LaserJesus
-
Posts
1006 -
Joined
-
Congraturation, PW! A winner is you!
-
Quote:Yeah, even a level 1 custom minion on standard will have 2-6 attacks, with the ones with low numbers of attacks getting defenses, when almost every enemy at that level has maybe a pistol and brawl and that's it.Originally Posted by Venture
Dead false. Customs will make mincemeat out of most low-level builds. -
Quote:Like MrCaptainMan said, quite a lot of people actually either give it 5 or nothing due to the innate incentives the MA search window gives to peoples' arcs to have a high rating by making it so 5 star arcs are always listed before 4 star arcs, regardless of number of ratings or number of plays. So I'd guess that the number of 2-4 ratings are actually quite lower than the 60% of the rating scale they represent.Originally Posted by Doc_Wormwood
Generally, any time you have a range of options, people have a strong tendency to veer toward the middle. For example, if you have a 1-5 spread centered at 3 being 'average' feelings about something, I would guess the percent of folks answering 2-4 is much higher than the 60% it should be.
Similarly, a lot of folks are seeing '5 star' as meaning in the top 99th percentile or something. Why? There are 5 stars, and no indication you should be grading on a curve.
If you think an arc is better than 80% of the arcs out there... go on. Give it 5 stars.
I personally give 4 or 5 stars to any arc that I had fun playing, 1 or 2 for any arc that was frustrating or I really hated, and 3 for missions that are pretty average. I find myself giving out pretty varied ratings overall. -
The comment that was so crazy I saved it to a text file:
Quote:Got this one ages ago, before the comments were tracked.[Tell] @Me Am Greatest Hero: Feedback on Architect Mission Rise of the Drakule: Hmmm. Didn't really enjoy this one. Tired vampire theme with no new twistss. Lots of descripition for each mob that added up to, nothing, really. Dialogue seemed all over the place, too, but what killed it for me was having powerful foes tell me that I was 'a big meanie'. What was that all about? You should look at some newer vamp stories like Twilight for more modern ideas. -
Not a ton. Didn't really do a ton of playing this double XP weekend. Mainly got my Dual Pistols corruptor up to 22, got my Tank his last couple of levels to hit 50, and a few extra levels here and there on other characters.
-
Quote:Sometimes when you have an objective created after another one is completed the enemies will spawn outside of the map. This doesn't happen on every map, but it sounds like the Midnighter Club is pretty buggy. If you have a defeat all objective and that happens, then the mission will be impossible to complete since the enemies are "in the mission" but outside of the map, so players can't actually defeat them.Originally Posted by Diane Schlank
Yes. Several battles are supposed to take place (Leprechauns vs Midnighters) after the boss is either wounded or dead.
From what it sounds like, this is a case of the map just being bugged. The only suggestion I can make is to remove the defeat all objective if you have it, or try and find another map to use. -
Quote:You know I now recall this map having that problem in the mission where it first appeared when it was added to the game.Originally Posted by Bubbawheat
Yes, I was using this map as well for something I was testing (Arc It's a mad mad mad mad tea party, don't remember the #) and the same thing happened. I zoned in fine, teammate #2 and 3 fell a long way and hit bottom, I had to tp friend them to bring them back. And teammate #4 was fine. I had maxed out boss details (5) enemy group was <empty> and had 1 floor collection object. I'm not sure if all the bosses spawned, since they were non-required, and ally.
-
Quote:Never seen that issue with teams spawning in outside of the map in AE before.Originally Posted by Diane Schlank
The map of the Midnighters Club.
A follow up question, are any of your objectives set to spawn after another is completed? -
Quote:What map are you using? That will go a long way to people giving you advice.Originally Posted by Diane Schlank
I'm an old veteran when it comes to creating and publishing AE missions, however today I ran into some serious problems with my newest creation (which I just published today).
