Smurch

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I have a hard time with dialog; it takes me a long time to write and what sounds good to me might or might not sound good to everyone else. If anything particularly stood out, let me know what it was and I'll see if I can improve it.

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I don't remember specifically... but some of the dialog was a little cheesy. Again, I'm being nitpicky at this point, but it was just off a bit.


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The ambushes on the end boss spawn at 3/4 and 1/2 health (the second spawn is larger, though). There should be time between them, but ambush arrival time can vary a lot depending on just where they spawn. I could move the last ambush to 1/4 health, but then I'd be worried that sometimes the boss would be killed before the reinforcements even arrive.

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Maybe change where the ambushes spawn then, make the first one in back and the second in middle or something so there is a little more time between when they arrive. Having them both show up within a matter of seconds meant we were surrounded and quickly went down without hope. Spacing them out for even another 15-20 seconds would have been enough for us to get a handle on the first group before the larger second one arrived.

We were killing the boss pretty fast that first time around, because we had his own guards attacking him too (Confusion FTW!)

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I wasn't sure how to handle Brass's starting conversation, since there's no way to tell if the PC has worked with him before. In my early drafts, I tried to be ambiguous, but it felt rather awkward. Having him (re)introduce himself seemed like the smoother of the two evils to me.

And I know the arc takes a little while to get going, but I felt that a ramp up worked best for story, both in terms of plot and feel. I tried to make the early missions short to compensate. I hope that worked, and at least it sounds like it wasn't boring.

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The second mission send off is where I started becoming interested. There were some nice touches (the watermelon). And the plot, of course, was interesting and kept me guessing on what was a simulation and what was acting on it's own almost to the end, so that was good.

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Hmm. Ambushes can be glitchy, but those may be spawned patrols rather than actual ambushes. I'll see if I can make a clearer distinction between the two.

Actually, did you mean mission 3 (the Council base) or mission 4 (Aeon's office)? Mission 3 is pretty uniform, so I think you may mean mission 4. 4 has, IIRC, three glowies which can spawn mobs, only one of which is an ambush. I was trying to add some variety, but it sounds like I need to make things clearer. There are no escaped holograms there, just stuff Aeon was working on.

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Yes, that was the mission. We were thinking "why are there suddenly clockwork running around here?" and things like that. It seemed odd.

Overall, as I said, I really did like it.

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By all rights, to get it right I would need looney tunes as well as serious. It's not exactly an easy thing to mix at all. Of course the old man will be completely serious about this because he lost his realm to this absolute randomness.

I'm getting the idea one thinks Chaos would of simular lines of The Joker but it's not quite like that. Some stuff that's coming from this thing could be harmless. It is completely disorray, un orginized. Something effected might turn out like the joker, or you could end up with some form of super hero out of it.


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No, I was thinking more along the lines of Chaos from the Warhammer universe (mainly the PnP RPG, the MMO watered it down quite a bit). Bat-*blip*-crazy? Check. Random and wacky? Check. Scary, even horrifying, as all get out? Double-Check.

Chaos can be weird without being toon town.

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The thing with Chaos is you arn't dealing world destroyer type but bat *blip* insain unstable Chaos. There is no logic to how it operates. Only that it's mere existance desablizes everything on the world until it can no londer support itself.

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There are creepy ways to show that which might be more in line with the rest of the mission's tone. You can have completely random, chaotic, unstable and insane without having Looney Tunes.

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I actualy resisted the urge to have monsters speak over intelligently then bust into angery growls and roars.

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And that's not really it either.

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I've finally finished my first arc, and I couyld really use some feedback on just how well it works. If any kind reviewer has an opening in their schedule, here it is:

Name: Aeon's Nemesis
Arc ID: 161865
Length: Very Long
Morality: Villainous
Description: "You've heard a rumor that Marshal Brass is looking for someone to test a secret feature of the Architect system."
Suggested Level Range: 35+
Estimated Running Time: 1.5-2 hours
Estimated Difficulty: Moderate (similar to a standard villain Story Arc)

The arc has 5 missions, though the early ones are fairly quick. It mostly uses existing enemies, but there are several costum mobs. Hopefully they will be interesting and not infuriating/boring.

