Clave_Dark_5

All my arcs listed in my sig have elements of humor, with the first two (BUNNYGIRLS and Premium Quality) being mainly humor-focused.

The arc DayJob Hell is of course for villains, but if you wanna run your low level 'troller through, I won't tell anyone if you don't.

Any and all feedback is always greatly appreciated!

You know what's really making me ache to hear more about GR?

The fact that no one can stop talking about how we're not hearing anything.

Oh, ok, I see - my mistake.

Without playing it, I'd offer this advice (as I like tight stories) - why add the other two if the story is wrapped up in the first three?

Also, since the arc is pretty much done, you should post in the 'Mission Architect: Stories & Lore' section to look for feedback, not in this one.

Good luck!

Most players won't want to help you mess about with the mechanics this way until there's at least a solid story set down and all the missions are there, which means having a more-or-less finished arc. If anything, that's your job, your choices to make at this stage in the creation, you have to decide if those crates look right or not, etc. There's really no other way to do a good arc (that I know of) than to test, retest, check, recheck and play it so much that you get sick of it. It does pay off though when you get good ratings.

Here's how I usually do this: I cobble up all my missions in an arc while ignoring text/story and run it enough times during testing phase (can I see these crates? Is this the best possible map for what I want? etc.). Once that's done I publish it and write something in the description the player sees like "I'm still working on this so if you play it you'll be disappointed so stay off my lawn you damn kids!" Then as I keep testing it and adding in the story text (and making changes as well), I'm earning tickets and XP. This is the best part of this deal.

Each of my four arcs has something that disqualifies it based on your criteria, except for...

TOO MANY BUNNYGIRLS!
Arc ID#: 101165
Length: Medium
Morality: Neutral (leans heroic)
Enemy Groups: custom
Description: "You can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting another stupid bunnygirl mission. Ugh. Someone should do something about them, once and for all. Someone like you. (story, humor, rabbit puns; best for higher levels but not too hard; 5 Bosses, no EBs or AVs)"

Fight bunnygirls and try to stop a super-celebrity tabloid from publishing embarrassing pictures of yourself! I made this one based off some silly discussion with my girlfriend, and it probably shows. Funnily enough, the plot is pretty tight regardless... not sure how that happened!

I think it's currently at 4 stars with about 125 plays, give or take ten. It was my first mission and went through a lot of refining. It's pretty basically a "go in and beat up badguys" kind of story with puns.

If you do play, I always like feedback and ratings.

Others will address this better than I, but the short version of an answer to the "no one will play it" problem is that there are something like 500,000 arcs posted up by players. I think. It's some huge number like that.

That's a lot of arcs! Just dropping yours off in that pool and waving buh-bye means that's your odds of seeing it played are kind of small. This is why you do, yes, have to find ways to get people to play.

One good way is to form an MA arc playing PUG and start off with yours. Keep notes from these forums about other well-regarded arcs and you'll never have to grow bored with content in this game again.

>.>

<.<

"The ducks fly over the pond at midnight." Pass it on.

I've studied fine arts in college, work in a museum and yet I normally hate most conceptual art. But this?... this is a pretty clever scam, which I suppose makes it art.

I must be some sort of sick freak because I can't think of much.

I tend to gush endless love on one AT to another in cycles. Currently I'm out of my Bots MM crush ("Bots, mm!") and making moon-eyes at my old flame, stalkers, but the same chemistry isn't there because I tend to only actually play say one session out of three, the other two being spent on MA arc writing.

I've always loved stalker AS's (please don't try to read that out loud; think of the children). Invariably as I level up at some point I get silly and think "Let's see what happens when I AS that red-con guy over there" and then I actually end up wiping the floor with him thanks to that huge influx of ouch from my opening AS. It's a nice feeling.

I have at least 3 or four possible pistolers I'd like to make, but I'm probably going to narrow those down to two - four right off the bat is overkill, really.

BUT WHICH TWO?! I can't decide yet. I've never run a defender and one of my ideas would fit into that AT so I might take that route for one.

I've been all MasterMind-y as of late (before MA sucked me into a never ending stream of testing arcs so that I never get to actually level anyone up) - much as I like the idea of the Demon set I might take my time to getting around to that new powerset.

So - we've identified the conspiracy and its perps, we now need a way to let everyone else who might stumble across the thread know up front that its been made by one of these suspiciously-low-post-count-d00mer. Something as easily elegant and easy to post as good ol' /jranger that will let other perhaps less knowledgeable forumites recognize the troll for who he is and to serve as warning to not feed said troll.

I nominate the image.

Here's something I'll toss in to this discussion...

@LaserJesus has a series of arcs that parody old-style vampire movies; I think there are three of them now, maybe it's four, haven't played them all yet. Each one has a pretty well self-contained storyline, like any good series of sequels would. They may or may not be leading up to an "epic battle/ending of of epic proportions!", I don't know. But I've had fun playing the first two and definitely intend to play the rest.

I guess what I'm pointing to is that a really long story with no breaks that stretches over two arcs can feel like a slog that's too much of a pain to start. "A journey begins with but a single footstep, but dude look at those thousand miles before me, ouch!" But if the story can be broken up into say three fairly self-contained arcs with three or four missions each, then it wouldn't feel that way because you can always log off after one arc and come back to the next when you're ready.

Then again - if it feels right to make it a huge story that stretches out over two arcs and you can honestly say it all works after you're done, then it will come through and engage the player ("most players" anyways, no doubt you'll still get complaints) and make him or her want to keep playing so that's what you should do. If I only ever get five plays on any of my arcs but all five of those players "got" what I was doing, then that's what counts to me.

...that is the question.

I'm working on an arc containing an enemy group that will probably all have Ninjitsu for their second power set, because "popping up out of nowhere" fits their theme and the story. I do intend to drop a warning about it on the arc description too so it won't come as that unexpected a surprise. Anyone with any kind of +perception will see them as well.

I'm wondering how that might go over with the player base though. Also, what level range do you think such an arc should be set for? I'm guessing maybe 25+?

Any thoughts?

You can also (I hear) go to another AE building in another zone.