Arc 60866: Do You Have Previous Experience?

[OpMegs]

Arc Description:

"Crey's resident go-between Mr. Mason's got another problem for you to solve. One wonders how many rogue robots he's lost this time..."

Writer's Tips:

This mish involves, unlike the prior one, an entirely different custom faction "Crey Prototypes". However, the Archvillians themselves are extremely
capable. Expect to use yellows and blues for the Striker and Smasher Archetypes, respectfully. Also, anyone that can solo this thing at Rugged or above is
truly uber, as far as this particular writer is concerned. O_O

EDIT:

Apparently, I posted this to the wrong forum. Erk. Uh, forum kick taxi!

EDIT 2:

Accidentally clicked an Unpublish button and now it has a new arc number. At least it only had 3 ratings. :lol
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

[Acyl]

OpMegs wrote:

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Also, anyone that can solo this thing at Rugged or above is truly uber, as far as this particular writer is concerned. O_O

Challenge accepted, Mister OpMegs.

I'll let you know how it turns out. =)
-- Acyl

[Terrenceknight]

*waves* I did and rated your mission Ops, along with a lengthy comment to go with it, I solo'd it on unyeilding, For me the biggest immediate upfront
threat was the 'Sapper' Arch Type for obvious reasons, and I fussed when the Slasher did its T9 so that was 3 minutes of trying to keep its hit points
down untill the T9 wore off, Smasher was annoying to try and overcome the Damage resist/Regen/ubarHP Again, another long fight, ended up useing a few reds,
along with the blues I had to use earlier vs Sapper, I was greatful there was no T9 or T8 on the Smasher or I wouldn't have been able to put her down, and
would have wept if she self rezzed lol. The Striker..I'll be honest..was by far the easiest, I Shredded her like a paper shredder on rice paper

Still, it was -really- fun and again Makes me hate Crey and Mason all the more *grin* I felt -horrible- as I read the Arch-Type's comments *Hangs self*

5 stars from me

[Acyl]

Okay, I solo'd this on Rugged (or rather the villain equiv, Vicious). I could have done it on Unyielding, honestly - larger mob size wouldn't have really bothered me.
I think it's very challenging. We all know which character Terry used, but I should probably say. =D I ran this on Battery Acid, my 50 Elec/Will Brute, using my partially IO'd 'psuedotank' build.
Here's how it was for me:

Slasher: Tier 9 was very annoying. It took forever, jeez...but I had no hair-tearing arrrghhh moments in the fight, it merely took a long time. Had to wait until it dropped before killing her.

Striker: I needed to use two yellows to take this boss down...one wasn't sufficient, but when the second popped it proceeded fine.

Sapper: I had to burn...I think three, four blues on the sapper? Once early on when I was first end-drained. Ol'blue-sparks successfully detoggled me once, right when the boss was almost dead; I had to jump back a bit, pop a couple more blues before leaping back to finish it. Wasn't that frustrating though, quite fun.

Smasher: Now this was hard. This was very very hard. The inspirations I had left didn't really do me any good against the Smasher's high damage. And I didn't seem to be doing much damage to her either. Got my posterior completely handed to me on a silver platter. Hit the hospital, came back with a bunch of purples...and promptly discovered the purples did not really help against the Smasher's high accuracy. So, er, I had to hit the hospital again. Well. I could have run that time, but heck, I was almost dead, figured it'd be faster to just let myself die. I need my debt badges anyway.
What I ended up doing for my third attempt for the Smasher was...oranges. I used one or two orange insps at a time, enough to put my S/L resistance to the point where I could regen faster than the Smasher could do damage. Then I could see about slowly whittling down that health bar. It was a very long fight, but with this method I wasn't in significant danger. I should say Battery Acid already has very high native S/L resists and is IO'd for HP and Regen bonuses, so I dunno how well this will work for anyone else.
...
Ok, that's playwise. Story-wise though...if I had to be honest, I was slightly disappointed. I liked the NPC dialogue in the mission, but I was kinda =( at the custom NPC descriptions. I don't mind brevity in bios, but this really said...not much at all. I think the story hook could be brought across better with...I dunno, maybe some optional glowies with some informative clues or somesuch.
I'm also not sure how well this would work for someone who isn't a) part of our SG circle, or b) doesn't catch the Bubblegum Crisis reference off the bat. But that's always the danger with homage or reference missions.
-- Acyl

[OpMegs]

One thing I need to really look into is the level of filesize everything else not custom takes up.

