Smash_Zone

You have friends with you, therefore it is not dead.

As for the topic, I don't really think this would work out. There would have to be severe limitations to prevent your sidekick from becoming too overpowered and letting you solo with ease. After that, they'd probably be dumbed down so much that nobody would want to use them.

Just use your imagination. For example, me and my sister play together frequently. Her Hero is higher level than my Hero, so when we team together is almost like I'm her sidekick. She's the tough scrapper who goes and dukes it out with the enemies, and I'm the defender who makes her stronger and blasts from afar. If you have friends who like to duo, you could work it out like that. Even if you're the leader of an eight man team, they could all technically be your sidekicks. Just temporary. It could be like "Okay guys, Dr. Super-Evil is planning to destroy the Atlas statue! That is why I've called you all here, we've got to stop him! Follow my lead and we'll stop Dr. Super-Evil!"

Cliche', I know. But I'm just showing you how you can role play that type of thing out while you're playing the game regularly. Besides, having a real player that you can coordinate strategies with is far better than having some Fusionette AI run around blasting everything that moves. The most fun I have with my sister is when we come to a tough boss and we both talk about our strategy and how we're going to approach the situation.

Also, here's another rule you should know if you choose to come back. Ignore anything that Graystar_blaster says.

I think he's just stating the the new E-mail is the closest we have to an actual bank system. It's limited, yes, but right now I'm glad we have something like it at all.

No, no it hasn't. Only the more obvious names have been taken. Of course all the single word names are gone, because they're too obvious. Just do a little thinking and you can easily come up with a cool name.

Names I've recently claimed:

Desert Spear
Solemn Shadow
Amplified Assassin
Serpent Lance

It really isn't that hard. You don't have to break out a thesaurus, but if you do so it can lead to some very cool sounding names. Also, whenever it gets a little tough to find a name, I always use Seventh Sanctum's hero/villain name generator. It doesn't give you great choices, but it almost always gives me a better idea for possible names.

Your suggestion would cause a ton of confusion and make people frustrated. Even if it's a different font, it would still irk people that somebody else is running around with their name that they created. Plus, how would you tell people apart? I could run around named Captain Awesome in a different font and claim that I'm the original Captain Awesome. There would really be no way to prove that Captain Awesome is the original while Captain Awesome is not.

Yes yes yes a million times YES! This is a much needed change that has been ignored for too long! The star system is horribly flawed and desperately needs a change. I actually had an arc that got many five-star ratings (Becoming a villain, in my sig. *hint hint*) until it got hit by one lousy four star rating, dropping the average to four stars. After that, it was never touched again. It fell down the list somewhere into the hundreds page mark. I made some major changes and started over. It got one four star rating, and was never heard from again.

Point being, anytime your arc gets lower than five stars, it's basically the death sentence for the story. Anything lower than five stars gets dropped so far down in the pages that nobody will ever see it unless they specifically search for it. A simple like/dislike system would be far more efficient, and would prevent the eternal banishment of the four-star rating if your arc is halfway decent. =P

Again, I whole-heartedly agree. The same exact arcs that have been on page one about three months ago are still there today, while new arcs never see the light of day. You could also have different categories for arcs like "Newest arcs," "Most played today," and such appear on the front page. The goal should be to get new writers recognized, not to leave the famous writers on the front page for an eternity.

Here is where I disagree. The "locking" of the arc prevents someone from going "Oh, my arc is devs choice, now I can totally remove all the story and turn it into a farm!" Unless some change totally breaks your arc, it should stay locked.

No, please no. There should be no badges based on artistic talent. What about those people who aren't writers? Those people who can number-crunch with the best of them but couldn't write a coherent story to save their lives? There are creative, writing, artistic people; Then there are the academic, math, and science people who would rather figure out how to IO their toon out to max stats than write a story. It's a broad generalization, maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that some people just aren't good writers. Just like some people aren't good actors or aren't good at sports. A badge like that would become as mythical and legendary as the fabled Bug Hunter badge.

A separate listing for dev choice and HoV arcs would be great. Stop shoving those arcs in our face; we get it, they're popular.

The AE hasn't had any cosmetic changes in a long time. We've gotten bug fixes, exploit's closed, new maps, new groups and a ton of other stuff, but the main system remains the same. It's long-overdue for an update.