GlaziusF

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Umm... Sorry that I rose to the bait on this one. But since I did, I feel obligated to make one last reply on the subject.

The issue of the relative merits of dev choice arcs is, of course, subjective and invites both comparisons to non-DC arcs and controversy. It's a difficult enough subject to discuss with straight talk in the context of the forum. Adding a layer of satire, obfuscation or false modesty would seem to me to have an effect opposite of promoting "healthy discussion".

Anyway, to the OP: Sincere congratulations on your selection to Dev's Choice. Thanks also for the insight into some of the "baggage" associated with the award. Most of us (including, I'm sure, yours truly) will never experience this side of MA "fame".

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Well, look at it like higher ed admissions. There are way more people who could hack it in, say, law school than will make it past the admissions committee. Especially in something where standards are way more personal, it's not surprising to find something you think is as good or better than a Dev Choice arc in the wild.

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Really? Some one else said if you're getting more than 600 or so tickets, you're doing it wrong?

Wow... Did one amazing Troll/Dyne Bust that took a team of 8, and several trips to the hospital, and one or two team wipes (at lvl 43 BTW) over an hour to complete... We never did clear the entire map of spawns either, we fought to the end of the objective... I still think my 2600 tickets weren't too much... It wasn't an outright gold roll but certainly worth a shot at that Call of the Sandman I've been coveting... Certainly was less than the comm officer fiasco and MORE time/risk but certainly MORE rewarding...

The tickets, and the ability to finally start getting back the good drops for content since merits arrived really energized my play... I expected and desired corrections on AE, but the first heavy Nerf Whack put me off, and the ticket cap made me change all my search parameters to "NO AE"



So it was a map entirely made of bosses, is what you're saying.

Yeah.

Still not normal.


Sorry, not quite used to the forum formatting yet...

Sigh, no, it had 3 custom made critters. All very much like you'd expect to see trolls. Don't know if that makes a difference drop wise, but it certainly wasn't a comm officer cake walk. By comparision, 3-4x longer, a lot less xp and more than half the tickets less. And I really enjoyed myself... Were they bosses? Don't care. I enjoyed the mish and don't think the reward was out of whack.

The nerfs had to come. The holier than thou attitudes do not. These changes are what should have come out of beta...

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I'm saying that I don't believe it's mathematically possible to make a map containing an enemy group with a normal amount of minions, lieutenants, and bosses that rewards 2600 tickets per team member when cleared. The mission creator has to be spawning lieutenants in, in place of minions, or bosses in, in place of both minions and lieutenants.

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The ratings system is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. The problem is not the abusers. The problem is the built-in incentives for abuse. Any solution that doesn't involve removing those incentives is not a solution, as the abusers will always find a way around whatever obstacle you implement

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Very well said. With me, this raises the question, "What is the incentive that is the most common reason for abuse?"

If it's the prestige of being listed on the first page, I think the fair solution is to make current default behavior create a first page at random amongst all the arcs. This way, there is absolutely no point to zero-star something as it won't make your arc list that much higher.

If it's for the badges, then change the badge requirements. However, I don't see how this would be causing so much of the proclaimed griefing.

If it's cause their a jerk, then there is nothing that can be done. Except, ban them after they bomb too many arcs and remove all the ratings they have given.

For me, the whole idea of bombing people's arcs is ludicrious. Not that it isn't done. But, that I cannot see where the enjoyment comes from. Then again, some people enjoy urinating in other's cheerios.

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As long as people can sort by ratings, there will always be an incentive to downrank some arcs to push others up, because it's 10 times easier to push something down.

But what's the alternative?

If you do something like "total positive votes" you get a "them as has, gets" scenario.

Proportion of total positive votes? Not much different from the current system, except that new arcs can get dogpiled and canned faster than established ones.

Disable rating sort entirely and just show a random selection? Possible. Possible.

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Its ironic really. They rail and rail and rail about how the farmers are ruining their fun.

Then the second they get any reason to ruin the farmer's fun, are they mature about it? Hell no. The vocal minority seems to think the best solution to deal with the "stop having fun guys" is to be the EXACT SAME WAY AS THE PEOPLE THEY CLAIM ARE HURTING THEIR FUN

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Farmers are one chinese guy 8-boxing.

He isn't having fun.

