Darkonne

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Not an outright lie. The person who wrote the patch note wasn't aware of all the things this was intended to fix. That's one of the main reasons I'm having this discussion: Full disclosure.

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I am ever and always in favor of open and honest discourse, so this thread gets a big thumbs up from me. Thanks, Castle!

My general distaste for +recharge and pets means I'm not really effected by this change at all. So I'm sure it's easier for me to accept than for most of the playerbase. But I do understand Castle's reasoning: the fundamental design of the game is what it is, and this does sound like the best practical solution to several problems. I hope the results will be worth the effort.

-D

What the heck, here's the mission I created to test out the system.

Arc Name: Fight Darkonne!
Arc ID: 4318
Faction: Villain
Creator Global/Forum Name: Darkonne
Difficulty Level: Trivial
Synopsis: If you've ever wanted to clobber me, now's your chance!
Estimated Time to Play: ~5 minutes if you read all the text
Link to More Details or Feedback: Nah, it's perfect. :-p

I figure if you're going to create a tutorial mission, why not do it with style?

-D

Thanks for keeping up the FAQ, Arcana! Here are a few things I noticed when reading it.

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Q4.1: How many mission arcs can I publish, maximum?

A4.1: To begin with: three. If any of your arcs reaches dev choice status, that arc doesn't count against your limit. So really you can have up to three non-choiced mission arcs. You can have an unlimited number of choiced arcs in theory.


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Doesn't being voted into the Hall of Fame also make an arc not count against the limit?


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Q4.2: Do I have to publish a mission to test it?

A4.2: You can test a mission with the test option, and it will play no differently than if you published it *except* you won't earn any tickets during a test run. "Invisibly" you'll be earning special "virtual" tickets in the background that you just can't see, and that will count towards the virtual ticket badges. But (at the moment) you won't get any indication of how much you're earning as you go along, so to test ticket-earning you basically need to publish the mission.


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You should mention that you will also not earn Inspirations in testing mode. This might be a good place to mention the Inspiration vendor in the AE building, too.

Also, if you're desperate to track virtual tickets when testing a mission, you could keep an eye on your progress toward the virtual ticket badges (assuming you haven't already completed them). It would be a real pain to do so, though.


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Q4.13: Hey, I got an enhancement drop in an MA mission! Is that a bug?

A4.13: Not if its a dev-choice mission. If a mission arc is dev-choice, all normal reward drops are enabled on it. You *won't* get tickets at the same time, though, and the same restriction on badge earning (namely, you can't earn progress on any badge except for the MA-related ones in MA missions) is still in force. Even in dev-choice missions, you cannot earn progress on XP badges, debt badges, defeat X badges, etc.


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XP Badges? Did you mean Influence/Infamy badges?


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At the moment, you cannot:

* Set descriptive text for your contact, beyond mission dialog
* Set dialog that the regular spawns speak (you can do this for patrols)
* Change the powers of existing critters
* Use the powers of existing critters in custom critters
* Customize the appearance of powers (except to the degree currently possible on live, which basically means custom weapons only)
* Make cutscenes
* Populate a mission with (panicked) civilians
* Lead an ally to anywhere but the door
* Trigger a collection to appear after another objective is completed
* Customize maps, alter spawn points, or make your own mission maps
* Specify a single entity spawn as an ambush, such as a single named boss

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You might want to add that you cannot create a custom critter using any of the EAT powersets. I know it's not something that's likely to be added soon (if it ever is), but I doubt I'm the only one who wondered about it.

-D

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I think adding what it does in your next FAQ would be most welcome, because if you're like me and you're going to ask the question, you want some guideline to the answer. And I bear in mind that not everyone is going to get this right off the bat; you need this to be as user-friendly as possible. And if that means offering up an explanation for most of everything, then so be it. It might seem obvious to most people, but if you want people to fully utilise what this tool has to offer, then you explain as much as you humanly can.


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It's been my experience that Arcanaville is unusually good at explaining details in a comprehensible fashion. Still, I do think her explanation for the difficulty slider is a bit lacking. She explains why it was added and goes into detail about how dangerous unlimited power access can be, but the actual effect of the difficulty settings is alluded to rather than actually explained.

So I agree that a quick synopsis of the way the difficulty settings actually function (they remove most, some or none of the powers from the two sets; the powers removed are chosen automatically, and vary from powerset to powerset) would be a good addition to the FAQ. Even if that isn't technically the question being asked. :-p


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I understand what you're saying about mission difficulty vs. critter difficulty and while that in itself is more or less clear (though I don't see why you couldn't use the same game settings of Heroic through Invincible, terms that people can instantly lock onto and recognise),


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Given that these difficulty settings do something completely different than the reputation settings, I think it's for the best that they use different terminology.

