Eva Destruction

I got the Cyborg, Valkyrie and Wedding packs. I already have Pocket D and Magic.

I did get a vet reward yesterday, and when I was looking for my team tp power I noticed I had self-destruct. Later during the same play session I noticed I had the mission teleporter, and since it was for some reason out of alignment with the rest of the powers in the window, I think it must have been given to me while I was playing.

Forcing people to leave a comment along with a rating on a truly bad arc would give the author their global, and open them up to revenge 1-star griefing. Although forcing the griefer to comment would make it obvious that it was a revenge griefing, the odds of a petition getting that low rating removed are slim to none.

I rarely even comment on arcs I rate 3 stars, unless it's by someone I know has responded maturely to criticism in the past, simply because so many people don't take it well. If I rate something below 3 stars, chances are it can't be salvaged anyway.

I'm thinking more and more you might be right. One of my other arcs used to have two destructible objects, both triggered, both set to "back," with the second triggering off the first, and the number of objectives on the map maxed out. Sometimes the second one wouldn't spawn.

I have had no complaints about my other missions with triggered spawns, and as it turns out none of them have more than one that could take up the same spawn point. (Well except a couple of ambushes and patrols that trigger as the boss's health gets low, but nobody's going to complain about NOT being ambushed by Malta . The point is, the required one spawns first.)

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I've noticed the bosses not spawning problem a lot on outdoor maps, especially ones with battles. (Though battles take up rescue slots.) Frankly, I try to avoid conditional boss spawn trees wherever possible, as the more you stack up, the more they tend to break, I personally avoid outdoor maps like the plague since I have pretty much zero control over where things spawn, and I use conditional spawns on small maps with extreme caution.

I do have a question, even though there wasn't anything else set to back, did you have something else that uses a boss spawn point set to any, like a patrol, destroy object, or ambush? If my theory is correct (which in all likelihood it probably isn't) that 'any' spawn is taking priority in the code over your conditional spawn, and if it starts in that 1 back spot, then when the boss tries to spawn it can't, since it either doesn't have code to reassign it to a random spot or that code it broken.

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I honestly have no idea whether there was anything set to "any" in my husband's mission. There may very well have been, he did have a few ambushes.

My outdoor one does have quite a few patrols. Some of them are triggered, but they are quite likely to spawn before the boss, in fact two of the people who couldn't find the boss had triggered them. So they might have been stealing his spot.

Hmm, maybe that was part of the problem with my triggered guy? He was on an outdoor map, so there is no front, middle or back. Maybe he just got confused.

Neither of the other arcs I've played where the final boss failed to spawn had a lot of objectives at the point where he was supposed to be. The first one was a single-mission arc, so I restarted it, because effort had obviously been put into it and it was fun so I didn't mind doing it again, he worked fine the second time.

The other arc was my husband's, so I know for a fact that nothing was set to spawn at the back except the boss. It was on a unique map with only one spawn point in the back room, and when he failed to spawn there was nothing there.

So....what is it when you log in and find that all three of your arcs have been rated overnight, and you have no tickets to claim and no feedback? One of these arcs gets about a play a day and mostly positive (3-star or higher) ratings, but the other two haven't been rated in days. Does that mean someone played one of them, decided it was bad, and out of sheer masochism played the other two?

Edit: And no progress on the Builder line of badges either. So someone must have started all three arcs, and thought they were so bad they couldn't even finish them.

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It would still be easy to go into a mission with a level 1 newbie and die a bunch of times to greif someone.

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Who needs a level 1? I can die in a mission just fine with my 50. If I do though, it doesn't necessarily reflect on the difficulty of the arc. If I choose to solo Malta on Unyielding with an AR blaster, it's my own dumb fault.

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I like the idea of a reccomendations list, possibly with some ready made check boxes to say why it was recommended (which would be searchable criteria). Things like "Good story" "Challenging combat" or "Innovative System Use".

Another feature that might be good would be to choose a player and get a list of their recommendations.

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These I could totally get behind. As long as recommendations can still be made anonymously, so if someone doesn't want their global out there they still have a way to indicate that they liked your arc.

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I think I managed to "break" one of my arcs as well, when I added some custom enemies that pushed the file size up near the limit. Suddenly a triggered boss on the final mission, that had been spawning fine during testing and for about 20 plays, started refusing to spawn. The arc was still playable, but people would fail it and tell me the ending sucked. So I had to take him out.

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This correlates with my arcs too. My final boss is a triggered objective (spawns after you destroy three obelisks), and would spawn very consistently in the back room of the last map during a week of playtesting with me and other people. Publish it up, and then reports start filtering in of people being unable to find the last boss... I was able to duplicate this once, and spent over an hour scouring the map for ANY clue of where the boss was, but no dice.

