RikOz

That doesn't sound like the same entity.

So, Crey scientists create AI Executable Number 6. The particular Crey employees who created it seem to be reasonably decent people, at least compared to most of the other Crey we encounter, and they give you the information you need to help the AI escape onto the internet. The AI is self-aware, and wants to do good. You turn it loose to do its own thing. It ends up being mentioned here and there in a couple later missions, but that's about it. You don't really hear much of anything about what it's doing. I'm thinking that AI Executable Number 6 should have become a contact. It seems to me that a self-aware AI that wants to "do good" would be the ideal NPC character to spend its time correlating information and unraveling the various conspiracies and plots of groups like Crey, Nemesis, and Malta, and come up with ways to disrupt these plots and conspiracies. All it needs is a human agent (you, the hero) to be "disruptive" at the appropriate times and places. Of course, it would need to be a contact like Max from the Dark Astoria storyline - you can only contact it remotely (though this would be because it doesn't have a physical form, rather than Max's desire for ... privacy). Or rather, it would contact you. I'm thinking that this could work something like the Tips system - you would occasionally receive a message on your phone to contact Number 6, and it would point you in the direction of a mission that will cause trouble for some plot or other. On the other hand, in a possible "head canon" scenario, it is doing exactly what I've suggested, re: correlating information and untangling plots, but it passes this information to the existing contacts we talk to. I've noticed that some of these contacts seem to have way more detailed information than you'd expect. Things like knowing that such-and-such group has the incriminating evidence stored on some specific number of computers, or that you and a teammate will need to disarm multiple bombs simultaneously (in the original forms of those missions, anyway). What say you? Could AI Executable Number 6 have been used more effectively?

Real life comparison (from my job): 1. We are short-staffed. 2. Without enough staff, we cannot create enough product. 3. We cannot sell product we don't have. 4. Lack of product = less sales 5. Corporate bean counter looks at numbers, sees sales are down. 6. Corporate bean counter solution: WE NEED TO CUT LABOR HOURS.

That was my initial problem with Death Knights in WoW. You'd be starting with, effectively, a level 60 character, with all the powers a level 60 character would have. I had a really difficult time figuring out, all at once, how they were all supposed to work together.

As I entered a mission to stop Crey from terrorizing a bank, the mission pop-up upon entry said something to the effect of, "Does Crey think they're above the law?" After I dismissed the pop-up, I noticed the dialog box: [NPC] Field Agent: Working for Crey, you know, sometimes I just feel kind of above the law. A bit later, doing a safeguard mission, I encountered Double Tap robbing the bank. He had this to say: "You're not a REAL hero! A REAL hero, like me, would have killed me by now!

Latest costume design for Gamma Time (rad/rad scrapper). Starting to really enjoy this guy.

As I was flying past an AE building: Architect Patron [#1]: Architect Entertainment spans multiple dimensions. We could be playing a mission built by someone from another universe! Architect Patron [#2]: It's not even possible to describe how dumb you are.

I used to do something similar for my writing. The (USA) Social Security web site has a feature that lets you search for the most popular baby names for any given year. So I'd decide what year a character was born, pull up the top 100 male or female names for that year, and either peruse it until I found one I liked, or just roll a percentage die (or 2d10) to pick one randomly. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ (Scroll down to "Items of Interest")

One of my rare tankers (Stone Armor/Super Strength) The Real Ziggursky! I tend to gravitate toward that Alpha costume set a bit too often, and I typically use a high-contrast color pairing. But in this case, I really like how the low-contrast color scheme worked out. The two colors are from the extreme left and right swatches of the same row of the color picker (7th row from the bottom). I think this is also the first time I've used that "High Tech Helmet", which I normally find kind of goofy-looking, but it somehow fit this character to a T.

I'm not sure why it took me until now to notice that the Phoenix Wings would work great with this costume.

In Night Ward: [NPC] Disgruntled Spirit: Pfft... nice costume.

Erm, the Silent Blade mission was a hero alignment mission that I've done dozens of times (I have a lot of alts), and she always helps with combat after she's rescued. This last time, she didn't.

So I encountered the strangest thing in this mission. I'm not entirely certain that it's a bug, but the Wiki article for the mission mentions nothing about it. This is a "board transit" mission. I encountered multiple groups of level 1 civilians, all huddled together, cowering in fear. They were all labeled "Citizen", and showed the group membership, "<Paragon Citizens>". The odd part was that they were all hostile, i.e. I could have attacked them had I chosen to do so, despite this being a blueside mission. When I would approach to within a certain distance, they would all run away as a group. And when I followed them, I discovered they were all making their way to the mission exit: Like I said, I'm not certain that this is a bug, as I don't believe I've ever done this mission before now, and I'm sure I would remember it if I'd seen this before. Regardless, it was extremely strange.