-D

I know we can create souvenirs for our arcs, and I know it is possible to fail a mission. But I cannot see any way to give a different souvenir depending upon whether or not the final mission of an arc is failed. Did I overlook something, or is that beyond the ability of the MA?

And if it is beyond the ability of the MA, is it something that could be added within a Soon or two?

-D

BTW, thanks for this FAQ, Arcana!

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I don't think there is an "Ask about contact" option for dialog, at least not that I've seen.

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Well, that's a serious disappointment. If custom contacts are just a pretty face, it sort of kills my most promising story idea. Any chance this will be changed?

-D

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14 per arc.

That is why some people have split their story up between two or three mini-arcs.

Hey, movie makers only get 2-3 hours to tell a story, and, if the story doesn't fit, they make sequels or trilogies.

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Unless they've lifted the 3 arc cap, that seems like a very serious problem.

-D

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Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to beta test, somewhere beyond the heavens...

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Battlestar Arcanica.

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I think that's Betastar. You know: "Testing the Aeon functionality, the first Betastar, Arcanica, leads a rag-tag, fugitive band on a lonely quest: A shining event known as Issue 14."

Battlestar Arcanica sounds like the Shield/Mace Tanker she should have tested I13 with. :-p

-D

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(I'm kidding about the pet Hamidon. Hamidon can't move. The Kronos Titan would be a better choice.)

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Come on, Arcanaville, rookie mistake. A giant, unstoppable robotic death machine as your loyal servant? That thing will turn on you faster than you can say "I am Nomad!"

Meanwhile, I recall hearing that Mastermind sets would not be available in the MA character builder: something about pet summoning powers making the AI weep. Does anyone know if that has changed? It would be nice to make custom MM opponents.

-D

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I'm going to write the best arcs I possibly can, but the chances any of them will get one of the golden rings is negligible. At the same time, unless one of the arcs is rated low enough that it's clearly just not performing well, I'm not going to want to put that much energy into an arc and then pull it down in a week because I have six more arcs sitting on my hard drive. That's especially true if I want to do sequel arcs -- I'll want people to have the chance to play the introduction as well as the sequel.

Tying ratings to the only way to have more than three published adventures (aside from Dev fiat) clouds the issue of ratings, IMO. It encourages mission architects to write to the crowd instead of developing what they want to develop, in hopes of grabbing the brass ring. And it means that when I'm rating a mission, I'm going to feel badly if I rate it as a 3 instead of a 4, because I know it'll knock it that much further down from Hall of Fame and the benefits accrued. At the same time, it gives disproportionate power to curmudgeonly types who consider a 3 something you have to go above and beyond to earn and who live in 1s and 2s.

A lot of that becomes mitigated if we have alternate means of increasing our slots.

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I share these concerns. Three arcs isn't much from a storytelling perspective. If the only way to tell more stories is for one of your three stories to become extremely popular, I think there is going to be a lot of frustration. I have no problem with awarding extra slots for HoF arcs, but I would also be more comfortable with alternate ways to get additional arc bandwidth.

On a side note: does anyone know if HoF status is permanent once granted? If a bunch of people run a HoF arc and think it was garbage, can their votes drive it out of the Hall? None of the comments I've read have addressed this.

On the one hand, I would hope not; it would open up all kinds of logistical issues. But on the other hand, that seems to set up an odd situation where early buzz may well be better than later accolades. Once a bunch of people give an arc middling reviews, you're probably better off scrapping it than leaving it up there in the hopes that it was merely ahead of its time.

All the more reason for us to have alternate means of gaining arc slots.

-D

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As it stands now the system of being able to rate arcs without an investment of time is flawed.

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I agree it's a potential problem. I wonder if it would be possible to measure the time someone spent running an arc before they reviewed it? That way you could establish a split conditional: either spend X minutes in the arc's missions, or complete it before you're allowed to review it.

It's not perfect, but it should at least discourage people from slapping ratings on arcs just for the sake of rating them. At the same time, if you run across a truly horrible grindfest of an arc, you need only give it a good college try, then declare it hopeless and vote it into oblivion.

-D

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I wouldn't be so sure. We can already buy inspirations with merits (1 merit = 1 random large insp), but it's not like merit drops replaced large inspiration drops or anything.

