GlaziusF

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An Aside: I was actually under the impression that the nemesis soldiers, the tiralleuers and all, were clockwork and autamatons. Is this not the case?

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Not the case.

Nemesis actively recruits from other villain groups. Also, several of his lieutenants have advanced their own plots and later been put into Warhulks for "failing" Nemesis, and that shrively purple thing in the green tank is definitely biological.

Why do they all say "forsooth" and "gadzooks"? Because this is how you get in good with the giant army of ten-foot tall robots with power staves.

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The arc is meant to be very personal and your character is meant to be very present for the whole thing - doing it all through a payphone or computer desk just feels too detached to have the same feeling as talking to a person.

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It's sitting out in the streets of Dark Astoria. The phone isn't hooked up but it rings anyway. Your "contact" is across the way in a phone booth after the first mission. The walls make her feel safe.

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It's up to the player to decide how they feel about themselves after running the last mission - were they really killing innocent civilians this whole time, or was what they saw in the last mission just a side effect of getting too close to Mot in mission 4? As for weapons, I intentionally wanted to give them the most "realistic" armament I could rather than crazy stuff. They're meant to really feel like they're just normal people trying to survive in a town that's gone insane - not meant to be insane themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, different interpretations here. Also after I saw the civvies start attacking me I just turned on superspeed and slipped through to the end, stopping to drop the occasional zombie. I gave Event Horizon the first strike and kept his henchmen out of splash range. Call me an old softie.

If you're leveling up a hero then "Dream Paper" and "Bricked Electronics" will work well up to 20. "The Bravuran Jobs" should work in the high 20s villainside - it boosts you up to 30 for a couple later missions but that shouldn't be anything you can't handle.

Promised you feedback later on.

So here's your later on.

There's nothing that kept me from giving this five stars, it definitely sells the atmosphere very well, but here are things I wanted to say.

1) Your "contact" is supposed to vanish for the last two missions. In that case why not work the whole thing through a.. well I want to say pay phone, but that's not available. Maybe one of the desks with an abandoned office phone? If you want to introduce Irene, maybe put her right inside the first mission.

2) Had some over-boundary issues with the default-size clue and dialog windows - the medical lab clue from the fourth mission and the closing text after the fifth mission. If you were going for that, all well and good, but I wanted to let you know.

3) Argh, not the Mayhem asylum and Ruladak caves again! I got very sick of those in test, because they're pains to navigate and there's only one layout. The Ruladak caves especially, since they require making a blind right and opening a non-obvious passageway to get to the end. The Mayhem asylum seems like the only thing for that map, and I won't say the Ruladak caves didn't work, even seeing all-caps descriptions pop out was a bit of a jump scare. You might be able to pull off the atmosphere of twisted reality just as well with one of the large office map-transition-to-sewer layouts.

4) Yeah, I noticed that the lights were on in the first mission and it struck me as odd then. Maybe you could set the first mission in an abandoned-office version of the same map, and then in the fifth mission the lights are on? It struck me as Event Horizon replaying the day when he snapped, when everyone seemed to be attacking him. I didn't particularly notice the civilian armament, but they'd work well with crazy weapons instead of vanilla ones - a Ruladak sword, a "bloody rust" rifle, etc.

5) Been playing Urban Dead, have we? The BaniPan zombies really don't follow the standard model in that they're basically half mummy half zombie. Husks, Chambers, etc. Old Civil War-era dead. The shamans, contrarily, are all actual modern-day people who've turned to the cult of the cannibal gods. Presenting them as standard Romero zombies doesn't work, but putting their ancient dead gods in their mouths is just as effective as barhah harman hambargahz. Similarly, your claws guy could be focused on cutting instead of blood and be suspiciously, clinically _clean_. And then a bloody clown in the psycho reality. (unless he's the same model then I dunno what to say)

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"Mathematically feasible" and "going to happen" are two different stories.

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Okay, let me run the numbers then.

