3dent

Yes, it stops after you get the first upgrade and/or Spec Ops. (Or I just so got used to it that I don't notice.)

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Do you get the same problem if you use a different mob as the hostage?

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Learning for sure requires more time than I have at the moment, given that both bugs don't always happen. But that too may be an useful test...

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No - I tested this for the OP last night.

I could find 2 hostages and the mobs surrounding each one were using their boomboxes. There was another group of mobs using a boombox emote, but no apparent hostage there, just enemy mobs.

Upon defeating these boombox-using enemies I saw a speechbubble go racing off - no visible mob, just the speechbubble. This looks like a true invisible mob. And, IIRC, there were no ambushes in that mission.

Now I did mention to the OP that I believe the cases when the hostage has been reported as not spawning at all may actually be invisible spawns: even when the guards are defeated you need to go near the hostage to 'trigger' their rescue. If the mob spawns as invisible and the guards are pulled and defeated away from the invisible spawn then it's possible that you won't rescue the hostage as you are too far away.

For me, the invisible hostage spawned near (not quite in, but near) a dead end in an office building. If I hadn't jumped near enough to accidentally trigger the rescue as I delivered the killing blow to the last guard mob, then I probably wouldn't have rescued the hostage as I could see it was a dead end with no glowies/mobs so I wouldn't have gone near enough to the hostage.

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Thanks again for your help!
A few clarifications.
1) there was an ambush when you click a glowie. If there weren't any, that's another misspawn. (sorry, forgot to mention it in the OP)
2) I've seen that bug you described now, and it's a bit different from the failed spawns I've seen more often, - in those, hostages counter resets to 2 right upon entering the mish, but you don't get "hostage rescued" chat (all 3 cops have it) all other objectives are there, and if you complete them you're left with an empty objective list, but the mission doesn't complete.

I'm almost tempted to make hostages non-required now, but since further missions assume you've met them this may cause other problems...

Twice. They're from the same set thjough, (office to sewers) and regular offices of the right size, layout and spawn capacity are simply not there. (although CoH office, Small #12 looks almost right, it has just enough spawn points to show there's no errorrs, and that's not good. Plus, for some odd reason it was reverted back to office sewers after a few edits. I didn't it, MA itself did.)

MA devs boasted that you can't create "Kobayashi maru"-type mission. But, as usual, they were absolutely wrong, nopt only you can do it, you can do it BY ACCIDENT, and you can't fix it!

A very simple mish (click a glowie, rescue 3 hostages, defeat a boss) in my arc somehow fails to spawn one of the hostages from time to time, and/or makes one of the hostages invisible.

I made the map bigger, removed all conditional triggers, quintiple-checked it... Still the very first feedback I've got was about that DAMN spawn failure.

Yesterday, I removed anything fancy that was in the rescue objectives themselves, thinking that maybe it's /em boombox I used or the fact that I didn't set enemy group for 2 of 3 captives caused it, - On the 3rd run I've got "invisible hostage" bug (earlirer I've got a report of one from Judgrement_Dave) That hostage is set to just a random PPD cop. (couldn't select a specific one, would mess up mish'level range. BTW, why the heck, non-escort, non-combt captive, not Ally, not Hostage, but basic captive has to affect THAT?)

After hours of that I ended up just sticking an ugly warning about the bug into the arc's descriptor, which probably will kill any chance of it ever being played. Are there any other ways?

What he heard, but didn't yet try for himself, was that base crafting was changed in I13. You still need to craft things, but it's now more like enhancements crafting, no "Base salvage" is needed, but regular one is.

QR 2 Judgement_Dave
Ok, I've got my share of "Can u fill a little" (sometimes I even could), but MA farms... Well, they're BIG, they're everyewhere, and MA farmers broadcast and spam chat channels, unlike more discreet PortalCorp farmers.

Still, any farmer is a baby compared to blind SGer.

People, read the entire post, not just the subordinate clause. I THINK the aurhor just meant that they kept firing (and hitting him), instead of being totally held, as normal mobs do.

Or so I think. (note to self: do not use purple, flowery turns of belle lettres on this literalist message board or you'll get people confuzzled, blinded and smoke-grenaded.)

BTW, Opera 8.x-9.0 zoom was broken, one they have now behaves much better.

That said I don't expect perfect layout from a zoomed page... But this forum, for one, is usable with zooms up to 250% in my monitor. (1600*1024) Nothing is overlaid/mispaced, text reads in the correct order, no horiz scrollbar in sight.

ADD: Just where is that magic flag? Never found it, gave up on FF, thinking that their zoom doesn't zoom everything including images and flash.

It's great because of that. If I need zoom, that's because I don't see something clearly, and that "something" includes the whole site, not just the text, the whole site, not just the text author thinks is important, the whole site, not just everything except textfields... you've got the idea.

Serioussly, I don't even consider browsers that don't do that nowadays.

Please, if you can, also try out the magnification function in the Opera. I use rather high ones, (200+%) and although everything fits now, it does so in rather strange way even on milder mag levels like 140%. (don't ewen ask how I read ingame test. The short answer is: Poorly.) Haven't tried MSIE or FF3 magnificators, but I believe there might be issues too.

For a week now, it's the same dozen arcs. NVM they're all from beta times, but surely there are more worthwhile arcs from beta? I've played a few myself. NVM their promise of 1% arcs, clearly impossible now, without lowering standards/hiring a staff of MA critics, but I expected there would be more arcs than that by now...

