AmazingMOO

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Arc Name: Pirate's Quest: A Tale of Sound and Fury
Arc ID: 217930
Morality: Heroic
Factions: Almost all of them ( I kid you not ),

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This is a fun arc, but has a pretty serious bug that renders it unfinishable for heroes under level 40. Carnies won't spawn for heroes below level 40, even though they're marked as spawning much lower since they will spawn earlier for villains. I went through with a 34 scrapper and ground to a halt against the last mission for the handful of 40 Carnies inside. You should seriously consider removing them.

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... It'd be kinda cool if they combined Cap and PO into one big zone in-game. Use the ferries to get from one side to the other quickly, or take a nice scenic trip over Mt. Diable.

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If you go to the right places on Cap and PO, there are Paragon-style underpasses that are blocked so you can't go through them.... I suppose a remnant of Recluse's takeover.

It seems like that's on purpose. The whole place was kinda building up and then stagnated wherever Arachnos has direct control. It's only where there are strong 2nd parties, (Aeon, Sonata, Longbow and Wyvern, etc...) that things build back up.

Interestingly, I use that outdoor Steel Canyon 'Farm' map in a serious arc. The time-travel-based story calls for the player to prevent a reporter from being assassinated by Arachnos forces.

The story I wrote simply had the reporter in Steel Canyon as forces broke in from Siren's Call, so that map was the most appropriate.

I hate that the map is considered a 'Farm' map. I wish the 'demon farm' mission had been removed in Issue 1.

"The Once and Future Freak"
Mission 1: Steel Canyon 'Destroy the Statues' map with Freakshow
Mission 2: Arachnos Lab map with Arachnos
Mission 3: Brickstown 'Breakout' map with Freakshow, Longbow, and PPD
Mission 4: Steel Canyon 'Farm' map with Arachnos
Mission 5: Arachnos Lab map with Arachnos, Longbow, Council, and Nemesis

1. Costume Pieces

I can't separate out the costume pieces because I think they're all awesome and each one adds a huge amount of flexibility to the costume creator. I think I use at least one piece from each of the sets on at least one of my characters. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the various exposed midriff 'Belly Tees', but I'd be hard pressed to give any of them up.

2. Buff Pets - Great for adding flexibility to low-level characters

3. Base Teleporter - I've spent a great deal of time building my base as an exercise in experiencing the content. After the repricing, it meant that my base exploded with functionality: all the teleporters, crafting stations, empowerment buff stations, etc. The Base teleporter keys in to that.

I invited some friends to play through a lowbie mission arc I created this evening and didn't fill up my team. Rather than go with a small team, I opened my invites up to the zone (King's Row on Victory) and got a few more players.

Everyone on the team got a level from the arc and since we were all lowbies, a couple badges as well.

Quoth a DB/Inv scrapper on my team: "Wow! It's neat to see someone running something other than a farm!"

The lesson? Don't assume that if you run AE missions that your team wants nothing but to farm. Hopefully, they'll surprise you with willingness to do original content!

That's a darn good suggestion.

I use two macro buttons to keep track of arcs:

/macro Fav "playernote favorites"
/macro ToDo "playernote todo"

I noticed this evening that I have quite a few arcs in my 'Favorites' list, so I thought I'd share them:

Under The Wire by @Valdy, Arc ID: 103823
The Footsteps Initiative by @Muu, Arc ID: 2291
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings by @Paula, Arc ID: 1481
Attack of the Discount Ninjas by @GiantMosquito, Arc ID: 126725
Females for Hire by @suedenim, Arc ID: 110723
Gambler's Addiction by Dyrnwyn, Arc ID: 2862
Seeking Men by @Fatare, Arc ID: 169114
It Lurks Below! by @Hydrophidian, Arc ID: 192922
Doctor Brainstorm & An Experiment Gone Awry by @Chad GulzowMan, Arc ID: 2093

Like I said, I did take the 'tagging' bet of his comment seriously, and even altered my arc description. With the sheer number of arcs and mission available, I simply don't think authors have the luxury of 'surprising' their players with the story contents.

If I pick up a book that says 'Sci-fi', I'm going to be a little disappointed if I get a modern political drama with no sci-fi elements. By the same token, if I pick up a mission that says 'Long, story focused', I'm going to expect 3-5 missions of fights with a few clues to read.

However, I think a far harder topic to guage is 'how much info do I need to give ahead of time?'

If I read a book that has a description indicating 'A gripping sci-fi tale of sensuality and exotic romance', I know I'm probably going to get some romance novel scenes with my aliens and space ships, and maybe some R-rated reading about the space captain and some green-skinned slave girls, depending on the author.

