Ankylosaur

Had a great chat with someone who tried this arc out with some really positive things to say but also had good feedback about some issues in the first mission., Mission 1 continued to have a lag in that the second runner would sometimes take his sweet time to get to the front room. So then you look for him in the the back to look for the second trespasser and he comes out another way and escapes, making you fail the mission unintentionally... So instead I had him trigger to appear after you talk with your ally - which seems to have made him consistently trigger sooner and no longer lag.

Decided to update this a little bit to make the penultimate finale more exciting. I removed the ally in mission 4 that made it a little too easy, and took some of your agency and purpose away. I also updated all the custom Skyraider mobs to give them mechanical wings. They had been flying with just boots - and though they look less like the originals with the wings, they make more sense.

One small tip that may help on an outdoor map - though it does not seem to work on all maps - is that if you fill all the slots for something it seems like it loads every encounter in the same load order and therefore position things in the same position. Therefore having an ally load in a certain point on a map can be possible but takes a large amount of trial and error. I first stumbled on this on Rularulian in mission 4 where LT Flynn is always in the same spot. This let me use the mission start pop up to direct you to him.

Adding my latest arc that involves Praetoria for your consideration: "Policemen vs. Aliens" - ID 31353 I came up with a creative way to tell the story over a timeline without time travel so you can see Praetoria before the Hamidon wasteland it has become. The arc has you exploring memories you are remembering that span from the discovery of Praetoria to the final mission that happens after the Number 6 storyline which kind of puts the capstone on Praetoria. To pull that off in arc, each mission progresses in levels and time, as does your main contact - ending with a 50-54 mission. Read more here if interested. Because it also goes a bit beyond the Number Six storyline - it advances the Praetoria story just a hair. Plus it does all this with a Kheldian thread and an attempt to give the player choices in arc.

So - I finished my arc that involves Praetoria: "Policemen Vs. Aliens ID 31353" I came up with a creative way to tell the story over a timeline without time travel so you can see Praetoria before the Hamidon wasteland it has become. The arc has you exploring memories you are remembering that span from the discovery of Praetoria to the final mission that happens after the Number 6 storyline referenced above. To pull that off in arc, each mission progresses in levels and time, as does your main contact - ending with a 50-54 mission. Read more here if interested. Because it also goes a bit beyond the Number Six storyline - it advances the Praetoria story just a hair. Plus it does all this with a Kheldian thread. If anyone gives it a go please let me know if you enjoyed it or see big holes or little refinements or things to improve. Feedback welcome! (And generous star ratings much appreciated - even if you have copious constructive feedback! 🙂 )

After much testing with different toons, several little refinements and text corrections, I am calling this ready for prime time. I hope you enjoy it if you give it a whirl!

In working on another arc, I found a fish headed EB, in a lab coat (of all things) with water powers among the mobs in AE. Just had to use him in here. With the Virtea already using those heads and me already having doctors and nurse types in here, Mission 3 is back to Mayhem's hospital map and Sea Witch is back in for a little support. If we ever get water blast all the virtea will have it, but for now - at least one dr. does... no idea who this dr. Is in AE either. His descriptions says TO BE ADDED

This is ready for feedback once more. Will probably run through it a few times this weekend and finalize. Made several small tweaks throughout and redid missions 4 & 5 on both story and mechanics making mission 5 easier to make a choice that the player wants. Even figured out a way to include Unbound Nictus making mission 5 a dash more interesting!

Thanks for giving it a playthrough, the feedback and for the overall recommendation! You've given me some good things to think about - some of those are below. I am reworking it a bit because I felt like mission 4 and 5 in particular needed some work, both from a story and mechanics approach. Thanks again for the early playthrough - it's great to get another's perspective to help hone the story/expereince. (Your help on the Genesis and Geneticists of the coming Hammiggedon was great too and that is much refined since you first encountered it because of your feedback.) Minor note - in mission 1 I wanted to use the eat donuts animation, but for some reason its not available on that model. (It was when Buddy was custom.) Sorry you never got those donuts...

I replayed the Number Six arc last night - which is the big "Praetoria is over" series and I think I need to rework missions 4 & 5 a bit. Namely the DE need to be the threat in 4, not Metronome. Putting this back to work in progress.

I did too initially. I managed to get more after about a year in. 🙂You can file a ticket to request more - and I believe if you have been doing story based arcs they will give you more. Not sure how they validate that of course - in my case I had submitted some to the Dev’s Choice thread and the contest on this board (which is no longer run) and as a result they knew that is what I was doing.

So this arc took some interesting turns for me in development. It's probably only interesting to me, but I thought I would share anyway. Of course - lots of spoilers in the below...

