Arcanaville

The three I have so far are:

Arc Name: Secret Weapons
Arc ID: 1080
Faction: Custom/Crey/CoT (Note: critters temporarily removed/changed to work around level-range bug, hopefully fixed next patch)
Creator Global/Forum Name: Arcanaville
Difficulty Level: Medium/High
Synopsis: Ashley McKnight investigates a crime that dates back to the Rikti War.
Estimated Time to Play: 30-60 minutes


Arc Name: Bug Hunt
Arc ID: 1644
Faction: Uh, hard to explain
Creator Global/Forum Name: Arcanaville
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: Architect Entertainment is looking for volunteers to test their new virtual entertainment system.
Estimated Time to Play: 10-20 minutes

Edit: this arc now has a feedback thread also: Bug Hunt Feedback thread.


Arc Name: Scrapper (or Anything Else) Challenge Mission 3.0
Arc ID: 1117
Faction: Evil Personified
Creator Global/Forum Name: Arcanaville
Difficulty Level: Suicidal
Synopsis: Kill, kill, kill you all.
Estimated Time to Play: the rest of your life, all three minutes of it.

Note: this mission contains only minions, Lts, and Bosses. Its not an AV-fest. I'd still suggest wearing a helmet though. Discussion thread here.

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I think adding what it does in your next FAQ would be most welcome

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Added additional explanation of the mechanics of the setting to the next draft based on your feedback, and should be uploaded tonight. I've included a description of what it "generally" does, but since that is tweakable per powerset, those rules are guidelines only (and the updated FAQ states such).

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Failing that, what would be a good way to approximate a "You have to fight your way out of here!" mission?

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In one sense, that's never going to be possible because the devs have deliberately put the panic button up in your Nav: to prevent players from getting "trapped" in malfunctioning missions, the player can always escape.

However, I was working on a mission last week that does something *close* to what you're describing. What I did was create a blinkie that spawns "Back" and I tested to ensure it was actually "back." I then set a large number of patrols to spawn based on that blinkie which fills the mission *and* a triggered boss that becomes a mandatory completion task set to "Front."

Net result: player enters emtpy map. Player walks to back of map, clicks blinkie. Map spawns patrols, and forces player to walk back through patrols to get to boss, which is required objective, to complete the mission (the way I set this up story-wise was to tell the player to "hack" a computer for information, and the act of doing that accidentally trips an alarm).

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Except for one interface design oversight, the difficulty slider is trivial to explain: it adjusts the set of powers a custom critter will get in a manner that is specific to each mission maker powerset (each powerset is individually configured as to which of its powers are standard, hard, or extreme).

But the issue I was highlighting was the question of *why* it was *needed* and that is not a user interface issue: its a question of understanding that custom critters are intrinsicly more powerful than standard critters. I could give you a three page numerical explanation, but actually seeing custom critters' performance on extreme for yourself will answer that question much more directly.

What a setting does and why its there are two completely different questions. Saying that setting is to adjust critter difficulty is literally correct, but totally worthless without context.

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Again, I'll have to disagree there. Not everyone will want to (such as myself) go into the mission and evaluate the performance of the given NPC in action. The only context to explain the difficulty is to see it in action, which requires you to encounter it in a way that wouldn't be indicative of how it'd truly perform in a group. It makes more sense to have an explanation of how this works; I understand the concepts of Lieutenants, Bosses, Elite Bosses and Arch-Villains; so would anyone who's played the game to some extent. I'm not going to go in and playtest every single boss under every single setting; if you have that much time on your hands you should be working for NCSoft. I already suggested a test setting where you ride along with a generic group to see how it plays out if you want the 'practical example' of play, but having a guideline beyond some generic terms is equally as useful. I don't consider ANY aspect of a powerful design tool to be trivial to explain when the point is to make it as understandable and user-friendly as possible.

S.

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How it works is when you click the setting, that setting is checked against a set of values in the powerset definition and turns powers off and on. There's no general rule like "hard is always powers one through six" so there is literally no rule for a tooltip to tell you. You have to set the setting and actually *look* at the powerset power listing to see what "Hard" means for powerset X.

