Alari_Azure

I agree that vet rewards should not be the only way to get more slots, but it could be one way. I don't think we should have to pay cash for them, real or otherwise, either. If the rating system was more reliable, that could be another way to do it. Maybe, if someone can keep a certain high rating (maybe 4 or 5 stars) over a certain number of plays, they could earn another slot. But, that would nullify the DC/HoF perk, unless they made the rewards for that a little different, too. They'd really need to make the ratings more meaningful to get a more reliable assessment of quality/popularity, though.

I can't really think of another way to make it tie to the MA itself. It probably should be something that players that actively use the MA for creating missions can earn, as opposed to players that never use it for creation at all.

I do understand that some people just hate to admit that their ability to create good arcs doesn't exist, and, they will probably post more crap if given the opportunity. That being said, I would like to see other ways of gaining slots other than the DC/HoF rewards. First of all, I think many of the ones that exist at this point, only got there because they were some of the first missions put into the system. Since the volume of missions available at the time was so much lower than it is now, they easily reached the number of plays required because there was a much smaller field available to play. And, since the MA was the new 'shiny', people's ratings were probably more lenient in granting stars at that point, too. People didn't have time to really get to learn how to use the MA system well enough, early on, and people playing didn't have enough good examples of MA missions.

The chances of ever earning those rewards now are significantly less. Especially the DC, because there's such a slim chance of a really good arc ever getting the attention of a dev. There are way too many for them to wade through. Even the number of plays can be deceiving, since the highest play numbers may very well be on farm missions.

Vet rewards could be one good way to gain more slots. At least, giving slots to players that have been around a while will ensure that there won't be huge numbers of arcs posted by people that only play for a couple of months, then move on to the next game that catches their eye. And, long term players are more likely to want to make good missions that people will like to play. Hopefully.

Great minds running in the same track.

You can read Positron's posts about it here and here.

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My funniest for "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" (a perverted twist on Lewis Carrol's Alice and Wonderland) had to come from the player who advised me to change my choice of story Contact, who was a university professor named Carol Lewis. `

He complained that she didn't "fit in".

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ROFLMAO!!

Apparently, someone didn't 'get' the perfect irony of that name. They've probably never read anything more 'literary' than a comic book, either.

I might have to try that arc, just to check out the twisted humor. I hope there aren't any nasty EB/AVs in it.

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Hey, Telstar ... I saw you tried my story yesterday. Glad you really enjoyed it. And I appreciated the kind words.

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I loved it. I can only imagine that the guy who made that comment knows absolutely nothing about the story, though. If he did, he would have gotten a good chuckle out of it. I loved the way you wrote it in a similar way as the original story. It was very clever.

I'd love to have more slots available. Just having 3 is only a 'teaser' to people that really love to write a good story. I'd be wary of setting up another account to do it because I'd be afraid that sometime in the future (when they start running low on server space), they might decide to delete arcs posted on inactive accounts. If they're really good arcs, that would suck.

I've also found that using ctrl/a & v could also be adding phantoms. Try right click copy/paste instead. It could make a difference. Also, try to avoid using a word processor for the final copy/paste. I know it's a pain, but I've been moving the text from the word processor (it is handy to actually write in because of spellcheck) and pasting it to notepad as a go-between. It does help to get rid of some of the hidden formatting, a little bit. It's extremely tedious to have to do it that way, but if it minimizes the aggravation of finding phantoms in MA, then it's worth it, IMO.

I'll add that I've also tried Time Loop and Wicked, Wicked Wonderland. They are both a lot of fun to play. I played Wicked, Wicked Wonderland last night and although the writing is very brief, it's very well done. The custom group really is a hoot. I suggest everyone should be sure to read all of the bios for the full effect. Because of her name and her function, the contact is a perfect addition to the story. (I really had to chuckle at the contact because she looks like one of my own in-game characters, Star Saphire. LOL)

I'd also like to thank Steele Magnolia for mentioning my short mission, Slash Demento and the Stolen Weapons. I was very pleasantly surprised to see it on your list. I appreciate that, immensely. Thank you.

