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Not just that—I care more about the Meteors than I do about the Freedom Phalanx or the Vindicators. Mid-level supergroups ("B-list" my ass, Liberty!) are better for story purposes anyway. They're a lot easier to identify with. And with the "top tier" groups, there's the problem of justifying why they should be considered top tier—which IMO never happened with the Freedom Phalanx.

Thanks; I think that all makes sense. That map is really cool, but it works better in developer missions like the LRSF where the author can place mobs in exact locations. In AE, where the author is at the mercy of random placement, that map isn't well suited to a "find the spawn, then find the next spawn" mission. It's not that the map itself is huge, it's just that it's unstructured and hard to search. The expectations we've built in regular missions—i.e., that the boss will be at the end of the map, or that spawns will be somewhere around the ruins of City Hall—don't hold. One suggestion on this point: maybe include a warning that the next mission is timed before the player accepts the mission? I've usually seen that as in-character text—for example, in some of Unai Kemen's missions, he tells you that you'll only have 90 minutes because the dimension is unstable, the portal can only be held open that long, or whatever. But you could also include an OOC warning at the bottom of the pre-acceptance mission text. Anything that tells the player that "you'd better hurry" isn't just flavor text and now would be a good time to do anything that needs to get done in the next 10/15/30 minutes.

To put it another way: is there anything about the first mission that makes running out of time an in-story plot element (or tells the player/character why time is a constraint)? For example, having 10 minutes to disarm the Megamaguffin Bomb or the world ends makes story sense—the player knows why there's a timer and why not getting the thing done in time means mission failure. But I didn't see anything about the mission that seemed time-sensitive other than the clock ticking down in my nav window. And since the main time sink is hunting for spawns on the map, "The world ended because you couldn't figure out where the heck Baron Zoria was on the big map" is...well, it's not a great way to start a story arc IMO. Your story, of course; write it the way you want. But for my part, I found that opening mission off-putting enough that I didn't really feel like continuing on with the rest of the arc.

For me, it wasn't unsettling, just frustrating. The time constraints are almost entirely due to the difficulty of finding spawns on a large open map. I spent very little of the allotted 10 minutes doing anything other than hopping/flying around the map trying to figure out where Positron, Zoria, or the Dagons were. That's not fun, it's not really story related, it's not unsettling, and it doesn't add tension. It's just a frustrating artifact of random placement of spawns on a large open map. And if it's clear that it's a no win scenario, that's one thing (although I don't think that's necessary for this mission—there are ways to complete a mission in a way that isn't really a "win" without getting the "Mission Failed!" message). That wasn't clear to me in this mission. And it's not always about "winning," the mission, either. I'm sort of a completist; I want to see what happens if I defeat all the goals. I think that atmosphere of that setting is more than enough to set up what you want to set up without having to "fail" the mission too. IMO, the end of the world is already unsettling; it doesn't need a timer. My chat window displays all NPC text. I didn't get any NPC text from Positron until I was right on top of him. The NPC text didn't help me figure out what I was supposed to do at all.

I posted this in @TerroirNoir's thread, but since there's a thread dedicated to this arc, here it is again: So, about that 10-minute timer, @cranebump... I'm guessing you're going for something sort of like the start of "The Reports of My Death Are Entirely Accurate" (which, you're right, is an excellent arc). But in that one, The first mission of Mobius 1, though—well, it sure seems like a no-win story opener. But the timer is just tight enough (or long enough) that maybe the player could win? I honestly couldn't tell—and that was kind of frustrating, to be honest. Now, maybe the mission is supposed to fail. And even if I'd "won," I'd have lost (shades of the "Rescue Comrade" mission, there). But if so, isn't the timer kind of unnecessary? That map has so much going on, and so much atmosphere, that putting a time limit on it is kind of a shame, IMO. And it's not like you're fighting time at the end of the world—the world's going to be ended for a long time. I get that it's all a dream, and dreams sort of have time limits, but time also works weirdly in dreams. So I don't think it needs to be there the way the timer in "The Reports of My Death" does. And if it seems like it's possible to win a mission, certain players are going to fixate on winning the mission even if that would have no effect on the story. Not that I know any players like that. Nope. So, maybe consider removing the timer from that mission?

I did! I found Positron after about three minutes or so, and only because I had your post to confirm that he was actually somewhere alive and not in one of the body bags. Baron Zoria was also alive, "friendly" and guarded by mobs, but clearly not my friend. When I defeated him, the next goal was to defeat five Dagons (whatever those were; I didn't have time to check their Info pages). Maybe there were even more objectives after that, and the idea was to have more objectives than the player will have time for? I don't know, but IMO it didn't quite work.

