Kyksie

Any dependencies? Are you using a small or nonstandard map?

Interestingly, I may have played Ninjas in the Wind inbetween revisions! The first time I played it, one of the waypoints didn't appear, but when I tried it again it worked perfectly. As for the last mission in Spark of the Blind, no, I just hit the button, tried to kick the vending machine and left. A bit anticlimactic, but it works. Anyway, Spark of the Blind has the player working with Belladonna Vetrano to send Apex back to fight the good fight, while Ninjas in the Wind has you fighting collection agents from Chiba City or something. I don't want to give away too much of the plot of either, so I'll just say that both arcs are top-notch, with lots of dialog and clues and no time wasters. The former even uses the escort code to have NPCs comment on stuff. It's awesome. I came up short trying to integrate Kyksie's latest adventures into this, so let's just say that after completing both, she stops into Major Flander's and orders a Deluxe Bucket (you know, the one that the Freedom Phalanx did the ad for) but the manager says she's been abusing their 'heroes get free food' policy and only gives her a single order of wings, so she offers to clear out the Trolls that have been giving him trouble, then goes and kicks all the Trolls in the surrounding block, even though they weren't harassing the store, in fact they often stop by for Flambeax Fries after a Superdyne binge. The manager gives her the bucket because it's less trouble than arguing.

We Need Original Content - 39992 I generally don't review 'challenge' arcs, but I hit a wall trying to come up with a story hook for Ninjas in the Wind and The Spark of the Blind (spoiler: both are excellent) so I jumped into this and... eh. Set in the Frostfire's Party Palace map, this has swarms of custom mobs with names like "sonic noises" and "spines regen", with bosses named "I'm difficult" and "Blow Me (up)", plus wandering mobs from random groups like Red Caps and Praetorian Clockwork. Mob dialog consists of head-scratchers like "I'll give you a cookie to stop!!" Seriously it feels like the author let his 9 year old nephew write the dialog. I took my Crab Spider in and found it effortless at 0x2, then bumped it up to 0x8 and left after two minutes because every single mob had Smoke Grenade or Detention Field.

This happens to me once in a great while. I think I have screenshots if it would help.

How about The Worst Article on the Internet. The slideshow is out of sync with the text and I hit a spelling error after five seconds. Seriously, MSN, just give up.

Freakshow 2.0 - 40266 After debriefing the PPD and FBSA agents regarding her latest triumph over the Clockwork King, Kyksie took the express turbolift from the conference room to the command center of the Super Best Friends' high-tech base. Helping herself to a chicken wrap and Greek salad from the catering table, she settled into the form-fitting armchair and tapped the touch-sensitive datascreen. A map of Paragon City appeared, overlaid with green and red markers indicating potential trouble spots. Sipping her mango protein shake, Kyksie zoomed in on the Skyway City map, calling up a panel of statistics detailing recent activity by the Trolls... ...is what you would have read if this took place in an ideal universe, where the FBSA and City Hall gave heroes the resources they need. In reality, Kyksie sat in an uncomfortable folding chair in front of row of public access computers at the Steel Canyon branch of Paragon university, checking her email and catching up with her friends on Capebook. The homeless guy in the terminal next to her grunted and scratched, his screen displaying something about Mynx, Swan, and an illegal Crey vaseline factory. Kyksie finished off the Almond Joy bar she obtained from the lobby vending machine (c'mon, it had been hanging by a corner, if she hadn't kicked the machine like that someone else would have) when a Crime Alert popped up, something about Freakshow in Skyway City. Sighing, she logged off, stole one last glance at the unholy tableau unfolding at the station next to her, and headed off to catch the monorail. 1) Kyksie arrives in Skyway to find it overrun by Freakshow. Synapse and Mynx aren't there, so she squares her shoulders and makes with the kicking. Yep, it's a defeat all. Because they're Freakshow, many of them get up afterwards and need to be kicked again. After a bit, she noticed that some of the freaks have newer and shinier implants, which fill them with zest and vigor, because *all* of these 'cyber freaks' get up for round two. Kyksie spends fifteen minutes scouring the multi-level freeway of Freaks before returning to the library. 2) One of the Freaks dropped his phone, with his address for Amazon deliveries. Kyksie heads for a warehouse, kicks more Freaks and finds more equipment. One of the boxes had a shipping manifest, so she follows the address to... 3) St. Martial, where she kicks a Praetorian commander, who drops clues leading to... 4) Neutropolis, where she smashes a suspicious truck, containing the address of... 5) A high tech lab, where she hacks computers, kicks Praetorian scientists (who have no offensive powers, so no XP/INF), breaks some fabrication machines, and defeats some war Walkers. She tried kicking a Praetorian vending machine, but only Cole Crunchies and Tyrant Toffee drop out ("The sun never sets on flavor!"). She eats them anyway. Freakshow 2.0 is a rather bland and generic arc, with a few bits of fun dialog, but dragged down by the defeat-all time waster in act 1.