For a quick reference, initially there were boss level enemies in this mish, but fitting all of them into one map required 110.87% of the allowed file size.

Optional glowies might definitely be a way to make up for the fact that I didn't want to be TO on the nose with the bio descriptions. At best, they'd be from Mason, and thus give you a combat evaluation. After all, he's TRYING to dehumanize them from your perspective.

Smasher being challenging is VERY encouraging. Me, Uni, and MD trio'd it and Striker was one step below MAKO for sheer problems presented. I fear her as an actual AV. Smasher, however, gets both Strength of Will and Resurgence at /Extreme WP levels, so I dialed her back to Extreme/Hard. Interestingly, when Sylia soloed this mission, she had no trouble keeping up with Smasher's damage(Invincibility meant Smasher whiffed about as often as she hit) because of her main weakness: KB. Not being an Extreme, she doesn't have Willpower's status effect protection toggle(if she did, she'd have both Strength of Will and Resurgence and I'm not sure people would appreciate that. :lol) so the best strategy for Sylia was to keep her on the ground most of the time and whittle away at her. Especially as I didn't have Fury to draw back on.

Oddly, it seems the AI didn't particularly think y'all were threats if Striker didn't toggle her Tier 9 which I left in.

I also note that the ending dialogue from Mason is left deliberately ambiguous as to what happened, as is the souvenir you should've received. However, if you aren't actively checking that for dialogue, then it's probably not very obvious. But this is what testing is for!
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

[Acyl]

...Smasher is bouncable? My brute has three knockdown/knockback powers. I was using two of them on her - they are part of my attack chain, while the third (Lightning Clap) is for utility. I never used Lightning Clap, but I didn't seem to notice any bouncy bouncy with my two damage KD powers in play. I could swear she never fell down.
But I may be out of my tree. I'll try again later.
As for file size - the main issue there is almost always custom critters. You have what - four minion types, four lieutenants, four EB/AVs? Twelve customs total? Yeah, that's pushing it. It might be possible to condense things slightly and have only two minions, two lieuts ... use, I dunno, Striker and Smasher as minions, Sapper and Slasher as lieuts, and...I dunno what as bosses. But you see what I'm getting at here.
Mind bosses won't show up while a player is solo, typically...
Maybe make four boss types, but to make sure they're used even while solo? That brings you up to the current custom count you have now. Throw another four non-required boss objectives in, and use the boss-grade models. Eight boss fight objectives on a big map should be doable, and also give more opportunities for dialogue.
Making the character bios be combat evaluations as per Mason seems a great idea to me.
EDIT: I dunno if Striker fired her tier 9 or not. I presume Elude was not used; as I said I fired two yellows and beat her before they wore off.
EDIT 2: With regards to ending ambiguity - yes, I liked that. I really liked that.
Personally, my mental image goes something like this... Battery Acid smiling and nodding to Mason. Before pointing out that she took the time to carefully tag each deactivated shell. And it should be pretty clear which ones the important four are, anyway - c'mon, don't you guys trace components? Sure, the remains are pretty scorched and smashed, but there should be ENOUGH bits with identifiable serial numbers.
She wouldn't, though, say anything about the canvas shopping bag she rather casually carried out when she left the lab. A large-ish bag, just about big enough to hold four adult human heads and a few extra bits. Nope. Wouldn't know anything about that...nope, not at all, mm-hm.
    
-- Acyl

[Sweno]

I can't say much regarding story line, but having 3 of them in the same room? evil! and fun!

And yes, Smasher was very hard (arrg MASSIVE regen)
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Wiregeek]

Sapper did bad things to me, I need a counselor and therapy now
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Bob Schroeck]

(Moving thread into Mission Design subforum.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.