Kyksie

What's there to say? Yet another very well done arc, with excellent writing, and tons of detail. The difficulty isn't too high, and no maps have Objective Overload. As with previous arcs, my only compliant is that it tells you what your character thinks and says at times, which tends to annoy Real Roleplayers, like Shadowsilk Nightprowler, the immortal werewolf who sees everything as a snack, or Lady Galatea Ravenhair, the immortal succubus who sees everything as... um... yeah. At this point I'd like to thank the people in this forum who consistently poop out terrible arcs (you know who you are). Without them, my life as an AE reviewer would be terminally boring, since Ankylosaur arcs never have any major flaws to make fun of. Oh yeah, one minor glitch: the second mission tells you to lead an escort to a console, but instead you lead her to the exit. Yeah, there's something.

A nice fun beat-em-up mission. The player is starring on a sub-prime TV show, where you smash cars, tag 'babes', and meet funny parodies of celebrities. There's no story, but who cares. It does get a bit odd in places... the mobs are called "gotchas", with some Animus Arcana thrown in for some reason. The "Karen" boss in the last mission feel out of place. And, although I looked high and low, I couldn't find enough keys to enter the Pleasure Dome.

Yet another very well written arc, following on the heels of Full Circle, which attempts to provide an in-game rationalization for the time we spent apart from the City. Lots of dialog, tons of clues, and an overall great story. Like Full Circle, it tells you what your character thinks and says at times, which may annoy Real Roleplayers. My only real nitpick is the level range... 20-22. If you're playing this with your main character, like Real Roleplayers do, you'll lose all Incarnate powers and half your regular powers. Real Roleplayers get upset when their immortal vampire succubus demon wizard gets defeated by level 22 mobs, which is rather likely to happen when the map contains EBs who summon ambush waves, like this one does. Still, this is an awesome arc that any demon succubus will enjoy.

I ran this a while ago and promptly forgot all about it. It's a well written arc, with lots of detail and clues and custom mobs. I got a kick out of one of the dialog screens which has your character dining on sardines and spam; I was playing the arc with Spider-Kitty, who canonically enjoys sardines. Cuz, you, know, she's a kitty. Kitties like those things. My only complaint is that the arc throws a lot at you; all of reality is being attacked by "Dagons", and you get thrown into the "Mobius Strip" and there are a bunch of heroes who used to work together but one doesn't exist and... I dunno. Also the arc tells you what your character thinks at times, which tends to upset Real Roleplayers. That's actually two complaints. Still, this is worth playing if you enjoy heavy narrative focused arcs (and sardines).

1) Penelope Yin has invited you to join her at Drenched Donuts, where she, Doc Delilah and Faultline are having an intervention for Fusionette. "I told you," she says between bites, "I can eat as many as I want without putting on weight! I have a nuclear reactor in my chest, remember!" "It's not that," says Penny, pointedly not looking at Fusionette's thighs, "It's gotten to the point where Drenched Donuts has a guy making donuts just for you." Behind a sliding door, a skinny teen worked the glazer frantically, remembering the sinister glow in her eyes the last time he had been late with the Boston Creme. "And you're really abusing the 'heroes get free food' bit," Doc Delilah sighed. "They just applied for a second small business loan." "Jeez", Annette muttered, inhaling another fluorescent pink donut, "It's not that big a deal, I can quit anytime-" Suddenly, a loud ripping sound came from outside. The heroes poured out onto the streets of Faultline to see civilians fleeing. Penny's love of Drenched Donuts was so great that the thought of going without them had caused holes to appear in reality, spilling out demons. Kyksie and the heroes pound the holes and defeat a demon lord. 2) In an effort to find the cause of Fusionette's all-consuming lust for donuts, Penelope projects Kyksie into the Astral plane, which looks like Faultline before the rebuilding. She defeats a CoT mage named Porthos and steals his magical donut hole puncher. Porthos is invisible, forcing Kyksie to wander the map until she bumps into him. 3) Kykie takes the artifact into a SERAPH lab, punches more holes, and defeats the demon lord, who was trying to glaze the world or something. 4) And now the Clockwork King has projected his consciousness into the donut fryer, which becomes ambulatory, grabs Penny, and runs to the top of a skyscraper under construction, with Kyksie in pursuit. He tries to stop Kyksie by rolling flaming barrels at her, but she stops him by removing the plugs and sending the building crashing down. 5) Now the fryer, with the Clockwork King's mind inside, has merged with Psicurse's old Psychocrumbetron and is about to turn all heroes into jelly sticks or something. Some more punching and it's over. The threat averted, the team of heroes meets back at Drenched Donuts to relax. "Thanks, guys." Fusionette flops bonelessly into a booth. "And... uh, yeah, maybe I'll lay off on the donuts for a bit." "Are you sure?" Kyksie has a strawberry glaze in one hand and a double fudge in the other. "They're... sooooo... good!!" None of what I've written is true; Return to Faultline is actually a very well written arc with tons of detail, lots of custom mobs, and a great deal of lore on Faultline's past. My only nitpick is a few spelling errors.