Assume 30% of all people playing the mission architect are "insane" - they play random arcs and give them random ratings. The average rating from an insane person is 2.5 stars.

If 70% of the other people play an arc and rate it 5 stars, the arc will have an aggregate rating of (30% * 2.5) + (70% * 5), or 4.25.

If "anything over 4" is sufficient for Dev's Choice, this is fine. If "4.5 and up" is sufficient, it isn't.

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Ye Gads! Why do I keep reading these whiney "my sooper arc can't get an award cause of all u meanies!" threads.... I see em, I know what they are, and I just read em anyway! Stupid stupid.

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Right, because pointing out that it's mathematically feasible for a contrarian and/or insane minority (figure 30%) to deny ANYBODY a chance at Hall of Fame equals childish whining.

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Too bad we can't buy inspirations while doing MA missions.


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Psst. Hey, buddy. Over here! Right by the elevator to the reconstruction chamber. Yeah, the guy in the AE shirt.

Click me sometime.

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I have sympathy for the authors as well(despite not showing it in this thread), but a lot of the comments from this thread seem extremely arrogant to me. Content creators(in this case Mission Architect authors) need to realize that you can't please everybody. The other thing they need to realize that if their arc doesn't stand out, it is probably because it doesn't deserve to.

Truly great arcs will stand out, the rest will be lost in a giant pile of bad, mediocre, and good. Where they belong.

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Haha, "deserve". That's rich.

Success is about luck. You need to meet some minimum level, which a modest chunk of the arcs in the game will probably meet, but if a team of 8 people looking for architect badges all one-star your arc because it doesn't have 100 optional objectives, that may not be an expectation you catered to and it's not wrong of you to not meet it.

Sometimes it's a matter of having the right people happen to play it. Sometimes it's a matter of hitting the right keywords.

But you do have to try. Promote your arcs on global channels, the forums, whatever, write the description and the initial dialogue to hook. If you put out a very long arc, realize that you're handicapping yourself (all things being equal a very short arc will get 10x your number of plays) and promote harder.

You can't reach everyone. You can't please everyone. And in a game where promotion might reach 1% of the people, there's a giant random element who your arc will rub the wrong way for no reason you can fix or will want to.

Dream Paper and Bricked Electronics (see my sig) are both good lowbie arcs. Dream Paper is 10-20, Bricked Electronics can probably be run from level 1 since the only enemy group that's higher than that starts at 8.

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1. Post here with your story arc name and number, and your global name.


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"Bricked Electronics", ID: 2180. @GlaziusF

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2. Run through one of my story arcs, give it a rating, and leave me a note so that I know you did it. You don't have to give me a good rating, but if you want to give me a bad one, please give me suggestions!

3. You don't have to do one of my story arcs before I will do yours. But, once you do one of my story arcs, I'll "owe" you a review, and give your arc higher priority to look at.


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Here's your feedback, then. Ran through "Celebrity Kidnapping". Overall nice setup, good use of maps, not entirely sure you wanted the second mission that short, as there's something to be said for chasing down a giant pile of money through an abandoned office. Not complaining about that, though.

Complaining about this: they throw somebody in the Zig, superpowered cold cell central, for drunk driving? I mean, have you SEEN how people drive in Paragon City? How would you tell? I'd have liked the celebrity guest villain better had I not teamed up with like half a dozen people with that exact concept and regretted most of it.

My advice: come up with somebody who's only loosely tied to a real-world celebrity and have her put in the Zig after she blows up on reality TV. Like, actually blows up. People, houses, puppy orphanages, whatever. The arc works fine aside from that little quibble.

So do you do low-level stuff, Venture, or just high-level? Because I'd like your opinion on my lowbie mission "Bricked Electronics".

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That AV in mission 2 IS entirely optional if you want the infamy. He is NOT an required objective. Don't fight him if you don't want to It's not listed as being required.


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He's a boosted perception fast-flying AV who spawns right inside a mission full of Malta.

