Aliana Blue

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I give up.

You are correct. 19th century literature is the ultimate form of entertainment. That is why everywhere you go you see people reading it.

Those passing fads television, the internet, electronic games just couldn't compete.

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Who has to compete?

Jules Verne seems to be holding up quite well when compared to, say, Pong, if you want comparisons.

However, that's not to say that it's impossible to enjoy both. You seem adamant on introducing a false dichotomy here, where one who reads old books cannot possibly like anything else. It's complete rubbish.

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The 6.1 million people who watched the premiere of an animated show about penguins (Penguins of Madagascar) are nothing compared to the uncounted millions who spent that half hour curled up reading 19th century novels.

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False dichotomy. Again.

Unless you assume that any other form of entertainment that didn't manage to pull 6.1 million people during that exact half an hour is just dead and worthless?

The millions that read old books are not "uncounted". You can look top 100 lists on Amazon and see what old authors are still selling. You can look up the statistics page of Project Gutenberg. You can look at book catalogs and see what's hot with them. Are they the hottest thing ever? Probably not. But they still draw a sizeable audience.

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And yes - I stated "it is against the law to read 19th century literature and play CoX".

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Considering your demand that we all cancel our accounts if we want to "prove" that good stories are timeless, pretty much, yes. You apparently think there's a law where one can only enjoy or appreciate one form of entertainment.

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People still read quite a lot of Jules Verne. Different versions of his books often make the same bestseller's lists -- for instance, there are two printings of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in the Top 100 SF list on Amazon's sales chart.

Same with Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.

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*Cough*

I can tell you that I re-read 20,000 leagues at least once a year. It's my favourite book, and I have a good collection in print of Jules Verne's books. I have a pretty lengthy collection of e-books from Gutenberg that I read too. And a sizeable amount of books from the 16th-17th Century authors from Spain's "Golden Century" ("Siglo de Oro"), seeing as Spanish is my native tongue.

Also, it may be worth noting that I can read those books while still being subscribed to the game. Never thought I was breaking the law by doing both o.O

A non-ruined hospital.
A set of cargo boats of different sizes.
A Stadium (for those "beat my character" missions).
A few pieces of plain land without War Walls (or any buildings really).

I want an Umbrella/Parasol scrapper.

No, really. I do.

AFAIK, it was tested and what happens is that the fourth arc becomes uneditable.

The thing is, suceeding and then telling you that you failed doesn't set well either. If they destroyed the altar, they succeeded, better to give the baddies a backup plan and maybe have the contact blame himself a bit for not realizing there would be a backup.

So what about (totally made up since I have no idea what your ritual's supposed to do)...

Return text from contact:

"Great job! With the ritual stopped, there is no way these mystics will be able to abduct the Damsel!

I'lll... Wait, what is that? I'm sensing... something...

Oh no, no no NO!

$Name, the ritual has just completed! I sensed its magical pulse just now, they must have had a second one going!

This is terrible <insert something depending on how you want to play it, the contact failing to detect the two rituals or whatever>"

Something like that maybe?

Just a note on modifying files.

Prior to writing my guide about Subversion, I PMed Ex Libris about it, asking if it would be OK according to the rules. The guide included how to look into .storyarc files, compare, and modify them (by hand, or rather, with diff first then by hand).

I got an OK back. So the guide was written. And so this should be OK too.

I'd bet the custom critters are stored server-side in a different format of what we see in the files, and have a fixed size regardless (except possibly going up with custom descriptions and such).

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Here are my observations on that bug: editing the custom mobs in the mission itself don't seem to work. Here's what's always worked for me (so far):

Apparently, custom mobs always display their base faction, regardless of whatever custom factions they've been added to. The only work around I've ever found is to directly edit the custom mob - on the last screen of the editor (the one with the description) you can actually set the base faction for the mob - it almost certainly says 'All' right now, but if you set to something else (or select New and type in Council, for example), it should reset the mob's base faction.

You don't want to know how long it took me to puzzle that one out. I hope it works for you.

