Venture

Ernest Hemmingway only needed six words; I'm sure you can make do with five missions.

Pretty sure it was at 4 stars when I posted it....

This list of "maps that could be exploited to begin with" would be "all of them".

When I've tried this in the past I got the circular-objectives warning, but now that you mention it I did do it in "Splintered Shields" and didn't even notice.

You mean like how a majority of the players don't like being made to run all over the map multiple times for chained objectives?

You only get five missions. "Multi-part arcs" fail.

And in my experience, the majority of commentators have spoken against heavy use of chained objectives as a matter of mission design.

No, but the bad uses far outnumber the good.

Yes, but it does so in a way that does not require the player to run all over hell's half-acre.

A very few. In each case I was very hesitant about adding them and paid particular attention to feedback. The most egregious use is in the second act of "Splintered Shields": the player arrives at a cargo ship full of Family and a villain (Boss) being attacked by Longbow; when the Boss at the back snuffs it an Arachnos Boss is triggered at the front with a bunch of patrols. You then have to fight your way back out to take him down. No one has objected to it, and most of the time when it's mentioned the feedback has been along the lines of "the fight out is better than the fight in". I could omit the Family and villain and just have the Longbow and Arachnos duking it out when the player arrives, but that would make it pretty much the same as the first act of the arc.

If a mechanic promotes more bad storytelling and mission design than good then it's a bad mechanic and serious thought should be given to its exclusion from the system. Yes, this means a few good writers get penalized, but this is why we can't have nice things. If the system promotes the creation of bad arcs then people trying it out will find the bad arcs and conclude AE is not worth their time. Which, by the way, is the most commonly-expressed opinion I hear in chat channels.

You just told us.

I've reviewed between 150 and 200 arcs (I've lost count), and played I don't know how many that I didn't review. Do you seriously think you've done something original here? I've seen this kind of thing lots of times. It's a PITA.

"Blowback" has a 4/85, "Two Households Alike" a 4/66, "Why We Fight" a 4/29, and "Splintered Shields" a 4/38. From a popularity standpoint, all of these arcs are complete failures.

First off, you lost most people at "escort". In case you haven't figured this out, most players hate escorts with the heat of a thousand suns. Players will zone in and out to recycle their newspaper/scanner lists if it's full of escorts. Second, since you can't trigger two objectives off of one completion, your intermediary objective must trigger the Boss or vice-versa; what happens if the triggered one spawns behind the player? Oops. You'll probably answer "that can't happen" but even if you're careful about map choices and zone placements I'd be willing to bet it sometimes does.

I played EQ for five years, starting on the day of its release. I soloed a Ranger to 49 before they removed the 40% XP penalty on hybrids and I walked everywhere I could get to without a teleport (except on the few occasions guildmates needed me somewhere fast). As a lowbie, before getting SoW (which for Rangers was 39 back then) I used to run back and forth between Surefall Glade and East Commons, the E'ci market zone, to make and sell bows. I know what long travel times look like, I think City players are spoiled brats when it comes to travel times, and I still think maps with bunches of triggered objectives are more trouble than they are worth.

No, you write the mission so it doesn't matter if they defeat Boss 1 or Boss 2 first. If Boss 1 absolutely, positively has to snuff it first, put him in the prior mission.

Nonsense, and if you can't write your "story and dialogue" without using chained objectives you're not as smart or creative as you think you are.

I hate it already.

Most players really don't want to run over the map four times. Chained objectives are another feature that probably should have been left out. Bad uses outnumber the good by about a factor of 10.

Judging from the reviews I've gotten, evidently so have I.

As for the non-snarky replies:

Four missions in two arcs, five in the other six, though to be fair two of the missions in "The Christmas We Get" are very short (as in some people have completed act III in less time than it took to load).

As many as they need. I don't skimp but I adhere to the "less is more" principle. I don't throw in extra stuff just because there's room. (nav bar: "Click 47 glowies!" player: "DIE IN A FIRE!")

Again, as many as I need, which often is not many.

Breaking down arcs by space used:

"Why We Fight" and "Psychophage" are the two four-mission arcs, FWIW. The latter was written to be deliberately bad and still got a four-star review....