1. I inserted a boss into this mission, but when you play this mish the boss is nowhere to be found.
2. Whenever I run a team thru this mish, half the team ends up in limbo where there are no walls, no floors, no color (other than black) and no villains to fight. There's also no exit. I've run six teams thru this mish and it's happened with every team.
3. If you manage to defeat all the foes on them map, click on the one clickable item and free the one ally you STILL do not complete the mish and you end up standing around wondering what you're supposed to do next. There's nobody left to fight and nothing left to click!
Anybody have any idea what's going on here? Is there some new glitch in the AE system I should know about? -
Quote:Keep in mind that this issue scales up with rank, due to the resistance/defense/regen values going up, in addition to it having more HP, meaning it will regen more HP every tick.Originally Posted by ReclusesPhantom
Most of the Willpower set.
Trying to solo a Hard WP EB on a Dark/Thermal Corrupter was not fun. I mean, c'mon, it died, rezzed and by the time I bashed through it's Resistance and Defence it it's rez was recharged.
Archvillains with ANY kind of regen power, including fast healing, will be completely immune to regen debuffs. Willpower will give them more HP from the first auto power, and they will get more regen from fast healing and rise to the challenge on top of their already boosted regen.
So essentially, for the love of god, do not give willpower to your custom AVs. -
Quote:You can manage a self rez every once in a while, but definitely not on any enemy that the player will be seeing a lot. It should be saved for special encounters, and only if the story really warrants it.Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer
I'm told that Self Rezzes are very annoying! Especially if the critter is already tough.
-
Quote:Not really. All of its stone melee attacks deal far more damage than the same versions in stone melee. I'd bet that the ranged attacks are also dealing more than they should. Best bet is to just use stone melee instead.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
Hm. WhT's up with earth assault specifically? I'm planning on an earth dom as a boss in an upcoming arc.
Can anything be done to mitigate its negative effects?
Eco -
Quote:Pretty good list. Want to point out though that the reason why carrion creepers is a good one to avoid is because they work exceptionally strange when custom critters use them. They never seem to stop spawning, and some will spawn as allies. Just a real mess.Originally Posted by Mystic_Fortune
I try to avoid these when making custom critters.
- Aim/Build Up/Rage
- Carrion Creepers
- Dark Regeneration
- Flash Arrow/Smoke/Smoke Grenade
- Granite Armor
- Hibernate
- Power Sink
- Rise to the Challenge
- Web Grenade
Web Grenade can be okay on bosses, and works better if the enemy has a weapon they need to draw or has melee powers. This causes them to not want to toss the web grenade every time it recharges.
Also, I want to add the entire earth assault set to that list. The set is bugged to deal out way too much damage.
EDIT: Also, Terrify and Fearsome Stare, and by extension, spectral terror on anything lower than a boss. They have a heft -15% to-hit and a really long duration fear, which most sets don't resist. -
Quote:I've done that, but never quite as bad as 4000.Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
The ones you pm'd me earlier are in the area of what I consider to be 'quick fixes.' If it's in an in-mission clue, I can usually strip the formatting and fix the typo in about 30 seconds. The tough stuff comes when I've completely color coded a briefing box and have like 2000 characters crammed into the space where 1000 is supposed to go.
The favorite thing I do to myself is when I forget to leave the MA interface after stripping one of those big ones down and have the paragraph breaks without tabs yet. When you highlight a large section of text that isn't broken by tabs and is only broken by enters, when you color code the text, it proceeds to put about 40 extra {color}{/color} tabs in as it attempts to color and uncolor something that only its mechanical mind can perceive.
It is great fun to see a text box designed to accept 1000 characters suddenly jump up to over 4000, which I've seen once. -
After playing the arc, I can definitely say this with confidence.
-
Quote:Cry moarOriginally Posted by Stampead
Oh, you guys suck.
I'm going to Freedom!
>=( -
Quote:I can't see any flaws in this logic.Originally Posted by Stampead
I don't really mind all the other people running Dual Pistols at the same time as me...