Since I have no high level Controllers or Dominators, bonus points if anyone can review it with one of those. Hope you all enjoy it!

-D

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I ran it with my wife, me on my level 37 Mind/Ice dom, her on her level 34 Plant/Thorn dom.

Overall, I liked it. Mostly my complaints are nitpicky more than serious, I won't go into them at this time, but I'll just say you may want to revisit some of the dialog here and there.

The only WTF moment we really had was the multiple ambushes on the end boss. They seemed like they came at the exact same time and we were overwhelmed and had to hospital. On the second time back we used those guys to build domination and then fought off the boss... barely. I used almost a whole tray of insps to do it, but we did it. I don't think I could have soloed it. We ran on Challenge Level 3, however. On challenge level 1, I might have been able to solo it, although those ambushes still may have swamped me. If it's possible, space them out a little more is my advice.

Otherwise it seems well balanced for Doms. It was challenging, but not a faceplant marathon. The custom critters seemed about right in balance, especially to the standard mobs.

The story wasn't bad, either. The initial set up was kinda weak and since my char had already worked with Martial Brass, the introduction broke versilimitude, but it picked up from there and I was engaged throughout.

We had some glowies that obviously spawned an ambush (heard the dialog) but they never showed. Also some of the enemy groups chosen for ambushes in mission 3 seemed... odd. I wasn't sure if they were really ambushing (and if so... why?) or if they were escaped holograms or something. It was never very clear.

Again had some nitpicky moments here and there but overall I found it to be a good arc. It just needs a little polish.

I rated 4 stars.

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Just wanted to note that one of the reasons why so many missions (Architect and canon) have no "moral or theme" and are "just a bunch of stuff that happened" is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to write such a story for literally thousands of characters.

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The best thing to do, IMHO, is not to try. Via the description, give the basic premise/setup the player needs to meet you half way on and then just go on from there. By clicking play they are implicitly already on board with the basic premise. From there, build on that premise to present a theme.

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While I do have one arc published for general consumption, thus far most of my MA work has been dedicated to character-oriented and supergroup-oriented stories. I write the arc and publish it, the group or person it's been written for plays it, and then I unpublish it.

I currently have one ongoing storyline that's now up to six missions (spread out over 4 arcs). I have no idea how long it'll ultimately be, as it evolves based on the choices and actions of the players involved.

And they seem very happy about that. What they do can actually change the course of the story and has lasting consequences. It's a novel experience in an otherwise very static world.

For me, this is a tremendous strength of the MA system.

I'm just curious... how many other people are using it this way?

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That's pretty much all I've been doing with it. I cycle the oldest one out whenever I make a new one. I have not designed any arcs for public consumption, and I label them clearly that this is the case. Oddly one of mine still got abunch of ratings at a four star average, although I can't imagine why, as I don't see how anyone could really understand the story unless they were involved in the RP events that led up to it.

But hey, free tickets!

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there is probably a better name.
an arc about Hellions turning into demons

I like the name Hellion Earth - which works as "Hellion" and "Hell on Earth"

I'm not sure if Hellion Earth makes that obvious enough (or if it needs to be obvious) - Helli-On Earth seems to hokey

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I got the reference as soon as I saw the thread title. I think it's clever.

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Too bad you can't use the capital i in place of the lowercase L for it since it wouldn't show up in searches.

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You COULD just use "Singers" and give em all sonic attacks... like a evil band of vocalists who are out to dominate the eardrums of the world with their infernal crooning.

And the "Gunsingers" could be interesting... they sing songs about guns while they shoot you. That'd be pretty neat.

But yeah, the word filter needs some serious help.