I vaguely recall hearing on live that the algorithm they use is glitchy. In particular, if you log off with a an AE arc active, all time logged off is counted.

An all-my-alts supergroup solves all these problems, but it prevents you from joining an actual SG.

As long as we're on the subject of 'stuff clipping into other stuff', in northern Steel there's a skyscraper that's embedded into another one high in the air. Given that this would probably be difficult to fix, maybe the best way to address this would be to add a badge and backstory, much like the Ishmael story. Maybe one of the buildings had an office that was secretly a Circle of Thorns hideout, like on the Synapse TF, and the mages cast a spell to animate the water cooler so it would make them iced tea, but the spell got out of hand and animated the entire building, and it fell in love with the building next door and tried to make babies with it, but the spell wore off halfway.

It's quite beatable on a fully tricked out character. The thing is, as soon as a guy dings 50, the first thing I want is the Alpha unlock so further XP can go toward higher Incarnate unlocks. So, a character attempting it is likely running on crappy 45 SOs.

People have already mentioned these, but... The Honoree mission from Mender Ramiel, Not only is is hard (two EBs with swarms of adds) but it will almost always be undertaken by a character who has just turned 50, and does not have their 50 enhancements set up. The bombs 'n' hostages mission from the 'join the Vanguard' arc. Actually I'll autocomplete any mission where you have to find multiple hostages on a wide open outdoor map.

Yeah... on my Illusion troller, the Phantasm seems to be getting stuck a lot more than usual the last week or so.

Right. But even the server has only so much CPU.

For each and every logged in player, the game checks all badges every 8 seconds? Doesn't this eat up CPU?

I'm not sure that "really, really, really likes kitsune" can be called a genre.

Not bad. Warshades already have a power called Eclipse, but that's ok because no one plays Warshades.

So... uh... let me see if I get this straight. You're doing an MSR, and the words "Recipe Found!" don't appear in purple on your computer screen like they did on the previous 872 raids you did this week. You talk to a few 'friends' who mutter 'mmm yeah', and the obvious conclusion is that the devs have turned off purples after 99 as part of a malicious plot to, uh, deprive you of purples, and the GMs are all in on it except for one brave GM who dared speak the truth. And now you're going to devote your life to rooting out the evildoers by standing in Atlas Park "naked" and donating A WHOLE DOLLAR to Autism Speaks in exchange for information on this vast conspiracy, is that right? The Veteran Level field is just a number that increments when you ding, and is not looked at by anything other than your bio. Saying that it affects your drop rates is exactly like saying that, when mommy drove you to McDonalds last week, you didn't get a Happy Meal toy because the last digit of the odometer was a 9. I mean, I used to code a bit for fun, so I know how fixing one bug will cause seventeen new and exciting glitches to pop up, even in parts of the code which have no connection whatsoever to the part you chang- what? Another compiler error? I didn't even TOUCH that module, you flea-infested piece of... version mismatch??? AAAAUGHHHH(*@!#*!*# (deep breath) Look. You just got unlucky for a bit. There is no huge conspiracy between the devs, GMs, New York bankers, and the Thule Group to take away your purples. Let me remind you that those people are all volunteers, working without any compensation, so that you can have the pleasure of seeing "recipe found!" pop up on your computer screen 89324 times a day. (except for the New York bankers, they never work for free.)

