Clave Dark 5

Just whatever looks good. Never bothered to get a T4 with any toon, it's a lot of cost and work for a few extra percentage points, really, and because I level instead of insta-farm them, I usually bored of them by T2 or so and moving on.

I haven't finished leveling him (stalled out around 40-something), but my most recent Emp toon was actually very usual, often, to my teams, even those times I played with teams with 50s on them. Like with Rezz powers, forumites like to say it's pointless these days, but they're a small percentage of the population of actual players.

People enjoy camping Bot MMs in areas where people ToT (like the PI murder hotel) to leech XP and drops. People now dual-box to run "AFK farms" where they run to the back of a map, rescue someone which spawns the map full of foes, then set themselves on "follow" as the someone walks back out through the mobs while their AoEs (or, again,Bots; Bots MMs are one of the most popular toons apparently) do all the killing while they actually play on the other acount. Seriously. And then boast about how fast they got it over with. 😄

I'm wondering if the messages for say a boss defeat are only going to the person the system figures out landed the killing blow points or something. But yes, like the Drop Ship defeat on an MSR, it should be shown team-wide, not just to the one player.

So show 'em all how to do it right on your toons! I'm generally with you, I usually just stick to one adjective. That said, I like what @Harlequin565 said, it can generate some good humor. I have one 90's inspired toon named: The Extreme Extreme CAT Beam Because what's more extreme than more etxreeeeme?!

Update: so I was randomly hopping into the AE with a new stalker (who couldn't handle it :P) and (re)discovered a published story with a perfect "dead body" in it. The title is "Murder on 34th Street," it was one of the Christmas contest winners (rightly so), and you find a body in the first mission. The dead guy didn't burble about when you get close, didn't stand up, anything - perfect execution. I have no idea how they did that 😄 I think it was a Boss set as ally, something something, but I dunno. I don't know if the author is still hanging around, but you could track the name down and send them a comment and see what they say. And please report back!

I mean, that's kind of my point: if you ever find parts of the game a slog, imho it's time to stop playing. Losing at blackjack in Vegas might be a slog too, but that doesn't mean the solution is to let me pick my cards when I play, that's not playing the game. Just rifling thru the deck so I can pull out an ace and a face card every time would get awfully boring awfully quickly.

Cheating at the game to make it too easy is a Homecoming tradition though! (was surprised to see this thread got unlocked... and that it was locked in the first place???)

Probably not too difficult, but the current devs aren't too keen to do too much work with the AE.

I'm sure these are still popular because they're still completely attention free rewards, seems to me - you can multi-box it while actually playing the game elsewhere, or even (as it says) AFK. Probably only seconded to ToT leeching.

The AE System Still, thanks for the hack info!

Not stand up, remain on the ground. I'd be happy enough to see the AE, you know, actually work as instructed to and let us place a dead (or even just unconscious!) character. 😃 ETA: Here's what I mean... Me: "Will you lay down already GEEZ!" AE: You can't make me!

I have a mission with some dead NPCs in it. I set them as Allies and to "do nothing" when they are acquired so to speak. I want to say I can remember sometimes they might shift about but stay on the floor in their "Unconscious" animation, but most of the time they will stand up and then remain there; I just ran it again and that's what they did this time anyway. This is another case of having to try and fit your story around the weird systems and sometimes glitches of the AE. In my story I could allow for it as they're sort of zombies, and @UltraAlt option isn't a bad idea either. I would have prefered they not do that of course but...

What's that, "they crashed Dennis' record player into a cold preserver"???? I'll never understand how computers really work!

Do some teaming with strangers, mention that you're hard up for IOs, you will be given in-game cash. Get one toon to 50 and keep playing them, the in-game cash will roll in. Many folks here'll tell ya ya need to do some boring farms, play the market or whatever... that's BS don't listen, you don't need to bore yourself to be able to PLAY. See my sig. And feel free to use the block feature on anyone.

That's not hacky, unless you meant it in a sort of metaphorical "sneaky way around existing problems" way. That's a decent trick, I'll have to keep that in mind. Excel. The population size would probably help you get more players, sure.

@DougGraves Thanks for the play! I'm glad you overall enjoyed it. This was one of the first things I wrote for AE so I'm sure it is indeed rough round the edges as you describe. It was also composed before the AE started to break, doing things like having every NPC say their "Enemy Unaware, "Enemy Aware" lines when you first step onto the map. Maybe some day they can get that fixed, the comedic timing worked so much better, sigh. The point of some of these jobs is that indeed they are stupid busy-work your stupid boss sends you out on; I based some of this on my own employment history, cough, but clearly didn't work those memories to feel universal enough. I do hope to have the time to clean things up in future.

That Christmas Arc Guy I talked about above was doing one thing right in not even addressing that any AE story is only half the usual XP, ha ha. He got players to join sure, but they dropped a bit faster than say people on a PI radio team do; it was my perception that those joining were less-than-skilled or more exactly less experienced players. More experienced players wouldn't just be doing something for fun, right? Leading a team thru a radio-type mission is fairly easy enough (just be sure it's not 4/8 if over half the team are under 20th level, say), but I do understand the aversion to wearing the star. What with the "meta" of HC being "line goes up" mere number-acquisition (the idea that people do AFK farming still just floors me), plus little to no help from the Devs, we are clearly fighting an uphill battle. Maybe we need to start running contests like the costume contests, "let's go play this AE story and one player on my team will will millions of numbers from me!" First thought. I may have more later.

Watched this last night. It's not my favorite W&G, but it's up there, it was an enjoyable watch that never made me feel I was having to hand-wave away something in the story (looking at you, Shaun the Sheep Xmas special!).

I've found this to be one of the few good "NeoStar Wars" projects. The creators know how to pace things and tell a story, which seems to be a rare skill anymore. It's staying out of its own way by not diving deep into lore (the bane of any long-standing franchise), the episodes are short enough that when they end I'm sort of mad because I wanted to see more, and the story isn't stalling out due to pacing problems or the need to streeeeetch things out. There's decent enough characters, scenarios and action, and while there's room for the occasional quip, they're not overloading the dialogue. It's nothing deep no but it's also not ponderously up it's own butt with VERY IMPORTANCE STAR WARS IMPORTANCE, it's just plain fun, for once.

Looking forward to seeing that.

Agreed. I've mentioned this here already, but over the holiday there was this one guy I kept running into asking for players to come along on his AE arc, "not a farm!" and he recruited heavily. The arc I think was just one mission, the winter Croatoa map, with some standard enemies renamed to Christmas references, such as a Council werewolf renamed "Max" after the Grinch's dog. That was it. I think I checked the story and it was basically as short and thin a story as a Radio's text, "Whoa, a Christmas invasion, and they've stolen the P.L.O.T. device!" or whatever. No clues, no linked objectives requiring you to run back and forth or to scour the map for, no fear of custom foes. And he was getting takers, I joined hsi team like four times just for something different to do. I was planning to maybe start a series of such "AE Radios" and see if I couldn't get teams like he did, but learning about the XP drop to anything AE, it seems a bit unlikely to take off. But hey, if he could get people to join, maybe???

Welp, Zam's cancelled now yep.

I got this idea from some bloke hitting the LFG channel hard over the holiday season "come play my AE Christmas arc - not a farm!" and it was like perfect PI Radios alternative on the winter Croatoa map. I went along a few times just for a change of pace and, as a "radio," it wasn't too bad at all. Shame it sort of all ends in this usual dead end, but it's easy scripting so I'll probably post it sooner than my never-to-be-completed current epic.