StratoNexus

Thank you very much for your time. I will keep your comments in mind (well, more probably I will re-read them a bunch of times) as I rework the arc to lessen the tedium and bring some more cohesion to the story.

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do people think they're getting too long, too sprawling?

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I do not, but then again I appreciate all the ideas and critiques you offered me.

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That vice is quite terrible because it doesn't just look like you didn't explain something, it makes it look like you can't.

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I can, but I have to struggle mightily and I still fall back into the bad habit far too often.

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You overvalue purist realism in a world with psychic policemen.

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Agreed. While I have been beaten on this point before, my brain is still comfortable there, sadly.

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Hope this has been useful.

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Extremely. Once again, thank you for your time, I wish it would have been more enjoyable for you.

Thank you very much for the look and review. I think you got the tone and flavor of the arc down perfectly. Most all of your comments are dead on and while some of the things you dislike I did on purpose and like myself, I am glad to hear them all pointed out, it means I conveyed the idea at least, even if you feel it is a lame idea.

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have him explicitly mention 'I know this seems beneath you, but...

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Good advice. I thought I hinted at that enough in the intro and then explained it better after misison 1, but I like your suggestion to make it more blatant ahead of time.

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give me some reason why my character needs to do a defeat all

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I don't hate defeat all missions unless they are overused. I guess to me, clearing out all Council invaders in a city business is something a Hero would do, since it is so close to residences and such. I know, in theory, the local PPD/Longbow could take care of it and I could let the player choose how they want to roleplay it. Maybe I will alter it, but I am inclined to leave it as is.

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But I will say, due to level range of the arc coupled with the in-continuity weirdness of a defeat-all that's supposedly about retrieving information from ... a robbery site? Why did they set up computers on the site of the robbery? It seems very odd to me, really, since surely the police would have turned up at the site... anyway.

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Agreed. It was supposed to be odd. I am glad you got that feeling, it means I succeeded.

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I suppose the idea of dragging together an all-women independent mercenary group, a secret coalition of antisupers who want to purge the world of metahumans, and an all-male organisation of fascist supersoldiers seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I just doesn't work for me

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I am not entirely happy with how the battles function works in MA. While it was an interesting idea to allow the game to have enemies actually fight each other, I think I preferred the old way, where they just appeared to be fighting each other. That way the player could see the battles (many battles are over before the player even gets to see them, in my experience). The fact that the groups are not working together well and that only some members of each organization have betrayed their standard values was supposed to be evident from the battles and the dialogue in this mission. I also wanted the Gray Knight to speak more, but his rescue dialogue and clue text were very limited in space. Perhaps, I will add some more commentary from him in the form of a letter as part of the return to contact text after mission 2.

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It calls together enemy groups who are pretty much diametrically opposed and only linked in that they annoy players or use technology, and it kinda 'squishes' them all together without some amazing, idealistic leader to draw things together. And in the end, there's not really much of a conclusion.

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This commentary is so familiar to me. This is a terrible flaw I have in creation of a story, not letting the players in on all the information, because they likely would not have it all. While it makes sense and is realistic, people would like that information in a fiction environment. I will indeed look for ways to give the player a better feeling for why these events are shaping up as they do, starting with that extra information from the Gray Knight and I think I can introduce some more information from "our" world Council. Did you read the clues? I have a feeling most people ignore them, and I put a fair amount of information there, but still probably not enough, and I should consider that people ignore the Clues tab often.

As far as conclusion... well, I like the last mission as is. I considered the big-bad route. An EB or AV, that charismatic leader to draw them together (a Council Empire Center seemed the obvious choice) that you must defeat. I decided to go with a fight against an army of men, their generals, and their technology instead. The mission text and clues up to this point do indeed hint that the Alliance is not well formed and lacks cohesion. Perhaps that was a bad choice, but at the time of writing, I was sick of the big-bad, so that influenced my decision to steer away from it.

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I quit the arc and give my rating, and quietly sigh to myself about how much a jerk it must make me look.