^^^ That. ^^^

Careful, some people are going to take that as a challenge.

Youth For Eternity - 39817 The contact is Agent Amara Fox, who is a fox. Not a fox in the 'hot chick' sense, but an actual fox with a tail and pointy ears. Except that she is a fox in the hot chick sense too, smartly dressed with a cigarette dangling from her lips, gazing across the room with a cool yet assertive stare... you get the idea. This looks like a vanity arc for one of the author's alts. From previous experience, I've learned that vanity arcs are not always bad, just usually. Fox tells me that she works for Crey, but nevertheless she's hiring me to spy on Crey, because that's the way they do it at Crey I guess. Maybe they don't allow people to schedule vacation time, you have to hack the secretary's computer and insert yourself. Kyksie arrives in the Manticore's Mansion map, which normally can be problematic for people who don't know where the secret door is, but here we rescue a hostage, Yukiko Fox, who both gives us a clue telling us where the door is, but needs to be led to a glowie, which gives us a waypoint. Yep, she's a fox too. Not in the 'hot chick' sense, but... you get the idea. The mansion is guarded by Crey 'elite troops'; some of them actually have names and bios. There are also loads of non-required glowies as decoration. The level of detail is amazing. We have learned that Crey is doing a fun new research project which combines science and magic, and nothing bad could possibly come out of that, right? I'm kidding, that always goes sideways. We need to infiltrate an office and grab some files. The office is the Praetorian one, which is under attack by... Dark Elves??? Yep, see, this is where things go wrong. Mixing high tech stuff with magic results in elves every time, just ask Keebler. They're another custom group, with names like "Dark Elf Katana Ichi" and "Dark Elf Archer Ni." I can only assume that 'ichi' means they wear wool socks, and 'ni' means they say nasty things to old ladies. Here, we run into the arc's main problem... spelling and grammar errors. The text blocks have only a few errors, suggesting the author ran them through a spell checker. However, everything that isn't a dialog block has a lot of spelling errors, and I mean a LOT. Like, here's what happens when I find the files... "Cabinet" is misspelled in two different ways. Now that's dedication. We've learned that Crey has been breeding young kitsune in a lab to serve as maids, or maybe spies, I dunno. The lab is super fortified, so Agent Fox summons a Demon Lord to break the walls down so that the PPD can swarm in and apprehend the Crey forces. Kyksie arrives, and discovers that a demon lord has smashed through the walls and PPD forces have captured the Crey ones. This is probably the best use of a map and decorative NPCs I've seen. Kicking our way through the lab, we rescue six kitsune maidens, including Yukiko Fox ("visual age: early teens") and lead them through a conveniently placed magic portal. The demon lord is there too as a rather tough EB, although I suspect he wasn't a required defeat. I tend to just plow in and kick everything I see. After returning, I discover that Agent Fox has taken all the kitsune except for Yukiko, who lies on the floor panting "Kyksie, I need your help...", sweat dripping from her brow and pooling near her heaving... you get the idea. Youth For Eternity is very hard to rate. The writing is excellent, although it's clear that the author really, really likes kitsune, huh huh huh. The level of detail here exceeds that of any arc I've seen on Homecoming so far: loads of clues, dozens of decorative objects, two full custom groups, and plenty of NPCs with bios. But, the whole things is soured by the many spelling and grammatical errors. It's like going to a Michelin restaurant, and having filet mignon with oysters and Chateau Maison, and you're out on the terrace with sailboats sailing and strolling violinists strolling by... and your plate has a chip in the edge and a crack running down the middle. Your food is still exquisite and the strolling violinists are still strolling, but you'd think that with all the effort they put into the oysters, they would take a second to make sure your plate was intact. This picture sums up the arc perfectly: Given that the author is no doubt the founding member of an SG named League of Extraordinary Yiffers or Well of the Furries or something, I'm sure a few of his flunkies could swing through and mop up the errors, at which point this would be prime candidate for Devs's Choice.

It's not Beast Mastery, it's the door. The same thing happened with my robot minions; they just refused to attack the door.

