MrCaptainMan

Definitely a better analogy, and one which I think illustrates very well another diffference between arcs and mp3 songs - I too have favourite films in my DVD collection, and even not-so-favorites. Last week i watched all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I wouldn't put them in my Top Five Favorite Films of All Time list at all, but they're certainly entertaining enough. The last time I watched any of them, however, was over 6 months ago. And the time before that, probably over 6 months previous to that. How long have I had to play MArcs?

One of my all-time favourite films is Magnolia. I've watched it 4 times so far. I think it's a great film, but i'm not going to watch it more than once a year probably, whereas I might watch brain-candy like a Spiderman movie more than once or even twice a year.

The point is, I might consider film A to be better than film B, but watch film B more often than film A because it's not so demanding. Likewise, the arcs that are easier to play through again and again are possibly likely to be somehow easier in some way to play. Shorter of course is one way.

Eco.

EDIT: I've just noticed the bracketed part in your post, and bolded it for emphasis. Here's maybe an even more important point in specific relation to me - I generally take a whole session of around 4-5 hours to run an arc. I don't know if i'm just being horribly slow or what, but even when I'm not reviewing, RL intrudes a lot, slowing me down.

Interesting point. The reason I have played (and will agan) all the Striga content over and over, I think, is that it's familiar, the same every time, not bugged for the most part, and most importantly, there's a LOT of content that's all sort of connected. It's in the same zone, the contacts are all loosely connected, and there's a progression of arcs that lead up to the TF. AE content obviously doesn't have any zone of its own, and the arcs can be sometimes relatively short. There's debate about how long is too long for an arc, etc, but something like the Faultline arcs I view as all part of one overrecahing super-arc. If the individual arcs in Faultline were scattered across random zones, I don't think they'd have the same feeling. For me, I mean. Others may of course differ.

Eco.

How would you suggest distance from the ally be managed? As it stands, i was thiunking of just more options from the right click menu we've got already, with 'info' and 'follow'.

Eco.

PCGAMER UKs coverage of CoH has always been terrible. The MMO 'specialists' for the mag are WoW players, and their poor knowledge of other games illustrates their bias.

Eco

If you play my arc The Audition, you'll see in mission 1 and in the final mission examples of exactly why I would HATE this to happen. Mission 1 is set on an alien planet entirely populated by a single hive-mind inhabiting millions of identical bodies. The mob group is made up of one minion-level mob. If I was forced to add a lieut and a boss to that group, in order to maintain the mission exactly as it is (and as it is is the story I want to tell), I'd simply make liuet and boss versions of the minion, with the identical costume and identical powersets. In other owrds, i'd use up space pointlessly.

Mission 6 wouldn't even be possible to simulate as is using your mooted method. Mission 6 takes place on an alien spaceship. Aboard the spaceship, the Player encounters 2 different types of being. The maps default group is called 'servitirs' and that group uses Storm elementals. They are supposed to be general wierd alien gaseous automaton servitors of the main group present on the spaceship, the Galactic Constructors, who are 5 individual immensely powerful alien robots who claim to have created the universe. For plot reaosns, during this mission they have been (luckily for the player) brought down to EB-levels of power. Their custom group contains just them, 5 individual EBs. They appear in the mission as Defeat Boss encounters. What is the point of adding random lieuts and minions to their group?

I for one wish that they hadn't added the XP-adjustment thing in relation to customs group minion/lieyt/boss spread. its not limited ctorytellers per se, as we can still make any kind of group we want. However, it has reduced the audience that we might expect, because there are a lot of players who, interested in story arcs though they may be, are also more interested in XP. Those players will for example play your arcs, Dal, seeing your 'Full XP' tag, than mine, whioch now gives less XP than it used to, even though it was in no way designed as a farm.

Please don't call for more nerfs to story-mechanics. One day you might want to use a custom group with only a single mob in it. EDIT: What I mean by 'no more nerfs' there is that I'd rather see XP nerfed than mechanics made unusable, but I'd of course prefer that XP weas left alone instead and the Devs had some kind of harsher on-hands attitude to farms. I mean, that's why they did the XP nerf, isn't it? because of exploits from farmers?

Eco.

Lol I get totally over-annoyed whenever someone says this. Its a pet peeve of mine. The cake in Portal was not a lie. As promised by the much-maligned GladOS, there is cake at tge very end of the game, after the end credits and the accompanying awesome song.

Eco

Sto Lat!

My favourite cake for you!



Now everybody post more cake for Silver gale!



Eco.

lol sorry dude. I only have an en/en blaster blueside that's high enough for Malta, and he routinely gets trounced by them. I hate them, really. Plus, Crimson's arcs bore the bejeezus out of me.

Eco.