The Hound

Bump. So... no one is interested? Not a soul? Come on guys, please? It's been decades since I had a review or even a rating on one of my arcs, and it was from a kid who wanted the end boss to be a Naruto ninja.

Keywords: Ideal for Teams, Save the World, Sci Fi
Length: Long (Four Missions)
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: Custom Group, Arachnos
Description: The Restarian Empire is back! This time, you are taking the fight to their home planet! Gather up your strongest allies and fight your way right to the evil Emperor himself.

Notes: So, as you can probably tell from the description and keywords, this is an arc meant for a team. By them being "back", let me give you the Too Long; Didn't Read version: They were in my first arc, I deleted it, people who played it wanted them back.

It's my latest one. Hope I can hear everyone's feedback and/or crticisms soon.

Meanwhile. Tyrant, Recluse and all the evil lords,
Drew up diabolical schemes on their newly-unwrapped boards

I'd like something that seems like an evil palace or something of that ilk. The antagonist I have in one of my arcs is directing his men from such a place. However, none, and I do mean NONE, of the maps seem to represent the bloody thing. I did think I might have had a breakthrough with some CoT maps, but they have too much spots dotted around that just screams "It's underground!"

Oh my, quite a few peeves here. S'pose I'll add mine.

-- Having to defeat the mob around the boss for the objective to count.

There's nothing wrong with that, as long as there is a reason to why I must hunt down the guards surrounding the boss. Most of the time, I dive straight after the boss forgetting about the little minions and they run off in the carnage. Leaving me to look for them. Not a big gripe, but a gripe none-the-less.

-- Defeat Alls.

Probably the most common thing on the Architect Hate List. Defeat Alls NEED a reason as to why that mission involves you slaughtering every lifeform you come into contact with. Just chucking them in for the hell of it is not good storytelling.

-- Spelling Errors

Nothing ruins the plot more for me then seeing the author has accidentally spelt a word wrong.

-- Custom Enemies with no descriptions.

If you made the costume, gave them names and managed to string together powersets for them, atleast give your custom mobs a bit of a backstory.

I have more, but I am rushing as there's a Turkey in the oven.

Maybe Tyrant captured Sally and has outfitted her to be his own personal scourge of the seas. Something to help him take over the rest of Praetorian earth since Cole's empire isn't the only nation on the planet.

Contaminated Brawlers would last longer then you.

Time to fight some Hydra. Hey, look, your mother is among their ranks.

Agreed with the above. No new redside zones.

I don't want to have to hike it through a recently added zone to get to where I want to go, least of all through one that never gets used.

5th Column: No! We will NOT drop it!

Arachnos: Remember, as long as you kill your boss THEN take his place, it's not illegal.

Spectral Pirates: Arr matey, d'ya happen t' know if there is any good parrot shops 'round here?

The Family: We watch da Godfather every Friday night!

Rikti: Old Meme: All your planets: Are belong to us.

Longbow: Looking for a group that shouts out the obvious any time, every time?

Nemesis: C'mon, we don't plot everything!

Circle of Thorns: Every day, a poor, wrathful, vengful spirit is abandoned because it's original host died. It now has nothing, it cannot survive for very long without a body, please, donate your own body, so that this spirit can have a new home. Sign up now, and we'll send you this free information pack along with pictures of the spirit that is going to be sharing your insides for the next five thousand years.

Freakshow: You aren't a man until you've cut it off and replaced it with metal plates.

Legacy Chain: Everyone loves the helmets.

The Cabal: Whose side were we on again?

Mine was just something I thought up, it also had something to do with the fact I own three dogs, ironically, the breed in my avatar is not one of them. The Hound is also the name of a big baddie in one of my more 'Strike Force' type arcs.

BLAH! I can't wait! Why must five o'clock be five hours away!? I wants mah colourable powerz!

Why must college be in the way!? Why must I go back for another three lessons!? WHY!?!?!?

I absolutely adore this idea. It would certainly make you feel like an evil master villain rather then the lackey of one.