He's doing his job.

He would continue to do his job even if the screen flashed in sickening rainbow colors and his computer implemented Punch People In The Face Over The Internet Protocol.

Actual players can, through speeding up "cycle time" or other measures, continue to have fun if they're reward-focused. I believe HenryTank has started a thread on this very topic in this very forum.

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Really? Some one else said if you're getting more than 600 or so tickets, you're doing it wrong?

Wow... Did one amazing Troll/Dyne Bust that took a team of 8, and several trips to the hospital, and one or two team wipes (at lvl 43 BTW) over an hour to complete... We never did clear the entire map of spawns either, we fought to the end of the objective... I still think my 2600 tickets weren't too much... It wasn't an outright gold roll but certainly worth a shot at that Call of the Sandman I've been coveting... Certainly was less than the comm officer fiasco and MORE time/risk but certainly MORE rewarding...

The tickets, and the ability to finally start getting back the good drops for content since merits arrived really energized my play... I expected and desired corrections on AE, but the first heavy Nerf Whack put me off, and the ticket cap made me change all my search parameters to "NO AE"

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So it was a map entirely made of bosses, is what you're saying.

Yeah.

Still not normal.

Ah, levelin' bits.

"Bricked Electronics" (2180) ought to work out of the gate, "Dream Paper" (1874) will work once you get some anti-mez (there's Lost and Tsoo in it), and I've pitched "The Bravuran Jobs" (5073) as workable for 20-30 but it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

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"Kill All" is pretty much [u]the lamest mission criteria of all time[u] from my viewpoint and should [u]never[u] be used.

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THIS.

Although I won't take off stars for it, I have DEFINETLY quit and not rated or simply NOT PLAYED arcs that have kill alls. Unless there is some compelling reason for it, (of which the arcs I've played already DON'T have one) there really is no reason for a kill all.

With the recent cap on in mission ticket rewards there's even LESS incentive for me to bother with arcs that have Kill Alls.

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Unless a map is full of a custom faction made only of bosses you are not going to hit the ticket cap, even with a kill all.

There's a standard list of tag abbreviations on this forum. The problem is it eats into the 300 characters for your arc so most people try to keep it short.

"Defeat All" is not the worst mission complete condition. It is, however, one of the easiest to get wrong. (I try to get it right in Dream Paper.)

If you're going to make an arc with an uneven top range, either start low and ramp up, or have a really really good rationale why your powers are suppressed.

People can get used to playing without certain powers in the context of an arc, but not to having them "taken away".

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So you are subjugating yourself to "bronze" worst of the worst?? Your idea is selling the cheapest things and that's fine, but I aim for higher rewards. Drops can be gold, silver or bronze in reg mish's and not just Bronze not just the worst ones out there. One gold classified drop in a reg mish could pay for more then your 6 bronze classified recipes combined and much more. So mindlessly walk through that door and more power to you for doing so, but I at least want to the opportunity to do better.

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Well, good luck getting a gold-class drop in a regular mission.

I think they might have a 1% chance of dropping from bosses? Maybe?

(they're the ones you get by rolling on a random TF/Trial drop with reward merits)

Bronze-class are pool A, enemy defeats.
Silver-class are a hybrid of the rares from pool A (which still show up in bronze, mind you) and pool B, mission completions. Though I don't remember there being a very big market for pool B recipes most times.
Gold-class are the former pools C and D, taskforce and trial rewards, fused.

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Sounds like you are talking purple recipes. : D I think they are 1% chance. Ohh I'm sorry, you can't get purples in ma either. Silly me.

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Nope. From the patch notes:

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Pools C (Task/Strike Force) and D (Trials) have been combined into one pool with drops weighted for usefulness. Recipes in IO Sets that are used by more powersets have a proportionally higher chance to drop than others. The Merit Vendor no longer has separate rolls for Pool C and D. They are combined and weighted. Additionally, Boss, Elite Boss, and Arch Villain ranked critters now have a very rare chance to drop a recipe from this combined and weighed C+D Pool.

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Purple pool for levels other than 50? Mmmmmmaybe?

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You know, I thought during beta that you'd get HoF with 1000 4 or 5 star votes.


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You have ears that turn bad ideas into good ones, my carrot-seeking friend.