Posi was only giving examples of things you can buy, and outlining the difference between global and local things you can purchase. If you decide to spend tickets on an inspiration, then only that character gets that inspiration. If you decide to spend tickets on something global (like an AV for MA), then any of your characters can use that AV when making missions, not just the one that bought it.

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That is possible, but the FAQ only said we would get experience and influence for defeating mobs; it made no mention of Inspirations. I had overlooked that until Positron mentioned buying Inspirations, but it is vaguely possible that the devs might want to prevent easy large Inspiration farming the same way they wish to curb recipe farming.

So I'm curious: will we get Inspirations from MA missions?

-D

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I think they are thinking of this from the perspective of say a scrapper doing the arc vs say a defender doing the arc in addition to any extra or less slots you might have at said levels.

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Well, Positron specifically cited level difference as the key issue.

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Positron said:

Now if you are simply asking that Merits be a tradable resource, or even trade-within-account, I am sorry, but that's not going to happen. Characters of different levels earn Merits at different rates. Merits are supposed to streamline the reward process for that character, and that's not going to be changing any time soon.


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I'm just curious as to how that difference is maintained in practice.

-D

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If you spend tickets on a specific reward, like an Inspiration or Recipe Roll, then that is only given to the character spending the tickets.

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I had not thought about it before, but this quote points out that Inspirations will probably not be dropped in the MA. That might be a problem: I know I've been burning through Inspirations like candy as I try to get my Peacebringer through the EB infested Hero's Hero arc.

Obviosuly, this isn't going to be an issue for Rikti War Zone Challengees, but none of my characters have ever been in that league. I'd hate to have to interrupt an otherwise enjoyable arc multiple times to go buy Inspirations for my squishy.

Also, while I'm here:
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GeminiProject said:
So while the disparity between merit earning time between chars is a reason not to render merits intra-account, the sheer fact that it exists renders merit earinng on anything less than the optimal toon pointless, thus taking the fun out of creating alts for me.

$.02


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I'll bring his total up to $.04. It does feel as though spreading my playing time over alts is at cross purposes with the way the Merit system works.

I also have to say, I don't quite understand Positron's reasoning. All characters running, say, the Positron TF are going to be the in the same level bracket while they run it, even though they might have very disparate levels otherwise. They'll obviously complete the TF at the same time as each other, and they'll get the same number of Merits when they do.

Given that characters can SK up to run some story arcs, and anyone can Exemplar down for Merit activities, how can the devs expect characters at different levels to consistently earn Merits at different, level-appropriate rates? Do most players just not SK/Exemplar very often?

-D

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Well, let me put it this way. That very same problem is a problem I'll face as a potential Mission Architect author: potentially thousands of other players will be writing stories, and there is the real danger that after working on a story arc and publishing it, the player community will say "seen it."


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Really now, Arcana, I doubt it will be that bad. I stalk all your posts on the forums so I'm sure I'll check out all your mission arch... err, I mean ... 'seen it.' <whistles>

I think it will be hard for almost any given mission to get attention. The difficulty in being original will be a problem, but I think the sheer number of potential missions that could be out there to sort through is an even bigger problem.

The fact that dev created content will be built directly into the game world rather than part of the MA emporium should be enough to keep it noteworthy all by itself. That the devs will get a few unique tricks, artwork and features for their content is the icing on the cake.

I do wonder, though, how the MA system will influence dev content. I've always heard that the original interface they used was pretty rudimentary, so they might well have an easier time making content now. That's a happy thought. And since we players should be churning out plenty of "normal" content, the devs might choose to focus their content on stories that have unusual graphics, features, or a very strong tie to the game world. That's always the content that I have been most interested in. So I'm cautiously very optimistic about this.

-D

Neat stuff! Let me try...

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Are there any context sensitive dialogue options available to us (different dialogue based on character gender, origin, badges, souvys, mission progress etc...)? Or if not, is it a possibility for later on?

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It will be somehting like this:

$name
$class
$origin
$supergroup
$level
$himher
$heshe
$hisher

Example:
Oh no! its the mighty $class $name! Get $himher before $heshe can stop us with $hisher powerful $origin abilities!

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This sounds like the system for in-mission dialog. Will it be possible to have contact dialog change more extensively based on these variables, the way the Origin of Power arc does?

Also, how will the MA system handle difficulty-scaled custom characters? Will a custom AV be scaled down to an EB if not at the maximum difficulty? Would a custom Boss become a Lt on the lowest difficulty setting?

Thanks for all the answers, pohsyb!

-D

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So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should? That's exactly the wrong mindset. The exploiters will just find the next exploit (or just go back to the farming missions, teaming, whatever), maybe be a bit slower in rolling up the rewards, but the normal players are left high and dry.

