Arcanaville

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Hi:

The reason for these so call adjustments, is mostly due to lack of planning, professional testing, and perhaps poor coding practices.

My husband who manages a software development team, tells me that many of the "old" code or poorly configuration managed software are usually regarded as "Spaguetti Code". When you have "spaguetti" Code" you are in a situation when you do a change in the code, it may have totally unexpected side effects. For example, look at the changes done in I13, how come the Blackwand got bugged? Look at the changes on I12, how come the chat color instructions got bugged? One would be lead to believe that historically CoX developers are not practicing professional software development practices, and over the time, their spaguetti code has gotten increasingly more tangled.

So how does this impact the vision of a power? It should be obvious, when the code is poorly managed and integrated, and changes yields many surprises, some good, some bad; then powers would suddenly work much better or worse than intended and as a result they will need to be retuned.

Frankly, if CoX has spaguetti code issues, its impossible for a developer to tell us in advance what his vision of what is going to happen to our powers or what not.

I would suggest, that CoX maybe stop after I14 making new upgrades, and simply look back at their code and clean their act. The reward of this will be a more stable game, better satified costumers (no more jerking around of power effects), and future upgrades can actually be developed faster and easier.

Hugs

Stormy

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Just an FYI: powers definitions are not code: they are data. There is no "code" that tells the game how power burst works. The game code implements mechanics that the powers data obeys to generate powers effects.

Although sometimes the game code is very clearly borked, in the case of the pet recharge issues there was no sudden odd or unexpected change in behavior. Rather, there was undesirable behavior that reached a point where the devs decided to take action. No amount of "good coding practices" in that sense would have avoided this particular issue.


Also, the term "spaghetti code" is usually reserved for code that is bordering on the incomprehensible because its structure makes it almost impossible to trace its logical execution. The canonical example is code with large numbers of conditional branches ("GOTOs"). If I had to bet real money, I'd bet CoX is full of the stuff, just because I *always* win that bet on any software project, even ones supposedly run by "good coding practices." But in this case, that isn't a factor in these issues.

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I'm guessing she is steaming about it as she is extremely detail oriented and that explains her disavowing any knowledge of DR and tossing Castle under the bus.

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I don't really see it as "throwing Castle under the bus"** so I'm not as upset as you assume I am. Actually, I tend to disagree with the devs more than I agree with them, and it doesn't hurt my ability to communicate with them. But the devs rarely simply do whatever I (or any other player) say, and Elusivity is no exception to that rule. The devs suggested that ED itself was "suggested by the players" but the most likely source of that suggestion was probably the post made by Pilcrow, who did not suggest the implementation that was actually put into the game, and from talking to him at the time I know it would not have been his first choice. He (and other players) only suggested *some* form of diminishing returns be placed on enhancement strength.

But I can't throw Castle under the bus by claiming it wasn't my decision, because nothing is ever my decision. The devs only do it if they themselves decide to do it. At best the most I or any other player can take credit for is suggesting an idea. The ultimate form that idea takes is always ultimately the devs' own final decision. And I have *never* gotten an unvetted idea past the devs. They pick them apart no differently than they would anyone elses idea.


** for one thing, Castle wasn't the sole architect of DR or Elusivity

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Preach on, but do us a favor and just leave it at preaching in the future, I don't think I could handle your deific touch damaging another aspect of the game like your elusivity idea did to pvp.

Your services as a dev interpreter and personal assistant to the stars is invaluable, so please don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. I really hope you got MMO pvp development out of your system and hopefully the devs don't do another "bring your kid to work and let them run stuff day" in the near future.

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How could I possibly take it the wrong way that you're basically accusing me of breaking PvP with a suggestion that wasn't actually followed in precisely the way I suggested it needed to be, because otherwise Defense would get too strong.

And having said that, blaming me for Diminishing Returns - which actually interferes with Elusivity and is *most* of the source of defense sets being too powerful in PvP - can't possibly be a bad thing, because even though I never suggested it and never had knowledge of it until after it was implemented, blaming me has the advantage of attempting to pin your substantive ignorance on someone with a proven track record of actually understanding the issues well enough to make you look like an idiot. Seems like a winning strategy right there.


I mean, the fact that the suggestion document is still up on the forums for anyone with a brain to read, and was linked in my sig until just a couple weeks ago (and for the search-challenged its right here), and spells all of this out shouldn't deter you from once again having the audacity to point to words that contradict you and then claiming semantic victory. If you like, I can try to dig up the thread from 2005 where the idea was first openly discussed and you can run a victory lap around it.


Just be aware that while I have certain limits on "defending bedfellows" I have no such limits when it comes to defending against personal attacks directly. And I've been doing it for longer than you've heard of the internet. So if this is your pleasure, draw what passes for your wit and step forward. Otherwise, I would strongly suggest quitting while you are behind, but still in possession of one.


Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go break the mission maker powers now. Just giving you fair warning in case you need some smelling salts or a defibrilator. I won't specifically try to make the game intolerable for you personally while I do, but if I happen to do so, well we all get lucky sometime.

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An ability the player never has under any other circumstance, and has been called a bug in every other circumstance where it appeared.


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Peacebringer Light Form prevents rooting.

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As far as I'm aware, Light Form doesn't root you, but I don't recall it specifically blocking all other combat roots. However, I'm not in a position to test that at the moment. If it does have that behavior, its almost certainly due to some weird Kheldian mode bug and not deliberate. I'll certainly take a closer look at it at some point when I have more time.

Another area where there exists a (currently) unavoidable lack of rooting is during the interruptible window of Sniper attacks. It wasn't well known (except to players that used the power extensively) that slotting interrupt reduction into sniper attacks would reduce the interruptible window, but not reduce the interruptible animation. The interruptible animation is not rooted, because its left unrooted so you can move or be moved, which would interrupt the power. But when you slot interrupt reduction, the duration during which you can be interrupted and break the power gets lower, while the duration during which you can actually *move* doesn't - the combat engine does not instruct the interruptible animation to stop playing.