I recently dug up the textfiles for the award-winning* AE trilogy I wrote on the Live server, which have Lord Recluse as a contact. After loading them, it seems that Recluse has decided that white is the proper attire for a ruthless overlord to wear in spring. I had the launcher re-validate all assets, no problems there. I tried switching between different versions of the Lord Recluse contact, and all appeared the same way. I made a mission from scratch, and Recluse looked fashionably white in that one as well. I then loaded up another player's arc which had Lord Recluse as a contact, and the model was a Mek Man, which is what the game uses when it can't find any costume file at all. He appears normal when used as a hostile mob in one of those missions. *in my own mind.

39828 - Storm and Stars I was reluctant to review this at first, given that two of the three missions have the dreaded 'defeat all enemies' objective, the bane of my existence. However, the second map is listed as medium and the last as small, so hopefully it won't be too time consuming. My afternoon was free because everyone in my Goosebumps book club just died of covid, so I poured myself another martini and dove in. This arc opens in media res, with the player telling the "PPD representative" (no contact bio) about how they want to take down the guy who killed Atta. It feels like the sequel to a previous arc, but there are no others by this author. The contact warns that said person is 'scum', but the player is driven on by their relentless drive for justice or something. We boldly venture into a warehouse, kick some Tsoo and find an address. Now to the office to find the assassin. It's the Praetorian Office set, and this "medium" map consisted of three huge floors packed with Tsoo. Tsoo were doing katas in the reception, Tsoo played Mahjongg in the tside offices, Tsoo watched tsentacle porn in the restroom. After fifteen minutes of Tsoo-tsomping, we clobber the boss and find a tshipping manifest. Now, to capture the assassin. We take a boat, and... the "small" map is the cargo ship. Eighteen cavernous rooms packed with Tsoo. No thanks. Arc authors: do not, I repeat, do NOT use the 'defeat all enemies' objective unless the plot requires it AND the map is very small. If I'm playing an AE arc for the story, I want to read the story, not get bogged down by tswarms of foes. I realize that some people will be playing your arc with a sub-50 who can use the XP, and some other people enjoy the repetition of defeating mob after mob... after mob... after mob after mob... you get the idea. But, by pushing the defeat all button, you take away the player's choice and force them to tslog through a bunch of random dudes before continuing the story. Don't do this. But, just so this isn't a total wash, I ran to the back of the huge cargo ship to encounter the assassin... an Electric Armor EB, who not only has the end-draining Lightning Field, but the godmode Overload power, which makes him invincible for 90 seconds. My incarnated Crab Spider could have punched through that fairly quickly, but oops, I'm down to level 40, no Incarnate powers. Storm and Stars fails on almost every level imaginable; no contact bio, player is dumped into the story, breaks the ocelot rule, multiple time wasters, overpowered boss with the player reduced in level.

IIRC the live devs said as much. The code structure is different.

Mynx's Big Adventure - 39792 Perched atop a Skyway City overpass smoking a doobie, Kyksie receives a telepathic message from her good friend Penelope Yin, telling her that the Circle of Thorns have kidnapped her other good friend Mynx. She follows the trail of booster wrappers to a high tech lab, kicks some mages, and finds Mynx imprisoned in a force field. She tries to lower the field, but the Circle have cast a spell making everyone extremely stupid, so she can't figure out how. Their other other good friend, Azuria, tells her that she can make an anti-stupid potion using some rare herbs. Kyksie finds the herbs in a cave guarded be DE, then spends an hour drinking Natty Lite, scratching lottery tickets, and watching Fox News while Azuria brews the potions. With her brain fortified against the stupidity field, she breaks into the lab again, kicks the mages a second time, lowers the force field and frees Mynx. They escape back to Skyway City, but Mynx has to pee real bad, so Kyksie kicks away some trolls so Mynx can go in a garbage can. Mynx's Big Adventure feels like someone's first arc: the dialog is rather simple, with not many clues or mob chatter. Still, there's no real faults beyond a few spelling errors. With a bit more attention to detail, this could be a worthwhile addition to the "Mynx takes a leak" genre, along with Bad Kitty! and Vindicators Pit Stop 1, 2, and 4. (I'm not going to mention 3, that one was terrible).