Exactly what are my options here? 1) fight 2) run blindly into Sapper + ops officer, get grenaded and end drained, FIGHT ANYWAY.

Mission 1:

Check your spelling on that acronym - "Fundamental". Also the clue mentions the system designed by a Dr. Dreadskoff, where your contact calls him Dreadnot.

The "jeering" animation loop involves a phase where the mob playing it jumps up and down like a monkey. Somehow that doesn't seem very Knivesy.

Knives are a bit annoying in MA since any objective involving defeating them doesn't actually complete until their caltrops fade away.

Mission 2:

A fast-flying AV with what appears to be some form of boosted perception and fantastically high defense right in the entrance. Um... k. If that's what you want go for it. At least it's a warehouse map so he doesn't have a direct line of sight to start shredding you while the loading screen's on.

Mission 3:

Sixty Second Man has no description and runs the risk of slaughtering his guards with his lightning field before you even get there.

Also, looks like the old P0 bug popped up on success there.

Also also, this is where things started to grate a little. I don't play this game to be some other supergroup's cleanup squad, but this is how I started to feel.

Lastly also, the fake names aren't consistent across clues.

Mission 4:

Check the clue you get from the computer, please? It looks like your keyboard got stuck while you were typing it. Too many letters mashed together.

Tier 9 defensive sets on elite bosses are a terrible, terrible idea. It's like 4 minutes of powerlessness. I actually thought I was going to be looking at a floored to-hit chance outside of build-up until it suddenly dropped. Even though Instant Healing isn't a tier 9, still a bad idea - though me and my pet green glowy couldn't even dent her regen, until it dropped.

Mission 5:

Rage and an autohit endurance drain. Yyyyyyeah. Not finishing this one.

This isn't solo friendly. Don't sell it as such.

AE System
--------
Welcome to Architect Entertainment -- Neutral
Death for Dollars! -- Neutral
Bare Knuckles of Rage (9304)
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
--------
Birth of a Fossil -- Heroic
Midnight Bells Toll ----Villanious
*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
--------
THE BOMBER --- Heroic --- Arc 16607
*

Comedy
--------
The Extadine Lab -- Heroic
The Great Chicken Caper of '09 -- Heroic
MacGuffin Delivery Service (1567) -- Villainous
ParaCon -- Heroic
The new and improved Lord Recluse Strike Force -- Villainous (though I wouldn't recommend against a hero )
The Fire Bunnies - Neutral, They are only bunnies after all...
You Say It's Your Birthday! (3630) - Neutral
*

Comedy/Drama
--------
A Super Team is Born -- Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749) -- Neutral
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings #1481 -- Neutral
Lawyers of Ghastly Horror -- Heroic
How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- Heroic
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare -- Neutral
It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding (9059) -- Neutral
TURG FICTION: Ghost in the Machine, Act I - Heroic (althoughs romantic villains could try this too )
Rum Runners of Bloody Bay (3691) - Heroic
*

Crime/Gangs
--------

Bricked Electronics -- Heroic (LIVE! 2180)
The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (LIVE! 5073)
*

Drama
--------
*

Global Domination
--------
Axis and Allies -- Villainous (10597)
*

Heist
--------
Celebrity Kidnapping -- Villainous (20161)

*

Historical (Realistic)
--------
*

Historical (CoH Lore)
--------
The War on Superadine - The Regulators in their 1980's drug war (Heroic) (Arc 7959)
*

Holiday
--------
*

Horror
--------
Dark Dreams -- Heroic (18914)
The Amulet of J'gara (1709) -- Heroic
Project: Perilous - Into the Chthonian Pit (#3586) - Neutral (Unless you happen to be a mad cultist, in which case, go nuts!)
Small Fears -- Heroic
*

Large-Scale Crisis
--------
A Hero's Halo -- Heroic
This Is War, Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz -- Neutral
Win the Past, Own the Future - Heroic
A Warrior's Friend - Heroic*