So: its actually possible to do this:

Activate Sniper blast (slotted for interrupt reduction).
Wait one second
Move in some direction (i.e. towards or away from your target)
Sniper goes off without being interrupted

That lack of root should *also* be considered a bug, and subject to change at any time without warning (and the fix probably wouldn't be that hard, if they ever decided to get around to it).

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Something else that comes up in regards to this solution: at what levels of pet recharge does the AI start to go funky? Because if they're okay at, say, +20%, then couldn't you just set the max to 1.2? You still get some benefit from recharge buffs, the AI still behaves itself, and the whole RIP thing, while not totally fixed, becomes much less of an issue. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

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I'm extrapolating a bit here, but the problem isn't specifically a particular level of recharge. The problem is that the critter AI is sensitive to the amount of time it takes for certain powers to recharge, and which ones are important is itself based on a different algorithm that selects powers to use.

I *think* that the issue is that critter AI can be theoretically tweaked (if necessary, possibly per critter) to adjust them to avoid funky behavior, provided the devs know what powersets it uses and what the recharge times of the various attack powers are. However, it cannot be tweaked to avoid bad behavior in the general case where they don't know what the recharge times are for all the attacks - or at least the critical ones related to the problem.

I think the recharge lock is *part* of a solution that will involve the devs *also* tweaking the AI in the most problematic cases, which is why that change alone is not automatically fixing all the pets on test. Its setting the groundwork for them to be able to individually fix them, by adjusting the AI to handle the static set of cases they now are facing.

That's a guess, based on what I know about the AI problem itself, and keep in mind that's separate from Castle stating that in some cases pets were getting recharge unintentionally regardless of AI issues.

On the subject of the OP: the devs have said for a very long time now that its an unavoidable but undesirable and unintentional bug in the game that if they want a power to be slottable for X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C, they cannot prevent an enhancement that provides X and A from only passing X to the power. Its all or nothing, and this bug and this statement that it *is* a bug goes all the way back to Hamidon enhancements (a generalization of this issue seems to affect inheriting modifiers from caster to pet). We all knew, or should have known, that this was unintentional. So asking the devs for a "powers vision document" in this case would not have improved the situation. All it would have said was what they had already said: this behavior is not intended, currently technically unavoidable, but there are no current plans to address it.

In this case, however, they had the existing bug that these modifiers were being passed to powers in an unintended manner, AND the invention system has continuously increased the amount of recharge exposed to the bug AND there was a separate issue involving critter AI which was determined to be affected by changing recharge. And there's no way the devs can write a vision document that says "we won't change it unless this, this, and that occur" because that's impossible to predict.

We also have a precident for what the devs have done in the past when they've decided, upon reflection, that this is too strong of a bug to ignore. We clever players decided to exploit this bug in the past by slotting melee attacks for range and there were all sorts of bizarre rationalizations for why this was actually a good thing by some of the players doing it. The devs thought differently, and it was actually *that* exploit that caused them to originally put the technology into the game that actually *allows* them to make powers ignore some buffs - the very same tech now being used to make pet powers ignore recharge. Same problem, same remediation. Surprise, surprise.


Now, am I in favor of publishing such documents anyway? Absolutely not. First, we have the melee range slotting issue of the past. Even for something *that* obvious, we had players arguing that it should be allowed. Just imagine all the design document rules the devs would have to be arguing over on the forums and in PM for years after such documents were published. Second, at the moment we have players making the claim that Castle promised [u]never[u] to change existing powers to make them immune from recharge buffs, and the actual fact that he said that decision was subject to change in the future if game conditions changed is legal technical mumbo-jumbo.

Given the fact that the devs cannot trivially protect themselves from either circumstance, I don't believe such documents could provide more benefit than harm.

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I remember hover used to provide KB mitigation. I remember in the description it even said this, and that if you got hit with a KB power, you'd spin in place, recover, then could attack again. But then the devs lengthened the recovery time and said "it was never intended" to give KB protection. For 10 issues it worked this way, but suddenly, it "was never intended"?

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Clarification here:

Hover has always, and continues to provide knockback mitigation. It does not, and never did, provide knockback protection. It was always true that when hit with a knockback power, instead of being knocked backward you'd flip in place. The time this took was always less than the time it took to be thrown down or back, and then stand up - and still is.

What has changed is that originally, the backflip animation that played had a pair of settings that were not set correctly in combination. First, the backflip animation was not set to root - specifically, it was not set as a CANTMOVE animation. *All* other knockback animations are flagged this way so that during the knock and while you are standing up the game prevents you from either moving** or executing a power. What most players then and now aren't aware of is that the part of the game that prevents you from taking an action when you're executing another action is actually the animation system, not the powers system*** and if the knock/flip animation of hover is not flagged as CANTMOVE, then unlike all other knockback animations you can actually act during it.

However - and this is the rosetta stone for the definitive proof that this is a bug and not designed as intended - that animation is *also* flagged so that other powers animations cannot interrupt it. In other words, if you are in the middle of the backflip and you execute, say, power blast, then power blast's animation will not play: the backflip will prevent it from playing, and the power will just execute without the player performing its assigned animation. Because of that, the CANTMOVE built into power blast's animation will never take effect either, because its animation is blocked.

*That* is the Hover bug: first, Hover's knockback animation doesn't root like all other knockback animations, and second it prevents all other roots from taking effect during its animation, because it locks out all other animations from playing. If you are hoving and something hits you with a knockback power, during the knockback effect you are essentially unaffected by knockback because the knockback animation doesn't actually *do* anything to you, and doesn't prevent activity, AND it actually makes you basically ignore the rooting rules of the game by blocking all roots from taking effect[/i]. An ability the player never has under any other circumstance, and has been called a bug in every other circumstance where it appeared.

