PW searches for level 12-20 story-focused mission arcs

[Police Woman]

Arrow Girl's next adventure was [Ordinary People 2] Hope and Bullets (arc #31903) by @cranebump, the sequel to [Ordinary People 1] Standard Operating Procedure.

 

 

The Powers That Be are trying to take Detective Freitag off the Skullions case, and Freitag has gone off investigating on his own, with the help of a police cadet, and gotten into trouble.  Detective Becktrees calls me in to help.

 

I quickly locate and rescue Freitag.

 

 

Based on the dialog, Freitag wants to find Willie (the police cadet that he dragged into this), but ... I convince him not to?  This doesn't make sense to me, but I go ahead and lead him out, then find the police cadet on my own.  She wants to download some files from a nearby database, presumably filled with valuable evidence.

 

We get jumped by an ambush (actually, a boss spawns right next to me) and narrowly escape.

 

After rescuing Freitag and Willie, Becktrees puts me on a stakeout in a suspiciously quiet neighborhood of Kings Row.  I don't fully buy this ("nothing at all is happening in this neighborhood!  IT MUST BE A PLOT!!") but somehow this hunch pays off and Arrow Girl follows some trucks to a villain base operated by the "Gatling Gang", the actual name of the mysterious "Hats" faction that first appeared in Ordinary People 1. 

 

The Gatling base has some evil research scientists doing .... something nefarious.  I wasn't quite sure what (I don't think it's fully explained here, so I suspect it's a hook for the sequel), but they were determined to keep Arrow Girl from finding out.

 

 

Arrow Girl rescued and teamed up with an Arachnos operative (he apparently was also investigating the suspiciously quiet neighborhood) and beat up Steve Gatling, the local Gatling boss.

 

 

There was a pretty big ambush (or maybe 2 ambushes) that showed up soon after fighting Steve Gatling, and tbh the ambushers were meaner than the boss, though Arrow Girl narrowly defeated them.

 

An awkward moment.  They had a lot of knockback!

 

Having cleared the Gatling base, Becktrees and I were patting ourselves on the back when the Gatling Gang launched a firebomb attack and a physical invasion of the Paragon Police Department headquarters!  And Willie was in there, trying to decode the Important Files from before!  (Drama!)  Arrow Girl charged into the burning building to rescue Willie and stop the villains!

 

 

We're done when I say we're done, buddy!

 

After clearing out the Gatling Gang invaders, we found that Willie has been captured and taken to a construction site, where the Gatling Gang is massing in large numbers and apparently about to move somewhere.  Arrow Girl and some other backup Kings Row heroes are sent to the scene!

 

Steve Gatling, the boss from before, is back and suffers a beatdown from Arrow Girl and Acrobattle, one of the NPC allies (and reappearing from Ordinary People 1).

 

 

Defeating Steve caused his even meaner brother, Larry Gatling, to show up.  Arrow Girl and Acrobattle tried to take him down.

 

 

Larry Gatling spawned as an elite boss for me, and hit hard with excellent accuracy (able to hit Arrow Girl even through 2 lucks).  Arrow Girl was defeated twice fighting Larry until I decided I'd better round up all the other optional allies in the mission.

 

Oh... Whipsmart again.  Um, yes, we need you and your cannon fod-- your wonderful robots

 

With all this help, we're able to dogpile Larry and finish him off, though it was a close thing; we lost Acrobattle and Arrow Girl dropped to 20% health at one point.

 

 

After we defeat Larry he gives us an ominous clue:

Spoiler

He claims not to have had anything to do with "what happened to the girl".  Sure enough, we find the dead body of poor Willie Sullivan, aspiring police cadet.

 

The arc ends on a bit of a downer, but in the final mission debriefing there is a surprisingly poignant bit of writing that eulogizes Willie.

 

 

Overall impressions

 

I liked Willie's arc.  The story did a good job of introducing her and making us care about what happens to her.  I think it'd be a little more powerful if Freitag helped the player find Willie in mission 1 (after all, he got her into this jam) and if Freitag were one of the optional allies in mission 4 (so he can react to finding Willie).

 

I found the game mechanics in mission 4 to be especially frustrating.  Despite Becktrees telling me that "We've got to save Willie" in the mission briefing, finding Willie doesn't even show up in my initial objectives for the mission; instead I have to "Arrest Steve Gatling (again)" (reasonable) and "5 getaway vehicles to destroy" (not important to the story, and also having 5 things to find on a huge outdoor map is kind of a pain).  The chained objectives of Defeat Steve -> Defeat Larry -> Find Willie were frustrating because they could spawn anywhere on the outdoor map, so I had to criss-cross the map repeatedly; I ended up literally clearing the entire map to finish this mission, which felt like too much. 