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Well, it might fix the "nobody in HoF ever" problem but it isn't going to fix the "grief downvote out of the ratings sort" problem.

And you could pretty easily argue that unless you go viral the latter problem is going to lead to the former anyway.

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The autocomplete on entry missions are just a bug in MA that should be fixed. An Ally goal set to to Single is not a legitimate goal, and arcs containing them should not be publishable. If there are similar immediately completable goals they too should inhibit publishing.


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You mean "marked as required", not just "containing", right?

There are lots of ways that unescorted allies or captives can add to a story, to say nothing of those objectives that can't help but auto-complete by showing up (take a new character into an MA mission with ambushes, watch your "workaholic" progress bar go up).

Optional allies and captives without guards are just fine.

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So you are subjugating yourself to "bronze" worst of the worst?? Your idea is selling the cheapest things and that's fine, but I aim for higher rewards. Drops can be gold, silver or bronze in reg mish's and not just Bronze not just the worst ones out there. One gold classified drop in a reg mish could pay for more then your 6 bronze classified recipes combined and much more. So mindlessly walk through that door and more power to you for doing so, but I at least want to the opportunity to do better.

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Well, good luck getting a gold-class drop in a regular mission.

I think they might have a 1% chance of dropping from bosses? Maybe?

(they're the ones you get by rolling on a random TF/Trial drop with reward merits)

Bronze-class are pool A, enemy defeats.
Silver-class are a hybrid of the rares from pool A (which still show up in bronze, mind you) and pool B, mission completions. Though I don't remember there being a very big market for pool B recipes most times.
Gold-class are the former pools C and D, taskforce and trial rewards, fused.

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I dual box a 50 brute and 50 corr. I farm all 52 boss mobs that use super strength and can fly. I use no exploits what so ever. I typically pick up a 3rd person for company.

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Who does this 1500 ticket cap effect? The casual 8-man groups that are trying to earn infamy by playing AE.


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One of these things is not like the other.

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Exactly - one group of players is getting nerfed the other group is just adjusting to work around the imposed cap.

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Um, no. There aren't any casual 8-man groups composed of three characters (a two-boxer and a dead weight) fighting only level 52 boss mobs.

And the 1500 ticket per person per mission cap is really only going to be an issue for the latter.

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You are aware that many 'common' level 50 IO recipes sell for over 100k each at a VENDOR, right? I can get usually at least 3 simply cleaning off the ramparts in cimerora. total invested time: maybe 5 minutes.

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I'm not trying to make the argument that MA is the best way to make money in the game, here.

Man, I remember the old days where the most lucrative thing you could get was SOs and you never had enough money to buy the ones you needed, where I would die so much in missions and, for a change of pace, clear off the giant hunks of debt in the railyards in IP and on the northern islands of Talos and get what I thought was modestly rich. (This is back when things didn't run out of Burn, either.)

The point is - you do different things in the game depending on what you want. And you can easily make enough to keep yourself in SOs or common IOs in the MA.

You can't use MA to streetsweep or put yourself up against hordes of enemies like you can by going out into the big blue skybox and punching things, and that's still the best way to get stuff to sell if you're into that, or if you're into orange and purple names on all your enhancements.

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6 bronze random rolls- you are LUCKY if you can pull off 100k for any of them, salvage-wise you are lucky if you can pull off 10k. total invested time- 30 minutes.

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I can reliably pull a million-inf recipe out of 10 rolls on 30-34, with 100-200k on others. High enough to get Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact, low enough for some of the nice mid-card sets.

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trust me, I have done many many many side-by-side comparisons. the 'average rewards' for MA missions are less than a quarter of what they are for 'regular content'

add in bouncing autolevels, some truly crappoy content, insanely tough and hard-hitting 'custom enemies' and the constant perceived threat of GM injunction, and the MA is quickly becoming the arena of the PvE crowd.

I know i won't touch it anymore, it's a waste of time.

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You're not going to get any argument from me that pulling the random lever in MA is not gonna spit out crap, or that playing MA is a way to max-track your rewards.

But somebody who plays from level 1 inside just ticket-granting missions isn't going to be scraping up pennies like back in the day, when DOs at 15 and SOs at 25 were just pipe dreams.

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Ma was nerfed again today. Now tickets are limited to 1500 per mish no mater what. Personally I think this is terrible and I won't be AE'ng it anymore unless it's a friend who wants me to check out their arc. No recipes, no salvage and now tiny ticket amounts have gone to far attempting to stop farming.

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Haha, "tiny ticket amounts"? Seriously?

A whole outdoor map of stock mobs, spawned on diff 4, might get up to 600 solo, including both defeats and mission bonus.

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yeah, that is a tiny reward compared to a reg mish on same map which drops salvage and recipes. TINY.

Don't forget that salvage drops and recipe drops help pay for your toon's progress through the leveling process and MA now Doesn't keep pace. MA will now put you in a bigger hole when it comes time to pay for those enhancements and you don't have anywhere near the inf you used to doing reg mish's.

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Um, 600 tickets is 6 bronze rolls for "Pool A" recipes and 30 pieces of common salvage. Okay, there aren't any common IOs in that mix, and they can be modestly lucrative at high levels.

But I'm pretty sure that with the bronze rolls being weighted for sets people actually use, you can make a small fortune selling the damage/healing/defense/damres stuff you pick up, way more than you could get off autoselling common IOs.

I mean, I know I have. To say nothing of the lucrativeness of the low/midlevel common salvage market.

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I dual box a 50 brute and 50 corr. I farm all 52 boss mobs that use super strength and can fly. I use no exploits what so ever. I typically pick up a 3rd person for company.

....

Who does this 1500 ticket cap effect? The casual 8-man groups that are trying to earn infamy by playing AE.


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One of these things is not like the other.

You know, I thought during beta that you'd get HoF with 1000 4 or 5 star votes.

This was probably a mis-hearing on my part, but it still sounds like a good idea.

A 4.5 average means you need 1 5 vote and 1 4, or 3 5s and 1 3, or 5 5s and 1 2, or 7 5s and 1 1, or 9 5s and 1 0.

Somebody deliberately down-voting is 9 times as powerful as somebody deliberately up-voting.

Scaling it back to 7 times as powerful won't fix anything.

But you know, nothing is going to ensure that a good arc gets plays without even being advertised. There are 6 digits' worth of arc numbers.

Even if the hypothetical "everybody who zero-stars anything not made by their SG mates" gets booted off the system tomorrow and their ratings rescinded, they've been doing that to everybody and the front pages will be just as crowded again. If you don't put your arc in the public eye it's almost certainly not going to get there on its own, no matter what happens.

Trying to come up with a system where that happens is just doomed to fail.

Should tag systems go official, and searches reflect them, how are you going to enforce tags? People searching for story-focused arcs don't want to find LOL THIS IS MY FREAK TANK FARM LOL, after all, and you know that one's going to get every tag under the sun.

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Ma was nerfed again today. Now tickets are limited to 1500 per mish no mater what. Personally I think this is terrible and I won't be AE'ng it anymore unless it's a friend who wants me to check out their arc. No recipes, no salvage and now tiny ticket amounts have gone to far attempting to stop farming.

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Haha, "tiny ticket amounts"? Seriously?

A whole outdoor map of stock mobs, spawned on diff 4, might get up to 600 solo, including both defeats and mission bonus.

Dream Paper (1874) and Bricked Electronics (2180) are both intended to be lowbie-manageable - at least, I've managed them on lowbies.

But, y'know, Lost and Tsoo, so YMMV.

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To GlaziusF: actually I would be interested in seeing the sequel - I'm not sure when I'm going to have time, but if the offer's still open when I find the time, I'm game. I actually do have an odd request: Triumph is my "villain" server; even though it's "out of character" running that arc in test mode would work pretty well for me (I've got a "badge" character villain, and an opportunity to work on testing badges would be welcome).


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Well, drop me a global tell, and I hope your badger's over 35 because we'll need to meet in the RWZ.

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I'd add rescue animations for both captives. I've noticed that if you don't, captives will immediately take off like Olympic sprinters, which just looks strange.

It wouldn't let me pick any animation that would reasonably fit the circumstances. I have no freaking idea why. Both are stock mobs from the Civilians list.

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Civilians have a really sharply restricted list of emotes, and I have no idea why. I don't even think you can make them cower, which is really weird.

I don't even think they can play the standard "Thank You" emote, and that's just nuts.