To put it in terms above, if you got hit with a KB power, you'd spin in place, recover, and while this was happening you could move and shoot totally unrooted: no waiting required. And there's no way on earth that Hover was explicitly intended to provide that sort of buff.


Now, what took so long for the dev team to find it? Well, the simply fact of the matter is that its a subtle enough bug that not many people were even aware of it, and apparently no one thought to report it as a bug. Not even I did, although to be honest, I can say with reasonably certainty that if BaB hadn't fixed it when he did, I was about a month away from actually reporting it as a bug. I was already at the time investigating the "shadow maul unrooting" bug and feeding BaB information about that. I'm pretty certain I would have gotten to it fairly soon afterward.

And FYI Hover still provides knockback mitigation. Its backflip still strongly resists backward movement, and it still lasts for less time than a genuine knockdown. But it doesn't offer the prior root immunity/unrooted attacking capability that it used to, which no one can reasonably claim was a reasonable ability for the power.



** technically, it doesn't prevent moving, it prevents the player from giving movement commands - you could still fall, slide, or other movements that don't require player input or continuing automatic input, such as autoforward

*** to be precise, the powers system enforces cast time which prevents you from activating a power while another is under its cast time, but its the animation system that "roots" a player and prevents *both* movement and executing other abilities while a power is performing its mandatory rooted animation

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2 Phantasms, 2 Dark Servants, 9-12 Imps I think...oh how fire control was really crazy

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My Ill/Rad used to have three phantasms with three decoys, partially overlapping perma-PA, and however many spectral terrors I felt like at the time concurrently.

I think a speedy fire controller could get 15 imps out at once at least for a while.

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wasnt 25 the theoretical cap? There was a "history of" thread around somewhere that people were claiming as such

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Theoretically, if you were at the speed cap and if you happened to get five imps in five casts in a row (usually you got three or four, but you could get anything from two to five). Never seen it myself.

Averaging 3.5, you were more likely to see a decently fast controller get about 14-16 imps out there, unless you were in a speed-boosted team.

(There was this one time I was in an eight controller team where all the controllers were either fire or ill, and either rad or kin, except for one emp. I4. Totally insane).

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I keep waiting for Castle to snap and post something that gets modded.

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Castle hasn't really flipped out in a long time. Sometimes I wonder if NCSoft pumps Paxilon Hydrochlorate into the CoH offices, and that simultaneously explains Castle's posting behavior, and BaBs.

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I think people are getting hung up on the comparison to AOE "rain" powers. Let me put the OP's thought as I understand it in different terms. Right now on live, Lightning Storm's attack has a cast time of 1.17 seconds and a recharge time of 4 seconds. What would happen if you changed that to a cast time of 5.17 seconds and recharge time of 0 seconds, leaving all other power parameters unchanged?

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That's a good question. And the answer is, if its a totally immobile pet, I believe probably what you want: it would fire about every 5.17 seconds (probably plus a small AI tailgate), and be immune to recharge.

If you tried to do this to a mobile pet, that could be a different story. Rooting wouldn't be a problem because that is handled by the animation system, but actually making moving decisions itself could get screwed. If the game actually waits the cast time before asking the critter to make decisions on next course of action then a power like that could either prevent or seriously impair the critter's ability to make reasonable motion decisions. Its hard to say at the moment because that would depend on very specific implementation details.

It also goes without saying you could only do this for critters with only one click power.

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One of the problems I have is that my notebook is rather weak so I really can't play while traveling. Besides getting a powerful notebook, it would be awesome if I could play it on a cheap netbook or even an iphone.

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The more recent netbooks might be powerful enough. I helped a friend of mine get WoW to run on a Lenovo netbook, and it ran fairly decently without significant tweaking (because that's what his son plays: I wasn't specificially shilling for the competition).

The pre-release files have sometimes come weeks before release. Usually, they come when the devs are pretty sure they aren't going to be making big changes to the data, which means most of the patching past that point will likely be server-side, tiny data changes, and maybe one last code change on the client.

My guess is the "Big Patch" for Issue 14 is pretty stable, even if the issue itself isn't yet, so its reasonable to get people starting the pre-download.

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2 Phantasms, 2 Dark Servants, 9-12 Imps I think...oh how fire control was really crazy

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My Ill/Rad used to have three phantasms with three decoys, partially overlapping perma-PA, and however many spectral terrors I felt like at the time concurrently.

I think a speedy fire controller could get 15 imps out at once at least for a while.

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In fact I would like for someone to prove its game breaking for LS to be the way it is.

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You say that like it matters. It doesn't. "Game-breaking" means its definitely not allowed. "Not game-breaking" means nothing.

Proving something in the game is not game breaking is comparable to proving it doesn't cause acne.


On the subject of what is and is not intuitive, I generally stay away from the subject in general, but one of the things I find most non-intuitive is that pets often use a higher damage scale than their casters, which means a low damage archetype is effectively allowed to summon the use of powers that operate beyond their damage scale.

The "intuitive" bomb does not discriminate targets. It should be considered the nuclear option and left in its silos.

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How many of you are there at the moment?

Well, however many of you there are, I don't mind continuing to remind all of you that your statements are irrelevant. Even if its not a need of any of yours, I'm more than happy to do it anyway.

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In fact I would like for someone to prove its game breaking for LS to be the way it is.

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You say that like it matters. It doesn't. "Game-breaking" means its definitely not allowed. "Not game-breaking" means nothing.

Proving something in the game is not game breaking is comparable to proving it doesn't cause acne.


On the subject of what is and is not intuitive, I generally stay away from the subject in general, but one of the things I find most non-intuitive is that pets often use a higher damage scale than their casters, which means a low damage archetype is effectively allowed to summon the use of powers that operate beyond their damage scale.

The "intuitive" bomb does not discriminate targets. It should be considered the nuclear option and left in its silos.