Well, if you need something to do, I'll toss in my mini-version of my custom group, Slash DeMento and the Stolen Weapons. I've recently done a rewrite since Pro Payne gave me a very good review. I would like to see another reviewers opinion of it. (Pro Payne really seemed to like the improvements and said it was a fun mission.)

Arc Name: Slash DeMento and the Stolen Weapons
Slash DeMento and his gang, the Demon Spawn, (that came about after Slash gave Frostfire a beating and took half the Outcasts with him to start the new gang) have stolen some Weapons and a Bomb from the Paragon City Armory. Their target area is somewhere in Atlas Park. You need to defeat him, destroy the Bomb and confiscate those stolen Weapons.
Arc ID: 100045
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Alari Azure
Difficulty Level: 1-54
Synopsis: Single mission that is a hint at the new custom enemy group in the next arc in the list.
Medium Map/Custom Enemy Group/Ambush/Boss/Collection/Destructable Object/Patrol. (No EB/AVs, but the axers can be a bit tough on squishies)

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My funniest for "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" (a perverted twist on Lewis Carrol's Alice and Wonderland) had to come from the player who advised me to change my choice of story Contact, who was a university professor named Carol Lewis.

He complained that she didn't "fit in".

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ROFLMAO!!

Apparently, someone didn't 'get' the perfect irony of that name. They've probably never read anything more 'literary' than a comic book, either.

I might have to try that arc, just to check out the twisted humor. I hope there aren't any nasty EB/AVs in it.

I agree, 100%. What really bugs me, when I think about it, is that they're going to end up with thousands of arcs that are either broken and can't be played, or were made by people that only did it as a joke with no intention of ever touching it again, or players that made them have quit the game, etc., etc... On top of all those, we'll have all of the banned farming arcs, that seem to be replaced as fast as one becomes banned.

All of that crap will end up bloating the servers with useless junk, while those of us that really want to tell a good story will still be limited to 3 slots. Eventually, they might even have to reduce the number of arcs that we can publish because all that glut will be filling up the server. They really need to set up some way to at least move some of that stuff (inactive accounts/banned arcs) somewhere else, or delete it, to make more room for the rest of us that wish we had more slots available.

I'm really beginning to think it's those 'phantom' letters that seem to appear (invisibly) randomly in MA. I had a real problem with this yesterday. I kept getting a message that some 'description' was too long, but everything I looked at was fine. Finally, I decided to go to some of the descriptions that I had worked on to see if there were phantoms. I copied the text that was there and re-pasted it.

When I looked at what pasted, I could see that the end of the 'description' was cut off. Sure enough, I read it and found one of the apostrophes was surrounded by letters and symbols that were not supposed to be there. I think any time you copy something from a word processing program (Word, Word Perfect, MS Works) some of the punctuation in that program will copy over to MA. You can't see it, but it's there. It will show up as an html error or a 'description' error. The best way I can think of to combat that, is to copy the text to notepad, or another basic text program that doesn't have formatting built into it, before pasting it into MA.

They really need to fix the text editing portion of the MA and CoH in general to keep that from happening.

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In the past, I have made changes to my customs, but when I went to play the mission they were still the way they were before I changed them. I had to go into edit mode and hit 'republish' to get those changes to take effect.

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That's the same thing that would happen if you were testing the local file. Unless you open it for editing the new critter info will not get rolled into the storyarc file.

Also, the storage of custom critters has gotten a lot better in issue 15 beta. I and others are reporting having 20% to 25% of their filespace freed up on arcs with lots of custom critters. One of my arcs on live that is at 99.6% with 11 customs is now only 91% on Test with 14 customs.

