Zhym

I believe the old launcher will still work when and if someone gets around to updating the manifest at http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml.

And I have updated! Unfortunately, I can't log into the game right now. The manifest that Island Rum* uses hasn't been updated yet, so the game won't let me in until the manifest is updated or I install the modern Mac launcher. So I can't add the arc IDs until I can get back in. *I know, I know, but it has worked with my slightly weird setup that confused the newer launcher last time I tried it.

FWIW, it looks like the manifest at http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml hasn't been updated yet for the latest patch. I don't know who maintains that, but maybe it could be updated for those of us who still haven't migrated off of old launchers? In my case, I'm still using Island Rum on the Mac because it works with my wonky setup.

That's the problem with the contact being so fast. "What, it took you guys an hour? It woulda been five minutes for me, tops."

Just ran this. It's not bad. There were a lot of different factions. I guess I could imagine why there might be, given the story—they're all probably looking for the MacGuffin. But but it would still have been good for the mission to have said something about why various different factions are there. And for a stealth-friendly-mission, it sure seemed to require a lot of fighting. And putting a certain faction in a "stealth-friendly" arc was just mean. :) I did like the way the "contact" was handled, and the writing was very evocative of the genre. A couple of other notes:

FWIW, I think part of the issue is that Superman is a lot harder to do this sort of thing with than Batman is. Put someone in a story where he's a brooding billionaire with a butler and bunches of toys, and you've pretty much got Batman. That sort of approach doesn't work with Superman. You can't just have him in a story with a fiesty reporter girlfriend and photographer pal and evil genius arch-nemesis without it veering across the line from homage into being a copy—and even then, I don't think the result would necessarily feel like Superman. When I think about what defines Superman, a lot of it is how he's been portrayed in movies and on TV and how's he's drawn in the comics. It's his earnest and friendly demeanor, not necessarily how he talks. Although, come to think of it, he does often have a specific speaking style. He's almost never terse. For example, there's the great moment in the 1978 movie after saving people from a plane crash: "Well, I certainly hope this little incident hasn't put you off flying, miss. Statistically speaking, of course, it's still the safest way to travel." Look at all the extra words in there: "Well," "certainly," "little incident," "miss," "Statistically speaking," "of course." He could have just said, "I hope this hasn't put you off flying. It's still the safest way to travel." But that's not Superman. He takes the time to soften his language, because he's already strong and intimidating. The result is a little like how an adult might talk to a child. A speaking style like that can be really hard to get right. It's easy to miss the mark by just a little and have it come off as annoyingly arrogant instead. (Lookin' at you, Statesman). BTW, I thjink it's interesting to compare Superman's speaking style with Batman, who is often terse. Batman talks tough because he needs to prove that he's tough—to villains and to himself. Superman doesn't need to prove that he's tough; he needs to show that he's friendly. So my advice would be not to try to write the player as Superman. You already have a great silver-age-style Superman story, with details and character dialog that are very much in keeping with the style. You don't also need the player to talk like Superman to make it feel like a Superman adventure.

I just ran this one. Fun time. My fully-slotted Inv/SS tanker ("Splendidman") didn't have much trouble with Despoticus. The violations of the Ocelot Rule bothered me more in this arc than those in Allegedly, Your Death. "My" dialog seemed more extensive in this one, and it didn't seem much like Superman's voice. FWIW, I think you could remove a lot of the PC's dialog without losing anything. There seems to be a convention in CoX to have contacts react to things your character never actually said. The PC's words and reactions are more or less implied, which lets the player fill in their own character's voice. Taking the contact intro dialog as an example: I'd say that the PC's lines could be removed entirely, and the rest of the text would only need minor edits (e.g., with pauses and reactions). Maybe something like this: I guess the idea is that the contact can treat the PC as an upright, goody-goody, stand-up superhero without having to insert the PC's dialog to do it. And in most cases, the PC's side of the dialog isn't necessary to move the conversation along.

I've run a couple of them, and plan to run the others. They're fun stories. But I'm going to stick to indexing only the arcs @TerroirNoir3 has posted—I can barely keep up with those right now. But if (okay, who am I kidding? When) @TerroirNoir3 runs those as well, I'll add them!

I've updated the program guide. I think I managed to get everything since the last update, but if I missed anything, please let me know.

@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.