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Bah. If you're not having fun quitting is the smart thing to do.

Arc Name: The Empire - One Alliance
Level: 40+
Publish Number: 1044
Description: Inter-dimensional warfare. Political intrigue. Odd alliances. Stop the invasion. This arc is appropriate for solo and team play.
Length: 4 missions. 1 big map. 3 medium maps. 1 Kill all. 30-60 minutes, depending on team.

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And what happens? He starts a real massive argument with me trying to justify what he made.

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He did not start the argument, you did. You provided feedback. He responded. All you had to do to end it was respond to his response like this... "OK." Then go on with your life. You do not need to defend your feedback and they do not need to heed it.

The arc is intended for higher levels. No EBs or custom critters, but it does have some of the tougher spawns from the devs. I am worried it might be too difficult, although it didn't seem any harder than standard fare to me. I like the story, or else I wouldn't have written it, but I am a better oral/interactive storyteller than I am a writer (I feed on other peoples ideas, social critter that I am). The custom group is just a mix of Malta and Knives, so they will spawn together.

Arc Name: The Empire - One Alliance
Publish Number: 1044
Description: Inter-dimensional warfare. Political intrigue. Odd alliances. Stop the invasion. This arc is appropriate for solo and team play.
Length: 4 missions. 1 big map. 3 medium maps. 1 Kill all. 30-60 minutes, depending on team.

I ran Axis and Allies with some SG mates and put my feedback in that thread.

My arc is in my signature.

I liked the overall story and concept very much. I enjoyed the villain groups, including the custom groups. The mission goals, maps, and special bosses are all nicely done.

Mission 1 - Some more backstory here might be appropriate after the mission. Perhaps the clue could include some notes Hitler has about a political rival becoming too powerful and his concern about it. Maybe a pamphlet or somesuch with a picture of the player's character, demonstrating how the contact has been working on our behalf in the past. That way there is some political will behind the takeover as well.

Mission 2 - In the Nav window it says Defeat Allies. It might be confusing and seem like a kill all. Might be better to say Defeat Generals of the Allies or some such.

Mission 3 - If the map would support it, a few more battles would be nice. It brought me glee to aid my men, I'd like more opportunity to do it.

All missions - The information in the clues should be in the return to contact text. The clues should be redone some. As an example of why, the clue for mission 3 states that we forced the Soviet surrender, then we return to the contact who says that Russia's defeat is assured. That is backwards. It seems like the clues could contain information about what happened in mission 3, while the return to contact text explains how after our success there the campaign quickly moved to success in the rest of the Soviet Union.

Thank you for the enjoyable time. I ran the mission once with some SG mates, 4 or 5 man team. I liked it enough to run it again solo, in order to better critique it.

It is possible that MiA custom critters will boost the value of caltrops even higher than they are now. When +1 con Marital Arts bosses can AoE Dragon Tail for 1400+ damage, making sure you never (not even for a second) get into melee rises in value.

Arc Name: The Empire - One Alliance
Author: me
Publish Number: 1044
Description: Inter-dimensional warfare. Political intrigue. Odd alliances. Stop the invasion. This arc is appropriate for solo and team play.
Length: 4 missions. 1 big map. 3 medium maps. 1 Kill all. 30-60 minutes, depending on team.

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Which ones? The only one I can think of that might be there would be Warshades, but their pet requires you kill things first, as well. Which is unique.

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You can have out multiple Gun Drones.

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Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs didn't intend for people to not have multiple day job badges?

I'd agree that double negatives are bad....

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In this situation I think that the usage was appropriate. The negations do not cancel out.

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Shouldn't the question have read: Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs intended for people to have multiple day job badges?

I agree that double negatives are bad.

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One of us jokingly said "I know, make you stay logged out for a month straight.".


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Yeah, that would have been bad.

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I think there is a misconception that the devs explicitly want the badges to take a very long time to get. I think it has more to do with how long they want it to take for players to get the day job bonus powers, and to make them not easily farmable.