Answering the Kyksie and friends alert!, Kyksie is invited to a toga party at Delta Tau Chi at Paragon University. After a few beers, she is about to hook up with Pinto when suddenly an Arachnos squad bursts in and kidnaps Dr. Hamilton, who was helping students with Bronze Age poetry while simultaneously playing beer pong. After a bit, Kyksie finds herself on the plains surrounding Troy, where she rescues Menaleus and Odysseus and others. Then another field, where she defeats the Trojans and their gods, then more Trojans on another field. Finally, we find that Dr. Aeon is planning on marching an army of Styx-powered super soldiers into modern Paragon, so Kyksie shows up in a car disguised as a cake and kicks them all into submission. If you like toga parties and beer pong, Dr. Aeon and the Wrath of Achilles is for you.

Neverwinter Nights the singleplayer game is great if you like 3/3.5 D&D. GOG.com gives it away for free every so often. The Neverwinter MMO is terrible and should be avoided. It looks nice and is a smooth ride to top level, but the endgame is a WoW-like treadmill of 'run raids to get gear which lets you run harder raids'. The really top gear requires crafting materials which cost real money, and the playerbase is the unwashed masses who infest every FtP game. Stay away.

Like I mentioned in the other thread, City of Titans is the only spiritual successor who aren't scammers or morons. They really do want to give us a finished game. However, I strongly doubt their ability to actually do it.

The first season was awsome: top-notch writing, great acting, great SFX, everything. The second season retained the solid acting, but the plot rambled and meandered without any clear focus. Gay Spock flip-flopped from being a good guy to a bad guy seemingly at random. The third season was bad, and the fourth was so horrible that one was left frantically chugging Everclear and huffing airplane glue to wipe those bad, bad memories away.

