Clave_Dark_5

I'm not sure what genre it qualifies as, but I'm kicking around an arc to answer the question "What if David Lynch wrote an MA arc?"

I expect it'll get lots of 1-star ratings though because hardly anyone would be able to follow it...

I have two up so far, both listed in my sig. The first one is the stronger of the two but you are of course welcome to play them both. I've recently rejiggered the second one a tad and run them both through a spell checker, although I might still have the occasional typo. Both are currently sitting at 4 stars, so they shouldn't be too awful for you to take a look at - and a big thanks! if you do!

I often don't slot toons for anything below say level 10, if not 12 when you get DOs (that is at 12, right?). Those that are having trouble with END get END generics until then. It's always worked pretty well for me.

Tempest in a teapot.

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You forgot to mention that your one character can have five different costumes. That's like five different characters right there!

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I've actually heard that from a CoH detractor on a different forum. Obviously the rest of his post didn't serve to change my mind about anything.

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The busy zones on villainside are Cap Au Diable and Grandville. You can go to those zones on pretty much any server and find teams broadcasting for members during peak hours. During off hours good luck. That's why I'm so glad villain ATs solo so well. When I can't find a team, at least I can still do something.



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I game during those hours too and on Freedom I can usually always find a team.

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As a new set with a distinctly different feel, I very much enjoy Pain Domination.

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TMI, TMI!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

You seem to be a very prolific MA creator, I'll giver you that! I will also say that no matter how perfect you think each idea is, being forced to drop some in favor of others is a great editor who'll force you to tighten up your existing work and overall probably make it better.

It's worked that way for me at least. I have two arcs already out (see sig) and I'm seriously kicking around about three more ideas. It makes me panic a bit too, but on the other hand it forces me to weight each idea and achievability of each against the other - and we all win when that happens. I get more plays and stars and a rep for a good arc, you get more fun playing what I created.

Don't get me wrong, I realize the chance exists that everything you're doing and want to do is solid gold, but it may not be and I'd like to have my gold in discrete nuggets, panned and sifted, rather than coming to me in a bucketful of sand from the river bottom.

Today I was retesting a mish I have published. At one point I come to fight a boss that I gave the MM Bots power to, but it never called them. Granted, the boss wasn't on its feet too long after I started attacking, but we tangled for a good fifteen seconds or so, during that time I think I saw it cycle through every one of the secondary powers. Yet no bots, no stun grenade rifle thingy they use, etc. Up until now it was my experience that calling out the bots was always at the top of the list. I did check to make sure the boss was still assigned Bots for its primary.

I've only had a chance to test this once so far, I'll go home and do some more testing tonight, but I was wondering if anyone else has seen this or had reoccurring problems like this? Was this maybe just a one-time bug?

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In all honesty, I'd avoid any custom enemy group that lacks minions, LTs, or bosses. Doing so is likely to get your arc flagged for review as a farm, and possibly removed by the GMs that review it. Even if the first GM to look at it OKs the arc, any time you edit it (likely every patch that effects the MA), your arc would likely be flagged for review again.

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Due to some long story details I won't bother with, the first mish of my first arc listed in my sig has no bosses, just minions and Lt.s and so far hasn't been touched once by the banhammer. I am going to be taking care of that soon though (the lack of bosses, not the banhammer).

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You may be giving them far too much credit and reading to too much into their form responses and patting themselves on the back.

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And you may be giving them too little and being a cranky guy for some strange reason. If you really hate the devs and the game with such vociferous high-temperature flames from hell are you here?

"It's fun trolling the forums..."

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Make sure of course they have similar names (I added a space to the none required ones at the end) and BAM, you got multiple items but only 1 that is the real one!

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Hey nice trick! I ran into this problem on one of my arcs and was wondering if the next one I'm working on was going to have this same problem, thanks for that!

And hey Cap - not sure which version of this I ran but it went well for me, it was fun. Thanks again!

Meh, I still enjoy the game even if it's not 100% whatever.

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"Just because you can't see us, it doesn't mean we can't see you."

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Close to what I was thinking: You can't see me, I'm invisible!