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I think they want it to take a bit over a month to get them. I think it may be possible to persuade them that it should take a bit less than a month, but I personally kind of like the idea of it taking about 1 month, give or take a few days.

If I had to guess, "I won't be able to get ALL the badges in under 8 months," is not going to persuade them to change the time required, but I could be wrong.

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You basically have said to badge collectors exactly that: "Continue to collect badges, but only collect some of them."

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That is indeed my position. I think it is a reasonable position.

Completists =! Collectors

I sympathize with the pain completists may feel, but I do not feel that all content for the rest of the gaming population should be totally constrained by their particular desires.

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Badges should be about showing your commitment to the game. It's about getting rewards for your hard work and dedication not to mention patience in farming completely annoying tasks.

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I (and every other badger I've seen post here for that matter) just want them to create badges based on gameplay. What's the point of having a tangible reward for not playing the game for 2.6M seconds?

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Badges are signs of a variety of achievements that can be gotten in various ways and are being engineered more and more so that a variety of playstyles are included. I am glad that more and more badges are seen as out of reach by more and more people (but most badges are still obtainable by most people). Everyone should have some badges they view as unavailable or unobtainable by them or by their playstyle choices, IMO.

Making all badges forever be achieved in the same manner as previous badges is not a direction I want to see the game take. I want to see more and more variety in the types of badges created, not less.

30 days sounds fine to me. So does 20 and so does 40. 15 and 45 seem a little too short or too long. 10 seems very short and 50 seems very long. 1 month just seems like a good period of time to me.

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If anything, we need more unique badges that require substantial time and skill investments.

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Therein lies the solution.

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That may include badges you aren't skilled enough to earn. Is it still OK?

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jeeeez 30 freakin days?? screw that, not even gonna touch the day job thing.

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One can tell that the devs are really going to need to stress that whole non-consecutive part.

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Now, because they tied badges to the system, they bring in a completely different set of competing criteria that it now is a sizable barrier to badge completists

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You can't tell people "be a collector, of some stuff." That's incompatible with the collector mindset, and a good game designer should acknowledge the target audience they are targetting.

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Are you sure most collectors are also completists? There can be value to collecting something, without the goal of collecting all of something. I know a lot of collectors who do not and will not ever have all of something and they still seem happy with their collecting hobby, but I do not know enough of psychology to say which way is the best here.

Completists might get alienated by a system where they can't collect it all, but I and all of my SG mates still collect badges here and there, and not just for the powers and other rewards, even though I think we only have one or two completists amongst us (one for sure, but they seem OK with the fact that it will take a very long time for them to complete, and the other I think is a closet completist).

Perhaps the target is collectors, not completists. That may or may not be a good choice, I have no idea if there is even a real distinction, but it seems to me there is one.

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Just to clarify "Priority Issue" was just the term I put at the end of all the issues that received a certain number of votes during the voting period.

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Sorry, I just grabbed the stuff I wanted to vote for this time around and copy/pasted. After I finished I should have removed the priority issue tag, but I got lazy.

In no particular order I vote for the below:

The current rep and bounty system doesn’t reward new and learning players. Look at changing the reward system we already have to one where you gain just for participating but still gain more for winning.

People often have to reset matches multiple times to get an acceptable map. Add selectable maps, as well as the ability to eliminate maps from the selection while still having a random pick. Priority Issue

There’s no way of policing the tier of inspiration used even though tier 1s are the only thing sold at the arena store. Add an option to limit the tier of inspirations used. Priority Issue

Since team size on non-SG matches caps at 8 people, new people who want to play are often shut out of matches. Allow non-SG matches to be greater than 8v8. Priority Issue

There are no options in arena matches that aren’t just “kill the most people on the other team.” Add objective based instanced PvP like capture the flag and king of the hill. Priority Issue

Popular events like lethal lotteries and kickball are hard to organize using the current arena UI. Make mechanics to auto run some of the more popular styles. Priority Issue

It’s annoying to have to trudge through multiple zones to find out where the greatest amount of PvP is happening. Add a /pvpcount or other slash command that would give a count of heroes and villains in the various pvp zones. If possible include people on /hide in the count. Priority Issue

In most zones there’s no reward for killing other players who are PvPing. Expand the bounty system to all the PvP zones. Priority Issue

There’s no open zone where heroes and villains are able to team. Allow heroes and villains to team in Warburg.

