AncientSpirit_NA

I'm game. Just drop me a line telling me what you found at the end of my mission (just a little surprise!), and I will check out yours.

Mine is listed in my sig.

But it is FORBIDDEN to use that link????

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... the #1 piece of sage advice I've ever seen on these boards relates to this. Several people have said, "I make my arcs for me. If other people like it, cool. If they don't, that's cool too" or something to that effect. That's what I've used as my mantra. If I like it and it works for me, that's all that really matters.

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I believe this too ... up to a point. If you don't like your own work, you shouldn't be publishing it. But many ideas that would be tremendous fun just for you aren't really meant for anyone else but you. Your origin story, for example. It MAY be compelling to others but since we all have heros or villians, your origin may not be interesting to us. On the other hand, incorporate the kind of story mechanics that make for a great story and your origin tale could be as big as Clark Kent's or Peter Parkers!

The other thing I think is important when testing your own arc is that you can't "blow through it." My arc still gets the best of me sometimes and sends me to the hospital, or forces me to load up on a special inspiration (or six) before I have to confront the ultimate challenge in the game. To me this makes a players arc play like the Dev team's. Anyway, that my 2 MA tickets on the subject.

I begin testing with an invul/eng tanker who can survive a lot of punishment but takes a while to whittle down mobs. I have couple of these so I test them on challenge levels 4 and 5. Once I've worked out the bugs and the story and villains work for (keep in mind, I only have one arc published), I then start bringing in other character types like scrappers and blasters, still at level 50, but usually at challenge levels 3 and 4. If that goes well, I start to dip into low to mid level characters of different AT types (controllers, masterminds and others) that I solo with in the regular game. Basically, if I don't use a toon solo in the real fake world, I won't use him in the MA world. And since I love to create, design and use custom-critters, they scale up and down with me, regardless of what level I choose.

Sometime the choices surprise me. My mid-level Archery MM made mincemeat out of my arc, where higher level damage dealers barely made it through.

Only after I've played my own arc too many times to count, do I publish it ... as I don't think its "right" to ask others to "test" your arc for you. (This is just my personal opinion, and others are entitled to feel exactly the opposite.)

Interestingly, initial comments will always clue you into things you didn't think of. But if you get enough comments, you will learn that just as many people absolutely love a feature that others absolutely abhore. So you're not going to please everybody, that's for sure.

unique maps is a great idea. Sign me up!

This is a REALLY OPEN ENDED question, and one that I almost dismissed.

However, I actually did have a thought that you may or may not like that would revolve around your one character.

It's derivitive from an old black and white Twilight Zone episode that really frightened me when I was young. And yet by the very nature of how you handled it, it might not violate any copywrite.

Basically, its a theme based story all about INVIDUALITY in a world where we are all Programmed to look and act the same. I do not think I have seen an arc like this myself.

However, to do it justice one shouldn't slap it together. It would require unique characterization that's always in conflict with non-unique characterization. And the real trick -- to give the non-unique characterization compelling reason to be the way they are, so they are not all ignorant zombie bad guys.

The other thing I would recommend is to look at unique arcs that try to tell an interesting story or use everyday items in unusual ways. Take my arc "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" for example, #1224. It may not be a Dev's Choice but it does some things that might have relevance to whatever you wind up doing.

But most of all, have fun with it. Don't rush it. Slave over it. And test it yourself with a million different alts of different powersets and levels ... so that you don't burn out your friends with things that you easily catch yourself.

Let me know what you ultimately do.

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If I could see the number of AVs and EBs in arcs, I would be much more tempted to try other players' arcs. As it is, I'm sticking to my own creations.

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If that's all that's holding you back from trying other people's work, try mine.

There is exactly ONE EB in "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland," and that's the Queen of Hearts.

(We now leave this outrageouly shameless plug and return you to the thread in progress.)

Good to know. And while I could tell you in private a very easy workaround for this, forum rules mandate that I would then have to terminate you. So Mum's the word.

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Ex Libris at her new day job

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How wonderful for you to share with the community this funny farewell piece for Ex.

Ex, I hope you're moving on to greener pastures. Or at least pastures with fewer cow pies on the playing field.

Um ... I'm not sure about this ... but it seems to me that just about any arc on a medium or large size map can be used as a farm.

My middle mission uses one of the carnival maps, so it certainly has the potential to be farmed. But that isn't its intention.

Other than those 5 million arcs that specifically include the word "farm" in their desciption (a real hint, by the way), I suppose its all how you play.

Do our profanity filters work in MA?

If so, you shouldn't have a problem with language since individual users set that for themselves.

If not, I wouldn't even curse because children play.

So far, I love the feedback system. Of the 17 people who left feedback, 14 were positive, 2 were negative -- and the other was absolutely crucial because it was so out of whack (telling me that my EB were all over the place!) that I knew a patch had screwed something up so I could fix it before others ran into multiple EBs when there was only supposed to be one.

And it also gave me the opportunity to play the arcs of people who tried mine - most of which were tremendous fun!

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#3 would really come into play if #2 was implemented. Not many people have a build that could solo 8 man spawn.

Also its really annoying to expect everyone to have a solo toon. Some of us like to team.