Because the arc has a level of 6-54, I used the lvl 6 Spider I made for the previous mission. 1) So, four years ago, I got an email from a buddy on the force named Buddy Bolton. He's been doing a little off the books work for some extra donut money, and just got wind that the lab he's guarding is about to be hit. Upon entering, I'm told that I can either waste the badguy or let them get away. Scarlet arrives and meets up with Buddy. A moment later, we spot a huge purple lobster and a flying purple squid running for the exit. Hoping that this isn't another LSD flashback, Scarlet and Buddy open fire on the lobster- MISSION FAILED You chose to let the bad guy get away! Like they said in Jaws, we're going to need a bigger kitty. I log off and get my lvl 50 SoA, Spider-Kitty. Her and Buddy blast the aliens into sushi rolls. 2) A few months later, Buddy has been promoted to Sergeant for his help in putting down the BLM riots. Now, he's gotten wind of some Warshade activity in Praetoria, come check it out with me? It seems a bit odd that a simple PPD cop would be handling things in Praetoria, but eh. We arrive in Neutropolis, read some plaques and chat with some decorative NPCs. A hacker named Hatchet is spotted dropping some thumb drives in the parking lot; Spider-Kitty teaches him not to litter, then takes the drives home in case there's kitty pr0n on them. 3) Now there's a lab with Council and Void Hunters and a Shadow Cyst Crystal and some sort of generator. Meeting up with Buddy again, who is wearing a snazzy suit of power armor this time, we clobber the Council troops, smash the generator, rescue some allies- MISSION FAILED You chose to let the Void Hunters destroy the crystal! Uh, yeah, that's it. I totally chose to destroy it, to keep those nasty, nasty aliens on their side of the wall. 4) Now things are going south in Praetoria again, time for the PPD to swoop in and save the day. We can choose to spank the badguys, or wait 30 minutes until the radiation kills us, or something. Kitty ventures into a bad part of Praetoria, where every lawn has at least two cars on blocks and the lawns are covered in Natty Light cans. We free some allies, then defeat Bewb Robot, aka Nightstar, except it's really Metronome. This is the version of Nightstar from the BAF, with the sequester power, making for a tough fight even as an EB. Lots of decorative NPCs. 5) Off to the Keyes Island reactors to defeat Metronome for good. He's in Siege's body, and again can sequester foes. Kitty breaks Siege, then frees some allies, then- MISSION FAILED You chose to let the Nictus steal all the donuts! Policemen vs. Aliens is yet another very well written arc, with a LOT of extra details, like clues and non-required mobs to add atmosphere. However, this arc does have some problems. It feels a bit odd for a simple PPD cop to be fighting aliens in Praetoria, even with a super powered friend like you. Worse, you never get the donuts Buddy promised you in the first mission. The idea of letting the player choose his own path is a novel one; I used it myself back on live in my award winning arc Cat: It's What's For Dinner. However, here it has some problems. In some places, it's way too easy to 'choose' the wrong choice; several times, I never even saw the objective I was supposed to defend. In other missions, the player is required to wait 30 minutes in order to make one of the choices. Finally, it feels odd to give the player a choice in the early missions, since everything that comes after will be the same no matter what you choose. Despite this, Policemen vs. Aliens is another great arc that everyone should play.

Just for the record, killing Stateman in WWD was not Posi and crew extending a middle finger to Emmert. I specifically asked Miller that during one of the Loregasms. Personally I think Emmert is a great storyteller, but he has a very poor grasp of what people actually want. Like at launch, SR/Elude made you unable to attack for 45 seconds, and Empathy/Adrenaline Boost stunned the caster for 20 seconds. Who would possibly enjoy that?

In order to experience the arc properly, I made a new Crab Spider. 1) The contact is Alan Desslock, who hates Arachnos, but he's willing to help me out because he's such a nice guy. He needs someone like me, because I'm an 'insider', but also I'm expendable, which makes Scarlet wonder what one needs to do to be considered irreplaceable to Arachnos. Maybe if she learns to make coffee just the way Lord Recluse likes it, with just the right amount of cinnamon. Anyway, Desslock needs information, so he sends me into an Arachnos base on a datasteal, and oh yeah, also kill everyone. Arachnos doesn't mind that sort of thing, honest. 2) Fort Darwin has been taken over by Longbow, but they couldn't have done it by themselves, they would need an inside man. Off to another base, where we find a receiver, and punch a Longbow Warden in the box until she spills the beans. 3) Now off to the Longbow base, to prevent them from wiping their email servers by hitting them with baseball bats. Scarlet liberates three servers, but the fourth gets smashed even before I see it, mission failed, but fortunately we managed to salvage a hard drive. 4) I've talked to the arbiters, who patted Scarlet on hte back and gave her a cookie, and gave her the go-ahead to arrest Operative Carmack. Off to another base, with is entirely brown except for pools of lava. He rants about how Professor Echo warned him about the end of the world. This is another well written arc, with no overtuned mobs or time wasters (the first map is a defeat all, but I'll forgive that because it's not to big). The only thing that doesn't click is Desslock's motivation. He tells me how he left Arachnos because they sent him on a suicide mission, maybe because he burnt the coffee or something, but still he hates Longbow so very much that he's willing to secretly help Arachnos, while I get a raise and the corner office.