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I had this problem too... couldn't solve it. Had to go back to working around it with an Ally marked as "single" and then go get him before the fight.

No where near the way I wanted it to work, but that's the only thing MA allows at the moment I'm afraid

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Same here. There is no reliable way to do a "boss ambush" much less an "ally ambush"... yet.

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Okay I'm working on an arc, and the second or third mission could potentially be veiwed as a Farm...

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No. And yeah, what everyone else said, dont put the glowies on a 1 min timer. 15-20 seconds is plenty. And make sure that 20 min is adequate for your AV battle. May need to increase that time a bit.

Basically, make sure your mission is BALANCED for risk/reward/time and you'll be fine.

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The burning forest map was likely removed because of its high density of spawn points. It made for a great battlefield... but likewise, it made a farmers paradise.

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See, now this is why I get so very flustered about farmers. They say their actions don't effect anyone else, but we see entire groups of critters pulled, entire maps pulled, hours upon hour of our work go away because of their actions. How can they continue to claim they don't hurt anyone else? As of this patch due to the maps being pulled, about THIRTY HOURS of work I had in the MA is now GONE. Their actions don't hurt anyone? Really? Maybe if they compensate me for those 30 hours. At time and a half (this was after work hours), that comes out to about $68/hour for me. PM me for where you can send the check.

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The Unique/Crey Clone Lab map is history as of today.

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Ah man! Now I gotta rework an entire arc to figure out how NOT to include that.

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So if I put a "battle" in my mish, they just fight and leave everyone dead. There's nothing left for players. Also all the dialog (inactive, first spotted) gets played right away, the players usually don't get to hear it.

I've added a trigger for my battles. Now they have to accomplish an objective before the battles show up. Hopefully the players will run into at least one once the map clears out a bit.

But is there a better way to do this?

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Really it's a matter of selecting the right map. The battle starts when the players come within a certain range. In maps that wrap around themselves, the battle will start two or three encounters before they can see it and it's usually over by then. On the right maps with the right placement, they will come across the battles as they happen or at least be in visual range when they start. Trial and error is the only way to figure that out unfortunately.

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You mean like this?

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Oh great... now I'm going to be stuck playing that all day.
Thank you so much. Gaaah!

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Whenever I right click and hit info on a non-human enemy (EG: Sky Skiff, Rikti HAV, Arachnobot, Controller pets, Lusca, etc), My cape vanishes and I have to reset my costume, using the full 30 second delay.

Is this because of my low-end graphics card?

Is there any easier way to get the cape back without using the 30-second menu?

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This has been happening to me lately as well, and I've heard some comments from others about it. And my graphics card is faboo, so I doubt it's yours. It's a new and exciting bug brought to you by Paragon Studios.

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Ah okay. My friend told me to have it point outward to pull the hot air out, but I'll try it without the side or just flip it around because I don't have an available fan to blow into it.

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A good utility you can try for seeing what your internal temperatures are is Speedfan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

This will let you access your computer's thermal sensors and even control your fan speeds based on temperature. It helped me solve some airflow problems I had with my system.

Give it a try. Post your temperature results (system, processor core, hard drive) here and maybe you can get some more targeted advice.

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What if, tomorrow, being a stalker in PvP was declared illegal and all stalkers that had previously PvP'd were given the same treatment? While admittedly this is a bit of a straw-man argument,

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Only a bit? How about a little fire, scarecrow?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you're one of the people worried that you might have a character rolled back or lost to you, then the reason you're worried is because you KNOW you exploited the system to get the benefits you received.

Being worried about the possible punishment for egregious abuse means you know that something you've done has been egregious abuse.

So ask yourself honestly, do you feel you've been abusing the system? If not, then you have nothing to worry about. If so, you have no one to blame but yourself.

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Ideally, I'm looking for a way to make a boss objective, who won't attack until the players do. That way, I can give him some text upon seeing the players, but let him appear to be 'friendly' until they decide to initiate hostilities. Ideally, this would apply to a group of surrounding minions as well, but I will settle for just the boss if need be.