What sucks here is that this is a game-level fault, not a design fault. ;( Spawned objectives that are required for completing the mission can halt arc progress if they don't spawn correctly, and all it does is make the writer look bad.

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It makes you look even worse when the first person to get a failure to spawn is reviewing your arc on the forums, fails, and (justifiably) mentions that the ending is a real downer.

I have had triggered objectives fail to spawn twice while playing other people's arcs. Both arcs used custom enemies heavily, so they may very well have been near the file size limit, and both times the objective that failed to spawn was the final one.

I'm not aware of any new text limitations. If one of your text fields is suddenly too big, it might be some sneaky HTML that shouldn't be there. I've also had some HTML sneak into one of my character bios, where it is invalid, and prevent me from testing an arc.

Extra objectives might also sneak in, and break the arc. Some maps allow you to place more objectives than the map, technically, allows. The later ones just won't spawn. This might possibly break the arc.

I think I managed to "break" one of my arcs as well, when I added some custom enemies that pushed the file size up near the limit. Suddenly a triggered boss on the final mission, that had been spawning fine during testing and for about 20 plays, started refusing to spawn. The arc was still playable, but people would fail it and tell me the ending sucked. So I had to take him out.

Yes, let's, please. The point isn't Heavens_Agent's rating system. He played the arc, he didn't enjoy it, he is entitled to give it whatever rating he wants, whether you feel it's too harsh or not.

The point is, HE PLAYED THE ARC.

Now I know you can see how many people finished your arcs by looking at your badge progress bar (at least, until i15 hits.) The problem is we have no way of knowing how many people, say, started the arc, and finished the first mission, how many people quit because they couldn't beat the end AV, and how many people simply clicked "Play", and immediately quit and 1-starred it without even entering the first mission. If there was some way we could see that, we would be able to say for sure, "my arc got griefed, three people 1-starred it without even going into the first mission."

Unless there is someone out there who has access to that information, and would maybe be willing to take action against those aforementioned "1-star without even starting" people. You know, like they said they would....

Ok so what you're saying is, "The system won't let me do exactly what I want, so I will use it for what it is flat-out not intended for instead?"

You know what? The system won't let me do a lot of things I want to do. I'm sure nobody who has ever made a story focused arc could make one that fit their vision perfectly, whether because of file size limitations, mission objectives that are flat out unavailable (lead escort to object, find exit, standard minions and lieutenants as "boss" objectives), and a myriad of other reasons. We adapt. We do the best we can.

Lack of flexibility is no excuse for doing what you were specifically told not to do.

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They should add more SFs to red side *** hey have more choices. Maybe something with 5th Column.

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and maybe it can come out in i15 to.

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It's a start, but another 45-50 SF doesn't really shore up the holes at lower levels.

I'd much rather see a 30-35 SF than another 45-50; at that level a villain has 3 to choose from already.


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Can't we have both? And a 40-45 one as well, while we're at it.

So after extensive tweaking based on feedback, this arc now gets its own thread.

Title: Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID: 161629
Faction: Heroic
Level Range: 41-50
Difficulty: Average. No AVs or EBs, mostly standard enemies
Enemy Groups: Knives of Artemis (on a tiny map, I promise), Freakshow, Malta Operatives, Custom Crey (I threw in some custom suit guys to break up the all-tank spawns at 45+)
Synopsis: A group of would-be heroes find themselves in way over their heads and in desperate need of help, in a tale of shadowy conspiracies, deadly politics, and total pwnage. A Malta arc from a different perspective, and without a single fed-ex.

Um, the concept of "line of sight" was lost on a lot of people long before Meow farms were so much as a glint in an exploiter's eye. The problem with some of those ranged attacks is their high damage breaks the "ranged attacks do less damage" equation, which at least at low levels mostly holds true with dev-created critters.

You can collect IOs to make your toon totally awesome, then go see what you can do with it.
You can collect badges.
You can join Mothership raids. They always need 50s.
You can go through Ouroboros and get a star next to every story arc.
And if you're still bored, you can make your own missions now. If you're not that creative, plenty of people have made missions for you to try.

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Well now, this is a very complex question, isn't it? I mean, what units do you use to measure hotness? Being an old fashioned kind of guy, I prefere measuring in units of Helen of Troys (HoTs). It's quite likely that Arcanaville does not have access to a HoT-o-meter, unfortunately, so she would have to use lesser measuring devices provided by beauty pagents. Conversion from those lesser measurement schemes is highly problamatic - to the point where it's really not worth the bother.

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If anyone could do the conversion, it's Arcanaville. Thereby upping her "HoT factor" just by calculating it.

Actually I meant I checked Turg's, since he said it kept breaking. But I just checked yours, they all work too.

The only one I can find right now is #1297, but that one's old so may have been invalidated by the patch that broke default descriptions.

Edit: Just checked yours, as of right now it will start.

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Turg, it sucks that it happens to you, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but at least Dev's Choice arcs are locked at 5 stars.