My arc is now tagged 'Very short and silly'. Combined with 'Rikti Monkeys', I *think* it says everything that needs to be said about the arc without saying, 'Hey, you're going to be fighting some monkeys in this one and probably won't get a lot in the way of merits^H^H^H^H^H^Htickets.'.


For the record, I took the scrapper I was playing through the mission, freed the hostages, and bapped the patrols and came away with about 16 merits^H^H^H^H^H^Htickets.

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AE Player: Feedback on Architect Mission Day of the Monkeys: Zero merits for having done what appears to be "rikti monkey" farm mission. Waste of your time and mine.

Someone voted on 'Day of the Monkeys'.

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This would be arc #1302, 'Day of the Monkeys'. It's the arc I used to test MA when I first gained access to the I14 beta and was experimenting with the different features. It's been through a number of revisions and bug fixes and has remained in my first mission slot because I haven't yet finished the arc that I'd like to replace it with.

It's a very short mission about Rikti monkeys escaping from the sewers and rampaging around City Hall. There are a few hostages to save and a few Rikti patrols. Mostly it's about running around under the Statue of Atlas and bapping monkeys for 5 minutes or so and listening to monkey-poo jokes. Because underlings don't drop merits, the only way a player is going to earn merits is by bapping the patrols. Even then, there are only a few, so merit gain is obviously not the objective of the mission.

I was in a quarrelsome mood, so I decided to engage the player who'd rated it.

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Me: Why would you say it's a waste of time when you get the joy of bapping rikti monkeys? I don't build missions to max merits or for badges, so if that's what you're looking for, I'm sorry to dissapoint you.

Player: i'm not a AE farmer at all, I've soloed all AE maps. Also, I can easily go to Crey's Folly to smack monkeys around. At the least, was expecting some kind of "reward" that could be used tangibly. No merits, enhancements, salvage or recipe drop

Me: I'm building for story, not rewards. If you're not interested in story, I'm sorry to dissapoint you. I prefer saving Atlas from the monkeys because it's the heroic thing to do and not because I get a shiny medal.

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It's Sunday morning and I'm a bit grumpy after going to bed late the previous evening. What can I say?

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Player: *rolls eyes*...kind of wrong place going on a "crusade" of some sort. After all, it is generally assumed/understood that players are to be "rewarded" for doing AE missions. You could atleast clearly state that others "should not expect...

Player: should not expect rewards. One mission designer actually had the courtesy to state that...so people weren't misled.

Me: Why should I expect that heroes wouldn't want to save Atlas just because? I think you are out of order, sir.

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I'm not making any progress here and being pretty silly besides, so I decided to chase him off. He's likely lost as a player to me anyway for my arcs that DO have enough content to generate significant rewards.


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Me:: Go play a farm map and trouble me no more!

Player: enjoy perma ignore, you are just trolling and not responding with anything intelligent to say.


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Yay!

However, he did have one point. The mission is marked as 'Short' on the AE browser because it contains a custom group that contains nothing but monkeys, so I can do things like have a wave of monkeys appear and ambush you after rescuing the poor, beleaguered, monkey-stained citizens. I built the mission before people started tagging their arcs, so I hadn't really bothered with this one. It would be nice of me as mission arc author to let people know that this wasn't a serious arc.

I went to the local AE building to add '(Very Short and Silly)' to the arc description. Lo and behold, I found that my player had given me my very first Report for Content complaint!

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This story has received the following complaints: * Mission appears to be nothing but a rikti monkey farm map. Also received zero merits for time spent. Or even any kind of salvage drops/enhancements or recipe drops.

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I love Mission Architect! It truly has something for everyone!

I love blasting. I make no secret of it. Blasting is my favorite thing to do in COH. However, not all blasters are created equal. Some are more reliant on teams, and some do better solo. Some combinations are problematic, and some just kinda suck.

As kind of an exercise in determining what I liked and didn't like about each of the blasting sets, I built a spreadsheet comparing the different blaster secondaries. This is not a numbers comparison. I'll leave that to those with more talent at math. Instead, this is a instead a 'what set does what?' chart to identify gaps within each set. I'm trying to see what makes them more useful in groups or solo and to identify why a set may feel like it underperforms.

Blaster Secondaries Spreadsheet


The most obvious conclusion I can make is that the other sets are overpowered dramatically by Mental Manipulation. Not only is it the only set that offers a self-heal (in the form of Drain Psyche's heal-over-time effect), but it also does LOTS of psi damage and has a lot of 'soft' control. Drain Psyche also comes with a 'light' enemy regen and recovery debuff which can mean the difference between defeating an AV and not defeating an AV in certain teams. About the only bad thing you can say about Mental Manipulation is that it doesn't do so much against robots.

