Bubbawheat

General update 9-27-09 and bump:

Played my controller on Guardian for the first time in a long while and got her a couple levels on a radio team I formed myself. Yes, I'm sure all of you here know this, but the servers are not dead, and it only took me a couple missions before having a full team. After playing her for a bit, and realizing all her enhancements had gone red, and I hadn't visited the i16 tailor yet, I called it a day, then shortly afterwards moved to my blaster on Virtue for a full team from the LiveJournal channel which had a fairly thinly veiled Wolverine clone. He was different enough to fool some people, but he was claws/regen with a yellow and black costume that strongly hinted at Wolvie's costume, though his head was different.

I just realized now that I finished a bio for my Magic origin fire/thermal controller, that I need to have a character with a mutation origin to complete that part. Looking back through them, I feel like I did do a pretty good job at matching the bios to their origins. Not sure what I'm going to do for mutation though. I guess I'll just have to think of one during a costume contest like I did with the last two. Although tech/science/natural do kind of have similar sources of power, though I like to think that they are a bit different in their own ways.

Awesome, thanks so much for putting together the contest!

And I do have a DA account of the same name - Bubbawheat

Heh, I knew a few people that referred to those as vitamins.

I've got 90 characters, so that's a good guess. Actually, that's also a guess at how many characters I have.

Hopefully phase 2 of this fix is to add +level difficulty options in the TF challenge settings.

67' was a very good year.

Another compromise on the nav-bar hints - add clues in the mission pop-up, like "You smell death when you walk in the door." and "You hear the screams of several hostages in the distance."

Ran this earlier tonight - 2nd! - and really enjoyed it, people need to get on the ball and check this arc out. I loved all the movie references even though they either dried up or moved out of my realm of experience after the second or so mission.


Not a spoiler, you see her in the first mission.

The only problems I really had are with the objective placements, which are somewhat hard to control with the current system. M2: Shell was in the 2nd to last group on the map, then it spawned several new hostage objectives that we had to find. M3: first objective's in the back of the multi-floor map, and the next objective is in the front of the multi-floor map. M4: Had one of the harder maps to get around in.

As far as the story goes, I thought it was top notch with good characterization of Shell and Dr. Shelley, even though the plot itself was pretty basic - which isn't a bad thing.

Arc Name:Of Mentors and Legacy
Author: @Aliana Blue
Arc ID#: 1589
Morality: heroic
Enemies: Circle of Thorns, Nemesis, Devouring Earth (Mission 4 is 33-50, you should think about normalizing it to 35)
Description: Have you ever heard of the word "Ouroboros"? If you have, you may also know the word "Mender". Now we must save the future to save the past. (AVs inside! And allies) CLASSIFIEDS: Looking for heroes to run a military simulation against Freakshow, please contact Collin Larson at your nearest AE center.
Played at: level 26
How I found it: look a few posts up.

I found a classified ad today that lead me to Collin Larson in order to run a training simulation against some Freakshow. I know it had nothing to do with time travel, but I had a feeling about it. And when I first stepped into the portal my instincts were correct as I find myself in the future. And according to my nav computer, I'm supposed to find a dead body. I'm not sure why, or who it is, but I do end up finding it and a letter from someone calling himself Mender Paelin. Also, I didn't know it but I'm very skilled at forensic investigations. Apparently he is manipulating the AE system to send me into the future. And the body belongs to a young man named Phillip, the son of two heroes who died when he was just a baby, but Paelin will send me to save his parents to prevent his death and allow him to grow up to become a great hero in his own right.

I return to Collin and while he is perplexed at what happened, he is also very curious as to how it happened, and he acquiesces to my request to run the simulation again in order to further Mender Paelin's plans while Collin stays back and studies the temporal portal on his side. Once again, I go in fairly blind besides the knowledge that I'm eventually going to rescue Phillip's parents, and the information my nav computer tells me. Besides rescuing Phillip's mother, there's also another letter from Mender Paelin telling me after the fact what this mission will accomplish, along with a hint of how I'm going to rescue his father.


