Bubbawheat

Interesting read. I've played all of those arcs mentioned (as being good), except for the Saul Rubenstein one, and they are all quite good.

My votes:

Groups:
2nd: Clave Dark 5's WickerWork. I liked the look of them, and they played pretty well. Loved the look of the Lantern Warrior especially.
3rd: Lazarus's Nagan Hedgemony. They're interesting, nice costume designs, and varied/interesting powersets.

Characters:
1st: New Age Ronin's Becky. She's just absolute fun.
2nd: FemFury's Erica Lashion aka Escalation. Fun arc, interesting villain, and reminds me of one of my own arcs.
3rd: LaserJesus's Ashton. Another one that's just plain fun.

Yet another mini-update. I made a new outfit for my blaster using some of the santa pieces for the holiday season (even though it's a little late now), I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with it yet, I plan on adding the naughty halo too once I get enough candy canes. It just doesn't feel quite right - and I'm not just talking about the lack of the stripe, or maybe that really is why I don't quite like it. I dunno. I'd be happy with suggestions for it. I really like the new mask though, it fits perfectly with the blaster's bio - she's blind.



edit: And now I have removed this costume in favor of the version in the post below.

For me:

the new SModcast book by Kevin Smith
A SModcast t-shirt
Slippers

I got my wife:

Sims 3
The Tudors 2nd season

And my 3 year old daughter got:

Full scale Woody doll with pull string and hat.
Coraline figures
Coraline doll
Coraline DVD

Got another commission through the ever generous Caemgen from the ever awesome Foo. I told him he could have free reign on which character he picked, and he went with my Tanker. Great timing as a surprise Christmas present. Check it out! (click for larger version)

Merry Christmas to you as well. I also have enjoyed this community greatly, it kept me reading the boards even when I took a couple months break from the game. And why I don't have any plans on taking another break any time soon (money situation notwithstanding).

I like Worthington as a name.

As for Mr. Richman...

reicher Mann is German, though that is probably too close to Reichsman.
Winst is Dutch for profit.
Argent is French for money.

You gat 16 people to sign up.

You start put their names in a random order where they start choosing the best arcs, not choosing any duplicates. See here for an example

Each person gets 4 picks, ending with 64 total arcs.

In a new voting thread, the arcs get paired off and people vote for each pair - like a single elimination tournament.

Eventually, you end up with a single winner.

I see these in the Comic and Culture section a lot. People sign up, the list gets randomized, then they go through and make their picks on what they think fits the topic the best (in this case, pick the best arcs). Afterwards, the picks are paired up and everyone votes on each pair until we get to a winner. Would anyone be interested in doing one of these for AE arcs? (Do we have 16 people that would be willing to participate?)

Added a couple shots from my second costume on my Dominator on Triumph.



And one of my blaster I had sitting around for a bit.

When I say that the missions could be questioned internally, I mean you could have a non-dialog text either in italics or a different color representing the player character's thoughts where they are questioning why they are going along with it so easily. I suspected mind control/brainwashing, but if there's some way you can hint at it earlier. I think I remember that you do have this a little bit, but thinking back, I just don't remember it being quite clear enough.

As far as the escort goes, you can have either patrols or boss details that don't spawn until the hostage is released. You can have them spawn in the front so there's something more to fight on the way out. Or you can have the mission end on the rescue. It's not a big logic jump to assume that the player character leads them out on their own without having them physically lead them out. You could even have a patrol from the Greater Good as an enemy with a line like "No one will stop us from bringing Nikki in. No one!".

Next up is an arc with a lot of good in it, from ArrowRose:

The Greater Good #350877 by @Gypsy Rose

I'm met today by a very friendly and seemingly kind-hearted individual with a very literal name: Ms. Goodheart. She's a representative of a Robin Hood-like organization calling themselves The Greater Good, and she's looking at me as a possible new recruit. But first, I have to show my willingness to the cause. And the first step is getting me to commit...

Evil for the Greater Good: Again, quite literal in this instance, and earlier than most of the arcs I've played, so I'll spell it all out first. It starts off small: robbing a bank where an evil businessman keeps much of his money (and again with the literal: "Mr. Richman") guarded by a bunch of Longbow. Next stop is breaking the founder of The Greater Good Mr. Goodman (or Dr., I forget) out of the Zig, on a purely technical infraction I'm sure. The third mission steps it up a notch by kidnapping the daughter of the aforementioned Mr. Richman's, Nikki, with assurances of her safety at every step of the way. And finally destroying the entire Greater Good operation, for reasons I will explain further down.

The Arc as an Arc: As far as the gameplay goes, it's pretty solid, with good details and interesting missions, with good flavor and mechanics on the final mission. Though the last mission does have a few too many of the tiny bombs to find on a medium sized office map. There are a few things I didn't like too much. I didn't really care for the too-literal names everywhere. If this were a humor arc and played off of them, that would be one thing, but this is a serious arc, I would suggest changing at least 2 out of 3 of the names to something more interesting, you can keep the metaphor, just pick something a little less obvious.