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This is a valid point. I stand corrected. #1, #2 and #3 are all good ideas.

In other words, "please play my arc - its one of the toughest, most balanced and most fun."

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Have 61 glowies to collect, each taking one minute to interact. Have the mish be timed at an hour.

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You are one TWISTED dude!

(And if I were still at my old ad agency, I would hire you in a New York minute!) (We specialized in twisted thinking.)

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#1 Person in architect building next to inspiration seller that we can use to set our difficulty level. It's really annoying to be constantly leaving, running to trainer, then running back to test missions on different difficulties.

#2 - Ability in test mode to spawn mission for 1-8 players. It's a nightmare to get 7 people to join me just so I can test a mission and see what the spawns look like for 8 people. Giving us an option to spawn mission at 1-8 people would save so much time.

#3 - Observer mode in mission. Or intangible. Give us a way to navigate thru mission without being attacked and to be able to trigger ambush's to test them. It's a pain to test ambush's when you aren't a solo friendly build. This also ties in to number 2. It would be nice to be able to solo test ambush for 8 person team and see how well it works.

#4 Ability to publish a mission as beta. Its available for people to try, they will earn xp, can leave you comments etc but it cannot be rated and you will possibly not earn tickets for people playing it. It would make it much easier to test and allow it to be exposed to a broader range of people.

Aside from these 4 suggestions i'm loving the architect. It's a great feature and major props for pulling off something no other MMO has dared.

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I really like #1 and #2. Both ideas are solid and constructive.

As for #3, its not a bad idea ... but I simply bring in a different alt who is built to solo, so its never a problem to trigger things and survive.

#4, as has already been pointed out, you can already do by publishing and republishing. You might want to rename your arc, though, when republishing it, so that people don't dismiss it as having seen it before. (Based on the feedback you've received and acted on, it may play differently.)

Not sure where to post this:

My desktop uses an ATI 92XX series card with the final driver release (its an old card) and is running XP. In game, everything works fine.

But when I use the MA on the test server, the start/stop animation box is viturally blank. There's only a tiny spot in the upper right hand corner -- and if you look REAL closely, you can see its the loaded toon.

Frankly, I thought the animation feature simply wasn't functioning yet. But then I ran a test mission using my laptop which is running Vista - and the start/stop animation box works perfectly.

Does anyone have a clue to what is causing this for my desktop? And if so, is there a fix or readjustment to my settings for this? (The desktop with XP has 4 megs of memory; the laptop has 2 megs.)

Thanks.

Arc Name: Waging War On Wonderland
Arc ID: 14601
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: ancientspirit
Difficulty Level: medium
Synopsis: The Queen of Hearts has a dark secret and Alice has gone missing because of it. As you unearth the answers and battle custom gangs like "Not Playing with A Full Deck" and "The Broken Hearts", you discover a side of Wonderland that you never knew existed.

Estimated Time to Play: 50 - 60 minutes

Hmmm. The way I read the announcement and the interview, there will be more "free" issues BUT ...

The but seems to revolve around the way they hedge their language about how they intend to "expand the franchise." That sounds to me like new games to buy and/or new monthly fees, especially since they repeated that language in a few places. "We’re looking beyond the normal slate of free Issues for City of Heroes. We want to use City of Heroes as a focal point and really build on this franchise."

As for the special "Thank You" gifts, have they left anyone else with the feeling that these are "in name only," or is it just my jaded old AncientSelf having spent too many years in relationship marketing.

I suspect that most of COX players already have both Heroes and Villians, so the offer to give you both for "free" sounds more like a PR gimmick than anything else to me. A few will benefit, but I got to think that the majority of players won't.

Debt wipe, also, seems like a marginal marketing ploy since it takes so little time in-game to wipe out debt to begin with.

Not sure what the extra prestige will mean for SGs. To me, it sounds like the best sweetener in the packet - but in truth, because of my limited amount of time to play, I've really been deeply involved with the creation or maintenance of a SG. I would be interested though in insight from those who do all the heavy lifting in SGs to tell be if this is good news or indifferent to mature SGs. Will the extra prestige allow you to make things bigger, better, bolder ... or have you taken the SuperGroup headquarters as far as you can go.

Of course, they didn't need to say "Thank You" at all ... and I guess I would have preferred that they didn't rather than make this half-@$%^^ effort that leaves me feeling like they're trying to manipulate how I feel about their announcement rather than actual Thank Me for staying around. (And haven't they done that already with the Veteran Rewards, which I actually enjoy because some thought has gone into them, and they oftentimes provide real game enhancement and value.)

Does anyone else feel like I do? Or am I simply acting cranky?

Anybody hear anything about when they'll release this guide so we can buy a hard copy?

I don't know anything quite so useless as this free 200+ page guide that's printed horizontal and veritical to make it unreadable on screen and impractical to print out ...

When they were selling the binders they made such a point about how they were going to be releasing update packs to retailers to coincide with major additions ....

you mean, like Issue 7?

DUH!

Interesting about no travel power. I just started a Trick Arrow/Archery build and realized that NONE of my role models for the AT (from Hawkeye and Green Arrow right down to Robin Hood) has special means for transportation.

But is the game even playable unless you give in and pick up a means to get around?