Edge, back from his own edge.

Back to Collin and he believes that he only needs one more point of data in order to triangulate their data and track to portal to its source. This time I'm in a graveyard freeing Phillip's father Edge from more Circle of Thorns as well as some ghosts. But before I rescue Edge, I also have to rescue several other identical hostages being used in some sort of ritual I know nothing about or why I'm stopping them. I also defeat a Circle mage, and find a weakened, but living Edge, now Phillip should have a stable family of heroes to guide him into his own superheroism and lead a fulfilling life to help push back the darkness that closes in during the future.


Asoulx, a demon summoned by the CoT.

Things should be over, but neither myself, nor Collin thinks we should just leave it at that. He would like to test out his datapoints, and I would like to see if this plan really did make any sort of difference. So he configures his computer to recreate the time travel portal created by Mender Paelin to send me about fifty years into the future, in what they call a temporal convergence point if I remember correctly. That is to say, it is a point in time that has seen a lot of temporal activity, which would insinuate that it is an important point in time in the future course of history. Although I don't think Collin explained the theory quite as well. When I get there I find the world is ruled by the steam-powered brass fist of Nemesis. Also while I am there I find some information on their computer systems. I find some pictures of Mist and Phillip just before their death, though I'm personally curious as to who took those pictures and why they are sitting on the computer. All the other information I find leads me to the information that Phillip did grow up to be a strong hero, but his parents were still killed, it just took several extra years for it to happen. Phillip was a young, strongheaded superhero and went after the Circle's stronghold. In a rage, he managed to take out the majority of the Circle's leaders, but at the cost of his own life. And without a central power center, the Circle of Thorns devolved into chaos which spread out through the world, allowing Nemesis to step in and create his own order.


Mist and Edge, in full health this time.

This wasn't what I signed up for, and Collin agrees. So they use this additional data point to refine their system and send me to another temporal convergence point where they believe is the when of Phillip's parent's deaths. And their calcuations are correct as I find Edge and Mist in short order, as well as Phillip who knows me already from my earlier dealings with his parents. There is a demon named Asoulx, as well as a stronger demon named Olurtenep, who curses me as well as Mender Paelin as he is defeated, which for some reason leads me to believe that Paelin is working with the Circle of Thorns. And I also happen to find him in here as well, ready to be taken down a peg or two for his deception.


Olurtenep - a name just begging to be an anagram, or backwards, but great look.

My task is done, and while I'm still curious as to the effect my newfound presence in the future has had on the further future, Collin informs me that the temporal attributes of the AE portal are gone now and they are unable to re-open the portal into the future anymore. But he did happen across another letter addressed to me while he was looking away for just a moment. It is another message from Paelin who tells me that my work was indeed a success, working better than his original plans which made Phillip into a strong, but reckless hero.

Four stars: Recommended.


Mender Paelin in his first and last appearance, notice the ninja on the far right.

(This is partly a personal gripe that I don't like calling the AE for what it is. It's just a little too meta for me. In my estimation, the AE is a simulation of a real mission, and when that mission is a simulation, then I'm playing a simulation of a simulation. I can look past that, but in this instance, the simulation is used as a framework for the real story. The only problem is that all the contact text goes to the frame and not the story, so every mission I'm going in blind with nav bar, and sometimes even pop-ups that don't make sense to me. I.E. mission 4 with Nemesis, the pop-up says "This is unexpected..." but when I'm entering the mission all I see is a perfectly normal looking base. How is that unexpected. It's not until I see Nemesis around the first corner that I understand what that pop-up meant. But this is a lot of time being left in the dark. Like the first mission, I'm supposed to find a dead body, but until I do, I am in the dark as to the relevance of the body. Also, this framework moves all of the text for the real story into the letters you find from Mender Paelin which are all mission complete clues. And mission 4 when you're working outside of Paelin, you're even more in the dark.