Also, things seemed to flow too easily in the first few missions. There's very little (in my opinion) in the way of convincing on her part, or questioning on my character's part. It made me as a player suspicious from the very start, suspecting some sort of mind control, or other plot device from the beginning. It just seems odd how my character would easily continue on the ever increasing ethically questionable missions, especially with all the crumpled paper clues strewn throughout the missions undermining the contact's credulity. There should be some comment about the notes, at least internally since you find out that the notes come from the contact herself. Since it seems as though Ms. Goodheart wants to take the organization down the whole time, maybe you should add more foreshadowing to the brainwashing revealed in the final mission. Like adding an over-zealous ally that Ms. Goodheart comments as being out of line. But I think I'm going overboard in the suggestions department.

Overall, I enjoyed playing through this arc, though I think it could still use a bit more work. Good luck with it!

Player Choice: Customs - Voting Rules

• Voting will be open through December 31st at 11:59pm EST.
• You may vote in either category, or both categories.
• You must vote for a first choice, second choice, and third choice Please be clear with your order.
• First place choices get 3 points, second place choices get 2 points, and third place choices get 1 point.
• Nominees may only vote for a 2nd and 3rd place choice, and not for their own entry. This approximates every nominee voting for their own entry in 1st place.
• The group or character with the most points at the end of the voting period wins. In the case of a tie, 1st place votes will be used as a tiebreaker, then 2nd. In a true tie, a vote-off will be held over the weekend.
• The winner will recieve 25 million inf transferred to the character of their choice.
• Links go to the entry post where you can see the pictures and descriptions. I recommend also playing at least one of their arcs to get the full experience.

Best Group Entries

Mr Squid's: The Lost Choir
Found in: The Lost Choir part 1 #123675 (M5) and 2 #136959
Keywords: Challenging, Balanced

Lazarus's: Nagan Hegemony
Found in: The Portal Bandits #3326, Of Futures Past #254599 (M1-A), A Show of Hands #296884 (M3,4), Breaking The Barrier (And Putting It Back Together) #347029 (M1,2 M3,4,5-A)
Keywords: Challenging, Balanced

Nebulhym's The Satyrs
Found in: Tales of Cimerora, volume 1 : Of feathers and fur... #12647

PoliceWoman's Paparazzi
Found in: Celebrity Kidnapping #1388

Wrong Number's The Wannabes
Found in: Trademark Infringement #2220
Keywords: Fun, Comedy

Bubbawheat's Matchstick Women
Found in: Matchstick Women #3369
Keywords: Themed, Detailed Backstory

ArrowRose's The Anti Liberty League
Found in: In Pursuit of Liberty #344916
Keywords: Themed, Balanced

Ironik's Weaponized Toys
Found in: The Toy Box #132772

OzzieArcane's Big Evil
Found in: BE Prologue: Gangs United #250480 , Evil is Thicker Than Water #340274, The Night Big Evil Stole Christmas #348697
Keywords: Homage, Themed

Mirror Man's GP - Division 0
Found in: The Galactic Protectorate -01 #47143
Keywords: Challenging, Themed

Poptarts Ninja's Space Ape Armada
Found in: The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada #356628

Laser Jesus's Freedom Militia
Found in: Fighting Freedom #177930 (M1, M2, M4, M5)
Keywords: Balanced, Varied

Clave Dark 5's WickerWork
Found in: Against the WickerWork Khan #346904


Best Character Entries

Jail Bird's K-10
Found in: Old Dog, New Trick Arc 81318 (M3 Ally)

Clave Dark 5's Fritz, Your AE Representative
Found in: A.E.'s Premium Quality Mission: "guaranteed qualityyyLOADING ERROR 0.000459 #148476 (contact, last mission Hostage)

Wrong Number's Miss Manners
Found in: Trademark Infringement #2220 (contact), In Poor Taste #259920 (contact, M3 Ally)

Fem Fury's Erica Lashion, aka Escalation
Found in: Escalation #6143

LaserJesus's Ashton
Found in: Rise of the Drakule #51357 (M1,M3), Return of the Revenge of the Son of Drakule Part 2: First Blood #84543 (M2), Drakule Armageddon 5: This Time, It's Personal! #257242 (M1, M4), Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers From Hell #340316 (M2)

Tubbius's Waddle
Found in: Polar Emergence Neutral Government User Interface Network (PENGUIN) #29205 (M3), This Costume Contest Sponsored by Tubbius #101933 (M1, M4), Waddle's Revenge #302196 (M4)

Wrong Number's The Firecracker Kid
Found in: The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596 (Contact)

New Age Ronin's Becky, the Tarantula Mistress
Found in: Becky's Revenge #60197 (Contact), Becky and Mandy #175000, Payback, Tarantula Style #235630

Lazarus's Cobalt Stinger
Found in: Of Futures Past #254599 (Contact)

Supafunkadunka's McGrimm
Found in: Clan Destiny #349053 (M1 boss)

Nice to see a lot of last minute entries. It is now 12:02 EST December 21st, and submissions are closed. I'm too tired to make up a voting thread tonight, but it will be posted by 6pm Eastern. Good luck to all the entries.

