Kyksie

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).

I ran through "Clockwork Rising", it was a bit generic but still good. I'm the first to recommend trimming the real Synapse TF to about half it's size. Of all the things you need to do to get accolades, that's probably the most time consuming and least fun, unless it's an RP TF where your character's father was murdered by the Clockwork to get his dentures, letting the player do the Inigo Montoya bit when encountering the King. However, the devs have stated that you can't just push a button to turn an AE into a real arc, so no luck there.

Digging in the Dirt - 39785 Kyksie receives a call from Detective Rogers at the PPD, telling her that one Mitsumoto Hagashi has been stealing girders in Boomtown, hoping to build a new Outback factory there or something; Countess Crey has been giving him financial backing, so obviously he's up to no good. We head to Boomtown and discover that the Council are conducting the thefts. After some kicking, the Archon spills the beans about some infighting within their ranks. Then, we go to the old Hero Corps building in Faultline, fight some 'Hero Drones' and find a video of the Countess and Rebecca Foss photocopying their butts or something. Finally, after more punching, we discover that the new Hero corps building in Baumton was built on the site of an old 5th column base, so Kyksie busts in, rescues three hostages, shuts down a time portal and defeats the EB boss, Panzer. This is another well done arc, with good dialog and lots of clues and mob chatter. My only gripe is the last mission, which reduces the player to level 19 and then throws an EB at you. Arc writers need to be very careful when reducing the player's level; many characters will have lost access to key powers. Granted, I was actually playing this with a Dark/Elec Sentinel, who is unable to deal damage at any level, so it didn't matter. On the one in a million chance that the devs here are actually reading this column; Sentinels are a pretty cool idea, but they need a lot of love. The basic concept of "A blaster but not quite as squishy" is a sound one, except that we already have that: Soldiers of Arachnos. A Crab Spider can deal blaster-level damage with tons of AoEs as be quite sturdy at the same time, plus they also have pets, improved Leadership auras, and awesome looking spider arms. Bane Spiders don't deal quite as much AoE damage and don't have the cool arms, but they can still do a respectable amount of damage and be sturdy as well. All Sentinels can do is... be reasonably hard to kill. Their damage is so bad I feel that my Dark sent is merely glaring harshly at her foes. The word "Vulnerability" pops up over their heads once in a while, but as far as I can tell this merely causes mobs to question whether being a minion is a worthwhile life choice, because it doesn't make them go down any faster, except for those few who burst into tears and run off to get counseling. With their damage improved by about 25-30%, and their inherent ability given some sort of boost, Sentinels could become a valid option. Oh yeah, Digging in the Dirt is pretty good too.

When you're testing the mission locally, open the "architect options" tab, it gives you a bunch of abilities. You can autocomplete missions, become invincible, etc. I would recommend against using defendable objects. Sometimes the mobs start attacking them before the player even gets there, causing the mission to fail.

I led Penny out, which I think meant giving her to the Clockwork King? I'm not sure.

@Take One asked me to take a look through his stuff, so I jumped in and hit a few buttons at random: Murders in RWZ Morgue - A fun, quick detective mystery. Very little combat. Clockwork Uprising - A 'retelling' of the Synapse task force. Not bad, but not remarkable. If you're in the mood to pummel wind-up robots, you might as well slog through the real TF to get credit for the accolade. Clockwork Romance - I liked this one. The Clockwork King has kidnapped Penelope Yin (again) and it's up to you to rescue her... or not. A very well written story. My only suggestion would be to make it clearer exactly what you're doing in the final mission; I wasn't sure what I was doing until after it was over. Granted, I was halfway through my second Marley, making Penny appear as a young Margaret Cho doing a bit about her father's grocery, so I dunno. War on Christmas - This one is my favorite. Working for Weston Phipps (as a villain), you formulate a plan to kill Santa Claus, or maybe just kidnap him, I forget. You hack a reindeer to obtain the security codes or something, then go clobber Santa in his North Pole fortress. Lots of well written dialog and injokes. Interestingly, the description tells you to play it with archvillains turned on... but Santa was still an EB.

