Can You WIN The Internet? # 85544 WELL CAN YOU??

Arc Name: Can You Win The Internet?
Arc ID: 85544
Author: @twelfth (easiest way to find it)
Length: "Very Long" (4 mission; maps are small to med)
First Published: 04/18/2009
Morality: Neutral (with chewy, nugatey heroic flavor, and approved by redsiders)
Description: Betty The AI needs your help to save the internet from digital menaces both within cyberspace and the real world!
[*]COOL! Flame Wars! [*] CRUSH! Gold Spammers! [*] CLEAN! up pr0n! [*] DEFEAT! the one eye-stabbingly, hair-pullingly, groin-explodingly frustrating adversary CoX NEVER lets you fight!! [*] BEHOLD! Grotesque overuse of Exclamation Points!!!11!!

Comedy-based arc intended just for fun. If you're not watching the chatbox, infoboxes for critters, or checking the clues you'll miss most of the jokes. If you're looking for a plot, you're totally missing the point.

Normal to Medium difficulty. Most mishes have bosses, one defeat all (medium map), One AV at the end (which will scale to EB solo) with an ally to help. Reasonably solo-able (although the Custom Group in 3rd mish might make it hard), but very reasonable for a duo or trio (recommended). Tested on diff 3 with squishies.

The first 3 mishes will auto-exemp/malefactor the player, but 4th is 40-54 so most toons will have all powers up by that point.

I gratefully accept your comments, criticisms, and rotten fruit in the spaces below.

Bumping this up - stumbled on it the other day and it only has 8 playthroughs! This is a really awesome arc, and I was practically falling out of my chair laughing. Amazing work, and you can tell tons of time was spent on it, too.

Thanks, Dinah! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for giving me a bump on Saturday night!

Rating: Four stars!

Comments: Absolutely amusing! Last mission is a doozy for certain archetypes, otherwise, no real balance issues. Run on a level 50 MA/Regen!

Thanks for the tip, that was a fun one, had me laughing out loud for real at the Succubus hostage dialogue

<Edit> One minor thing I forgot in the ingame feedback: Mission 4, there were quite a few patrols using the same dialogue, making it sound a bit repetitive after the 3rd time you hear it. If you got room, maybe you could make several different patrols with different dialogues.

@Cap'tain:

Yeah, I had forgotten about Kheldians on mish 4 - that mission originally had Psychic Clockwork - but I felt like the critters weren't a serious enough threat for anyone at 40+. Nictus were the next idea I had, since I figured I could get squiddies and Novas and such - but the dang mission won't spawn them normally. I have no idea how to force the MA to give me the squiddehs!!

As the Arc is vaguely skewed toward team play (with the recommendation in the send off text in that mish in particular), I figured that it shouldn't send things over the edge into unplayable.

Oh well. Thanks for the comments, I believe my main test-it alt is working on your time travel arc (which I think is the newest one?). Only just started it before I came to work this morning.

@skydance:
I think I'm at 95-96% capacity on the arc, but I'll see if I can switch up the patrols. I felt like there had to be a reason for the Nictus to be there, since the rest of the missions had enemy groups chosen strictly by theme. But yeah, belaboring a joke is poor form.

I heard the last boss is hard.

I think it also lieks mudkips, but i'm not

[corrupted data]

PATCH NOTE: 05/13/2009

1. Changed some minor typos, partially caused by editing errors and text limits.

2. Mission 4: 5 patrols using the same tired joke is ...uh..tired. Reduced this to one patrol, added 3 new patrols of Nictus (no text) and one of PRAWN (by popular demand).

3. To Do: Find snappier text for the Prawn Patrol (huh...there's a nice ring there) in mish 4, 'cause my comedy gland had been sucked dry at the time.

Review posted.

Patch Note: 05/23/2009 - all changes to Mission 4

1. Mission 4 enemy group changed to a custom (Map's Army) with all regular critters. Mixture of Neuron robots & storm elementals (supposed to be corrupted programs), and the Nictus for flavor & to keep the bare-bones plot basically intact.

2. since Posi's guarding group makes an off-color joke, makes sense to have his guards be Prawn.

3. Changed Prawn patrol to spawn due to event in the same area where they are found. also changed text to reflect why the prawn are there at all.

4. AV's ambush moved up to 50% health. Adjusted text appropriately.

5. Changed to Arc Description to include warning for solo Kheldies.

Tested with duo, seems to run much faster and less sloggy. Hopefully Kheldies will be not so aggrieved with less Nictus (although most mob groups will have at least one)

bumped to avoid death-purge-terror-panic

Notes for future changes:

Mission 3 considered too long with a defeat all condition - reasonable complaint. Possible retool to make it defeat all "in last room"; Need to figure out a way to make sure that a player can still find all of the optional goals. Also consider putting in a new optional goal which will spell out that you wouldn't need to defeat all.