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But what about exemptions to this fix. Thats what most of us want to know about. We already know its possible for some exemptions because there have been reports that the defender lightning storm still behaves the same as on live as on test yet the controller/corrupter/mastermind version of the power is now uneffected by recharge. I do think at the very least if you are making the powers not take recharge any more and if they arent able to be targeted anyways then maybe you can up the damage or change the recharge itself. I just really hate for lightning storm to become worthless outside of boss/av fights.

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Powers like Lightning Storm, Voltaic Sentinel and Auto Turret are precisely the powers that were targeted by this fix. Making exemptions for them would defeat the purpose, don't you think?

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In other words you weren't trying to help those with problems with the Bruiser or Stony getting stuck just tossing rocks. You were targetting everyone else and just happened to fix their problem?

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Actually, what Castle is saying is that there was already a problem on the table - recharge being passed to pets unintentionally - when a separate problem came along that happened to propose a solution that also addressed the pet recharge problem.

Its often the case that problem X has a solution A that doesn't appear to be worth the effort, then another problem Y comes along that also has solution A, and suddenly solution A is killing two birds with one stone and becomes much more attractive to perform.

Just a couple months ago I had a customer ask if they should load a particular patch to one of their systems. My answer was nope. Then last month they ran into a problem, and I recommended they load the very same patch. They asked me why I didn't recommend the patch earlier, and the answer was simple: that patch has side effects that made it not worth it back then, but with the appearance of the new problem (which was not directly mentioned in the patch, but turns out to be resolved by it) the patch now became worth it, in spite of those side effects (which I subsequently had to resolve after patching).

It would be easy to characterize decision-making like this as either confused or inconsistent, but its actually precisely what happens with any complex system when proper risk analysis is performed. These decisions are almost never simple binary decisions, and they are almost always subject to modification when new information changes the equation.

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Question: Once an arc has reached Developers' Choice status, can it be edited at all, ever?

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Up to the latest patch, the answer to that question was "yes."

At this moment in time, I can't answer that question definitively.

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So to get optional objectives to show in the Nav, you apparently have to fill in both even if your objective happens to be only one thing.

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Do you think that's a bug, Arcana, or intended behavior? *glances around for Pohsyb*

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Most likely a bug, but probably not from a programming perspective but rather from an algorithmic perspective: it was done intentionally this way without realizing that people might want to have optional singeton objectives that displayed text without being required.

(The most common and probably prototypical case of optional item(s) displaying text is when the optional item(s) are combined with a mandatory item to "hide" the mandatory item, and the plural text is always required in that case).

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do I have to fill in BOTH fields to have an optional thing display on the nav bar?

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Apparently you do. I just tested this circumstance with collections, and if your optional collection has only one item, if you only fill in the singular text that text doesn't show in the Nav. But if you fill in both text fields (putting anything into the plural text you want) then the singular text shows.

So to get optional objectives to show in the Nav, you apparently have to fill in both even if your objective happens to be only one thing.

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How do I make an optional objective display on the nav bar? Any time I set something as optional, it won't show up top. But I know pohsyb accomplished this in an arc.

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If you leave the singular and plural text of an optional collection empty, nothing shows in the Nav. If you actually put text in those blanks, the MA assumes you want it to show, and that text will show in the Nav whether the collection is optional or required.

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I get less & less excited for i14 after reading & asking questions. Same goes for bout 15 of us playing currently.

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Everyone has their own desires and expectations for the MA, and its impossible for the MA to meet all of them. However, given the test server has seen over 10,000 published missions to date (granted, some are duplicates or revoked and republished missions or test missions) I believe the intent of the devs to launch a system that a significant percentage of players will enjoy authoring with and playing under is likely to be achieved.

If its sufficiently successful, the devs will certainly continue to improve the system (its significantly improved since its first inception, and continued to improve since its original launch in closed beta). However, it will *never* have all the features everyone is asking for, which means regardless of how much time and effort is put into its development, there will unavoidably be players that will not be satisfied with its capabilities.

The bottom line for me is that in my own opinion, if you are looking to be displeased with it, you'll probably find reason to be. If you're looking to be entertained by it, you probably will find a way to be. There's no "objective" way to judge its entertainment value in that sense.

I'm past the editing window, so I'm posting the updated FAQ here. I'll ping Ex about having this copied into the OP on Monday, on the presumption she needs a weekend just as much as I do.

I have only had time to add a bunch of content to the FAQ: I'll work on formatting it next, so it doesn't look like just a wall of text.


Frequently Asked Questions about Designing Missions with the MA


Section One: Critters

Q1.1: How do I restrict the level that my critters spawn at? I want to make a critter that only spawns from level 15 to 25, but custom critters seem to spawn from level 1 to 54 always.

A1.1: At the moment, you cannot do that. However, it may be possible to force the *mission* to spawn only in that range by adding something to the mission that only spawns in the desired range, like a rescue objective or an ally. If the mission is forced into that range, the custom critters will obviously be forced to stay (at least roughly) in that range also.


Q1.2: What does "Standard, Hard, and Extreme" mean?

A1.2: These are difficulty settings for the critters. When you design a critter, you pick a primary and secondary powerset for that critter. Each powerset has settings that specify which powers are usable by minions, LTs, and Bosses (or higher). Lower ranks generally get less number (and weaker) powers. In addition, the difficulty scaler can be used to reduce the number of powers that a critter gets to use. These two settings (Rank and Difficulty) are independent: a critter can only use what its rank allows *and* what its difficulty allows.

Note that these settings (both Rank and especially Difficulty) are not fully implemented correctly yet: you may see unusual sets of powers becoming available or not available with these settings: they were a late addition to the MA feature set.


Q1.3: Why was the difficulty setting added to the custom critter editor anyway?

