Police Woman

Meet Arrow Girl, agent of Wyvern! Arrow Girl's next adventure was Bricked Electronics (arc #6625), a heroic level 8-19 arc by @Zasani. (I also played this arc once on the live servers.) Mark Freeman, a hacker with mutant electronics sensing powers, finds something suspicious on a cell phone and sends Arrow Girl to investigate. The reasoning behind this is a little vague, but sure. Soon: The Goldbrickers are involved somehow! This leads me to raid a nearby warehouse where... there aren't any Goldbrickers. But there are some custom clockwork that have been refurbished by a local kid inventor! She figures I'm there to arrest her. Yeah, putting refurbished clockworks on the street is probably against the law somehow. But we come to an understanding, and she gives us a lead to the next location ... supposedly dumpster diving, but actually: The dump turns out to be occupied by a Council base where they're plotting some ... completely unrelated attack on the city?? Fortunately I manage to stop them from releasing the poison gas, which sends me back to the main plot with the Goldbrickers. After a couple more missions, I discover that the Goldbrickers were planning to rob a bank, and Arrow Girl manages to stop them. Overall, each mission was decently constructed with lots of clues detailing what's going on in that mission. Mark Freeman's dialog was well-written and referencing his mutant powers was a nice dip into the lore. The kid sidekick and her robots were fun. However, I felt the plotting was on the weak side. The initial incident "There's something weird about this phone" really didn't seem like something important enough that you'd call a hero to investigate, and I didn't feel like my character had a very strong motivation to follow up on the leads for the first 3 missions. Then we accidentally stumble across the Council plot to poison gas the city. This was interesting (if random), but it ends up being just a side quest. This felt weird because poison gassing the city is a much more serious threat than either the cell phone investigation or the bank job at the end of the arc. I gave this arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended up 3/4ths of the way through level 17.

Arrow Girl's next adventure was All That Glitters 1.3: Capitalism in Cap Au Diable (arc #36056), a Vigilante level 12-20 story arc where you help Wyvern stop demons from overrunning Cap au Diable. This is the third story arc in a series. I considered going back to play All That Glitters 1.1 first, but the earlier story arcs are lower level and wouldn't fit the rules of engagement that I set; so I decided to go ahead and start with 1.3 and see how it went. Off to Cap au Diable to help with the demon invasion problem! There were a lot of civilians and protestors roaming the streets, which I thought was a nice touch. Ow ow hot hot hot! After clearing the streets, my Wyvern contact sends me to the power palnt to deal with Bat'Zul himself. Fortunately, Wyvern and the Legacy Chain provide me with backup. Rounding up the various allies and leading them around caused me to clear most of the map, but it ended up being worthwhile when I finally track down Bat'Zul perched near the top of a smokestack. Getting my allies up the catwalks to reach Bat'Zul was a bit like parallel parking, but once the fight started, Arrow Girl promptly fell off the catwalk and the allies ended up doing most of the work while I ran back up. Bat'zul revealed during the fight that Duke Mordrogar and the Hellions were behind releasing him, so Arrow Girl's next mission takes her into the interior of the power station to track down Mordrogar and rescue some power plant workers. This has got to be a workplace safety violation After defeating "Duke" Mordrogar, I find out the real mastermind behind this is "Duchess" Mordrogar, one of the literal Girlfriends from Hell. We have a final showdown with her in the fourth mission. The arc reaches a climax with the defeat of Duchess Mordrogar. The Hellion plot is stopped, and everyone is happy! But wait, there's a fifth mission! In the final mission, Arrow Girl joined up with some Wyvern agents and go after the Goldbrickers, the Langston Corporation and a bunch of evil scientists. Archery power!! To be honest the fourth mission felt like the "finale" mission, and the fifth mission felt more like a post-credits trailer for the next arc of the mega-epic. Several characters and references from arcs 1.1 and 1.2 appear, and there's an explanation for how this particular story arc furthers the narrative of the overall epic. The arc is clearly labeled as being the third in a series, though, so I can't blame it for that. The Langston Corp custom NPCs looked good and didn't seem overpowered; the extra Wyvern allies certainly helped. Defeating the various evil scientists and reading their notes finished the story arc - along with giving me copious plot hooks for later story arcs in the series. -- I liked the large amount of detail in each mission and the ties to canon like how the PTS is powered and reusing Duke Mordrogar. The map selection was perfect, using the Cap and PTS maps made it feel very immersive, and there were a lot of great visuals along the way. I liked having allies to help with the AVs, though maybe the allies were a little too powerful against Bat'Zul; at my difficulty level, I had 2 EB allies and 1 boss ally that helped with the EB Bat'Zul. I did think that mission 4 was a more natural ending to the story arc, but I kind of get why a fifth mission was necessary to tie-in to the rest of the mega-epic. Overall I really liked this story arc. I gave it 5 stars. Arrow Girl reached level 17, and this arc also inspired me to give her a "Wyvern" costume.

