before the NPC stole the plans? I doubt he has gone too far back into the past."

Err...continuity check. I killed this guy, right? You told me to defeat him. He's down. On the ground. Yes, I know you said his body got pulled back in time or what not. If I defeated him, surely I could search the bastard before his body got pulled back in time? It's reading like you wanted him to run, so you may as well have just made a victory condition for him running away, and we would have all been very happy the first time around.

*grumble*

"You and Nikola Tesla must hurry there at once at put a stop to the NPC."

(sic) With only the name of the NPC changed on purpose because I refuse to type his long bloody name. I'm happy to see that the grammatical inconsistencies of the standard developer content continue in our developer's choice missions made by other players. This in a mission whom the creator emphasizes as a "heavy story" arc.

*growl*

Mission 2. I step in. I'm supposed to join forces with Nikola Tesla. I'm paused at the door because I'm typing this blog.

By the time I get to scrolling through targets, I notice that the machine objective is at a surprisingly amount of low hp left. Huh?

There's damage ticks scrolling over the machine and the two Rikti near it. For 41 damage a piece. Huh?

Oh wait. Is that Nikola Tesla I see, cowering in the face of the two Rikti, with a major lightning field toggle on him?

*LOL*

BOOM, goes the machine objective. While I'm laughing my ass off, the two Rikti fall over and die.

Gee, I think you're doing fine, Mr Tesla. Why don't you just continue without me and keep cowering at the Rikti? My inferiority complex is acting up cos your lightning field is more uber than some of my attacks... :P

I'm heartily tempted to let him solo everything, except it's Rikti, and I get vanguard merits, so I do need to at least touch some of the NPCs...

Problem number 2 turns up after we trash the spawn at the bottom of the next ramp. Mr Tesla gets stuck. He's trying to go up the ramp where I'm standing, typing into the other screen, like a fly bumping into a window. So I go down the ramp. But there's a big fat broken machine in the way. And now he's bumping in the other direction.

Just when I think I have to leave Mr Uber behind, he finally gets it into his head to fly UP a little, before going forward, and comes to join me.

Out of curiosity, I check his bio. The world knows Dr. Nikola Tesla as the miracle inventor of the radio, alternating current electricity, (and I'm just about thinking, not bad, he's quoting nearly the exact same speech our science educators use for our Tesla Coil demonstration, I read this...) and of course the Telsa Coil. Nikola Telsa is less well known for his secret adventures, blah blah blah.

*sigh*

Adventurer's Log, entry number AE6. Found a number of interesting and well-written clues strewn around the lab. Nikola Tesla continues to pwn entire spawns with his 53 damage a tick lightning field and his 406 damage electrical bolts. Feeling unnecessary.

Adventurer's Log, entry number AE7. Found the coolest looking mystical cauldron as an objective. Also found Rikti gathered around it with mystical green glows. What the heck? I thought Rikti don't use magic? While I'm standing around trying to figure it out, our darling Nikola Tesla blows up the cauldron in my face and kills the Rikti, and the other spawn nearby for good measure, then runs off chasing a Rikti monkey into another spawn to slaughter. I'm tempted to just keep hiding in his lightning field.

I finally find the relevant cauldron clue in my immense list of random clues. It speaks of defeating Circle of Thorn gathered around the mystic cauldron. I guess Icon's had run out of mystic robes (all packaged for Super Booster II maybe) and had a special on Rikti Halloween costumes.

Adventurer's Log, entry number AE8. Found Dr Creed. Let the two labcoats duke it out with each other while I destroyed a mystical cauldron like a good minion. Finally found someone Nikola Tesla would die to. Scared to repeat mission over, so I hit Dr Creed and turned his aggro away in three hits and defeated him. He said very satisfactory evil genius-losing things. Still puzzled about the aggro loss because the two of them were duking it out for 200-400 hp blasts, and I was only hitting for 100-220 hp.

Adventurer's Log, entry number AE9. Nikola Tesla pwned the unpronounceable custom named NPC.

Mission 3 introduction. Found 3 typos. a '/', a 'to in' and a '&'

I see the timestream is indeed becoming very fragile.

Adventure's Log, entry number AE10. Miss Nikola Tesla. Not used to fighting own battles. Met first custom enemies, Derivatives that look like yellow zombies. Very cool. Very well done. Almost a shame to kill them. Endless potential of AE to be very interesting very obvious here.

Still not sure why Rikti are all over the place. Except for free vanguard merits. Except that I'm back in time. So I'm actually helping out in the first Rikti War, and earning futuremerits for the second invasion? Cos every Rikti I defeat now, is one less that will attack much much later? Do not envy the Vanguard clerks their tally.

Sidelong possibly long-ago still-existing bug note: Global channel went on the fritz. One tab switched global channels oddly. Bright side, more than 5 global channels is pretty darned awesome. Could join the new VirtueAE channel without losing any of my old ones. Dark side, it switched back to the Guardian channel in my tab by itself until I noticed. Hrmph.

Adventurer's Log AE11. Getting tired of fighting Rikti. This map is very big. Hunting for glowies is boring. I am either losing my touch and sense of aggro radius, or these things are very close together, because I'm triggering two spawns at a time very regularly. This leads to many adds because of all the comm officer portals. It might be my unyielding setting. Good thing I am a scrapper.

Done. New and final mission. Happy to be fighting Derivatives at last. Custom enemies are cool. Also happy to be an /SR scrapper, because the few hits that seeped through look like they hurt.

Adventurer's Log AE12. Found Nikola Tesla kneeling down with hands behind head, with no one around him. Again.

Surely there's a way to introduce a mission ally that doesn't involve them getting waylaid by the enemies in the mission? Maybe not. :/

He is pwning all these poor zombies with cute red shoulder capes. Again. Let's hope the Phantom puts up more of a fight at the end.

Hitting severe inventory issues with salvage and recipes. Again. Damn MMO inventory management minigame.

I must admit that having an elite boss NPC around and watching him kill things, while helping out occasionally, is immensely more entertaining than having to nickle and dime every last minion and lieutenant to death myself. Like your very own pet uber-UBER-voltaic sentinel.

Am now trailing a 3 NPC army. This is fun. The end battle is made of win. Especially because the custom enemies have a mass trigger aggro, so all of them who could see us swarmed us, aka half the room. At last a big brawl, with the allies to help out and see to completion.

I must say ending with a bang does help the ratings, because I was grumbling along with about a 4, and am now feeling warm and fuzzy enough with adrenaline to maybe consider a five star rating.

Still, I think I must maintain a little bit of my high quality standard and save 5 for something I really consider fantastic.

So I will need to shift down my scale to something much more fair. This will be worth a 4, an arc that is well-put together with decent custom enemies and a good story, but flawed with a couple bugs and typos.

A 5 will be flawless excellence on the par of the awe-inspiring like Aralcox's videos.

3 will then become an average decent arc that doesn't break down and die and halfway, and is completable. Aka most of the normal content are somewhere between a 3 and 4. Awesome 5 is for arcs like the secret of Ghost Widow stuff.

Not sure about 1 and 2. I need to read up and see whether these mean bad/poor, or if one or two stars is valuable and means fair/decent. Won't rate anything below 3 yet then, it's 3-5 or naught for now.

One thing good going for this. I can certainly make content last a lot longer by having stuff be somewhat different and getting to rate and evaluate it. Critiques and reviews take up a lot more time than just mindlessly plowing through the same-old, same-old masses of enemies and grinding out xp.