Magic
--------
The Magical Miss Fitz (5079) -- Heroic
Chains of Blood (5492) -- Heroic
*

Military
--------
Redoubt Operations #1: Fires over Kalago -- Heroic

Red Storm Rising Arc 4912 Heroic
*
Misc. Adventure
--------
The Portal Bandits (3326) -- Heroic
*

Mystery
--------
Blowback (18575) -- Heroic
Dream Paper -- Heroic (LIVE! 1874)
*

Mythology
--------
Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld -- Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) -- Neutral
The Seelie War -- Heroic
The Unseelie War -- Villainous
Tales of Cimerora, volume 1 : Of feathers and fur -- Heroic
*
The Aegis Affair - Heroic

Nemesis Plots
--------
Brass Reaver: Part 1 -- Neutral
*

Player-Chosen Outcome
--------
Hunting the Dark Dragon -- Heroic
*

Sci-Fi
--------
Above Mars - Part 1: The Wellington -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 -- Neutral
Down With The Sickness -- Neutral (12420)
The Final Nemesis
Netrunner -- Heroic (14434)
*

Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
--------
The Meatgrinder -- Neutral
*

---------

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So, if I am reading this correctly, you want the wife to essentially share information that moves the player into the next mission that has the boss/son?

Instead of making her an interactive glowie (since I thought I read they can't be reactively linked, though I have not tried it, what about making her a reactively linked Ally or other NPC that can pop up at the time you want her? She can spout some specific dialogue then you can possibly add more specific information in an (optional) clue completion entry?

I am at work right now, but it seems something like that could be possible.

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Well, not to spoil too much of the story, but she's in a bodybag.

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Put the bodybag down, call the objective something innocuous (like "investigate"), then make somebody with shadow shard reflections effects and call it a soul.

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So, if you had 1,000 votes of 4-stars, and one 5-star, then you'd make HoF. So, consider 4-star votes as simply not counting. If it's a good arc, you should not be getting any 2s or 1s.


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When was the last time you PUGged? And the tank who never took any armors or attacks after level 6, instead opting for the stealth pool, and the teleport pool, and the flight pool, and the superspeed pool, blamed the defender who had healing aura on autofire for not following him into the knot of 30 purple Freak tanks?

Arcs are going to get 2s and 1s out of spite and misclicks and because the rater doesn't like the shade of blue you used for your custom mobs which are actually the stock Antimatter robots that he has never seen.

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<QR>

When running a mission, level capped at 29:

The Lost are replaced by Rikti who still spawn at level 29, presumably because they "would be" 30 but are being scaled down.

Creating an enemy group made up of just the Lost, with no random 5-30 spawners, instead results in NO Lost spawning when they "would be" level 30.

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Remember that Lost and Rikti are (yeah we know)

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But that's just it, the Rikti and Lost are separately listed factions in the MA, but the Rikti will show up at the level the Lost are supposed to be capped at regardless. I think this is even with a Flat level distribution.

It can be a bit disrupting to be fighting a bunch of Lost, only to turn a corner and run into a Headman Gunman. Yeah, they probably care about what happens to the Lost, but that much?

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It wasn't that it was unexpected, it was that these Rikti were spawning at "+1 to the mission" but because the mission was capped at 29, they were showing up at 29. In that overflow group, Comms Officers are still genuine minions, among other things.

Also see the SECOND part of that, where the enemy group that's just made up of the Lost with the random spawner taken out doesn't spawn AT ALL when they're supposed to be "+1 to the mission". I know this because I would enter a mission with multiple hostages and half of them would be rescued already, waiting around in giant empty rooms with nobody there.

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Did they fix the bug where you can't edit and republish any missions once you have three published missions? Maybe I missed it in the patch notes.

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Yep. Been there for a while.

<QR>

When running a mission, level capped at 29:

The Lost are replaced by Rikti who still spawn at level 29, presumably because they "would be" 30 but are being scaled down.

