dugfromthearth

some contacts are annoying and some lie and trick you.

It is very annoying to end an arc being told you've been duped and having nothing you can do about it.

Enter - the vengeance mission.

Now your contact is not likely to send you on a mission to hunt them down, but they can give you clues.

Hardcase "Thanks for your help. I made so much money off of you, I'm headed down to the bank."

Choice: Follow Hardcase to the Bank.

Then have a bank mission where Hardcase is the enemy and you can defeat him.

The casino would also work for this.

you cannot officially change the contact during an arc, but sometimes you want to for the story.

The only way I know to do this is to have the "contact" not be an actual person but be a computer, desk, or something else through which you talk to the real contact. That way you can get a phone call or email from different people throughout the arc.

Are there any other ways to do it?

nope.

The only way to specify an enemy is as a boss objective.
Every other way they are random.

to avoid griefing- the rating should ignore a certain percentage of ratings - the highest and the lowest.

Ignore the top 10% and lowest 10%.

That way if 10% of the people are griefers and rate a great arc a 0, it doesn't count. But if the arc is just bad and most people rate it low - it gets a low rating.

we definitely need to list the genre of missions - could be action or horror, but more importantly could be spoof, or humor. Maybe the guy intended it to be that dumb. But the player should be warned.

A problem right now is simply the low number of ratings most have. A "proper" rating system drops the outliers once you get enough ratings. If an arc has 100 ratings it should drop the top 5 and bottom 5. So if a few people try to skew the ratings it gets fixed.

But if you only have 2 ratings there isn't much that can be done.

I asked this yesterday I think
Lady Sadako posted:
Unique Maps - Office - Mayhem's Hospital

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I always test my missions first a) because it helps you find those mistakes you made or maybe one thing should be tweaked better. b) There's a bunch of badges for testing and c) some people actually take pride and take the time in there work.

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I think you missed the point.

Other than badges requiring test mode - you can still find problems with and improve your arc by publishing it and playing it.

Basically you choose between badges for being in test mode, and xp and tickets for being published.

Set up Ms. Liberty as a rescue, not an ally.
When you rescue her she says she needs to find her girdle and runs off.

This triggers the glowie quest to find her girdle.
When you find her girdle it triggers her as a solo ally - when you find her again she can fight because now you have the girdle.

an allied ambush? I've never tried that.]

I have an arc where you are supposed to get reinforcements at the end. I just have it as an ally appearing.

A reinforcement ambush would be great.

I found I had regen at medium with the self heal on, instead of minimum. I reduced it down.

the boss in the villain group has pain control.
I am planning on toning that down (it is probably set to extreme right now).

The problem is that my testing doesn't show what a group encounters.

the villain uses stone melee. It's a minion. I had regen as the second power. I got a comment that all of the regen made the mission too tough (at least for lvl 16s).

So in this case, and in general - if you just want one powerset really - what's a good second powerset to take which won't make them too powerful or alter the feel of the villain?

the system doesn't universally work. You can't set some mission types as a trigger. Like you can't trigger off an ambush (and you can't make an ambush required for the mission).

if you have a unique boss - you need to put them in a different group.

basic enemy group is Crey. Put your unique boss in Crey Research.

That way any Crey spawns will not spawn your unique boss. For the boss spawn select him from Crey Research and the rest of the spawn around him from Crey.

thanks

it is used in a task force - I think it is a base office, but it has screens and gurneys and stuff throughout it.

it seems the perfect evil setting for my final mission.

it occurs to me that making a character with an alt build with invisibility and superspeed would make running through missions to look at the objectives, see how the spawns are laid out etc, would be helpful.

or maybe just a stalker

Anyone setting up spy characters to be able to look over their missions without the fighting?

the problem is you can't sort by level. So even if you make a mission for low levels, the people who need it may not find it.

I have dialog for the unaware enemy, dialog for unaware ally, and dialog for enemy attacks and ally is aware.

Whenever I go into missions it plays all at once and just zips by. Is that just the way it does it? Am I approaching to quickly? Are you just not supposed to use all of the text options?

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Hm, you know, I need to add that to the tutorial if I can find a good guideline. There's a temptation to put in a large map so players will have lots of space to play around in (plus it feels so grandiose)...

What would you say the ideal should be? Small Maps - quick task, Medium Maps - Default, Large Maps - You want players to feel the burn ...?

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it should be based on how many objectives you want the player to do. Basic spawns are filler. after a small map of basic spawns they are not generally fun, just tedious.

If you have only one objective use a small map.

Only use a large map if you have number of objectives or story that needs it. A story should be tight - it should be the size it needs to be and no larger or smaller.

If you want to fight more enemies it is easy enough to start another mission.

it is really simple to click unpublish, edit the local copy, then republish.

I really wish that publishing it ran a great risk that people would play it. I have 2 published arcs - one has been played once (and rated 4 stars) and the other never played.

And I put Test in the title if it isn't finished.

when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.

So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.

if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?

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I enjoyed the start of the mission, because I found it humorous to be able to beat up satirical versions of a prolific forum poster. After defeating the 43rd black gargoyle however, it started to get a bit old and the mission had little else to recommend it, it seemed like a one trick pony. I could potentially enjoy the arc, but it would need to work on more than that one level.

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but some things never get old.

The only 2 things I've really hated so far was:

an EB with regen. My tanker's health and his health didn't drop. I just gave up after a few minutes.

A mission filled with elec blast enemies. Every one of them. My endurance was gone in the second fight and they weren't killing me but I couldn't do anything.

Arc Name: Skull Duggery
Arc ID: 12086
Faction: Skulls
Creator Global/Forum Name: dugfromthearth
Difficulty Level: Medium/High
Level Requirement: 10-15
Alignment: Heroic
Synopsis: The Skulls are stealing corpses for their new voodoo rituals. Patrol the cemetery with the Legacy Chain.
Estimated Time to Play: 30 minutes

Arc Name: Crey Havoc and Unleash...
Arc ID: 9286
Faction: Crey
Creator Global/Forum Name: Dugfromthearth
Difficulty Level: Moderate
Synopsis: Aid Longbow in raiding a Crey lab.
Estimated Time to Play: 15-20 minutes (1 mission)