PS. Supafunkadunka, your entry's valid in case you were wondering, feel free to edit in screenshots when you get things sorted out.

My character nomination is @New Age Ronin's take on Becky the Tarantula Mistress.

She appears in Becky's Revenge #(will have to look up later)

She's a standard character, but New Age Ronin captures her voice pretty well and make a very entertaining contact.

Thanks for the review, the arc is set up as somewhat of a mystery, there's lots of clues and descriptions in bios for more answers. But I do leave some bits to the player's imagination. I'll try to answer some of the questions you have.

ok I'll guess: 12, an even dozen.

I'm in the no-mic boat as well, but I'm perfectly happy typing my little comments out in the ether, so there's that.

I moved a couple of my lower played villains on Liberty over to Virtue for a start-up VG with the other Screenshots and Fan art members. I chose them because I liked the characters, but haven't played them much, and this will get me to play them more often. I haven't moved anyone from Pinnacle, and don't intend to move my higher level characters, though I might swap one of my mid-level heroes for a mid-level villain on one of my other servers. I haven't fully decided yet.

Also, I rarely have trouble finding people to do any TF whenever the urge hits me. Takes at most 15-20 mins to get a full team - if it's a slower time.

So this was actually the second arc I ran through, but I waited to post it until it had it's own thread, or the fact that I've seen it advertised around elsewhere at least. Here's what I thought about

Turg Fiction: IX #351787 by @Turgenev

My contact is a Family Lawyer whose biggest fault is that he is too cooperative with the police. He is aligned with the Bonnano faction of the family who have a friendly rivalry with the Marcones. And friendly in gang terms is they rough each other up every once in a while, but things are starting to escalate and I'm sent in to check it out before it gets out of hand.

In short order, I'm introduced to the girl. She's the prototypical fish out of water. The saintly daughter of the mob boss, and all he wants to do is protect her, which isn't always easy due to his line of work, so I get sent in to the rescue. But things aren't exactly as they seem as the Marcones seem to be trying to pin this on some third faction.

Next up, I'm sent to check out an old base in the Overbrook area. It looks very old, but has some interesting high tech equipment in it, as well as being populated by a bunch of electrical robots who did not like my end bar at all. All of the clues in the base point to someone from the future being here. Afterwards, I get a text message from that someone who promises to explain everything to me if I come back to meet him. He's not actually here of course, but through his messages explains that he is from the future where that so called good girl goes bad after the death of her father and ultimately results in the death of this guy's wife. He's been repeating the past nine years over and over again (because he can only go backwards in time) trying to save everyone, but he's come to the conclusion that she has to die.

The evil for the greater good: It all boils down to the last mission, which is presented as a choice, like many it seems from what I've seen. In this arc, the choice boils down to the fate of the girl. She's an ally in the mission and generally the first thing you will find as you climb up the office building to the roof. Instead of the Don, however, you find the time traveller, calling himself IX, who has dispached of the girl's parents already and is ready to dispatch her as well. Your choice as it is presented is to help IX with his plan to prevent a future despot from gaining power before it even starts. Or to rescue her, allowing events to unfold naturally and see her rise to power to become worse than her father before her. If you let her die, you find out that IX's wife turns out to have been collateral damage in the surrounding gunfight, leaving her future fate unchanged. If you rescue her, you see through the souvenir (which you don't get on a failed final mission) that the pain of her loss starts her on the path that IX was trying to prevent. You tell her all about his endeavors, and she leaves with a cold interest in him, leaving you to wonder what will happen to his past self and his wife.

The arc as an arc: This holds up quite well as a solid arc that really kept me interested throughout. I was very curious by the end to find out how it was all going to end, and luckily, the author was online so I was able to find out both endings without having to play through the entire thing a second time. Which wouldn't be so bad except for all the elec minions in M3 and M4.

I really enjoyed this one!

*pounces*

Matchstick Women #3369
4 missions (1 non-combat)
lvl 25+ (all customs)
A mysterious flame draws you in and shows you the story of a cult of women arsonists.

This is my first arc, but has gone through some recent changes and I've been looking for some good feedback, as well as trying to get it to 100 plays.

Ctrl + Alt + Reset #137561
4 missions
lvl 15-30 (Wyvern)
A tale of a time loop.

This is my most popular mission, nominated for a couple awards, but hasn't won any.

Whack A Mole - Where's Moldo Edition #2711
2 missions - timed missions - 15 mins total

This is just for fun. If you're limiting it to one arc, go with Matchstick Women. I offered the others since you also seemed like you're just looking for some good arcs.

Some extra info about the VG:

Rankings:

Commissioner (since I "commissioned" the VG)
Designer (for the base designers - VexXxa or I can promote you, Oathbound)
Artist / Collector (both have the same permissions)
Enthusiast
Aficionado

Would like some suggestions for our Motto.

AE arc of the week - just let me know if you've got an arc you want to promote, and I'll rotate it in the MOTD, weekly-ish.