Creating an enemy group made up of just the Lost, with no random 5-30 spawners, instead results in NO Lost spawning when they "would be" level 30.

[ QUOTE ]

Magic
--------
The Amulet of J'gara - Heroic
*

Mystery
--------
Dream Paper -- Heroic (13030)
Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep -- Heroic (16797)
Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams -- Heroic (13064)
*

Military
--------
*

Comedy
--------
The Great Chicken Caper of '09 - Heroic
*

Comedy/Drama
--------
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings - Neutral
Lawyers of Ghastly Horror - Heroic
How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749)-Neutral

*

Crime/Gangs
------------
The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (16809)
*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
--------------
*

Mythology
----------------
Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld - Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) - Neutral
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
----------------
Birth of a Fossil - Heroic
*


Horror
---------
Small Fears - Heroic
*

Holiday
---------
*

Sci-Fi
--------

Adventures of the Space Marines --- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 ---Neutral

*
Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
-----------------------
The Meatgrinder - Neutral
*

Historical (Realistic)
--------------------
*

Historical (CoH Lore)
-------------------
*


Drama
-------------
*


Misc. Adventure
----------------
The Portal Bandits - Heroic
*

Global Domination
----------------
*




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Yeah, for villains more than heroes, having an arc with essentially an inanimate object giving "you" ideas goes a long way. if somebody doesn't agree with the ideas they're "getting", well, that's their prerogative. Lots more missions to choose from.

My 'The Bravuran Jobs' puts a diplomat in the role of inanimate object. Occasionally he reads the beautiful paper of his home country out loud, to practice his English, and if someone should overhear him and be moved to visit the homeland, well, that's hardly HIS fault now, is it?

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((includes spoilers))

-mission 1 --> The Countess made an interesting character. I liked that she'd put herself in danger in order to assess your skills.


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The Contessa puts herself in danger for the hell of it, most times. Though I wonder if she can even die on that map, I definitely took it into account.

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-mission 2 --> Something that I found odd was that the triggered hostage spawns were untargetable until they were aggroed. I wasn't sure if that was a setting that I didn't know about (and there are many of them) or a bug?


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Yeah, the first hostage spawns in the third mission actually had no intro dialog and a hostile hostage for somebody else. I'm betting that's just weirdness with the engine.

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-mission 3 --> I liked this, the Countess kind of overruling the government for her own agenda - she reminds me a bit of a medieval Countess Crey.

For the third and fourth missions, I thought that 6 glowies might be a little much. If there are x number of clues, there isn't really a need for the excess glowies, in my opinion.


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3 for both, then?

As far as "overruling the government" goes? In her nation, the Contessa IS the government. But some people become dissatisfied with the things she does, so you get things like mission 3. I figured I'd made that clear enough, where should I work it in?

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-mission 4 --> I was a little puzzled by parts of this. It made sense, and I enjoyed it, in reference to the whole newspaper job line, but I really wasn't sure what the Duchess was talking about with lines like, "step aside and let me shine," "glorious production," I'm not sure what she was referencing. She also mentions, "The Comt," who had never been mentioned and I didn't know who she was talking about, but then even the contact only sort of alluded to him.

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The Comte (translated "Count") is the other half of Their Excellencies. He had invited the Carnies over because they're actually Italian nobility, but they decided to take over the hotel, and "the Duchess" was looking forward to having an unspeakably rich nobleman as a personal servant.

And you walked allll over that dream.

Maybe I should talk about him more in previous missions, but where should I put him in?

[ QUOTE ]

-mission 5 --> This mission seemed to continue from the first better than the other ones. While the others gave the impression that you were being tested without explicitly saying so, I liked that this kind of pulled it all together.

Overall, I really enjoyed that "this is what you're doing" *winkwink* feel of the arc, it made me giggle. The only thing is, though, that it kind of felt like, literally, a bunch of newspaper missions. Out of 2,3,4, 3 was the only one that seemed to have any connection to the Countess story, even though, as I said before, it was alluded to that she was keeping an eye on you and your abilities.


