Fleeting Whisper

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The devs have gone to great lengths to add code to artificially separate the sides. The most recent example of this is the one that prevents you from setting a mission unless all team members are in the same zone. This was done to prevent hero players from playing villian content in coop zones and vice-versa.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thankfully, this is not true - what you are talking here is a nasty bug, not a feature. It is a real pain in the [censored] bug too.


[/ QUOTE ]

It is indeed true. I did not say it wasn't a bug. The separation code is indeed meant as a feature (exploit fix). The inability to set a mission without everyone in the zone is the bug. It's also a bug that may not be able to be coded back out if they can't figure out how to leave the exploit fix in without it and it may not be easy to do in any case.

[/ QUOTE ]

My understanding is that this "feature" is to prevent setting (for example) a villain mission outside a co-op zone while on a mixed team (i.e. inside a co-op zone) and then using the Mission Teleporter to get the whole team to the mission. And obviously, vice-versa.

[/ QUOTE ]That's the intent of the feature. The bug is that it's affecting all arc missions in all zones.

[ QUOTE ]
and failing positron? LOL- that stupid TF doesn't even have an AV in it- a 3 person team even at lvl 10 will wreck it if the players are half competent.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, my level 10 Heroes wreck +5 Ruin Mages, Spectral Daemon Lords, and Abominations all the time.[/sarcasm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Treespec Trials. 45 Merits in 60 minutes. That beats both Positron and Citadel.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, for villians to compete with heroes they have to be lvl 44+ vs. a lvl 10+ for heroes.

No, no inequality at all.

Plus, I have yet to be on a treespec that wasn't 25-35 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]1) Treespecs are available 24+, not 44+.
2) It's rare that a merit farmer isn't level 50 anyway, regardless of what they are farming. A 50 has access to more inf/time, more slots, and better enhancements than any other level character.
3) Matthew Burke -> Billie Heck -> Dimitri Krylov = 31 merits by level 15, with only 1 contact in each 5-level block range
Flux -> (Jill Pastor or Kyle Peck or Tristan Caine) = 20 merits by level 15, with only 1 contact in each 5-level block range

In order for Heroes to surpass Villains in merit rewards in the early levels, they have to run what is often claimed to be one of the worst TFs in the game. And barring a superteam, you're simply not going to take 8 level 10 characters through Positron successfully, and probably not even 3 level 10 characters. By the time the heroes have a chance of completing Positron in a time frame that makes it worth it for more than just the badge, Villains have access to Virgil Tarikoss, the villainside Katie.

[ QUOTE ]
You still have the issue of blue side constant buyers being fine with their prices and just eating red side's supply for a tasty snack before business as usual.

[/ QUOTE ]If villains stopped producing anything after the merger, that would be true.

Who are the heroes buying these items from after a merger, again? Anyone. Including villains.

If the market is merged, villain sellers will benefit more than villain buyers in the short term, until the wealth between the two sides of the game stabilizes. At that time (ie, in the long term), everyone - Hero sellers, Hero buyers, Villains sellers, and Villain buyers - is in the same boat, the very situation that Smurphy is describing.

[ QUOTE ]
*sighs* Sadly, I can't find the webpage that discussed that meme anymore...

[/ QUOTE ] http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/...vis/Cmabrigde/

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If it's not possible to get an actual AV ambush, I figured I'd try to spawn the boss close to the glowy. The problem is, despite both being marked middle, the glowy spawned one room from the end of the mish, and the AV spawned one room from the entrance!

[/ QUOTE ]

We don't have that kind of control to place things exactly where we want, and in this case the placement settings ("Middle") are hints to tell the mapserver which spawn points to use. However, the game *won't* spawn two things in the same place - if you set two things to Middle, the game will try to find two spawn points tagged as being near the middle of the map and place each objective into one of them. Placement is at *map instance* even if the critter doesn't spawn immediately the critter is taking up that spawn point: its "allocated."

There are times when you can "game" the system to get what you want, but to do so you have to be extremely patient and diligent: its possible to find maps that just coincidentally do what you want them to do in terms of placement. However, in general this is an intractible problem with the current MA system, sorry.