39590 - Revel For He Shall Return This is a nicely done one. Coyote (you know, the guy from the old tutorial) tells you that the Hellions and Skulls in Perez Park have worked out their differences and are now putting on a performance of Hamlet over at the amphitheater, or something like that. The player conducts some pugilistic interrogation and discovers that Ishmael of the Lost is behind it, so we delve into the sewers for more pummeling. This is a very well written arc, with lots of references, a deep knowledge of CoH lore, and several sprinkles of humor. However, it gets bogged down in the first mission: That's a total of twenty enemy groups you need to pummel. The player is reduced to level 14, and in addition to that, the Kraken is there, forcing the player to run and hide when he sees you. That's about twelve groups more than the story requires. Then, in the last mission, Ishmael is an EB, who not only throws ambush waves at the player, but has a Final Form as well. Yep, you're still reduced to level 14. With the first mission toned down and Ishmael nerfed a bit (or maybe just a 'hard boss' warning) this could be an epic arc.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Kyksie's Dojo, where all the cool kids come to learn the latest martial arts moves and hang out. Except that we won't be hanging out, we'll be reviewing the latest offerings from Architect Entertainment! And it's not a "dojo", it's more like "the lobby of City Hall". Actually that's exactly what it is. Dojos cost money. Anyway, I'll be using this space to post reviews of arcs that don't have their own thread, like those mentioned on the Architect channel on Discord. Feel free to send a message to me on Discord as @Kyksie, although I generally check that only every two or three days. I'll happily review any arc that has some semblance of a story. I don't review farms or "Challenge" arcs. If it's a 'farm with a story' I'll review it solely on the merits of the story.

It didn't work before???

Coming off the monorail from her shift as night watchperson, Kyksie arrives in King's Row to find it trashed. After a quick stop at Major Flanders, she stops by the police station to touch base. Her usual contact Joe Frietag isn't there; instead, Pep Becktrees is in charge. His eyes wide, he stares into the distance with a manic grin. "KYKSIE!!! Those Nazi maniacs came out of nowhere!" Becktrees has a Starbucks Grande in one hand and a Drenched Donuts double glazed in the other. "We're spread thin up here, go into the sewers and take them out!!!" Slogging through the sewers kicking Nazis, Kyksie is overjoyed to run into the Vigilant Patriots, a group of true, proud Americans ready to fight and die for their country. Their leader, Bastion, uses the power of his mind to root out those opposed to Making America Great, just like NewsAnon says! There's Victory Maiden, defender of the homeland, and Grail, who uses his personal connection with Jesus to clobber anyone lacking said connection. Squealing with joy, Kyksie kicks the remaining Nazis so hard they land in the next sewer over. When she returns, Becktrees has finished his second Starbucks and is eagerly plowing into a third. "Kyksie!! We can't find Joe! I'm sure he's okay but maybe he isn't!! Go look for him, okay????" He's practically vibrating at this point. Kyksie heads out and rescues Freitag, but his suit isn't dusted with powdered sugar, so she suspects something is up. Back at the PPD, she talks with the hyper-caffienated Becktrees, and together they topple a plan to reinstate the Might for Right Act and force all supers to register for traffic detail or something. I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil the storyline too much, although my reviews generally have about as much to do with an arc's actual plot as Fox News does with reality. Leviathan: Finale is another masterfully written arc, with a great story, lots of detail, and no time wasters. Other than a few spelling errors, my only gripe is that the EB bosses are a bit hard considering that you're reduced to level 35. Still, the player is warned in the description, and the EBs went down easily with the proper use of Inspirations. This is one of the many instances where City of Heroes teaches valuable life lessons; in this case, the lesson is that any problem can be made manageable by eating a handful of pills. Other than that, this is a great finale to an excellent series... except for Becktrees' vacant eyes and manic grin, which will haunt your nightmares for all eternity.