But that's still irrelevant, because I'm not describing what the setting does, I'm describing why the setting was deemed necessary, because I've been asked several times why the devs chose to complicate the critter interface by adding another setting to adjust difficulty besides just minion/LT/Boss. Let me repeat: this is not a UI issue. The question is more properly stated (in more nit-picky bulletproof terms) why was the decision made to add such a setting to the user interface at all, regardless of how it works mechanically.

Why I added this question to the FAQ is specifically because I've been asked why its there several times, but only once asked what it actually does. In the next version of the FAQ, I'm adding the question of what it does to avoid further confusion.

As to the issue of a "test group" mode, while it came up in closed beta that testers should have a way to spawn a map for any number of players on the team to see what it looks like, it would be impractical to actually program a literal AI controlled group to test a mission given the limits of the critter AI. However, I'm not sure what that has to do with the difficulty setting, because the difficulty setting does not affect the number of spawns in a mission regardless of team size. Just to make sure you and I are even talking about the same thing, as previously mentioned the only thing that setting does is turn off and on the powers of the custom critter you're making. It is not a mission spawn setting. Basically, it does things like turn off Energy Transfer on a critter if you don't want it to have that power.

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Q1.3: What's the purpose of the difficulty setting anyway?

A1.3: Seriously, you need to make some critters and find out for yourself. Originally, critters just used everything, and I mean everything. 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.

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Unfortunately, I disagree with this 'try it and see' approach. Any other design tool or creator software is very specific in informing you on how it works and this should be absolutely no different.

If the software itself cannot inform you of what the difficulty setting means and you have to test it by playing the mission/fighting the boss in question, then you are wasting time in designing your overall mission to test ONE feature. Something seriously lacking as I have suggested is more tooltips to help guide novice mission builders with this.

S.

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Except for one interface design oversight, the difficulty slider is trivial to explain: it adjusts the set of powers a custom critter will get in a manner that is specific to each mission maker powerset (each powerset is individually configured as to which of its powers are standard, hard, or extreme).

But the issue I was highlighting was the question of *why* it was *needed* and that is not a user interface issue: its a question of understanding that custom critters are intrinsicly more powerful than standard critters. I could give you a three page numerical explanation, but actually seeing custom critters' performance on extreme for yourself will answer that question much more directly.

What a setting does and why its there are two completely different questions. Saying that setting is to adjust critter difficulty is literally correct, but totally worthless without context.

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Are we able to put in freaked out civvies running all haywire in our maps (to help fill it out and add a little personality)?

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Not at the moment.

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Can I take this as an implicit thumbs up that this behavior is intended and not going away? If so, huzzah! I was afraid that empty maps would be frowned upon.

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I don't know if "intended" is the right word. "Unavoidable" is the right word: they really couldn't change it much even if they wanted to.

Given that we're only rewarded for killing things, empty maps have limited exploit potential, so I don't think they are worried about it too much.

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Any way to make the henchmen, and the MM critter overall, more challenging to fight?

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Sonic is a good secondary, because of the resistance buffs.

Pain Domination is another one, because of the AoE buffs in general.

Plant Control is the psycho option: carrion creepers means every pet you kill, you'll get another thing to fight. Even if you kill the creepers you get more creepers.

Also, in general MMs have lower offense because their primary is tied up in the pets. You could give the AV another offensive set with more teeth, like Fire blast or Energy Melee. But you may place the AV outside the ability for a large percentage of the players if you do.

If you're just looking to make it tough for yourself, you could also add Radiation Emission. You won't be regenerating nearly as fast anymore I can tell you that much.

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Ok I created a seperate thread about this question, but after reading this I figured I should just ask here (edited from original post):

I created a thugs/MM as the mish's boss. I was set to vicous (challenge lvl 3) and he was set as an EB. When he summoned his Henchmen, they were 49-51. I went back, set him to extreme AV, set my challenge lvl to 5 (relentless) and now he's a 50 AV, but the henchman summoned are 48-50.