This is what my search looks like: "Text: SFMA; my level" (where my level has ranged from 12 to 16 on this run, so far). Then I manually filter these search results further by skipping all the arcs that are "level 1-54" or otherwise have a level cap above 20, since most such arcs are poorly balanced for a level 16 character. I've been trying to work through these from top to bottom in the search results, so highly rated arcs with lots of ratings (well, 20ish, anyway) show up for me first. My search, despite being so simple, only comes up with 3 pages of results, which is actually a pretty manageable number of story arcs to look through. Hope that helps! Happy hunting!

Yeah, Spirals: Part One was level 1-24 so strictly speaking was too high level for Arrow Girl's rules of engagement, but I didn't catch that at the time. The difficulty is probably fine. Arrow Girl's next adventure was [Ordinary People 1] Standard Operating Procedure, a level 15-20 heroic story arc by @cranebump where you get tasked to stop some mayhem occurring in Kings' Row, and this leads you into fighting a new street gang. Arrow Girl started off rescuing some hostages in a building in Kings Row. The rescued hostages don't help out, but they sure have opinions about how I'm doing things. Arrow Girl rescues another satisfied customer While clearing the building, Arrow Girl ran into the "Skullions", a new street gang that apparently split off from the Skulls and Hellions. They have a lot of custom characters but are mixed with regular Skulls and Hellions so don't seem too bad. A lead from the Skullions causes my contact, Detective Freitag, to send me to Prince Kiros Nandelu's estate. I'm excited to see Prince Kiros used in a story arc, but for some reason Freitag keeps talking about "Powers Division" on this arc, which seems weird to me ... as far as I know, "Powers Division" is strictly a Praetorian organization? Arrow Girl manages to rescue Prince Kiros, but it turns out the villains have made off with his precious Cullinan diamond! For the third mission, Freitag sends Arrow Girl to look for the missing diamond, along with another hero, Whipsmart, whose AI does not live up to his code name. Arrow Girl heals one of Whipsmart's robots who was left parked in a burn patch while the mastermind charges the street gangers with a beam rifle. We don't find the diamond, but we do find a clue leading us to Port Oakes (I think? the fourth mission says we're going to Port Oakes in one place and Mercy Island in another). There, Arrow Girl clears the docks and part of a ship, eventually defeating a Skullions boss. I don't know who this Pyranna chick is, but she clearly knows Arrow Girl After defeating Pyranna, we have to destroy the portal that she mentioned in dialog, which was guarded by the mysterious "Hats" faction that the story arc has been hinting at. After that, we finally find the diamond laying around on the ground. I feel like this could've been explained a little better; Freitag explicitly told me that finding the Cullinan diamond was my highest priority, but "Find the Cullinan diamond" didn't even become one of my objectives until near the end of the mission. Instead I had to Defeat Pyranna (a villain who had never been mentioned before showing up in the nav bar), which then set off a series of chained objectives. The teleporter objective was referenced in Pyranna's dialog, but it wasn't clear to me why the diamond just spawns as a clickable glowy after breaking the teleporter. I noticed the first three missions had plentiful clues explaining every step of the way, but the fourth mission didn't seem to have any clues until the very end. In the fourth mission I also noticed there was a "Link up with Acrobattle" objective that appeared in the nav bar when I entered the mission, but instantly completed within a few seconds (maybe because he had no guards?) - not sure if this was intentional. Finding the Cullinan diamond finished the story arc, but Freitag tells me about some loose ends (another missing jewel, and the continuing mystery of the "Hats" faction) as teasers for "part 2" of the epic. -- Overall I liked this story arc, and I liked the links to canon characters like Freitag and Nandelu. Freitag's voice in the mission briefings seemed just right. The Skullions gang seemed interesting and not too overpowered. I liked the snarky dialog from the rescued captives in the first mission. I was confused by the references to "Powers Division" and I think the fourth mission needs some work, it doesn't seem quite as well-polished as the earlier missions. I gave this arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc 45% through level 16.