A nice fun arc. Non-coders won't get a lot of the jokes, and those who weren't around in the 80's will miss some of the references, but this is an MMO that came out 16 years ago, so I'm sure that every last one of us is at least 40 years old with Github open on the other screen.

If anyone has been wondering where Kyskie has been recently, she finally found a job as an overnight security guard at a medical marijuana facility in nearby Warwick. Things were uneventful the past few months, until last night, when instead of getting onto the bus back to Paragon City, she accidentally got on the helicopter to Warburg. Warzone Agent Goddard met Kyksie as she arrived on the platform, finishing off the last of her Taco Bell chalupas. 1) A mysterious dude named Sam has tipped Goddard that something weird has been happening in the tunnels beneath Warburg, could you take a look? Kyksie investigates, and discovers the unthinkable: Arachnoids with boobs. 2) Marshall Blitz is planning to transport a group of "Arachnesses" to Paragon City, presumably to start an Arachnoid nail salon or something. Kyksie hops in and makes with the kicking. 3) Now they're doing experiments on Arachnesses. Kyksie searches the lab for a Fritos vending machine but finds only a plan to make more Arachnesss using Lord Recluse's blood. Annoyed, she plants a bomb in the lab, then goes looking for a late night gas station. 4) Sam is trapped in a cave, go save him. We rescue his Arachnoid friends and clear his browser history. 5) Lolth the Spider Queen is on the verge of attacking Paragon City with an army of Drow, or something like that. Kyksie smoked another doobie on the way over, so the entire battle was kind of a blur. Marshal Blitz has some odd dialog about wanting the Arachnoids to hook up with nice lady spiders and have lots of spiderlings. Like all the other arcs by this author, Spycraft and Spidermen is fun and well written, with no overly tough mobs or time wasters.

Time wasters are usually one of the following: * Requiring the player to defeat all enemies (this can be forgiven if the map is very small) * Using 17 glowies when 3 would be fine * Requiring the player to escort a hostage across the map (again, forgivable if the map is small) As a rule of thumb, if something would require the player to spend more then a minute, ask yourself "is this really needed to get my point across?".

I ran through the first one (26756) and it was pretty good. Quality writing, well done custom mobs, no time wasters.

This is a fun joke-ish arc, chronicling the shutdown of the original game. The player goes after "Soften Sea", recovering the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom or something. The foes are a custom group with at least a dozen types, all of whom have funny bios. The joke density is high, and all of them hit the mark, making this a must play. The only downside is that people who weren't there for the shutdown won't get it. Incidentally, does anyone with a long memory recall an AE called "Your final Mission", which was released about a month before Live shutdown? It was designed to provide a way to retire your favorite character or something.

