BackFire

Have you tried Villain side yet?

You haven't lived until you play a VEAT!! (and you can't play one of those until you have a lvl 50 villain ;P

Personally, I read EVERYTHING (including the contact away text!)

That said, there is a lot of fat that can be trimmed from most mishes.

<ul type="square">[*]Boss Fight Text: 4 lines is more than enough: Unaware, Initial attack, 1/2 damage and defeated.

[*]NPC Bios: Keep 'em short and sweet. It's a nice bonus if they're there, but not always needed.

[*]Enter/Exit Mish Text: It's good to have the bubble on the first mish, and afterwards only if you needed to clarify something from the story you couldn't fit into the mish dialogue or clues.

[*]Hostage/Patrol Dialogue: Just use one line each. If you use all 4 it gets too cluttered and you won't be able to read it until the fight is over.

[*]Contact Return Text: If you have a mission following this text, keep it short. You can explain whatever you need to in the next mission text.

[*]Boss Navigation Text: Instead of having every named boss listed in the nav bar, use the Multiple objectives line and use more generalized terms ie. "Defeat 5 MyBadCustomGroup Leaders." Nav text overload is a growing problem![/list]

Subjective: Custom Critter power bundles by difficulty need to be reworked.

Powers that blind characters ie. Flash arrow, Smoke grenade, and Smoke (or is it Cinders) are available at too low a setting.

This either makes Custom Critters too powerful (with the Bundle that includes Blind) or too weak (without the other powers that are bundled in with the Blinds)

Here's my AE Arc promo poster for submission to Scoop!

Arc Name: Enter the Father Hat Gang
Arc ID: 21391
*click here for Promo Poster*

Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @backfire
Difficulty Level: Medium (harder for low levels)

Synopsis:
Fans of Azumanga Daioh rejoice!! Inspired by Tomo's dream of robbing a bank dressed in 'Father Hats', this mission is the latest parody to hit AE!!

Can you defeat Prodigy, Day-Dreamer, Spitfire, Yummie, and the Feline-ious Fury before the bank closes to the dismay of their Worried Sensei?!?
<ul type="square">[*] Anime school girls with guns![*] In-Jokes galore!![*] And more cuteness than should be allowed by law!!![/list]

Play "Enter the Father Hat Gang" at an AE near you today!

An update:

My other experiment hit yesterday. I made a promotional poster, submitted it to be posted on the forums and it was

200+ forumites visited the thread and saw the poster!! Awesome. I eagerly anticipated coming home after work and seeing the results.

Not what I expected at all...I barely had a dozen more plays on the mish. Not bad...but not spectacular, either considering the exposure.

I played a bunch of arcs last night with my non-BB alts and had a couple more hits, but nothing major. Then I decided to work on a new arc and logged into my Human BB on Virtue to do it.

I had 2 plays in the 30 minutes I was in the editor as a Billboard! Could have been coincidence, but I doubt it.

I'll be curious to see the numbers tonight, as my poster thread has almost doubled in Views today.

[ QUOTE ]
I wish i could save arc's to favorites for a quick load.

[/ QUOTE ]

this!!!

(and here's the mish you're looking for, I think...)

Also, unlock the enemy group that has more Devoured Earth in it by redeeming your tickets upstairs.

I ran into the same problem when I wanted a map filled with Herders but kept getting Boulders...I eventually gave up on the concept but discovered there was a DE pack in the unlockables that has your Crystal enemies and such.

Gratz!!

Oh, and who's the short person doing a dance emote in the back, left? You can only see their hands!

Flash arrow &amp; smoke grenade seriously need to be switched to Extreme settings only or coded to work like the player versions, where it breaks after taking damage.

Having it in the Hard range means sacrificing a lot of legitimate power choices for custom critters for the sake of making your mishes less annoying.

[ QUOTE ]
And, if you're just futzing around creating characters or writing text for an arc and don't need a higher level to test with, why not do all your work at the AE terminal on that character?