 

I think narratively it might be better if the chained objectives were reordered to either Find Willie -> Defeat Steve -> Defeat Larry, or Defeat Steve -> Find Willie -> Defeat Larry.  

Spoiler

This order would let the player discover Willie's fate earlier, then take revenge on the final boss, which may feel more satisfying.  It mitigates the downer ending, though, which might or might not be the author's vision.

 

The custom characters were a little difficult for my squishy character, but not unacceptably so.  I started to dread the "Knife" minions, who could see me at long range and run through my glue patches to try and stab me.  There was a custom faction of entirely "Assistant" minions that staffed the ambushes in mission 2 and guarded vehicles in mission 4; since they all had dual pistols, their attacks repeatedly stacked knockback on my character, which was frustrating.  I'd suggest mixing in a couple minion types with varying attack types.  The final boss, Larry Gatling, was pretty hard for Arrow Girl, but several optional allies were provided and they were a big help.

 

Minor typos and continuity errors (not serious, but listing these in case you want to fix them):

Spoiler

"abaondoned" should be "abandoned"

 

 

This clue is numbered "4.:" with both a period and a colon (all your other clues only have one or the other)

 

"they're training" should be "their training" (also occurs on other Gatling Gang members)

 

"harcopy" should be "hardcopy"

 

Also, the text in the Souvenir (Golden Bullet) appears to contradict clue #14 (Larry's Confession) - one says Larry did it, the other says he didn't do it.

 

I gave this story arc 4 stars.  Arrow Girl ended the arc 80% of the way through level 18 (...with some debt).

 

 

 

[cranebump]

Some really good ideas there. Mish 4 does need some work (starting with making getaway vehicles optional, since that’s easy). My recent issue with fixing any of my older stories was crashing during edits (due to file size, I guess). Putting willie rescue active upon M4 entry is a good idea,  though I’d have to tweak the confession and a couple other things. There IS a callback to Willies death in the capstone arc, so the downer ending is entirely intentional, and meant as motivation during the last arc of the story.
 

Really good feedback. I am not sure when I’ll get around to employing any of it, but I’ve put a pin in it for future reference. Thanks again!

Edited November 16 by cranebump

[TygerDarkstorm]

Can I just say how lovely it is to see the content creators come in here and take the feedback in the manner y'all have? It helps that Police Woman provides her criticism in a constructive manner as well, I'm sure, but it's so cool to see you creators take that criticism thoughtfully. Like sure, some of the choices you've made are things you stand by, which is fair as you know what you had intended for your content, but seeing how respectful your responses are make someone like me a lot less nervous to try my own version of one of the review type threads in the future.

 

I really love this idea and love following Arrow Girl's adventures through the AE.

[Police Woman]

The next arc in my search was tagged both "Ideal for Teams" and "Challenging" and intended for a Task Force-like experience, which didn't seem like a good idea for my solo blaster.

 

So Arrow Girl's next adventure was Dream Paper (arc# 6645) by @Zasani (fka Glazius), a heroic arc where you're sent to stop the Lost from breaking and entering an apartment complex.  I also played this arc on the live servers, but that was a long time ago so I remembered almost none of it.

 

 

Alfonse Rubel, a delivery boy from Steel Canyon, tells me about a gang of Lost breaking into his apartment building.  Entering the apartment complex, I rescue a number of tenants, including Grandma Yan.

 

Explosive arrows are not "best practices" for hostage situations, but it worked out

 

Curiously, the Lost seemed mainly interested in stealing packets of medicine from Grandma Yan.  Alfonse sent the "medicine" off to a PPD lab, and the analysis came back with a lead to a warehouse full of Tsoo.

 

 

The Tsoo were remarkably Zen about Arrow Girl breaking into their warehouse and demanding answers; it turns out the "medicine" wasn't anything illegal, just some herbal alternative medicine one of them had made for Granny Yan.

 

Going back to Alfonse, he tells me the PPD lab he sent the paper packets to was under attack!  Arrow Girl just cleared out another attack on the PPD in the last arc.  Why do villains keep attacking the poor police department?!  *shakes fist at sky*

 

 

 

In the police lab, Arrow Girl rescued a number of rather woozy and confused police and Longbow saying that they had gotten "exposed" to some substance.  Finally she tracked down a lab tech who actually knew what was going on.

