Dechs Kaison

I didn't think it would, but figured it was worth a shot.

Yeah, this sounds like my problem and it makes sense as a solution.

I'm pretty sure this will work, but it'll have to wait until tonight to see. If I don't post again, then this worked.

Thanks again for all the help!

Thanks, I'll try this when I get home tonight. I did check the chat options, but didn't know about having the proper channels in the tabs.

I heard there were some changes with the text system (I haven't played in about a year), but I didn't realize that it would hide bubbles that you didn't have a window for.

Add this to your queue, please.

Arc ID: 186198
Arc Name: A bad hand from a worse deck...
Morality: Heroic
Factions: CoT (half of a mission), Custom group.
Synopsis: A fellow hero, Kinetic Tut, needs your help recovering a unique artifact that was stolen from his collection. What appears to be a routine mission unfolds into a bitter rivalry.

Hey guys, I just published my first arc and I want some serious feedback on it. I love the idea of creating arcs and I want to do my best to make them enjoyable. The feedback I get here will not only affect this arc, but will shape my future arcs, including a villainous sequel to this one.

This is important to me because of how much time and effort I invested in this arc. I loaded as much content as I could squeeze, down to detailed backgrounds of the bosses, critter descriptions and a lengthy souvenir. The arc hit 98.5% when I finished.

The arc was designed for high level play, and I've only been able to test it with my 40 Bot/FF mastermind, and he can solo it, but I haven't seen the bosses of my custom group.

My questions are:

How does the arc play with regard to the enemies? Are the minions/LTs/Bosses too difficult or too easy? Do the minions have enough variety? Is it solo-able without being too easy for large groups?

How are the objectives? There are a few optional objectives; is it clear that they are optional? Is the time limit on the third mission too stringent or not even challenging? Is the last mission sized well?

What do you think of the story? Is it well developed enough? Is it interesting and original? Does anything seem overly cliche or contrived?

Grammar Nazis: Give this arc a good look. I pride myself in my writing ability, so I don't think you'll find anything. If you do find anything wrong, I would like to fix it.

I don't particularly like the title, but I couldn't think of anything better. Any suggestions?

Arc Name: A bad hand from a worse deck...
Arc ID: 186198
Morality: Heroic
Factions: CoT, Custom group.
Synopsis: A fellow hero, Kinetic Tut, needs your help recovering a unique artifact that was stolen from his collection. What appears to be a routine mission unfolds into a bitter rivalry.

Thanks in advance, I greatly appreciate it.

I recently noticed this myself, luckily I already had recall friend.

One thing I just thought of, but haven't tried yet, is this: Try telling the bot to "say" /stuck?

The problem is seen in two places. The first is with NPC dialog chat bubbles and the second is with my mastermind's pet bubbles. I don't see any of them. When playing through missions, I don't see the enemies say anything anymore. I thought it could be just the missions I was on that didn't have the content, but I still don't see chat bubbles on Mission Architect missions where I know they should be talking. With my pets, I have a few macros to make them say thing and act out little scenes. I no longer see the chat bubbles from them either, and I've checked with other players who tell me that my pets are talking. The macros are working, my game isn't.

I noticed this problem when I started playing CoH/V on my new PC, so I'm inclined to blame it on Vista. Has anyone else seen this problem before? What should I try to fix it?

Thanks.

I did notice that the phantasm doesn't fade away after a time, so that's cool. But when did they change the pets? It's the phantasm I'm most concerned about, because that could alter a lot of my plans on other characters.

Does the change effect things like Voltaic Sentinel?

Ok, so I haven't played in about a year and a half, and last I recall, my illusion/radiation controller was a beast. He stomped things. Annihilated even. I remember having perma haste and accelerate metabolism, which lead to perma decoys and at least two phantasms, with the occasional third.

Now my haste and AM don't recharge fast enough, leaving me without my perma decoys, and I can only summon one phantasm no matter what!

What happened?

Hey everyone, after several days of time tweaking and writing, my first arc is now live.

Arc Name: A bad hand from a worse deck...
Arc ID: 186198
Morality: Heroic
Factions: CoT, Custom group.
Difficulty Level: Custom group makes it difficult. Not recommended for low levels.
Synopsis: A fellow hero, Kinetic Tut, needs your help recovering a unique artifact that was stolen from his collection. What appears to be a routine mission unfolds into a bitter rivalry.
Estimated Time to Play: Not really sure. It's a "Long" arc with four total missions. There are two custom bosses and one custom elite boss.
Other details: The story pits my favorite hero against my favorite villain characters in what I think is an epic battle. Energy resistance will be key. Psionic resistance will help with one of the bosses.

I look forward to feedback. Please, since it's my first arc, don't be gentle, but don't be brutal either. I just want honest opinions, thanks!

Alright, I've managed to get a set of 4/2/1, plus 3 special bosses and an ally. All four missions fit, I didn't have to remove any text and I'm at 98%. w00t!

I'm still ironing out some kinks; expect the arc to be up later this evening. If you care.

Thanks all for your help!

Yes.

Bump so more people see this idea's awesomeness.

