Eva Destruction

I just wish people wouldn't put "defeat all in final room" in their nav bars. It's really immersion-breaking. "Defeat X and his guards" gets the point across just fine.

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Ok I have a new theory, can anyone confirm or dispute?

It seems to me that Custom critters are being given priority over standard critters when populating the mission.

The reason I'm thinking this is that my standard guys weren't showing up in the hallway sections of the map (enclosed space, you're more likely to get a small group of higher-level guys) but appeared in the more enclosed spaces where you'd get a larger group of lower-level guys. So if you have three custom minions and they have priority, the standard guys will never spawn for a solo tester on diff 1, 3, or 5, and almost never on 2 or 4.

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I have a custom group that's a mix of Clockwork and customs.

If I run the mission with them at level 20 I'll run across spawns that are entirely customs. I think this happens because the game is trying to spawn level 21 enemies and scale them down to 20. And only the customs are valid level 21s.

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You know, that could be the cause of my problem as well. I'm testing this with my main, for the badges, and both the arc and the standard mobs in my custom group cap out at 32. I'll try it with a toon in the actual level range and see what happens.

Yeah it seems to try to assign one of each to each spawn, where multiple critters exist. However if you have three custom critters, and one standard critter, it seems to place the custom ones first, and the standard one only appears if you need four. At least, that's what it looks like.

Nope. If your custom group contains only Freakshow, the mission will be limited to level 20 and up. If it contains enemies that exist at lower ranges, a lower level player will only get the lower level mobs.

Ok I have a new theory, can anyone confirm or dispute?

It seems to me that Custom critters are being given priority over standard critters when populating the mission.

The reason I'm thinking this is that my standard guys weren't showing up in the hallway sections of the map (enclosed space, you're more likely to get a small group of higher-level guys) but appeared in the more enclosed spaces where you'd get a larger group of lower-level guys. So if you have three custom minions and they have priority, the standard guys will never spawn for a solo tester on diff 1, 3, or 5, and almost never on 2 or 4.

I think someone said it was the exclamation point. Try using "$name !"

I think it's because we've all had to go through way too many defeat alls on huge maps, complete with patrols and little nooks and crannies for enemies to hide in, in dev-created content.

They've become the Oranbega of mission objectives. Even if you use the smallest, most linear Oranbega map available, people will groan when they see it, even if your story is about CoT and that's the only map that makes sense. For that matter, I have yet run a single arc that uses the blue or yellow caves.

There is nothing wrong with going for rewards in a legitimate way. We can tell the difference between a legitimate RBMA and a farm. So can the devs.

The problem comes from the "don't tell me how to play" crowd that thinks their farm IS a legitimate Rewards-Based Mission Arc. So your "Defeat a bunch of Rikti on a big map" will get lumped in with their "Defeat a bunch of Comm Officers on a big map."

Go read the thread about the missions that got banned for having "Farm" in the description and turned out to be about a bunch of farm animals. I'm not saying don't use the tag, just don't be surprised if your perfectly legitimate arc gets pulled.

Well since we're throwing suggestions out, and we've got LBMA and MLMA why not

HLMA - High Level Mission Arc

For 40+ arcs. These would denote a challenge level appropriate to a high-level character or team and narrow the search for people who don't feel like exemping.

The more suggestions people throw out the more I'm agreeing the devs need to implement some kind of inherent tagging system. How is anyone ever going to remember all of these?

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I really like the idea of my VMMA, although the tag itself and name could use work.

We need a tag, essentially, that tags arcs which are villain based, but instead of the standard COV style where you work for the contact, you're trying to achieve a goal for yourself and the contact either doesn't exist or works for you. My DIY Laser Moonbase arc being an example of this. Self-directed villainy is something I'd love to promote more of, so having a tag for it would rock.

Any ideas on how to refine it?

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Honestly, I think you're getting too specific with this one, and this kind of tag is way too open to interpretation. To a mercenary style villain, half the arcs in CoV could be classified as "working for yourself."

