BackFire

Hidsight from getting the banner badges on at least 1 character per server:

• Limit the zones the event triggers in (or limit to only 1 instance at a time.)
  
  Hopping from zone to zone & server to server, I quickly noticed players mainly participated in the higher population zones, ie. Atlas, Kings Row, Talos & PI. Occassionally you'd find an attempt in Steel, but this often failed miserably due to banner placement.
  
  Teams tended to avoid large zones where the banners are spread too far apart, ie. Steel Canyon and Independence Port. They also seemed to avoid zones which were "off the beaten path" such as Brickstown, Croatoa, & Galaxy City.
  
  Never once did I find a team attempting the banner event in a hazard zone.
  
  
• Lower the required amount of damage to banners in order to get badge credit.
  
  On high population servers like Freedom & Virtue, it took multiple runs to get all the banner badges since they went down so fast. On low pop servers it was just the opposite, sometimes you'd be lucky to get down just 1 banner before the time ended.
  
  What was really frustrating was when a full team was attacking the banner and you were either solo or a 2-3 person team and didn't do enough damage to get credit. I wouldn't go so far as awarding credit for just doing 1 point of damage as this would discourage teaming, but lower the requirement to 5 or 10%.
  
  
• Temp powers had great synergy with overall event.
  
  I esp. enjoyed the Resistance temp power which helped ToTing solo on my blaster immensely! I found myself seeking out Banner teams for the temp powers instead of badges on certain alts!
  
  It would have been nice to see a Temp team teleport in the mix, too.
  
  
• Longer event window/less frequency.
  
  I agree, adding an extra week did more for this event than upping the frequency. Keep them less frequent and more players participate in each. By expanding the event dates you address the frequency problem without impacting it's uniqueness.
  
  Players will always complain of frequency, but if they get a long enough window of opportunity they will be able to participate.
  
  
• More background on the event.
  
  While the event was a fun, new mini-game, it was missing a key ingredient...it's story. It would be nice to have a mission arc that ties into the banners and fleshes out the story behind it. Maybe the mission could drop clues on ways to defeat the banners more effectively, in essence, be a tutorial on how to complete the event successfully.
  
  The mission could be granted from the costume contacts in Croatoa or Nerva the same way DJ Zero only seasonally gives out the Valentine arc.

Another fun weekend of MARC-ing! We had a full-8 team running for most of the missions but villains were strangely absent this week...maybe too much Halloween candy?

Anyway, the random button did us good. We played 2 solid arcs, gained a couple levels and cracked wise as usual!

First up was Measure of a Machine by @Creed Buhallin Arc ID: 267757

In this arc, our team is recruited to help find a lost SG mate and wind up thwarting a larger plot by an evil Crey scientist.

This mission only had, like 7 plays so we really didn't know what to expect, and it was noted in the description text that it was made for a specific SG. So, right from the get-go we were skeptical.

We were worried a bit more since "Sci Fi" was one of our filters, yet our contact was dressed in a knight's armor and spoke like a character from Asgard...

But we quickly realized that he was merely a member of a Supergroup that had sci fi, heroic & fantasy type characters in it. Much like the Avengers have Thor, the Vision & Capt A, but are not considered a "fantasy" group. Still, initially it was hard to think sci fi when reading the mission text.

But, luckily, the story was solid and flowed well from mission to mission. Clues were well placed & thought out and the boss dialogue wasn't generic "I'll smash you" text. Also, all of the enemies (save the final AV) were existing groups so balance wasn't an issue.

Areas for improvement:

• The "Asgard-speak" needs some grammar checks, ie. thine vs thus vs thee
• Some maps were a bit large for the few objectives needed
• Patrol dialogue would be nice to keep things fresh and flesh out the enemies' motivations. I think the first NPC chat we found was the final room of mission 2! That's a whole lotta quiet.
• Timed mission text says the team has 30 minutes to complete, but the mission is actually set to 90. Apparently the contact hasn't adjusted to Midgard Time 90 minutes was definitely better since the map was huge, so I'd update the mission text to match.
• Final AV's background didn't seem to fit the story which led up to him, but maybe that's because we're not privy to the personal history of the character in the SG.

Overall, not a bad arc, esp. since it was written for a specific SG we'd never heard of and for the parameters we searched: 3-4 stars.

Next up was Old Dog, New Trick by K10 Arc ID: 81318:

This one was a treat as K10 is one of our MA super team members and he normally plays the character whose origin is revealed in this arc. It was too bad K10 had logged off right after our first arc, it would have been fun to get his feedback as we all ran thru his.

The arc was a charming story of a how a bomb-sniffing dog becomes a super hero of Paragon City. Lots of fine details in each mission, including bios on existing NPC models and a final mission filled with custom enemies. Be sure to check out the ending souvenier for an extra sweet finishing touch.

Areas to improve:

• The final enemy group didn't mesh well visually or thematically. The powersets worked well together and nothing was overpowering, but as a group they seemed very...random.

One thing we noticed while playing with the random button was the lack of choices for "Kid-Friendly" arcs. There's an untapped niche just waiting for an arc writer to make their mark!

I must have been nerve-wracking to run your own arc on a team full of critics, your avatar seems very appropriate for the occasion ;P

I love that, just like reading comic books, playing this game expands the vocab! Excelsior!

