twelfth

Alien for the C-64.

Holy...someone else had that? It always became a race to see who could blow up the Nostromo for me. Plus, you couldn't ditch that damned cat!!

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest wasn't Nintendo Hard, but it was Nintendo stupid for forcing a Guide Dang It as the manual never told you what all of the items did, and the localization (i.e. the translation) was awful so you rarely understood what the villagers were telling you.

I recently replayed the game and it's actually fairly easy if you know where to go and how to use the items. The secret of Deborah cliff literally took me years to find out about. After the frustrating amount of time I spent just trying to get to the end, Drac is a total freaking pushover. Simon's Quest is actually probably the easiest incarnation of him in the series. So, Nintendo Hard, no. Controller-crushing, TV-smashing, console-kicking frustrating, oh hellsyeah

Choking Cloud is a poor holdover from the Controller /rad set. As a controller, its hold could be buffed by the Controller overpower innate. As a corr, it has a lackluster accuracy element and it will AOE aggro. This latter aspect is NOT what you want, considering you will be drawing constant aggro with fire/ & debuffs anyway (which if you've gotten high enough to get CC & EMP, you already know).

I sorta like EMP as it is a stronger PBAOE burst hold/stun and comes in pretty handy in those ohshit moments when you have a large mob of critters coming at you. The fact that it will do some damage to robots (which includes odd things like freakshow and annoying things like Rikti Drones) makes it a little bit more utilitarian. I don't recall if it has mag enough to mez a boss, but you're not likely to use it on a single target anyway.

Honestly, if you're looking to lose some stuff in the /rad powers, I'd recommend skipping Choking Cloud and Fallout. Fallout can be fun to play with, but it does require you to have a dead teammate - which means its not really useful solo and sorta suggests that you want a teammate to die instead of helping them with debuffs, buffs, and healing.

Fire breath is pretty much bread and butter for your damage chain, I usually add a little range to it to broaden out the cone.

I sorta found fire/rad sorta (but not very) forgiving for a build - what other pools/powers are making it tight? I assume this is for PVE? Mostly solo or teams? What kind of teams, etc....

Bad News Folks:

With i16's XP changes on custom mobs and groups, the Prawn Stars are took a dive on their reward/risk. The group as it stands in "...Internet?" is only minions and LTs, and there's no group sufficient to allow another custom in the arc to bring a boss in. Also, I think at least one of the Prawns is missing a basic power (if not more of them), so they might not be worth any XP whatsoever. If someone notices this in a live run of CYWtI, PM me here or ingame (global is the same).

I'll be looking at these changes once I get my machine back from the black hole of tech support, since all my custom critters are saved on that machine. Now that SuperSK will allow you to get XP from exemp'd/mal'd levels (which most players will be in CYWtI mishes), I really do want you to get as much reward for the risk I cruelly place you in.

Why? Because Even Evil Has Standards.

Yup, just ran through all the badge hunting, and got soul taker; no demonic badge. Full progress bar. /bugged it too.

Eva, I've got a lot of these in arcs I'm working on. What maps or map-types (caves, offices, etc) did you notice these on?

Also, I think I agree with another of your posts. We need a dev go-to on AEs. I know that dev would be "Teh Debbil" to many people, but still...

I'm not even sure why I'm getting into this "jerk hackers" trainwreck...

The thing I really don't get is the idea of the XP nerf on custom critters as being a "punishment". That's not the case. A "punishment" would be if they stripped XP or inf gains from the toons rather than the critters. This is a "nerf" which is simply a modification to the risk/reward ratio - which is accurate to how the system has been frequently used by the playerbase before. If there is less risk, it is not too strange for the threat to provide less reward. This goes on in the content all the time with hardly a blink - The Freakshow Xp modifications come to mind as an example (which have gone up and down before).

Farmers, you will always be with us. If you don't like what is happening now, find another thread in this VERY forum on how to adapt your strategies to continue to PL, farm, and otherwise bulldoze your way through whatever challenges (or lack thereof) you see fit to place between yourself and your goals.

I'm actually looking at my dumb "quote a day" calendar on my desk and amazingly, it has an apt quote for your plight:

"If you have to will to change it, you have no right to criticise it"

Necrobump 'cause I Need more Zero Stars.

Giant Laser Shark is totally what we are looking for in the GM for the Mercy Island (home of the Chum badge, of course!)

Can we please not devolve this into another farmers/content debate? Me, I find the PL team spam obnoxious, but sheesh.

I agree with the issue in Cap. Blueside has a lot more options on where you can go at the appropriate level and Steel Canyon (the reasonable analog on blueside) has the AE building in the middle of the zone (away from WW & the university).