So, about that 10-minute timer, @cranebump... I'm guessing you're going for something sort of like the start of "The Reports of My Death Are Entirely Accurate" (which, you're right, is an excellent arc). But in that one, The first mission of Mobius 1, though—well, it sure seems like a no-win story opener. But the timer is just tight enough (or long enough) that maybe the player could win? I honestly couldn't tell—and that was kind of frustrating, to be honest. Now, maybe the mission is supposed to fail. And even if I'd "won," I'd have lost (shades of the "Rescue Comrade" mission, there). But if so, isn't the timer kind of unnecessary? That map has so much going on, and so much atmosphere, that putting a time limit on it is kind of a shame, IMO. And it's not like you're fighting time at the end of the world—the world's going to be ended for a long time. I get that it's all a dream, and dreams sort of have time limits, but time also works weirdly in dreams. So I don't think it needs to be there the way the timer in "The Reports of My Death" does. And if it seems like it's possible to win a mission, certain players are going to fixate on winning the mission even if that would have no effect on the story. Not that I know any players like that. Nope. So, maybe consider removing the timer from that mission?

Okay, it's bits like this that make these play-throughs worth reading. :)

Okay. That was cool. Surreal, weird, mind-bending...all in a good way. I don't think I've run anything quite like it. Bravo, @cranebump. One of the best stories I've run, in or out of AE. One note: the AE souvenir seems to be cut off:

Amazon®, Apple®, Oracle®, and Target® would all like a word. Not to mention Marvel®, who has indeed registered Bullseye® as a trademark. :) You may be thinking of "genericization"—that when a name of a particular product starts to become used as a generic term for all products of that type, it loses protection as a trademark. Some historical examples include Aspirin, Escalator, and Teleprompter—all of which used to be trademarked product names but eventually became generic terms. But there's no rule that dictionary words can't be trademarked. BTW, to bring this slightly on-topic, "Escalator" is available on Excelsior, but "Aspirin" and "Teleprompter" are taken (I figured that last one is way too good to still be available.) ETA: Please meet my newest character, the Purple Pedant. Battle cry: "Well, actually..."

I've been running @cranebump's stories (yeah, #%#@% timers and all—y'know ,sometimes people have to go to the bathroom, and at my age....anyway), and got to this one yesterday: I'd been running the missions at x3—nothing too insane, but enough extra mobs to keep things interesting. Hollow Point went down pretty quickly, and Comrade died about half a second after he got up. Maybe if I'd had a buffer/healer instead of a blaster, he'd have lived a few more seconds. Anyway, after I got the "Mission Failed!" message, I turned the difficulty down and ran it again to see if I could get Comrade out the door safely. And I did! Even though he was at about 10% health at one point, I got him to the door. Good thing there were no more ambushes. But I got the same reaction from Freitag, pissed that Comerade got killed. Huh? What the—is there a bug and my previous result is still holding? Oh, wait. There's a clue describing how Comrade got killed anyway. Because of course he did—it's AE and you can't do branching logic, so he's dead one way or another. Oh well. I'm not sure whether or not "saving" Comrade only to have him killed off-screen feels cheaper than just finding his corpse on the floor. There's definitely an aspect of "You win! Hah ha, no, just kidding, he's dead anyway, you lose," to the way it is now. One other question for @cranebump: At least one of the missions had "Janitors" and "Janiters." Was that intentional, or a typo?

Well, it would only end abruptly if you kill any of the lawyers. As long as you can make it through an office full of lawyers without killing any of them, the story would continue!

Too bad there's not a way to have branching logic in AE missions (is there?). Just imagine someone coming out of that mission after killing a bunch of the lawyers, and the next screen is something like:

The first thing to do is kill all the lawyers… (Also? That office is way too large and fancy for Chris Jenkins. Those are the offices of a big corporate defense firm. The Chris Jenkins law office should be on a strip mall or a shared office space in an industrial park.)

Not that I recall. They just followed me around like pets…or non-targetable Chris Jenkins law firm associates.

Impossible, right? But:

Hm. Let me try a test. Here's a large screenshot I took highlighting what looks like a bug in one of @Darmian's Praetorian missions: I'll check my quota then delete the image and see what happens. Edits: That's a 1.69MB file and my quota is currently at 12.48MB. Now l'll delete it...and, yup, back down to 10.79MB. You don't suppose that the other thread was somehow using the files you'd already uploaded here, do you? (And you're refreshing/reloading the "My Attachments" page after removing pictures, right?)

Are you sure you're deleting the attachments from the posts (at the bottom of the post, where it lists attachments), not just removing them from the bodies of the posts? When I replaced a couple of huge PNGs in this thread with smaller JPGs, it updated my quota usage right away.

You might want to check whether removing those threads (or posts) actually improves your quota. I believe it's impossible to "delete" posts on these forums, only hide them—which means if you just hide the threads instead of going through them and deleting those attachments manually, they'll still count against your quota. Although I think you can delete multiple attachments at once from the Attachments page. I assume that if you did that, they'd just disappear from the posts.

I can't remember whether I commented in the Box Set threads, but if so those would be lost as well. And removing those three threads only postpones the issue—it'll cut your quota usage in half, but you'll end up bumping into the quota again before long. And FWIW, I find the Box Sets much easier to read. Maybe those could be the repositories for the photos, and this thread could be edited to have links to the Box Set threads? BTW, while we're on the topic, the forums don't seem to handle the really long image-heavy posts all that well, at least on my browser. And they result in pages that are really really long. Have you thought about having one post per mission, instead of per AE story? You could use placeholder posts to keep the stories together (i.e., when you post the first mission in a story, immediately post four more placeholders that you can edit when you're able to get to the next missions).

Yikes! I wonder if the forum admins could increase your quota. Or maybe the screenshots could be hosted on another site and linked in the posts here? These play-throughs are great and I'd hate to lose them (or the Box Set threads, which IMO are easier to read through) because of that quota. It might at least be worth a PM to the forum admins to see if there's a solution.

FWIW, the forums have a ~100MB limit on attachments (which include images). So @TerroirNoir, you might want to check "My Attachments" (in the dropdown menu under your username in the menu bar at the top of the page) to see how much of your quota you've used so far. ETA: It looks like the few images I've uploaded have eaten into my quota because they're fairly huge PNGs, not JPGs. @TerroirNoir seems to be smarter about image file size, so hopefully 100MB will be plenty of room to watch Engineria go through all these long story arcs!

Not to spoil things (I hope), but there's one mission in the Praetorian stories where I'd really like to get a team together.

Excellent question. When did I say that? Oh, right: That was two weeks ago! You expect me to remember anything from way back then? ;) But it might have had something to do with how it looked like everything was resolving itself (more or less), the last mission was just going to be a coda, and then Ms. Liberty shows up to fight us and tease Season 2. It's not quite a cliffhanger, but it's not quite not, either. Incidentally, I recall spending a lot of time running around the map in the last mission trying to figure out where the objectives were (NPCs or glowies). I'm not sure if it was that map in particular or what. Oh, and it would be nice if the Meteors' perception could be boosted; trying to herd all of them at the same time got to be a challenge. I think one of them even got stuck inside a planter or a floor or something. It's a great arc, though. It's written very well, which is not something that can be said of all AE stories. @Darmian has an engaging, readable writing style. And the plot is engrossing—I basically "binge played" through the whole thing because I wanted to find out what the deal was with Lord Richter (a name/title that really grabbed me early on with a "WTF?" reaction) and, well, what would happen next after each episode. I also really like how the story ties into existing lore & characters. I got a kick out of seeing characters like Chris Jenkins and Thunderclap. And I loved how @Darmian took a bunch of NPCs who are standing around Atlas post-Galaxy City, gave them each personalities, and turned them into a supergroup. Stories involving the Vindicators or Freedom Phalanx can seem like Mary Sue fanfic, IMO; centering the story around a hitherto unheard-of supergroup made up of characters we've seen (if not necessarily noticed) was brilliant. If I have a criticism, it's that the story might lean into clones and doppelgangers just a bit too hard. There's a risk that once a story has made it clear that clones are easy, cheap, and plentiful, anyone could be a clone. Did you really defeat Lord Richter, or just a clone (of the clone)? How many Weavers are there? Are those really the Meteors you're fighting with, or are they clones too? The clones-within-clones-within-clones thing can kind of eat itself, IMO. In early episodes, for example, the fact that someone was actually a clone could still be surprising (even though it was totally set up for the player). Used too much, and the player starts to wonder if any victory actually means anything. (I did like how one of the fake Lord Richters was just a guy in a costume. Nice job of playing with expectations and tropes there.) And I could really use a recap/synopsis and the end of what the heck just happened. There was a lot going on in that story arc. You've got Lord Richter's identity, the Weavers, Tessitore, three different "Arachnos" factions, the Spectras, and so very very many clones. I honestly can't remember now which of those threads were resolved and which were left open for a future arc. Random thoughts: I like how the story eventually acknowledges that getting a DNA sample to clone someone who goes by the name of "Lord Recluse" would not be easy. Drea the Hook seems awfully reclusive for someone who can usually be found just standing around Port Oakes. Are we supposed to have any idea what the hell the Weavers are talking about in the penultimate mission? Or is that mostly flavor and setup for the next story arc? Finally, kudos to @TerroirNoir for these great posts. @Darmian's arcs are fun, but so is reading about the adventures of Engineria as she goes through the stories and reacts to them. I especially appreciate that Engineria is a weaker AT who often gets knocked back onto her ass, frequently needs to call for backup or rely on friends, and is on a first-name basis with the Emergency Room doctors at all the local hospitals. It makes these posts a lot more entertaining than if the character had no trouble defeating anything that came along (although the latter is who I'd usually play). I'm looking forward to the coverage of the Praetorian arcs. I have some thoughts about those, too, but who knows if I'll remember them.

Nice look. BTW, I think you were right originally to use the "armored" costume pieces instead of "tight." In the comics, there's definitely a bit of flare at the top of the legs, for example. So I redid my version with armor pieces instead of tight. Here's what I ended up with: I'm not sure now that the shoulder pads are necessary, either—I think the big rounded "pads" in the comics are just the artist's conception of what the normal armor shoulders look like. But I kind of like the look of having the pads on. BTW, what are you using to get the glowy eyes?