Live feedback from a high-40s spine/regen scrapper. Here we here we here we go.

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Okay, so I'm looking for... an antique. I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what it does, it's just old. Can a brotha get a file photo?

"perform", not "preform".

Hey, it's Location Employee! I haven't seen him since he disappeared during Citywide Disaster! Good to know he made it out okay.

The male assistants' outfits are too low-contrast given their particle effects. It looks like they're just wearing a black bodysuit instead of the intricately patterned thing that shows up when I zoom in.

It seems like an ambush hits with no warning dialogue after I rescue Location Manager, and I suppose I deserve it since I dumped Carbonated Beverage all over her when we were celebrating Local Sports Team winning the championship.

Dude. Rage on a boss. Not cool. Dull Pain was down, and KO blow activated the one-shot protection code which then ticked down because of lingering gravity damage.

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Apparently this guy is stealing old stage magician gear. Harry Houdini would not approve.

I enter with... the Circle of Thorns looking for something? And the magician assistants have captured a curator who's trying to cast a spell on them or something?

Later in I find a wounded group of assistants. How did that happen? The CoT patrol and the kidnap group in the opening room got on fine.

Hey, it's a talking display case! It seems to be collaborating with the CoT to get un-displayed! (This seems like a bug but is hilarious anyway.)

And another talking display case with the magician assistants!

One of the CoT battles triggers the boss early, I guess when an Air Thorn flips out and flies away.

What do you mean the props were nothing important, I was saving talking antiques! (but seriously, the CoT were after one, too. That suggests there's got to be something worthwhile there.)

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Who's this Radiant Glinda? Maybe that should have been her name in the previous mission.

More "preform" for "perform".

Man. Aggroing two groups and having two lieutenants spam Deceive is a recipe for doing nothing.

...and the Mystery Magician shows up after I search the table? How? Why?

He tries to run, but ha ha spine poison.

His spawn is all spread out, and the defeat objective isn't complete until I poke my head into a side room and take out his assistants. He should probably be boss-only.

Even with tabbing out to type I beat this mission in under 10 minutes. Maybe you should scale it back to 15?

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Okay, a confrontation!

...wow. Even level lieutenants with Deceive can keep it almost perma-applied.

And the Mystery Magician is... in the first room? With all his attendants on the bottom floor and himself up on a catwalk? It can't be this easy.

...is Bowen's rescue animation also spell-capture? He seems to stick in the green smoke for a while before he's ready to follow me.

Huh. It doesn't look like the objective completed. I'm betting he's actually waiting further in, but I'd like some dialogue to that effect.

Another Rage boss? Good thing I got a gravity buddy.

Still more stolen antiques. No clue what they are or why they were stolen.

I can understand why the mystery magician is an illusionist, but why the necromancy?

And... my contact has no idea why the antiques were stolen either. Okay.

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The custom group was alright, except for the perma-deceive from the illusion elements of it. But I never really got a sense of why the Mystery Magician was taking stuff, or what he was hoping to accomplish -- or what I stopped, other than another group from horning on on the CoT's apparent monopoly on stealing artifacts from museums.

If I got some hints at, like, using the spirits of the dead stage magicians that lingered in their gear as part of a plot to put on the greatest magic show and work in a subliminal illusion to control the minds of half the city?

Or whatever the actual plan was here. That'd really help enormously.

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Sequel's written. Perhaps eventually there may be a way to post it without throwing my other arcs in the dustbin.

Standing invite: if you have someone on Virtue, Triumph (heroes), Protector (villains), or Champion (both) and are curious where it was going to go I can show you the somewhat unpolished test version.

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there were no typos that i saw and i looked hard. there was only one odd thing and that was in the 3rd mission. all other bombs say lost bomb, one says lost IED. not sure if that was on purpose. it looks amazingly well cleaned up and edited.

the open-ended conclusion might fall a little flat with some people. but i happen to like stuff like that. none of my arcs are open and shut cases. it leaves you hoping for more and lets your imagination run.


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Well, I wrote it as a three-parter on test, but I didn't want to publish THE MONOLITH EPIC. Anyone's guess if I'll ever get the slots for it.

As for the Lost bombs, there's a bomb, an explosive, and an Improvised Explosive Device, because they have to be different objectives with different names for the Lost guarding them to say different things.