[/ QUOTE ]

Would you believe that's what I was going for? The arc was intended as a quick flyover of Bravura: a tiny nation with a mystic past, high technology, rebel factions, a perhaps undue respect for nobility, and a Contessa who pulls whatever crazy crap she wants to.

(my inspiration begins with "L" and ends with "atveria")

Glad you had a good time, I wanted to make something more light-hearted after Dream Paper.

[ QUOTE ]

Your custom group can hit pretty hard! I was on my blaster, whose only form of crowd control is holds, and the mez protection made them a bit of a challenge since I'm so used to just mezzing lieuts and bosses - once I adjusted I didn't have a problem with them though.


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Yeah, if they're in numbers and buffing each other it can get pretty crazy.

[ QUOTE ]

mine:


[/ QUOTE ]

Going on the list of stuff to play.

Might as well get mine out, then.

The Dream Paper Series: (caution, lots of words and most of them are important)

Arc Name: Dream Paper
Arc ID: 520
Faction: Heroic alignment, Lost, Tsoo, Trolls, customs
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Zasani/GlaziusF
Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium
Synopsis: The Lost are breaking into the cheapest apartments in the city. Finding out why will lead you up a trail of scanty evidence to a Lost headquarters and a disquieting conclusion
Estimated Time to Play: 60-90 minutes

Arc Name: Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep
Arc ID: 916
Faction: Heroic alignment, Freakshow, Warriors, Arachnos, Lost, Circle of Thorns, customs
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Zasani/GlaziusF
Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium
Synopsis: Investigating the events at the tail end of Dream Paper leads you all around the city and into Oranbega on a last-second rescue (don't worry, I picked a map there to minimize frustration) From eclectic sources you at last put together a picture of what's going on, even if you don't know how to stop it.
Estimated Time to Play: 60-120 min

Arc Name: Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams
Arc ID: 11467
Faction: Heroic alignment, Lost, Arachnos, Devouring Earth, Rikti, customs
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Zasani/GlaziusF
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: End the threat to the people of Paragon City that first reared its head at the end of Dream Paper. Break through the illusions in an Arachnos base! Break into a most unconventional revival meeting! Break your panic button if you've ever been mothership raiding!
Estimated Time to Play: 60-150 min

The Bravuran Series (a work in progress)

Arc Name: The Bravuran Jobs
Arc ID: 9257
Faction: Villain alignment, Bravuran Militia (custom group), Wyvern, Legacy Chain, Carnies
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Zasani/GlaziusF
Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium (stock some CABs for the last boss)
Synopsis: The tiny sovereignty of Bravura arose in the wake of the Rikti War. While it claims an ancient ruling dynasty, it's an open secret that its holdings are products of military conquest. Sounds like your kind of place. And even better, they're looking for freelancers.
Estimated Time to Play: 30-90 minutes, depending on how much fighting you're up for

[ QUOTE ]

Here's mine, be gentle :P

Arc Name: A New World's Order
Arc ID: 8395
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Libertys Finest/Patriot_America
Difficulty Level: Medium/Hard (the final boss is DM/WP, set to extreme, but I am so not changing him)
Synopsis: Travel to a new dimension and stop the Copper Mask, who's quest for world domination could mean disaster for millions of innocent people. Plus an encounter with a mysterious civilization known as the Serpent Empire.
Estimated Time to Play: between 1h - 1h 30m

[/ QUOTE ]

Hokay. Here are some things you should be aware of.

First, not everybody's played the Malta Warburg mission, and thus does not expect to be able to click a door to get into the base. When everything's inside the base, this is a problem. Putting "inside the warehouse" or something in the mission objective text would help a lot with this.

Second, an Elite Boss with Confuse can keep it permanently applied. Poison doesn't exist as a set, either. Hmm. Maybe Plant Control, considering the enemies later on? That'll keep the confuse but it will be much shorter.

