dugfromthearth

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If the arc is meant to be played with a team I will repeat some of the story in the clues just so that the rest of the team can follow along. Too often I've done an MA arc with a team and had no clue WTH was happening since so many important details were in the debriefings and ended up not even rating the arc because I couldn't make an informed decision.


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very good point. I should remember to put in some clues with at least a sketch of the plot.

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I thought the OP said NOT to pimp your own arcs.

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like we read more than thread titles.

space is tight and there are lots of places to add text. So where should you not bother to put add text (or add little)? And where should you definitely put it?

NPC descriptions - do you read them? What should be listed there?

Clues - do you read them?

NPC dialog - In general I like one line of dialog per group, two or three for rescues/allies and bosses. That's enough for flavor without becoming clutter.

Mission conclusion middle missions - if the mission does not end an arc, how much do you put into the mission successful text?

any other places to skimp on text?

I hope mine is good
72771 - Darkness Falls on Paragon

It is my attempt at horror - as much as can be done with supers. Skulls start practicing voodoo and raising zombies. All custom Skulls, so it can be played at any level.

there are a lot of limitations to MA.

keep in mind there are 20,000 arcs published. If each is 100k, that is 2,000,000k of mission arcs published. That's after a few weeks.

We definitely need to be able to have more unique characters - but the key to that is probably reducing the size they take up rather than allowing larger sizes.

Manually picking objective location is a problem due to possible abuse. It would be nice.

Cutscenes would probably take up a ton of file space - I would think that would be the main problem.

Map creation is also prone to abuse. But yes, it is one thing that I would really like.

You can't copy characters because they limit power selection in MA. Powers are not balanced - powersets are balanced in general. But the real issue is making wimpy villians for farming.

Basically size is a big issue - and giving the players more control lets them abuse the system more.

I am hoping we get more flexibility, but I'm not holding my breath.

right - if you want to force bosses, set up boss spawns with actual bosses.

you can also set up boss spawns with Lt's as the "boss" and set the spawn to hard to make larger spawns.

my him a rescue
you can make him single - so no other enemies. When you get to him he should run away (in theory you rescued him, but with animations and text you can make it clear he is fleeing).


or have enemies around. He won't fight. After they are defeated he runs away.

no, you just fail the mission. It has no effect on the rest of the arc.

nope, it's a bug

I have heard rumor that you can set ambushes to be allies. So you can trigger ambushes of allied toys off of objectives - they can be called in to help in a boss fight (when the boss is at 3/4 health) that sort of thing.

Also you can have battles between your allied toys and the enemy.

In both cases they don't follow you around, but they add the flavor of an army.

tag

nope. All you can do with standard enemies is put them in groups. you can't change anything about them.

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Depending on the name, there is always using "stupid name tricks" like using "l" for "I" etc. for now. Not exactly optimal, but you might get by, depending.

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I'll have to remember that.

You can make a lot of groups out of the Skulls that way

I have found tar patch in dark miasma is a fight changer. The heroes get stuck in it and lack movement. Add minions with ranged attacks and it becomes a death trap for the hero. But a hero who thinks will move out of the tar patch - it can't be recast. So it both limits movement and encourages movement.

Any healing is fight changing. But if minions heal there is nothing the hero can do - it is just a pain. Lt's or bosses healing makes it a tactical situation - take out the healer first.

I am wanting to do this for one of my missions.

I can have civilians. So I am going to see about adding in a bunch of rescue or ally missions set to "single" so the person has no enemy around them. That should make some more spawns be enemy free.

1) They don't have to be rescued. You can have an ally "single" which means there are no enemies with them. You still have to find them, but they don't need rescuing.

2) if they aren't captured (they are alone), then having them go in first isn't too bad.

3) not switch sides as such. You can make a rescue where you save them and they run through a door (they don't fight as an ally). Or have them as an escort - they will fight beside you, but you have to lead them out. Then have them as an enemy triggered by completion of the first objective. So you find them and they are friendly. Then they show up later as an enemy.

20,000 searchable arcs?

that's a lot of content.

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Here's another mess with them:
Use a five story building type setup, then have collection objects each triggered by another, alternate front and back with the first one back and only the first and last are required for completion you'd have like 20 clickies but only 1 or 2 is showing on the status bar.

That way they have fought through the whole building and have their ticket count when they hit the first one, and won't want to lose their bonus. So for the next 18 it is still showing Find Last Clickie.

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nice. But add an ambush of ninjitsu stalkers triggered to each. So you click, then get ambushed while going to find the others - that way you don't want to split up the team too much to search.

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Chances are it was a custom npc with any of the stalker pools featuring hide, and was flight enabled. When they hide, they flee for a few moments until they can come back and nail you with hefty hide bonus damage. I really wish we could get a weaker form of stealth to use on custom NPCs as I would like to have some that can go stealthy without the obnoxious values tied to the stalker pools and without that horridly nasty damage bonus too.

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the dark miasma I think has shadowfall which adds stealth. There are a couple of others. It isn't invisibility, but it reduces the range at which you see them.

and you can publish the arc, play it to test it, unpublish it.

than while "testing" you get tickets and xp.

hmm, so shorter missions should be first, longer missions at the end for more tickets.

I was thinking of adding a padding mission - something very short to meet a contact as a break from the long missions. I can still do that as mission 4, it makes the tickets for the final mission worth more by being mission 5 instead of mission 4.

You can add an ally that doesn't fight.

They can follow you, wander away, or other options.

An ally is completed when you rescue them - you don't have to escort them.

There is also a "rescue" objective that just requires you to free them - you don't have to escort them.

dang.

sounds clever. It would make me want see what the author could dream up.

I want an outdoor night map - forest, swamp, or something.

I don't want to have to select the map, enter the mission and check. Is there a way to tell from the map if it is at night?

Or just a site where I can view the maps and see if they are night maps?