Doctor_Gemini

A Vague Notion

Run by Doctor Gemini Inv/SS Tank

This mission was tagged with everything that usually makes me skip to the next one. So I have to say it turned out to be a much more pleasant experience than I expected going in.

General Cons: No information on the custom group. Additionally, I personally dislike EBs as anything but the major threat of the arc. This one was far too full of them for my tastes. Even a little girl was an EB, not to mention a number of named EBs in the Longbow base. Too many EBs just, too me, make a hero feel like some guy who threw a dishtowel around his neck and went out to play superhero. That's my personal bugaboo so I set it aside when rating the arc.

General Pros: Loved the craziness of the contact. He gave me lots of good chuckles. I liked most of the missions, and what you were trying to do with them.

Except for mission 4 and 5, I only have thematic nitpicks with certain things.

Mission 1: Liked it being mostly empty and just a quick introduction to the plot. It gave the next mission more of a feel of the threat ramping up.

Mission 3: Two issues, which are just thematic nit-picking, not anything of consequence. Firstly, I feel like I missed something because I didn't understand why that map was used. Of course, though I read all the texts I might have failed to retain something, but there seemed to be no reason in story why they were tunneling into an office building from the sewer.

The 2nd issue for me was the rescuees themselves. Spawning one after another like that ended up with me missing the 2nd one (not hard to do on that map) and exploring the rest of the map, so the 3rd one ended up being where I had already looked. I realize though, there may not be a way around that for what you're trying to accomplish. It might work better to have someone mention that the other 2 are being brought in and will be here any minute now, or some such thing.

Mission 4: Didn't see the point, really, though I did enjoy the Longbow banter. Also, as you had the glowies only accessible in succession, the map makes it easy to find the special file cabinet and the computer before you can even access them so you end up running back and forth around the base.

I'd suggest spawning all the glowies at once, and having all of them trigger an ambush. That would make it feel more like you have something to do. With a map that size, a glowie hunt quickly loses interest. Edit: A smaller map would work much better without needing to add anything to it. Although I'd still suggest spawning all the glowies at once.

Mission 5: Oh no...it's a CoT city...and the first thing is another EB flunky. He almost killed me but, I used up half my inspiration tray and prevailed. He was the toughest boss in the entire arc having Confuse and Fear effects. He would have been good as the main enemy, but felt like too much for the doorman.

I think this mission would have been much better with far fewer dampeners to place. Although it's hard for me to judge because I hate most of these type of CoT maps. Too me, the mission felt like more of a chore than fun. Especially given that I missed a glowie and had to backtrack to find it.

Not sure why Vagues has lost some of her powers and is now a Boss instead of an EB. I was happy for the change but some text as to why (maybe the psychic dampeners lowered her power level?) would be a good addition. Sadly, we got separated in that room with the tall pyramids on both sides and a river in the middle, and she got killed by a Mindblade before I realized she was in trouble. I avenged her though!

Overall: While not my cup of tea because of the EBs, the arc was very good. Good story both in the overall plot and in what we learn about the various individuals. I gave it 4 stars.

I would like to see missions accessible from the actual contacts out in the world for thematic reasons, but nuking the AE buildings is not an option for reasons others have already pointed out.

I also agree that the devs need to acknowledge AE farming (when it's not an exploit) and have a "farm" tag for arcs. I doubt they'll hire more GMs to police the AE for exploits, however. Sadly, AE has only been a big draw when an exploit has become popular.

I like the replacing stars with thumbs up/down idea.

The rest of the OPs ideas, however, are not beneficial. They're either irrelevant or a handicap to authors. If AE is to be fixed, first it has to get more player interest. It seems the devs have little desire to act in this regard.

That leaves it up to the player base that is supporting AE. If it's to be fixed, then players are going to have to get players interested in running missions there. There are alot of threads and events here for authors, but none to generate players. As long as AE is just a tiny niche, anything other than fixing exploits and adding maps is going to be far on the backburner.

I'm also on the "there's too much co-op stuff" bandwagon.

I would be behind them putting a Shadow Shark in the game though. It should swim around in Croatoa waiting for some evil, bullying "hero" to go beat up on poor, defenseless Sally and suddenly leap out of the water, swallowing the hero whole.

The fact that I can start a new character and not have to level him up using the same missions my other 100+ characters have already run (thanks in large part to AE). That, more than anything, is what makes certain I rarely play the closest competitor.

Some servers are up now.

If I had my way, any player who created an exploit arc that was still up 2 weeks after the exploit was fixed would be banned and have their hands cut off.

I don't care if people want to pl to 50 in 2 hours. I do care when their selfishness, proven by their inability to spend 5 seconds to delete their arc when the exploit is fixed, requires me to hit the random button 50 times to find anything other than another version of the same, months old, now fixed, exploit arc.

So, until we live in a perfect world that allows us to actually come to your house and chop off your hands, please clean-up after yourselves. You'd probably find far less anger over your activities if you did.

...and that makes as much sense as your first post.

You probably do need to check that box to get an email about your invite. I have it unchecked, yet I get invites, so you don't seem to need it checked to be invited.

Its because the only people left who drive cars in Paragon are homicidal maniacs! I can't even count the number of times a car has slammed into me, despite the fact that they're only doing 10 or 15 MPH and had plenty of room, and time, to change lanes!