A1.3: You will best appreciate the reason by actually testing critters in the MA, and noting their relative difficulty. Custom critters are *much* stronger than standard PvE critters for a lot of reasons. Originally, custom critters used all powers in the powersets they were given. This means every Thugs minion spammed Gang War, and every Willpower critter rezzed at the end of the fight - with no way for the player to have any say in the matter. Also, Bosses would be hitting far harder than players expected, because they now had *our* powers. Critter powers are generally limited to Scale 2.0 damage - even the critter version of total focus hits for only Scale 2.0 damage. But now they have our version, which hits at 3.56 scale. This means critters are capable of hitting 70% harder than ever before. On top of that, they now have Build Up with alarming frequency: a critter that uses BU + TF can hit nearly four times harder than any other critter of the same rank generally hits with *any* attack in the standard PvE game.

Interesting if the Scrapper Challenge makes you yawn. Otherwise, its instant death to a lot of other players. Thus, it was important to allow players to tone down critters if they so chose. If you still want maximum firepower, you can still set your critters to be "Extreme."


Q1.4: What powers are "Hard?" What powers are "Extreme?"

A1.4: These settings are still being set, tweaked, and debugged, so they are still in flux. Also, they are hand-edited, so every powerset is different. There is no hard and fast rule like "Hard turns on powers one through six" which will tell you ahead of time what powers will be turned off and on. However, there are certain general rules that are *usually* but not *always* followed:

* Rezzes, Nukes, Tier 9 pets, Tier 9 "overdrive" powers, and status protection powers are generally Extreme powers only. Also, most (but not all) confuses and most tier 9 attacks in general.
* The first two attacks in a primary are usually included among the Standard powers. Sometimes, but not always, one of them will be limited to level 20 and higher
* Most other powers are "Hard"

However: these rules are not hard and fast rules. The only way to know which powers a particular setting will turn off or on is to set that setting and actually look in the powerset listing. Powers unavailable at that setting will be greyed out.


Q1.5: Can I "reskin" existing critters, or give existing critters different powers?

A1.5: Nope. Custom critters use a version of the player costume editor for creating their appearance: basically, if you can't make yourself look like it, you can't make a custom critter look like it either. Nor can you edit existing critters and change their powers. Essentially, you can make player characters into custom NPCs.


Q1.6: Can I make my own custom villain groups? Can I edit existing groups?

A1.6: You can make your own; they are also called custom critter groups. You cannot edit any existing critter groups, but you can add both custom critters and existing critters to custom groups. So if you want to make your own version of the Vahzilok with additional zombies, you can make a custom critter group, add all of the Vahz, and then add your own supplemental critters.

But be warned: every custom critter takes about 6.5% of your *total* mission arc file space (for the entire arc, not just a single mission). You're not going to be able to get more than about 14 custom critters into a single mission arc - 15 if they all stand in a phonebooth and don't speak.

You can't edit existing groups. But you can make your owngroup , and add in all the members of the original group if you want to, and then edit from there.


Q1.7: Why can't I use capes/auras/My Ultra Cool Talsorian Sword?

A1.7: All unlockable player costume content must be unlocked again for the MA by purchasing with tickets earned while playing MA content. Fortunately, the costs relative to the earning rate are low. The reason this was done was because it was problematic to allow players to edit MA content with multiple alts, all of which might have different things unlocked. The MA basically requires all unlockable content to be unlocked account-wide for the purposes of the MA, thus the need to unlock specificially for the MA.

Note there are other things that are unlockable, like certain maps and critters (see below).


Q1.8: Why does my custom AV spawn as an Elite Boss?

A1.8: The MA enforces the same rules as the standard PvE missions regarding when an AV will spawn. For a solo hero, AVs will only spawn on Invincible. For teams, AVs will spawn at lower difficulty settings if there are enough players on the team.


Q1.9: Why does my Elite Boss spawn as an Lt?

A1.9: Unlike standard missions, the MA missions have code to downscale EBs. At the moment, that downscales them to LTs (just like Bosses) if the mission is played on heroic. Whether this is intentional, or bugged (and the correct behavior was to downscale to Lts) is unclear at this time.


Q1.10: Why is my AV spawning at my level, while all other critters are spawning at higher levels. I'm set to Invincible.

A1.10: The MA follows the same AV spawning rule as standard missions which states that normally AVs spawn at the player's level, not at a higher level regardless of the difficulty setting. This does not affect non-AVs which will spawn at the level implied by the security level and difficulty setting of the mission holder.

Curiously and unexpectedly for some players, this means a player that enters a mission on invincible can face an AV that is level 50, and upon reducing their difficulty to Unyielding could be facing an Elite boss that is level 51 or 52 - higher than the level of the AV.


Q1.11: What is "Reflections?"

A1.11: Its a version of flight that also gives the critter a translucent glow - its the travel power that Shadow Shard reflections critters have.



Q1.12: The stalker version of Super Reflexes doesn't have Hide. That's a bug, right?

A1.12: No. There is only one version of all powersets, and technically its not the Stalker or Scrapper or Brute version: its the Mission Maker version. In the case of SR, the Mission Maker version is identical in most respects to the Scrapper version. But in no case are there two different versions of the same set in the custom critter editor. The headings for the powers are intended to be sorting hints to make it easier to find comparable sets: if you are looking for the Stalker powerset "(Stalker) Super Reflexes" it will point you to the closest one.

However, its important to note that it isn't exactly the Scrapper version either, because most powersets have been tweaked to make them work for critters. For example, the Mission Maker version of SR's Elude doesn't crash. In fact, most tier 9s only cost the critter 50% of their endurance when they expire, and have no -recovery (and no -health either in the case of Unstoppable). Some powersets are even more dramatically different: Radiation Emission's "toggle" debuffs are now clicks (to make it easier for critter AI to use them). A really dramatic change is Force Fields: the Mission Maker FF powerset combines both small bubble buffs into one bubble - deflection shield. In Insulation's place is aid self. That's right: Mission Maker FF critters have a self-heal.

If you really care what the custom critters will have in terms of powers, actually examine the powersets *and* the power definitions carefully (the critter editor shows "Real Numbers" for the Mission Maker powers). There will be occasional surprises in there.