[/ QUOTE ]I don't really need them in the same spot, just close. So the player doesn't have to backtrack through the entire mission to fight the AV that ought to be an ambush

QR

Okay, so I've got 2 problems with my arc that I'm not certain how to fix, hoping someone can help me:

1. I teamed with 2 others to test my arc. Mission 2 (Unique Maps > Croatoa > Croatoa 01) has:
- Defeat boss (with clue on defeat)
- Defeat boss (with clue on defeat)
- Defeat boss (with clue on defeat)
- Defeat boss (with clue on defeat)
- Defeat boss (with clue on defeat)
- Battle (Custom faction 1 vs. custom faction 2; allied with faction 1; 10 count)
- Patrol (Custom faction 1; allied; 5 count)
- Patrol (Custom faction 2; 5 count)

Yet when the mission was complete, we only had 4 clues, instead of the 5 (one for each boss defeat) that we were supposed to have. Checking now, one of the bosses was set to "Defeat boss and group" while the others were "Defeat boss only", but the objective shouldn't have cleared if we still needed some from the spawn...?

2. Mission 4 (Unique Maps > Circle of Thorns > Circle of Thorns - Spirit City) has:
- Collection (placement middle)
- Defeat boss (spawn on Collection Complete; placement middle)

I really want the boss (AV) to be an ambush, but couldn't figure out how to set the AV as an ambush (any help would be appreciated). If it's not possible to get an actual AV ambush, I figured I'd try to spawn the boss close to the glowy. The problem is, despite both being marked middle, the glowy spawned one room from the end of the mish, and the AV spawned one room from the entrance!

[ QUOTE ]
Not a whole lot of people name their kid "God". At least I wouldn't think so.

[/ QUOTE ]How about Robert'); DROP TABLE Characters;

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry if this has already been posted and I missed it but I was trying to create a story arc called “The “Phoenix” Gambit and to my surprise it wouldn’t let me because “Gambit” is a restricted word.

[/ QUOTE ]Write The "Phoenix" Maneuver instead?

[ QUOTE ]
It would certainly qualify as an Easter Egg. I could be just be digging too much though.

[/ QUOTE ]No, it would qualify as a badge

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Walter Daschle

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, THAT guy! I haven't done the Croatoa stuff in, like, forever. All the big huge yellow outdoor maps crush my will to live

[/ QUOTE ]Half my arc is on Croatoa maps >.>

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Many spawns do that hyperfast cycling, seems to be a general bug. The boss in question may not be able to do the animation you wanted, so reverted to "default"

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, this was a custom character using a player model doing an animation that I don't believe players have access to, but he was showing doing it just fine on the looping animation in the editor. Is there some kind of list I can see that shows what works on which player model?

[/ QUOTE ]Trial and error, I think. I've only tried the animation you're talking about on Walter Daschle, and it worked fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would be your own custom character? What model was he using?

[/ QUOTE ]Walter Daschle

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Many spawns do that hyperfast cycling, seems to be a general bug. The boss in question may not be able to do the animation you wanted, so reverted to "default"

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, this was a custom character using a player model doing an animation that I don't believe players have access to, but he was showing doing it just fine on the looping animation in the editor. Is there some kind of list I can see that shows what works on which player model?

[/ QUOTE ]Trial and error, I think. I've only tried the animation you're talking about on Walter Daschle, and it worked fine.

[ QUOTE ]
Can I make a mission that doesn't spawn anything until you trigger some kind of event, like the trap for Nocturne in the Faultline Dam, and if so, how do I achieve that? I don't seem to have any control over regular spawns, other than saying what enemy group they are.

[/ QUOTE ]No. Ambushes take up spawn points, but you're capped at 3 ambushes and you're going to have more than 3 spawn points.

[ QUOTE ]
Why does it seem like my missions are MASSIVELY more populated than regular contact missions? Seems like there will routinely be two 6-minion spawns overlapping with each other in a small corridor or intersection (warehouse), leading to some nasty encounters that I hadn't intended.

[/ QUOTE ]Weren't the spawn points re-done for MA? It could be that they are in fact closer.

[ QUOTE ]
Is there any way to determine what static spawns are doing when they spawn? On regular missions, Nemesis soldiers will spawn crouching, Council soldiers will be sitting on crates, Freakshow will be dancing to boomboxes, etc. On mine, they spawn in packs huddled together, punching their fists or looking around.

[/ QUOTE ]None that I know of

[ QUOTE ]
Similarly, are boss and entourage animations not working properly? I set my boss to "Extracting Soul" and his minions to "Shotgun (Lookout)." What actually happened was the Boss was cycling "pinching fist" and "taunt" over and over rapidly, like half a second each, and his entourage, while they WERE holding their shotguns, we jittering and playing only something like 10% of their idle animation before looping back to the start.