Arrow Girl's next story arc was Spirals: Part One. (arc #55109), a Crusader-faction story arc by @Darmian where you're tasked with finding a mole that's been leaking info on the Resistance. Arrow Girl rescued a crotchety old Resistance leader who wasn't real thrilled to see her. Arrow Girl followed a lead into the Ministry of Information, where she encountered numerous Imperial bureaucrats and nearly got taken down by "friendly" fire from another group of Resistance fighters. Later, Arrow Girl teamed up with the Resistance and had a tough battle against Powers Division. One of her allies fell in battle and shouted encouragement with his dying breath. Arrow Girl shares a quiet moment of introspection with the other Resistance members before the final battle. Showdown with the Olympian guard. (I really liked this visual, with the giant abstract sculpture framing the shot.) This story arc was also a little hard for Arrow Girl as a level 15 blaster. There were a number of custom mobs, but they were mostly not too bad, except that it seemed like all the bosses and elite bosses would self-rez after death, which was pretty annoying. The custom mobs were mixed with standard mobs, and allies were provided in several missions which helped on the difficulty. However, numerous ambushes did make it rough for Arrow Girl, and she suffered 2 defeats from those. The missions themselves had very complex mechanics where objectives would trigger other objectives (and spawns of mobs) which would trigger yet more objectives. It's easy to make this kind of mission annoying due to the amount of backtracking required, but the missions were set up with a natural progression of initial objectives in the front, and later objectives in the middle/back of the map, with each objective clearly labeled. As a result, the complex daisy chain of objectives went off like a Swiss watch. The writing was terrific, with the contact and the allies doing a good job of portraying the amorality of the Crusader faction, and plentiful clues explaining the plot details and even providing info for team members who aren't the leader and can't read the mission briefings and debriefings. I loved the various connections to the in-game Praetorian lore. I was disappointed that there were so many loose ends at the end of the story arc, but then decided that since I had willingly started an arc with "Part 1" in the name, I shouldn't be judgy about that. So overall I thought the arc was a little high on difficulty for this level, but the writing and the mechanics outweighed that. I gave it 5 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc at level 16 and picked up Glue Arrow. I'm hoping that dropping a slow patch as a pseudo-control might help her survivability against the tough groups of mobs I'm starting to encounter.

Arrow Girl's next adventure was Of Guns and Asa Ronan (arc #41018), a level 15-20 villain story arc by @cranebumpwhere you do some dirty work for the Marcones and run into a rival villain with a history of bad blood with your employer. I ran into some weird glitches early in this story arc; a couple times I ran into doorways that looked like this: Wha....? This looked like a clip plane issue, which is likely the game's fault, not the arc's fault. I could walk through them, but it was certainly disorienting. As a Marcone triggerwoman I ran afoul of a PPD special forces unit full of custom characters that were very hard to fight. Soon I had become rivals with the Multiple Man, who had illusions and clones everywhere. Ahhh! Not in the face! Fortunately I manage to defeat Multiple Man and break his equipment, so that he'll never be a problem for me again (...). While smuggling the captured Multiple Man out of the city, I ran into the black berets again. I'll mention again that they are REALLY hard for a level 15 - much harder than the canonical low level enemies. Lots of them have mez protection, some of them can mez, and this boss actually popped Elude or something similar (note my 7.5% chance to hit ... this is not cool for a low level arc). Finally in the last mission "somehow Multiple Man returned"... and even more powerful. Nevertheless I managed to beat the upgraded Multiple Man and rescue my employer and his (?) family, so it had a happy ending for everyone but Multiple Man. Overall I thought this arc was too difficult for a squishy character in the official level range of level 15-20. I maybe would've had more success if I were playing a scrapper, brute, or a level 25+ character; as a blaster I suffered 4 defeats, but eventually got through it with several hospital runs and heavy use of inspirations. The custom characters, with high defenses and mez protection, felt overpowered; maybe you could reduce their defense powers and/or mix in some generic PPD with the custom PPD characters. Fighting a jillion clones and encountering one false lead after another was frustrating, but it was probably intended to be, considering Multiple Man's powerset. I would've liked Multiple Man's clones to have a little more visual interest, though maybe they are based on the Phantom Army from Illusion powerset. I didn't like that the clues told me I had put a stop to Multiple Man's powers, but later he came back even more powerful; that felt like cheating. The story itself was pretty decent, and I liked the formatting and the use of clues, but I felt that it was overshadowed by the difficulty. I gave the story arc 3 stars. Arrow Girl reached the top of level 15 by the end.

Arrow Girl's next arc was Test for the Destined Ones (arc #19492), a villainous story arc where you get assigned to a buggy virtual reality training simulation. It starts out pretty slow with fairly generic missions fighting low level enemies, but then there's an interesting twist. Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes? Wait ... is this not part of the training simulation? Oops, Spoiler warning! Though the first couple missions seemed kind of slow, the later missions more than made up for it. I waffled between 4 and 5 stars on this arc, ended up giving it the benefit of the doubt and 5 stars. Arrow Girl hit level 15.