Then again, Cap has ALWAYS been lag central (being the most common place to use the BM and crafting stations) - but AE has compounded the issue. Redside might have it worse due to the compressed zone sizes. I know it's sort of troublesome and completley unlikely to happen, but they could move the building out toward the boardwalk. Fewer people out there, and its still within spitting distance of an Arbiter (the one right next to the PO ferry - I think a lot of ppl forget he's there).

While I think lowering the numbers for a duplicate instance of the zone is a good idea, I think they could limit it to the known high-pop zones (Atlas and Cap) instead of doing a blanket drop.

Other QoL suggestions? Turn off Broadcast in your chat box. Blessed silence...

You can use tickets to unlock the costume pieces and booster pack costume pieces for use on your custom critters in AE.
However, this is only for AE creation. You cannot unlock booster packs for use on your active toons using tickets (you have to buy them with real money on the NC Soft store). Also, having the boosters on your account does not unlock them in AE creator.

On the other hand, unlocking the costume pieces in AE unlocks them for any of your characters who are creating or editing mishes in AE.

But..but...why can't the satyrs have wine? With whom will we have our bitchin' classical Keggers? Its not like the satyrs have time to cultivate vines, they're too busy having bitchin' keggers. T.T

I don't know anything about Latin, but I'll put this one on my list.

Jenny proposes a round of margueritas at El Super Mexicano...

Although Marguerita is a woman's name, margarita is generally the spelling for the drink.

Your assistant Jenny hands you your briefcase, and you stumble out the door.

That's a lot of y-o-u in that sentence. Just scans awkwardly.

So this is what the outside of the office looks like! You had nearly forgotten.

It's 7:15pm and I'm still at the cube farm. I KNOW THIS PAIN.

EDIT: It occurs to me that it might be amusing to reference the "Crey Employee" Day Job badge somewhere in the text of the missions...wait, is it in the Souvenir? I forgot to check for one!

Though I'm not sure whether to be flattered or disturbed by the screen shot.

It took me a minute to remember whose arc this was, so I actually thought: "Police Woman? That's an sorta odd, generic name for a critter. Oh well...OH WAIT."

Do you think it's bad enough to warrant changing their defense set to something else?

Nope. Since the ones you run into most often are LTs, they mezz pretty readily or can be controlled in other manners. They weren't a massive threat, it just took forever to whittle down their hp on an elec blast set. But hell, EM/ brutes deserve to have a little challenge in their day too. For once.

Barbarella is fine, and it obviously fits thematically.

It's a pretty small map and in my testing I could finish the mission with time to spare

I did okay on both, since I didn't catch it immediately, I did lose some time of my first run, but managed to squeak it by. I did just skip several mobs, which I think is a reasonable strategy for this level. If there was a 20 minute mark, I'd recommend bumping it up a smidge. Since there isn't, I say keep it at 15 mins, let folks sweat it out.

Played through Papers and Paychecks & posted in the thread.
Mind taking at look at "Inhuman Resources..."? Arc info is in the sig, but details are here.

298290 - Papers & Paychecks

Okay, I ran this solo on my 43 elec/kin corruptor, Synge Cabiri, who can solo EBs (slowly) if necessary. The second run was on Celine Dioscura, 39 claw/WP stalker.

TL;DR: I think this is in a final state, I don't see any major problems, and very few minor issues. Frankly, I think it's ready to fly. Gave it 5 stars, which is probably a leeetle too much, but since i can't give it a 4.80, I figure what the hell.

Mission One:
My only problems with the whole of the text in this arc is whether the brackets around the yellow OOC text are really necessary. The yellow text would stand out enough since no other text is marked with color. The brackets just look like remnants of an earlier markup phase of the text. On the other hand, with the exception of the finale debriefing, there is also no 3rd party narration - so it might break some of the immersion of the monologues. Meh.

Heading into the mish, I hear a lot of battles going off - which usually signals to me that something's broken and I'm going to miss some chances at plot points, but it's immediately apparent this won't be the case since Crey and Longbow are going at it with almost completely disregard for me. I don't really bother to correct them, and let them slug it out. Still, there's a lot of text that fires off at the beginning.

On the other hand, it's nice to run into Paragon Protectors that aren't punching me in the face.

The objectives brought a smile to my face.

Ah...so, we're mirroring the Manty SF? I'll admit up front I have not done it, so some of these references are going to miss the mark. Still, I get that I'm probably interfering with the canon storyline. The descriptions of our generic hero antagonists got a smirk, although I did forget to check them on their first appearance.

