Clave_Dark_5

Don't get wrong here, I'm not trying to start trouble, just looking for clarification: are we allowed to advertize our AE arcs in this forum? I was under the impression we can't.

Personally, I'd like to be able to and this thread shows why: over on the MA forums, this (cross-posted) thread has gotten only 35 views, while here it's gotten 134. That board has become something of a ghost town just for the hard-core MA community. If we can advertize here, that'd help a lot with getting exposure for our new works.

They could do that, sure. They could put in some work and actually redesign some parts of the MA to make things work better too. They also could change up the reward structure to bribe people back into the MA such as some merits for playing DC arcs or something (it seems to have worked well with the SSA arcs). But.

After putting in the man-hours to set up the pay-for-new-AE-stuff as you suggested, currently they'd probably clear maybe $11.98 for their troubles (unless one of those maps or power sets makes for good farming). AE authors are a very small subset these days and like PVP or base-building I doubt there's much to be made off them, so the devs probably won't try for that simple plan. Last time I saw the devs asked about anything for the MA, they either mentioned maps, updated Tsoo or said "we currently have no plans..."

Personally, I'm guessing that they decided the whole thing was a debacle - no one cringes after getting their fingers singed like a coprorate entity - and have vowed to never sink another dime or minute into it. But they also won't just pull it outright as that would make them look like they've admitted defeat. Better to pretend the 'defeat' doesn't exist, outside of the occasional wan PR move that costs them maybe one hour (see this thread's purpose).

Usually weapons sets are weaker as they don't have a lot of mezzing-type (stuns, knock-downs, -to hits, +defensives etc.) powers, but you have to be sure you haven't given your NPCs powers like Build Up or Aim, etc. or they can go to town once in a while.

I'm not sure any of mine can be described as "the one" anything, but I have a lot of toons, let me think here...

...

I do have one who's something like "the last queen of Mars" (who can't wait for that retro space helmet option). And I took a character from an MA arc I made who's a princess on her alternate world... then proceeded to make multiples ATs with her on different servers as I liked the costume so much, so that kind of negates the idea I guess. I also started a scrapper who was King Of Monster Isle, but he's still stuck in Praetoria. I think those are about as close as I get.

Congratulations! That's a nice story to hear.

Getting too aware of one's own cheesiness is never a good thing (see Troma). I can find a heck of a lot of better worse-movies to watch most likely.

There are schools of literary criticism built around whether or not the author's view of his work is of prime concern vs. it's not and what you or others may find in it are the prime concern. I know this from having read a little about them but not enough to really discuss them in depth... my own feeling is the author's intent is the best way to go. Someone might read Moby Dick and see some gay subtext or something about the destructive nature of capitalism or whatever, but from what I know of Melville, this is probably wrong - a cute 'catch' if you can argue your point well, but ultimately a little pointless I think (see TVTropes.com). At best I think they can score some real points by reading (and arguing) the text through their specific lens, "this work can be applied to my issue X and provides good examples of it because... etc."

There may be real room though for saying author X was writing about Y but you can see he may also be writing about issue Z without realizing he was at the time (I recall John Lennon had written some angry song about Paul McCartney after the Beatles broke up and later said something along the lines of 'turns out it was really about my own issues at the time'). Which may be the basis people use to argue these angels-on-pinheads topics, I don't know.

As for ideas having their own lives, that I think is what a meme is supposed to be. William Burroughs wrote about this from many different angles; he may have even been quite serious about it, from what I know of him. It's all summed up best in his simple phrase: language is a virus.

Ok, that's my rambling.

Grats, Deep!

I took Soul Mastery on my stalker and when I solo I've found that a Placate/Soul Storm combo on two other foes after the initial AS can really give me some breathing room to scrap my way through a mob.

Those billions would have to be enough to get people to use up one of their arc slots or buy another one, I 'd think... I gather a lot of us old-hands here have used up our slots.

I'm currently up to my eight and I'm not about to buy another one - pay for a slot in a system that's needs so much love and is getting flat-out ignored?! No way! So if I were to consider this, it would mean replacing one of my arcs or biting the bullet and accepting a pile of inf in exchange for my scruples... um, so how much are we talking about again?

Here's my namesake demonstrating Shadowmeld.

The first image is (I think) a Dark Servent in its basic form and colors (and with some annoying red thingies, sorry about that); you'll note he has some glowing eye stuff going on there, almost hidden by the red, he's looking off to the left.

The next three images show what Shadowmeld looks like as you activate it (please ignore the Hasten pom-poms there), while you're a shadow (I guess) and the aftereffects which last some seconds.



I think this costume 5 is wearing might have a slight blue glow-aura which you can see inside the cloud, but this should still give you some idea what SM looks like. I think the textures are different, DS being rather "spotty" while SM is more wispy - plus no radiating stuff at your feet like DS has.