My next story arc to play through was Rewarded as a Loyalist Deserves (arc #37325). In this Loyalist faction story arc you're initially tasked to rescue some civilians and police from the Resistance, but it gets complicated and you end up fighting through a rogues gallery of most of the various Praetorian factions. A Syndicate boss hints that the person I'm trying to rescue may not be who she seems. Arrow Girl stumbles over a Destroyer rave in a helicopter hangar. This was a cool visual. Oooh, foreshadowing! They're gonna get me! I finally found her, the missing hostage that I had been trying to rescue for 4 (!) straight missions. Despite that, she didn't have much to say. Oh no, they really are out to get me! (Seriously, this set of ambushes was ridiculous at level 13.) Overall I thought trying to rescue the same hostage for 4 missions straight was a bit repetitive; one of the NPCs even lampshades this by saying "Sorry, your princess is in another castle." It was also rather confusing to figure out what side Nishimura was really on - I got the impression that she was a triple agent? But I could've used some clues or dialog that more clearly spelled this out. There were way too many ambushes - it was dramatic if I could manage to survive them, but as a level 13 squishy blaster, facing 3 ambushes at a time felt like too much. It was nice getting to see Praetorian lore and enemy groups explored, though. I gave the arc 3 stars. Despite suffering 2 defeats, Arrow Girl made it to level 14.

Thanks for the support! Yeah, I had been semi-dormant on AE stuff for awhile, but reading in another thread about how hard it is to find good story arcs for lower level toons inspired me to give this a try.

Arrow Girl's first story arc to play through is The Lazarus Project (arc #6554) by @Coulomb. I think I may have played this on the live servers, but I didn't really remember any details (it would've been around 15 years ago?). The Lazarus Project was a terrific story arc where you investigate some Vahzilok-related disappearances. Arrow Girl got to fight both Vahzilok and rich entitled jerks, both things I hate. I was a little worried that it might be too long an arc with 5 full missions (I know most authors like to max out at 5 missions per arc, but I don't subscribe to that). However, several of these missions were on small maps so it still felt very doable. Missing newbie heroes, you say? Arrow Girl is on the case! And I thought Aid Other would be useless when soloing! Sorry lady, but this really sounds like a First World problem to me. OMG I hate this guy so much. Rich, entitled Vahzilok!! The final boss! The dialog throughout this whole arc was excellent. I gave The Lazarus Project 5 stars. Arrow Girl finished the story arc at level 13.

Meet Arrow Girl, a level 12 blaster! I've decided to try to level her up through level 20 via story-focused mission arcs in Mission Architect. The rules of engagement: I will use the AE interface to search for the keyword "SFMA" and "my level". I'll skip over any story arc where the max level range is above level 20. Arrow Girl is a good soloer, but she won't do well in those level 1-54 story arcs. I'll be solo, with XP and double XP on, and earning architect tickets. I'll try to keep this project going until Arrow Girl hits level 21. (We'll see if I keep going after that.) Interestingly, the first two SFMA story arcs that show up in my search at "my level" of 12 are written by me. I'll skip over those too, but I'm going to go ahead and plug them in this forum post. Talos Vice (arc #1337) and Two Tickets to Westerly (arc #1678), please check them out!

Released: Axis Sally Fire Belle Hotter Marmot Model Minority Poster Child

Suggestion: If the goal is to give influence to new players while encouraging varied teams, what about: Give +10% influence bonus to defeating enemies when on a team with 5 different ATs Give +15% influence bonus to defeating enemies when on a team with 6 different ATs Give +20% influence bonus to defeating enemies when on a team with 7 different ATs Give +25% influence bonus to defeating enemies when on a team with 8 different ATs You would get this extra influence even if you took the double XP buff that turned off influence. Maybe there'd be some protection against some of these players being idle (door sitters/multi-boxers), and maybe the bonus would taper off starting around level 30 so it doesn't flood high level characters with influence. I think you'd want to decouple it from PAPs (new players might not know how to use the auction house and/or might think they need to hoard PAPs "for later" - if you want them to have influence, just give influence) and from TFs/SFs (that way new players doing door missions or radio missions still get the bonus; also helps people who started in Praetoria).