Dang it, Praetor Duncan stole part of my costume!

I dunno, I've just run into virtually the same thing in the hero alignment mission, "A Cloud of Odorous Smoke". Rescued Silent Blade, and afterwards she never drew her sword. In fact, since I tabbed out of the game to add this fact, I didn't notice we got ambushed, and Silent Blade went down without defending herself.

Encountered another apparent bug in the very next mission of the arc. The Longbow lieutenant guarding the computer is simply named "Scrapper". The other lieutenants encountered had correct names.

In Bane Spider Ruben's arc, "Destiny Follows", the second mission, "Cripple the Arachnos Base", has the player teaming up with the villain Icecap. Icecap fights alongside the player ... right up until completing the mission's first objective. From that point until the end of the mission, Icecap just follows the player and does nothing except describe the next objective. I assume this is not the intended behavior. I think this is the second time I've played this arc, but I can't remember if the same thing happened the first time.

Montague Castanella breaks the fourth wall when I call him around level 35 to get the mission to travel to Cimerora and talk to Imperius: (He says, "Hello there, PlayerName")

My alleged fire farmer, a Spines/Fire brute has, nearly three years after rolling him, finally reached level 40. So here's Girra's new costume: The top hat and cigar are the only consistent bits from one costume to the next.

Heh. Yeah, the NPC pathing in that mission chain, at least the parts inside that base, have been seriously bugged since its debut. I noticed that it only seems to be a problem with the female NPCs, Twinshot and Flambeaux. I'm no programmer, but I suspect it's somehow related to the fact that both Twinshot and Flambeaux spawn offscreen when you hit a "trigger" in the script, and then come to you, while the male characters are pre-spawned in a specific spot, and you go to them. Then, in the scene you screenshotted, I have a suspicion that one of those Twinshots is supposed to be Proton. You start the mission on the first floor, Twinshot shows up, and then you take the elevator to the second floor to meet Proton and Flambeaux. From there you go to the third floor to meet Dillo, at which point you get the message from Proton about a disturbance back on the first floor. Since you, Twinshot, Flambeaux, and Dillo are on the third floor* and Proton is on the second floor, he ought to get down to the first floor before you do. *The four of you are technically on the third floor, but the bugged pathing for Twinshot and Flambeaux has them running back and forth between you and the elevators, and apparently going up and down the elevators for no good reason, and I think that, in the confusion of the coding, a Twinshot model gets substituted for the Proton model (you'll notice that, when you pass through the second floor again on your way down, Proton is not there where you left him, so it's safe to assume that he is supposed to be heading down to the front entrance encounter). Then Twinshot shows up after the fight is over asking, "Who's this?", and you have to specifically talk to that Twinshot, not the other one, to complete the mission. The whole thing is a mess. I think the Shining Stars arc was added at the same time the game went Free-to-Play (veterans, correct me if I'm wrong about that - I only found the live game shortly after it went FTP), and I suspect the devs' time was being taken up with the in-game store stuff and bugfixing got put off for later. And then the shutdown announcement came before they could get to fixing this stuff :(

I almost never have more than one mission active at a time. The only exception is when I have one of the costume slot missions, but those are hunt missions with no clues. So everything in my Clues list should be from the one arc I'm currently doing. I think part of the problem is that, in missions that have several Clues (like, there are some missions where every glowie gives a clue, and possibly multiple NPCs that give clues), there's a programming expectation that the player will find the clues in a certain order, which doesn't always work out. Sometimes the objectives will spawn out of order, sometimes the player just misses them on the first pass. So the clues appear in the list in that expected order, rather than the order they were actually found.

Who knew? Everybody! :D

It might be similar to another mission-completion oddity I've encountered several times. There are some missions that have the objective of clicking on all of the glowies that will complete without clicking the last one if you happen to defeat all of the enemies on the map first. I wondered if this was a deliberate time-saving thing: with all the enemies defeated, there is nobody to stop you from clicking that glowie, so we'll just consider it clicked and complete the mission. I actually complained about this, because of the Intern day job. Intern rewards you with a Large(?) inspiration upon mission completion, but of course it can't give it to you if your insp tray is full. So I'd go into one of these missions and save the last glowie until after I defeated the last enemy. That way, I could clear a space in my insp tray and then click the glowie to complete the mission. Except I'd defeat the last enemy and *boom* "Mission Complete", and no insp reward.

It was recent: You probably didn't find it because I didn't put "Crey" in the title. I didn't realize it was Crey-specific until I encountered it again in a different mission.

Alt #124: New Claws/Fiery Aura brute, "Canis Rufus" (Red Wolf) I may reconsider the name. It occurred to me after the fact that, not being a black man myself, it might appear that I picked "Rufus" as a stereotypical name.