Egos_Shadow

This...

This is going to require me to leave the Architect building. Isn't it.

*cries*

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I'm skeptical, but I'm not above giving it a try (if the acronym is really getting around). I've edited my arc on my local and was going to do the ton of cut and paste to get it to live later today, so...what the heck, I'll give it a shot.

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You may want to try CFMA (Clown-Focused Mission Arc) instead.

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Agreed. We can't even write stories about agriculture! We've got entire Croatoa maps based on fighting pumpkin men in farms, but can't use them.

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Wait! That's it! Word subsitution!

/b L1 Defender LF Agri team

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Qr - I'm personally quite happy with SFMA. It has a few advantages over the [TAGStory] IMO - it's shorter, it's already got 6 pages worth of arcs up using it, it's already getting talked about IN-GAME, and...I invented it!

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There's something to be said for being the first one in the door. Until we get a real tagging solution (I'm sure we will eventually) SFMA is the best way to stand out from the morass.

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What would be the tag for "Solo Friendly Mission Arc"? SOMA?

Turg, your 2-letter tags would return too many "false hits" when searching for them.

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Yeah, the whole point of a unique tag is to be able to search on it and return only tagged arcs. There's two ideas here, "codes to help the description be more accurate" and "ways to get people to find your arc in the first place".

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On a slightly more ruefully depressing note, I see that the creator of Greedy has a rather more loose definition of 'story focussed' than some, as he's tagged his arc with SFMA even though it is by his own admission a badge-farm lol.

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*shrug*

Rate it down like you would any arc that contains an inaccurate description, no different from if the arc description promised puppies and suitability for low-level non-melee solo characters and you open the door and AARRGH LEVEL 53 GHOST WIDOW

I'm happy to trade arc plays, rates and such, though I tend to prioritize return plays of people who've left comments over random participant lists.

My own arc is #1288: Villainous Values, which is medium length and full of villains (values not guaranteed).

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I wouldn't say quite so much about gaining levels so quickly, unless you want that to be changed.

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He's probably a buffing corruptor. It's no different from inviting a buff caster to a normal T/SF if they're at the minimum level, and letting them just cast their buffs, hang out in the back and bathe in the XP.

"Task Force" versus "Strike Force" - they're the same thing, really. It's just like heroes call their minions "sidekicks" and villains call them "lackeys".

AE missions aren't really quite the same as Task/Strike Forces; and yes, automagically raising your level only takes place in AE. Real Task/Strike Forces require you to be a certain level to start them, and will level anyone above their level range down, but will never raise anyone's level up... except the old fashioned way.

Real Task/Strike Forces give different rewards as well - "merits" instead of "tickets", which is a whole 'nother discussion...

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4) Is there a way to slow down the flow on NPC dialogue? My NPCs say important things.. but teammates can't read it because it zooms by. I think a window with JUST the NPC talk would be cool... for ALL missions. As it is now, I'm always scrolling back.

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I have this as one of my standard tabs, and I create it on new alts as soon as they're logged in. Put "NPC Dialog" and "Cutscene Captions" in a tab together and just pop the tab open when you want to see what you're missing.

So, you can do it, but it doesn't come standard.

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I've now seen several different MA missions where the behavior of a collect, rescue, etc. changes with each subsequent (identical) item/mob that is done.

For instance, in @Autumnsno's "Nuking the Fridge" arc, you're asked to collect 6 DVDs. (Text bar reads "6 DVDs to collect" or something like that.) Every time you click on one of the glowies, you get a clue. Each of the clues is unique.

The only way I can think of to do this is to begin with a collect objective with a quantity of 1 and a singular text of "6 DVDs to collect", then have a "5 DVDs to collect" objective spawn when that one is done, and so on. However, that could cause some awkward problems with having to backtrack and whatnot.

Similarly, in @Jetpack's "Save the Spiderlings!" arc, you're asked to save 12 captive spiderlings. Each of them has a different set of dialogue ("rescue a captive" set-up).

Am I overlooking some useful button in the MA interface that lets me customize what happens with each incremental achievement of a multi-quantity objective?

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You can have six different collection objects with "DVDs to collect" as the plural text on each of them, and "Collect the last DVD" as the singular text on each of them, and the system will automatically combine them all for you.

You can do this for any combination of things. For example, you can have one 1-item collection, one 5-item collection, and a boss fight, and if they all have the plural text "Things to Do", then your mission bar will have "7 Things to Do" on it and will decrease as the user accomplishes tasks.