Found Jenny, rescued her...and she's a follower. Okay... Time for an RP moment.

Jenny: Thanks!
Synge: No problem. *lights post-combat cigarette*
Jenny: You can't smoke in here.
Synge: Why not? You've been smokin' since I first walked in here.
Jenny: <_<;;;
Longbow Nullifer: *rifle bash*
Synge: OW! Goddammit! Why ya gotta mez me in front of the ladies?!

The crates and clues got a lot of smiles. You know, I've actually worked this job RL.

Debriefing: Promoted? Alright! I should be 45 minutes late to my first day on the job all the time!

Mish 2:
The Accept text needs a period after "I can handle that".

Synge: Screw the dress code!! I'm showing up an hour and a half late too!!

Ah, I see Jenny is a fan of <a href=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CheekCopy>the Cheek Copy</a>. This is my kind of girl: exhibitionistic and reckless.

Synge: *looks at copy* We need to do tequila shots after this.
Jenny: But I'm a naive girl from a small town in the midwest!
Synge: ...Bourbon?

Immediately after this, we rob Crey Industries blind for their office supplies. I'm old enough to remember when this was required for publishing your crappy scenester zine. I fully approve of this to this day. Incidentally, there was no chatbox text for the objective, but that might be a stylistic choice as it has been commented on the forums that some people don't read them. I'm not one of those people, but whatever.

It's at this point I notice my new objective: Photocopy your butt.

Yes, I approve of this too. Honestly made me lol irl.

At lvl 43, I was running into a lot of Police drones, and not that many actual PPD. Those that I did, I was able to handle pretty readily. Celine (at 39) had more varied groups with PPD Shells and Psi Cops/Lts, which made the dialogue seem a bit more natural. I can imagine that a Police Drone might have a speaker on it through which someone offsite could speak, but I don't recall if this happens in the regular content.

I'm noticing there are no popups at the mission exit. Again, some people like these, some don't.


Mish 3:

Now I'm a research scientist? After shredding documents?

Synge: You know, I didn't even finish high school. I don't have any kind of credent--
Manning: *hairy eyeball*
Synge: You know, eff it, I can mix chemicals with the best of them. Hook me up.

I didn't catch it immediately, but my second run did confirm that Experiment C is from the Manty Hero team, which was sorta funny. Also appreciated that her clicky text changed as well. On Synge's run, Most of the Experiments were already in battle with the research scientists and other friendly mobs long before he got to them. Celine did better and could actually fight them, no real problem. Not sure if that's a function of her Hide power, though.

We meet up with Jenny again.

Synge: Hellllooooo Nurse!
Jenny: *Looks uncomfortable, guilty*
Synge: Seriously, I totally still respect you after last night.
Jenny: But...what about the rash?
Synge: Totally goes away after a week. *snappy pointy fingers*

I noticed on this mish, I didn't have a lot of mobs available to fight with, and those that were around were conned pretty low (-1 and +0's on a diff 3 setting) . I didn't really mind, but others might. This is sort of why when Synge ran into Summerfield, I totally got owned 'cause I was not actually ready for a Boss fight (he had conned as Red Boss, which is still a +1 technically, I think?) I managed to come back in afterwards and wipe him with my usual sapping strategy.

Celine's run was sorta the same, although the groups appeared to con around even or maybe +1. I did get some purple bosses and Summerfield's fight was a little more trouble, although I didn't faceplant on him.

Didn't have a problem finding the computer afterwards, and on Celine's run I did notice that there was some backtracking needed but (since I knew what to look for) I didn't have problems with this.

No pop up again.

Mish 4:

Middle Management?

Synge: T.T
Synge: No good can come of this.

On Synge I immediately noticed that some of the Nemi Automatons were tougher than others, and upon inspection, I saw that one of the Lieutenants was a hidden custom critter, AR/Elec Armor (I didn't figure out the Elec armor part until Celine's run when I could get close enough to them). This made Synge's run a little more difficult, 'cause I really had to work to whittle past their resistence (elec/kin remember?). Celine's attempt at this made them about on par for custom critters.

The "TPS reports" dialogue repeats a lot in the mission. I don't mind so much, I just "toned it out" - but others might be annoyed by the repetition.

Another run in with the Manty TF... I didn't get the reference to Kimberly or the significance of Kellerman (I missed checking his clicky text the first time), but guessed that's referenced in the TF. I got figured out on Celine's run that he was the Kellerman in the "Kellerman Process".

Barbie took a metric eon for Synge to whittle down, but again, she isn't as difficult when you have a damage type that they don't have uber resistence to. On Celine's run, Barbie spawned where the Warhulk spawned on Synge's run. I was a little concerned I was going to have a boss spawn on top of a boss, but luckily this did not occur.

