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Game-wise, sometimes I have time for a huge meal, sometimes I only have time to grab a snack. The very short arcs are AE snack food, and finding good ones can be challenging. I've written both, and play both according to available time and what I feel like at the moment.

And that's how you do that.

All of them. Each has something to offer.

High population: Freedom, Virtue
Medium population: Infinity, Champion
Low population: Pinnacle, Protector
Role playing: Virtue
"Role playing": Dark corners of Pocket D
Friendly alcoholics: Pinnacle

Try them all, you have the slots already!

Hopefully they're all Thugs Masterminds.

If it's optional, sure. Some people don't want or need the additional graphical/information processing overhead.

I'd have to say "it depends". Some architects add allies specifically to help deal with custom mobs, EBs or AVs that might be difficult to handle solo. Others add allies to help drive the story. Adding a very powerful ally can make players the co-star of their own stories and smacks of Mary Sue-ism, especially when said allies are obvious reproductions of player characters.

Test your missions with a variety of ATs; if the ally is helpful but not TOO helpful, you're probably fine. If you find yourself following in the allies' wake while they clear every mob, you might want to reconsider (like a mission I played that had 10 - that's TEN - red Elite Bosses "helping me out").

The best way seems to be looking on the forums. You'll get shameless plugs for arcs that people are proud of, and unsolicited praise of gems people have run across.

Put "marauders to defeat" in the plural block, and "defeat last marauder" in the singular block.

In my case, the small number of plays makes it easy. You get 5 tickets per star from everyone who rates you, so if I had 170 tickets and 12 plays yesterday and have 195 tickets and 13 plays today, then 1 person played my arc and rated it 5 stars. Zero-star votes and abstentions both yield no tickets, so you'll have to do the math to see whether or not your average was affected. There number of comments tends to be low whether the ratings are good or bad.

It may have been a legitimate "I hate your arc" zero-star vote, or a mistaken "I mostly hate your arc" zero-star vote that was intended to be a 1-star vote, or their pet cat, or Freemasons, sunspot activity, rockin' pneumonia or the boogie-woogie flu. Whatever the reason, I think it would be helpful for players to be able to see that that vote was an outlier.

The Crey clone lab map, and a few others...take a look through this thread for a more comprehensive list.

1) I don't know.

2) Everyone can read all the clues, but only the clicker gets the "Clue Found!" popup.

I don't think any of the pulled maps were...two of my three arcs were invalidated by yoinked maps in the patch, and I only found out by finding a forum thread talking about it.

It was pulled in the 5/5 patch...we theorize it has something to do with the number/location of spawn points. It'll be back.

Yeah, that would be counterproductive for the farm builders. They'd be attracting exactly the wrong sort of people...kinda like inviting the police to tour your meth lab.

There seems to be a fair amount of dissatisfaction with the ratings systems as it stands, in large part because it can be easily griefed. Zero-star ratings do an inordinate amount of damage and can instantly banish well-regarded arcs to statistical invisibility.

The first arc in my sig currently has 13 plays and is rated at 4 stars. Due to ticket awards and/or actually being on line, I know exactly how the ratings break down for this arc. It has:
<ul type="square">[*]9 5-star votes[*]2 4-star votes[*]1 Zero-star vote[*]1 abstention (no vote)[/list]Based on this information, I've come to the conclusion that most people really like it, but that I was griefed once. If players could see the distribution of votes, they could see what most people think about an arc and draw their own conclusions accordingly. The only thing this wouldn't address is being banished to page 214 by a zero-star vote, but at least if anyone found you again, they could see for themselves what probably happened.

For those of you who buy computer parts online, Newegg uses a similar system (X eggs out of 5, with a breakdown of votes), and it is easy to determine whether a three-egg part is REALLY a three-egg part, or if it's a 5-egg part whose overall rating was dragged down by a one or two dissatisfied people.

Thoughts?

If you have a complicated story to tell, you have to use every means at your disposal to tell it: enemy bios, dialog, mission entry and exit popups, and of course everything the contact says. If I could have one feature added to the MA, it would be triggerable dialog that didn't rely on combat (achieve objective X or enter area Y, ally says Z).

I guess you could award the "Cat Herder" badge* for 100 hours with the star...


*The "Catgirl Herder" badge is awarded to characters on Virtue

How is THAT reactionary? Sheesh, get with the program and do some doomsaying, at least.

Yes, but we can't tell you about it.

I've said it before many times, but I'll say it again now:

Vigilance would be greatly improved if it took the defender's own health into account.

Good for soloers, good for teams, good for proactive and reactive sets. I think the endurance discount is useful and thematically appropriate, so I'd be happy with this one tweak.

People will back to their usual gaming habits after a few weeks...MA is still the new shiny. Stay calm, all is well.

I'll play on that team.

Yep, you nailed it...the devs hate it when we enjoy their work.

Somebody probably stayed up nights figuring out how to use the animation to get something for nothing.