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That will be an excellent improvement for me. I like having a wide range of customs so you're not seeing the same ones in every circumstance. Most of my group has a high mix of minion/Lt/boss, but I've had to eliminate a few others because of file space. I've also had to really cut the amount of text used in my 4 mission arc. I hate having to do that because it takes a lot away from the story that I want to tell. If I want to use standards, I do have more space. Then, I tend to run into canon issues, as I apparently have in my CoT arc. I don't have a lot of knowledge in those areas, so customs give me quite a bit more wiggle room.

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Would also be nice if the author received a notification as well that their arc was invalidated.

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Amen. The only way they know now is if someone is nice enough to send them a PM, or they try to play it themselves. There needs to be some kind of notice to the author that is triggered, at least once, by an arc becoming unplayable for any reason.

I was working on an arc that I wanted to include a batle in and the same thing kept happening to me. I've decided that I don't need no steenkin' battles.

The 'length' is based on how many missions are included in the arc, as far as I can tell. It might also take into consideration the size of the maps used, but a single mission arc is usually shown as 'short'. The time it takes to complete it has nothing to do with it's 'length'. File size has nothing to do with it, either.

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Well, yesterday I decided to go ahead and edit my CoT single mission arc. I expanded the story extensively by adding several more objectives with many additional clues, a plot twist that added a minor boss, a major overhaul of the text, etc.. It took me at least 4-5 hours of hard work and I was still not quite finished. Just as I was about to add the last couple of objectives.... yup, you guessed it, 'Disconnected from mapserver'.

In retrospect, I wish that (frequently) along the way I had saved it to local, 'just in case', but I didn't.

After that happened, I was very tempted to forget about the whole thing. Then, I calmed down and decided to do it all over again, but this time, I saved the arc on my local drive to make the changes. (I really am that stubborn) It took me until after 1 AM, then I tested it. (of course, since I did it locally, no mapserver snafus occurred)

I do like the changes because it really does improve the story, IMHO. Now, I am debating whether or not to delete the older version (only 6 plays/4 stars) and put this one up instead. I might do some final editing and a few run-throughs to make sure it all works correctly, then just go for it.

If they made it possible to upload changes from the local drive, I'd be golden and not have to worry about starting it all over again at 0 stars. Most of those plays were not friends of mine so, apparently, the people that did try it liked the original. I just hope the remake is going to be worth starting all over from scratch.

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if i'm not mistaken, after saving to local file, the "Republish" option is not longer available

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Not in the version that you saved to local (because it recreates it as a new file on your PC), but you can still republish the published version, IIRC. I do recall having that problem at one point and had to unpublish before republishing. One of my arcs should have a lot more 'ratings' because of that. In fact, I think it's the one I was working on. It might have been one of the things that was fixed already.

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Second suggestion: Save our missions on the server, not on our computer! When I read that the file was limited because the file was to be downloaded on the server or something like that, it made me wonder. It also have the disadvantage of being lost if something happens to your hard-drive.


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If you publish the mission it puts it on the server. You can still edit and republish there. The only problem I know of is that if you want to make a change in the custom groups you have some problems with being sure the right local information is available.

It makes it a little trickier but you can do a lot of editing on the published mission live. But now that I think on it I'm not sure how changing the custom critters works when it's updated if you're not at your 'main' computer.

Hmm....

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In the past, I have made changes to my customs, but when I went to play the mission they were still the way they were before I changed them. I had to go into edit mode and hit 'republish' to get those changes to take effect.

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Something was changed by the developers in a patch that occured after the story was published, and the change invalidated the story in some way.


For example, the author used a map that has since been pulled because it needs to be fixed.

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They REALLY need to document that in game better. I went through a dozen missiosn looking for one I could actually play. Drove me nuts as all the ones that looked interesting with 4 stars were 'broken'.

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There should be a warning on the description page that lets people know that the arc is unplayable. Maybe have it show up with an orange tint like the error messages in editing. At least if you see that color show up, you don't even have to bother opening the description.