And I'm not saying lay out exactly the exploit, just the change. For example, with the Rikti Portal issue, they wouldn't say "well, you see, people are getting massive XP by nicking portals in the RWZ", they'd just say "Rikti portals summoned by lieutenants give no XP, influence/infamy, prestige, drops, or merits". People will ask why, some people might even figure out the exploit, but so what? There are always exploits people are using. And maybe we could have gotten a better solution like, you only get proportional reward based on the damage you did. Or at least, immediately, we might have gotten Comm Officers to con as lieutenants.

Now clearly, severity has to be an issue about the exploit as well as impact. If it's an exploit that lets you grief others (like the change they made to keep people from stealing stuff out of base storage), that has a higher justification for secrecy. But "oh noes! They are getting more xp than they should be getting!" is a lousy excuse to screw up the legitimate rewards of the normal players.

And even if you can make a case for not documenting on the training room, there is ZERO excuse for not documenting it when they go live. Part of the process of saying "OK, this doesn't go into the training room patch notes" has to ensure "it will be highlighted in the live patch notes". The problem is that most things that are withheld from the training room patch notes don't make it to live either.

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I agreed with GadgetDon, particularly his last point.

If secrecy is indeed essential in closing a particular exploit, then it is imperative that the secrecy be dropped when the danger has passed. Otherwise, it becomes too easy for that secrecy to obscure mistakes in the patch notes system, and that is in no one's interest.

-D

[Editted for better phrasing]

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After sitting down with Phil and going over the history of EVERYTHING badge related with this issue, Phil and I decided to go back and reinstate the Reformed badge for Heroes. This will be in Issue 14: Architect, but your credit should still be being counted from now until that releases. Of course, you have no progress bar, and something might have happened elsewhere that I don’t know about, so if you really want to make progress towards the badge, I would wait until Issue 14 is released to do it.

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Thank you for the explanation, Posi. It's always nice to hear how things happen the way they do.

But I'm also pleased by the final decision; I think letting heroes gain the badge if they want to is the right call. Even if I'm not particularly inclined to get this badge on my heroes, it's nice to have the choice.

-D

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In a recent patch, we removed the ability to have the conversion of old base-salvage to new invention salvage count towards the overall “crafting” badges. This is a change to the methods I had previously said would count towards earning those overall crafting badges.

The reasoning behind this change was it made these badges a little TOO easy to get, there is a lot of Base Salvage sitting around in storage racks gathering database dust. Crafting the actual base items still count towards the badge (as they always have), it’s simply the conversion from Base-to-Invention that has been removed from counting.


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I see.

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Here’s a bit of a teaser: We have big plans for these (and other) badges, and we really want them to mean something to your character. If you are in a dialog tree that involves creating something, we have the ability to look at your badges and see if you have taken the effort to prove yourself as a crafter. This effort would be rewarded with special options in the dialog tree that earn you better results, enable you to skip steps, etc. For this system to work, we’ll need them to be a reasonable indicator of the amount of work a crafter has put into crafting. And it’s not just dialog trees that are going to look at badges, and it’s not just crafting badges that will be looked at, so you guys can speculate away!

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Neat idea. But I can't help but feel it's horribly undercut by the fact that a large number of the people out there will have earned these badges by using a technique that was deemed "too easy" and is no longer available to the rest of us.

In essense, you are once again reinforcing the "exploit early" mentality that I so despise. I understand that there's no way to retroactively de-badge people who used salvage conversions as part of their badging. But how is it any more fair to make those of us who have not earned the badges yet play by entirely different rules just because you feel the new system would be more balanced? The fact still remains that plenty of people won't be using that system at all, yet they'll still get the benefits.

-D

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In addition to their track record of actually giving a darn (in general) what their customers think, I'm a voice in a lot smaller crowd here than in the rest of the world. Out there, it'd be ludicrous to think that I could even make myself *heard* by those who control things, totally apart from their willingness to listen. Here, though, it's not nearly so impossible.

BABs Back Alley Brawler BAB Castle Posi Positron Sunstorm Blue Steel Pohsyb Ghost Widow War Witch

There, I just made nearly certain that at least one dev will likely see this post. There's no way I could pull that off in real life.

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Unless you're a figment of my imagination, you did just pull that off in real life.

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Huh. I always assumed the dev(s) of Real Life would keep a lower profile.

-D

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I go to a sandwich store and buy 10 sandwiches at $5.00. I get my card punched. At 10 punches I get a free sandwich. My loyalty is being rewarded.