Like Mr. Tow, I am a li'l gripey at the second zone invasion idea. But hell, if it could be balanced well enough or something, I could possibly put two thumbs up to it. I really wish the devs would implement something like this, maybe Issue 23? Or earlier. Here's hopin'

/signed

I'll stop you Recluse! You won't get away with this! Oh, darn, I just remembered, I've got a turkey in the oven. Can we do this some time next week?

Unless this new alien race would be a part of an established CoX storyline, I don't really want a new race. It is bad enough keeping track of the Nictus, Peacebringers, Rikti (Okay, their not really aliens, but they have giant saucers.), and the Hydra Men.

Besides, whatever the hell the Coming Storm is, I'm leaning away from aliens and going towards Nemesis and his ability to just say that everything went on because it was in his plan.

My favourite noob moment? During Issue 11's release...

I was never good with enhancments, I thought that once you got them in your inventory, their effect was immediete. So for two whole Issues I sat with the same enhancments in my inventory, with completely unslotted powers.

Eventually, I stumble across a team with Set Bonuses. When I ask "How'd you get the Set Bonuses?" the team leader shouted "Hah! Noob!" and kicked me.

Well, I know how to get them now! Thank you self-learning!

I like all of BBQ_Pork's ideas. They'd be handy for tracking down that last little mob that has eluded your destructive powers entirely.

But you know what I would like? I'd like some contacts to actually tell you that the mission you are wandering into IS going to be a Defeat-All.

Take Sister Airila's arc for example. Near enough every mission I took from her had the simple objective to just kill a boss or get a glowie. But the nav had pinned the mission as "Defeat the Cimeroran Guards". At that point I think "Oh, for christ's sake."

I'd say that the contact for villain players of your arc should be something of a fan. You know, somene who has seen this villain rob a bank, perform a kidnapping, or even read them up in the paper and just developed an obssession of helping them. Alternatively, you could use something like a Longbow agent gone rogue and is now only interested in bringing the Corps down, and passes on vital information about Longbow's infrastructure to the player.

Just shooting out a few ideas there.

While I admit a Cimeroran GM would be very fun, I can't really see it happening.

In Cimerora, there is already Cyclops' and Minotaur's running around who are the size of Deathsurge. They might as well be the Giant Monsters. Also, the devs described Cimerora as a 'hub' zone, like Ouroboros. So their unlikely to let anything big and ferocious loose onto the map.

It's still a good idea though.

It's a bit weird isn't it? The devs have implemented Nazi fascist super soldiers into the game, who even have references to the bad guys of WW2, i.e the mention of Mussolini in Requiem's bio. Yet, if the player makes a character that has ties to modern day extremism, suddenly, we offend people!

Maybe, just to stir things up, we should change Crey's name to 'Microsoft' and have the Countess replaced by Bill Gates.

/cooldown. Phew, as a wise Austrailian once said "What happens if we say something and someone gets offended...? Well, they can be offended."

I suppose this could be something fun to implement. I too enjoy the Siren's Call battles, the thing I love most about them is seeing the variety that your charging in with/against.

It's be a bit of a problem on smaller maps though, I can already see lag on an enormous scale in places like Caves or Tech maps. Perhaps if it was only limited to outdoor maps? Also, I wouldn't like to 'choose a side' at the beginning of the mission. If your fighting one particular group for three missions, then the option to aid them suddenly pops up, it's gonna be a bit of a confuser.

I got this weird image of every member of The Cabal watching Charmed episodes back to back.

Malta Operatives break out the popcorn for either 24 or the cartoon Transformers series.

And Countess Crey watching the documentary series 'Future Weapons'

1) Got the Isolator badge.

2) Visited every zone in their half of the game.

3) Charged Lusca, solo.

4) Got lost in Perez Park.

5) Used /em batsmash in the last mission of "A Hero's Hero".

6) Popped a few purples and a few reds before charging Sally.

7) Get lost in your SG base at least once. (even if you're the base designer)

8) Had their picture taken on top of the Atlas Globe

9) Led their team into a complete team wipe

10) Led countless sewer teams from AP all the way to KR.

11) Asked someone to drop an Ouro portal for you.

