Tubbius

PENGUIN and PENGUIN Part 2 have been capped at level 40 to better work around the Security Guards topping out at level 40.

I logged into the game a little earlier today to see if I had any tickets to claim. I didn't, but while in, I started looking through the first few pages of arcs.

I saw a Crey's Fire Cyborgs in Hall of Fame which I assume is a fire farm since other obvious farms reference it in their description.

I saw about a dozen obvious fire farms within the first four pages of arcs, most of them on page 4.

I'm not looking to raise the old farms vs. no farms argument; that's not getting settled soon, regardless of how I feel about it. What I'm puzzled about is WHY fire? Why are all these farms fire-based and nothing else? I'm guessing that fire-attacks are potentially highly unbalanced when compared to resists?

Thanks Eva. I appreciate it!

Hooray for another Hall of Fame that's NOT a farm! Congratulations!

Thanks, Coulomb2. I've had Option 5 come up mistakenly before, and even I didn't dig going through waves of grays just to beat a mission. I'd forgotten about Option 6 for the most part.

And PW, the other groups are Crey and Winter Horde (in PENGUIN) and Crey, Winter Horde, and a smattering of 5th Column (in PENGUIN Part 2). No customs other than a couple of bosses here and there. Level 40 would work in terms of power levels and "grand, epic feel" or not.

I've gone through and capped PENGUIN and PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge at 40 across the board for now. I'm going to see how they play in the next day or two and go from there. If they work, they'll stay that way for now; if not, then I'll readjust.

My one remaining concern is how this interacts with PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top. That's all Carnies straight for 3 missions. It mostly stands on its own, having minimal connection to the first two parts of the PENGUIN Trilogy (as it's known), but a level 40 coming off Part 2 wanting to play Part 3 is going to have an uphill fight all the way. . . . Then again, so will some fifties! Out of curiosity, what are Carnies like at level 40?

HOWEVER, I still want to hear folks' inputs on this! Please continue!

I have two arcs that both use Security Guards as a villain group; the Guards are, by default, levels 30-40. This sticks out as a sore thumb since all the other missions in both arcs go up to 54, so I've tried to keep the missions with Guards in them short and simple.

Someone posted this morning that I could easily make one of the arcs in question a level 40 cap throughout. It's a decent idea. Alternating level caps between missions looks sloppy in terms of writing.

However, I can see various sides.

Option 1: Leave it as-is.
Pros: Don't have to edit the arcs. Players can have a feeling of "powering up" after the first mission (if that's how they want to view it) since they're allowed to use their upper level stuff after the first mission is over.
Cons: Security Guards STILL stick out like a sore thumb. It's not just that I want a group with guns. It's that Security Guards make SENSE where they're used in both arcs. (Will come back to this shortly!)

Option 2: Edit the rest of the arcs to cap at 40.
Pros: Easy fix that means players won't have to deal with upper-end bad guys. Allows for consistency throughout (granted, if you have a level 30-40 character running the arcs, nothing changes).
Cons: Many players don't LIKE losing powers and/or set bonuses when they have to drop down to run on a team or mission, which means they might not run the arc if they would lose powers and/or set bonuses.

Option 3: Create an alternate group to replace Security Guards.
Pros: Can set the level ranges, powers, and group consistency to whatever I like.
Cons: Custom groups are tricky to balance and aggravating to design.

Option 4: Use a different group from Security Guards.
Pros: Get the level range to match the rest.
Cons: Muddles up the story by introducing a possibly unrelated faction.

From a story perspective, leaving the cap at level 40 versus Security Guards can make sense: these guys are paid workers doing their jobs. They're not Crey's elite operatives. They might be average dudes in bad situations taking jobs they can find; thus, a hero might go a little easier on them, and a villain might not think they're worth the full extent of his/her powers. That way, when the heroes/villains get into the later missions and have to deal with Crey and others, they decide to cut loose against the real threats.

What do you folks think?

Found out the problem!!!!

This was isolated to one character.

A couple days ago, I tried to claim a medium orange inspiration from an email. It failed with the same error message, but it didn't go back to my email. I shrugged it off.

I just now placed an inspiration in Wentworth's to test a theory. The missing orange inspiration popped right into my inspiration box as if nothing had ever happened. I used it and got my other inspiration back, and now everything looks ok.

So lesson learned: be VERY careful using the email system to send/receive items.

EDIT TO ADD: all this was just confirmed in a support email from one of the GMs. Thanks to them for the quick response!

Hi folks.

Over the last couple days or so, I've been receiving occasional "Your inventory is full. The item could not be added" pop ups in game. Normally, I'd say, "Ok, whatever," and click out. . . but there's a problem.

It's happening whether nor not my inventory is full.

Today, I beamed out of my base only to have another pop up. I was at 1/10 enhancements, 44/80 salvage, and 9/29 recipes. Only my inspirations were full, and that tab was minimized. A few moments later, as I clicked on the Wentworth's lady, it happened again. It happened again as I typed in a price to see what a Luck of the Gambler part was running.

