Zhym

I just finished this, and bravo, @cranebump—very well done. It's a great story (although I don't think I understood half of it—my problem, not yours). And that last clue for the final mission? Prefect. It's a shame it's not possible in AE to make that a cut scene. Overall, I thought the level of polish was pretty good. I did notice several errors in the bios in the first mission, and a stray typo here and there. A few notes on the missions: Mission 1 Mission 2 Mission 3 Mission 4 Mission 5 Finally, there are a couple of typos in the souvenir text: Overall, a fine ending to the series. I'm looking forward to seeing @TerroirNoir2 taking Engineria through it.

Checking the Unofficial HC WIki, it looks like you're right.

This my new favorite character.

BTW, I noticed that last year's badge ("License to Chill") is awarding for logging in this year, so that's something at least.

If you can't defeat the spawns, that's one thing. But just leaving them to be someone else's problem is decidedly outside the spirit of the season. Unless you're a villain, in which case selfishness is totally in character.

I get that the HC team is on vacation, and [insert standard comment here about being grateful that the game is even around to play]. But the Winter Event login badge is an annual tradition going back to 2005. If there really isn’t going to be one his year, it feels a little bit like neglect.

So true...

The Winter Event seems to be live, but I don't see any new badge yet.

Good boys and girls clean up after opening presents. It's very naughty to run away without defeating the snow beasts! (The presents respawn more quickly if you defeat the snow beasts. So be a good citizen and clean up after yourself!)

Why isn't this stickied? Do the mods hate story-mode AE? It's the only reason I can see for this not to be stickied. :)

The only thing on HC that I think is truly dead is PvP. Redside isn't as busy as blue, but I've seen plenty of strike forces running on Excelsior. Gold is its own thing: it's more story and solo-focused and caps out at level 20 unless you're really dedicated to not crossing over. It doesn't need or really benefit from having lots of people. Same for AE story missions—most of those are better experienced solo, where you have time to read the clues, look at NPC Info boxes, and really dig into what the author laid down. Neither of these are "dead" as long as you feel like playing them.

I'm playing this mission now, and @TerroirNoir2 left out some some great NPC dialogue. Two sales involving Reformed Salesfreaks are hilarious.

The arc gets five stars from me if just for this.

I thought you hit Chimera right on the mark, personally.

I think you're on to something there. Most red side is typical cartoon villainy. Vernon von Grun wants to be a mad scientist, Aeon is a mad scientist, and all Recluse wants to do is take over the world (is that so wrong?). But Phipps takes pleasure in grinding his boots on the faces of the downtrodden. He gets off on it. Burning books and kidnapping schoolteachers who are teaching Freaks to be better people aren't steps to some greater plan; they are the plan. Ends in themselves. Yeah, that's all too realistic of a motivation. Maybe that's why his arcs all seem to have "outs." You can let Miss Francine escape. Same with the rebels. You "fail" the missions, but the post-mission text in each case is far from chiding. And in the arc with Bane Spider Hugo, everyone you "capture" escapes anyway. Phipps doesn't actually accomplish much. Two other red side arcs have similar issues: Lt. Harris's "Price of Friendship" and Jezebel Jones's "Johnny's Squeeze." Harris is a creepy homicidal ex, and I really wish there were alternate endings available for that arc. It's a shame, too, because completing it kicks Longbow out of Fort Darwin, which is a worthy goal. As for Jezebel, "Johnny's Squeeze" is played less darkly, but the central theme is still about kidnapping a woman and forcing her to be someone's "girlfriend" against her will. Ugh. And it would have been so easy to have the same general plot but without the creepiness: instead of Johnny deciding he wants this woman and having her kidnapped, she initiates things (fan mail with a revealing photo, maybe?) and he sends the villain to rescue her. Having her initiate things even makes more sense given the rest of the story. I really like the idea of Westin Phipps in Hell. Nice touch. I'm now toying with the idea of an arc where you take down Phipps once and for all. Gally Ido would probably be the contact. Hugo Figures could be a mission ally. The goal would be not just to arrest or beat up Phipps, but to destroy him: turn Arachnos against him and replace him with someone who would use Haven House for what it pretends to be. And yes, there'd probably be a mission where you beat him up, because that would be fun. But I'm not sure what the general outline of the story would be yet.

It's not hard to run The Graveyard Shift without defeating either Salamander or Grey Matter. In the mission where they appear they're fighting each other, so it's easy for one of them to defeat the other before you get a chance to.

The short version? Flight powers are your friend. Ever since they revamped travel powers a while back, it hasn't been hard to cap flight speed. Combined with Evasive Maneuvers for better flight control, it's easy to get the badges by flying through the courses. I created a second build on my badger just so he could have a slotted flight power instead of his usual super jump.

Now I almost want to make an AR/Regen Sentinel, just to pile all the suck into one character. Almost.

Drat. I might just have to write one, then. Or, heyyyy... @Darmian, @cranebump, @Ankylosaur—do any of you take commissions? ;)

Aw, man. Westin Phipps? Screw that guy. Even my villains are like, "I'm not having anything to do with him." I don't suppose there's already an AE arc where Westin Phipps gets his comeuppance?

This made me curious how that compares to official story content in the game. My main (70s Man, the guy in the picture over there to the left) has done every mission arc, blue side, red side, and gold side—almost all of it (except gold side) while leveling, switching alignments through tip missions. The Information terminal tells me that he's completed 2,898 tasks, failed 11, completed 198 flashback arcs, and run a total of 54 AE story arcs. (I'm surprised he's run that many AE arcs—I didn't really get into AE at all until recently.) Oddly enough, I don't see anywhere that says how many AE missions he's run. Anyway, that 2,898 tasks probably includes lots of non-story arc missions (he's currently vet level 231 and Michal in Atlas Park tells me he's spent 1127 hours on patrol, so all those iTrials and general crimefighting after finishing the regular content are probably a large number of those 2,898 tasks). A different character, who did all the red side content before switching to blue, has completed 1,312 tasks. But it says that another character, who leveled up the "fast way" (for me) by just doing the Task Force Commander task forces and Maria Jenkins arc and generally just teaming, has only completed 67 tasks—which doesn't seem like enough to have included everything he did while teaming. Where was I going with this, again? Oh, yeah, something about how many missions are in the official story content in the game. And, yeah, I guess I have no idea. I mean, I could go to the wiki and add them all up, but...no. Frankly, what amazes me is not the number of missions Engineria has done—it's the number of screenshots you've posted!

Here's what I tend to do when I want to alt to join a TF: Send a tell: "I'm in for the TF. Mind if I alt?" TF leader either says "Sure" (or "Sorry, just filled"). (In theory, the TF leader could say, "No, eff off," but I've never seen it happen in the wild.) If I know who I'll be logging back in as (which is 90% of the time), I say, "Thanks. BRB with <Alt Name>." When I log in, I send a tell to the TF leader to tell them I'm ready. I don't even have to remember their name—having received a message from the TF leader on the previous character lets me use backspace to reply to them on the new character. Easy peasy! Takes about two minutes. And as far as I can tell, no one gets heartburn.

Wow. That's...gonzo. Yes, let's go with gonzo. Some cool ideas in there, but I've had five year-olds tell me stories that were more coherent. ;)

(And that statement is, "I'm only fighting crime while on break from my job as a mall-Santa's helper elf.")

Then again, this guy is one of my characters, so I'm not exactly an authority on tasteful costumes: