Eva Destruction

What makes the older dev-created content "worse" than the newer stuff is an over-reliance on time-sinks like defeat-alls, street hunts and fed-exes. Take those away, and some of the older arcs, like World Wide Red, A Path Into Darkness, and the Hess task force (ok, I admit I'm biased toward anything that has a giant robot in it) blows most of the newer, flashier content out of the water.

So yeah. A good story is a good story no matter what shiny new toys we have to play with.

I do not test with low-damage ATs. Sorry if you can't solo my arc with your Grav/FF controller, I don't have one and if I did I would die of boredom trying to test with it. I do make sure I run through with both a melee and a squishy of the appropriate level range, preferrably at the low end, on difficulty setting 3 or 4, depending on the powersets.

My 50 blaster on difficulty level 4 is my initial tester though, cause I want the badges and because she can plow through to make sure everything works. I find that if the mobs are easy for her, they're usually ok for my other toons.

It takes a minute sometimes. Patience. It'll say in your Mission Architect channel (which is in the global tab by default) That your mission has been updated.

Also, the edits don't save to your local file. You have to open the published arc again, hit the "Save as Local" button to update the local version.

You can't hard-set it, but I use the levels of the missions as a guide. The standard enemies the mission uses will be balanced around a certain level range, and IMO the custom enemies you use should be on par, unless you're specifically creating a "challenging" arc. You should be testing with a character naturally in that level range, since an exemped 50 is more powerful, especially if they have IOs.

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Critters becoming more powerful is the point.

It is evident that due to rampant farming, the Custom Critter minimum performance needs to be higher than it started as.

I personally am all in favor of tougher minimum critters (due to farming; not to punish anyone, but obviously the critters are not challenging enough out of the box for hardcore players).

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Yes. Because my custom archvillain in an arc geared toward level 25-32 players needs Total Focus to be a "challenge." Because everyone playing MA missions is a hardcore player.

One of the big problems with custom critters is that they have all the powers you give them, regardless of level. The only way you could made a lowbie-friendly arc was to set everything to standard, and even then some power sets were a no-no. Now even more powersets are being excluded, since using them will automatically give your critters debuffs and mezzes that lowbies aren't equipped to deal with.

Set the enemy group difficulty to "Single." The ally will spawn without guards.

If the custom mobs you're fighting are too powerful, then it's generally the mission creator's fault for either 1) not testing their arc, and making sure their custom critters present the same level of challenge as players have come to expect from standard enemies, or 2) not indicating in their arc description that the arc is intended to be more challenging.

It's entirely possible, on live, to make custom critters aren't overly powerful, if one is inclined to carefully select powersets and test their custom group. In other words, if you actually care enough to put in some effort.

Does Energy Melee get a RED power bolt? Or is it the stupid blue that doesn't match and will force me to redo my custom group?

I use orange for AV or timer warnings, since I find the red hard to read, and it just screams "THIS IS NOT PART OF THE BRIEFING!!" to me, whereas I try to make the warnings in-character for the contact. Then I pick whatever color seems to me to best suit the arc for titles.

I'm not a big fan of the overuse of colored text in the latest dev-created content; those Midnight Club mission briefings look like my 6-year-old wrote them in crayon.

Whoa whoa...minions with Stunning Shot and Beanbag? This game does not need more ranged mezzing, especially stuns which squishies can't get any protection from.

I'm noticing quite a few mezzes getting added actually, just looking over that big minion list. I guess now squishy-friendly = full of wimps. At least it looks like they took cobra strike away from Martial Arts on easy....

Ok first of all, totally agree with LaserJesus: Darkest Night is bad bad bad. Stacking Darkest Night is worse.

Second: Why do minions have access to tier 9s?

Third: Build Up on Hard: Bad bad bad. I use Hard to get a boss that is a bit more challenging, not to take a boss from pushover to one-shotting a tank, thank you. Move Build Up to Extreme on all sets that get it, please and thank you. Also Aim.

Fourth: Without Blaze Fire Blast enemies can be too easy. Blaze is what makes them dangerous to a solo player.

I'm sure there's more, but out of the changes you listed these are the ones that my own MA experience has indicated might be problematic.

So previously the critters were horribly unbalanced, and some sets were more unbalanced than others. Mixing and matching could create any challenge level between "pushover" and "killer of purpled-out tanks."

And currently on test, critters are more balanced, and you can choose between "pushover," "crazy overpowered and/or annoying" and "crazy overpowered and/or annoying +1"

Is that about the extent of it?

According the the latest Test Server patch notes:

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- Global mez protection in shields.

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On "Extreme" settings for Lts and above.

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Just a note, I left -perception stuff off this list. This wouldn't be so bad if they made blind break on damage like it use to.

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Perception debuffs suppress when the player is hit.

Totally agree about the intangible thing, it keeps people from using Force Fields for concept because it's just soooo annoying.

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As long as the enemies don't have a lot of resists or can stun or use hold lowbies seem to do fairly well.


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Both of which high-level characters are expected to deal with all the time in dev-created content. Thank you for proving my point.

I'm at the point where I think it's better to let the unplayable arcs languish among the mass of the unrated, just to close the door to griefers. Besides, if you give somebody a legitimate 1-star rating they can just unpublish and republish with a clean slate. Somebody targeted by a griefer can't do that without wiping out their legitimate high ratings.

Yeah, that's why we have level ranges. If the arc says 40-50 lower levels can still play it, but the implication is that it isn't balanced for them, it's balanced to provide an appropriate challenge for an epic level character. So no, I'm not going to run through an arc that contains Malta and Nemesis on a low-level character. It's not designed for them.

Making an arc appropriate to low-level characters involves more than just throwing in some Hellions and slapping an LBMA tag on it. You have to consider the limitations of a lowbie, especially when designing custom enemies. I'm incredibly leery of trying level 1-54 arcs on a lowbie, since I find most designers do not keep lowbies in mind when designing an arc that "everybody can play."

I include in my description that my arc has two AVs, and squishies may not be able to solo it, especially at the levels the arc is set to. The AVs aren't overly difficult, no SS/WP set to extreme or anything, so a brute or scrapper going in thinking "Meh, I can solo this" shouldn't have a problem.

I am currently working on a high level hero and high level villain arc that are intended to be completely soloable, no AVs or EBs at all. Once you hit the 40+ level range, the regular game throws some nasty stuff at you, so the definition of "soloable" allows for more flexibility, IMHO.

If you make it to the last mission of a four-mission arc, then you have seen enough of the arc to form an opinion. If you click "play" and immediately quit the arc, you have not. We need an in between solution, so people in the first situation can express their disappointment, while keeping people from using the second to either 5-star arcs "as a favor" or 1-star arcs just to be jerks. I highly doubt the ratings griefers are going to want to play through a 5-mission arc just to kill a 5-star rating.

A minion-level ally set to aggressive with a secondary that grants +perception would be pretty much guaranteed to get themselves killed, especially if you use enemies with AoEs.

Just in case though, you could have the captive animation indicate the ally is wounded, and even if they survive the mission they later die of their wounds? That could break immersion for a player with an ally heal though.

I'll second the no to up or nothing. There's a huge difference between a 3-star arc and a 5-star arc. The writer of a paper mission shouldn't be getting the same recognition as the writer of an ITF.

Hopefully after all the Anniversary stuff is done we'll start seeing an outcry of "WTF? I can't use MA?" as the ratings griefers and repeat farm-makers are systematically banned from the Mission Architect...like the devs said would happen.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to have to do, for lack of an actual "teleport away" animation.

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* Missions can now be selected for both "Hall of Fame" and "Dev Choice," allowing players to attain both badges. "Dev Choice" missions also have selectable reward types.

I'm not seeing the point of this, given HoF is Unobtainium due to the steep ratings requirement and DC is applying to less than 1% of all arcs. This is a benefit that only a handful of people will see, so why does it merit a bullet point? And who would be dense enough to take what's behind Door Number Two when this is one of the only ways to get a mission slot?

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Maybe by "selectable reward types" they're referring to the rewards the player gets for completing the arc? Such as choosing between bonus xp, merits, tickets, etc.

I agree, for the creator there really doesn't seem to be any reward they can give that would be preferable to getting another arc slot.

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Melee only bosses do seem to be rather chicken if you kite them. Or smart, depending on how you look at it. Although the latest patch to test apparently gave all melee sets a ranged attack, so no more risk-free EB kills for Blasters.

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Oh, that's good. The typical pattern I encountered with Super Strength bosses is that they run for a good long while, then suddenly do a Hurl ranged attack. I wonder if I was just out-ranging the boss until I got close enough for Hurl range? But then again, don't critters all have ranges that far, far exceed a player character's range?

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Hurl has a fairly long recharge, so if it's not recharged he's still going to think "I can't hurt this person" and run. I'm sure the critters will still run when they get their ranged attacks, just not as much.

It doesn't make sense to me to have an obvious enemy be untargetable. I'm a hero, I see boss, I attack boss. If only they'd give us the "teleport away when they're near death" animation... Oh well, I guess I'll have to get creative with the text.

Melee only bosses do seem to be rather chicken if you kite them. Or smart, depending on how you look at it. Although the latest patch to test apparently gave all melee sets a ranged attack, so no more risk-free EB kills for Blasters.