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Eva: They're not. The DISPLAY shows them as five stars, but behind-scenes, they retain a "real" star rating. For instance, when the "Builder" series went live, I only earned the first 4 badges; I didn't get "Master Builder", which awards for 100 ratings of an average of 4 stars or higher. That's one of the gauges I'm using.

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That's what I meant, the display. To the average player looking for an arc to play, it looks like a 5-star arc. To the average player, this arc should be among "the best of the best." If they don't think it is, for whatever reason, they might rate it down for "false advertising." Especially since your arc contains one major annoyance, that may or may not be your fault, but the average player who doesn't read patch notes has no way of knowing that.

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Anyway, just sharing yet another angle of ratings griefing. The conspiritorial side of me thinks all of this (the farming blitz, the over-cooked drama responses, the star cartels, etc) is an attempt to sour our COH experience in light of new games coming out. But, as usual, everyone thinks I'm insane.

*puts tinfoil hat on to protect himself from VIPER psi-troops*

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It's all a Nemesis plot?

Don't know about the "zero errors" part since it hasn't happened to my arcs, but I've come a cross a few highly-rated arcs with many plays that won't start.

Turg, it sucks that it happens to you, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but at least Dev's Choice arcs are locked at 5 stars. For people whose arcs aren't locked, a few ratings griefers can easily reduce visibility. You're getting one-stars out of spite, jealousy, or as a knee-jerk response to "Well this isn't the best MA ARC EVAR, fail!" People who aren't Dev's Choice are getting griefed as a form of ratings PvP. The first is an emotional response from childish morons. The second is a calculated attempt to reduce an arc's visibility by selfish jerks.

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1. Merit values: States TF: 38, Recluse: 25. Right there is an indication that the LRSF is obviously shorter (or comparably easier if you prefer) going by the reward formula.

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This here I see as an oversight in merit calculation. Im sure that most SUCCESSFUL LRSF's take about an hour, because it's the same superteams running them over and over and over, thus driving the completion time down. That of course does not take into account the attempts that take far longer then that, or the attempts that end in failure. It's one of the prime examples of powergamers ruining it for the rest of us.

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Powergamers didn't ruin anything for you. They just found the quickest way to complete a task. If anyone ruined anything for you, its the Devs decision to put rewards based on time of completion of said task. Don't fault players for playing the game well. Enhance your skills young padiwan.

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No, I agree that powergamers weren't the ones who ruined it. These same powergamers run STFs way faster than the teams I'm on could ever hope to. The difference is that non-powergamers are far more likely to complete the STF. If they fail, they can at least point to where they failed: "We couldn't beat Mako, need more to-hit buffs next time." "Couldn't beat Ghost Widow, need more ranged damage and debuffs." Whereas with the RSF, it's not just failure, it's EPIC FAIL. Your team that tore through the rest of the SF just gets annihilated in seconds on the final mission, with no indication of what you did wrong, and most people are discouraged from ever trying again.

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The other 87 are, ultimately, fair. Except the "play x Hall of Fame" line, as the system currently stands, since other people's actions can keep you from getting them. Some of them are still pretty dumb, namely the higher-end virtual ones.

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we're talking about the Evaluator line.
I think that badge is unfair to the authors, not to the badgers. The added reward for HOF arcs favors running those arcs on the merit of their existing ratings, instead of running any arc on its own merits.
It's a "rich get richer" mentality, and that's a lousy side-effect of the badge, so the badge is a bad design. The same way a badge for kill stealing would be a bad design even if fairly available to anyone.

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It's also unfair to anyone trying to get it, since ratings griefers can pull an arc out of HoF and prevent you from getting the badge. But you're right, it does encourage people to vote a single arc into HoF NAO, rather than trying multiple arcs in the hopes that there will be many HoFs further down the line.

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Good point, Geek_Boy. Not only that, but the MA buildings in some zones are really hopping; hardly brought down.

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Correction: the MA buildings in Freedom's Atlas 1 and Atlas 2 are "really hopping." Elsewhere they are ghost-towns. Both in Freedom's other zones [with the possible occasional exception of the Talos MA.. that has a few people in there at peak times] and on other servers that I have visited.

Especially redside. Complete and total ghost-towns.

Sounds like a "success" to me.... success at running everyone off, that is. I wouldn't call scaring everyone out of using The New Shiny all that much of a success for the game, but obviously I know nothing.

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Yep, cause only Atlas on Freedom is full of people standing around the MA and looking for farms. St. Martial on Champion on the other hand, has one or two people standing in front of the terminals, and a steady trickle of people going in and out of the big glowy thing. You know, actually USING the MA.

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End game content is suppose to be a bit harder then normal isn't it?

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A bit, yeah. Mostly, I'm just ticked off that the STF is so much easier, and yet gives more merits.