And I don't really have a concept. I plan on just running around, shooting stuffs, and looking badass while doing it. =P
And I can eat bacon while playing.
If you want to pick it up now, you could always make a pistols blaster now, and then a pistols corruptor or something later.
Because shooting stuff is damn fun. -
Quote:Considering there are 3 instances of Earth Thorn Casters listed in the MA interface, only one of which with Quicksand, I think it's safe to guess that they work in the same manner as Malta Sappers, where only one quicksand user can spawn in a group at a time. Obviously, custom groups can not be made to have these "baked in" rules, and need to be built carefully.Originally Posted by Zamuel
Experienced this with a few arcs with different enemy groups and I believe I know what the problem is. Some enemies have "1 per spawn" rules for a specific mob while others have it for a specific power. Only one Sapper, CoT only casts one Quicksand patch or only one ghost uses the -to hit aura, Family only summons one Singularity, etc. Custom picked groups break these spawning rules which can have results ranging from an interesting challenge to freakishly hard. It's the only thing preventing me from using Sappers in a future arc since I'd like to have them within reason.
I just want to state that I am not of that opinion personally, despite what I said about your arc. I don't want to discourage trying different things. However, you can't please anyone all the time.Quote:Originally Posted by MrCaptainManThe general view from those that play an arc at a different setting from the main setting that its tested at is that an arc should be balanced to cater for EVERY difficulty; I'm no expert at the MA, but I suspect that this is extremely difficult if not impossible in some cases, especially where Customs are involved.
I also want to point out that where your arc's last mission is ill suited to higher difficulties because of a larger volume of enemies on an already large map that must all be defeated and not due to it becoming significantly harder, Tiger Knight's arc is ill suited to higher difficulties because of an honest-to-god bug and some oddities with how custom groups work. Both of these issues were wholly unintended and can be fixed. A warning isn't necessary at all for his arc after the problems are fixed, either. You aren't forced to fight anything stronger than a boss, and nothing too rough regardless. -
Quote:I have the same exact problem all the time. When I published my challenge arc I dreaded the revisions that I just knew I would have to make as I got feedback on it just for this exact reason.Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
Unfortunately, I tend to use up all of the characters allowed to me with almost every text box I fill. This means that my only option for color formatting is to highlight a section of the text, right click and then choose which of the limited number of color choices are available to me. I can't change anything at this point, because the MA interface counts all of the color tags as characters.
I can continue to add tags, but in order to actually edit anything from this point on, I have to delete all of the color tags and all of the paragraph breaks and reformat the entire section. I can make minor edits that only require deletions, but I cannot add any characters at all.
It sucks but, knowing my writing style, this will probably be the only way I'll ever be able to format text color, because I hardly ever leave any space after I write the initial text.
Perhaps at some point, they will figure out how to make the AE interface a bit more user-friendly, but I have the sneaking suspicion that we are using the exact same mission creation tool the developers use and have no intention of making it easier for their players to create missions than their own employees.
Oh, and to make things worse, while playing through the arc earlier (haven't finished it yet because of the server going down) I noticed a couple typos in the clues. When I'm done I'll send a PM to Dr. Aeon and hopefully he can go in and fix them. It's just minor stuff like two i's in midnight and formatting inconsistencies with clue titles so far, anyhow. -
Quote:I only got done with two missions before the server went down for maintenance, but yeah. It's hard to remember when the low level gang members are played for laughs so often, but the Hellions aren't just gang members, but demon-obsessed gang members.Originally Posted by Avonlea
Congrats, S12--it was definitely well-earned! I'm loving going through everyone's arcs, but yours had a great twist with the newspaper articles. (Usually those mission clues are pretty tiresome, but I actually looked forward to these!) And your portrayal of the Hellions was really great as well...it was kinda spooky seeing them as having such depraved indifference to their victims, rather than just being gang members and a low-level nuisance.