My latest arc takes you through missions that start in the low levels and end in the high... Cleaning out your email, you came across several threads from an Col. "Buddy" Bolton at the PPD. The emails remind you of your many adventures together, fighting aliens and even going offworld, in memories you like to call: Policemen vs. Aliens. [SFMA] If you try it and have any feedback or find an errant typo - let me know! --- Inspiration (possible spoilers) This arc gave me a chance to pull together many little ideas and things I wanted to try. I have wanted to do something with: Praetoria - It has great outdoor maps and loads of mobs so I have wanted to use it. But if you have been through the New Praetorians and Number Six arcs, you know it's pretty much a radioactive wasteland, meaning it's hard to use those maps or mobs without some explanation or time travel. Kheldians - The New Praetorians arc reminds us the Kheldians are still here and Arakhn and Requiem may have plans for the Nictus. But its hard to do something unique with them since there is no way to use Kheldian powers with custom mobs. So you have to use the mobs that exist to fit them in, and, well, they are in pockets throughout different levels. (I also really did not want to use the Council in this.) In the end this arc uses only one custom character - an in game character that just did not exist in AE. I even created her as a person, so there are no custom powersets - all OOTB mobs in combat. Multi-level missions I have always wanted to have missions that go up in levels through the arc - but only if there was a REALLY good reason to. The Kheldian constraint helped here as I had mobs I wanted to use that were in different level ranges. Evolving contact - My first go at a contact who shows up in different ways in mission was way back in Condemning Croatoa which was on live. Then I did it recently throughout in The Genesis and Geneticists of the Coming Hamiggedon. Because this arc spans levels (and years), and uses no custom mobs, having the contact evolve is almost a requirement. So you get missions through email, and you meet your contact in mission. He evolves (is promoted) throughout the missions as you go up in levels. This also solved the Praetoria issue as you are looking through the emails as memories - so it all starts before Praetoria is irradiated. Mission Failed Mechanic - I have wanted to try to use the mission failure mechanic as a way to offer different results based on choices you make in the missions. Every mission here uses some way to fail, (though it is really just choosing Option B) so you get slightly different results based on what you do. I say slightly because there is no branching in AE, so the story progresses regardless of which choice you make - but its the best we can do. 🙂 Anyway - it was a lot of work, but also a lot fun to pull this together, and along the way I learned a lot about the Praetorian and Kheldian storylines. If you give it a go, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together!

Was pretty proud of this one, but it has not gotten very many plays and no in game Comments. Until tonight! Received an awesome comment and was thrilled someone tried it out. Thought I would share in case it inspires another play or two... Comments like this make my day!

So I have been working on an arc idea that includes Praetoria. I came up with (what I think) is an interesting angle, so was researching the Provost Marchand and Number Six arcs to help me make sure I have the details of where Praetoria is today. I want to use an outdoor Praetorian map to give a sense of place. Unfortunately, the current state of Praetoria seems to pretty much be Hamidon has taken over, everyone is evacuated, and all the Praetorian signature folk are captured or dead. 🙂 Doesn't leave a lot to work with as all the available maps are "everything is normal as can be." 🙂 Am I wrong about this? Is anyone still alive there (other than, say, in New Tokyo or the like). In particular I wanted to use Antimatter's Power Plant - and he seems to have blown himself and it, up - you experience this as a personal story, so its not even an offscreen reference where you can skirt the issue with a "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!" Realizing all of this makes it hard to justify the TUNNEL network that lets me just pop on over to a Praetoria devoid of rampaging DE with sonic barriers up, a functioning Power Plant, and signature contacts in squares waiting to level you up. Oh the cognitive dissonance. 🙂

Adding a new arc for Dev Choice consideration! Spycraft & Spidermen - 30367 - Heroic 40-47 Warzone Agent Goddard has new intel that concerns him. His source claims there are female Arachnoids able to reproduce in The Web beneath Warburg! Help him track down and eliminate this new threat before it reaches Paragon City! [SFMA]

So, I made some significant changes after several playthroughs and think I can call it done now. I think it came out really well with a more complex story built in than I started with. Including what I did below just on the unlikely chance anyone is interested in how things evolve for me.

The NPCs know it too... 😉

I'm with you - I spend a lot more time creating them than playing the game any more. 🙂 Getting people interested in playing them is a challenge all its own that I have not solved, but I still have fun authoring them regardless for those one or two plays and comments I get back. 🙂 Of course to choose to play an AE arc - people are giving up their time to experience something that may or may not be any good - so I completely get the reluctance to explore. And if they are after rewards - speed runs of official content and farming just yield greater dividends - so an AE story arc is not a choice on parity there.