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly! While hanging out in the various AEs around the city, I noticed a ton of players working on their arcs...just standing there for hours, taking up space. They could have been plugging one of their arcs at the same time!

The hardest part of the whole experiment was coming up with a name.

I wanted something that would immediately be recognizable as an arc promotion, stick out in a crowd, tell a 'promise at a glance', have all the info needed to play the arc, and be as personal as possible.

That's pretty tough to do in 20 characters!!

For my test, I went with the most basic and informative name I could think of. I wound up sacrificing the 'promise at a glance' but think for future iterations I may try to focus more in getting that in.

If anyone is thinking of trying this, here's my brainstorm list of promise-at-a-glance names:

<ul type="square">[*]Challenge
Fight me. arc- XXXXX
Test your skill XXXXX
AV challenge- XXXXX
[*]Enticement
Click me for fun
Help me in arc XXXXX
arcXXXXX-Girls wGuns
Cute.Fast.FUN.-XXXXX
My Funny Story-XXXXX
My Epic Story- XXXXX
Be a hero- arc XXXXX
[*]Appeals
Rate my mish- XXXXX
XXXXX-Please comment
Help me edit -XXXXX[/list]
Note: I was tempted to use leet-speak for space, but decided against it, as it can be seen as such a negative to players. If you had a leet-speak appropriate arc, tho, it could work!

[ QUOTE ]
I wanted to get 5 (6 now) friends together and have us each hold up the scorecard emote to display the number of an arc for people to try. The idea was that we would advertise one arc for a while, then switch to another. At first we would advertise our own arcs, but we could take requests or even use the mechanism in various contests.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a great idea! I had thought to put the arc ID # on each members' chest, but this gives you more versatility. Genius...if you have that many friends willing to help... ;P

Just make sure they double-check their numbers often and keep vigilant as some friendly buffs will pop characters out of emotes.

So, this weekend I tested out an in-game advertising idea I had: the (virtual) Human Billboard

I rolled up a lvl 1 alt on a few servers, dressed her up as a character from my story arc, put a description and plug for my mission arc in her bio, then named her "Play my AEarc- 21391"

Once in-game I ran up to AE or a trainer, positioned myself in a visible-yet-unobstructive area, hit a dance emote and popped an AFK bubble over my head that read, "Read my bio for more details!"

I experimented with hanging out in the Atlas AE, Atlas Trainer, and Talos AE. Best results were from Atlas AE and Trainer...it seemed to go in spurts at both locations.

Virtue was the most responsive, followed by Justice, then Freedom. Infinity, Guardian, and Pinnacle were pretty much wasted time.

The results: I went from 8 ratings to 30+ in a weekend...mostly positive! I also got to talk to a few players after they gave feedback and made some adjustments based on their comments.

By far, this has been the most effective advertising I have done to get people to play my arc.

Things I learned:
<ul type="square">[*]Double-check your name immediately when you get in game.
Twice I rolled up a character and either transposed 2 numbers or left one out!! Wasted a good 30-45 minutes promoting the wrong arc #!! DOH!!
[*]Try to avoid chatting in broadcast.
The nature of having a name like "Play my arc..." brings out the worst in some players...they assume you're a bot or a gold farmer. Answering helpful questions in broadcast seemed to be received well, tho.

For the most part, I didn't talk at all unless I was answering someone's question. The whole concept is to be as non-spam as possible.
[*]If you're setting up in AE, move around every 15-30 minutes.
There's 2 or 3 main areas people go to click the computer and get a mish, if you just hang in one spot you'll miss a large amount of players who only use the computers on the other side.
[*]This playerbase rocks!!
I rec'd a lot of compliments on the advertising concept and felt generally well-received. Nobody harassed me or sent nasty tells. It was actually fun to watch players run by. Stop. Turn to look at me for a bit. Then run off and 10 or 15 minutes later get a tell &amp; tickets!! [/list]This promotion method is definitely not for everyone, but if you've got some spare time and an arc that needs exposure, I recommend giving it a go!