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Subversion? What is that and how does it affect custom groups/enemies?

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See: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...umber=13298829

It's a source control system. Basically, it lets you audit any changes made to your arc by the system itself (exposing bugs, etc.)

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O.o

That looks waaaaay too complicated to a non-geek like me. I don't think I'd get very far. I'd be lucky if I could install it, nevermind trying to figure out how to use it.

Thanks for the explanation, though. If I get brave, I might read up on it to see if it's something I can actually use.

I was a bit intimidated by MA at first, but since I got my feet wet, I've jumped into it head first. It does take a bit of work to dot all the 'i's and cross all the 't's, but when you get to try out the story you've created, it is a whole lot of fun. Some people that aren't all that creative can try their hand at it, too. Some arcs out there are rough around the edges and some of them are close to in-game quality. Some are fun, others not so fun. Some are well written, but others look like they were written by third-graders.

What it all boils down to is that, at least we can all have a good time making new enemies to fight and writing stories that other people might really like to play, over and over. It gives us an outlet to see if we can create something that other players might enjoy as much, or even more than they do the regular missions in the game.

Even if we just do it for ourselves, it's still a good way to see what the devs have to go through in order to create new content. I think, for the most part, people are finding out that it's not as easy as some of us might have thought it was. It might help us to better appreciate their problems in trying to create interesting content and in finding solutions that work when there are problems, when we have the same kind of problems in setting up our own scenarios. Most people will probably have a little more respect for what the devs do as a result of their experiences with MA. Or not.

Well, yesterday I decided to go ahead and edit my CoT single mission arc. I expanded the story extensively by adding several more objectives with many additional clues, a plot twist that added a minor boss, a major overhaul of the text, etc.. It took me at least 4-5 hours of hard work and I was still not quite finished. Just as I was about to add the last couple of objectives.... yup, you guessed it, 'Disconnected from mapserver'.

In retrospect, I wish that (frequently) along the way I had saved it to local, 'just in case', but I didn't.

After that happened, I was very tempted to forget about the whole thing. Then, I calmed down and decided to do it all over again, but this time, I saved the arc on my local drive to make the changes. (I really am that stubborn) It took me until after 1 AM, then I tested it. (of course, since I did it locally, no mapserver snafus occurred)

I do like the changes because it really does improve the story, IMHO. Now, I am debating whether or not to delete the older version (only 6 plays/4 stars) and put this one up instead. I might do some final editing and a few run-throughs to make sure it all works correctly, then just go for it.

If they made it possible to upload changes from the local drive, I'd be golden and not have to worry about starting it all over again at 0 stars. Most of those plays were not friends of mine so, apparently, the people that did try it liked the original. I just hope the remake is going to be worth starting all over from scratch.

It seems that they must have done something to adjust the radius of the triggers for each of those dialogues. Whatever they did, I hope they readjust it so it works a little more realistically.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the OP is saying that you should lay out the whole story in the first contact dialogue. I think what he's trying to say is that you need to at least have some type of hint of what's going on. If a contact just says, "I need you to go here and see what's going on", there's nothing there to hook the player into wanting to do the mission. There's no clear goal that you're looking to accomplish. If they said, "I need you to go to this place because there's a rumor that so-and-so might have done such-and-such", at least you have a purpose that would give you more incentive to do it. The rest of the story unfolds as you get more involved. One clue leads to another. But, there has to be something that gives you a clear reason for wanting to 'go investigate' in the first place.

I hate that, too. Patrols all seem to be triggered as soon as you enter the floor or area they are in. Hostages, etc., wait until you are within combat range, then say all of their unaware/aware dialogue at once. If you're lucky, the patrols are close enough to you that at least the $name works, otherwise that tag shows up in their dialogue instead of the players name. It is extremely annoying. I've had to cut out tags and make dialogue generic because it makes it look so stupid.