1) After a sudden sneeze blasts out all the windows in the Skyway City Super Duper Mart, Hayfever Lass finds herself in the PPD jail, where she is approached by one Tristanna Caine, who works for "Section 41", a top-secret off-the-books division of the PPD (a bit cliche, but oh well). In exchange for losing my paperwork or something, she sends me into the sewers to rescue her friend, Juliana Nehring. The sewer just happens to have computers containing the details of Dr. Vahzilok's plot to have his minions pee in the city's water or something. 2) Into the sewers again to recover more data on Dr. Vazh's new project, the "menuloks", who I guess are zombies make up from restaurant scraps or something. I dunno. Tristanna warns me not to touch the machines in there, but Hayfever Lass manages to break all of them by sneezing on them. Oh no, the 5th column is involved! 3) So now it seems that Section 41 doesn't exist, not in a top-secret 'disavow all knowledge' way, but it really doesn't exist, and Tristanna isn't real or something, so we go into (wait for it) a warehouse, where we find Tristanna, who is really someone else, and she was trying to infiltrate Section 41, which actually does exist. Or something. 4) Off to an office to collect evidence on Section 41, which really does exist, really. This mission has custom mobs, about half a dozen types, with bios and varying powers. This mission suffers from a bit of Objective Overload, with 12 glowies to click, 2 things to smash, and Defeat All. Interestingly, this office is the one with the hole in the floor that leads to the sewers, which suggests that Section 41's off-the-books budget is rather tight. since they can't afford a office with intact floors. It must kinda suck to work for a black-ops group with a tiny budget. I'm imagining their agents taking the bus to their target's home to assassinate him, then waiting for off-peak hours to report the job done. 5) Now, we head into a 5th column base to put an end to the Menulok project. Again, a bit of Objective Overload, with 6 glowies to click and 5 thingies to smash. Then we pummel Dr. Menulok, who is actually a brainwashed Tristan Caine. After the mission, we try to get the brainwashing undone, but Section 41 can only afford Big Jim's Discount Deprogramming, which is really just the back room of a Major Flanders' Fried Chicken, where the assistant manager splashes expired Orange Crush on his face while saying "Snap out of it, okay?" Friends and Lovers is another very well executed arc, with excellent writing and a well done custom group. My only nitpick is too many objectives in a few maps.

A quick joke arc, the player is tasked by "Saint Jessica" with finding out why devils are getting into Heaven, then stopping them, the going to Hell to pummel Satan. There are at least a dozen types of custom mobs, all with funny descriptions. The whole arc is fast and not too hard. My only nitpick is that the contact dialog is barely one sentence per screen, and no contact bio.

This is a quickie joke arc, wherein the Circle has stolen your birthday cake for some reason, maybe to offer as a sacrifice to the birthday gods. You pummel the mages and get the delicious cake. It's a bit bloated (why are there four "the cake thief"?) but it makes for a fun five minutes, especially if it is in fact your birthday and you're celebrating it via Zoom with a reheated Hostess Ding-Dong.

This is an odd one. First the player (reduced to lvl 15) rescues "The Spanish Maine" from some ghost pirates. Or are they pirate ghosts? Then you're in the criminally underused Preatorian slum map, rescuing five heroes with colorful descriptions, one of whom turns on you for some unknown reason. The contact speaks only in song quotes featuring the work "Jack". Then you follow the smell of rum to an alien signal, then rescue a guy from a prison, then the contact dies I think. This is a vanity arc for the author's old SG, featuring the old characters. People who were in the old SG will no doubt get a kick out of seeing the old faces again, but the general public will be kinda lost, like watching a foreign film but the subtitles are in yet another language.

I was able to complete it this time, and this is definitely a top-notch arc. Great writing, compelling characters, copious use of clues, no spelling errors, no time wasters. Let me restate that for emphasis; no time wasters. Even pausing to read all the dialog, including over a dozen clues, I was able to complete this in under 15 mins. My only minor gripe is the morality. The player is cast as a villain (you're approached at random walking through Grandville) but throughout the arc the player doesn't act villainous, you're all "I'll help out, for SCIENCE!" Maybe you're a hero who just went to Grandville for coffee like Arbiter Sands does. Anyway, this is a great arc that everyone should play!

I tried this just now, and mission 2 glitched. Taking the hostages to the map exit didn't work; the waypoint was way off the map.

This... uh... this has been in the game how long?

I took a quick run through this just now. It's a quick, fun story with a lot of jokes, although a few are injokes that only hardcore oldschool players will get. The mobs aren't too hard, and (this is important) there are no time-wasters, a good character can bang through it in five minutes. My only nitpick is a few missing details; no contact bio, and some of the custom mobs have Fifth Column bios. IMHO the final boss should have the full text of the original 🙂