Allow for raids to be set to 30 minutes instead of an hour.

Cross Server PvP

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Is there a guide anywhere for Mental Manipulation? I noticed in the main thread, MM is NOT listed in the Secondary Sets.

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I have posted my Mental Manipulation Guide - I12 in the Player Guides section.

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I don't need to put an anti-Blapper rant in this thing, do I?

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I hope not, but if you told me to keep my Fire/Fire blaster at range, I'd cry.

The flier respawns every 20 minutes from the time the first person enters the mission. I find it very helpful to push a timer as soon as I enter. If after clearing the 4 AVs I look and notice we are near 20 or 40 minutes, we just call a break until the thing respawns. Saves having to beat it down twice, gives a nice leg stretch and beverage refill. Also useful if we catch the flier in the middle of its spawn period and decide to start right away, and then after clearing a tower or two we notice the time is getting close we will pull out and wait for it to respawn in safety.

Vine Room - after clearing the CoT, we move around to a position about 9-10 o'clock on the map near the outer wall (west side, slightly north), there is a nice rock there and it is plenty far from tree aggro. We dole out buffs and then have most of the team move out and kill vines working clockwise, while the Tanker(s) and possibly a tough scrapper move counter-clockwise. This generally avoids squishy tree aggro. Buffers of course need to understand that they cannot go help said tanker(s) and/or scrapper, and those armored characters need to understand they are on their own after the initial buffs (although they can always pull out of the tree area and run around the tree to get rebuffed, but usually the squishy team is already almost all the way around by the time buffs are wearing off). The squishy team needs to be aware of when they hit 3 o'clock and be cautious to avoid tree aggro.

Mission 4: Strategy 1 - its proper name is Door of Doom! (also Happy Fun Time!)

GW - you mention mag 5 immobilize, however, I have noticed that she often still moves, no matter how much immob stacking we have. I think it would be worthwhile to mention in the main section that the tanker needs to STAY at range by backing up as GW occasionally tries to enter melee, instead of it just being a footnote. I also think it is worth mentioning that no one, other than the tanker, should be in front of GW, ever, since her hold power is a cone. Attacking her from behind is preferable. It might also be worth noting that if the tanker gets Black Holed, the rest of the team should probably pull out of melee and they need to be careful in case she turns around. If a second tanker is on the team, it is very helpful if the taunt tanker also has some range attacks, in order to build some damage on top of the taunting, just to make sure gauntlet doesn't get lucky and override the taunter (also the melee tanker should turn off any taunt aura, and scrappers with taunt auras should do likewise). I have seen PA take aggro off a taunting tanker as well, but that is dependent on how well slotted Taunt is and how many range attacks the taunter is using.

Mako - Mako will occasionally go crazy and start running a lot. I recommend the tanker not chase. If you don't chase, Mako always comes back, and the team doesn't have to try to reposition to avoid his cones. It might be worthwhile to mention that just before he Eludes he uses a nuke that stuns for a long time, so status protection after you get him to 50% can be very helpful.

Scirocco - his AoE hold can be killer, and he likes to use it near the beginning of a fight and then if he lasts longe enough, occasionally throughout the fight. I'd recommend a note that while fighting him, status protection buffs (or BFs) are important for the squishies. He also has a tendency to drain End, although most teams can cover that pretty well.

Nice guide, I think it should be helpful.

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I mention this because, I don't know if all the powers provided this, but an 8% almost constant damage buff is considerable.

Am I way off here? or if I'm correct does this stack? Anyone? Or is this (mostly likely now that I'm thinking about it) the blaster defiance at work?


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I highly recommend that all Blasters should use the Attributes Monitor to at least monitor your damage buff. Watch it go up and down as you fight.