Eva Destruction

Another question: Who gives the high-level villain arc where you have to kidnap the rogue Fortunata who then "volunteers" to be turned into a Tarantula Mistress?

Is there any canon explanation for how exactly the "mind link" works, from a story perspective? Do they use it to tap into the minds of the other Arachnos troops they hang out with? Are they all psychically linked to each other? If they have a psychic link, is it always on, or do they just activate it when needed? And if it is always on, how do the Rogue Fortunatas get away from it?

I'm working on an arc where you are essentially going from one mission straight to the next. Rather than you returning to the contact, the contact is checking up on you. Of course she has something you want, so you let her get away with it.

Yeah, I've changed the map since I made him. He's right in front of the door now. I think I'm just going to make him a captive....still, good to know for future reference.

Basically **If you failed this, it's a bug.** Really, failing makes the rest of the arc not make sense. There are other objectives, but the escort has to be the first one for the purpose of the story.

You can only have one "base" group.

You can use any number of groups as bosses, patrols, guards, etc.

No, it is technically failable. As soon as you add an escort it is technically failable. I'm pretty sure non-combat guys can't be attacked. Whenever I've seen them used as enemies in other people's missions, they have the orange hitbox but you get "Invalid Target" when trying to attack them, and they don't take damage from PBAoEs either. I just want to make sure the escorts work the same way, because if my escort is actually failable, you know the second I remove the text someone will somehow manage to get him killed.

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yeah the problem with setting an actual timer where you can fail is that people can and will fail. you even put in the fail text in case of such an eventuality. you can do urgency without a timer. that way you would remove the possibility of complete failure as happened to me by fluke. an hour is a reasonable amount of time, but people can and will fail as i have so experienced. it is your arc and you can keep it that way. but you are going to get some pretty strong negative reacations if people fail completely, especially when it is not their fault.

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I figured that most people, if they can't find him in an hour, would just quit anyway. BTW I ran it again myself, and he spawned just fine. So you might have been hit with a fluke failure to spawn, which as I said I have experienced myself with other people's missions.

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Edit: I have no idea why the Longbow ally would have followed you. I just checked, and he is still set to "Non-combat" and "do nothing," which in testing made him stay in one spot and alternate between the two "oooh, I'm hurt" animations.


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when i would leave her/him behind she would lie down and do the lost text. but if i came back she would get up and follow but do nothing. must be an ally bug. i am not on right now, but can you not make him a captive that just stays? or was it because of the text that he has that you choose to do it this way?


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Captives run off as soon as you rescue them. That is why he is an ally, he can barely stand up, so how can he run? I reset his settings, and he seems to stay now.

For the record, if you succeed it's implied that he lives. I might actually take his death out of the failure text as well, I wanted to have some serious consequences for failure without flat-out killing a canon NPC. I might also have to rewrite the text to make it clearer that you still mostly foiled the evil plan of evil, so it's still a partial success.

I tend to pretend the AE building isn't there. I find it hard to believe that I went back in time, or went to France, or went to dimension X and yet when I was defeated I ended up in the AE hospital. So what you're proposing wouldn't require any more suspension of disbelief than that.

Oh I'm not worried about the escort not being able to get out. Mine is set to non-combat, and he has no powers. I just want to make sure he's unkillable, then I can just delete the copy-pasted mission fail text and free up some space.

I have noticed however that some destructible objects give an "invalid target" message and can't be damaged until you damage one of the guards. It could be because some of them have a massive explosion, which would kill the guards at no risk to you. So make sure you can actually destroy the object in question, if it's a required objective.

Technically any mission with an escort as a required objective is failable. However, can non-combat escorts with no powers (ie. a "person" or civilian) actually be killed? Or are they simply immune to all damage?

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missions one
maybe have clue with the notebook? ah, the notebook clue comes at the end of the mission...

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It's at the end of the mission due to the length of the clue. Blinky clues are limited to 300 characters, mission complete clues allow 1000

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the exit pop up is a little redundant.

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It's mostly there for people who missed the clues.

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with the nav bar clue "why are the freakshow here?" it seems to indicate searching all the bodies...

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I didn't think of it that way. I think I might reduce the number of bodies in case people think you have to search them.

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you could give the noise tank a name...


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Once you name it, you start getting attached to it...also people might assume he's important, which he isn't. He's there for flavor.

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in the crushifier clue it says "deliability' is this on purpose? probably a joke...

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Yes it's on purpose. He thinks he's tougher, smarter, and cooler than he really is.

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the mission accept text is "he wrote down an address..." which makes no sense for accepting a mission

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It's supposed to be you reminding the contact about the clue you found in mission 1. I guess I'll have to reword it.

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ok i am really confused now. who is pete? is he robert anderson? ooops it would seem so... the pwzinator description calls him robert anderson.

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Doh! Yes, Pwnzinator is Pete, I guess I got his first name wrong in the bio. Gonna have to change that. The first mission clue also mentions both Pwnzinator and Peter Anderson.

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is the shadow paragon protector the same as the paragon protector elite? in the PP elite description it mentions the other, but falls under the crey group. maybe it is just a confusing description.

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Blame the devs for that one. It's a stock PP elite. I had to pick a Crey boss that spanned the entire level range of the arc, the two PP elites are the only ones available.

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the ambassador's description kind of implies an escort, though he just runs away.


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Since you can't choose the spawn placements on an outdoor map, I didn't want to make him an escort and risk having him spawn on the opposite end of the map.

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and what is chavez? an ally? she has not done anything except follow me around. is she on passive? i say leadship powers briefly, but that is all she display or assisted.

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She followed you? Doh, I had her set to not move. (also, she is now a he.) I'll have to recheck that. Her animations make it clearer that she is wounded and can't help you. All she does when you rescue her is call in longbow backup.

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the first occured last. your last mission is a timer mission. several problems occured in that mission. one is due to the patrols, all the allies with exception of officer chavez were alone by virtue of the wanderering friendly patrols. i just sort of ran into them randomly.

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They are supposed to be unguarded. They chose to show up to help. All these guys have had to be rescued before, I was trying to avoid the "Why do you keep getting captured?" running gag.

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i could not figure out what was the last objective was... was it a person? was it an object? i went everywhere. i eventually gave up and let it time out while i did other things. this ended with me failing the mission and the arc i guess... pretty downer for ending of the story. i guess that is what you wanted but it still sucks to fail like that. i have no idea what the final objective was and in a huge mission map like that did not help.

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I think maybe I should change the nav text there to "find the backup assassin," make it clearer that you are in fact looking for a person. The fact that he seemed to fail to spawn....that is problematic. I'll have to test this some more, to see if this is one of those flukes (I have seen triggered boss objectives fail to spawn on other people's missions), or if it happens with any regularity. I haven't had anyone else complain about failure to complete. So you may have been hit by a random "failed to spawn" bug.

For the record, no you are not supposed to fail. That is why the timer is an hour, plenty of time to search the map. I did want to have a timer, to give it a sense of urgency, but still make it reasonable so as to make for better gameplay. And as for the size of the map...unfortunately it's the only map that is a recognizable part of Paragon City, allows the rescues and allies, and doesn't have a stupid meteor in the middle of it.

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one thing i do look for is original justification... why am i helping this guy? am i just walking down the street and this freakshow that claims to be reformed asks for help with his buddies? it is kind of a stretch for me.

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It's kind of a tangent of the reformed Freak storyline that started with Westin Phipps in CoV and got revisited in the scanner missions where you save the reformed Freaks working at the Pwn Shop from the villain of the week. I'll see if I can rework the intro text to at least make him seem more nonthreatening. Yeah, the idea is pretty much that he needed a hero and you were available.

Thanks for your input. **goes back to tweaking**

Edit: I have no idea why the Longbow ally would have followed you. I just checked, and he is still set to "Non-combat" and "do nothing," which in testing made him stay in one spot and alternate between the two "oooh, I'm hurt" animations.

