Discussion: June 8, 2007 The City Scoop!

quick question where is the local in monster island i keep looking but where is he

plz gimme a description or a /loc i wanna know ehere the guy on the island is in monster island

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm diggin' all of this art exposure, between the great single panels and covers, to the full on interviews. Glad to see the comic book side of our lil' CoX world is still getting its due!

But what about the WRITERS, eh?

Writers? Stay tuned.

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plz gimme a description or a /loc i wanna know ehere the guy on the island is in monster island

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I feel guilty enough just revealing him so publically. I think War_Witch would kill me if I gave away the exact spot.

PM me his /loc then plz im a nice villain

u can PM me the /loc if anybody asks if u gave the cordinates to em u can always lie

fine il just find it on my own and tell it ot all my friends and we will hang out there and tell nobody else

go me i found it yay

Johhny, I love you, but for all the wrong reasons.

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On a scale of 1-10, how difficult would you want the quiz to be?

1 would be something like "All the answers are in the rulebook or are references to the very core story".

10 would be something more like "References so obscure and brilliant that people will be making threads to compare notes, even then in trouble".

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Gonna have to be a 7. Hard enough that you have to look a few things up, but not so hard as to quote what the Nth word in the Zth paragraph of contact X's Yth dialog was.

Having said that, the May 25's crossword was... how to say... "unpleasant" with all those "Origin contact in zone" dealies.

Hey, those clues were mighty generous, if I do say so myself. I told you where to look!

Darn. I should've written the clues as "Technology contact with a mustache."

Glass Cannons FTW? 6 down's also giving me issues.

Though I don't think 2 across and 11 down are fair. Unless you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you can't get 2. And 11 doesn't contain enough boxes for the zone's name; only the hero for which it was named.

look look i found spaulding

Willllllllssssssssssson!

first

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I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm diggin' all of this art exposure, between the great single panels and covers, to the full on interviews. Glad to see the comic book side of our lil' CoX world is still getting its due!

But what about the WRITERS, eh?

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Write something and send it in.

I'd suggest sending it to Marcian, Lemur or Hertz.

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I have to add that I am still stuck on 9 down.

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cough, I've got a COLD. It's like my nose is a carrot.

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The one thought that clue gave to me was "but those aren't Giant Monsters, are they?"

However, I've never farmed them, so I don't know.

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Yes, the big ones were Giant Monsters

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

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Glass Cannons FTW? 6 down's also giving me issues.

Though I don't think 2 across and 11 down are fair. Unless you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you can't get 2. And 11 doesn't contain enough boxes for the zone's name; only the hero for which it was named.

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Well, yes, you have to read the Developer's Digest from time to time.

As to 11 down, almost all the zones are referred to by either the full name, or like in this case just by the one word. The first puzzle used this convention with a proper name. Puzzles in other publications do similar things.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

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Well, different people will obviously have different preferences.

Using that scale of 1 to 10, I would personally rate this one as a 2.5 (needs a bit of obscure knowledge, but nothing a veteran of the games/forums won't think of within a second or two), and the first one as about 7 or 8. (I missed the second one, and the third one was "contaminated" by the duplicate answers.) I would personally like about a 5 or 6; some obscure knowledge (like Cryptic staff names), but the clues will be thoroughly unambiguous when applied to the answer (ie no cases of "it could mean almost anything"). I'm not sure if this is possible.

Having said that, well done on another issue of the Scoop.

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Addressing the "contamination". The third one had a theme. Crosswords reuse words and clues frequently, especially narrow focus ones.

I am not sure people's expectations that each crossword should be entirely unique is appropriate.

I designed the last two puzzles and clues. I don't work at Cryptic or NCSoft. I am trying to appeal to the "hard-core"/jaded/experienced as well as the newcomer. I know I can't always succeed, nor do I think anyone can.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

lol

Ok people, I have to ask... about the horoscopes.

I fired up my own star chart program this week and assigned the existing signs to each AT instead of rewording random stuff from a few newspapers.

Better? Worse? Don't care?

It's killing me here. I gotta know. Also, if anyone's vaguely interested in the details, all heroes were born in Providence and all villains were born in Hispaniola. Also, you were all born in 2002.

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Heroside or villainside? Just curious.

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I bought my Hamidon Goo for less than one million infamy two weeks ago. <_<

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A little while ago I was doing some badge-crafting in the morning, and I saw the price of some common thing or other (not Luck Charms or Runebound Armor, it was something more mundane, like Improvised Cybernetics) jump from 12 inf to 1000 inf as people drained the available supply. It was a pretty fascinating thing to watch.

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It gets hilarious for me after a while. While I'm doing the market thing with my villains I write down things they need, how much it costs to craft etc. I had something similar to your experience, except it was on a larger scale. An Uncommon salvage piece was selling in the low hundreds on the market, but when I bid 2,000 it wasn't buying instantly (like it would if I was highest bidder). Turns out some peeps were bidding 4,000! Then I bid 5,000. Someone bid 10,000 infamy on them from the history lookings. Time was of the essence, so I just bid 20,000 and got done with it. Nothing like watching the system bleed.

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Addressing the "contamination". The third one had a theme. Crosswords reuse words and clues frequently, especially narrow focus ones.

I am not sure people's expectations that each crossword should be entirely unique is appropriate.

I designed the last two puzzles and clues. I don't work at Cryptic or NCSoft. I am trying to appeal to the "hard-core"/jaded/experienced as well as the newcomer. I know I can't always succeed, nor do I think anyone can.

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"Contaminated" is perhaps an inappropriate word, but I can't think of another one (English third language, yadda yadda). What I meant was that I can't fairly judge the difficulty of that crossword because I was already "thinking along those lines" from the previous crossword I did. Therefore, "contaminated" by previous experience.

As mentioned, everyone will have different impressions on the difficulties of the various crosswords, and that was mine. 9 down (which gave me problems) and 2 across (which would give many others problems) are examples of "hard clues"; 9 down in particular is "hard but good", and I'd like to see a sprinkling of more of them, but not for the entire puzzle. For what it's worth, 2 down is perfect in terms of difficulty level, while 12 across may be a bit too easy. Again, others may have different opinions.

I'm not unappreciative of the work put into the puzzle. This is pretty much just feedback, perhaps poorly-worded but well-meaning.

Well, there are several of us compiling which clues are "recently used". I'll try not to use them too close together often, but no promises.

Contaminated tends to be a fairly harsh term in the english language though. Polluted, unclean, dirty, impure all come to mind when the word contaminated is used. It probably does not invoke the same reaction in me as it does someone who does not know English as their first language.

I can see that thinking along the same lines that you would think those are easier.

Like I said, I am trying to challenge all groups. Sometimes I will make a difficult puzzle, sometimes easy, but all times I will try to put a few of the opposite type in to balance things.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters