Take One

Sorry, I didn't mean that to seem like a challenge. I basically agreed with you and just quoted you to make my own post make sense.

Because the game doesn't start at 50+, and you still have 18/12 more lovely levels to go when you get your T9 at 32/38.

Thanks for playing my old arc. It was made for a competition the original devs held, where the point was to include a moral choice. This was solved by letting you decide if you wanted to save Penny, or not, in the final mission. As you discovered, if you do save her from the Lost, the Clockwork show up to bring her to their King, and her father gets very disappointed. If you don't save her from the Lost, something else happens. Glad you liked it!

While I'm waiting for inspiration and writing more arcs myself I figured I might add some other arcs I've found that feature Statesman or the Freedom Phalanx, that I like. Wayward Son by @TakelGryph Arc ID: 30287 Level 1-54 Description: Could Statesman really be fated to destroy the multiverse?

I would like to think that Matt Miller and Jack Emmert are/were both professional enough for this to be true.

Something I have been complaining about for a long time is how Statesman was treated after Signature Story Arc 1. He was simply removed from the game, leaving a void where people who started playing after the release of SSA1 wouldn't have any idea who the guy in Who Will Die even was, or why the event was a big deal. Sure, they might figure it out from the context, but it still felt very wrong. I'm not aware of what kind of intra-office politics that might have led to the decision to delete Statesman from the game so thoroughly (but not entirely), and I don't really care. All I care about is that we now have a chance to fix it. Going Rogue allows a player to interact with the Praetors on a very personal level, as they function as contacts and give out missions. Their terrible personalities are all laid bare for everyone to see in the writing, and we get to know them very well over 20 levels of Praetorian content. The same can't be said for Statesman and the Freedom Phalanx. There is very little information about the Freedom Phalanx and none about Statesman for a new character just starting out in Atlas Park. Barely even a mention of any of them, after you meet them briefly in the Galaxy City tutorial. If I was in charge of the game I would have made Statesman a contact in Atlas Park, near Ms. Liberty, that would give out missions from level 1-20 or maybe even higher, so you can really get to know him and the rest of the FP, as naturally they would feature heavily in the missions. This would include Sister Psyche, but not Penny Yin, for obvious reasons. After we have been able to interact with these heroes for 20+ levels, the events of SSA1 might actually mean something to our characters and make more of an impression. After a character played SSA1, the Statesman contact would have been replaced with a memorial full of flowers, candles, letters, etc, and surrounded by grieving citizens. If clicked, they should all provide a sentence about what Statesman meant to them, the city, or the world. A similar memorial for Sister Psyche would exist in Independence Port. Unfortunately I'm not in charge and can't make these changes, but what I can do is write AE stories. So I decided to try to make a series of stories that lets a new hero get to know Statesman and the Freedom Phalanx better, before they are torn down and destroyed by an uncaring universe. Without any further ado, here's the first arc in what I hope will be an entire series: Paragon Heights And Depths by @Take One Arc ID: 44889 Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Sci-Fi Level: 1-5 Description: You have just barely escaped from the total destruction of Galaxy City when Statesman gives you an important task.

Those are already very clearly marked as affected by something, by the crystals, so they don't have to drop to the ground while asleep. But maybe they should when released from the crystals, so the benefit of forcing them to stand up is consistent among all sleep powers. That was the effect I was looking for the most really, adding a very brief extra detriment to those who have been affected by Sleep.

You know what might really help? If 'sleeping' foes fell to the ground and stayed there for as long as they were asleep. This would let the whole team know that they are sleeping, more visibly than the 'standing up with bowed head' animation. It would also mean that even if they wake up, they have to spend a second or two on standing back up, which makes 'sleep' useful even if the mob is instantly awakened by a fireball from a trigger happy blaster.

I wish there was a power pool with super-senses that could let us do on purpose what sometimes happens on accident, i.e. what we're seeing in this screenshot: This looks like X-ray vision or something, or perhaps some kind of "life sense" or infra-vision since I can see the "warm" bodies and flames. It would be great if I could just turn on a toggle to see this so I could look around for enemies and other interesting things. That the walls and everything else disappears means that this is less exploitable, as it makes it nearly impossible to play/fight in this visual mode. As for what other powers could be in a super-senses pool, how about making the sound of "glowies" stronger, or make them visible on the map when you get close enough. Making enemies show up on the minimap would also be nice. A +perception power would be a given. Maybe some kind of analyzing power that reveals powers and weaknesses in your enemies, debuffing their resistance/defense. This has been discussed before, but I never managed to get a screenshot like that above before, which illustrated perfectly what I would like to see in an x-ray vision toggle.

Congratulations to the winners.

Some people have reported that different maps make these things work in different ways. I.e. some maps have the problem with npcs blurting out all their dialogue at once, and other maps work properly. But I don't think anyone has done any testing to find out if this is true, and if so, what maps work correctly. There can't be that many of them. Of course, if you go in to test this, it'll work flawlessly until you try to publish an actual story.