My /Mental blaster is a 50 Archery/Mental with a few good sets. She solos and groups with about the same efficiency and does a broad array of damage against pretty much all comers. I've told others that Archery/Mental is quirky, but highly rewarding.

Now I've heard nasty, hurtful rumors that a nerf might be incoming for certain powers in Mental Manipulation, but I haven't seen anything concrete. Honestly, you'd have the nerf the set a LOT before it quit outperforming the others.


Devices is problematic for me. It seems almost entirely group-oriented. I've seen /Devices blasters solo well, but they don't really seem to excel to me unless they're in a large group. A lot of that has to do with the lack of click self-buffs that other blasters get. Targeting Drone and Cloaking Device are worth-while powers, but their bonuses don't really seem to make up for their limitations.

My highest /Devices blaster is only about 21, so that could be shaded by inexperience with higher-level play. However, if I were going to make any changes to this set to make it more attractive, it would be to make the toggle buffs more powerful. I'd add a small +resist component to Cloaking Device (and maybe increase its +defense, too), and a small damage bonus to Targeting drone.


Energy Manipulation is probably my favorite secondary set. My Energy/Energy blaster was my first 50, and I love the visual effects and knockback it comes with. I've also got a Psi/Energy coming up on her mid-40s. However, this set still doesn't quite measure up to /Mental in terms of power and utility. It's very viable in groups and somewhat less viable solo.

It also offers what I consider to be one of the most 'skippable' powers in game: Boost Range. Solo, Boost Range means you can use your stronger powers without moving around so much. In groups, it means you can pull from slightly longer distances. It adds so little to a blaster's repertoire that many consider it to be a complete waste. I don't quite think it's a complete waste, but I wouldn't recommend it to many.

I would bring Energy Manipulation up in attractiveness and utility to Mental Manipulation a few different ways. The first thing I'd do would be decrease the recharge time on 'Conserve Power' a bit. Maybe 25% or so. This would allow 'conservationists' (like myself) to have a bit more control over their end expenditure.

To counter the sheer uselessness of Boost Range, I'd add a small-to-moderate -recharge component to it to not only allow /energy blasters to use their powers at longer ranges, but to also use them more frequently.


I consider Electric Manipulation to be the second strongest blaster secondary compared to /Mental. Most of this comes from the sheer power of Power Sink. Unslotted, it's an end drain that will make kinetic defenders cry and will always keep the blaster full on end. Slotted, and possibly in conjunction with other end draining powers, it will turn the blaster into an electric-powered machine of destruction solo or in groups.

/Electric's real weakness is that aside from its drains, it doesn't do a lot to protect the user. There's no heal along with all the free endurance, and the few status effects are all single-target, meaning that large groups will still do bad things to you.

However, having all the free endurance gives you the ability to run a LOT more powers than most blasters. My 50 Elec/Elec runs Combat Jumping, Acrobatics, Tough, Weave, and Charged Armor without any Fitness or Stamina.

That brings up the second, 'however'. The single hold in /electric can be augmented greatly with holds in other sets, including the 'epic' APPs.

Accordingly, I wouldn't do anything to Electric to make it more attractive or powerful. While it isn't quite up to /Mental's level, it allows for a broader range of secondary and tertiary options.


Fire Manipulation's big strength is the same as Fire Blast. It does great damage, coming up short only against enemies who are strongly resistant to fire. It also comes with Consume, meaning that the blaster can keep himself topped up on End when well-slotted. Careful use of Burn means that the blaster can always be free of all but the most powerful status effects. It doesn't offer a lot of protection for the blaster, which seems to make it more useful in teams than solo.

My highest /Fire character is 20ish. The only reason I haven't spent more time with her is simply because I've been playing other blasters. However, I've seen /Fire blasters do well both in teams and solo.

The only thing I'd do to this power is to make Consume offer a small, perhaps even non-enhanceable heal. It'd fit with the theme of other fire powers like 'Healing Flames' and make /Fire blasters slightly more durable when they choose to solo.


Like Devices, Ice can be problematic when solo. It performs okay on teams, but I feel that the other sets outperform it even then. My highest /Ice blaster is late 30-ish, so higher-level play may change that a bit.

Due to the lack of any kind of end utility or defensive utilities in the set, /Ice blasters tend to have to rely on slows and the knockdown effects of Ice Patch. This means using a lot of powers all the time. Rather than this set making other powers work well, as in the case of electric's end drain fueling Fighting toggles, a lot of ice blasters feel they need the Fitness set to even consider using it.