FYI: Barbie ran at 25% health or so on Celine, but never budged on Synge. Not sure which behavior is intended.

Mish 5:

Variant objectives sounds cool and ...

AH CRAP 15 MIN TIMED MISH

This was the only mish that Synge saw a purple boss, and it was on the last one. I lost about 2 mins at the first of the mish 'cause I was PM'ing in game with someone, so I barely made it to the end with a few seconds left.

Police Woman was actually considerably easier than the last Crey boss, which probably was intended in order to allow you to skip her to run to the exit if necessary. I had time on both runs, so ended up defeating her without much difficulty.

Aw yeah, got a Panty Shot Defeat on the author avatar

Synge: *headtilt*
Synge: You know, I was gonna make a joke about whether you wore police issue lingerie, but then you kinda wrecked the comedy when it turned out you did...

Anyway, so we get to the crucial moment. Do we turn in the mole to Crey or not?

Mole: Oh please, Synge Cabiri, don't turn me in! Think of all the times we've had!
Synge: Uh..yeah. um.
Mole: *twinkle eyes*
Synge: Uh, look, I'm sorta undercover here and supposed to be digging up dirt on Crey, and I sorta got caught up in all of this success and promotions, and I sorta forgot to get any information for my commander. So...uh...I'm gonna kinda take the info you found and ...uh... *hands over to Crey*
Mole: O.O
Synge: But we'll totally be back for ya! *zoinks!*

Celine's run was a little easier since she could just Hide and lose the Mole, so there was really no need to have her tagging behind. I liked that the escorts were never necessary to keep them with ya, which helped.

Finale:

I liked the parallel endings, and I'll admit that I liked the "good guy" ending better 'cause it didn't suggest that you were a good guy but that you were just capable of turning a good deed once in a while.

Conclusions:

Good arc, quite fun, and not long really. I think I ran it in about 75 mins or so - about 15 mins per mish, which is paper/radio mish duration. Not much to suggest in the way of improvements (thus all the dramatizations), so I think you've got another straightforward winner here. It's gonna suffer a bit for being a Villain-oriented Arc, but I'm already recommending it to folks in my SGs & VGs.

Sorry for the delay on this, the last week has been pretty intensive so I haven't put in much time in game. I did a runthrough on this on my 43 corr, and found it at a final draft level. I have some comments, but I am delaying posting in detail until I finish a second runthrough on my 39 stalker to catch things I know I missed and to re-run the final mish.

Excellent! I was hoping it would be receptive to lots of folks.

I'll put it on my list, which is empty at the moment. I need to get my new arc reviewed and the Flower Knight TF frankly scares the hell out of my squishy-loving butt, so I'll give this a try!

Title: Inhuman Resources - IE At Work
Arc #: 298132
Author: @twelfth
Search For: Arc or author works fine.

Morality: Neutral (Basically for villain ATs who RP as "heroic")

Level Range: 1-40 for the most part. Final mish is 40-54 due to the EB/AV.

Difficulty: Autopilot/Easy until final mish, which has an EB/AV. Designed for duo, allies are common. Despite the summary entry in the AE interface, there are no "enemies" with custom powersets (these are your allies). See below for details.

Length: "Long"; 4 missions set to small to medium maps. Runs about 45 mins to an hour.

Arc Summary: Want to join Inevitable Evolution, Virtue's renowned dissident army? Come along and thwart a fiendish plot to crush dissent in the population of the Rogue Isles before Arachnos can enslave further innocents.

Always looking for comments and reviews. Go on and post below!

Notes: This is explicitly a VG recruitment arc for Virtue-based RP VG Inevitable Evolution. The Arc is expected to be run at least as a Duo with a mentor (a member of the VG), although team play can be fast and furious. The arc is SFMA for soloers, but solo players may find the final EB/AV quite challenging (particularly at lower levels). Most missions provide at least one ally.

Design was crafted with the following objectives in mind:
1. Express the tone of IE's RP themes and plotlines, along with nods to established VG lore.
2. Large level range to accomodate any level of toon who might be recruited.
3. Uncomplicated enemy groups so as to not frustrate any AT or team size.
4. Speed. This isn't expected to take all day to finish.
5. Provide OOC info about the VG for interested parties.

Known Issues:
1. Final triggered boss in mish 2 spawns in the subjective "middle" of the map and not at the "back" as directed in the design.
2. Expect some backtracking on Mish 3 due to cascading objectives. Sharpsighted players might notice the objectives before they actually activate.
3. Final EB/AV tends to spawn around a blind corner. I'd be great if the devs would let us place spawn points, but whatever.