How do I make the AV's and henchmen lvls higher? I know "I'm doing it wrong", I just don't know why.

Gaheris

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I think the question you're asking is "why did my Elite Boss spawn at level 51, but when I bumped him up to an AV he spawned at level 50?" And I think the answer to that question is that except for special case critters (and custom critters aren't) AVs will spawn at the player's level, not the level dictated by the difficulty scaler. I believe that is a spawn rule the MA inherited from the regular PvE game where AVs in instanced missions generally spawn at the player's level, not the level the mission is instancing spawns at.

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I enter a boss battle to act as a trigger, then add about 100 patrols to spawn off those, would that map even load?

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If the map doesn't allow for 100 patrol objectives (each map lists its limits) then entering the number 100 for the quantity of patrol will immediately generate an error in the error window (the orange one in the upper right corner - clicking on the ! displays the errors) and the mission will be neither testable nor publishable. You'll have to reduce that number until your mission fits within the map limits.

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Is there some kind of list I can see that shows what works on which player model?

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You'd be surprised how difficult it actually is to generate such a list by anyone.

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Also, it appears that you can indeed force patrols to spawn on a particular trigger. The next question, then, is how can I tell how many spawn points a mission has so that I can fill all of them but one with patrols? I saw Arcanaville discuss that, but I can't seem to find that information on my screen.

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That number isn't specifically shown, but you can get a rough idea by looking at the map details on the screen where you select the mission map and add up all the critter-related detail points the map allows. The number of critter spawn points on a map is roughly the sum of all of those.

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Can I set up random trap things?

Say Stealth Trip Mines or Pop out Turrets? etc...


JJ

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Nope. But there are a couple of maps that have built-in things like turrets or sometimes even spawns. My guess is that the spawns themselves are bugs - things the devs forgot to remove. But the turrets, 50/50: those are probably bugs, but the devs might be convinced to let us keep them (re: RWZ outdoor map).

You'll have to make stealth critters instead.

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Here's a somewhat dumb question:

Where do I go to edit a contact's greeting text and "Ask about this contact" description?

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I do not believe contacts will talk about themselves: they will only talk about the missions they are giving out. You can set the text they will say during the mission, including for each mission's introduction, what they say when you complete the mission and go back to them, and what they will say if you talk to them in the middle of a mission (say you exit the mission before completion and decide to talk to the contact).

I don't think there is an "Ask about contact" option for dialog, at least not that I've seen.

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Another problem i have, the end boss in my last mish is suppose to be a EB but keeps spawning as a Lt. how do i fix that?

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In the current version of the MA, custom Bosses *and* custom Elite Bosses will downscale to LTs if you play on heroic (custom AVs will downscale to EBs). This is different from the normal PvE game where Bosses will downscale to Lts, but EBs will generally stick to being EBs. Personally, I think they should have downscaled to Bosses not LTs, but this is an issue the devs have been wrestling with all beta long: custom critters just tend to be vastly stronger than normal PvE critters, and missions that the MA authors make that seem perfectly reasonable to them are often coming up practically impossible to defeat for many players due to skill, archetype, or build.

Plus, there was an additional phenomenon going on in closed beta: Elite-itis. Players went berserk making missions in which it seemed every other critter was an Elite Boss, or an AV. *Part* of the reason for that was that it was just fun for many of the beta testers to make really tough critters. *Part* of the reason was that EBs were originally bugged to do only minion-levels of damage.

So it was subtly very attractive to be loading up missions with really tough critters that didn't return fire *so* hard that they annihilated you instantly. But the devs became cogniscent that it was very likely many of the early MA authors might load up missions with really tough things, thinking it was better to err on the side of not looking like a pushover. The devs are using the "Heroic" setting as a safety valve for players that want to play such missions.

One reason this might be important is that without this safety valve, the devs might have been forced to avoid most or all of the mission arcs that had such critters in them in terms of awarding dev-choice awards: they couldn't be highlighting large numbers of missions that the vast majority of the playerbase couldn't complete. Those mission arcs are now completeable on heroic, and those players can still enjoy the story within them.