Custom Group needs tweaks - Nurse & Gothic Prawn are cycling heals - which can really make things tough on a larger group. Kinky Prawn needs to lose entangle or whatever the AoE slow is. These problems were noted in testing, but considered minimal since the testing group was small. These will probably change or be adapted once i15 hits live. Note to self: need to check out AE options on test to confirm I can drop these powers.

Updates: 50 plays!!

Patch note 07/01/2009:

Changed Gothic Prawn to dark/ice dom; Customed Kinky Prawn's plant control to lose the damn root thingy.

Mission 3 is now defeat all in final room. Navbar text is changed to hopefully point this out without being stupid explicit.

EDIT: BACK UP TO FIVE STAR-RUHS!! Come see the new hotness!! Played it before, play it again and bring some friends!!

PoliceWoman has posted a new & comprehensive review of ...INTERNET! (Scroll toward the bottom of the page to find it) - 4 stars!

Expect to see several of her suggestions transferred into the newest build in the next few days.

Like an undead succubus, I shall necrobump!!

Man, the Mapserver was making you its beeaotch this XXP weekend.
I firmly suggest getting even. Time to WIN THE INTERNET.

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.

Wow. Didn't realize that the Arc was more than a year old.

Did a longish runthrough on this arc a few weeks back, and I have to say that INTERNET is full of fail. Normally I would probably just unpublish the thing, but it is my highest-played arc - so I'm loathe to do that. However, pretty much every mission needs major revisions. So we are looking at the REBUILD OF INTERNET:

General Objectives:
1. More Killer, Less Filler
2. Cut wordiness in the Text. I love Betty the Nanny, but damn.
3. Get more consistent level ranges

Mission One:
1. LOSE THE GOLDBRICKERS. It's bad enough that you're dropped to level 20, but these guys have massive amounts of suck due to all the -resist that they throw out. I've played the arc several times in teams, and the first hallway full of Goldbrickers is usually leads to a team wipe. This is no kinda good for a lighthearted comedy Mish.

2. Decrease spawning size. You know, I thought that the mission seemed a little bare in original build, so I put in some more patrols. At the level you're mal'd down to... no, just no. Less is more, let's just focus on what the objectives are in the mish and leave the rest of the map to fend for itself. It's a small enough map not to require stretching out more mobs.

3. Consider replacing Goldbrickers with custom colored Freakshow (Gold Freaks?).

Mission Two:

Just ******* lose it. I like the idea of going into the Chat Room to beat up people...but we can lose this. Even at 20 ish, Trolls are annoyingly difficult and the Minions of BatZuul, while an exotic critter group... they are an exotic critter group from a SF. That means that they are on average more difficult than same mobs at that level. Really damned annoying in solo and there are not allies here.

Also, the jokes in this mission were less than crisp.

Mission Three:

1. Might drop the Map size. Feels long. However, if we lose mission 2, then this could provide some longevity for the rest of the arc.

2. Prawn Stars still do not appear to have any Bosses, which is an i15 no-no. I don't remember if we got a memory increase on i17, but if so, I could have room to put in a new custom. Also, look at Leather Prawn powersets - he's pretty dang difficult to knock down and is probably one of the more difficult critters. Which is odd since he's only an LT.

Mission Four:

1. Need to redesign Mapserver's group, now that we have a few more options on custom critters. Will lose the Nictus and the Void Stalkers, etc. Might go with Psychic Clockwork and Various Robots. Maybe Rogue Robots.


Might consider bringing the whole Arc down in level range to make this a low-to-mid Arc range. This would probably necessitate lowering Mapserver's difficulty, but we'll have to see. Seriously, though, this is a pretty serious teardown and rebuild. Would require several days of work, not sure if I have the fortitude for that, but I do like the arc in general.

We did get an increase in file size. We also got the ability to tweak custom mob difficulty to be exactly where you want it.

I remember playing this back in the day, it was quite funny. I'll agree though, it probably hasn't aged well and could stand to be updated. I'll definitely be replaying it when/if it is.

Two Notes:
1. Got a very nice nod a few weeks back from Arrowrose on playing the completely unrevised version of the arc. Again, issues with the final mission came up.

2. The reason for post-bumping this: with i19, looks like we might get Praetorian Clockwork - which might be a good way to deal with mission 4. If so, the whole arc might get dropped down to hold at the 15-20 range. This would mean dropping Mapserver down to an EB (which is a little underwhelming for Mappy's importance in the world of CoX - but whatever).