Arc ID: 44775 Arc Name: Hard Christmas Author: @Take One Number of Missions: 3 Description: Holiday Television - is there anything better? To spend the chilly winter months curled up in bed or on your couch, wearing your new pyjamas or ugly knitted sweater under a thick blanket, sipping on egg nog while enjoying your favorite traditional shows... Well, this year you have to work for it.

And the results are in! Our first runner up is Cranebump's "Match Point", with arc Id 44239. This story is told in a way that is unusual for the AE format, in what can almost be considered a series of flashbacks as you ponder the information you have gathered, leading you up to the final confrontation with... well, you'll have to play it to find out. I found it a little confusing at first, but I won't deny that it was artistic. Next runner up is a real heartstring-tugger, in the form of Kyksie's "Your Final Mission", arc Id 44589. Nostalgic, bitter-sweet, maybe even a little sad - but with a not just literal but actual rebirth in the form of the very servers you may play on right now. The real winner though is Jiro Ito with "The Defenders of Talos", arc Id 44578. It is not perfect, but I could easily see this arc added to the game with maybe just minor modifications. The story was good all the way through, direct and to the point, and with no unnecessary gimmicks. Prizes will be sent out to your in-game email presently.

This competition is now closed. Thank you to the participants. I will re-play your arcs and make my judgment as soon as possible.

You mentioned that you had made it more difficult so I had to see if I could still do it.

Great idea, but it might make it more difficult to convince the devs to do it. I would however accept such a change to the "real" Mercenaries set that Masterminds use, to make it more attractive, preferably along with an update to make it less embarrassing.

Mercenaries is generally considered the red-headed step child of Mastermind primaries, with an average damage of half that of the next lowest damaging set. It has plenty of other problems, including overly long recharge on the powers of the minions, which might have helped with the damage if they would just use them. Mostly useless crowd control on the tier 2 minions don't help either. So, here's my suggestion: make the Mercenaries into a power pool that anyone can pick. They are already weak enough to be pool powers, and this way there's no longer an urgent reason to update the actual Mastermind powers. A Merc MM can double up their numbers with this pool, and thus approach the average damage of a real Mastermind. Power 1. Available at level 4: SOLDIERS Power 2. Available at level 4: SPEC OPS Power 3. Available at level 14, requires Soldiers or Spec Ops: EQUIP MERCENARY Power 4. Available at level 14, requires two other powers from Mercenaries: COMMANDO Power 5. Available at level 14, requires two other powers from Mercenaries: TACTICAL UPGRADE The numbers would perhaps need to be tweaked, but do they, really? Let's not forget how many cool concepts this would enable.

Super Strength has problems, the biggest of which is spelled Rage. There have been many suggestions for how to solve these problems. This isn't one of them. Instead I suggest that there should be a power pool called Strength, since I think it's silly to limit such an iconic super-power to two archetypes (potentially three if it ever gets proliferated to Scrappers - I'm not holding my breath), when many more concepts could benefit from a limited form of Super-Strength. Thus 'Strength'. Here's my suggestion for which powers you'll unlock at each tier. Power 1, available at level 4: PUNCH Power 2, available at level 4: HANDCLAP Power 3, available at level 14, requires one other power from Strength: HURL Power 4, available at level 14, requires two other powers from Strength: KNOCKOUT BLOW Power 5, available at level 14, requires two other powers from Strength: FOOT STOMP The exact numbers and effects for these would have to be balanced for the power pool nature of the attacks, but considering that they are already weakened by the lack of Rage I don't know if they need to be much weaker. I know that these would more than likely vastly overshadow Fighting's Boxing and Kick powers, but that's more of a problem with that power pool. The real purpose of this powerset isn't to turn everyone into The Hulk, but to let anyone appear strong, for theme and concept reasons. Ideally, the real Super Strength powerset should be updated before introducing this weaker version, or those poor brutes and tankers might feel tempted to double-dip into this to get access to two KO Blows and Foot Stomps. On the other hand, if they could do that, SS might not need to be updated.

The only rule about this says that it must be published before the cut-off date. So any old arc you've got lying around will do fine. Also, beggars can't be choosers and there haven't been too many entries this time around. I will treat this accordingly.

Must be a day ending in 'Y'

Can we do something about the color selection for titles? First of all, there is no way to make the title "uncolored" so it stays the same as the name's color. This means if you have a "The" title, and want your name to look uniform, you will have to find the correct blue-ish color for your title, so it looks right. But when you join a team your name turns green! Now the title is wrong again! There should be a color option that connects the name's color with the title's color. Second: why are there so many options for color titles? If you are trying to match both the primary and secondary it's a crapshoot because of how tiny the tiles are. Do we really need more than the primary colors and their complements, plus black, white and gray? Not that you can use black if you want it to be readable, but who knows, maybe someone wants it. I suggest 16 colors, bigger tiles, and a 'transparent' option that lets our title have the same color as the name. Optionally, let us set our name color to be the same as the title, and stay that way whether we are teamed or not. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

The lined bunch of pink squares down the middle-right makes me think of Japanese mosaic censorship. I wonder what this picture really looks like.

This and the "double" moon, one larger moon behind a smaller moon, is some of the funniest stuff I remember from back on live. It's still going strong.

I still got it.

Future-history is a thriving field of research in Post-Ouroboros Paragon City.