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Well, deleted the local files for the custom groups, re-assigned them from the published mission, re-re-resaved a few times as groups kept flaffing about (at one point the third mission allies showed up in the boss' group!), and finally managed to make the factions stick! Thanks for the advice

I've also added more mobs to the final fight while leaving the boss almost intact (made him /inv instead of /regen, should give him a bit more resilience without increasing its danger noticeably). There should be a veritable mess of mobs during the fight (2 ambushes), should make things more interesting with the allies!

Ran it a couple of times and seemed ok

Dibs!

*Ahem*

I'd love some feedback on my 5-mission Epic Arc: Of Mentors and Legacy.

ID: 1589

5 missions ranged 35-54 (well, one is 30-54), very story-centric, and with a big fight with 2 AVs at the end (you'll have help tho!).

Sitting at 9 ratings and 4 stars (it was at 8 ratings and 5 stars before), trying to figure out if there's something I could add to make it more 5-starry

Thanks!

If you want to take a quick look at my lowbie arc to see how it plays (1345), I did something similar, but I used an ally rescue instead of an ambush. If you set the group guarding the "kidnap victim" as allies, they'll be, well, allies. In my arc they spawn when the boss is defeated, but you can just as easily make them spawn when the boss fight just starts, or have both the allies and the boss spawn off a third objective in the same room.

With careful selection of the map and making sure you reserve the "back" spawn points for this, you can give the player whatever reinforcements you wanted for that boss fight. If you make both boss and allies spawn off a glowie, you'd need a back room with 3 placeable objectives in close proximity, if one of them is a glowie it can work - in fact, my arc has both the allies, boss, and a destructible object always in the same room as far as I can tell.

The important thing to remember is that having an ally guarded by allied mobs will make it impossible to "rescue" said ally, so don't make it a mandatory objective. Also, this will allow you to get more lines in. Finally, the ally being "guarded" will not lift a finger during the fight, but the guards will. Said ally may actually join with you if all the guards are defeated (I haven't checked).

It's been pretty good for me. When I heard about Architect I started thinking of ideas for it and writing stories in 5-fraction-format, then I heard about the 3 arc limit and just stopped with that and chose 3 to go with.

Then I had yet another idea, took one down due to complaints about /Ninjitsu, and the new creation ended up being my most popular arc, despite being largely humor-focused. Go figure

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i am reading the forums a lot lately and it is the same as always. we have a new issue and this is one that everyone can like no matter how you play. farmer, powerleveling, tfs, mission after mission, teaming, solo you name it MA has it and you can do it. but i see the same trend happeing. people cry because they cant control what other do or make them play how they like to play this game. some didnt like street hunters like i used to be so they nerfed the mob spawns on the streets because of cry babys. people complained bout certain missions because people used them for farms and powerleveling (drek and shadow hunter to of the most famous lol), nerf bat swings again. they complained said game wasnt made to be played the way farmers and plers were doing things and it interfered with what they were doing. let me say this, any good game will be made in a way so player can take it were developers never dreamed. So devs gave us MA, Mission Architect and said now it is like burger king, make it your way. and here we go again crying because your friend loves it and you dont. you like regular game play. but you cant just do your thing you have to try and mess it up for others. Devs!! balls in your court will you listen to the powerhunger wanna control the game players or those like me who like that i can make it my way, play others stuff or play regular content. dont mess this up. tell those others who dont like MA or tickets to go do something else and leave those who like MA alone. things were getting boreing till MA. Devs what will you do? just be scared of complainers who are mad because people can do it there way or show some guts.

blackmelee out

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its like an ed wood movie..

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But without the things that make them hilarious!

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After 2000 5 star ratings (even if there were 500 1 star ratings as well), it was good enough for 2000 people to think it was really good and it should be HoF. I'd agree with placing an an uneditable status on those arcs at that point.

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The fact that you're fine with your arc being uneditable doesn't mean everyone would. Unlike Dev's Choice, where you're notified before it happens and can decline, HoF can - and does - happen whenever the community decides the arc's good enough. Basically, the author doesn't have a choice on whether they want to give up control of their work or not.

Calculating the HoF status every server reset won't work. If an arc is really being "griefed" by being downvoted as soon as it reaches 5-stars, it can be equally griefed when it reaches 5 stars and sits at 999+ rates, wherever there's a pretty HoF icon next to the rates or not.