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It seems you can't make basic mission objectives trigger from something happening - like having a find object objective trigger when you find another object (going from clue to clue).

Is there a way to do this, or can we just not do it?

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You can do this. Once you make your objectives, you can edit them to occur when certain conditions apply. For example, you can create an ambush to occur when a particular boss reaches 50% HP. Or, in order for that boss to appear at all, you can have him spawn when a certain click object in the mission is activated. Or have another clue spawn when the first clue is clicked.

The key is to create objectives in the mission first. Once they're set, you can go to the drop-down menu (can't remember the specific one off the top of my head), where you'll be able to select from other objectives, in order to create an event chain.

Two tips: try not to use chaining in every mission, and be careful how you use chaining. For example, it might be good to chain a clue near the from of the mission to spawn another clue near the middle or back, especially on bigger maps. No team wants to clear a map or ghost to a clue only to have to backtrack several times as each clue is clicked. Unless you like torturing players and/ or want low ratings

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A warning about this: if you make an objective "not-required" like a blinkie, if you want to chain another blinkie to it that blinkie must *also* be not-required. Chaining a required objective onto a non-required one generates an error (for obvious reasons).

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Are powers kinda customizable? Meaning, say Waterspout, could I color it Redish & some fire effects, make it look like Fire Funnels of Spinning doom?

JJ

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No power customization additions exist in the MA. The only things we can do are make customization changes to custom critters that we can currently make for our own characters on live (meaning primarily custom weapons).

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One more:

Q: I created a custom critter as an ally, but when we fight, it doesn't seem to use all the powers at its disposal. Sometimes it just seems to sit there staring at the enemy.

A: This is a known issue, that seems to affect melee powersets in particular. We suspect it is related to the old Animated Stone bug/behavior of never quite closing to melee and simply cycling Hurl. Try changing up powersets and playtesting to find something that works.

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There's supposed to be some code that will help address this. I showed various critter oddities to pohsyb, and I believe he was able to justify addressing these issues as a potential exploit matter (I could create critters that were unlikely to significantly fight back, which is problematic, like an AV that never actually used a damaging power). Hopefully when that patch arrives critters will be a little more "random" in how they choose what powers to use, and in an ironic twist appear to be more intelligent (because slightly random is always better than predictably choosing badly).

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How do I set dialogue for non-patrol mobs?

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There's no way to do that at this time. We started a wish list for "MA 2.0" at some point, and I seem to recall that adding additional dialog trigger points was in there; maybe someone should revive that thread...

Arcanaville, I think another question people are going to ask (particularly after running your Scrapper Challenge) is: How do I spawn an ambush of all lieutenants, or all bosses?

Answer: You need to create a group whose only members are of the rank you want (all lieutenants, or all bosses), then set that group as the ambush group. When it spawns, it will be all of that rank. Be warned: that group will be hard, especially if it consists of custom critters - the normal spawn mix rules will be voided. (I'm not sure anyone knows what the spawn rules are for this case.) [Also, Arcanaville, do you have confirmation that this isn't a bug? I hope it's intended, but if we don't know, people who design maps based on that trick could be disappointed later.]

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It doesn't appear to be a "bug" in the sense that its an unexpected occurance: making a group that contains no minions at all seems to be something the code deals with in the way we've seen: when you can't find a minion to put in there, keep looking upward until you find something. So while a group of minions and LTs will spawn with some minions and some LTs, a group with all LTs will probably spawn as a group of some minions and some LTs where the minions are automatically promoted to LTs because there are no minions.

I doubt its a bug in the sense of "the devs intend to 'fix' it, although you never know.


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And a related question: How do I create an ambush with a named/custom boss (or EB, or AV)?

Answer: Currently, you can't. Many people suggested this be added.

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To be precise, the problem is that we cannot state unequivocally how many things are in the ambush. If we could say "single" for ambush and it would only spawn one thing, this would be possible. Because we cannot, if we try to spawn an ambush with a named boss, we're likely to get four of his clone brothers with him.