Congrats again! Enjoy the win! :-) -
Quote:Still incorrect. First off, Roanoke isn't even in Ireland. Roanoke was an early American colony that mysteriously disappeared, with the only clue being the word "Croatoa" carved on a tree.Originally Posted by TigerKnight
Again, I appreciate all your comments and suggestions but this one unfortunately I couldn't seem to get around. When I made the arc, I kept notes about the story to keep my timeline straight. It took me an hour of looking for the notebook they were in and another in searching the CoH universe for how my notes made it possible. (What? I keep poor notes. Lay off me. :P) Now I remember why it was possible (Drumroll please):
The Ritki war started in 2002
The cabal has existed in CoH since 1588. They had been in Croatoa since 1604. (Give or take a year or two.)
There you go. The Cabal predated the Ritki war. The storylines do mention the Malleus Mundi event happening in 2004 but it didn't free ALL the creatures you see in Croatoa. It only really points to the Fir Bolg being freed. (As mentioned in Kelly's storyline)
The Cabal, Tuatha the Red Caps are natives to this dimension. You see, the cabal has been fighting the Red Caps (with the aid of the bound Tuatha) for centuries after they destroyed their original settlement in Ireland (Roanoke). The Cabal fled across the sea in hopes of escaping the Red Caps. However the Red Caps did follow them and slaughtered all their men. For the last 400 years they took delight in the Cabal's suffering while keeping them trapped in Croatoa. (Katie Hannon arc... I wonder how many people actually read that one. lol)
When the Banished Patheon casted the Malleus Mundi in 2004 (you were right on that one) and it did free the Fir Bolg which was an unintended result. However it was one that the Witches were more than happy to use to their advantage. Hence their union against the common foe of the Red Caps.
So that piece of my story was still 100% accurate. Heh. Maybe I should throw a footnote about this in there and get rid of that coffee piece after all. Now if only I could explain Sally....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony
The Cabal are from the Roanoke Colony. The Fir Bolg and Tuatha De Dannan are both from Ireland, where they were mortal enemies. The Red Caps followed them across the sea, and trapped all of them in the spirit realm. If you'll notice from the article, Roanoke Colony was located in what is now North Carolina, which is totally not Rhode Island where Paragon City and Salamanca are located.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Katie_Hannon_Task_Force
The Malleus Mundi event weakened the barriers of the spirit world, allowing all sorts of monsters to run free around the time of Halloween, including the Fir Bolg who were previously still trapped in the spirit realm. As you'll note from the article I posted earlier, while the chaos was eventually contained in Paragon City, Salamanca did not work out so well. The barriers that separate the physical world from the spirit realm were weak enough for the Cabal, the Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha De Dannan to break loose. The Red Caps of course, hate this, and are now trying to do the same thing to Salamanca as they did to Roanoke, and trap it in the spirit realm.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Buck_Salinger
Note the clue 'Walter Daschle's' story that he specifically states that Croatoa is a separate place from Salamanca altogether.
So sorry, that piece of your story is 100% inaccurate.
Also, what? What's that about taking out the coffee? That was fine and added a nice bit of flavor to the arc. You can assume that most heroes are living creatures that work incredibly late hours and may want a cup of coffee every once in a while. -
You know what, I'll post my filesizes too.
#51357 Rise of the Drakule: 85.79%
#84543 Return of the Revenge of the Son of Drakule Part 2: First Blood: 93.05%
#257242 Drakule Armageddon 5: This Time, It's Personal!: 99.98%
#340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers From Hell: 99.92%
#177930 Fighting Freedom: 99.39%
#257226 'Tis Nobler in the Mind: 99.76%
#379065 Holding Down the Fort: 65.10%
So, does this mean I win the game? -
Some quick notes: You do not need an elite boss in a custom group for it to give out full rewards. Just minions, lieutenants, and bosses. I don't know how on earth Blade Princes showed up as regular bosses, because with any group that would have a boss in it, it was either a Succubus or a Blade Prince. I'm suspecting it's a bug with the MA itself. The quick fix is to simply remove the Blade Prince from the custom group and you're golden. They're the only reason the mission was hard at all. Everything else in there is pretty standard. The comment about the nerva spectral demons and succubi was more a note of people possibly being annoyed rather than any note of difficulty.