Someone else goes to the sandwich shop 1 time, buys 1 sandwich, and wants to pay $2.50 for an additional sandwich.


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The Veteran's Rewards in this game do not work that way. You don't get a free week's playtime with every 3 months of time you purchase: you get access to in game badges/costumes/powers/abilities, mostly unique to the VR program.

By your lights, someone who goes into the sandwich store and orders a reuben would be told they have to buy ham and cheese sandwiches for a week before they can get access to pumpernickel bread. And you'd expect this to encourage the person to become a regular customer.

-D

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Edit: What it breaks down to, in my eyes, is this: if a veteran pays $45 per reward and a new player pays $10 per reward, which customer would you rather have, and how do you get more of the former? Which player helps offset the cost of game development, the loyal fan who pays and plays, or the on-again-off-again fan who wants a discount?

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Seems to me the correct answer is both.

But if I had to choose, I'd probably favor the fly-by-night fan...

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Are you answering the same question I asked? I said which player helps offset the cost of game development? Are you sure that a player who maaaaaybe pays for 1 month out of every 12 is the one funding the game, more so than the one who pays for 12/12?

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I'm pointing out that the veteran is not paying $45 per reward: he's paying zero per reward. You already get his money whether or not he gets any reward. But the $10 you get from the fly-by-nighter is actually for the reward: you only get it if he gets the reward. And that's in addition to the cost for him to keep his account active long enough to purchase the shiny.

-D

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Edit: What it breaks down to, in my eyes, is this: if a veteran pays $45 per reward and a new player pays $10 per reward, which customer would you rather have, and how do you get more of the former? Which player helps offset the cost of game development, the loyal fan who pays and plays, or the on-again-off-again fan who wants a discount?

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Seems to me the correct answer is both.

But if I had to choose, I'd probably favor the fly-by-night fan, since the loyal fans are more likely to play the game non-stop even if they aren't rewarded. The extra money I make from selling VR packs is money I wouldn't otherwise have, whereas the $45 from the vets is money I'm already getting.

This is, presumably, why we're seeing all the $10 content packs being developed now. Cyborgs could have been released as a Veteran's Reward, but they were instead sold to everyone.

-D

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These vet rewards are to reward those that have stuck it out this long and have resisted the urge to drop the game and do something else. And believe, that urge gets stronger and stronger and stronger all the time. It will be the same for you if and when you get there.


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Oh please. If the urge to stop playing the game is that strong, then go ahead and stop playing the game. It's a game; it's purpose is to be fun. I don't think the Veteran's Rewards are well suited to the task of convincing people who don't enjoy playing the game to keep paying for it, because they're all things that only matter if you play the game.

Not to mention that if the VRs did make the game more fun to play, denying them to people who are otherwise not enjoying the game would be foolish: you'd be forcing them to wait years to get something that, if they had it, would encourage them to play for years. That could not possibly end well.

IMHO, the Nemesis Staff/Blackwand reward is already too close to that area: I was amazed at how much better charatcers are with a one of those, even past their low levels. I'd rather not see any more such rewards handed out, especially since the lag time to obtain them increases with every new reward.

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As to whether or not they are overpowered, I don't think so. Kheldians get travel powers at level 1 and it is now possible to buy temp travel powers at level one for ALL your new alts. The purpose of SOME of these vet rewards powers, I believe, is to make the game go a bit faster in the early levels for people who've been around the block several times. Whe you are rolling your nth alt, it's nice to know you can get through the early levels just a bit faster. Is it an advantage? Yes, but not a large one and mostly only in the early levels. It evens out toward the higher levels.

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Kheldians have their own set of issues. Though you do raise a point. I assume the 60 month reward would not specially unlock the Fly or Teleport powers for Kheldians, but it would be nice if a dev could confirm that. Castle? BABs? Anyone?

As for speeding up the game, I agree that's a good reward for Vets to get. But I think that a) 5 years to earn such a perk is a bit excessive, and b) the reward, as currently structured, does a lot more than just let you pick up your travel power early. If you couldn't skip the prerequisite for the travel power, this reward would be a lot less of a problem.

-D

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The only real advantage the older vets have, is many months more of fun playing CoX.[*](I do have to admit that is a pretty sweet advantage. Oh well.)

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I wish we could accept that as enough of an advantage and do away with Vet Rewards entirely.

But if that is going to happen and Vet Rewards are going to continue beyond 60 months, I hope the devs will at least consider altering the way the rewards are ordered. Letting us pick one of our choice would at least solve the "ever lengthing lag time" issue.

-D