Ice Manipulation offers as its tier 9 power, 'Frozen Aura', an AOE sleep. In the world of 'AOEs Win', dedicated sleep powers don't play well in groups.

To make this set more attractive to soloers and for group usage, I'd make a few significant changes. First, I'd place a small bit of defense in Frozen Aura. Second, I'd increase the radius of Ice Patch slightly and add the same status buff that Burn gets. Lastly, I'd add a small endurance recovery buff to Frozen Aura... make it so that it works something like a 'single target Heat Loss'


These are my thoughts. Please note that I am in no way nerfherding. I'd prefer things to remain the way they are rather than see a single set nerfed in any way. Corrections or comments are highly welcome.

-1 point for using VB.

+17,010,382 points for contributing something cool and useful to the CoH community.

Kudos, PK!

Wired has a new article that... well.. blasts the MA system and suggests that the recent changes will cause players to leave.

Slashdot discussion of said article.

Mods, please feel free to delete or move this if it's inappropriate or not worthy of its own thread.

I've been editing a custom group in a lowbie arc because the ranged damage changes make them a bit too powerful with the powersets I had selected. However, when I 'republish and play', I get the old versions of the NPCs in my mission. About how long does it take changes like this to take effect?

I recently published a new arc (ID: 150765, 'The Once and Future Freak') that contains no custom enemies and variations on 2 custom critters for hostages and an ally. The rest of the arc contains stock enemies including Freaks, Arachnos, Longbow, and a handful of Council and Nemesis. That means that the narrowest level range in the arc, Nemesis, is 30-54. Everything else goes 1-54, except the freaks who go 20-54.

This would make for a fairly wide player level range for my arc. Most players can handle all of the above at level 20 or 30. Unfortunately, the effective level range is much narrower due to the presence of stock allies and the single AV/EB at the end of the arc.

The story calls for the presence of Synapse, Sirocco, Ghost Widow, and Mako in various places. Mako is the only one you ever fight against in the arc. However, because they are in the arc, the minimum level range is narrowed from 20 or 30 up to 40 since the AV/Hero characters all have a range of 40-54.

The devs would be doing me and those who play my arc quite a favor if they adjusted the AVs so that they functioned well at lower levels.

Synapse's bio is over 500 characters long. As of the latest patch, every time I re-test my arc, the 300 character blank character description that is associated with him is filled with the bio, meaning that I have to delete it every time I run the arc.

Adhesive Control
Imagine a powerset in which the player launched adhesives at his opponents to control them. One power would spray glue on the ground to snare enemies. Another sprays a thick layer of glue on an enemy knocking them back into and then sticking them against then nearest wall.

Problems:

My concept for using this power is a Tech hero with a Super-soaker-like cannon. However, it's really darn close to the web-throwing powers of a certain trademarked Science hero who's been in 3 blockbuster movies lately.

This power would have a lot of crossover with Traps, Devices, and Trick Arrow.

The 'Spooge' jokes would never, ever end.


Dancing Power Pool
By being an expert dancer, you gain the ability to attack your enemies and defend yourself with lightning quick dance moves. "Kick, 1, 2, Strike, 1, 2, Dodge 1, 2". You'd need four or five powers in the pool: High kick (Single target kick attack with a chance for Stun), Defensive Spin, (Toggle to have a chance to spin away from attacks), Tap Dance (You stun or confuse an enemy by dancing in front of them and shove them around), Offensive Spin (deal light damage to all enemies in melee range, and have a small chance of knocking them down.)

Problems: Besides having a bit of overlap with fighting and leaping pools, the animation for this pool would be a NIGHTMARE for the devs. Not only would you have to do the animations for the attacks, you'd have to come up with transitions for dancing into attacks.

Many players wouldn't like the default dance animations, so you'd have to come up with a way to allow players to pick from a few different default sets of dance moves like Ballet, Moshing, Club dancing, etc...

A ballet-themed dancer would do a graceful pirouette and catch all the enemies with her outstretched foot. A mosh-pit themed dancer would swing around with his fists outstretched and clobber all his enemies that way.

I'd love to see it, but I can't help but think that the devs would balk at the animation time required.

Additionally, a lot of players would complain that having Dancers around would distract them.

Vanden, I saw the post about this arc in the 'City Life' forum. I wouldn't have played it if I didn't see it there.

....

Wow. The screenshots make it look like I can do EVERYTHING I want to to make my pre-written stuff work.

Reading back over the opening posts is quite the trip in the wayback machine, however.

I'd personally like to thank you guys for the literally YEARS of work you've put into tracking these badges and keeping them updated on sites like Paraonwiki and Vidiotmaps.

