Zhym

@TerroirNoir3 (3 now??) has been awfully prolific lately, and I'm away on vacation. I'll catch up when I get back sometime next week.

Even if it's a small community, it's still a community. If there are far fewer of us than those who prefer to powerlevel through fire farming—well, so what? They have their fun, we have ours. I'm just glad people are writing SFMA AE arcs. I've always been a fan of level editors and other toolkits that transform a "mere" game into a toolkit for building more stories than the developers can (or want to) tell. So I'm also glad that @TerroirNoir2 is writing about them, even if the Nielsen ratings on the Cable Chaanel of AE aren't exactly drawing in big advertiser dollars. Although, now that I think of it: @TerroirNoir2, your posts should totally have sponsors. I mean, Drenched Donuts is famous, but the place is always locked when I try to go in, so they must need more business. And Chris Jenkins has got to be a big advertiser, right?

Incidentally, Lt. Harris's arc is near the top of my list of arcs where I wish I had options other than those given. Specifically, I'd like to kick his ass and not kill the woman he's creepily stalking.

Oh, look who's posting so much all of a sudden that I can't keep up!

Boy, those were the days. They weren't necessarily good days. But they were days.

Timed missions. (Hi, @cranebump!)

I was running Belladonna Vetrano's arc today, where Pendragon is dead set on claiming Excalibur as his destiny, because he's owed it, and for other reasons that scream, "This is not going to turn out well." And the PC just sort of goes along with it, including fighting the Black Knights, when it's kind of clear that Pendragon is completely off his Arthurian rocker. Which got me thinking: what other arcs kind of force your character into acting like a complete idiot? The first one I thought of was Kelly Uqua, where—spoiler alert—it turns out she's really a Rikti! Who knew?? Except anyone who is paying attention, of course. It's been a while since I ran that arc, but IIRC the arc has you working with her long after it should be obvious she's an agent for an alien invader. What other arcs force characters into acting like they have no sense at all?

Because then I'd have to make her Pipi LePew-Pew-Pew, and that's just over the top.

I enjoy BR. It's maybe not my all-time favorite offensive set, but I enjoy it. Yes, it's kind of fiddly with effective damage relying on tagging an enemy with the Disintegrate effect and trying to get it to spread, but that's part of the fun for me—it's kind of a metagame that's more interesting than just pointing and blasting. Plus, I enjoy the pew pew. So of course I named my BR/Devices blaster "Pippi LePew": She's a lot of fun to play, but I admit that a lot of the fun is in the /Devices part of the character. I could lay mines all day long and not get tired of it. The pew pew is just a nice add-on that works with the theme and isn't half bad to play.

I kid you not, when I first read that I thought it was going to end in, ". . . on a date." Which would have been a very different adventure (but probably involving less slavery). Look, if you got summoned every hour just to get beaten up, you'd be a little glum too.

Yay, @TerroirNoir2 is posting in cable Cable Channel of AE again! And so I'm updating the TV Guide again. (And not so subtly bumping this.)

Woo hoo! Welcome back, @TerroirNoir2! Also, @cranebump: Nixon, Agnew, and Haldeman? ISWYDT...

Thanks for this. I prefer my camera distance to be a little bit father back than the default so I can see mobs coming up behind me. I've been typing "/camdist 25" every time I log in for about five years now. Finally, it happens automatically! Of course, now that it's a habit I'll probably keep typing it.

I said before that I think the Homecoming economy is broken. But it's broken in good way (assuming you aren't a new player). A lot of the economy on Live was built on keeping the power progression slow and always having things for players to aspire towards being able to afford, all in the interest of maintaining subscriptions. Homecoming doesn't have subscriptions , so it doesn't need to drag things out. Yes, inf is easy to get. But the way it's easy to get is weird. You either powerlevel a 50 farmer, or you collect reward merits, turn them into converters, then either sell the converters or use them to play the enhancement conversion game. Neither of these methods are obvious to new players, who quite reasonably think that the way to get inf is by fighting crime (or, for red side, committing it) and doing missions. But at low to mid levels the inf gained from defeating enemies and completing missions is such a pittance compared to using the market that turning it off completely has no ill effect at all. That seems a bit broken to me. But I have no idea how I would "fix" that brokenness without breaking things even more. And as screwy as the current system is, it works—again, unless you're a new player. And that's a problem that can be solved by educating new users (to the extent there are any these days). So that's why I think the economy is broken, but it also works.

I saw this and the posting date and thought, "Ooh, a new @cranebump arc! The arc title seems familiar, but still..." Then I noticed the year it was posted. July 6, 2024. I'm getting old, man. ETA: Oh, but wait! I see that there are two new parts to the storyline that I haven't played yet! BRB, y'all.

Let me just say this about hoarding my temp powers: it's been five years now and Stephanie Peebles still hasn't getten her wedding ring back. Kind of inconsiderate of me, really.

Wasn't there a really short timer? I thought there was one when I ran the mission, but maybe it didn't trigger until I got my butt kicked?

Not to speak for @twozerofoxtrot, and I didn't hate the badge implementation, but Truth Seeker is a very fiddly, narrow-path badge to get. Without the guide I would have had no idea how to get it. I think there are three main issues: You need to pick a specific set of options at the press conference (or at least it seems that way). There's no clue (that I saw, anyway) about which of your contacts you should talk to. There seems to be an expectation that the player will think about which contacts are the right ones to talk to, but without the guide it would basically be a matter of trying to contact everyone. There's no reason that the arc couldn't suggest talking to specific contacts. When you talk to the correct contacts, you need to get specific clues, and go back and forth between contacts to get all of them. It sounds like not all of the clues are needed, but there's a threshold that's not obvious. Note: I liked this arc. I want to replay it to get the different results. I liked the writing and the deep branching dialogue trees. But if I hadn't known that there was a Truth Seeker badge and had a guide on how to get it, there was no possible way I would have stumbled across it (mostly because of issue #2).

This isn't that. There's another contact needed after the contact after the final mission. In other words: Exit the final mission. Contact Kagan, have the close-out conversation, which is clearly a "we're done here" conversation. The arc is still active in the Missions tab, with a "return to contact" message Call Kagan again. This time, there's no dialog at all, but it closes out the mission After all of this, the aforementioned clues remain until relogging. FWIW, I expect that both issues (the leftover clues and the extra contact) are related to the different endings available for the arc. For whatever reason, the various endings aren't completing the mission and clearing the clues.

FWIW, I ran the arc again with a different character, and the clues were still there after I closed out the arc. They were gone when I relogged, but it seems they're hanging around a bit longer than they should. Also, I'm not sure if it's intentional that I have to talk to Kagan again after what seems like the final dialogue. There's no content in that last contact, but it's needed to resolve a the arc.

Thanks! I was never going to get all those plaques just by exploring. The ones on walls I just never seem to see unless I'm standing right next to them. (And even then...)

Does anyone know the locations yet for all the plaques needed to get the new history badges in Kallisti Wharf? I've spent a lot of time traveling around the zone now and I'm still only halfway to any of the badges.

I'm just gonna add another anecdata point that I also thought that portal was inactive and spent a lot of time looking around for an active portal.

I was offline for a while and they're all gone now, so something fixed it. Maybe relogging did it. Thanks.

Is anyone else seeing leftover clues from Robert Kogan's arc? I've finished the arc and closed out the contact, but "Empty Ampules," "Old Decanter Centrifuge," "Skulls-Branded Chemistry Station," "Costume Zoot Suits," "Early Release," "Bought and Paid," and "Old Tire Fire's new clothes" are still showing up in my clues window.