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that although villain AT X may be like hero AT X, they always play very differently. Always. Best advice I can offer is to check out the guides in each AT's section here on the boards, there is usually one or two about "How to play your new AT" with some helpful generalized advice no matter what build you go with.

Good luck on your Dom.

I'm on Freedom too and at one point wanted to try and get in on some ship raids with my the-new 50 stalker. I'd go into the zone and it was just a ghost town. I don't think anyone hangs out in there unless they have something prearranged. Which is sad, it's a nice zone.

Few maps are 100% on this I understand. I've heard only the cargo tanker maps are trustworthy while outside maps are the worst.

I ran into this problem with my second story arc (see below) in my3rd mish and pretty much just let it ride. It would have been nicer if they all showed up where I wanted them to, but not story-breaking. Oddly enough, now that I think of it, the second mission in the same arc has an outside map - a small one - and the glowies drop pretty reliably where I put them.

Hm!

I'd guess perhaps no later than halfway through the summer - why release a video game when all the kids are in school? This would of course mean that it's very very close and probably 90% done.

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I am one.

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Then we should just ignore you - Decorum said so!

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...

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Highly productive post there. I shall interpret this as a reverential silence befitting my godlike hubris.

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Well, I can agree with one word of that post.

I actually have more to say about this though, this has been something I've been thinking over for a bit now.

The other day my first arc (see sig) got a feedback about it "not being soloable for anything less than a tanker", which struck me as untrue, since there are no AVs or even EBs in it. The player had mentioned that "after the last patch, the bosses are too tough" so I ran it through again with my 50th level sloppily-built DB/Nin Stalker (with IOs but nothing ridiculous like Numina or purpled out), on difficulty level 1, and even without using my AS it went by very quickly. I kicked it up to difficulty 3 and still made it through without going to half HP more than once. So who knows what the player was using, what difficulty level they were set at, etc.

So this set me to wondering about this whole issue. Maybe some people haven't gotten the idea that they can't run these missions at the same difficulty levels they do regular content, maybe they hate the idea of having to admit their builds aren't so uber or something and toning it down. There certainly are cases of people building bosses that are way tough, I was fighting some with an MM this morning that rezzed and drained End that were just too much (still survived them all though . Like normal combat, some builds or ATs or level ranges are just going to flat out be BAD at facing certain types of foes in MA. I kind of think it's up to the player to know their limits and not the MA creator's fault for not tailoring the arc to them. If any squishie could solo an arc, not many would be much of a challenge, which is what some people are creating and playing them for (not me, but some do).

I suppose you could fault the devs though for not allowing us a way to scale down an arc far enough so that "any squishie can play this", if that's what you want to create.

I have an AR/Pain Corr with a hook. When he goes to fire his rifle, he uses his hook to cradle the rifle's barrel to steady it, it looks kinda cool. I've been wanting to make a bow toon to see what that looks like.

I had one with claws once, back before we could choose what they look like, and they just sort of appeared out of the air right next to the hook.

If I only catch a couple in an otherwise good story, I don't care. If they're numerous, I'd probably mention it and maybe drop a star. If the story didn't do anything for me (or didn't exist in the first place), I might even drop it two. The writing in the MA stories has to really carry the whole thing for me.

On my own arcs, I proofread endlessly and have resorted to spell checking everything with an online spell checker (I don't have Word) by cutting and pasting it on the online page then re-pasting the fixed text when I find errors.

I would think that allowing someone to build their own nemesis would open the door to people making them specifically weak in areas their toons was strong on. Every time you met him or her, you'd wipe the floor with him or her and get cheap and easy XP/drops. Farming in other words. It'll be interesting to see if CO suffers this.

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if you can honestly tell me you never went to the sewers when you started out for faster levels then you can talk, everyone does sewers when you start a new toon. sewers=low level farming.

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I understand that farming is about getting the rewards with little or none of the risk of fighting "real" enemies. I've seen plenty of team wipe sin the sewers, so I don't think that's farming. "Running the candy cane mission with a low level toon's mission" is a better example of farming "everyone" does.

I haven't played any DC arcs yet. I prefer shorter ones as my time can be limited, plus if I get into an arc and start having trouble with getting wiped by custom mobs during mission one (this happened to me once, but not on a DC) I feel extra annoyed, not sure why.