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At its current state to me the MA is to easy to be abused , i think they actually should increase the ticket rewards and just remove exp all togehter from theese arc's , as it is right now no new player will learn anything about the citys history background or major heros and villains.

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What they may need to do is actually hand out some brief account bans on people who keep posting up missions that get flagged for exploits, and prevent anyone from posting arcs until they have the 3rd veteran badge.

You may not be able to stop people from exploiting the system, but you can stop them from continuing to exploit the system.

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I didn't even see a complaint button but the form said. "This mission has been banned by a GM for being a farm" etc...

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Sounds like a grep on the word "farm" then.

The sad thing is, that's probably pulling up 99% actual farms (or "lawl lookit, I made a farm mish" nubbie missions anyway), which would put anyone into George Jetson mode even if they were trying hard to genuinely review each instance at first.

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I seriously believe that some of the GMs are just doing a search for the word farm and banning everything that comes up without bothering to look at it.

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Was it just banned, or were there complaints attached? It could be there's an arc-narcing squad going around blanket reporting stuff.

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If the community is using votes to voice such opposition to arcs being identified as HOF, maybe the whole concept is too elitist and ratings should just be ratings with no added HOF labeling?

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I'm not averse to the idea of just removing the whole Hall of Fame idea if it's too much of a pain in the backside, but I think the problem is more that the qualifications for HoF are so fragile that a small number of hooligans can have a weight in the determination far out of proportion to their numbers.

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I also like playing through arcs when the person who wrote them is on, that way I can send a ton of global tells and I know they'll all show up.

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Some people are vexingly popular, too. I hate writing up a bunch of feedback and hitting the "global mailbox is full, sry" message. I still do it, of course, it just vexes me.

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I attempted to re-publish a banned arc and it was just deleted. Completely gone. Which sucks because i didn't have a local copy of it.

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Yikes! Save early, save often I guess...

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Ahh.. that makes more sense I guess. Was not aware of any issues with it, care to expand as to what the problem is?

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The problems should be pretty obvious - just look at any of the Dev Choice related threads on the forums. Should DC be used to encourage good writers to create more arcs (more than one DC/person)? Should DC be used exclusively to elevate interesting but rarely touched missions? Should there be a standard, or each Dev decide their own criteria? Should short missions ever get Dev Choice, given there's an arc reward at the end?

If I had to guess, I'd say they're probably talking over the very same things we were, only, of course, they have the ability to actually come to a decision eventually.

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Once Hall of Fame status has been achieved, the mission should remain a Hall of Fame mission.

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At the very least it should "stick" for 1-7 days so that it couldn't immediately be de-HoF'd. Without the immediate gratification of people being able to just make the flag go away, the enthusiasm with which these arcs are griefed might be diminished.

I would absolutely lose the kill all aspect of the mission. That map plus hidey mobs makes it a nightmare, and not in the fun way that you're hoping. Put some other objectives in so people wander around a bit, and you'll get the "jumping out attack" factor while not frustrating people with hunting that last cloaked guy in a corner somewhere.

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Anyone stumbled on any good TRULY villanious story arcs?

That's my only complaint as seaoned villain side player.
I haven't found any REALLY villanious arcs. Surely it's sujective, but all this time I haven't seen anything that would be that evil ( Westin Phipps was great). Most of the time I just end up fighting other villains or just some totally irrelevant custom hero group without doing anything evil or atleast feeling like a villain.

So, anyone seen any?

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You might want to try #6715: Proactive Destiny. It's not baby-eating supervillainy, but you are rather cruel to people in the name of your own selfish plans.

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I prefer it being non-anonymous. It breeds a more civil behavior.

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Anonymous comments might encourage more detailed criticism. While anonymous comments might also bruise some egos, right now if I think your arc's a stinker I can one star it in total anonymity, which is in many ways worse than if I told you privately what I thought of its flaws.

Yeah, you really only get useful buffing if you have one (1) ally with you. Any more than that and they may be spending their time buffing other allies instead of you!

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I thought the OP said NOT to pimp your own arcs.

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like we read more than thread titles.

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Yeah, you had us at "Any... arcs?"

I don't know about the rest of you but that's all I read.

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That's extremely frustrating, since that's a common thing you see in missions throughout CoX. Not sure why they didn't add it here (and I wouldn't think "unbalancing" is a possible concern, given how powerful custom characters are).

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Well, nobody expected them to have everything in the MA at release. I would hope that we can put in those kind of "face off" encounters in the future though.