MA mobs SO need pistol/bat set. It could be patterned after assault sets, available only to mobs, and between pistol attack, baseball bat attack, 3 thug MM attacks and some auras here and there we can find required 9 animations. OTOH, err... agricultural persons would abuse it by making pistol-toting LVL 54s.

Deceive FTW! But yes, customs get containment, Defiance, AS and scrapper/corr crits, or so it seems. No problem with Boss or above getting them, sure, but minions?

As someone already suggested, disallow SKs in the MA. ANY kinds of SKs, while we're at it. Or nerf it, making SKs with level diff above some limit receive zero XP. Problem solved.

PS. And puh-lease leave the XP alone. I'm moostly a "story-oriented" player, check my arcs if you won't believe that, but killing/nerfing XP rewards would hurt MA.

Nerfing tickets is another story, mind you, tickets as they are now made one of my toons instant 30 mil, without farming of any kind. Maybe I've got extremely lucky (3 shiny procs in 35 Bronze rolls) but I suspect that it's because instead of drop rolls that otherwise would be mostly salvage, you effectively get just recipe rolls, and weighted towards useful recipes, to boot.

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This is true.

But the EU NCSoft website is new, not something that was made 10 years ago.

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Yes, the design is new, but we don't know whether backend components were updated along with it or not. And if they weren't, adjustable listbox in itself may make little good. (depends on the quality of that same backend, which in turn communicates with actual credit card company service, which in turn, etc., etc... Lots of places where someone might get lazy like that.)

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Such as not recognizing that there's Maestro cards starting in 2009, meaning I can't get the booster pack nor can I update my sub at the end of the month.

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This is a known issue and should be resolved in the near future.

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Meaning we will fix this for 2009 around the time 2010 begins to be an issue.

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How do you even manage to make such an error? Any half-way sane system uses a dynamic system to generate Date drop-downs, either on the server side or failing that using simple Javascript to populate the drop-down. It's really not hard at all.

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People do it all the time. Back in 199x. 2009 seemed like a distant future, sure, there would be a few days to implement something better than that hardcoded listbox (and associated data model.) Somehow, development and support being what they are, those days are never found until it's too late. I don't say this is good, or that all teams lack foresight like that, but it happens often enough.

Happy birthday!

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What MA does for me is a great new way to get from those irritating below level 20 levels. Story wise(when I play solo...but then everyone wants to put in at least one EB...sigh...Sir Drake not a happy blaster... ) or just having fun with a few others in a team...at the moment I don't really care in what kind of mission that is.

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Shameless plug: "Goldbricked!" 2.0 has no EBs, AVs, etc, just 3 bosses, one custom ss/regen. http://www.cityofguides.com/ma/view-mission.php?id=71

That said, yes, people (meself included) tend to forget that just placing Outcasts or Helions do not lowbie arc make. They use extrem EBs, open maps, huge objective lists, etc, as a matter of course

What GS said, although I use double-rad defender and I'm not playing him exclusively in MA.

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Regardless there's only one way all of this can go. Rewards in the MA will be brutally culled meaning all the really fun arcs out there will go unplayed.


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I hope devs won't do something this stupid, not blatantly, anyway. (but stealthy ticket roll nerf will come, I fear...)

As for disabling of auto-SK, - /signed, /signed, /signed. Most pointless and abuse-prone feature of the MA. I mean, there's just no reason anyone would want that on a regular basis except for PLing themselves, you have no powers to match that level anyway. Or, even better, make it a sliding scale: auto-sk for uop to +2 levels works as is, for +2-+10 rewards are halved, and so on. So, if someone absolutely dies to see how Malta sapp gun looks like, yes, he can.

(I suspect that devs truly didn't suspect how popular MA would be, they thought in terms of maybe a few dozens good arcs and a few thousands dross in the first month. They missed it by the order of magnitude, and instead of lowbies needing auto-SK to do anything in the MA we got what we've got.)


And the idea to make MA buildings unusable for high-levels in Atlas and Galaxy is perfect.

What GrinningSpade said. And specific spawn locations... The more I think about it the more wrong rhe idea seems. For a huge part of game everyone and his dog uses, and probably will use, foolproofnes, lulzproofness and not making farming too easy, are more importaant than the ability to spawn that boss exactly where you want him.

BUT! While potential spawn sites and front/middle/back areas should be computed, author should see them. That way you can tweak your map to make that all-important boss appear at specific location, but not to make your own Atta Cave just for lulz or by accident. (Oh, I soloed Atta cave and liked it, good test for a newb ghoster/"there was an EB?" toon. But if every arc will be like that, it would become uncool.)

And frankly, I would agree to just, say, Longbow set with the ability to change group symbol on the walls and repaint them. Would allow 90% of things I'd personally like to use map editor for (like better Council/5th-themed maps. Or Malta having their own maps insted of squatting council bases. )

AE should have been a zone, not building. Those windows are neat and all, but...

/me hides in Galaxy, FF, Faultline and other places where tractors aren't as noisy.

Just to encourage people to use them even more.

Like,
10 rolls, - Gambler, 25 rolls, - Treasure Hunter, 50 - Adventurer, 100 - Chaos Theorist.

Bronze ticket, salvage, insp, etc. rolls shouldn't give that though, or it would be too easy, no matter what the numbers. Only Silver/Gold/Merit rolls.