So I'd call this beta now. Really just cleaning edge cases of text at this point. I went through and polished a great deal and changed how a few things worked based on testing. But this arc really illustrated how important testing is. On the "Warehouse to Arachnoid" maps I found the weirdest bug. Once you are in the Arachnoid caves the mobs disappear - they are there one moment then they fade away. I was going to have a few rescues in the caves, but as you couldn't defeat the captors after they faded - it was pointless so I moved them into the warehouse. I tried a few different versions of those maps but they all behaved the same. In a possible related bug - when I was testing with an MM - my pets kept dropping in and respawning like I had traveled too far from them. In the end I went with one of versions of these maps the smallest Arachnoid cave, just for the flavor and moved a glowie there from the warehouse instead. Mobs still show up and may fade away in the caves but it won't prevent you from finishing the map at least. It shows you can take nothing for granted in AE. 🙂 Open to all feedback - if too tough or unbalanced or missing something or you love it or have ideas to add I am all ears. If you give it a spin I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it and exploring the Warburg and Arachnoid lore.

Just use $name Ask one of the NPCs in the architect area for all their advice to get more code and colors (tip - right click). 🙂 You can have multiple of the same boss appear multiple times on the map or multiple distinct bosses. It is all about the number of bosses a map supports.

Warzone Agent Goddard has new intel that concerns him. His source claims there are female Arachnoids able to reproduce in The Web beneath Warburg! Help him track down and eliminate this new threat before it reaches Paragon City - and spreads! [SFMA] --- Sharing this a bit earlier than I normally would - sort of an "Alpha." I will be going through and testing and polishing and re-writing bits over the next few weeks and will keep it as a "Work in Progress," but all the main elements are there - the story and characters, descriptions, clues, and triggered events are all in place but need polish and testing. Feedback welcomed! I also had other names in mind like Friendly Neighborhood Spidermen or the Amazing Spiderwomen, but decided those might mislead as there are no radioactive spiders or young photographic journalists herein. I always thought the Arachnoids were interesting as a story, and even more so that Warburg was. (I regularly worked to grab a nuke back in the day and even ran Goddard missions there for fun sometimes.) Plus there are so many Arachnoid maps that it makes it easy to give a sense of place to the story - which is something I always go for. The Arachnoids are simple as a mob though and as a result I did have a hard time coming up with a premise, until it occurred to me that they are all male! Marshal Blitz still wants to wreck havoc on Paragon City, so bring on the ladies and voila! Rogue Arachnos as a mob had some opportunities to expand too. They are already buying Malta robots to bolster their ranks (and the robots in my Robolution arc) so weaving that all in with the usually-not-seen Orb Weavers was fun too. (I do think that is my first instance of a cross-over arc 😉 ) If you do explore it, feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

Thanks for the playthrough and feedback! It encouraged me to refine it further. I have no good explanation for why I consistently misspelled the Cheshire Cat, but I did, so fixed that - thanks for pointing it out. If you find anything else - let me know! I also spent a little time adding a few of the characters I had left out previously and bolstering the dialog and "life" in the final mission. It's a big map and could benefit from a bit more personality. I expanded on the idea of blending in elements of the Croquet party and added in The Duchess, the Dormouse, and updated The Cook to be more Victorian. I also added in more triggered events with dialog for the battles there to make that mission have more life if players explore and don't just do the core objective. I also removed unscripted battles and put the Croquet patrols down to just two. Finally, I added in The White Knight and the Knave from the adventures to that point.

I tried to recolor the text of voice bubbles by just manually putting in the html code for the text. It worked pretty inconsistently - with the same boss sometimes using it and sometimes not, which may be why its not officially an enabled thing.

This has gone down to 4 stars, and I am not sure why since there have been no comments. 😞 It's my oldest arc, so I went and played through it. At the time, I had a main ally (Faerlun) with you who was an LT and I am guessing he is just a bit too weak as an ally - too easy to die while also not helpful enough. I often had you rescue a boss in addition to him (e.g. a Legacy Chain Boss or Sea Witch) to make up for that and frankly they were just kind of extraneous. I decided to simplify here and just made Faerlun a boss, minimizing his attacks so he's not doing all the work, and giving him Willpower so he can take some aggro, while also eliminating the secondary bosses. I use that approach a lot frankly for allies - so hoping it works here for a better experience too. I previously also had several patrols in missions to add more voices to the story you experience. Now that you have a boss ally from the start I swapped the patrols out for bosses, which seems richer as they are mobs soloists would not otherwise see - and now that soloists can toggle them as LTs if they want it to be easier - its a nice way to include more voices in the mission. Plus with several patrols it could make the encounters less predictable which can make for a poor experience too. Lastly, I've waffled back and forth between using a Freakshow map or Mayhem's hospital map for the Freakshop - a place where Freak body modifications are made. Though its still low lighting, (per the comments above) I decided to use the Freaklympics map instead of the mother mayhem map. Seems more authentic to what I am after. I do wish it had a "back" that you could place mobs in, but instead placed clues back there so it is not a totally pointless room. The other Freakshow warehouse was a contender too but its so small everyone feels on top of each other. Also removed a few of the standard Freak mobs too so you see more of the "Freaks in transition" and the custom Bone nurses and Juice nurses too.