May I humbly suggest:

[MLMA] Mid-Level Mission Arc

For arcs in the 20-35 range or thereabouts, balanced for characters of that level. At least until the devs give us an option to search by level.

For the same reason they put "This is not a farm" in their description. They're hoping to slip it past the radar. By the time they finally get it into their heads that IT DOESN'T WORK, the tag will be meaningless.

Nope. I'm editing from the mission. I don't think I've ever opened the Custom Critter or Custom Group tabs.

Edit: I seem to have gotten them back, for now. On the downside, one of my custom critter's butt is clipping through his jacket...argh!

You get "Seek clues, Seek clues"

Ideally it wouldn't show up in the nav bar at all until you do something else (for example, the evil plan is there for you to find, but you don't know to look for it until the boss you defeated hints at it). Guess I'll have to figure out a way to make it make sense within the confines of the system.

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I had a lot of problem trying to delete standards out of my groups. I kept pressing remove but everytime I came back they were in. I couldn't get them off my big custom critters list either till I went into the folder on my computer and manually deleted them.

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Wanna trade?

Unfortunately a tag such as "XP-based mission" would very quickly be appropriated by farmers. While your giant map populated entirely by Rikti might not be an exploit, it would end up sharing the same tag as a giant map populated entirely by Comm Officers, and would get removed anyway.

That is what I did to limit the level range of the mission. There are patrols made up entirely of the standard critters I'm trying to use. The problem I'm having is that the standard critters are flat out disappearing from my custom group. They don't appear mixed in with the custom critters when I test the mission, and when I go to edit my custom group they aren't there anymore either.

Is there any way to do this without having the number of objectives appear?

Example: My objectives are a computer and a crate. I know that if I make the Nav bar text exactly the same I can make it say "2 clues to find." Is there any way to make it simply say "seek clues?"

I've also noticed that the editor allows you to place more objectives in a specific area than the map will allow, as long as you don't exceed the total maximum for the map. If you do this it moves the extra objectives to a seemingly random location.

I've made a custom faction that contains standard enemies, and for some reason the standard enemies keep disappearing from the custom faction. All I get is my custom critters. I have to keep putting the standard ones back. Anybody know what's up with that?

(And no, I'm not using "random minion," "random lieutenant," "random boss." I'm choosing specific standard enemies. The randoms have even more of a disappearing problem. The level range of my mission is limited to that of the standard enemies I'm trying to use.)

Also, I think joke missions would also qualify as non-story focused.

This does not include humorous narrative arcs, as long as they have an actual story, as absurd or funny as it may be, and aren't just a series of running gags.

There may be a bug with making everything 54. My husband did one such mission, he was on a 50 with a lower-level friend, and it seemed like the friend's SOs weren't working. When he tired a different mission and sidekicked her normally, they worked again.

I second Greyhawke's suggestion for a "Lowbie" tag. Also a "Mid-level" tag and a "High-level" tag.

And without allowing for the possibility of exploitation, the MA wouldn't exist. At least not with the options it currently has.

Blaming people who exploit the tools they are given is like blaming a kid for throwing a baseball through your window.

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So what it sounds like is that there are some valiant crusaders going around reporting everything that says "farm," causing it to be banned based on the number of complaints rather than the content of said complaints. So it's not the farmers, but the anti-farmers that are more than likely causing the problems for these legitimate arcs.

I'm sure the GM crew is swamped right now, so it's probably taking them a while to clear the ones that shouldn't have been banned in the first place.

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No, it is the farmers' fault. If there weren't so many actual farms around, the GM crew wouldn't be so swamped, and would be able to actually look at individual arcs to determine whether or not they are farms, instead of just blanket banning anything with "Farm" in the description. Especially since any farmer with half a brain will NOT advertise their mission as a farm.

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Besides, what you call a "farming mission" I might describe as a "fun challenge." I like being swarmed by tons of bad guys and seeing if I can survive them.

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You don't need a whole Dreck map full of swarms of bad guys to see if you can survive it. Sorry. Legitimate "challenge" arcs look very different from farm missions.