It's stickied in the Stories and Lore section.

It seems natural to give a 'thank you' if I'm online at the time of their feedback. I've only had a couple back and forths from doing so, as most are just "Fun mish" comments.

If it's an offline tell I don't normally send one unless it's more than just a "Fun mish" comment.

In all cases, I take down their global, search for any arcs they have up, and give one of theirs a whirl. I've found some fantastic stories that way!

***Click here for Promotional Poster***

Arc Name: Enter the Father Hat Gang
Arc ID: 21391
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @backfire
Difficulty Level: Medium (suggest lvl 14+)
Synopsis: Fans of Azumanga Daioh rejoice!!
Tomo's dream of robbing a bank dressed in 'Father Hats' has become the latest parody to hit AE!!

Can you defeat Prodigy, Day-Dreamer, Spitfire, Yummie, and the Feline-ious Fury before the bank closes to the dismay of their Worried Sensei?!?

<ul type="square">[*]Anime school girls with guns![*]In-Jokes galore!![*]And more cuteness than should be allowed by law!!![/list]
Play "Enter the Father Hat Gang" at an AE near you today!


[current bug: each Boss should be doing an emote when you come upon them but they're all doing a default Taunt emote instead. Prodigy: Clean Gun, Spitfire: Training Kung Fu, Yummie: Eat Donut, Feline-ious: Katana Point, Day-Dreamer: Wounded]

Youtube vid is already on the list, and yes, you CAN post a link to it...just keep it clean

Interesting, I did something similar where I put in all my alts to fight in one map, but found that the computer AI plays completely different than I do!!

He had a couple tricks I never used, but I had the advantage of 16 trip mines ;P

[ QUOTE ]
I did that once. Published an unfinished, buggy thing and then got a rating from someone that was confused and thought it was fairly mediocre.

I seriously doubt this person will ever try the final version.

I use testing exclusively.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly.

Publishing unfinished/unpolished work will likely doom it's rating quickly.

Of course, you could just unpub and reset it's rating, but those that have been burned by it once will likely not play it again...and those are the players who are actively playing new arcs, so it'll be that much tougher to get the ball rolling on your mish.

tl;dr version: Test your missions!

[ QUOTE ]
You win. 5 stars. Amazingly cool mission and I don't even get the in-jokes.

Everyone should play this.

[/ QUOTE ]

wow. thank you so much

I was really afraid the humor would be lost on the uninitiated, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I'm looking forward to seeing how your Pug Hell mish plays, tonight

Put it in as a glowie with an ambush or chained event?

Hmmm...toggles? Only 2 of the 3 bosses have defensive toggles but none of them are doing the emotes.

I'll have to double check if they have other self-buffs they might be popping like aim or build up.

Any chance it has to do with them having "Unaware" dialogue? That's one of the only consistent settings I can imagine they share.

Oh, and none have auras.

QR

Just saw this in a recent post:
<ul type="square">[*]Include an exciting or tempting screenshot in your mission description! (a preview of your custom Boss or Enemy Group would be great)[/list]Best of all: no art skills necessary!

Just pushed this up last night...if you don't know what Azumanga Daioh is, tho, you probably won't get the in-jokes. But it should still be an enjoyable mish on it's own.

Arc Name: Enter the Father Hat Gang
Arc ID: 21391
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @backfire
Difficulty Level: Medium (harder for low levels)
Synopsis: Fans of Azumanga Daioh rejoice!! Tomo's dream of robbing a bank dressed in 'Father Hats' has become the latest parody to hit AE!!

Can you defeat Prodigy, Day-Dreamer, Spitfire, Yummie, and the Feline-ious Fury before the bank closes to the dismay of their Worried Sensei?!?

<ul type="square">[*]Japanese school girls with guns![*]In-Jokes galore!![*]And more cuteness than should be allowed by law!!![/list]
Play "Enter the Father Hat Gang" at an AE near you today!

All of the emotes play fine in the editor, but they don't do them when actually running the mission in Test mode or Published.