 

 

It turns out it's the paper used to wrap the packets of medicine, not the contents at all!  There was something psychoactive about the paper that mesmerized all the police people who looked at it, and this had something to do with why the Lost wanted it so badly.  The "dream paper" was getting regularly dropped off by a Troll paperboy, so Arrow Girl went off to track this Troll down.

 

I eventually find him deep in a Troll cave.  He looks a bit sick, and his friends are not happy that I'm there.

 

 

Once I fight off the other Trolls, the paperboy tells me he's trying to get clean from Superadine (which is why he seems sick).  He's trying to go legit and was delivering the paper as a favor for a Mr. Blaloch, but he willingly tells me where he's picking up the dream paper - another warehouse, of course.

 

 

 

In the warehouse is a ton of paper-making paraphernalia which all needs to be destroyed, over the protests of the Lost that are operating the paper mill.  I run across the Troll paperboy again and he offers to help out; having a big muscly ally proves very useful for Arrow Girl.

 

 

The Lost keep babbling something about Scripture and the Prophet, and we finally stumble across the Prophet himself:

 

 

The Prophet / Mr. Blaloch seems a little mixed up, alternating between villain dialog and being a confused old man, the two personalities struggling for control.  Exposure to the dream paper and/or the Lost had given the Prophet psychic powers, but he's not too tough, and Arrow Girl and her troll sidekick manage to beat him.  Afterwards, Mr. Blaloch recovers from being possessed by the dream paper and seems to have no memory of what happened - though there are several loose ends that hint at future investigations.  (Though I don't believe a sequel was ever published.)

 

Overall I thought this arc had an offbeat plot but was well written and well balanced for a low level arc; mostly standard enemies with a few custom characters for bosses and hostages.  I liked the minor characters that were introduced: Grandma Yan, her Tsoo grandson, and the Troll paperboy.  I would've liked Blaloch to get a little more development before we meet him in the last mission, that would've made his possession (and eventual recovery) hit harder.  Alfonse does name drop Blaloch earlier on, but it wasn't enough to give me any kind of impression of the man.  The clues were well-written, especially the ones that told a personal story about one of the characters.  The idea of the dream paper itself was very creative, and it made total sense that we'd check into the drugs before suspecting something about the paper.

 

I gave this arc 5 stars.  Arrow Girl finished the arc 70% of the way through level 19.

 

 

 

 

[Police Woman]

Arrow Girl's next adventure was Bridge of Forever: (arc #36642), a level 19-20 Loyalist arc by @Darmian.  On this arc, Chimera sends you to investigate the disappearances of several members of Powers Division.

 

 

As it happens, Arrow Girl is a Praetorian character whose origin story involves working for Chimera, so .... of course I had to make a Chimera ninja themed costume for this arc.

 

On the first mission Arrow Girl teams up with Officer Welks of the PPD to investigate the disappearances.  The map starts entirely empty and we start off mostly clicking glowies to get clues, so there was very little fighting, but this actually conveyed the feeling of doing detective work very well.

 

 

After we found a lot of clues, there was an obligatory ambush, which we defeated handily.

 

After that, Chimera sent Arrow Girl to follow up leads by breaking into a variety of government buildings to steal evidence, generating friction with the other big-name Praetors.  This all felt very true to the Praetorian dimension.

 

 

 

At one point, while investigating the underground tunnels, I run into Mr. G, who claims to be there on Chimera's behalf to replace another ally who was a no-show.

 

Sure!  You look trustworthy!

 

Mr. G helps Arrow Girl with her mission, clearing out ghouls and other sewer trash ... at least for a little while.  When we're on the verge of rescuing one of the missing persons, Mr. G turns traitor.

 

I guess I should've expected this.  It's another day in Praetoria.

 

 

After escaping Mr. G's treachery, Chimera sends Arrow Girl to break into one of Mr. G's cloning facilities to find out what he's really up to.  And while there, Arrow Girl encounters... Arachnos?!

 

 

All the clues have been pointing towards the missing supers being transported to another dimension for some nefarious reason, and now Arrow Girl has run across a cross-dimensional incursion from Primal Earth!

 

 

Arrow Girl defeats the Arachnos boss and breaks their dimension-hopping hardware.  Having discovered what happened to the missing people, rescued one, and stopped the Arachnos incursion, it's mission accomplished when she reports to Chimera, and the end of the arc.

