Eva Destruction

Eventually you can grab yourself a stealth IO and ditch Stealth. It works just as well for concept, doesn't slow your movement, saves end, and saves a power pick.

I honestly don't like the way some of the newer "loot" has been implemented. We have four in-game currencies already, three of them untradeable. Merits especially can only be obtained in a reasonable timeframe through repeating the same raid over and over, and things that they buy can't be acquired any other way. HOs were much the same way before the market.

If that's the model for future raid content, no thanks. Personally I hate them. With all the lag it doesn't matter how good my character is, at a mothership raid all I'm doing is firing randomly at the nearest Rikti, and at Hami raids I can contribute fully without even looking at my monitor most of the time. It isn't challenging for the majority of the participants. The only people getting a challenge are the ones who figure out the strategy, and the ones tasked with getting the right people involved.

What I would like to see in GR is some task forces, as well as soloable content that is more challenging than what we currently have, gives better rewards as a result, and runs parallel to content of "normal" difficulty instead of just ramping everything up to "hard" mode. Ideally, all new content would have a "normal" and "hard" difficulty, with "hard" giving better rewards, and offering a different kind of challenge than just raising your difficulty level or trying to find seven Corruptors and a stone Brute to throw at yet more giant sacks of HP.

I think the escort thing is just a bug. It's cropped up from time to time in dev-created missions as well. One thing I've noticed is that allies who aren't supposed to follow (and escorts who won't leave too, although I admittedly haven't run into many lately as MA authors tend to use them sparingly) are better at following than the ones who are actually supposed to follow.

The Law of Inverse Cuteness: The more evil a character is, the cuter they are in chibi form.

I especially like the expressions on the two ninjas at the bottom of the pile.

Just make sure you do all your edits to the published version first. Then when you're done, do the refresh thing, open it up again, and "save locally." Saving locally takes you out of the published arc and any further changes will only apply to the local copy.

If you're referring to what I think you are, yes, Captain Needs a Map has some issues with getting lost. It's been a while since I played it, but I think the problem was that, as an ally, he would exhibit the usual Ally "stranded" behavior (stand there and do nothing) when he went out of ally range of the player.

Edit: Alright, did a quick test. Here is how ally behavior is working on the map I used (Steel Canyon outdoor, ally was pet-class Numina).

Non-Combat/Do nothing, Passive/Do nothing: Ally will stay put when rescued. If you lose them and then reacquire them, they will follow.

Non-Combat/wander, Passive/Wander: Ally will wander when rescued. If you lose and reacquire, they will follow.

Fight Defensive/Do nothing, Fight Defensive/wander: Ally will follow.

Aggressive/Do nothing, Aggressive/wander: Ally will do nothing or wander. If you lose and reacquire, ally will not follow (although I'm guessing they will become non-combatants if lost; see below)

Allies are automatically SSKd to the player's level upon rescue; they revert to their normal level (as decided by critter level/player difficulty settings) when lost.

Edit again: Tested with a custom ally, on a sewer map, got some slightly different behavior:

Aggressive/Do nothing: ally will do nothing. If lost and reacquired, ally will follow.

Passive/wander, Non-combat/wander: ally will wander. If lost and reaquired, ally will resume wandering.

Considering I got different ally behaviors on different maps, my conclusion is that it's seriously whacked. However the explanation for "defensive" allies always following sounds likely, so that behavior may be consistent.

So Dalghryn, try setting your guy to Aggressive/wander and see how that works.

If you want to ensure all your edits stick, wait for the system message then hit "search" to refresh the "My published stories" window before you edit again.

Well as a Canadian I can tell you there sure are a lot of fat people in my neighborhood.

It's the beer, I think. Ours is actually worth drinking.

I give up. That stupid timed mission auto-fail bug has been around for months, and it seems like once MA bugs go live they're there to stay. Every single review of this arc since i15 has said "that last mission seems like it should have a timer." I really don't want to add an escort on that big map, especially with their behavior having issues at times, so the mission is now on a timer of "get over here and help us," and all references to the 1-hour timer have been (I hope) removed.

Also fixed the little things PoliceWoman pointed out (like the Knives' inability to count), tweaked the "liquidation squads" on the third mission a bit (one patrol got cut due to the smaller map, and some dialogue edits), added a clue to the optional Laptop objective as well. The first ambush on the boss in the Crey mission has been changed from Malta to Crey.

The old Invincible used to spawn even-level AVs for soloers. Sometimes you would get a +1 if it happened to spawn in a section of the map that forced +3 spawns.

Soloing AVs at -1 is totally pointless since the whole purpose of the exercise is to see if you can do it.

Best Lowbie arc: Ctrl + Alt +Reset #137561
Best Midlevel arc: Astoria in D Minor # 41565 (if it qualifies. The level range is actually 20-29)
Best High level arc: A Warrior's Journey: the Flower Night Task Force #260285
Best Comedy arc: The Invasion of the Bikini Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space #61013
Best Serious arc: (I'm gonna have to think on this one. Does "Serious" mean serious throughout or just a serious theme even if there is a bit of teh funneh?)
Best Short arc: Forget the Rose, Send Me the Thorns #8925
Best Multi-part arc: The Consequences of War #227331 and 241496

Sounds plausible. However I think it sounds like a bug rather than a deliberate change, since you can easily have multiple allies in a mission. As someone has pointed out, MM pets are killstealers, and if one were to exploit an MM ally you would do the reverse; remove their pets and give them a buffing secondary. It could be that the additional allies confuse your MM ally.

My heroes would go fight killer robots in their spare time.

Since robots lack the moral capacity to distinguish right from wrong, they can't truly be classified as "evil," so you can't get rid of them by getting rid of evil. And you can't just eliminate all robots, because robots are cool.

The Lesser Devoured is awesome. Vaguely disturbing in a way I can't quite place my finger on, but awesome nonetheless.

#6017

It's time for Dawnrazor to see how the other half lives. Today I am playing the part of a villain, freshly escaped from the Zig, who as penance for her crimes is sent to the first circle of Hell: A place called Mercy Island where I shall be tormented for all eternity by a mad scientist's inane ramblings.

My contact is Dmitri Krylov, a Soviet researcher who needs my help building an amphibian super-army out of some Coralax creatures that are like sea monkeys but totally different. He claims to have sought me out personally...I feel special. And a little scared.

I hit the beach to find an exemplary specimen of Coralaxhood for Krylov to study. Of course, to my unscientific eye they all look kinda the same, so I just grab the one that isn't trying to kill me and tell Krylov it was the best one I could find. Along the way I overhear some disturbing chatter...about a book and a Deep One? Uh oh. This sounds vaguely familiar.


One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

Ok Krylov, here's your fish-thing, now do I get paid now? Not yet? Ok fine, let's see if I can get my hands on that book, it's probably valuable and I'm broke and for some reason craving sushi.

Welcome to the second circle of Hell: where the greedy shall be forever tormented by someone else showing up before you and stealing what was rightfully yours to steal. At least they were kind enough to leave a clue.

Or, maybe stupid enough. I pull Krylov away from his research long enough for him to make some sense of the clue I found, and to tell me what he's learned about my fish-thing. I don't ask how he learned it, as I don't think I want to know. Nothing to see here comrade, I am 100% pure human, no mutations, nothing at all interesting about me. Just put the scalpel down...I think I'll go get that book now. Bye.

I enter the third circle, which is full of bad music and two-bit thugs who will tell me everything except what I want to know. Oooh, customs. They are appropriately wimpy for this level, and don't give me too much trouble. After squealing some useless but amusing info, I finally get something useful out of one of them. Back to Krylov, where I am somewhat surprised to find out our fishy friend is still alive.

The Fourth circle: ah, there's the fire and brimstone I was promised. Fortunately, all bookshelves are fireproof. Amid the collected works of Stephanie Meyer, I find something that is relevant to my current interests. Aaaand, there's the jerk who kidnapped what I was going to rightfully steal. Memo to jerk: when a book says "do not open" on the cover, you probably shouldn't open it. Weeeell, maybe a little peek won't hurt..."Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..." eep, I'd better not.

And on to the fifth and final circle, where you have to do heroic things to protect your own self-interest. Either that, or grow gills. I'm sure Krylov would offer to help me with that, if I were to ask, but I choose the lesser of two evils.

Poor fishy, I feel your pain, I really do. Still, better you than me. How did that barrel of acid get there? Still, I do what I need to do, showing a complete and utter disregard for not-quite-human life like the villain I am. Now when do I get paid?

Overall an amusing take on the Lovecraftian homage which you kind of expect when you deal with the Coralax. I've seen this story before, in some form or another; the humor is what kept it from being stale. The contact was well-chosen, both for his, um, unconventional approach to research and his over-the-top characterization, and the jokes never got in the way of the overall storyline.

Excellent arc.

Ok, reviewy time cause I felt like it after all.

Dawnrazor's very first arc is, appropriately enough, "Learning the Ropes."

The premise is that I'm a starting hero going off on my very first mission. Not much of a stretch there. My contact is Back Alley Brawler, who apparently spends a lot of time listening to the police scanner while he's standing around in Galaxy. The Hellions and Skulls are at each others throats again, so off I go to save the day.

It's awfully quiet in here, considering there's supposed to be a gang battle going on. I did see some battle spam pop up in my global, but no dialogue to go with, and of course the battles were over long before I got there. Cute name on the Skull leader; dropping him gets me to level 3.


I feel much stronger now. Train me up!

Off to the real BaBs to train up, then back to holo-BaBs for my next mission. My introduction to the world of heroing continues, as I am introduced to the Clockwork. I take care of them, then it's on to the Vahzilok...starting to see a pattern here?


Well, well, looks like the Vahz aren't alone down here. Nice to see some interaction between the enemy groups, and objectives scattered throughout the map to keep it interesting.

Next up: A bunch of glowy-eyed guys in dresses who like to hang out in dank blue caves. Apparently whatever horrible things they planned to do to their hapless captives included poor fashion choices; the "clubbers" they've captured look more like 1960s businessmen. I learn some bad things about the CoT during the course of the mission, but was spared the ultimate horror of the dreaded Layer Cake Cave.

For my final task I'm sent up against the Council. BaBs gives me his "never say Nazi" briefing, and off I go. A few more villain groups make cameos in this mission, I "arrest" them all and report back to BaBs, who tells me I've done a good job and recommends I talk to some of his friends in the PPD.

Which I think I'll do, because I'm now level 5. Essentially I've just completed all the starter hero contacts in one arc. Each mission I got my intro to a lowbie villain group, a little blurb from BaBs as to what they're all about, then I foiled their typical plot. This arc is exactly what it says on the label.

Where it falls short is that it could have done more. Most of the missions are pretty empty of flavor dialogue that could have served to help my newbie hero learn more about the villains I'm facing. There are a few hints of bigger things (the Warriors reference was a bit obvious though; perhaps replace "Warriors" with a specific, obviously Warrior-ish name?), but there's a sense of finality to these missions, as if foiling this one little plot means I'm done with these guys. I'm not done. I'm just getting started.

Next up: "Mercytown" jumps the queue due to capping out at 10.

Considering that most maps only have a few "front" spawn points, right in front of the door, combined with the ability to set maps to "empty," that reasoning is silly.

People only farmed Barracuda because SOs were actually valuable back then. From what I understand of farming (which admittedly is probably a few issues out of date), the -1 difficulty setting is far more exploitable than an up-front boss.

Of course it would be extermely exploitable to allow us to place spawn points anywhere, but choosing a specific existing spawn point, no, not really, and it would eliminate all the issues with "front" "middle" and "back" spawn points that aren't.

I'm in complete agreement that offering physical prizes isn't worth the hassle of jumping through legal hoops, and certainly not worth excluding a large portion of the playerbase.

Do they really think that anyone serious enough about their arc to actually have a chance of winning wouldn't enter if there was no physical prize? How did they miss an entire forum, not to mention countless signatures, of people promoting their arcs? Did they really think nobody would enter for the recognition alone?

I saw a very nice-looking Spines/Dark with a plant concept, with green Dark Armor. You could go with Mutation, Magic or Science origin for that one.

The metal spines would also work on a power-armored character, with the spines being a part of the armor, and maybe Invul or Electric or even WP as a secondary.