Clave_Dark_5

That wasn't on the Warburg Malta map by any chance was it? I've run tino the same problem on that map. Shame, it's a nice not-too-big outdoor map. Were you able to fix the problem or did you have to give it up?

Really, we should avoid doing superheroes, I am so tired of them by now.

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Now, say, having a giant carrot doing dance moves with a boom box in the middle of a deadly battle between the Council and 5th Column? That's definitely unexpected, but it's more silly or absurd than actually funny, because there's no particular context for it.

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Let em guess, you actually saw that in an MA story huh?

That is a good point. Much silly passes these days for funny - sometimes it even succeeds but more often than not, it doesn't. It's like funny's "slow" cousin or 12 year old bother. Then again, when it hits you in the right mood or something, it can work, so I'm not about to tell anyone DON'T DO SILLY! (which is good because I'd be a hypocrite for doing so, see my arc listed in my sig, which does have some funny as well, I hope)

Best part of the MA is we chimps all get to try our hand at whatever we want; the law of averages says that Shakespeare is within our grasp.

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The funny part is that someone else on the team took the blame for reporting him, because apparently, he and I had done the same thing.

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You could have told him that you reported it too,which might have re-enforced the idea that a number of players find that sort of thing distasteful.

I'm not so wound up about this issue myself, although the example given is pretty egregious. Still, that is a bit funny and I'd have probably done the same, or even quit before it was done.

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Humor Arcs - We get it. Super powers versus fruit.

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Humor is very subjective. Personally, I thought that arc's concept was pretty funny - especially the play on the celery stalk...er.

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You just don't understand. We've all seen funny in our lives before - it's been done. Funny is as dead as the superhero ideal of the 50s is. It's done, get over it. No one need attempt humor ever again.

Oh wait, I forgot my sarcasm tags. Sorry bout that. Not aimed at you at all DM, just the previous type of posters.

Listen guys, this thread will do no one any good amd certainly won't change anything. Everything's been done already, get over setting yourself up as the judge to decide what's worth doing and what's not.

No matter what you come up with, anyone with half a brain can find a good reason to include it in their next arc if they so desire, unless you somehow think there's no point in trying to be funny anymore anyways or something equally silly... I may just have to do a catgirls-on-a-cargo-ship-fighting zombies mission next, just to annoy everyone.

If you have the time, please look over mine, listed in my sig. I've triple-proofed it (at least!), but I know my spelling skills do have a few holes.

It's best to take a higher level toon (solo is fine), or keep it set low and cross your fingers. Set it for level 1 difficulty with a high level toon and you'll breeze through it pretty quickly even. I think I put text in just about everywhere possible, so it might be something of a read - hopefully an enjoyable one though!

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Expression of nom: triplicate.

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If I were currently working on an arc with Rikti in it, I'd so steal that. Hm, come to think of it...

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Graverobbers From Outer Space


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Ah, great card game, haven't played that in ages.

I'm guessing he means the stuff they say at various points, like the unaware comment. I was having this problem too up until a couple of days ago, then it "magically" cleared up, no idea why.

I had it set to staggered then changed it to flat and didn't see any difference, actually.

I was thinking to just drop a warning note ("For higher levels only" or something), guess I'll have to go with that. I do not what you mean by being bored though; running through it with a 50 or anyone over 40 with good DPS it was mostly a breeze. Which I can live with, really.

I'm having trouble getting my minions to spawn at less than "these guys are tough!" levels. I want my mission to be playable for as close to any level toon as I can, but my minions and lt.s spawn at yellow-con and orange-con respectively even when I'm set at the easiest setting (level 1 difficulty). I'd prefer if they came up white-con/yellow-con at that level. The only time I see white-con though is if I have a group set for "hard" that's surrounding a captive you have to free, then it puts down 2 white-cons and two yellow-cons.

Why does this happen? Does the system look at their power sets and think "these are tough, I'm gonna yellow- and orange-up them" or something? Maybe at the settings for the powersets themselves ("standard", "hard", etc.)?

My minions are Assault Rifle/Force Field (both set at standard) and my Lts. are the same but with AR set at hard if that helps.

Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated.

You know that one parameter you set for a mission called "mission pacing"? I think it's right below the map choices, and it has some vague terms like "flat", ramped up", staggered"...

Can anyone tell me what the flaming carrot that sets? It may be an unrelated issue, but I'm trying to easy-up a mission and I keep getting yellow-con minions and orange-con leuts, even on heroic. Does that affect this?

It doesn't work in all text fields, mostly in text areas like clues and mission intro's; I'm still learning which do and don't do that by trail and error. You have to highlight the text then right click the highlighted area.

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I am hoping we eventually get the outdoor/indoor cargo ship map and the Villain's Longbow battleship map. More maps the merrier!

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Can't argue with that.

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Not just the group name. Make a custom group that has ghosts in it (not the CoT ones, the portal ones), and make the captured NPCs be "Civilians", and from Civilians choose "Random".

The captured NPC will be a ghost too.

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The radio said "No, NPC. You are the ghosts"
And then NPC was a zombie.

Thanks for the explanation fo that, it was driving me crazy.

The Paragonwiki page that makes some suggestions for using the powersets thinks it's wise to avoid EM altogether and I can see why.

