Lazarus

Blue side has a lot of redundant zones. Aside from scenery there is no real reason to visit contacts in IP instead of Talos, each of them shares story arcs with a contact in the other zone and they're going to send you to everywhere but their own zone over and over. I got fed up with IP not only for the massive amounts of empty space to travel over but for the contacts in the back end of nowhere sending me back to Talos over and over before finally giving up their phone.

Too often that phone was given after the arc was finished, but which point I wanted nothing more to do with that contact ever again.

Bad example, the appendix still does serve a purpose. While's it's not a vital organ and you can easily live without thanks to modern food and medicine, that doesn't mean that it serves no purpose.

It makes much more sense to be a Dom specific set as they already have had Electric Assault for a while now. If Controllers get to keep Illusion all to themselves while taking our Plant set then it's only fair that we get a new set to keep to ourselves.

Wait, so does that imply that only new characters who start in Praetoria can switch sides? Or can an existing character go to Praetoria for a while to begin the transition? I'm confused.

It's up there with Drakule 1 for sure (I haven't yet played 2 and 5). However the Werewolves do abuse Dull Pain a bit and the EB in the first mission is overpowered compared to all others who follow in the remainder of the arc. An Elite Boss with Dark Regen is just going to annoy anyone who doesn't have soft-capped defense.

I'm not sure what you mean as most of the winners are not big forum names by a longshot and even the few who are forum names haven't been very active at all in the MA sections.

Maybe you meant that some people were not picked because they were already well known?

Ruludak's Cave is a map that should definitely be used in moderation. The fog gets pretty tiring on such a ridiculously long map when it would have been interesting on something much small, like that Banished Pantheon Cave that mysteriously lost it's fog effects some number of issues ago.

Hopefully they'll have the sense to coordinate with the author from now on, instead of doing things like giving DC status to invalid arcs.

It's nothing compared to the old days of farming for the Ratings Badges.

Reading comprehension FTW.

Being around for a long time does not mean an arc will have more ratings, there are plenty of 1000-range arcs that have hardly a dozen votes after all this time.

Exactly and it's what 99% of people will do anyways when it's allowed.

If you can't vote for the category at all then you don't take anything away from yourself. However if people are allowed to give themselves a free vote then there is little incentive to not do so for yourself.

I work in a Pharmacy College.

It'd make more sense then to require that nominees abstain from voting in the category that they were nominated in, which is what many of us presumed was the case until you said otherwise.

Apparently I've only worked in the few places were users were not utter idiots.

Well if everyone else is going to have license to cheat then...

Best use of Mechanics
1st Choice: Macguffin Delivery Service #1567 @Lazarus
2nd Choice: The Beating Heart of Astoria: A Play in Five Acts #170547 @The Cheshire Cat

Best Multi-Part Arc (2+ arcs)
1st Choice: The Consequences of War Part 1 #227331 and Part 2 #241496 @Dalghryn
2nd Choice: The Lost Choir #123675, 136959, 141011 @MrSquid

Especially as most of the files were redundant. Any info that was in critter and cvg files were all included in the storyarc file itself. That one file and the screenshots were all that they needed.

It was annoying as I use custom villain groups mostly for organization on the backend, a single critter from a group might be used in an arc but their rules implied that they wanted ALL the files, including critters who were not actually used in the arc but are attached to that group. Heck, I wonder if a few submissions got disqualified for submitting too many files.

And I don't see where this directories question keeps coming from. The rules specified FILES, not DIRECTORIES. Was that a rumor just started by someone who is probably too computer illiterate to even make their submissions properly?

You forget also the times they run into an author who's responses all boil down to "well you're just too stupid to understand the genius of my arc!" It gets old fast.

To be fair, a lot of people just hate that map because of how glitchy it is. Glowies often spawn behind or inside of the scenery as well as Allies and Escorts having a tendency to get stuck on same scenery. Hell, even players can get snagged easily just trying to maneuver through that map.

I'm not seeing what the relevance is there. Arcs are sorted by rating, not ID. There are plenty of 4 and 5 star arcs with high IDs as well as a lot of low-ID arcs in the 2-star gutter.

I would have eBay'd off the prizes anyway, they were all rather worthless to me. I just wanted a bit of recognition.

Have you seen your average 28 year old recently?

So apparently to win Best Enemy Group yours has to be as nonsensical and simultaneously forgettable as possible, using the same few critters over and over. Groups that are actually diverse and balanced are right out.

I really hate zone and neighborhood specific hunts as then I can't just grab a paper mission and kill both birds with one stone.