(this review is for the updated version) 1) Anderson Millard, an old acquaintance of Kyksie's from her sidekick days, invites her over to his apartment to smoke a joint. Halfway through, he tells her that 'something shady' is going down in Independence Port; shady even by Independence Port standards, which usually involve guns, Superdyne, and hundreds of pounds of mutant octopus sushi. Kyksie heads to a nearby warehouse and runs straight into a pasta eating contest, and is instantly gunned down by several hundred Mafiosi. Awakening in the hospital, Kyksie discovers that she had accidentally left team size set to eight from her last mission, Sister Psyche's Topless Beach Volleyball. After turning it back down to one, she re-enters the warehouse, rescues Anderson, and discovers that the Family are doing some things that might not be quite legal. 2) After another doobie, Kyksie and Anderson head down to an old safe house to recover some correspondence. Upon returning, they find that they hadn't put the joint out and it burned his apartment down. 3) The Family are in league with the Fifth Column, so she and Anderson head onto a cargo ship to arrest EVERYONE! Because they're NAZIS! 4) We go kick some Arachnoses, who are all eating Twinkies and watching Spongebob. 5) At last, Anderson has a revelation: the Family, with help from the NAZIS! and Arachnos, are smuggling in marijuana from the Rogue Isles, most likely to boost sales at Family-owned Major Flander's Fried Chicken franchises. The two bust into a warehouse and defeat "Tipsy" Malone. Afterwards, Anderson and Kyksie become roommates, setting the stage for a late-season buddy-cop sitcom. SHE'S a peppy, spunky, high-kicking martial arts ex-hero who sometimes forgets to wear panties! HE'S a grizzled ex-cop who's too old for this shit! They fight crime! They get high! They can never remember whose turn it is to wash the dishes! They're... KICKY AND GRUFF!!! Coming this fall, ONLY on FOX!!! New Friends, Old Enemies tells a good story; there's lots of clues and mob chatter, and Anderson's 'grizzled old cop' dialog is done well. My only real gripe is the third mission, where you have to arrest EVERYONE! Because they're NAZIS! On the huge cargo ship map, this took me ten minutes on my first run, then over half an hour the second time I did it because two NAZIS! were hiding behind a cargo crate smoking a bone. IMHO, the 'defeat all enemies' objective should only be used if the plot requires it and the map is small. Not or, and. There's also a few minor spelling errors, and it tells you what your character thinks at times (yeah, yeah, ocelots). Still, if you have time to kill, this is an arc worth playing.

This is a fun one. The player receives a Kyksie and Friends Alert! informing them that Li Tieh Kuai has stolen the city's earrings, so after some kicking, you unmask a vast globe-spanning conspiracy involving militias, the New World Order, mad scientists, catgirls, and Ayn Rand, who was probably a catgirl herself. There's loads of dialog and tons and tons of jokes covering dozens of past and present conspiracies. The author has a broad knowledge of conspiracy theories, suggesting they live in a remote cabin in Montana prepping for the apocalypse, or maybe just played lots of INWO and Deus Ex. My only gripe is the spelling and grammar errors... there's rather a lot.

Running a bit low on cash once more, Kyksie drifts back to the Rogue Isles and hooks up with an old 'acquaintance', an ex-Outcast named Bedrock. After a few beers, Bedrock lets her in on a plan to corner the underground tampon racket in Paragon. Hiding in the back of a delivery truck, Kyksie infiltrates the Cotton Pony plant in King's Row, hacks the delivery computer, then proceeds to... ...sigh. I was going to spin a whole tale about how Kyksie sets up her illegal sales and distribution network but is stopped by Mynx and Luminary, but I kinda ran out of inspiration halfway. In truth, the player talks with Bedrock about expanding the Outcasts presence in the Rogue Isles, then tries to muscle in on the Family's Superdyne ring, but gets betrayed, so we kick that guy a few times and things are back to normal. Outcast in the Isles is an extremely generic arc. There's nothing bad about it; no bad writing, no defeat alls, no catboys in their underwear, but there's nothing at all remarkable about it either. Like, if you were in a supermarket shopping for AE arcs to play, Outcast in the Isles would be in a plain generic wrapper labeled "Architect Mission #39130".

Has potential, needs polish. I'll post a full review when it's done.

Did you autocomplete while in Atlas? In low level zones, ambushes will not appear, to prevent griefing.

