GlaziusF

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I did run across an interesting “issue” that my fellow architects should be aware of (if you’re not already): apparently if you set a boss objective to use “random” for the boss, it will potentially pick ANY boss that is in the correct level range for the MISSION, regardless of the level of the character playing the mission. As my mission’s level range was 5-14, I ended up with a level 14 boss facing down my level 5 character. The fact he was scaled down to a lieutenant certainly did not make the fight doable.


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Huh. Maybe that only happens with lieutenant scaling? I've tried picking a random Council boss on a 1-20 map and I've never gotten any Council boss that wasn't a 20... gonna have to test it from the other end now. That would suck if it only worked downward.

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If players only play highly-rated arcs, newly written ones will never get reviewed. If you are an arc author, please take the time to search for "unrated" arcs and find several that interest you every time you play. That way all of us who are trying to make good arcs can get a chance to be seen.

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Sorry, buddy. I only play arcs where the author tells other people that the arc is available to be played. It indicates a certain confidence in the product and a willingness for other people to see it. How many people publish an arc just so they can get rewards while testing it?

Might want to check the other forum with "Mission Architect" on it. Putting a thread there, even if nobody replies right away, is an alright way to get some visibility if you don't want to go shout from the rooftops.

Well, of the arcs in my sig, Dream Paper will work as soon as you can take Tsoo, which may be before 15, and Bricked Electronics will work as soon as you can take goldbrickers, they spawn minimum level 8.

The Bravuran Jobs I wouldn't recommend running until the 20s, but if you want to try your luck against the customs and Carnies, go for it.

EDITED: Oh wait, heroside only? Heroes get floored at 30 by the Carnie mission, but the Carnies spawn at 40. Probably not a good idea then.

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It'd be nice if you could pick non-boss characters from the stock groups to use in "fight a boss" battles, which would serve here as "setpiece" battles -- LT challenging you or training warriors. But currently I don't think that's possible. Any Warrior boss fight has to be an Elite Slasher/Hewer/Crusher.

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No kidding. I wanted to use lts. as boss fights in a planned low-level arc of mine (like the devs often do in the 1-10 content), and ran into a wall when I found I couldn't actually do that.

I've found two somewhat haphazard workarounds, though they're rather limited. The first is of course to make a custom group lt, but you can only get so close to existing groups, and the second is to make an 'enemy escort' - select the add an escort objective, make the captive an lt. and set to hostile. It'll 'fail' the mission when defeated, but if fail is complete, at least it technically accomplishes its purpose.

Like I said, rather limited.

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Really? Because I'm working on a low-level arc with the Outcasts and Vahzilok, and had to use bosses. I just picked "Random" and when I tested on a low character the boss spawned as a lieutenant.

I could be wrong though, and I'll definitely go back and confirm.

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Thats how I did it with my arc. set the "bosses" to boss, and therefore on lower diffs they spawn as lieutenants

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Right. But when you want the boss at the end to actually be a cut above anything you find in a setpiece, even for teams or people above diff 1, there's no way to do that, at least not with stock groups.

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EBs already scale back to Bosses on difficulty 1.

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Keep in mind this is only in "Boss Encounters". It doesn't seem to apply to EBs used in other types of encounters.

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Um, if you're forcing a patrol full of EBs to spawn on top of someone then I think you're beyond caring what the people on diff 1 are doing.

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What about destroyable objects? I tried to do this trick using them, but didn't have any luck. That was during beta, though, so maybe something has changed, or maybe I was doing something wrong. Is it possible to have multiple destroyable objects with the same name? I wanted the NPC dialog around each one to be different.

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Plural text and singular text have nothing to do with the name.

When I've done this with, say, gas canisters, I've called it a tripartite nerve agent and labeled the canisters "compound A", "compound B", and "compound C".

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Please remind me how this is done. Can I edit locally and have it affect the published version? They say not to unpublish, as you will lose the ratings. I did a quick search without finding an answer, so any info is appreciated.

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If you go to my creations->my published arcs, and click on any arc, it'll expand to reveal three buttons: unpublish, play, and edit. You have to edit it from published arcs.

Unfortunately you currently can't overwrite an existing arc with a publish from your local arcs.

It'd be nice if you could pick non-boss characters from the stock groups to use in "fight a boss" battles, which would serve here as "setpiece" battles -- LT challenging you or training warriors. But currently I don't think that's possible. Any Warrior boss fight has to be an Elite Slasher/Hewer/Crusher.