I've been working on my first arc and gave my big boss (just "boss" mind you) EM. When I go in and test with a good DPS toon that's like 40th level+, I do ok. If I go in with a toon that's a ranged attacker, I do ok, especially if it has a Hold. Otherwise it's pretty ugly.

I keep wanting to test my mish with a real squishy, like a level 15 blaster, which might be doable. 15th level scrapper though, or a brute? No way. Last test I ran with my 30th level brute, this EM boss was the only serious threat I faced (and I died too).

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It's not mathematically impossible to keep a five star rating. Looking at IMDB there's three movies that's done so (has a rating of 9 and up, which would translate to 4.5 rounded up to 5). The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974). Those are the only three movies ever made that manages it, however.

So if you think your arc is the Godfather of CoH, then go ahead and strive for a 5 average. Those of us without hubris will be thrilled with a 4 average.

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Ok, so it's not mathematically impossible, just very very improbable.

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I don't mind them at all. They're linear, not particularly big (no kill-alls tho pls), and suitable for a variety of narrative purposes.

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These are good points. Not to dismiss them, but as time goes by I think that map will become very common in a "oh spit, not this again" sort of way - because of your good points and what I mentioned above.

Imagine if everything you had to eat was served as a sandwich: turkey sandwich, avacado sandwich, breakfast sausage in a pancake sandwich, etc. Everybody loves sandwiches, right? But after a month of them you might be ready to move on, you know?

(And then there's cake. No one gets tired of cake. But I digress.)

I've seen it once or twice too, but not often. seems like a small enough bug to me, but it might confuse your storyline some, sure.

After spending a LOOONG time trying to work out which maps work best for my first arc, I realized why people use the cargo ship map: laziness.
1) It is linear so you know the front/middle/back placements will work 100%
2) There aren't ten, fifteen versions of it to consider and have to test
3) It's also at the top of the list.
At this point, I'm starting to think that seeing the cargo ship when I step into a mish is an instant sign of upcoming crapiness - but I will keep an open mind and not quit-right-there-and-one-star. Hm, that action needs a good acronym or slang term...

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Apparently there is a way to keep a 5 star rating. Just add the string "JSNTS" into your arc description. Go ahead and search on that.

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What's with that, anyway? Just Say No To Supradyne? I've seen it pop up in a lot of arcs.

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Instinct says a voting cartel.

How about forming an anti-cartel JSYTS which one stars those arcs?

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Maybe I should call mine "Will no one help the widow's son?" and see if that helps me get more five s-star ratings...

(If I was at home I'd check - I'm betting it's already been used for a title.)

I'm learning that when I go AE-running, it's time to turn down the difficulty level to something like 2, maybe 3 if I have a really good toon - unless I want a serious fight on my hands. This goes especially for 50s.

Working on my first arc and testing it with a lot of toons as well I'm finding it hard to find a good balance for a mish so that anyone 1-50 can run it and not get squashed like a bug or bored. I'm probably going to lean towards the upper end of levels (nothing crazy, mind you) and leave a warning on it "not for anyone under 20th or the very squishy, unless you're a seriously good player" or something.

Also, there's a great paragonwiki page with hints and tips for building custom foes right here which I found very helpful in working on my arc.

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I'm about to dump this text altogether except for the "blarg I'm dead" line anyways because I only rarely see the other, earlier lines actually show up on screen. They do show in the chatbox so I know they're registering, but I think my boss has uttered them "out loud" in a word balloon only once out of ten tests.

Blargh indeed. Anyone else having this issue?

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I'd leave the Unaware in always for required bosses. They speak it once you get within a certain range of them, so it makes finding the necessary boss a lot easier.

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Up until yestersday I wasn't seeing this text show up until I started combat, by which point the function you mention was pointless. I also wasn't seeing hardly any of the other health-triggered comments, as I mentioned above.

Then for some reason when I logged in yesterday it all seemed to go just fine with those, /em shrug. So yeah, I am keeping it all in there now. Plus I've had so much fun writing the dialogue, I'm pretty much guaranteeing that players will have to back track through the chat log to catch them all.

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...

I looked at that pic and immediately tried to pull the angle down and zoom in.

I HATE WHEN I DO THAT WITH SCREENIES!

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Never done that with screenies, but for some reason I do it after I exit the game and check my email or something. Not sure why...

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Boss text: Not much is needed beyond "Aware" so that people know an important mob has aggroed. Maybe "Unaware" and/or "Defeated" text for EBs/AVs important to your story. But the 3/4, half, 1/4 texts don't add much because they're always variations of the same thing.

3/4: Ha! Is that all you got!
1/2: Arrgh! Maybe you're tougher than I thought!
1/4: Owww! How dare you! Now you must feel my wrath!

Even if you do something more creative, like having the villain monologing about his evil plot during the fight, players may miss it. So fight text is a great area to pare down the file size.

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I'm about to dump this text altogether except for the "blarg I'm dead" line anyways because I only rarely see the other, earlier lines actually show up on screen. They do show in the chatbox so I know they're registering, but I think my boss has uttered them "out loud" in a word balloon only once out of ten tests.

Blargh indeed. Anyone else having this issue?