Section Two: Maps

Q2.1: I'm having trouble placing things in my mission map. I told it to place "Middle" but it keeps showing up at the end of the mission.

A2.1: Two possibilities. First, many maps are unfortunately buggy, and most of the "Middle" spawn points are designated "Back" and vice versa. Don't be surprised if Back = Middle and Middle = Back for some maps (but not all).

Second: order is significant: when you create a mission and start placing objectives into it, the mapserver will instance your mission map by placing each item or set of items in the order they are listed in your mission definition. This can be significant because if you have a map with three front, three middle, and three back spawn locations, and you make an objective for 7 "Patrols" to spawn "Random" those will randomly take up seven of those nine points. If you then add a Boss objective set to spawn "Front" the three front spawn points might already be taken up. In that event, the mapserver will start looking from front to back looking for the nearest available spawn point. Your boss could end up anywhere.

In general, add the things you actually care about placement first, and the rest of the stuff last.


Q2.2: Can I reorder objectives to deal with the above issue?

A2.2: At the moment, only by hand-editing the mission file.


Q2.3: I need map XYZ and its not here; why?

A2.3: Some maps had certain problematic issues and were removed until those problems could be resolved. Its not always clear what those problems were for all removed maps. In addition, some maps might require unlocking and you didn't unlock them yet (see unlocking content above).


Section Three: Mission Building

Q3.1: What's the maximum size mission arc I can make?

A3.1: The maximum length of a mission arc is five missions. In addition, there is a 100k size limit on mission arcs. Note: this is not *exactly* the same as the file size on your computer: the local file can be as much as 20% larger than the amount of actual "memory space" that the mission takes up.


Q3.2: My mission was just under the 100k/100% limit, but after I saved and reopened it the mission claimed to be over the limit. What happened?

A3.2: A couple of things could have happened. First: newlines in text fields are replaced with "<br>" codes and they take up four characters each: a two-character NL-NL can expand to an eight character <br><br>. That can cause files to expand after being saved. Its also possible that other expansion takes place: try not to flirt with the limit too closely unless you know your mission arc file won't expand after saving.


Q3.3: I only have one mission and almost no details, but my mission arc is already over 100%! What happened?

A3.3: The most likely cause of this is that you created a custom group that included a lot of custom characters, and then used that group in a way that caused the mission editor to add the *entire* custom group - including its custom critters - into your mission file. In general, you should *never* add a custom group to any part of a mission design unless you fully intend to use *all* of the critters within that group.

The exception: designating a custom group from which to pull a single critter to use in a place where exactly one critter is asked for. For example: selecting a boss for a boss objective. Nevertheless, be careful about the use of custom groups in missions. A sudden jump in file usage is often a signal that a custom group was used incorrectly.


Q3.4: Can I change contacts in the middle of a mission arc?

A3.4: No.


Q3.5: I made a mission, and its empty! What happened?

A3.5: One thing to note is that all mission objectives involving critters - Boss fights, rescue Ally, Battles, Patrols - all of these actually take up spawn points normally occupied by regular mission spawns. Each one burns up a place that critters would ordinarly spawn when the mission instances. If you use enough of these, you could take up all of the spawn points in your mission, making it seem "empty." In fact, its worth noting that these objectives take up spawn points even if they aren't on the map to begin with. If you make seven patrols, and set them to be "triggered" based on a blinkie, those seven patrols will "allocate" seven spawn points which regular spawns can't use. Even though when you first enter the mission that blinkie isn't clicked, and those spawns aren't there yet, they will still prevent the map from generating seven regular spawns.

This can sometimes be a good thing, if that is what the designer intended. But be warned that mission objectives do not come for free (collection objects seem to take up a completely different set of spawn points, and do not generally take up mission spawn points - they do not "empty" missions as a rule).


Q3.6: I made an ambush, and when I trigger it nothing seems to happen/it comes but doesn't attack/it spawns incorrectly with the wrong critters!

A3.6: This is a known bug. Sometimes, ambushes don't spawn. Sometimes, they spawn in a weird way and never come to you. Sometimes they spawn, come to you, and then stop short of you and never attack (unless you go and engage them). Sometimes they don't spawn as the group you specified, but rather as the default mission group. All of these bugs were detected in closed beta, but do not appear to have simple solutions to. See the next question.


Q3.7: Why can't I make an ambush be a "Required" objective?

A3.7: See above. Ambushes are not 100% predictable. If they spawned incorrectly, they can sometimes be non-completable. That would make any mission that required them to be impossible to complete. For that reason, as a safety precaution Ambushes are not allowed to be designated as Required.


Q3.8: Why can't I add more than one ambush to the same trigger?

A3.8: This is an exploit precaution. Its too gameable to make a trigger spawn a large number of a weak critter like Family and just mop them up as they charge like lemmings. Its arguable that the limit is too low (3 ambushes per mission total, and only one per trigger), but if its determined to be too low, it can always be increased by the devs later (it would be much harder to lower the limit after release).

Also: the limit is one ambush per trigger. It is possible to make two ambushes respond to a single *objective* so long as the triggers are different (i.e. you can make one ambush trigger on BossX 1/2 health and a separate one trigger on BossX 1/4 health).


Q3.9: How do I see the source code for someone else's mission arc? I would like to figure out how he/she did X.

A3.9: You can't. You'll have to ask them.


Q3.10: Why does my boss not play the animation I set for him?

A3.10: If a custom critter has powers it uses immediately upon spawning, like turning on toggles, this will generally interrupt and override any starting animations you give it. As a result, those animations won't appear to play (this is a known problem).


Section Four: Mission Testing and Publishing

Q4.1: How many mission arcs can I publish, maximum?

A4.1: To begin with: three. If any of your arcs reaches dev choice status, that arc doesn't count against your limit. So really you can have up to three non-choiced mission arcs. You can have an unlimited number of choiced arcs in theory.


Q4.2: Do I have to publish a mission to test it?