12) By any means, hit the ceiling of a zone and fall all the way down

13) Been asked to fill in a space for bigger mob spawns, and flat out rejected due to rage.

14) Gone on a Mothership Raid and get confused about what numbers the pylons are.

15) Become enraged at the Tagteam of Death: Sapper and Gunslinger.

16) Made a joke about Nemesis Plots.

17) Pants Lord Recluse

18) Have contacts that have absolutely no missions for you because you already outleveled them.

19) Asked how to get a jetpack.

20) Been flattened by a purple minion.

21) Had his/her picture taken standing on top of City Hall in AP by the flag.

22) Volunteered for the Positron TF without really knowing better.

23) Attempted to solo a Rikti dropship.

24) Tried to kill Fusionette with Arbiter Sands' drones.

25) Fallen OFF the globe in Atlas Park.

26) Wondered why, when doing a cape mission, the Omega Team time capsule is in an abandoned lab somewhere under a cave in Perez Park.

27) Done laps around the Argo Highway in Talos hunting for Banished Pantheon masks.

28) Deliberately stood on the tram tracks and tried to get hit by a passing train.

29) Landed on the Blimp and Promptly fall off.

30) Hung out in AP under Atlas and his globe.

31) Entered a Costume Contest.

32) Called a contact just to check in some 10-15 levels later.

33) Went into The Hive alone and promptly exited five seconds later.

34) Changed their costume at least three times before they got a second costume slot.

35) Actually tried to do enough Meg Mason missions to get to a story arc.

36) Held a costume contest.

37) Hit some minion off a building with a knockback power.

38) Grabbed the Atlas Medallion.

39) Became Old-Fashioned in Faultline.

40) Added more slots to Brawl, Sprint, and/or Rest

41) Gone through every emote on the emote list in rapid succession

42) Get lost in Striga (where's the entrance of this *ù%$£µ Council tunnel)

43) Cursed when you found the map you were on was the cake-layer room.

44) Mapserved RIGHT WHEN YOU WERE FINISHING THAT MISH THAT TOOK FOREVER.

45) Yelled at a trainer for just standing there during a Rikti or zombie invasion.

46) Droned a Paladin in Kings Row.

47) Went to Bloody Bay for some Shivans and prayed no villains/heroes were there.

48) Prayed the villain/hero didn't want to fight when they spotted you in Bloody Bay.

49) Tried to land on a car and ride it

50) Visited Recluse's Victory

51) Accidentally hit the auto-run while fighting/typing

52) MT'ed into a global/supergroup chat channel

53) Visited every detective/broker whenever they entered a new zone.

54) Sold a highly coveted recipe to a NPC vendor.

55) Had an argument in broadcast.

56) Been knocked off a building by a foe with a Knockback attack.

57) Got a Scientist stolen off them while going for nukes.

58) Attempted to solo an Arch-Villain.

59) Complained about how slow the Heavy Robots are in Recluse's Victory.

We're gonna have to start backtracking on this list pretty soon, just to make sure we haven't said the same thing.

I just made what I hope is a masterpiece a few days ago.

No Hope #289978

It's soloable with an Elite Boss at the end. I worked hard on the storyline and the custom enemies, I hope whoever tries it out likes 'em.

1) Got the Isolator badge.

2) Visited every zone in their half of the game.

3) Charged Lusca, solo.

4) Got lost in Perez Park.

5) Used /em batsmash in the last mission of "A Hero's Hero".

6) Popped a few purples and a few reds before charging Sally.

7) Get lost in your SG base at least once. (even if you're the base designer)

8) Dad their picture taken on top of the Atlas Globe

9) Led their team into a complete team wipe

10) Led countless sewer teams from AP all the way to KR.

11) Asked someone to drop an Ouro portal for you.

12) By any means, hit the ceiling of a zone and fall all the way down

13) Been asked to fill in a space for bigger mob spawns, and flat out rejected due to rage.

14) Gone on a Mothership Raid and get confused about what numbers the pylons are.

15) Become enraged at the Tagteam of Death: Sapper and Gunslinger.