It's also pretty tough to set up a battle that a player can find in progress, as opposed to seeing the aftermath of because all the action happened while he was still around a corner.

I'd also like to be able to set up a defendable object that DOESN'T spawn in an ambush behind you, to use for setting purposes.

If you want to use random maps, so that people who play your arc again don't know where everything is the first time, you have to risk front/middle/back placement putting things out of the order people will find them in.

And finally, there's the size cap to consider. It's hard to make an arc with both a varied selection of custom enemies and a lot of optional details. Briefing text is the most compact way to convey information.

EBs already scale back to Bosses on difficulty 1.

If they're intended to be tough fights, people who run on difficulty 1 so as not to encounter bosses will find them to be tough fights anyway.

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With the Dev created content having become stale for us, and rarely updated with any consistency in Issues, the Dev created storylines just don't keep us here anymore, right now. We've seen them. Ad nauseum.

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With the success of MA, will the devs still have the same (or any) incentive to create new story content? Will future issues instead support MA (the game within a game), with everything else being put on the proverbial back burner?

Aside: if your characters spend all their time playing MArcs, does that mean they've withdrawn from their 'reality' into a world of fantasy and daydream?

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Nah, they still spend their off time volunteering at hospitals/casing banks/mending time/teaching classes.

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I love getting feedback on my MArcs and have always tried to correct bugs quickly when testing didn't reveal them.

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It's just so hard to get some decent feedback. Only yesterday someone finally pointed out all sorts of things that I had missed in the whole three weeks (counting test) that the arc had been up, and that no one else had ever mentioned to me.

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Good feedback is hard to put together. Most notably because you have room to make maybe one-two solid points in the space allotted. That's why I generally play arcs I find on the stories/lore forum, gives me a good play to type up a lot of stuff.

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.

Outdoor maps occasionally run into what I will call here the "overspawn" problem.

Two spawn locations slightly overlap, and anything that shows up at the second location stays hidden until you clear out whatever was at the first location.

In multi-mission arcs I label the clues with the mission they were found in, so someone who wants to catch up on the story in a later mission can at least know what they picked up and when.

Sometimes you'll get a "someone voted on arcname" message in addition to the normal ticket notification. It doesn't actually denote an extra vote. I've had it happen to me in missions most often.

Sorry, as far as I know bosses (and allies?) can only show up from their original factions.

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NvM, found similar question on page 2. Apparently not. ::cries::

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Buck up, soldier.

You may have to change your original vision to make it work in the mission architect, but only rarely is a vision so outlandish that it can't be hammered into place.

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Arc 1438 - A Jaunt Into Dataspace
Rating: ***

The arc isn't too long, and while it features a defeat all against a custom enemy group, the explanation is reasonably acceptable. You need a sample, and a sample can't be gleaned from a few key entities. It'd be nice if we could have a 'defeat the majority' function, but that would lead to thorough people finishing up in the first 51% of the map.

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Sorry to barge in here, but you can do this without a defeat all. You can set any custom enemy to be a boss, not just the boss factions. So just put in an "X examplars to scan" objective and have some lieutenants or even minions "leading" boss groups.

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I guess when you put all those details together up above, you didn't ask the question "why do all these lizard girls have breasts?"

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Honestly, I didn't see them. The black bodysuits + energy armor effects made them look fairly shapeless with occasional color highlight, and I figured you were doing a thing with armor and a minimum slider that I had seen done elsewhere.

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I dont mind the map per-se, but I am seeing it being used a whole lot. Overexposure to the mpa is the issue.

The other one I see a lot of is the ruined AP, which has the double whammy of not having a functioning mini-map. Its my own over exposure to that map which has left me in a quandry, of using it in one of my own arcs. Its 'right' for story reasons, but I dont want folks to come in see the map, see the foes and quit with a 1 star.

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Use one of the ruined outdoor maps or just the meteor one, though the meteor itself is a destructible presence.

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I'm designing a MArc that's intended to be taken as a Task Force. This Task Force features a number of various Arch Villains, all based off characters in an actual story we have worked out through role-play.

One of these AVs is an Energy Melee/Electric Armor brute set to Hard/Extreme, who is meant to be one of the strongest among these AVs. While me and my partner were testing this arc for dialogue and storyline, we happened to run into this AV. She proceeded to destroy each of his Bots in one punch, and then took him down in two. As for me, A DB/WP Brute of level 32, I managed to survive about 4 or 5 hits.

