Aliana Blue

I'll submit mine, #1589, "Of Mentors and Legacy", a 5-mission, 35-50 heroic serious arc. (Hows that for informative?)

EDIT: Drat, I forgot to edit the standard line in the description to fit a horoscope! Silly c&p, hold on...

Gemini: If someone can feel things that are not as they seem this week, that's you. Try arc #1589, you feel there's something wrong with that simulation!

(But... Not all will be as it seems in that arc ad!)

Got a few reviews done here, the feedback helping a lot with polishing. Links in the forum:

Review by HolyEvilAoD.
Review by Frozen_Northman.



EDIT AGAIN: Grrrrah! Bad grammar mistake, no cookie for me today! >_<

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People on your ignore list can't play or rate your arcs.

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That's an excellent suggestion, and although it doesn't eliminate the problem, it seems like it could go a long way towards reducing the severity.

If a player became known for 0-star griefing, lots of people would just put them on ignore and avoid the risk. The reverse-grief - i.e. putting valid raters on ignore just to spite them - seems like it would only hurt the intended griefers.

Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I like it.

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Why do I care if the spammers can't play my arcs?

Because that's what fills my ignore list. I don't think I have any actual players in there.

Besides mission completion XP/Inf, there's arc XP/inf rewards (they can be - relatively - huge at the lower levels), patrol XP doesn't work in MA, and no Merits awarded. There's also no purple recipe drops.

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As yet another warning on taking the numbers too seriously, the exact percentage I choose for incoming psionic damage makes a huge difference to Invulnerability. I'm saying 5%. At 10%, you'd drop to 1021 with 10 enemies in range. At 0%, you'd be at 1963 with 10 enemies in range. That's a huge range for an almost arbitrary choice in the spreadsheet setup.

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^^ That.

I've found that, with Actin, not just my survivability varies a LOT depending on the damage type, my playstyle has to vary with the kind of damage/mob setup I'm facing.

Dull Pain can - and should - vary in its use as a maxhp or as a plain heal depending on what you're doing (against F/C/E/N I get more mileage by using it as a heal, because against those she's basically SR if she can get enough things in range, it works better as a huge heal on lucky hits).

Same goes for the mitigation tricks. Cycling targets to spread the to-hit debuffs of Dark Melee can pay off even if you're fighting more mobs for longer by doing that. Losing damage and interrupting the chain to spam Petrifying Gaze works too.

For what I've seen in this thread, the numbers are handy and give you an idea of where you're at when comparing with other scrappers if you take into account what kind of mitigation they have. They seem to work specially well if you compare the same secondary with the builds in front of you

I have a villain who was made to "ride in between", so this expansion will be perfect for her

I don't think any other of my characters will take advantage of this, at least can't think of any offhand.

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Another thing worth noting is that SW:OR is also based on an entirely different business model (microtransactions).

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Could I see a link to that? I hadn't heard that, but I'm very curious, since I've been hoping quietly that SW:OR will be a good game. Microtransactions seems to make that... less likely.

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It's a misquote of an exec running his mouth during an interview... AFAIK there's not been anything official about how the game will run.

* A hospital. Non-ruined, non-nonsensical-maze hospital. Or a set of them.
* More cargo boat maps. Really, apparently a lot of people like the boats for their storytelling, but I'm getting a bit tired of always getting into the same map! Different sizes and cargo distributions would help. Or just plain different kinds of boats!

Woo!

*Note to self: Avoid Psi mobs*

And thanks

Yeah, figured it'd be a hasten/no hasten thing instead of an overall average, for what you said =)

It's surprisingly low when not having psi damage tho, is that with one mob in Invincibility range or 10?

Psi damage kills Actin rather hilariously... The "dummy" boss in Arcana's challenge has killed me more often than the other mobs combined

This looks like fun!

If you don't mind, Werner (how much work is this for you anyway?), how does Actin fare in there?

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(I should get her more recharge one of these days)

Hey, glad you liked my arc! One thing:

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Well I answered an Ad I saw online from a "Dr. Raven." How cliched if you ask me. Perhaps she should change her name to something else.

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40+ plays and nobody seems to have picked on the reason for that particular name yet!

(Gotta love obscure stuff!).

Going by superscience theme (in a tongue-in-cheek way) you may like the arc in my sig: #61013, levels 5-25 (though after the latest changes to custom critters, the lower range is a bit too much on the hard side).

30:40 with Actin (DM/Inv). Spent most of the fight with ony one boss in range for Soul Drain (having to hammer Dark Consumption constantly does have a detrimental effect on SD fodder), and a Psi Lt. shooting at me the whole time didn't help, it's just a bit of -rech but every bit counts

That works out as 147.78 DPS.

So, I tried setting my civilians to "Random" again.

Indeed, they no longer show up as the ghosts that were holding them hostage.

Instead, all six come up as this creepy Tsoo dude (&lt;Tsoo&gt; group, in fact) and ranked as an "Artist" (instead of "Minion", "Boss", etc).

Hm, after a third try I got to see a different hostage in one of the spawns. All ghosts are still "cowering" (which is NOT the animation they're set to, and the victims are set to "default").

Guess I'll leave the clones for now, oh well

"Ally" setting for the guard group on hostage objective = lines triggering only when you drag an enemy in and the "allied" guards aggro said enemy. I had to add an ambush in a mission of mine that did that. You may be encountering something like this.

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Which, sadly, gives a new way to grief: start the mission, then quit. Over and over. It will look like the mission is unplayable, or not worth finishing.

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That's because, while trying to tiptoe around it, it doesn't change that it's basically a fancy thumbs up/down system.

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That is supposed to be fixed in the most recent patch: and the fact that at least the hostages aren't from the surrounding group like they used to be suggests that it has been fixed, at least partly. You might try and look at it again.

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It was? I'll check it again, thanks for the heads up!

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Since, unlike item names, rescue names are for internal reference alone and not shown to the player, you could also try making several rescues where there was only the one repeated 6 times. That way, you could give them different lines. If you use the same plural tag for each, the MA does the math and displays them as an aggregate.

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The problem is that the boss is only supposed to show up after you finish the rescues (cascading objectives), can't have more than one trigger so it's a no-go. Identical lines it is until they improve that

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Same here. Some missions are immediately obvious garbage, and I shouldn't have to play through five missions to rate it accordingly and try to warn off the next guy.

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However, if you can only rate it if you play through it and the only way to get to hall of fame is to get ratings, then bad/unplayable trash will automatically be penalized simply by not being rated. The good ones will get played and rated (or at least the playable ones will get played) the bad ones will not get completed and not get rated.

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I look forward to every HoF arc gaining a fifth mission (EDIT: well... or a fourth, an extra mission) as soon as they hit the HoF with the biggest outdoors map and filled with thugs/willpower AVs set to extreme. Just to make sure it can't be voted down from there.

"The arc is done, this is just a little something to make sure I don't get griefed. Thanks for playing!"

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I think the 'random' on the civilians is bugged anyway. I tried using them as hostiages in an arc I am currently building a nd when I went to test every single one of them spawned as the Tsoo guy (and I double checked, tripled checked, what I had it set as). Finally gave in and made them all one of the Dr/scientists guys.

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^^ That.

I tried random civilians in one of my arcs, guarded by ghosts, and the hostages ended up being ghosts. The worst thing is that rescuing the 6 civilians triggers the boss, so I ended up with 6 clones that use the same 6 lines, kind of spooky.

The only way to get them is to have standard "Hydra" as the group in whatever trigger you're using (I use them in an ambush). That means sometimes you'll get hydra men mixed in with the tentacles - or even no tentacles at all depending on the level range.

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This, exactly. It's nowhere near worth the headache. I was getting more xp from greens in mercy than stock mobs in MA at level 8.

In fact, at level 37, +1 custom elite bosses in MA seem to give LESS xp than a single Chief Soldier in the warzone. Im gonna have to go back and check that actually, it seems way too low.

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Patrol XP doesn't seem to apply inside the MA. At level 44, same mobs:

+1 minion (outside/inside): 3292/2195 = 1.49977
+1 boss (outside/inside): 16459/10973 = 1.49995

Don't ask me why though, I think it's pretty silly myself.

As for minions becoming too strong, I have to agree. I have a 5-25 arc that mixed custom mobs with stock ones to try and get a balance across the whole range. It was a bit on the tough side but perfectly doable before (I used some dual blades mixed with katana and mace, it used to be pure katana and mace and I mixed them up to help the lowbies and achieved a pretty decent balance).

Now I'm actually contemplating raising the minimum level because lowbies are having an exceedingly tough time in there

*Points at sig*

Thanks for the feedback! It's really funny, I read through it and saw you picked the same thing I did, the repeptitive patrols/encounters/whatnot. I went to write a note that, in the third mission, the hostages are all identical and the dialog the same because it's the only way to properly have cascading objectives... And then I realized that on mission 2, the boss encounters weren't triggering anything anymore. They used to during one of the iterations, but I changed it, and I didn't realize I could make individual bosses. That's been corrected

Object placement, except for the outdoors map (where I can't control anything) was indeed carefully chosen so that it would flow well - I handpicked the maps after a lot of testing Mission 1's objective spawns in that middle room almost 100% of the time (and when not, it's in the open back room, still easy to spot), the chained AV fights at the end all spawn in that room by choice too, I wanted to have the last AV be an ambush but since it can't be done, I had to choose a map where it'd spawn where I wanted him.

Going back to patrols and flavour, I figured you'd be running short on file space, it's what usually happens with custom mobs (heck, mine is at 92% and doesn't have that many customs!).

A single, no-text patrol eats 0.37% of the file space. Maybe you could split the patrols so that you have one patrol objective with the amount set to 1 or 2 patrols and having the dialog, and a second objective with the amount set to 6 or 7 and with no dialog at all (that way you keep the variety of mobs in the missions without flooding the chat window with identical lines)? You'd be looking at 1.5%-ish increase if it's done in all 5 missions, if you can scavenge that much space. 1% for 3 missions. May be doable

I use a Longbow Heavy from Recluse's Victory, they're not too hard to take down (much easier than the AVs).

My arc: 1589, of Mentors and Legacy. Heroic, 35+ (recommended 40+), shouldn't need a team if you use the help available on the hairy spots (there's 2 AVs at the end, but you have help )

So, playing Fog of War, making notes as I go along.

Mission 1:

- Description for the dwarves = win
- All patrols have the same dialog? Not sure how you're doing filesize-wise, but think you could separate them? Patrols tend to take very little space in the files.
- Little else to add, it serves as an introduction to the system, has some humorous quips, just as one would expect

Mission 2:
- Heh, it's not easy being green ^_^
- WALL OF BLUE TEXT! Erm... No, really, all the patrols popped out their text at the same time, ouch! Don't think it's even necessary, maybe you could have one separate patrol (or two) with their own flavour text, and the rest be silent?
- I like the "meta" part here of the visible data nodes.
- Tee hee, boss' description

Mission 3:
- More investigation. I think you've played the story well enough that more "go. hunt. kill gnomes." feels perfectly fine and not like a drag.
- Bwahahaha! A lousy boss indeed
- I finally came across some Lts! (playing this solo on Invincible, so far I had only seen minions - maybe throw a boss encounter or two with custom Lts. as bosses to showcase them in case someone's soloing?)
- Found the boss early - luck of the draw with outdoors maps

Mission 4:
- So, we're closing in! I almost expected a mission to infiltrate THEIR servers instead of this one
- Hm, more exposure to random Lts. It almost feels as if you picked whcich characters would be in which map.
- Dun DUN DUN! So we know who the traitor is! Nice twist, I suspect the reason at this point, let's see if I'm right

Mission 5:
- Ok, while I understand the thematic reason for the Plant/ mobs, I just spent one minute stuck in a "pit" of the map because I couldn't jump out (untill the debuff faded), and the vines tend to distract the allies (so you keep losing them).
- Oh the humanity of the minotaur!
- Aha, I was right about the traitor!

Overall:

Really enjoyable, it's a 5 in my book (then again, maybe I'm easily amused ). The fact that it's long doesn't make it feel dragged out because of the good writting, and the humor is good.

Minor quibbles would be the patrols all with the same text. It's not like it's bad per se (heck, when you play my arc you'll see I did the same in two missions with named bosses), but when the dialog is long suck as that one, having everyone say the same it's a bit disconcerting - maybe have 1 patrol with the text set to 1, then the rest have no text, o rhave multiple patrols with their own flavour text. It's my opinion that when setting an encounter to be repeated N times, it's best not to have dialog, or just to keep it to very generic minimum one )"Kill them!" "Sound the alarm!" that kind of thing). Just my opinion of course

As far as difficulty goes, to quote TVTropes, I went for a "let's get dangerous" approach and took my best scrapper on invincible. Didn't have much trouble.

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Hmmm...I've had 48 plays and 37 ratings. It's been up about two weeks.

Maybe farming isn't the reason you're not getting plays, especially since there's about a million and a half other possibilities.

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I have three arcs up. I put three arcs when i14 hit, as they were the ones I had been working on in open beta, then took one down (/Nin mobs), and put a funny one up instead.

Standings?

5-mission long "serious" arc - 11 rates.
3-mission long lowbie arc - 36 rates.
3-mission long funny arc - 303 rates last time I checked.

It may be the allure of the Bikini-clad Vampiresses, or it may be that you just have to hit the right chord (and I apparently tickled a lot of people's funny bone with that one). I've got all but the last "played-through" badges already, thanks to that single arc (the others haven't really helped that much), but I know I worked just as hard (or harder) with the other two as well.