Third, double-stacked Web Grenades and Caltrops do a real number on movement speed. Is there a way you could give the initial group another Lieutenant?

Fourth, end boss warnings appreciated. He melted under the Shivan as long as I had his attention.

Lastly, the "required side objectives" really need some justification, at least for me. I'm there to stop a nuclear launch. I can understand punching the guy responsible in the head repeatedly, but why should I raid his fridge? (at first I thought it was the humorous response to "if you were a nuclear warhead, where would you be?") I'm in a base to cross-reference the sample I picked up with a computer - but if it's an alternate dimension, why should I care about some random poison pods? Or bother trying to take down the super-tough boss? I already have the information from the computer.

Even doing things just because a contact says so is a step up from doing things just because the game engine says so.

Anyway, here's my stuff.

Arc Name: The Bravuran Jobs
Arc ID: 9257
Faction: Villain alignment, Bravuran Militia (custom group), Wyvern, Legacy Chain, Carnies
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Zasani/GlaziusF
Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium (stock some CABs for the last boss)
Synopsis: The tiny sovereignty of Bravura arose in the wake of the Rikti War. While it claims an ancient ruling dynasty, it's an open secret that its holdings are products of military conquest. Sounds like your kind of place. And even better, they're looking for freelancers.
Estimated Time to Play: 30-90 minutes, depending on how much fighting you're up for

[ QUOTE ]

Assumptions #1 &2: a level 20ish character with 5 million that [u]might have[u] gotten a [u]bit lucky[u].

Unless you dedicate to using the market, it is unlikely that is possible without a sugar daddy.


[/ QUOTE ]

Let me share my genius market strategy with you.

Before I log off for the night, see how full recipe and salvage stores are getting. If they're over 2/3 full, dump everything on the market for 1 inf.

THAT'S IT. Occasionally I may get all fancy and sell common salvage for 333, uncommon for 1111, and rare for 5555.

My genius market strategy is acknowledging that the market exists at all, which in my experience is more of a sticking point for veteran players.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Let's assume an SG of 8 people is getting to level 20 from level 10, where they established their SG.

[/ QUOTE ]
Assumption #3. Size of group.

[/ QUOTE ]

8 is a bad size for a minimalist SG? It's half the size where you get free prestige for adding more people, I figure that's reasonable.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But let's assume they always team up.

[/ QUOTE ]
Assumption #4. Possible, but not always the case.

[ QUOTE ]
This effectively doubles XP relative to other measures of advancement, so that's 1,000 approximate minions per character.

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Assumption #5. Literally pulling numbers out of your <censored>. At this point the point behind your post is lost.

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Uh, no. When you team up with 8 people, the XP is... Huh. Apparently I misremembered. Anyway, there's a teaming XP bonus. Which is a factor of 2.5 instead of a factor of 2. Okay, so that's 800 scale minions.

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And let's assume they always play with rested XP on. 500 approximate minions per character.


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Assumption #6. Making up numbers again.

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Yes, but these are deliberately conservative assumptions. There's no way a team could use rest XP to get less than, well, 400 scale minions. (actually 3200 minions but since salvage is spread around, 400 scale minions.)

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So, by level 20, each member of this SG will have acquired 40 salvage, for a total of 320 salvage.

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Assumption #7. Random Number Generator.


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Binomial random distribution probability -- p=0.8, n=500 -- variance = np(1 - p) = 40(.92) = 36.8 -- standard deviation = square root of variance = square root of 36.8 = 6 and a tiny bit -- standard error of measurement = SD / sample size = .75

Yes. It's within the bounds of probability that the SG as a whole could wind up with one or two pieces more or less, 5% of the time.

(if I run it with p=0.1 n=4000 the numbers are ever so slightly higher)

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Of this about 11 pieces will be rare, 56 uncommon, and the remainder (253) common.


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Assumption #8. Random Number Generator.