Also, how do we let the devs know about this idea?

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I can't imagine the limits you'd be under with 4 missions and 2 unique groups... or did I read that wrong?

[/ QUOTE ]

You read that right, there's 2 unique groups. One of them is just three special character bosses though, and that's to keep them from appearing in with the regular spawns with large groups.

Like I said, I basically have 9 custom critters total right now. Adding two minions will make it 11, or 66% by the calculation from above. I have a LOT of text in this, so I'm a little worried.

OK, I just had an idea that will easily fit my theme and give me a great 4/2/1 ratio, but now I have the slight problem of space.

Devious: Right now I have two custom groups and a contact/ally. The first group is the army of robots, and the second group is the special boss of that army group.

The grand total right now is 2 minions, 2 LTs, 1 boss, 2 special bosses and an elite boss.

Do you think I can fit two more minions if I already have 82%?

You could make sure it's a "Hard" level ambush, that way there's more of them available to fight.

The way the ambush works, though, is that they ambush to the player, not the boss. If the player is staying far away from the boss, the ambush may never even "see" the boss.

I second this!

Excellent idea!

Alright, so I'm almost ready to publish my first arc (4 missions), but I want to ask some more questions.

How many minions, LTs, and bosses are appropriate? Right now, the main group of enemies has 2 types of minion, 2 types of LT, and one boss. Is that enough variation? Should I try to squeeze in another minion or a boss?

I'm at 82% right now, but I've finished all the text I need. I'd imagine I should be able to fit one more type of critter, but it will be tough to fit a minion in the theme.

I may be in the minority, but I agree with Eco on this one. We need to stop the moron players from playing an opposite alignment arc and downvoting it because they're too stupid to use the interface correctly.

Although, I do think restricting the type of player is a bad idea. It's going too far. Someone up there said that there are plenty of heroic arcs they want to play that they don't have the right level villain for and vice-versa.

I'm in favor of this idea, which was said above: Make the default search filter neutral+heroic for heroes and neutral+villainous for villains. Genius! Moron heroes and villains won't accidentally play improperly aligned missions and get all pissy about it. "Why'd you make me set the place on fire? FAIL!" and "Why did I have to save the kitten? FAIL!" comments go away.

If there was a really good evil arc you don't have a villain for, you can still search for villain arcs with your hero, you just have to understand the interface.

Also, when you make an MA mission, by default it's neutral, so anyone would be able to play it. The idiots that don't know about the interface will never know the difference. Everyone can play your mission if you don't know what you're doing.

This is off topic, but when I'm testing I noticed that I never see any dialog pop up from the enemies.

This could be related: When I played before, I had macros to make my pets say things (funny/RP related). Now I don't see those balloons pop up, but I'm sure I'm entering the commands correctly.

If you guys could fix either of those problems, that would be GREAT.

Thanks everyone, that's the kind of advice I was looking for. I stopped playing about a year and a half ago, and just got back into it last week. I've never gotten a character all the way to 50, so I don't know what they're capable of handling. Your comments have been very helpful. The MA was something I didn't know about until last month when I started thinking about playing CoH again. MA is something incredible to me, I always loved the creative aspect of this game and this takes it to another level.

I think I'll downgrade all the elite bosses to just boss, and the AV to an elite boss. He is based off one of my characters, but he's supposed to be the evil genius behind the entire Kaison Corporation. It just wouldn't be climactic if he was just a normal boss.

The ally is going to be my Kinetics defender, who will only be throwing buffs around and rarely some energy blast.

I understand the damned if you do, damned if you don't philosophy of the difficulty. I think I'm going to set the custom critters so that one powerset is hard or extreme with the other being standard. That way they can be difficult, but not impossible for the casual group.

I plan to do plenty of testing before I actually go live with it, but it seems hard to find people willing to help test since there's NO reward to test mode. I have a mastermind who at least makes it soloable.

I have found a little trick in my testing. If you want to make sure he summons pets, give him a melee powerset secondary but make sure he's set to ranged fighting style. He will prefer to fight ranged, and since the only thing he can do at range is summon, you'll see pets more often.

Also make sure you have him set to at least hard to make sure he can summon pets.

I'm currently in testing on my first arc, and I had a few questions before I publish it. If I'm going to do this, I want to make sure it's right and that people are going to enjoy it.

My target audience is high level, mid-large groups.

Technical question: What I would like to do is have mission four dependent upon success/failure of mission three. Basically, if the players fail, mission four happens as normal, but if they succeed, mission four is skipped. Is there a way to do this?

I've got a custom enemy group (themed lackeys of my mastermind character), and I want to make sure the difficulty is on par with what people expect. Is having the minion and LT powersets on hard a bad idea?

I have two mid-arc bosses. Should they be elite or normal bosses? I'm afraid at high levels normal bosses will be too easy for a "powerful foe."

The final boss of the arc will be a mastermind, and I'm thinking he should be an AV. Could the combo of MM and AV be too difficult?

Last question, I promise. I've added an ally to the last mission. Is the mission failed if the ally dies? If the boss is an AV, what should the ally be? Elite Boss or just Boss?

Thanks in advance.