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“First of all, never become an RPer… you suck at it. Second, don’t ever create a character on Virtue if you want to survive. As far as hitting things though, what kind of enhancements do you have slotted?”

“Enhancements?”

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5 Starred.

/applaud

Thank you!

Actually, the 'Special Projects Team' mentioned in the white paper are 3 of Dr. Star's 5 children and have had problems with Crey trying to steal or duplicate their father's inventions in the past.

From another piece I wrote to help clarify my thoughts on their powers, 'Project Blackstar':

I've received information on fairly good authority that scientists at Crey Labs have recently attempted to build working copies of Holly's gauntlets in order to aid in reproducing 'Star's secret project'. The gauntlets are completely nonfunctional, of course. Even if they had the exact design, neither the gloves nor boots work without the most important component of 'Project Blackstar'.

(When did such a venerable company become so dishonorable? Ever since that mess with Dr. Baen in the 80's, it seems as if the company has sunk further and further into unethical behavior. I once considered a job offer from Crey and am very, very glad that I rejected it.)

Star Research Whitepaper for Stealth Enhancement Generator

My thoughts on the Merit System

The main goals of the system seem to be:

1. Force an equivalence between a two hour TF and a random recipe roll.

2. Create more opportunities to earn progress towards specific recipes rather than the random roll.

3. Discourage players from farming 'Speed TFs', including Katie Hannon, Eden, Hess, etc...


I *like* points one and two. I'm not sure that I would have chosen Manticore as the ruler for a random roll, but it's a GOOD thing that the devs are stating 'This is how much effort we want before this reward.' It gives them a framework in which to construct future reward systems. Also, since it's a system rather than a trigger, it's much more amenable to small tweaks rather than massive, game-altering changes.

For example, the 'Fix' for Quick Katies before would be to yank the recipe reward. Now it can be scaled up or down. If, say, players discover a way to do 'Speed Posi', and the majority of Positron runs suddenly take 30 minutes, that 50 merit reward can be bumped down rather than removed entirely. Note that's just an example.

Better yet, allowing players to earn progress to those same recipes by working the shorter taskforcers, arcs, and missions is fantastic! It has significant potential to pull people back away from grinding Radio missions. I know that I'll quickly be building my very own 'Save up for' lists for each of my characters!

Good Work, devs!


Now issue 3 is the one that bothers me.

My reasons for doing Katie Hannon's TF are perhaps a little skewed from the general populace. I like it because it doubles as a 'Mini-Trial'. You're required to fight ten Arch-villains of increasing difficulty and then shepherd Katie out of a difficult ambush. It's a good opportunity for group leaders to learn a little bit of leadership skill and for group members to learn to follow instructions, employ tactics, and use their powers to the fullest for the benefit of the group rather than simply scrapperlock on redcaps and witches.

The recipe at the end is a happy bonus for me. That's certainly not the case for everyone who partakes in a KHTF.

Having the recipe at the end makes it fairly easy to recruit for KHTF. "Here's a 25-45 minute exercise that has some nice one-time awards and a recipe at the end," becomes, "Here's a 25-45 minute exercise that has some nice one-time awards and 1/4th of a recipe at the end."

I'd personally still do it. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the number of people willing to learn to fight 10 AVs in a row is going to dry up a bit.

My suggestion for buffering this somewhat is to alter the drop scheme so that a base reward is applied on top of each AV defeated in the mission.

For example, if you give 1 merit for each Mary and then another single Merit at the end of the TF, you have 11 instead of 7.

Compare to the 'SpeEden' runs, where you have 2 GMs and 3 AVs. If you award a single merit on top of those for completion, you have a 6 merit trial.


In short, I love the system, but wish it gave players slightly more incentive to hunt AVs.

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We proceeded to design out the set based on the theme of "Controlling, giving and taking away pain." It would have been very easy to cross the ESRB Teen rating with such a thing, so we were very careful to ensure that nothing crossed the line, despite the thematic temptations.

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Empasis mine.

Ah. And suddenly the reason why we haven't seen whips 'n chains for Dominators comes out.

I have to wonder if the conversation went something like:

"Now how, exactly, do we manage this without it seeming like we're encouraging players to make BDSM-themed characters?"

My guess is that if we ever do see whip melee, it'll likely be accompanied by lots of archaeology or vampire-slayer imagery.

However, that still leaves lots of room open for possible whip assault, whip manipulation, and whip melee powersets. I suspect that chain control, rope control, or other bondage-themed powersets are right out.

/applause for the excellent rundown.

I'll be purchasing this pack as soon as it's released.

/reloads store.plaync.com every 20 seconds