Glad you enjoyed it! Also, by popular demand (well...1 player feedback), I've added a forklift to mission 1. It's not critical to the plot, but I liked the idea. 🙂

Papers and Paychecks (arc id 47884) JOB OPENING: Entry-level position available in dynamic, fast-moving Fortune 500 company. Seeking flexible, motivated individuals, self-starters willing to think outside the box. Excellent salary, benefits, opportunities for rapid promotion. Qualified applicants, contact Crey Industries HR Dept. Level range: 33-54 Suggested alignment: Rogue Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Comedy Looking for Feedback to make this arc funnier and/or more fun!

I love the idea of having more shoppers from around Paragon City. I went ahead and added more shoppers and salespeople that belonged to various villain factions, including a Hellion looking for a gift for his girlfriend. 🙂 I agree that Mariah Christmas looked too similar to the backup dancers. I tried to fix this by making her noticeably taller than the backup dancers, and also giving her a bright white glowing aura to make her stand out. Thanks very much for the suggestions!

Arc ID: 44913 Arc Name: I Hate Christmas Music Author: @PW Number of Missions: 3 Description: Villainous. Solo Friendly, Comedy. Level 30-34. 'Tis the season for Christmas music - but that's simply the worst when you're a Troll Raver like the Boogie Man. Help the Boogie Man put an end to the scourge that is Christmas music and replace it with something with a more danceable beat.

Thanks, fixed that now!

Thanks for the feedback 🙂 I'll edit the OP to explicitly state that destroying Christmas music is a villainous arc. (I know, arguably it could be a net good for the world, but we must live under society's strict interpretation of morality!) Which use of "All I want for Christmas" did you think needed capitalization? Also, that SNIPER SHOT screenshot is amazing.

I Hate Christmas Music (arc id 44913) Villainous. Solo Friendly, Comedy: level 30-34, 3 missions 'Tis the season for Christmas music - but that's simply the worst when you're a Troll Raver like the Boogie Man. Help the Boogie Man put an end to the scourge that is Christmas music and replace it with something with a more danceable beat. (SFMA) - I'd welcome any feedback on how to make this arc better, more fun, more funny, or anything else! Thanks!

I played through this on an 18 scrapper (Princess Purple had leveled up a bit since the last AE mission). The story seemed fine, a pretty standard story about breaking up a drug ring. I did run into a game mechanics problem where the final boss of the story arc was spawning as a regular mob throughout missions 2 and 3. There was some unintentional humor when instances of the boss would speak minion dialog about how they were afraid of the big boss. As an 18 scrapper on a 1-14 story arc, I was able to handle the multi-spawns of the end boss, but I think this would've been a problem for a level 2. Princess Purple - Cracking Skulls!

I played through Storming Citadel on a 10 scrapper. I liked the framing story and the way the objectives chained into each other. I liked the one-and-done mission structure, which made it a quick romp. I was nervous about fighting what I think are Storm Elementals (?) at level 10, but Princess Purple was able to handle them and the end boss without any issues, and they definitely gave the mission some nice visuals.

I liked the story, the investigation of the corrupt music executives, and the custom group of roadies and such. The lighting techs were obnoxious but just enough to make me think about taking them out first. Princess Purple versus the recording company exployees I did think the Enraged Supa Trolls and the ambushes of katana wielding Bodyguards made the story arc too hard for a lowbie. I played a level 9 scrapper and routinely got clobbered by those, I had to hospital 4 times and after running back a few times I made sure to eat 2 lucks any time I fought 2 or more Supa Trolls or Bodyguards. Princess Purple getting punched by Enraged Supa Trolls The Supa Trolls were tough because they would all Knockout Blow my character (as seen above); getting KO Blow'd once isn't too bad, but if two trolls are doing them one after another, I'm pretty much toast. The Bodyguards just did a lot of DPS against me, and floored my defense with their attacks. I probably would've been OK if I were higher level, had more attacks and mez protection maybe (the holds from KO Blow really got me). With the level range of the arc being 1-25 I think this would've been even worse for a level 1. You might consider either raising the min level to be around 15, or else making these mobs easier (maybe mixing the Supa Trolls with more normal Trolls?). Anyway it was fun, and I did level to 10 and get some badges. Thanks for the arc!

While patrolling in Kings Row, you see her. Trashy outfit, smeared makeup, unkempt hair, just another Skulls Girlfriend, you think. You're about to pass her by when she starts waving to you. "Please! I need help!" she pleads. "My boyfriend...I think he's in trouble." Arc ID: 1678 Keywords: Solo Friendly, Magic, Romance Originally published for Dr. Aeon's Challenge #2. Formerly a Developer's Choice on live servers.

Yes, I was highly amused at the arc ID number too :) thanks!