Hertz

I'll check it out. I get off work in 1 hour.

Does that mean I'm posting from work?

Shhhh! Shh! They might hear.

Is there something I can go look at, something published?

What does it do when you substitute out the custom baddies and replace them with, say, Arachnos? Does the friendly's faction still show up wrong?

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Because it's still possible to beat those on your own. Simul-Glowies on the other hand...

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Meh, I don't have a problem with that. I'd rather have more tools than fewer.

You take the good with the bad, I guess. If you free up the word "God" for the Mission Architect, there will be those who use it as blasphemy (which doesn't bother me, being non-religious) and those who use it respectfully.

Me, I'd rather have more tools than fewer, even if other people don't know how to use them.

Which I suppose is a good thing. If the single Front spawn was always in that same place on that map, it'd get mighty dull.

I think I follow your explanation, which is a lot more useful than "a bunch of stuff that happened." I don't like the after-school special ("drugs are bad, m'kay?") idea of a moral at the end, precisely because it's so condescending to the player's intelligence. However, I could include a very specific danger to Shanghai's escape, rather than a vague set of possibilities — such as, "the last time she was apprehended, she was working on a plot to do X, Y and/or Z, and we think she's still going to try to complete it."

I'll fiddle with the text and, to a degree, with some of the NPCs that turn up. I think they can scale back to Boss level instead of Elite Boss level without affecting the end-mission balance too much.

As with any of the tools we've been given: the author will have earned whatever star rating he deserves.

We can set up "hard" spawns around hostile escorts, multiple hard ambushes on a single boss defeat, rooms full of invisible enemies all of whom have mez protection, stacked +DEF enemies, and any number of abuses. People who want to make unbeatable, annoying, 0-star-worthy missions can already do so. What makes you think simul-glowies would make things any worse?

The problem with adding new models, like Male Fat, Female Huge, and so on, is that it multiplies the work required for other labor-intensive aspects of the game.

Add one new model. Every costume piece now must be tested 1 extra time. Every animation must be perfected on one extra model. Every effect and aura must be tested on the new skeleton. Every bug must be chased on every new model separately.

What's worse, is that you could create a multitude of models: Fat, Huge, Bestial, Robotic, Taurian, Four-Armed, and Serpentine, in male and female versions, and it wouldn't create a lick of content. You still wouldn't have anything new to do in the game.

Now, Star Wars: Galaxies handled this by having a single model that could be adjusted for height, weight, age, and a number of other factors. It's probably too late to consider a change as sweeping as that.

Hmmmm. I have to say, I wouldn't mind if the developers did this in their missions. They have to deal with and respond to the feedback of their paying customers. I have liked this kind of thing in other games, where you get captured, where you get attacked while you're asleep and you have to put your armor back on, and so forth.

However, in the hands of the average schmuck, this would be used more as an abusive tool than as a good storytelling device.

That, too, would be a welcome alternative. It would certainly enable one to create a number of visually similar enemies with slightly different sets of powers. For instance: two minions, one Mace/Invulnerable and one Mace/Regen.

Thanks for the notes. I'll see if there's a way to bridge some of those objectives together a little bit better, and alter mission #4 to give a good explanation why Shanghai doesn't attempt to escape in #5.

Let me also state for the record that "a bunch of stuff that happened" applies to damn near every story in the entire game, so I'm going to disregard that entirely as an objection, as it is essentially meaningless.

Edit: If it were possible I would love to have the ability for Shanghai to switch bodies to someone else, you realize who it is, you fight them; she switches again, you fight that body too. The engine doesn't allow us to do so. There's no way to make an Ally betray you, which is what it would take. I could rewrite the clue to say, "You suspect that Shanghai is now ..." but that's about all I can do, short of rewriting the entire set of objectives. I just don't think the tools will let me do it the way it should be done.

Edit: It also occurs to me that I can't simply have the text say "and it's obvious where Shanghai is now" because it might not be. The player doesn't need to rescue any of the allies, and even if I made them required, the allies might not still be alive at the time you meet Shanghai. About the only thing I can do, now I think about it, is give the player credit in the "mission followup" text for being suspicious.

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I will state for the record that if I ever see those damn things in a MA mission it's going to get insta-1-starred.

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Like any tool, one must know when and where to use it, and importantly, when not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with simul-click objectives as long as a) they make story sense, and b) they're not overused.

I think the other dynamics in play could be<ul type="square">[*]No empathy — The author assumes that everybody has a min-maxed level 50 Scrapper with super purple IOs and really wants a challenge. It never occurs to the author that people — gasp! — might play anything less than an optimal build on the Bestest Archetype.[*]Doesn't get the concept — The author has not considered the effort-reward structure of the Mission Architect, namely, that if people hate your mission and don't play it, you don't get tickets.[/list]

I'm with you on this. Bosses of Death don't interest me in the least. It's not a challenge to die, run to the hospital, buy a ton of purples, and come back. It's just annoying, and it doesn't do much for the story.

I write the kind of missions I want to play. I assume that everybody does. The thing is, crafting a decent, well-balanced mission takes time, and slinging out a Killer Darkity Dark Evil Death Boss of Doom doesn't. The missions you're likely to see first are mostly the ones that didn't take much intelligence or thought or testing to create. Or, in some cases, spell-checking.