There are two solutions that I can think of that would solve a lot of these problems. One is to make the nav bar hints more generic - changing find the dead body to find a clue, or figure out what happened. The other is to get rid of the framework altogether, make Mender Paelin the contact and move the real story into the forefront. Personally, I don't really see what the framing story adds to the real story anyway, it feels like it's just there for it's own purposes. I liked the real story, but I didn't really feel anything from the framework story, and it feels like it just gets in the way of the storytelling instead of enhancing it.)

Ooh, the odds are better than 50:50 now, hope it lasts 'till tomorrow.

edit quote:

I won't comment on the changes to MA because they haven't affected me at all. I would still play story arcs for review at 0 xp, and I will be playing story arcs eventually at reduced xp.

The reason I've been out of the MA is due to all the other stuff they added in i16, notably SSK. I've been teaming the hell out of the game, and that's not conducive to the way I like to play AE arcs. I prefer to take those slow steady and solo. And it takes too much time for me to search for a good arc to play whne I'm running a team, it's easier for me personally to do radio/paper and contact missions.

I'll be back, I keep trying, but it's just too easy for me to find a team when I'm on now.

I just can't drive 55

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I was able to at least find some semblence of sence in the merging the servers thread that got locked. This one, I got nothing. Beware, that thread got locked, and I don't see this one going in any good direction either.

I was looking for these a while back, only got a couple forwarded to me, and I still haven't gotten around to playing the second one.

Kiss Hello Goodbye - forget the ID number - @Kitsune9tails - really enjoyed this one, the contact dialog is more of a noir detective's inner monologue.

What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50

<-- do you really think a woman would refer to herself as "Bubbawheat"?

My characters on the other hand tend to be mostly female.

Yeah, and earlier this week I was able to form a nearly full team.

On Champion. (One of the more empty servers fyi)

In the Hollows. (One of the more empty zones fyi)

At around 1am Eastern time. (One of the more empty times of day fyi)

Taclobanon's got 25 fingers, or so I heard.

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I heard Cashoo drew 37 pics...
In a row?

Me: It's 98 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses
Taclobanon: Hit it!

Cashoo: 44-66-2-29-19-65-90-60-20-42-88-99-5-6-13-37
Taclobanon: 35-43-12-17-1-11-88-89-58-42-90-69-2-10-72-98

Yeah, I mentioned this in the Architect questions forum, and several of them are duplicates from the forum merger. And one of them is for an event that's long over.

It's been a while since the second round, so I thought I'd give it another go around.

If you forgot how it works, you sign up in this thread, and after a week or so I will start a new thread pairing you up with a random person from the signups. You swap character screenshots and/or bios through PMs, then you redesign their character and post your version of their character.

The themes had mixed reviews so I'll leave them out this time and keep this one simple. I'll try mixing it up again next time.

Pair ups will be posted by next Monday afternoon/evening September 28th.

Link to how it happened last round

Last Updated: 11-15-09

Level: 16

Server: Champion

Made this one a while back, I believe it was actually shortly after fire got ported to scrappers. I wanted to make her a little bit differently from my brute and tank, so the main thing I'm planning is holding off on Blazing Aura for quite a while, and focusing on the single target attacks as much as possible, which is pretty much a given until the later levels anyway. I played her for a while today running on a PuG in the Hollows and decided to make another change, I made her stripe and most of her flame powers a bright red, and her healing flames and consume a light blue.



original costume - though the only change I made was the orange stripe to red and the X to orange.


Posing with some mannequins on The Cheshire Cat's arc Signal:Noise


Sketch by Christopher Robin for my 30th birthday


Sketch by Technic Dragon who I believe I just came across on Deviant art and saw that they took free requests. I forgot about it for a long while then on a whim I searched DA for "Burnt Matchstick" and found this. - Click for larger version.


And I just decided to try my hand at coloring it the other day.