I would suggest, if your arc is custom-enemy heavy and you have to limit the level range that you set it higher rather than lower. That way, anyone can get xp, the level range acts as a warning to lowbies that the arc may be too tough for them, and the standard enemies will be more of an even match for your custom group. Custom enemies are tough. Their damage scales down fairly well, but their secondary effects don't. The secondary debuffs and mezzes a lot of the powersets have can be murder on lowbies.

I give precedence to minions, then lieutenants, since everybody has to fight them. Bosses will only show up on teams, which will get even more minions and lieutenants. I managed to squeeze in 3/3/2, and also a standard critter for each rank, in a four-mission arc with a custom AV and a custom contact, a zillion extra objectives and lots of text.

Because when I see "neutral" in an arc description, I assume the story could apply to a hero or a villain.

When I see "heroic" I assume I'll be saving puppies. When I see "villainous" I assume I'll be eating puppies. "Neutral" could be anything from investigating the origin of the demonic puppies, finding someone's lost puppy for a reward, stopping the uberpuppy from eating me, puppies vs. catgirls...basically anything where I don't go in with the idea that "this arc will have me doing good" or "this arc will have me doing bad." Neutral is very hard to do well if it's not a joke arc.

I'm sorry you got a low rating from someone who can't read. It'll happen no matter how we treat the morality system.

And, I learned something.

This too should be a loading screen tip. Or, you know, just make the missions show up on the nav bar as soon as they're accepted, like normal missions do.

Click the little red star on the left side of the nav bar. It will let you read the contact text. You don't get to see the return to contact text though, and you have to wait until you get into the mission.

Can we have this on a loading screen tip, since so many people ask this question?

Primus was never mentioned in G1. He's mentioned in some of the comics, there is also a "Covenant of Primus" in Beast Wars. But as Coulomb2 pointed out the name has been used for leader figures in various other nerdy things, and it's fairly generic, plus the Transformers movie never mentions him and I don't think the current comics run does either, so I'm pretty sure any trademark they might have had has expired.

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Me: It does seem to bother some more than others. I've gotten feedback ranging from "Cool! Vahzilok!" to "Oh dear God, why do I have to fight the *bleepity bleep* Vahz!!!!"


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For me it's more like "gah, mah powerz! They is gone!" For the record, I do not avoid MA arcs that contain Vahz, when I am playing a character who actually is below level 20.

I think it's worth at least making the effort to rework as a stand-alone. Even if just for the fact that you actually do have to save a member of the Freedom Phalanx, as opposed to a "Oooh, Statesman needs me to save him!" mission where Statesman one-shots everything and is way tougher than you are.

Go ahead, might as well move it here since the spoilers have already been spoiled.

Edit: I reviewed this as a stand-alone arc, knowing that parts 2 and 3 were slated for removal. To people planning on playing the whole trilogy, a lot of the criticisms may not be relevant.

*sings* And IIIIIIIIIII wanna beeeeeee Anarchyyyyyyy.

Wow, that's convoluted.

Anyway, #161629 is ready to go again.

A stock critter used as a rescue or ally (optional or not) will also limit the level range of the mission.

To avoid the vicious circle of more people play heroes, so hero arcs get more plays, so more people write hero arcs, so people play heroes because they have more arcs to choose from....

Also, if I see an arc that looks interesting but is out of the level range of the villains I feel like playing, I can run it with a hero and pretend I'm a villain. I'm not an RPer, I just want to get some xp while enjoying a good story.

And, after level 35, my SG can form mixed teams without running the same RWZ arcs over and over again. We need an AE in Pocket D so we can do that from level 1.

I do agree that the filter should by default not include arcs of the opposite faction, because some people don't read, and I'm sure people have gotten "Why is my hero beating up cops? 1 star" Or at the very least the faction should be stated in a more obvious place, preferably right in the title bar (so you don't have to open up the description and deal with the annoying search window scrolling thing just to find out that, doh, wrong faction).

# 1567 "The MacGuffin Delivery Service" has a nice take on the contact, it's done in the form of your journal. Then the first mission is you playing through a flashback sequence. I don't want to say more to avoid spoilers. The second mission also shows creative use of MA tools to set the scene.