I'm not going to ask for anything expensive, like "500KB for every arc, 20 missions, let us design whole Task Forces, let us upload our own enemy models" or anything like that. This is just a simple and very low-maintenance set of mission tools that would vastly enhance the already-AMAZING level of customization in the Mission Architect.

Hertz's Mission Tools Wish List

1. New basic objective: fight a named lieutenant.
2. New advanced objective: boss ambush. A named boss comes to attack you. Bonus: Boss is not necessarily surrounded by enemies of the same faction.
3. New advanced objective: lead a captive to a collection. Bonus: Captive can betray you upon arriving at the collection.
4. New advanced objective: create a sparring contest (enemies use "we're fighting" emotes).
5. New advanced objective: simul-click objectives.
6. New objective enhancement: boss transformation. Upon a certain trigger, the boss will do the warwolf animation and be replaced by a different unit of our choice.
7. New objective enhancement: boss teleport. Upon a certain trigger, the boss teleports away and optionally says something as he does so.
8. New objective enhancement: ally betrayal. Upon a certain trigger, the ally will turn on you.
9. New objective enhancement: an option for Patrols to decide if they should Walk or Run.
10. New tool: rename standard critter units, but use the same model and attacks, eg, copy Blood Brother Slicer into a new custom group called "Ex-Hellions" and rename the unit Ex-Slicer.
11. New tool: downsize unit, eg, create a custom Boss for mission #1 (as an enemy), but deliberately spawn him at lieutenant strength for mission #2 (as an ally) without having to burn another 6.5% of our memory designing a duplicate. Could also work like for missions like Snaptooth, who appears in different strengths.
12. New tool: difficulty level below minion, i.e., pet. Create a few simple sets of powers for this difficulty of creatures, eg, knife, pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, fire brawling (as Fire Imps), electric brawling (as Gremlins), etc.
13. New contact: a telephone booth.

I want to emphasize, you guys have given us some incredible latitude in creating our own missions for this game. Has any MMO done this ... ever? (I don't think so.) Are all the MMOs carefully watching to see how this works out? (Damn straight.) Don't think I'm ungrateful for this unprecedented feature. All I'm saying is don't stop there!

Quid Pro Quo, by @Hertz
Arc#: 82369
Faction: Villain
Level: 1-5

Difficulty: Tested with solo lvl 2 Corruptor on Villainous, solo lvl 50 Blaster on Heroic, team of 2 (lvl 13 MM, lvl 6 Cor) on Villainous. Not hard, but contains Bone Daddies, which pack a punch at these levels.

Synopsis: Tired of taking orders from Arachnos? Tired of being pushed around by contacts? Tired of playing Idiot Ball? Want to feel like a villain at last? Play Quid Pro Quo.

The other problem with it is that it doesn't work.

1. Delete a mission.
2. Exit and abandon changes.
3. Go back into the arc. The mission you deleted is still gone.

I've done this in "Quid Pro Quo."

Hostage 1: spawns.
Hostage 2: spawns when hostage 1 is complete.
Boss: spawns when Hostage 2 is complete.

If you had a linear map (such as a cargo ship) with a defined Front, Middle and Back set of spawn points you could cascade the rescues one after the other and, unless the player chooses to stealth all the way to the end, chances are good he wouldn't notice.

It's theoretically possible to do so with more in a row than I did, but I wouldn't really advise it on most maps, because there's no telling which order the player will find the hostages in. On a map large enough to contain 4 hostages, chances are good the player will bypass one or more of them, have to backtrack, get frustrated, and wonder why you're so cruel.

It might work with Escorts. Some players like to pick up Escorts as if they're luggage and carry them around with 'em, gathering all the Escorts before returning to the exit, but I think you can make something spawn trigger upon the rescue of an escort, and another spawn trigger upon the completion of the Escort.

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If I use the "Random" boss-type for a critter group that spans a wide range of levels (Circle of Thorns and Arachnos, in this case), is there any way I can have a variable which notes which gender the critter is?

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The other thing you can do is create a custom group: that is, create a user-designed group called "Carnival of Shadows" and only stick in females. That way, you know that what's going to spawn in that group will always be "she."

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Um...I kinda did.

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Oh. Ha! Stupid me. I was scrolling up from the bottom of that thread, not reading down from the top.

You could have said. Or you could have simply not listed that as one of the arcs you wanted feedback on.

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Do our profanity filters work in MA?

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No, they do not — that is to say, the profanity filter does not check mission text, NPC dialogue, or clues for profanity.

When you are in the Architect you'll see an error pop up indicating there is a problematic word. For instance, if you type the word "buttress" the first four letters are "butt."

Mind you, "butt" is not considered a profane word; it's just an example. I'm sure you can imagine similar words ("assistant") that might set off the filter. Try it yourself and see.

I think I got skipped.

We only get 100K. There isn't enough memory for that feature. You can have auto-accept/decline for Fortunes, or Brawl. Which is it?

I wouldn't mind seeing the very best MA story arcs become incorporated into the game. It would certainly provide more depth to the canon (though technically not "more content" because we already have it) and it'd give the writer an extra slot to play with. Win-win, in my opinion.