Pretty good. The player is told by Wonder Woman Heraclea that baddies are invading Themiscyra New Colchis, go help out. The island is inhabited by a tribe of big, strong warrior women with bulging muscles... in fact, they're so strong and muscle-y that they can complete several of the objectives without the player's help. Then you track down and defeat the big baddie with the aid of some lesbian yodelers. A nice fun adventure.

I'm 100% confident that they're not scammers, in the sense that they really did spend the money on what they said they did, and not hookers and blow. However, I'm also 98% confident that they will not deliver unless they bite the bullet, do another Kickstarter for ~250K, and spend the money on full time coders.

Missions are saved locally as a text file, maybe cut 'n' paste?

Wait whaaaaaat? I'm sure this isn't true.

Not a bad idea, but 99.9% of people won't use it. I mean, I played on Live from launch until close, and only at one point did one of my characters have 2 billion, and that was only because it was on my bucket list.

Looking for something closer to home, Kyksie recently took a job as night watchperson at M.C. Louis Investments, at their Talos Island office. To pass the long nights, she practices katas, nibbles the occasional cannabis edible, and most of all, listens to NewsAnon, hosted by Tucker Hannity. "Those Rogue Isles liberals! Coming in here and taking our jobs, going on welfare, cutting in line at El Super Mexicano! Where would we be be without the Blasters, Tanks and Scrappers who patrol our streets tirelessly, keeping those libs locked up! And lets all thank our Defenders and Controllers too, they're all great! Except Warshades. Darn alien lobsters..." Kyksie nibbles her brownie and grins, turning up the podcast. Where would we be without Hannity and Newsanon to keep us informed? Near the end of her shift, Detective Frietag calls, informing her that their contact "Comrade" is willing to talk. 1) After a quick stop at Major Flanders, Kyksie heads for (wait for it) a warehouse, meets up with Hollow Point, then rmeets up with Comrade. The mobs are a custom group, with bios and varied powers, with names like "Shickljaeger" and "Kegelbreaker". We rescue Comrade, but then a massive ambush of Kegels show up and kill him. After completing the arc, I tried again with a top level Spider and he was still killed; I tried yet again with a tank, and was able to keep Comrade alive by spamming taunts... but then he was killed in dialog. Those damn liberals! 2) Comrade had been looking into Doc Buzzsaw, so after catching the latest Newsanon broadcast, Kyksie and Hollow Point infiltrate her lab, hack some computers, and kick the Doc in the box a few times. Hmmm, she's been working with Crey? 3) Into a Crey base, where Kyksie finds evidence suggesting that they might possibly be doing things that aren't quite legal. 4) Kyksie goes into an office and plants a bug or something, and also eats all the leftover City of Gyros in the fridge. Kicking people burns calories. 5) The bug picks up a conversation between an unknown party and... Tucker Hannity!! Overjoyed at the chance to meet her hero, Kyksie dashes into the office, and runs into Hollow Point once again. After a hasty explanation, they head through a hole in the floor into the sewers, kick more badguys and rescue Hannity. "You're my idol!" Kyksie squeals. "OMG I never miss a NewsAnon. You guys are awesome!" "Thanks," Tucker smiles. "I loved you on the Incredible Man Power Hour! I even saw that episode where..." his eyes briefly travel downward. "Uh..." Kyksie shifts uncomfortably, "yeeeeah. Let's... uh... head out." Hollow Point managed to sneak away, and the mysterious Leviathan is still out there, but the day has been saved, for now at least. Just like absolutely every other arc by this author, Leviathan is a top notch arc, with great writing, compelling characters tons of clues, custom mobs, and no time wasters. At this point, I'd like to make a request. Much as I enjoy reviewing all the great arcs being put out by the talented AE writers here, there's been a serious shortage of terrible arcs the past few months. Lavishing praise just isn't as much fun as heaping sarcasm on some slob's arc where every third word is misspelled and the contact is clearly the author's ego-stroke. All you terrible, terrible AE authors-you know who you are- waddle back to the keyboard and start churning out crap for me to dump on. RATING: