Eva Destruction

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As I understand it, the biggest problem with this kind of level jump is that just because a lowbie has been auto-SKed up to the appropriate level doesn't mean that they can actually handle enemies at that range.

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I'm just saying that if you pin the level ranges, you get this problem across the whole story arc instead of just some missions.


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If you set the level ranges, it's a pretty clear sign to a lowbie to AVOID THIS ARC. IT IS FOR HIGH LEVEL PLAYERS.

Seriously guys, go look at an arc description and see how pretty those 30-40, 30-40, 30-40, 30-40 level ranges look all lined up in a row. It's like a nice clean shirt. Throwing a 40-50 mission in there? That's the coffee stain.

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I think this arc takes a certain amount of mental flexibility to do, but it's definitely one of the more unique arcs. While it's not my ultimate favorite, Witch Engine has set out to try to do something different, and I think has accomplished that.

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Except it isn't. It is different for the MA, but as Venture pointed out, they already did this on Buffy, right down to the "which scenario is more plausible?" dialogue. The whole "superspeeder causes a global pandemic" thing has also been done.

I'll admit I didn't catch the anagram, so the ending was just a case of "oh no, not AGAIN."

Good use of mechanics though.

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So you stop and whack every purse-snatching Hellion you see? Level 50s shouldn't be fighting Hellions. If Hellions are showing up in a level 50 arc they should have a very good reason, and they should probably show up as grey-cons. There is a dev arc that does this, it's a Malta mission with level 15 Skulls in it.


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If I'm playing a story arc that compels me to in order to advance the story then "yes". If I see Tsoo playing tug-of-war with a giant green crystal then "no" because they are just going to respawn anyway (ie. there isn't a motivation to). And ya, it would be cool if we could add grey mobs like that to simulate that effect.

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You can, as of i15.

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If we want certain content, we have to use it as-is, we can't adjust the level of it--like the Devs did when they added high level Banished Pantheon for Portal Corp missions. There's a group that you only saw in the 20-30 range, but when they added the level 40-50 content they decided to use Banished Pantheon. If a player wanted to do the same thing in MA with say, Warriors, they couldn't, they'd just have to use them as 20-30.

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You have the option of making custom critters. Warriors are pretty easy to do in the critter creator. Of course, you'd have to have a reason for having level 50 Warriors. They are a mid-level gang.

Open the Shadow Shard to villains. They get to go to instanced versions anyway. Add new villain-only SFs to the Shadow Shard...and not something stupid like helping free Rularuu, that's stupid. Revamp the Dr. Q and Augustine TFs to not suck. Sara Moore could be a bit shorter too. Expand on the Shard lore through non-TF story arcs that are different for both sides; same story, different goals.

Story zones for villains, especially in the 20-30 range. These zones should have nothing to do with Arachnos.

Hero groups for villains to fight besides Longbow. The Legacy Chain especially could stand to have their level range extended. It doesn't make sense that the only magic-based hero group stops at such a low level, when magic-based villains are running around doing evil magic stuff all the way to 50.

Revamp of low-level hero arcs and the Freedom Phalanx TFs. A Positron Task Force that no longer sucks might as well be new content.

Only counting characters not in danger of deletion:

Blasters - 11 (6 50s)
Corruptors - 7 (3 50s)
Scrappers - 6 (3 50s)
Brutes - 4 (1 50)

And I have 1 controller, 1 tank, 1 defender, 1 stalker, 1 dom, and no MMs, VEATs, or khelds.

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Honestly the whole idea of 'level' or a faction having a level is non-immersive and I just ignore it. The concept that "I can't fight that, its 40 levels beneath me!" is seriously laughable. If I'm a hero, I'm going to fight the fights that need winning regardless of who the enemy is.

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So you stop and whack every purse-snatching Hellion you see? Level 50s shouldn't be fighting Hellions. If Hellions are showing up in a level 50 arc they should have a very good reason, and they should probably show up as grey-cons. There is a dev arc that does this, it's a Malta mission with level 15 Skulls in it.

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In short, set the level to what is most logical and if you play an arc with disparate level ranges don't complain because you were the one that chose to play it!

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When I can set the search engine to ignore level 1-54 arcs when searching for "my level," I'll stop complaining about them.

See, now "Teen Phalanx" is one of those cases where a disjointed level range actually makes sense for the story. The only minor nitpick I have is that if it's possible to do so by making a custom group out of standard mobs, the final mission could be made 25-30, so as to fit the pattern a bit better.

Since we're discussing level ranges though, there is also the case of the level 1-54 mission. Sure, it doesn't force anyone to exemp. However those arcs always show up when you search "my level," even though they are usually completely inappropriate for lower levels, from a gameplay perspective, and I fail to see how anything can be appropriate for all levels story-wise.

So, yeah, I consider level 1-54 missions just as sloppy and inappropriate as arcs with varying level ranges. The only exception to this is humor-based arcs that use a standard group, such as Council or Longbow, that spans the entire range.

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the Legacy Chain is already busy helping out in the Hollows...

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I haven't trusted the Legacy Chain since one of them dropped a Ryleh's Rain (old base salvage IIRC) on me...

For the curious...

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However that works...how can you have rain in an underwater city? Perhaps the Legacy Chain mislabeled it, and it's really from a small town in New England?

Might as well pimp the arcs in my sig, they are both designed to be solo-friendly.

"Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black" (41-54) is all standard groups, there is one custom boss but he's easier than the standard ones. No AVs or EBs.

"The Second Coming of the Mega Mech" (25-32) contains customs that are slightly more challenging than the standard groups. There is an EB, but he doesn't have a defensive set, so he can be KBd and mezzed.

When my husband gets twice the tickets I do my character is fully participating in all the fights. The only difference is that he goes in first because he's the brute.

Most of the villain zones are just too big.

Mercy and PO are too big for low-level zones with mission doors way on the opposite end of where you are. PO technically starts at level 5 but there is nary a level 5 mob around to amuse you while you run to said far-away door. Mercy looks terrible.

Sharkhead looks terrible, there's that stupid, stupid pit, and all the cool stuff is out in the water, where you never need to go, while all your mission doors are in the desolate industrial wasteland and slum areas.

Nerva has those stupid islands in the north that take way too long to get to, and hide the mission doors behind swarms of +5 CoT. Then you have to get out.

Grandville is just grandville. It looks lame. The design is lame. It's annoying. Note to devs: vertical zones do not work in a game with a 2-dimensional mapping system.

Nothing really wrong with Cap or St Martial. Nothing really right about them either.

There is currently no way to bypass them in this game though. They also have a habit of triggering at very inconvenient times, the worst being in Dark Watcher's arc.

They are a gimmick that was cool the first few times, and is now horribly overused by the devs, and would no doubt be horribly overused by players.

But a bigger file size...sure, I could do with a bigger file size. I enjoy fighting well-designed and varied customs. I could also do without a bigger file size though, and I don't think "I ran out of room" is an excuse for a sub-par or boring arc.

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First, I chose maps where front, middle and back actually means front, middle and back.

Which is the best you can do, and it's not enough. If the player misses or skips a trigger he's going to have to backtrack. Unless it's physically impossible for the player to progress past a trigger -- and we don't have the tech for that yet -- it's always going to be possible for the player to confound the Architect's intent.

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Players can skip an objective that isn't part of a chain of triggered events too, and have to backtrack, so it amounts to pretty much the same thing: If you hate having to go back over an empty map, make sure you search it on the first pass.

I have about as much sympathy for the guy who just runs to the end of an MA mission "because that's where the devs always put stuff" and then complains that he has to backtrack as I do for the guy who says an AV is overpowered because he can't solo it with his FF defender.

For level 40+ you could use Council Empire, they look more like generic military guys and less like Council. The Crey swat dudes might work for the 30s, as might some of the 20-35 PPD. You might even be able to get away with some of the gun-toting Longbow, depending on what you do with the costumes.

Blasters should behave as if they are Scrappers. If they can't solo a Chief Soldier, they should have their Blaster card revoked. They should love their Defenders, for Defenders make it easier to pretend you are a Scrapper.

Meanwhile the Scrapper should be off soloing the next mob because the Tank is too slow. It is generally accepted that at this point the Scrapper takes full responsibility for their own survival, or lack thereof, as does anyone stupid enough to follow them.

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Missions 3 and 4 have the player learn about the bad guys' plan through chained objectives, which I've managed to set up so there is no backtracking required.

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Can i review this for my review thread? A few times ive got 'out of my control, it's impossible to eliminate backtracking' responses from ingame feedback of mine suggesting looking at this again; if yours is a good example of success in this area, i'd like to spotlight it.

Eco

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You probably don't want to play it, it has two Malta missions, and you've made your hatred of them pretty clear. I'm just putting it up here in case anyone else is curious.

Making sure there's no backtracking required is pretty simple: First, I chose maps where front, middle and back actually means front, middle and back. Mission 3 has a front objective triggering a middle objective, triggering two back objectives. Mission 4 has two front objectives triggering a middle and back objective. All of them have triggered ambushes and patrols too. I am a big fan of missions that evolve as you play through them, it gives the immediate impression that the player is affecting events.