On a related note and slightly off topic of a FAQ, sometime soon (if not already) we should be getting updated code that will try to make sure that if we make a custom group with eight minions in it, we won't get spawns with three of one and two of another, and never see the other six minion types. The spawn logic will attempt to "evenly" spawn things for maximum diversity. I think some elements of this code are already in there, so while we cannot spawn a single custom boss in an ambush, we can get moderately close to spawning a *team* of critters, with one of each thing (if the mission decides to spawn more entities than we make critter types, you will still have duplicates though).

Got surprised a bit by the open beta: I thought there would be one more build to go. Anyway, this is a work in progress: its just my notepad notes written up a bit. I'll try to refine this as we go along, and also incorporate questions I read or hear in-game. This is just an early draft to try to anticipate as many common questions as possible. There's no way to answer them all in a brief FAQ: there's just so much to learn about the MA that authors will probably have to learn through experience.

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: What's the purpose of the difficulty setting anyway?

A1.3: Seriously, you need to make some critters and find out for yourself. Originally, critters just used everything, and I mean everything. 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: Can I "reskin" existing critters, or give existing critters different powers?

A1.4: 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.


Q1.5: Can I make my own custom villain groups?

A1.5: Sure; they are 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 file space. 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.


Q1.6: Why can't I use capes/auras/My Ultra Cool Talsorian Sword?

A1.6: 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).



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.


Section Four: Tips and Tricks

Q4.1: How do I make a set of blinkies, only one of which is actually required?

A4.1: 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.


Q4.2: How do I get the mission contact or other NPCs to speak the player's name?

A4.2: 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 and $heshe. 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).

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Is it possible to create a custom character and then add them into a preexisting enemy group? One thing that has always bugged me in CoH is that fighting named bosses is for the most part a disappointment in that they are the same generic boss looks-wise as any other boss, named or otherwise, in that villain group. Ergo making a boss for say the Outcasts that doesn't look like any other Outcast boss.

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You can't do what you're asking, but you can do what you're thinking.

Customizable bosses have been confirmed for a while now. It will be possible to make a mission full of Outcasts, but with a boss at the end you design yourself. Its up to you if you want to call him "Mr. WayCoolerThanNormalOutcast" boss.

Mechanically though its a reasonable guess that you won't be able to "edit" any of the pre-existing stuff of the game that is shared by everyone. That just isn't likely to be necessary to get the effect you want (for example, its confirmed you can make your own critter groups - nothing is going to stop you from adding all the Outcasts to it).

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In addition can we mix and match villainous critter archetypes? for example could I create a Stalker, Blaster, Mastermind and Controller on the same mob team/faction within a mission?

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Critters do not have archetypes in that sense. The critter archetypes are pet, underling, minion, Lt, Boss, Elite Boss, and AV (slightly simplified). There is no such thing as a "critter tanker" or "critter dominator." Consequently, the answer to your question is essentially yes.

Also, critters in the game don't have "factions" in the same way we do. They have only three "sides" - friendly to players, hostile to players, and hostile to just about everything. They are sort of on their own side, really.

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I didn't. Time to reread all 75 pages with an all new spin on things!

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There are some who say that Arcanaville is in each Beta before the devs. Some even say Arcanaville never actually leaves the test server, even when it is supposedly off-line...

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There are those who believe that beta testing here, began out there, far across the universe.

With tribes of testers who may have been the forefathers of Galaxy City, or Numina, or Blue Steel. That they may have been the architects of Crey's Folly, or the lost tracker of dev posts.

Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to beta test, somewhere beyond the heavens...

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just about the only thing I could think of would be if they had an investor who was willing to put $100mil into COX, on the condition that Arcana be held out of Beta for 1 week.

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Heck, I'd sit out voluntarily for fifty mil.

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I have one question I have not seen an answer to. I know we can save the arc with all details. It looks lilke you can save the costumes created as we do for our characters. My question is if we create a custom villain and a custom villain group, is there a way to save the NPC charcter data as a separate file. I would dislike creating a custom group, but would have to edit a previously created arc to use that group in another arc.

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My guess is that this is not going to be a problem.