 

--

 

This arc really felt perfect for a level 19 Praetorian.  I liked the way the investigations were set up, it really felt like we were doing detective work.  There were a lot of chained objectives but they were on indoor maps and each objective seemed to lead deeper into the map, so there wasn't a ton of backtracking.  Good use of Praetorian and Arachnos factions, none of them felt overpowered for my lowbie blaster. I liked the Praetorian lore and the obvious infighting between the various Praetorian factions.  Chimera was kind of characterized as being a mean boss, but this is fully in character for a Praetor who regularly murders his subordinates when they get uppity.  I would've liked an architect souvenir from this arc - it didn't look like it awarded one.

 

I gave this arc 5 stars.  Arrow Girl hit level 20 while playing through this arc, triggering Marchand to phone to tell her to go through the portal to Primal Earth - a perfect match for the story.

Edited November 21 by Police Woman

[Darmian]

On 11/21/2024 at 5:52 AM, Police Woman said:

Arrow Girl hit level 20 while playing through this arc, triggering Marchand to phone to tell her to go through the portal to Primal Earth - a perfect match for the story.

Although the story itself continues with The Cassini Division and concludes with The House of Gaunt Saints. 

Apologies for the lack of a souvenir. I've been meaning to add some but haven't gotten around to it. 

 

Again I was trying to provide more canon style missions for Praetorian characters once they hit the end of Neutropolis but before they go to First Ward/cross to Primal.

Edited November 25 by Darmian

[Darmian]

Actually @Police Woman, the initial idea for this arc was born from asking if anyone in Praetoria even noticed supers just vanishing when they hit level 20. Surely someone like Chimera would have spotted that and investigated.

[Police Woman]

Having reached level 20, New Heroes of Paragon (arc #42432) rose to the top of Arrow Girl's SFMA search.  This is a level 20-20 hero arc by @Electricboots where you babysit some young heroes and is both a Developer's Choice and a Hall of Fame arc.

 

So Arrow Girl gets sent to look after a group of kid heroes, who have lost a doll and have somehow run afoul of the Hellions.

 

 

I rescue Loud Girl and start looking for her brother, Super Captain Man.  But when I rescue him, something odd happens:

 

 

My objective is "Bring Miss Loud to Super Captain Man", but ... they're right next to each other now?  Completing this objective required me to walk the two of them back to Miss Loud's spawn point, not sure why ... some bugginess with the chained objectives, I assume.

 

After rescuing the two kids and defeating the boss, we still haven't found the doll, so Super Captain Man asks me to rally the troops - running around Steel Canyon to tell the other New Heroes of Paragon to come to their secret base.

 

 

It was kind of a pain to find the various New Heroes, who were scattered over a large map.  However, there were lots of diversions that made it more fun.

 

 

 

 

After rounding up the rest of the team, Arrow Girl got invited to their secret base.

 

 

While there, we get attacked by a bunch of humanoid sewer rats who were actually ridiculously adorable.

 

 

The supergroup meeting resolves that we need to uncurse the doll, and to do this we need to get a magic urn from a spoooky cave.

 

It's a g-g-ghost!!

 

The urn is guarded by some ancient being known as Shulkead, who had several tricks up its sleeve and was actually quite well written and fun.

 

This wasn't even its final form

 

After recovering the urn, we finally go on a mission to "uncurse" the magic doll.  Arrow Girl has to round up some allies again and perform a complicated magic ritual.

 

Well that's not a good sign.

 

Performing the ritual involves clicking a series of glowies.  Something frustrating happened on the last glowy, where it spawned the "final boss" of the story arc, but the New Heroes blocked the doorway so I couldn't reach the boss or even get line of sight; the room I was in wasn't big enough for me to lead my followers away from the doorway.  As a result, the kids ended up defeating the final boss before I ever got to see it.

 

Hey, down in front!  (Not pictured: another ally pounding the heck out of the final g-g-ghost with a baseball bat)

 

 

Overall I thought this was quite a fun story arc.  The plot was straightforward, but the writing was good (assuming you don't mind taking the role of babysitting a bunch of kid heroes) and there was a lot of set dressing in every map that helped make each mission more interesting.  The custom characters were well-done; I liked both the karate punks and the ratkins.  The triggered objectives seemed a little buggy (I think freeing Miss Loud first in the first mission ended up breaking the chained objectives, along with the allies blocking the door in the last mission) but I don't think these are necessarily the arc's fault.  The allies were pretty overpowered; they spawned as EBs for me, while named enemies were typically bosses or lieutenants, so the allies typically could win without me lifting a finger.  I was torn between rating this 4 or 5 stars, ended up giving it 5 stars because of all the good parts.

 

Arrow Girl finished the arc at level 20 and 6/10ths.

Edited November 24 by Police Woman