[/ QUOTE ]Many spawns do that hyperfast cycling, seems to be a general bug. The boss in question may not be able to do the animation you wanted, so reverted to "default"

[ QUOTE ]
I've seen I can give bosses starting animations that are part of a two-character combo, like punching/getting punched. I can spawn more bosses in a spawn, it seems, but how can I make them interact with each other?

[/ QUOTE ]No idea

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My big question is, how many different NPCs can you make?

Am I limited to ten NPCs? Can I make twenty versions of each, so different "Templar Squires" have different faces? Can I make two hundred individual NPCs, so every single minion in the mission has a different look and powerset? (That'd be a fun mission to play, not so much to write). And if the number of NPCs is limited, is it limited across mission arcs or across accounts?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good question, 'cause I've been working on costumes since i14 beta went to close, I have over 75 costumes so far.

[/ QUOTE ]Due to size constraints on the files, think "less than 20" (per arc). Custom enemies take up most of your space, and any text or mission objectives are going to eat into the space your critters would otherwise use.

You can make them run at 1/2 or 1/4 health... >.>

Not quite the same

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, how about this:

Can we have the eggs from the snake missions that start twitching if touched or you get close enough, and if not destroyed, spawn Cobras?

...Can they spawn something else instead?

[/ QUOTE ]Most likely yes, you can have the eggs, no they won't spawn anything but Cobras.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yup. The method used to create them is so clunky that (at least a few months ago) they said there was no way they'd saddle players with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh. Maybe they could make it available as an advanced-user kind of tool. Something you get access to once dev choiced? Or as a veteran perk?

[/ QUOTE ]Creating cutscenes now is probably similar to creating a demo file manually. Sure, it's possible (and people do it), but it's far from "simple" or "quick".

[ QUOTE ]
A version of Jurassik is encountered in a cave during Numina's Task Force and although it is de-powered to mere monster status

[/ QUOTE ]There is no enemy in any instanced mission that is actually a Giant Monster. The Flier in the STF is (currently) using the Giant Monster rewards table (2 merits on defeat), and I believe the Quarries in the Eden trial are called Giant Monsters despite being Monsters.

Giant Monsters are designed for more than one team (despite the fact that particularly strong teams can bring them down solo, and some GMs such as Deathsurge are pretty weak), whereas Monsters aren't much stronger than an AV.

You can save MArcs to your hard drive, and upload them. Unless for some reason they change the file format between Test and Live (and I guarantee they won't, not without extending the testing period after making the change), you can transfer the arcs just fine.

[ QUOTE ]
One feature that I haven't seen confirmed yet - branching contact dialog trees. I am hoping to use branching dialog trees to reveal much of the backstory for my arcs, instead of hitting the player with a big "wall of text".

For example, my contact could offer the mission "Defeat (character X)", and the player choices would be: <ul type="square">[*]Sure, I go do it now![*]No thanks.[*]Isn't (character X) your father? Why do you want me to defeat him?[/list]If player is not interested in my contact's motivation (or they've been through this arc before) they can skip right to the mission. However, the backstory is available, if they want it.

Will we be able to give our mission-arc contacts branching dialog trees?

[/ QUOTE ]I believe that branching dialogue isn't making it into launch, but may be added later.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did a quick search and couldn't find an answer: can we make and use underlings?

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you mean enemy group minions and lts or NPC's that help you fight?

The answer to both is yes.

[/ QUOTE ]Pretty sure he means "Underling" class enemies. Like Rikti Monkeys.

I believe we get "pick any two powersets", though the critters more than likely won't be getting all 9 powers from each set.

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone heard if there will be an option to "load character" like for example, if I want the villain in a mission to be my level 50 dominator, will I have to actually recreate her IN the system, or will I be able to just say "use Psychic Violet"

[/ QUOTE ]We haven't gotten any indication that you can just say "use Psychic Violet", but you can load a costume file (saved from the Tailor), and after that it's just selecting which powersets the character has.

[ QUOTE ]
i think the best part of this is Accrobatics at lvl 6 without the need for 2 other powers...

[/ QUOTE ]This vet reward doesn't allow for that. It lets you take SJ without 1 other power, but Acro you still have to wait until 20 and take 2 powers for.