Is ANYONE out there experiencing this? I play exclusively on Justice, and I was on a level 50 plant/empath/ice controller today. I've not been tracking which particular characters this has been happening on.

I've also sent in a petition, just in case, to the support crew.

"Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City" has regained its original title, now that the filter is working better.

Also, "PENGUIN" has seen a complete revamping all the way through. It's still 3 missions, but its first mission now includes Security Guards and a level 40 cap, like "PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge" does.

Ahhhh. . . . Thank you! This is great info, and it's getting me thinking. Thanks!

Can we see some examples of how this might work? Are we talking incorporating characters from other arcs, branching from other authors' plot threads, referencing clue items from other arcs, etc.? I'd suppose that such references would need to give author, title, and arc ID in the reference?

What do you best recommend for authors looking to get in on this sort of thing?

Mcm! Nooooooo!

It's apparently picking up on the "Iceman" in "Policeman," there, First Son.

MCM, they fixed SOME stuff a couple days ago or so. When's the last time you checked?

Even Shakespeare had some bombs. Go read Titus Andronicus some time.

That said, I love the concept of the AE, and, admittedly, I like using it to put my own work out there. However, I do realize that it's not all about me and about my own stuff. Other people deserve the right to do their things, too.

Hammer and Sickle is fixed. You may remove it from the list.

Going to rename "The Hammer and Sickle Cross" back to "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City." "City of Ho Ho Ho" will keep its newly shortened title.

Shame to hear that "5th Column" is still broken.

I understand, Wrong Number, and will comply. If I find any 100% broken arcs, I'll put them here.

I wouldn't take this list as a means of slamming the Devs, Zombie Man. The intention here is more likely to let people know what to expect when they want to play arcs that are potentially buggy, so as not to negatively affect ratings due to issues out of the control of the arc authors.

For my part, 5 of my 7 arcs were affected. Two of those 5 have been unpublished ("This Costume Contest Sponsored by Tubbius" and "Fox Hunt"). The other 3 faced minimal but annoying editing to fix. All of my arcs are fixed and playable currently, but among the in-arc edits, I had to change two arc names to "City of Ho Ho Ho" (a shortening of "City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon," arc 18775) and "The Hammer and Sickle Cross" (formerly "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City," arc 351727).

"The Hammer and Sickle Cross" (351727, formerly "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City") usually receives four and five star ratings, as it did yesterday from two separate players. During the last few weeks, it received at least one lower value rating (pretty sure there were a 1 and a 3?) with no memorable comments. While this might have been a fluke, as there's always going to be someone who doesn't like what they see, I'd suggest that this filter issue likely affected the player's experience. The arc title itself was bugged (visible on quitting the arc as "Invalidstringreplacement" or some such), and two NPCs who appeared in the first three missions were bugged. Toxin was supposed to be a scrawny white and red character with a big red skull on his chest , while Tovarisch was supposed to be a guy wearing a burgundy trench coat and slacks with yellow shades and a bandana. I know that Toxin was being loaded up as some kind of generic Council robot or something.

Thus, while the arc was perfectly PLAYABLE, it was not perfectly ENJOYABLE for the player or for me as the author.

These errors have been adjusted, and the arc is back to its usual mix of 4 and 5 star rates.

ON THE OTHER HAND, "PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge" (302196) was briefly rendered inoperable, apparently, as a friend who was playing through the PENGUIN Trilogy had to skip the second portion and play only "PENGUIN" and "PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top." Again, this has been fixed, but apparently, the arcs are randomly playable or NOT if they are bugged.

I dig it, especially if it could work with AE arcs.

I'd agree that it's a likely guess that they're working primarily on the Steampunk pack. Like many of you, I really do want to see more attention paid to the MA, however, if only to show that they support the MA as a viable attention grabber for new players.

Assume that someone finds a copy of the old Architect Edition at their local game store and wants to try COH based on that. They get on and go about wanting to make an arc. . . and hit this wall. What's going to happen? That person is probably going to stop playing the game and let his/her subscription run out after the free month. The average player is NOT going to know of the existence of this forum and probably isn't going to care to try to find out about it if the first attempt at making an arc gets slammed because of a vaguely directive filter, resulting in a loss of potentially hours of work.

The developers may indeed have other things on their plate; that's fine, as they need to keep the game moving forward. But, like one of my science teachers said back in high school, "we're not going to just do something at the start of the semester and put it on a shelf where it won't be used again."

What I found last night, Peacemoon, is that I had to go in and edit not only the custom character info by itself but I also had to go in and edit the individual information field by field in the arc itself. After I did all that, it finally took. Check each individual line of text you typed in and adjust from there.

Wow. . . :O

I'm sorry to hear that, Wrong Number. That's, in a word, rough.

Again, here's hoping they can fix all this easily enough from here on.

In light of recent Copyright Filter issues in the MA, I've had to make some changes.

"This Costume Contest Sponsored by Tubbius" and "Fox Hunt" have been unpublished completely.

"City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon" has been renamed to "City of Ho Ho Ho."

"Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City" has been renamed to "The Hammer and Sickle Cross."