Title: Inhuman Resources - Inevitable Evolution At Work
Arc #: 298132
Author: @twelfth
Search For: Arc or author works fine.

Faction: Neutral (Basically for villain ATs who RP as "heroic")

Level Range: 1-40 for the most part. Final mish is 40-54 due to the EB/AV.

Difficulty: Autopilot/Easy until final mish, which has an EB/AV. Designed for duo, allies are common. Despite the summary entry in the AE interface, there are no "enemies" with custom powersets (these are your allies). See below for details.

Length: "Long"; 4 missions set to small to medium maps. Runs about 45 mins to an hour.

Arc Summary: Want to join Inevitable Evolution, Virtue's renowned dissident army? Come along and thwart a fiendish plot to crush dissent in the population of the Rogue Isles before Arachnos can enslave further innocents.

Notes: This is explicitly a VG recruitment arc for Virtue-based RP VG Inevitable Evolution. The Arc is expected to be run at least as a Duo with a mentor (a member of the VG), although team play can be fast and furious. The arc is SFMA for soloers, but solo players may find the final EB/AV quite challenging (particularly at lower levels). Most missions provide at least one ally.

Design was crafted with the following objectives in mind:
1. Express the tone of IE's RP themes and plotlines, along with nods to established VG lore.
2. Large level range to accomodate any level of toon who might be recruited.
3. Uncomplicated enemy groups so as to not frustrate any AT or team size.
4. Speed. This arc isn't supposed to take all night.
5. Provide OOC info about the VG for interested parties.


Known Issues:
1. Final triggered boss in mish 2 spawns in the subjective "middle" of the map and not at the "back" as directed in the design.
2. Expect some backtracking on Mish 3 due to cascading objectives. Sharpsighted players might notice the objectives before they actually activate.
3. Final EB/AV tends to spawn around a blind corner. I'd be great if the devs would let us place spawn points, but whatever.

As with all things, it really might depend on the player(s).

1. A large team...:

A. ...might not want to stop for someone to take the escort back to the entrance.
B. ...might not notice if someone slips back to the entrance to take the escort while the rest of the team clears (depending on how thoroughly cleared the path back to the entrance is).
C. ...might not care, as long as they can safely "carry" the escort with them while they continue to clear out other objectives. This carries the risk of getting the escort killed, and "failing" the mission.

2. A solo player will have to take the escort back to the entrance regardless. Reactions to this will depend on...
A. ...the PC's AT. A brute is going to annoyed that they are losing Fury while taking the squeaking escort back to the entrance. A stalker or other stealthed AT is going to be upset they will lose stealth wihle guiding them back. A blaster whose fighting critters resistant to their damage type is going to have a long slog (of course they are probably used to it if they solo)
B. The player's playstyle. If you're willing to play slow and clear out a good path, then it might not be a big deal. If you like to stealth or fly-scout an outdoor map in order to avoid combat, the player's probably not going to like hoofin' it all the way over to the entrance if its far away.

As far as this particular map goes, it has two things going for it:
1. It's very open, unlike a forest map, so you're probably not likely to lose the escort.
2. Mob spawn points are usually pretty easy to avoid if you want to.

Also, I think "back" on this map is actually very close to the entrance-van, I think it's behind the motel where you spawn in.

As long as it is easy to maneouver around the mobs and its easy to keep LOS with the escort, I think leading an escort should be alright. Now, FINDING the escort might be a little more annoying, but I suppose that would be the trade off.

Still, given the nature of CoX Missions and the AE mishes in general, you really can't "fail" a mission and have permanent consequences. The program just isn't that sophisticated as to have branching storylines if you fail that objective.

But as for whether adding the escort will make people who hate big outdoor maps hate it more? Well, they're already biased against the map as is, adding another feature which is controversial (and I'm sure you've seen some hate for escort objectives) - you probably wouldn't win any more friends. Still, its already a biased opinion.

Also, is it just a quirk in my custom critters, but are they supposed to have terrible accuracy? I had two LT-level ally CC's following me around & they couldn't hit +1 mobs (presuming that the enemy critters con the same to the allies as they do to me). What governs the To-Hit and Acc of an ally or custom critter?

Okay, at least I can fix the issue with the escort being unguarded. Next time I'll actually read the help text in the MA Creator :X

I'll keep trying with the settings, but I wanted to see if there was a known issue.

I also remembered that I could drop the level range on critters, so I might change the critter to something that normally spawns at a high level but have the level floor dropped on it. Find a melee-based critter that I can use.

Thanks for the attention, folks.