The only way I can think of to pull this off, in a very limited capacity, is to set the boss as a 'rescue captive' objective with a single enemy group setting. Then, when the players 'rescue' him, have the actual boss spawn elsewhere. The problem, though, is that it seems with the 'single' enemy group set, the mission treats the objective as complete before the players reach the boss. Sigh.

So, I think I may be stuck having to rewrite this encounter- but I figure I'd post to see if anyone's thought of a novel way to achieve this.

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I don't know if it's been fixed, but there is a setting for a rescue captive that when you lead them to the door, they then betray you and fight instead of just leaving. When I last tried to use it, they turned red but then were giving "invalid target" but that WAS right after launch. It may have been fixed since.

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After reading alot of posts this morning about how people ONLY ran some of the COMM Officers farms to get through the BORING low level content,

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You can also run legitimate MA arcs to get through the "boring" low level content. Legitimate MA arcs give out XP and tickets too.

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I really think the devs should look at what IMDB has chosen to do with their ratings. It's the closest equivalent I can think of to what the MA ratings system is trying to achieve, and they've got a lot of experience with it by now (the site has been around at least 15 years, with a huge participation volume).

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Closer to 20 years. It was launched in 1990.

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OK check it.

The devs have only culled the enemy mob lists TEMPORARILY. Posi stated that the missing mobs/objects would be back once the dev team had time to recode AE-only versions of them.


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I've not seen this. I hope it's true. Do you have a link to where this was said?

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Its amazing the budding shakespears in the crowd always seem to feel that any 1 stars come from "dirty farmers" and not because their prose is dog crap. Just because you like to sing in the shower doesnt make you american idol material....on the other hand, after hearing some of those..maybe it does

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Umm, reading comprehension class?


There are farmers that have admitted to this, and I have caught missions with 5-star ratings and 100+ votes suddenly getting a large number of votes that pushed it to 4-star.


BTW, I have one arc. It's currently 4-star and never had anything lower than a 3. (And I use a global handle that is different from my forum handle, so I don't have to worry about being rating griefed by forum trolls.)

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Feel happy, the flip side of the coin are not only 1 starring missions but reporting them even though it is not against the rules unless an exploit is built into the mission.


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Personally, I WON'T report farm missions, because I fear that the dev's actions will ultimately impact us all, as we've seen happen already in the short time since launch. We're already on the slippery slope of entire groups being culled from MA as it is. We don't need to encourage that.

The sole and complete issue I have with farmers and those who make farm maps, is that they are the cause for having certain enemies, sometimes entire enemy groups, no longer being available in MA because of their abusing them for farming purposes. This directly impacts me as an MA author in that I can no longer use content because of those people.

They effectively have stolen part of the game from me that I used to have access to, but now do not. And yes, I DID have access to it. Since MA's launch, a large number of mobs have been removed from MA and I fear even more coming soon. The attitude of "farming doesn't hurt anyone else" is completely bogus when it comes to the MA. If you farm in this manner, such that it causes the devs to punish us all for your actions, then you ARE harming everyone else. Continuing to deny it will just prove that you don't care if you hurt others or not.

If your actions don't impact me, I don't care what you do, but as soon as I am losing access to parts of the game I once had because of you, well now we have an issue.

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Perhaps they need to set up a different filter for custom critter names, because seriously, you can't copyright the word "gambit," nor any other word. Perhaps Marvel or DC will introduce a new hero named "The" and destroy fiction entirely.

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It was never a question of Copyright. It's a question of Trademark, which is an entirely different set of laws overseen by an entirely different government agency. You cannot copyright a word, but you CAN Trademark one.

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There's simply no way to cover all sensible combinations with just 3 levels. There needs to be several per powerset.

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What they need is just simply the ability for us to toggle on which powers we want a custom critter to have. I don't know why there need to be pre-set combos at all.