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Similar small standard errors. We're looking at a sample size of over 3000 for this entire SG of 8, and that absorbs a lot of random into the comforting embrace of the normal curve.

I mean, unless the devs have coded the RNG to hate this particular supergroup. In which case, why are we even bothering?

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Now let's look heroside at all the places a level 20 character could go. Remember, to get a beacon you need to explore the heck out of a zone, which means being able to survive in it.

Atlas Park, Galaxy City, Perez Park, The Hollows, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, Talos Island, Independence Port, Striga Isle, Boomtown, Faultline. And Pocket D, I guess. That's 7 teleporters' worth of locations. What the heck, round it up to 8.

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Assumption #9. Hero side by level 20 on my controller, I can get PI which is a very safe short swim to the single unguarded badge, Founders a tiny bit tricky but possible, Brickstown very easy with flight, Terra Volta is 20+. The only ones locked are the hazard zones.

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Okay, I'll give on this one. A supergroup will probably not be able to build the 9 or 10 telepads it needs to transport to every possible zone just by getting 8 members from level 10 to level 20.

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Assuming they care about what kind of telepad they have, and that salvage winds up evenly distributed among the types, they will have 1 piece of their desired rare salvage, 4 of their desired uncommon salvage, and 20 of each needed common salvage.

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Assumptions #10 & 11. Random Number Generator.


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Assuming people specifically want a tech or arcane telepad is not RNG related, it's another one of those hyperconservative assumptions that will probably be more relaxed.

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The question then becomes, how much of the unneeded 10 rare, 52 uncommon, and 221 common salvage will they need to cash in to get 7 rares and 4 uncommons?

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Assumption #12. Assuming that people will want to use the market.


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Yes, I am assuming people who want telepads and have done the research needed to acquire the exploration badges for all the beacons will also understand and use all the existing in-game avenues for obtaining the salvage needed to build their telepads.

I do not think a large fraction of the playerbase is, shall I say, ideologically opposed to the marketplace?

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Villainside a level 20 only has to worry about going to maybe 4 places, potentially 5, so they're only looking at cashing that giant chunk of commons in for another couple rares.

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Assumption #13. I can get all the beacons except the RWZ villain side at level 1, but I generally wait till level 2 so that I can get to level 3 on my stalker just by explore beacon xp. I've done it several times.


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Yes, and all the villain beacons need a whole 4 teleporters. Maybe 5 for the RWZ? Half heroside.

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Of course, this all assumes they've got enough prestige to buy and power 4 rooms, 8 teleporters, and 13 beacons, which I don't have numbers for but which I believe may not be a very reasonable assumption.

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Assumptions #14.

I repeat that is far too many assumptions.

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Okay, you want facts? You want facts? I'll give you facts.

The first villaingroup I founded right at the start of the server had 5 guys, all of us fair newbies to CoV and the whole salvage dealie. And all we could afford was a room with one telepad. After a couple more weeks we could buy the power and control to plunk down another.

To go to different zones we all had base-editor privileges so we could swap out the beacons for other beacons, because we didn't have enough prestige to build a big enough support architecture to actually power and control more than 2 telepads and 4 beacons.

That, not salvage, was the limiting factor in how much we could expand.

And it still will be.

8 people will not be able to build a giant teleporter mega-complex with the salvage they collect just from going from level 10 to level 20. They also may not even collect the salvage to build even 1 telepad if the RNG takes an epic dump on them and they are all somehow ideologically opposed to the marketplace, or they just delete all the salvage they ever get, or perhaps their accounts are hacked and raided by mad geniuses in China with way too much time on their hands.

But you know what? It's not somehow an indictment of the system if some complete newbies to the whole supergroup system can't somehow get the wonder perfect base that's everything they want after a few nights of play. When did that start becoming a reasonable baseline? I was just trying to demonstrate that they could actually get pretty close to wonder perfect, and not even if they played smart, just if they played productively, under the worst possible salvage drop conditions they might create for themselves unwittingly.