I'm thinking some Fearghas arcs would be fun to run this weekend in celebration of his promotion to Doctor!

Gratz to Fearghas!!

Wow! Great costumes everyone. The Hatter bandolier is genius and I'm totally jealous of the trooper armor!

You've had time to sober up, Justice, keep them photos coming!

Yep, was a fun group as usual, too bad the missions came up lame this run.

Halloween Night:
Had some great dialogue and good looking custom enemies, but, unfortunately, they were way overpowered and overpopulated. Those ambushes of stunning, slowing, holding, etc witches were beyond nasty. I think we had 4 or 5 team wipes before we just stealthed our way out of it.

Note to the author- your custom allies almost never survived long enough for us to encounter them. We could see thier chat, but didn't actually see a live Hesling until we completed the mission objectives.

Amulet of J'gara:
Probably the best of the bunch, but that's really not saying much this weekend. The concept, dialogue, and story for this arc were solid but it suffered from "your princess is in another castle" syndrome: too many wild goose chases making the arc feel like filler.

The second mission could be deleted completely without losing any story and we were joking that the Midnighter hostage (McNeil?) must be competing with Fusionette for most times captured. Between the repetition and fluff there's a good story, tho.

Hallows Eve & the Pumpkin Master:
Looked like a fun mission filled with classic halloween monsters, but either the mission was bugged or it's designed as a trick on the players since the objective was "4 Pumpkin Master" (we figured that meant defeat or find 4 pumpkin masters) but there were none on the map. The enemies that were on the map had great costumes, tho! After beating up 1/4 of the map and not seeingn any progress we scouted, couldn't find anything, then quit.

Little Red Riding Hood:
This one was...strange? It had 27 plays and a 5 star rate so we had high hopes...zoned in, beat up Red and a group of Red Caps then mission completed. Huh????

Not sure if it was a bug or what. I scouted around after and found the Big Bad Wolf stuck in the ground and couldn't attack him. Red's costume was nice and her dialogue was good, but I think we missed something here.

Yeah, but do you have the hair to pull that off?

<.<

>.>

No other costumes yet? What, too soon?

Seeing as how Justice is one of the most creative and sexay servers ever, I thought it'd be fun to see what everyone's wearing this year.

Post your costume pix and party on Justice style!

Here's me as master theif, Lupin the 3rd! Now to just find me a Fujiko...

C'mon TA, we're all friends here. You can admit that you've used the new body scaling tailor to make 1 "Lady TA" costume slot. There's nothing wrong with that.

Short attention span? I've got just the thing!!

A quick, fun mission packed with anime school girls, bank robbers, and a few laughs.

Play Enter the Father Hat Gang
ID#: 21391

click here for poster

*lol at your own risk

Yeah, apparently I read it too fast. That's what I get for skimming! >.<

MOTD said we were playing the award winner next Saturday. Guess I'll have to run it solo

Any kind of visual upgrade would be nice. Most. Dissapointing. AV. Ever.

Gratz on your brush with fame! Did you at least try to invite him to your SG?

There better be a hot tub, us old folks need to soak after a good scrap!

Oh, and huuuuge library

High collars, packpacks & new shoulders, oh my!

Had a great turnout today and a lot of MA fun!

So many players showed up that we had to split into 2 groups. Team SO (led by WN) ran Player Nominee arc in the SO range while Team DO (mine) ran arcs in the DO range.

First up for Team DO was Bubbawheat's "Ctrl + Alt + Reset #137561"

You'd think that an arc based on the concept of being stuck in a time loop and having to repeat the same mission over and over would be grindy and repetitive, right? Wrong!! Bubbawheat takes the mechanic he/she used in Whack-a-mole and wraps it into a tight, compelling story with tons of easter eggs, fun dialogue, and interesing bios.

Everyone seemed to agree that this was a great arc with a surprisingly high amount of variety!

Next up: "The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space! #61013"

The writing on this was fun-tastic. Great dialogue, well developed characters, challenging, but not overpowered enemy group, and the humor had the whole group loling all the way.

Finally, we loaded up "Cutthroat Competition #10171"

Unfortunately, we hit a dud with this one.

Missions were grindy with very little clues (only 1 on the whole arc!) and very little dialogue (we grinded thru a whole map to get to the boss and all he said was 1 sentence...and it was forgettable.

It often jumped from serious to humourous in tone and never really hit it's mark as either before it finally went too far and broke the 4th wall in the final mission.

Not sure if it's due to an unavailable map, but one mission says you're going into caves and instead you go into a skyraider base! And a HUGE one at that. Author really should look into that.

And the topper to make this a must-avoid arc: invisible Assassin Striking LTs...en masse.

Seriously, this arc dragged out like Waterworld. It's so bad, I wouldn't wish it on Venture...or maybe I would...

Despite that last mission teaming up with other MA enthusiasts continues to be the highlight of my gaming week! Lots of fun was had and look forward to doing it again.

So glad you posted this!

*added to Amazon wish list*

Not surprised about the regulars showing up in the Official Awards. They're the ones who care enough to seek feedback and improve their missions. They play others' arcs and learn what works and what doesn't. And, even more importantly, the Devs find arcs the same as anyone else...they hear about them. So, like anything, it pays to advertise

Congrats to the nominees!