A better way would be, IMO, to have a buffer between gaining and losing stars. Once you reach 4.5 (or 3.5, or 2.5), your shown rating is 5, and the average must drop to 4.0 (or 4.1, or 4.2, whatever) before the just gained star is dropped. It's basically a small buffer zone.

This is a method often used when one wants to avoid ping-pong effects when swapping between states. Tends to work well.

You could also "lock" things in HoF for a certain amount of time, sure, but I think this'd be a more general solution that works across all rating ranges.

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Sister Flame, the wonderful child that she is, has told me that the arc is getting published Monday, April 27th or else. So, I am working like a mad man to check all the spelling and all the switches in the arc.

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I (literally) laughed out loud at this point.

Now THAT is a deadline!

Thanks for the review! Couple of things

The "All Custom Characters" is a surprisingly resilient bug of the MA. All the custom characters have, indeed, their own faction. The faction even shows when I edit the missions.

Yet, it keeps showing as "All Custom Characters".

I'll try later to see if scratching them all and redoing them will do the trick, but I got tired of trying different things to make that "All Custom Characters" tag go away >_<

The final fight, I have to take into account that it's easy to end up fighting the boss with just Clarissa - just turn left instead of right at the back of the map. And she can be really non-helpful depending on how the melee AI is feeling that day. I'll experiment with adding more mobs and see how it goes, but that final fight has always been hit and miss in my tests - allies have a very bad case of ADD in all cases.

I'll review the text again, thanks for pointing it out. And thanks for the review!

Well, I can plug two of mine here

# 1345: Jumping in Feet First. Levels 1-9, designed as an starter arc. I've made it 1->4 with it without much trouble solo on heroic.

# 61013 The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space! : Levels 5-25, I've had good feedback after my last tweak when it comes to difficulty (the custom Lts. on the second mission were hitting a bit to hard sometimes). It's got a few hairy spots, but shouldn't be too bad. Lower part of the range may be harder than higher due to the available stock mobs.

My end-game arc is # 1589, but that's a long way off anyway, and there's a lot of choice for the range (35+).

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Per week? That makes a BIG difference.

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It's not very clear if the re-vote is supposed to add to the total tally or replace the previous vote. Apparently it was added, on the aforementioned tests in the other thread, but I can't vouch either way personally.

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I think one of the devs (pohsyb?) mentioned a cap on tickets per mission. However, that cap was supposed to be ridiculously high "so that a single player would have to defeat everything on a map scaled for eight" to reach it.

That... sounds familiar.

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It must be very high. The other night, including the end-mish ticket bonus, I collected 2606 tickets on a single outdoor mission, running solo, defeating all.

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Depends on the mission size IIRC. I.e., a tiny map with a handful of spawns will have a lower cap than a huge map with loads of spawns.

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I'm not sure there's a specific anti-HoF voting bloc, because if there was, they'd have used all their voting "bullets" by now (you can only vote once per account, after all). I think it's that anyone who's close to the front of the list becomes the rating PvP-opponent of anyone in front of them.

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Once per account per week according to reports from another thread.

Dunno about others, but mine uses standard Council (except for a handful of specific named mobs), and I've gotten through it with a fresh-skipping-the-tutorial character several times.

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Er, does this sound like a good idea?


Eco.

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The danger is that, after the JSNTS debacle, you may get griefed by people who think it's a voting-ring thing instead of just a tag.

Better use a full word tag, I've been adding (Tags: this, that, those) to my arc descriptions. I'd say go with "Storytelling" or something like that. I'd recommend avoiding acronyms.

Not just the group name. Make a custom group that has ghosts in it (not the CoT ones, the portal ones), and make the captured NPCs be "Civilians", and from Civilians choose "Random".

The captured NPC will be a ghost too.

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Apparently there is a way to keep a 5 star rating. Just add the string "JSNTS" into your arc description. Go ahead and search on that.

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What's with that, anyway? Just Say No To Supradyne? I've seen it pop up in a lot of arcs.

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JSNTS stands for Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement, according to Google.

... probably wrong tho, at least in this context.