A4.2: You can test a mission with the test option, and it will play no differently than if you published it *except* you won't earn any tickets during a test run. "Invisibly" you'll be earning special "virtual" tickets in the background that you just can't see, and that will count towards the virtual ticket badges. But (at the moment) you won't get any indication of how much you're earning as you go along, so to test ticket-earning you basically need to publish the mission.


Q4.3: How do I access my local missions if I am on another computer?

A4.3: You need to copy the files in the directories called MIssions, costumes, Custom_Critter, and CustomVillainGroup to the other computer from the installation directory of City of Heroes. Technically the only file you need to move to edit a mission on another computer is the mission file located in the Missions subdirectory. That file contains all the information that mission needs, including definitions for all of the custom critters you have used in it. However, if you have created other resources *outside* of that mission that you would like to eventually use within it, you will still need to copy those files to the new computer as well.


Q4.4: Can I republish my missions on Live when Issue 14 launches?

A4.4: See above - just move the files to your Live CoH installation directory, and you'll be set. Note that republishing on live will start from zero, with no ratings or choice-awards.


Q4.5 Can I rate my own missions?

A4.5: No.


Q4.6: When I send comments to someone, how is that sent? How do I read comments sent to my own arcs?

A4.6: Mission comments are sent via in-game email to the alt you used to create the mission. However, it will appear to come from the global handle of the person that made the comment. That means you cannot reply to the email message unless the person coincidentally has a character with the same name as their global handle. The only way to respond to their comment is by sending a global tell message (some people have resorted to posting feedback threads on the forums to discuss their threads due to the issues currently with the feedback system).


Q4.7: I tested my mission, and it plays fine. When I try to publish it, I get an error. What's the problem here?

A4.7: The most common error at the moment is "Level Range Invalid" and its a bug. Usually, if the mission tests fine but doesn't publish, its a bug. Those are still being ironed out at the time of this writing.


Q4.8: I published a mission, and it shows up in My Creations under Published Missions, but it doesn't show up in general search, and other people say they cannot find it? What happened?

A4.8: If a mission cannot be played after its published, because something that was working breaks after a new patch to the game, the first time someone tries to play the mission and it fails to load the system will flag it with a special flag that makes it invisible to search so no one else can stumble onto an unplayable mission. However, its still published and visible to the author so the author can fix it and republish it. If the game *unpublished* the mission when this type of error occurs, that mission would lose all of its ratings. This is a compromise to ensure that invalid missions don't clutter the MA search, but still give the author a chance to fix it.


Q4.9: Can I invite people to test my missions without publishing it?

A4.9: Sure, just invite them and then test the mission while they are on your team. Also, you can actually invite people into your test *after* you've already started running it. Although MA mission arcs are "pseudo task forces" similar to Ouroboros missions, the devs have altered the rules for MA missions to allow people to join and drop at any time.


Q4.10: Why do I seem to always have an "Exit" button in my Nav, even if the mission isn't complete yet?

A4.10: Its a failsafe. In spite of all precautions, its possible a player could make a mission that was uncompletable. The devs wanted to be sure that no player would ever be "trapped" in another player's mission. No matter what you do, you cannot prevent them from simply pushing the button and bailing out of your missions. That doesn't *complete* the mission: its like automatically running to the door and exiting. The mission itself continues to run.


Q4.11: Where is the field analyst/fateweaver/thing I use to set difficulty in the Architect building? I would like to change difficulty for testing purposes?

A4.11: Unfortunately, at the moment there isn't one in any AE building. Its a highly requested feature though, so you're not alone in asking.


Q4.12: Well, is there an inspiration vendor at least?

A4.12: Yes. There is a contact that sells inspirations on the same level as the main architect terminals and the mission portal. Facing the mission portal from the editing terminals, that contact is to the far left near the exterior wall.


Q4.13: Hey, I got an enhancement drop in an MA mission! Is that a bug?

A4.13: Not if its a dev-choice mission. If a mission arc is dev-choice, all normal reward drops are enabled on it. You *won't* get tickets at the same time, though, and the same restriction on badge earning (namely, you can't earn progress on any badge except for the MA-related ones in MA missions) is still in force. Even in dev-choice missions, you cannot earn progress on XP badges, debt badges, defeat X badges, etc.


Section Five: Tips and Tricks

Q5.1: How do I make a set of blinkies, only one of which is actually required?

A5.1: Make one collection with one item that is required, and another with a bunch that is not. Then make sure that the single and multiple display text is *exactly* identical for both. The mission will combine identical text, and you'll have only a single set of text show up in the NAV for both sets, but only one of those items will be actually required to complete the mission.


Q5.2: How do I get the mission contact or other NPCs to speak the player's name?

A5.2: Although this is not 100% fully implemented everywhere yet, most text fields honor the substitution variables $name, $target, $archetype, $origin, $supergroup, $level and the gender-sensitive pronouns $himher, $heshe, $hisher and $sirmam. There might be others that I'm not aware of at the time of this writing.

Note: $target is literally the NPC's target. This may not be what you think it is at the exact moment the NPC utters the comment (he could be targetting a controller pet, for example).


Q5.3: How do I change the formatting of my text to change color, font, or size?

A5.3: You can highlight text and right-click to get special formatting. That will insert formatting tags into your text (you can also add the tags manually yourself).


Q5.4: How do I make a patrol/ambush/set of guards all LTs/all Bosses?

A5.4: Make a custom group and only include Lts in it. That group will then be forced to spawn all Lts when its used as the spawn group (same with Bosses).


Q5.5: How do I make an Ally that does not have any guards I have to defeat?

A5.5: Set the enemy group to "single" - that means the Ally will spawn by itself with no enemy guards.


Q5.6: How do I make an "empty" mission?