Not sure if it qualifies as complex mechanics exactly, but I just counted, and "Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black" has 56 unique objectives. Most of them are optional flavor stuff, but a lot of the story is told in clues. Missions 3 and 4 have the player learn about the bad guys' plan through chained objectives, which I've managed to set up so there is no backtracking required.

Personally, I think the nav bar should limit what it tells me to what my character already knows upon entering the mission. If my contact tells me to "check out the warehouse" and upon entering I immediately know I have to rescue the City Rep, defeat Haxxorz, destroy the 'Dyne stash and find Crimson's cell phone, it's really immersion breaking. "Seek clues" is an indication to me that I should, well, seek clues, and keep an eye out for anything unusual.

Personally, I believe in making missions as little of a PITA to complete as possible, if people actually 1: pay attention and 2: step outside their literal minds for a second and realize that hostages sometimes get killed or join the bad guys before you arrive, so you should look out for body bags and named bosses even though the nav says "find hostages."

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Several animations have disapperaed from the Escort/Captive sections of the editor. Most notably, the majority of the Captive set such as Captured: Cowering

EDIT: This could just be a funky lag problem since I was able to get this working. Could someone else please confirm?

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Some emotes aren't available for some critters. If you were using the same critter for both attempts it was probably a funky lag problem.

There are a few MA arcs that are of the "puzzle" type and they have been fairly well received. Why don't the devs add missions like that? Sure there will be walkthroughs, and sure some people will hate them, but as long as they are optional content, some people will love them.

Example of a simple puzzle mission: Go through the mission, free some people, read the clues they give, then from the clues choose the right blinky to click. If you click the wrong one, you get a big ambush that gives no xp.

I can totally see some people who don't read and are click-happy getting ticked off when they're splatted into paste by a gang of ten Paragon Protectors.

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The point of patch notes is to inform the player base about changes to the game. You would think users of the shiny, new, much-hyped feature would get the same consideration other portions of the playerbase get when some minor aspect of a part of the game they enjoy is changed.

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As long as there have been patch notes, they've been missing stuff that annoys people.

You aren't being persecuted, sorry.

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Yeah and whenever they miss stuff, everyone affected is all "Stealth-nerf!" and "DOOOOOMMMM!" and "Devs hate regen!" Eventually some dev sees it and goes "not a bug, we forgot the patch note, sorry." or "oops, that's a bug, we're working on a fix."

Most of the AE-related DOOOOMMM-crying has been farm-related, we need more stealth-nerf DOOOOOMMM.

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Once again, it's not the Devs job to babysit your arc. You are fully responsible for all content you create.

Which means their patch notes, that describe anything that you might use, are more than enough information for you to gather and think, "Hey, maybe that means my arc?"

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Well it's not the devs' job to babysit PvP either. Or to babysit people's favorite farm missions, so nobody gets all excited about getting the Dreck mission and finds out it's had a timer added.

The point of patch notes is to inform the player base about changes to the game. You would think users of the shiny, new, much-hyped feature would get the same consideration other portions of the playerbase get when some minor aspect of a part of the game they enjoy is changed.

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Did you ever think maybe they 'forgot' to mention it was removed, or 'forgot' that they didn't replace it with one that wasn't exploitable?

"To err is human..." and the last time I checked, all of the Devs are human.


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Well then maybe we need to rant more, so a dev will see it and realize they screwed up and give me back my generator Or maybe we just need to know which redname to send MA-related PMs to.

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So try and calm down.

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No, you calm down!

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Something to keep in mind about them not telling us about the generators--they told us about the mitos being removed and those were known to be an exploit.

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The patch notes also told us that destructible objects no longer affect players and NPCs, and that was known to be exploitable too. However the patch note 1: did not warn authors that the change could invalidate their arcs, and 2: did not mention that any objects had been removed entirely.

City Info Tracker has the /settitle numbers for the existing badges. They are in order, so presumably the missing numbers are for the badges that have been removed.

Edit: I tried it, and it didn't work. So if those are the /settitle numbers, then the badges are well and truly gone.

If he can take the time to make a real arc, he could take the time to pull the farm, publish the real arc, and let it stand on its own merits.

What this is, is flat out lying. You are claiming "100 people rated this arc an average of 4 stars." In actual fact, no one has rated that arc anything; the 100 ratings were for a completely different arc. The rating system exists to tell the playerbase what other people think of your arc, not so you "can see your number of plays go up."