Megajoule

I submit that people who post here, and who are still playing the game with multiple 50s and years of vet rewards under their belt, are not necessarily representative of the general population. (Yes, myself included.) There are players out there who just want to "win" the game and move onto the Next Shiny Thing.

Oh, and I got -rep from someone for my last post, about people being reasonable. Cute.

For the sake of eliminating redundancy, then, we should have a single mission terminal in every zone which dispenses regular missions, AE missions, inspirations, TO/DO/SO enhancements, and functions as a black market, trainer, merit vendor, field analyst/fateweaver, and arena terminal. Oh, and a tailor too, of course. And you can pay your SG/VG rent there.

Then we can get rid of all those unnecessary, redundant NPCs and stores and just have everyone go to one spot to get what they need.

Why do I suspect that a Black Scorpion SF would involve taking care of some problem he's too thick to solve himself, which he ends up taking credit for after you do it?

Can we all just knock off the feigned shock that our opponents can be reasonable? Thanks.

It's sounding more and more, Mr. OP, like no one wants to team with you. I wonder why.

Joining in with the applause, as another SGmate who enjoyed the "hell" out of this arc.

And even if I wasn't, thanks very much for getting the Dev's Choice category moving forward again.

I happen to be familiar with all three of the parties involved - Willingham since his stuff for Villains and Vigilantes (which evolved into his own comic series, Elementals); Rooster Teeth since the first seasons of Red vs. Blue (which I have on DVD); and Kurtz, from the beginning of PvP (and boy has his art style changed). Sad to say, in all three cases, I've not been much impressed by their recent work. Some bright spots, yes, but...

Wow. Also, ouch.

What can I say, other than "got it in one" on this being my first arc. (The ID number probably tipped you off too.) I've made some touch-ups to it since, but the basic arc is what I came up with back in I14's beta. My goal was simply to make something in the style of, and as good as, the official content. What I didn't realize at the time is that everyone apparently hates the official content.

I honestly don't know what else I could add. I wanted more captives (with dialogue) in the second mission, but couldn't make them fit without making the map even bigger. I don't want to bury players in clues that half of them will ever read. I don't want to (IMO) needlessly complicate the mission objectives. I don't want to put silly mood-breaking jokes in a dramatic arc; I'm already stretching it a bit with the whole Calendar/Holliday thing. (Did you read the clue you get on his defeat?)

As far as closure, I admit there isn't much besides some good done and an infiltration plot foiled. This insurgency has been going on for decades, and even with heroic help, final victory isn't going to come today or tomorrow or even next week. I hadn't planned on a sequel and certainly don't now; why follow a poor arc with another one? (If any of my arcs had an aggregate rating of 2.5, I'd probably unpublish it and never go near AE again.)

I hesitate to ask any more of you, but could you offer any advice, or have a look at my other arc when you get the time? I hope you'd like it better; response up to now has been generally positive.

I managed to hit 50 on three characters, though one was right there already and just needed a nudge over the line; one of the little perks of I16 is that by turning XP off and on, you can control when you ding rather precisely. So my Peacebringer cop dinged with friends, foiling a bank robbery. I'd intended to do much the same with another character, who had Dark Watcher's arc and only needed a half level, but ended up in the middle of a pitched battle against the Rikti and forgot about it until it happened. Still, that fits the character.

The one big disappointment was my third 50 of the weekend, who was exemped a few levels down. Currently, if you ding on a team below your actual level, you don't get the FX or the inspiration "surge." As a result, when it finally happened, she got... nothing. No light show, nothing at all to mark the end of a 273 hour journey. I had to log out for a little while after that.

I also pushed three other characters I'd left at 40 to (at least) 41, to open their ancillary pools.

"Rubber bullets. Honest."

I'm quite fond of AR's Sniper Rifle, but the best snipe in the game has got to be Rad's. Fire the photon torpedoes!

If you're taking new arcs, I'd like to submit "Glory Days." It's Heroic, 25-30, with one EB in the final mission (a defeat-all on a small bank map).
Bring whoever you like, but I'd suggest Tommy, or possibly the Accelerated Man or Soundman.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

(good idea, by the way)

LeoG: I understand your difficulty. My characters' personalities sometimes take a while in play to gel. But I consider the task of coming up with a good name and decent costume for them to be an essential part of the pre-play phase, and not just because the game mechanics force it on us (because there are any number of practical, mechanical reasons to require a unique identifier for each character). I've been known to spend days pondering these issues before pressing the "Create New Character" button.

I know you want to just jump in and start swinging, blasting, whatever. But we're talking about an alter-ego that you're going to be playing/inhabiting for hundreds of hours. Isn't it worth taking a few to get it right at the start?

Some people are attracted to easy gains and new shinies. What can be done? You can't hold these people's attention for more than a short while unless you have an enormous staff, are willing to wreck the normal rate of progression (or let them do it), or both.

As you are not listening to us, I am done listening to you.
Goodbye.

As the famous Claremont tagline goes,
"Hope you survive the experience!"

I ran Mercytown this evening, and enjoyed it. It was a good lowbie arc, with a nice mix of humor and creepiness.

One thing I found particularly noteworthy is that the second mission is actually something you decide to go do on your own initiative, while the contact is busy with his "research". That's a nice bit of proactive villainy that you rarely see, even in the Isles. I was also very amused by the entry popup in mission 3, and what the squealers had to say.

The journal entries in mission 4 were well-written and had a good Apocalyptic Log feel to them. Combined with the dialogue from Veidt and the Duke, it added some nice gravity and Lovecraftian foreboding to what had been a pretty light arc until then. And in mission 5, of course, things get very bad indeed. (Good use of emote when Veidt is rescued again. Given his description of what happened, I don't blame him.)

I actually stopped fighting the boss at one point to take care of something more important:
"As long as the [redacted] exists..."
"You mean this [redacted]?" *takes it out, dangles it over [redacted]*
*eyes bug out* *grabs for it*
*sploosh*
(Awfully convenient to have that there, wasn't it? There was a typo in the message when the altar is destroyed, though. Better check that.)

The briefing for mission 5 was a lot of fun, and the exit popup was also very nice, though it changes tense at the end; might look at that too. And a pretty good final wrap-up. I wavered on giving this four stars for nits, but ended up awarding a full five.

I was going to suggest recolored Dark too.

Pin down the history.

No.
Just no.

If I wanted to be playing That Other Game, I would be.

One of my characters is Irish-American (South Boston type); he was created to be the brother of another player's character, so if it was up to me I might go lighter on the accent... or not. As it is, I try to match her dialect. In the end, I justify it by noting that both comic books and television tend to go for stereotypes over subtlety.

So Jamie, well, he talks like this. Mostly what ye'd expect, good proper English, but with a certain rhythm to the words an' some letters left out.

(I also tend to mostly play him in just our little circle, so everyone already knows what accent I'm trying to represent.)

Next time, don't rebrand unfunny (and potentially politically charged) pop-culture references with a thin veneer of game relevance, and then expect people to laugh instead of seriously debating the implications of such a policy.

Last night, I was running a few missions with my Peacebringer and wanted backup, but my usual group wasn't available. So I started sending (IC) invites - maybe a dozen. About half responded affirmatively, and at least half of those were solid teammates. It was a good experience overall.