A5.6: Technically, you cannot. However, its possible to make a mission that is *initially* empty, or nearly so. Every patrol, ambush, boss, battle, and other objectives that involve spawning critters take up one of two kinds of spawn points reserved for critters. If you put enough details into your mission, its possible to take up all the critter spawn points so that *nothing* spawns except for the specific objectives you created. If those objectives are set to be *triggered* based on some other mission trigger, those objectives can be initially absent from the mission map. Net result: initially empty map. Eventually, however, if the player executes the trigger (say they click on the blinky that triggers those objectives) the map will fill up with those objectives. This could also be a useful design trick for mission authors.


Section Six: Especially Strange Bugs

* Ninjitsu Hide is currently buffing damage. It should buff damage +100% and suppress when Hide suppresses, as a pseudo-crit. Instead its buffing all the time, and self-stacking the buff to the 400% damage cap. Ninjitsu critters are currently hitting *hard*.
* The AI is currently a bit borked when it comes to melee-only critters. They can sometimes not attack. This is an known bug being worked on.
* Ditto the AI sometimes gets "fixated" on one power. Devices critters are notorious for becoming fixated on web grenade. This is also a known problem being worked on.
* The "Level Range" bug is notorious: the publishing server is currently misapplying level range checks all over the place making missions unpublishable even though they are testable. Among the many ways to trigger this bug are: make a battle in which the level ranges of the two groups aren't identical; make a sequence of missions in which the missions have non-overlapping level ranges; use critters whose internal game name changes at different levels; use placeholder critters such as the "Random" critters. The list keeps changing.
* Critters with damage auras can sometimes kill their own allies when they initially spawn in some circumstances (this may be fixed by the time the reader reads this)
* Captives with damage auras can often kill their own enemy guards before the player reaches them
* Bosses that flee the mission don't fail the mission - they sometimes complete the mission successfully, and sometimes make the mission uncompletable if they are required



Section Seven: Stuff You Can't Do

At the moment, you cannot:

* Set descriptive text for your contact, beyond mission dialog
* Set dialog that the regular spawns speak (you can do this for patrols)
* Change the powers of existing critters
* Use the powers of existing critters in custom critters
* Customize the appearance of powers (except to the degree currently possible on live, which basically means custom weapons only)
* Make cutscenes
* Populate a mission with (panicked) civilians
* Lead an ally to anywhere but the door
* Trigger a collection to appear after another objective is completed
* Customize maps, alter spawn points, or make your own mission maps
* Specify a single entity spawn as an ambush, such as a single named boss

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think it goes the other way though, that a reasonable EB becomes an stupidly easy to defeat Lt, which can really spoil an arc.

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I submit that if someone is soloing on heroic (as I often do), they're probably more interested in the story than difficult-to-defeat end bosses.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was true prior to the introduction of the MA. However, as was discussed in closed beta, the strength of custom critters means heroic is no longer the "wimp" setting it had the reputation of being prior to I14. Its now legitimate to play on heroic simply because one's build cannot handle the occasional +2 custom critter or double the spawn size, but *not* because they are incapable of handling bosses.

The MA is rewriting the rules on what "difficult" means for the game, and it will take some time for the full effects of MA mission difficulty to filter out to the macho masses that think only noobs play on anything but invincible. Ironically, the MA might be moving the game to what the devs always stated the difficulty settings were *intended* to be: everyone plays heroic by default, and players only play at higher levels if they really want above average difficulty - difficult enough to slow you down, kill you, or otherwise inconvenience you. It was never intended to be an XP-turbocharger.

[ QUOTE ]
Yet when the mission was complete, we only had 4 clues, instead of the 5 (one for each boss defeat) that we were supposed to have. Checking now, one of the bosses was set to "Defeat boss and group" while the others were "Defeat boss only", but the objective shouldn't have cleared if we still needed some from the spawn...?

[/ QUOTE ]

I've seen instances where "entire encounter" and "boss only" are reversed, or not working properly. You might be seeing a bug in how those features interact with the clue system.


[ QUOTE ]
I really want the boss (AV) to be an ambush, but couldn't figure out how to set the AV as an ambush (any help would be appreciated).

[/ QUOTE ]

You can't do that at the moment. Its not that you can't put bosses or AVs in ambushes: you can. However there are two gotchas:

* The game has spawn logic that tries to "balance" the ambush against the size of the team and the difficulty slider for the mission holder (just like any other PvE mission spawn). If you put minions in the ambush group, chances are that's what you'll get. But if you put *only* bosses (or AVs) in that group, the spawn logic will have no choice but to spawn that rank in the ambush.

* We can't dictate the precise number of critters in the ambush. If the ambush spawn logic wants to spawn three minions, we can't say only spawn one. If we make a custom group with only Bosses in it, and the ambush logic wants to spawn three minions, it won't find any minions and will spawn three Bosses instead. So you can spawn Bosses in ambushes, you just can't spawn *a* boss.


[ QUOTE ]
If it's not possible to get an actual AV ambush, I figured I'd try to spawn the boss close to the glowy. The problem is, despite both being marked middle, the glowy spawned one room from the end of the mish, and the AV spawned one room from the entrance!

[/ QUOTE ]

We don't have that kind of control to place things exactly where we want, and in this case the placement settings ("Middle") are hints to tell the mapserver which spawn points to use. However, the game *won't* spawn two things in the same place - if you set two things to Middle, the game will try to find two spawn points tagged as being near the middle of the map and place each objective into one of them. Placement is at *map instance* even if the critter doesn't spawn immediately the critter is taking up that spawn point: its "allocated."

There are times when you can "game" the system to get what you want, but to do so you have to be extremely patient and diligent: its possible to find maps that just coincidentally do what you want them to do in terms of placement. However, in general this is an intractible problem with the current MA system, sorry.

[ QUOTE ]
When I14 goes live, will I be able to just copy my Missions folder over to my live copy of CoX and thus have access to all my work-in-progress from Test?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. You can also copy those folders to another computer to gain access to your local creations if you log into CoH from another computer (a friend's computer, a laptop). It also goes without saying that you can share your creations with friends that way, although you need to be careful about name collisions with things they might already have.