You can tell from these numbers which arcs are high on customs and which rely mainly on stock mobs. Personally I regard heavy use of custom mobs with grave suspicion, as it is a strong positive indicator of an arc with no real story trying to get over on special effects. This is why I'm not optimistic about the coming increase in file space allotments; there is nothing you can do with the extra space but put in more custom mobs. In my not so humble opinion, "Splintered Shields" and "The Christmas We Get" are as good as anything else I've seen in the system and both rely heavily on stock factions. (I could cut the space used by "Shields" significantly if I used stock Malta instead of my custom version, which only appears in one act anyway.)

As much as they need, again, which tends towards using the bulk of the field's space.

Not much, I usually get them right the first time. "Households" probably saw more mob tuning than all the other arcs put together. "Psychophage" has no stock mobs in it at all and it took me less time than any of the others except for "Christmas".

Depends on how badly I screwed up the first time.

I usually use my heavily-purpled Scrapper (Claws/SR) while writing, and squishy-test with a Kheldian or a Defender. I don't test balance for groups; groups have no balance to begin with. I only test with Bosses on and AVs off; if it passes with Bosses on it's going to be even easier with them off and if soloists turn AVs on they get what they deserve.

Not much, as you can see from the size figures.

I know all of this before I start writing, probably due to three decades of trying to stay five minutes ahead of the four to six people across the table.

I know the lore cold, pretty much; once in a while I will look up something just to confirm it.

Overthinking. Really, if you can solo it with a squishy, especially one that's under the recommended level and/or not slotted up with sets, ship it. ("Shields" is a 45-54 arc; I cleared it with a 30 Storm/Electric Defender with common IOs.)

I do everything in one pass, running each mission in Test mode to make sure it works before moving on. I don't use external testers.

I saw, pretty much what I expected. I doubt anything they do is going to please any significant fraction of the authors. I can live with things the way they are, frankly, but then I still think the AE system should have zero rewards.

I don't. I'm not changing any of my arcs on account of this.

That would potentially break any number of otherwise-legitimate arcs. Reducing XP was probably the best solution they could pull off in the time available without too much collateral damage.

Take it up with Castle. Mistakes happen, this is one of them. Eventually something will be done about it, which will probably impact my characters. I won't cry over it.

And the flaw in the design that allowed people to create buffbots was a bug. That was the entire point of the prior post. Bugs are not just errors in code. Everything not forbidden is not permitted.

No, they were not designed this way on purpose. Castle has said in the past that they're aware there's too much positional Defense available from sets but they just don't know what to do about it. Taking advantage of that is not a Hell-worthy trespass but you have no complaint coming if/when this exploit gets closed.

It would be an exploit today and a fixed exploit tomorrow.

Yes, it is. Because it is:

A flaw can be a design flaw, not just a coding error. One of the Ariadne rockets exploded because of a flaw in its control software -- which was written perfectly to specification and passed testing. The specification was wrong. Just because the AE software was functioning does not mean it was not flawed. In this case, the design was flawed, and if you took advantage of that flaw to level faster than intended you are exploiting.

I very much doubt that you have.

Consider: a lawman in a remote community is faced with a band of killers. All the supposed upstanding members of the community turn their backs on him. Even his deputy won't help. Undeterred, the lawman keeps to his duty and faces the killers alone. Quick, does this story take place in Hadleyville, New Mexico or the moons of Jupiter?

Ever notice how Shakespeare's plays are usually transplanted to other settings and times? Orson Welles, working with WPA actors (i.e. people who weren't really actors and had no experience) put on a production of Macbeth set in Hati, with voodoo and mambos. It was hailed as a triumph.

If you've got an actual story (doesn't have to rival Doestoyevsky, just something with an actual theme), as opposed to a mere narrative of events, then you can set that story anywhere with any characters. If the whole thing is going to fall down if you can't use a particular AV, there was nothing there to begin with.

a) If the story absolutely can't work without a specific character then the odds are that you don't even have a story. You probably have just a bunch of stuff that happened.

b) Characters like the Honoree, which are built to be fought by teams and/or are supposed to require TF-specific temp powers to fight, should not be available in the MA in the first place. At least not until we have the ability to gate arcs by actual team size.

Nothing is fun for groups, they destroy everything in their path without effort or risk.

If you feel your arc is too difficult to be cleared by most soloists, make your arc less difficult. Don't put in another moving part to compensate.

I only put allied mobs in my arcs when there is an actual story reason for them to be there, not as "helpers". If someone runs into something too difficult for them in a MA arc they can do the same thing they do in the regular game: ask for teammates to help them.

Clues are limited to 100 characters. That's less than a freaking tweet.