Siergen

In 2010 there will be a national census in the United States, home of Paragon City. Will US citizens who have merged with Kheldians count as one "person" in this census, or two?

If you don't enjoy creating your own arcs in MA to tell your own stories, don't. Just like if you don't enjoy PVP in the arena, don't PVP in the arena. The game has many aspects, and most of them can be avoided if you enjoy other areas of the game more.

Thanks for the summary EvaDestruction. With those features most of my published arcs will be due for revision.

That was my suspicion as well. I noticed that most regular COX missions also bear a villain or hero tag.

On a couple of my arcs I put a small "Director's Commentary" at the bottom of the mission send off or debrief in [different color text] to explain things like that, design decisions, things I wanted to do but couldn't implement in the current MA, etc. Not sure if anyone has noticed - certainly no one has given feedback about them.

I figure it's more useful to present the info to players while they are in the arc, as opposed to out of game somewhere.

We can use the vaults just fine, the door is wide open. Now using the vault door is another matter all together. I use one of the bank maps in my villainous "Loose Lips" arc. You kidnap a women who works in the bank, and grab some bearer bonds from the vault to make it look a simple robbery.

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I was commenting on demonstrated attitude, not the reality of the situation.

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Everytime the devs "nerf X", it's an admission that "X" was at least partly a mistake. Now you may disagree with the devs about "X" being at least partly a mistake, but that does negate their admission.

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Ghost Widow cannot change sides unless all of Arachnos does. (See "Oh Wretched Man," Seer Marino, villain level 15-20.) If she tried, she would cease to exist. No, not even if Lord Recluse himself changed sides.

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As I recall, Ghost Widow is loyal to Arachnos, not Lord Recluse. If she became convinced that Recluse's megalomania was harming Arachnos, I think she'd turn on him. Of course, it's hard to imagine a "good" Arachnos, considering their Fascist roots...

I think all of the current bank maps are like that. For me, I just assume that the vault is open when I get there.

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I had to buy the GvE booster, yet those costume pieces are available to everyone, even those that didn't buy it...

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Yes, but GvE became unlockable long after other customers paid real money for it. I expect that the various booster packs will eventually be available to players who didn't pay for them, but I would be upset if it happened a month or two after I bought them myself.

Last few months I've been mostly playing my Fortunata. When facing Malta, I lead off by confusing the Gunslingers from stealth; they're still deadly, but in a good way...

Through trial and error I found a few inside maps that spawned in the right locations reliably, though one of them is still flaky on rare occasions. All you can do at this point is test, test, and test again.

I've found that Stalkers are great for testing spawn locations, since most (tho not all) mobs cannot detect them, allowing you to quickly run through the entire map.

You can select the enemy group that defends each object, but then the mission engine will choose which members of that group to spawn, as well as their numbers. If you try building a custom group that just has your boss in it, there is a good chance that you'll get multiple copies of that boss (learned that one the hard way).

Currently, you cannot specify a single enemy to defend, nor a single named enemy and a group. However, we can always hope for that capability in future updates.

I still think it may be the fact that his custom group only has one "tier". Since the mission engine can start adding mobs from a higher tier to compensate for a larger team, it just ramps up the numbers of the one tier it has.

Just checked it out solo. When I've seen that map in regular missions I think the spawns were almost that size. However, since he has only has a LT in his custom group, it's possible that the mission engine is treating them as though they were minions when calculating spawn size.

Since there are so many ambushes (one for each rescue, and there seem to be dozens of them), I suspect he's hitting ticket cap rather hard. However, since he labeled the arc as for "testing", perhaps that is OK with him.

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Yes this was discussed at length right after the Cimerora content was released.

IIRC, the consensus was that it was provided as a kind of demo that this was, in fact, possible, and perhaps as a bit of a tease for future content along these lines.

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Some would say that your theory is all wet...

If I understand you correctly, you could find an NPC that only spawns at higher levels, then add them to the mission somewhere. Even if the high-level NPC does not appear in combat (such as a non-combat hostage), I believe that will raise the lower level limit of the entire mission.

Do you recall the arc number?

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I'd be fine with using boss objectives if they actually worked everytime. I still can't get more than one of two bosses to spawn in the final mish of my Girls arc. No one has ever finished the entire arc due to the boss not showing up :/

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I've heard people complaining about stuff not spawning, but I've never seen it myself. Are you approaching the limit of number of spawn points for that map, or is it totally random?

I have a 4 1/2 year-old hero who I put on the shelf because I decided that, with her origin, she really wouldn't be running around smashing drug labs. Instead, I saw her as slowly sliding to "dark side", first by letting dealers go, then warning them of raids, etc. Now it looks like I'll finally get to play her again.

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Then what if a player in a SG found a way to exploit the system (like the MEOW missions)?

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Since I envision SG-missions as being primarily for role-playing, testing potential recruits, etc., I would not be adverse to greatly reduced rewards, possibly even no rewards at all.

I admit that when checking MA for unrated arcs to try, I am more likely to play a short arc than a long one. This primarily becuase I usually don't have long blocs of play time available, and I'd rather not log out with an arc unfinished.

Most of my own arcs run 4-5 missions, and I've noticed more plays on my shorter ones, even though I think the long ones are better. However, I'd rather the story I want to tell, than crop out the good stuff to meet an arbitrary length limit.

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How am I supposed to have fun with my school girl characters with no tentacles around? Huh?

[/ QUOTE ]Well, some mobs and named NPCs have tentacle-based attacks. Not that I know this from designing any MA story arcs...

I think it's hard to balance allies for all levels and ATs. The arc in my sig has gotten several feedbacks that the last mission (against an AV) is too easy with the allies, but when I test it solo, the allies and I wipe about half the time. Or maybe I just suck as a player...

One approach to avoid XP-stealing is to try to place the allies towards the back of the map. The back/middle/front bugs on some maps make this difficult, but it can help if you want the ally for the end-boss, but from a story perspective you don't need them from the start.

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If it really stings that bad, don't let the SG arc show up in the main MA system. Have it JUST be through the base. That way, it's not like an individual is getting any more slots.

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That's what I meant - arcs hosted on a Mission Computer would only be available from that Mission Computer.