As far as the powerposing goes, there's a difference between "assuming that everyone is a living human" and "assuming that every character would hug a crying War Witch". Speaking of War Witch, yes she did get emotional in the comic books, but any grief she was feeling was generally expressed as anger rather than getting depressed. Obviously this is one of those points where I can't really say "You're wrong," I can only say that it seemed out of character to me and leave it at that.
The Malleus Mundi event occurred around Halloween of 2004. It was the game story for the first Halloween event.
War Witch's power level has less to do with the fact that she's a boss and more to do with how many powers she has, including build up and aim. If you set her to standard/standard, maybe give her a couple extra powers, then she'd be far less kill crazy. With the custom boss's powers, he wasn't really tough at all to be sure, I'm just giving suggestions based on my experience with making dark armor enemies. Also, you've got to make sure that he's set to "Do not autospawn" in the custom group so he doesn't show up multiple times. Probably another thing that I only caught because of my difficulty settings. Which, you know, is why I run these the way I do.
Also, I don't know what is going on with the Ressurected custom group. It was definitely only spawning one rank of critter in each group and giving reduced experience. Really strange, because I saw a minion, lieutenant, and boss. Try to figure out what's going on there.
And as for the false glowies, if you want to leave them in, at least try and mix them up a bit, each with different flavor text so people aren't like "Oh. More boring bones."
Like I said, your story's got some potential. If you can get the big issues fixed (blade princes, other custom group oddities) then it really won't be too shabby at all. -
Quote:I don't want to insinuate that by "challenge" I mean trying to kill people outright. And obviously, with a team pretty much anything is a total cakewalk. But a carefully balanced custom group can provide a decent challenge for a solo player without being murderous. I've seen it happen. I can count the number of times on one hand, but I've seen it.Originally Posted by Venture
I designed the customs in "Psychophage" to kill people, specifically to kill teams, and they're still not a challenge to anyone who knows what they are doing. (The customs did, however, stop the goofs who provoked me into making them cold.
)
The game is too easy. Unless you go to outrageous extremes (e.g. maps full of AVs or GMs) nothing is a challenge (and that won't stop some people either). There isn't even any upside to doing so. The "reward" for trying to kill the player and succeeding is he doesn't finish the arc, doesn't read your story and probably downrates your work. If you fail, you most likely still aggravate him and lose rating. You can cover the entire range of difficulty with stock mobs in any case. (I loved a comment made in the AE Tonight review of "Splintered Shields" from one of the guys the reviewers had teamed with to the effect of "we start out fighting Longbow, then Arachnos jumps in, two of the most horrible groups to fight, and now Malta! I LOVE THIS ARC!")
Obviously you don't want your missions to be complete snoozefests but the sad truth is that in this game there's not a whole lot you can do about that, at least not without potentially alienating the majority of your players. The only viable reasons for the use of custom mobs are story reasons.
Of course, there should always be a story reason for the custom group. Otherwise it's pretty much "YO DAWG CHECK OUT THIS SUPER HARD/COOL LOOKING CUSTOM GROUP I MADE, MAN". -
Quote:This is one point where we will always disagree. A properly designed custom group can make for a really nice challenge.Originally Posted by Venture
Neither will anyone else's arcs, as custom mobs are nothing but window dressing. I can think of a few features that might warrant an increase in the limit but we're not getting any of those and even if we did people would only use the space for more customs anyway. The new limit isn't going to improve any existing arcs and will probably make a lot of them much, much worse.