Now, keep in mind that this arc is meant as a Task Force. These Arch-Villains are not MEANT to be soloed, or even duoed, at their AV level. If I knew enough willing souls to come and test it with me, I could see for myself. Yet, such is not the case, and so my question is asked.

Is Energy Melee just too powerful to be used at the Arch-Villain level? Or can such a monster be defeated easily enough by an organized team who know what they're doing?

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Set her to use Energy Assault instead of Energy Melee. Build Up makes Energy Melee, Broad Sword, and Martial Arts way more dangerous in hard mode than any other offensive power set (none of them get it, making me think this was an oversight).

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1) A. Nethema invariably slaughters all her guards with Blazing Aura before I can get at her. Unless and until they fix allies turning on their damage toggles, I think toning her down to Standard armor won't affect her survivability too much.

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Rather a minor issue, the only reason she even has guards is because if I set her to single some wierdness occurs where you get her clue the moment you enter the mission.

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Yeah, that's why I listed it first in the ascending order of gripiness.

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2) The primary custom faction is a race of snake-people. Why do they have hair? There are a whole ton of interesting crests to be had in the costume designer, go to town!

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Because they're not snake people.

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They have lizard tails and digigrade legs and I always read their name as "Naga". (Even though they're, like, "nogan" or something? Kinda hard to pick out in the game font.) You'll forgive me if I jumped from there to snake-people.

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3) I kinda felt like I was a bystander to a storyline that you'd cooked up involving either your characters or people in your SG and VG. I felt that way because everyone who had a role in the story, including the contact, was a custom character. Maybe this is just an unreasonable reaction on my part, and I haven't got a ready way to fix that since there's no reason ordained by the plot to invade somebody else's base. But it still bugged me.

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Yes, it's a cameo heavy arc and I don't deny that at all. Frankly I don't see what difference it would have made if I created random characters from scratch and can't think of what else more I can do to make you feel more important. It's flat out said from the beginning that the contact called you in for this arc, not that you're some random hero who walked by. The Allies don't act condescending towards you either. Also, when are we NOT invading villain bases for flimsy reasons?

Anyhow, the allies are just there to help out soloers and really small teams. The arc is designed more for teams and the contact warns you before every mission with an AV, in bright red text. I'm pretty much done even listening to that sort of complaint on this arc for that reason.

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I did a little more thinking about this, trying to come up with something helpful. And it hit me that my beef was more that it seemed like everyone knew everyone else, and I was on the outside, not knowing anyone.

It might help with that if the contact was, say, a Vanguard Helm Commander, with imperfect knowledge of the various people involved - only a little about the turncoat and not much about Anna and the thief. He could still send Iron Samurai to help you in the final mission.

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Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping a 5-star rating?

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Don't get people to play your arcs.

The average expected rating of a perfect arc is under 4.5 meaning it won't display as 5 stars. This assumes the game's playerbase is 30% crazy and will give mission arcs essentially random ratings.

As more and more people play your arc the chances that someone crazy will downvote it toward the norm increases.

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I think they're talking about Footsteps Initiative. Strangely, it seems like it's been removed. I can't find it using search.

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By default search doesn't show you arcs you've rated already. So you may want to take that out. That's how I "lost" it.

Alright, played "The Portal Bandits".

The custom enemies are varied without being overpowering, though the Archers are a little irritating just because glue arrow lasts so long. It also uses "setpieces" such as battles and patrols to great effect in scene-setting. (though the customs are getting their clocks cleaned by Vanguard and are on even ground with Rikti for some reason)

But there are three things that bug me in ascending order.

1) A. Nethema invariably slaughters all her guards with Blazing Aura before I can get at her. Unless and until they fix allies turning on their damage toggles, I think toning her down to Standard armor won't affect her survivability too much.

2) The primary custom faction is a race of snake-people. Why do they have hair? There are a whole ton of interesting crests to be had in the costume designer, go to town!

3) I kinda felt like I was a bystander to a storyline that you'd cooked up involving either your characters or people in your SG and VG. I felt that way because everyone who had a role in the story, including the contact, was a custom character. Maybe this is just an unreasonable reaction on my part, and I haven't got a ready way to fix that since there's no reason ordained by the plot to invade somebody else's base. But it still bugged me.

Dropped into "Eclipse over Paragon". The grand plan here seems very familiar, but I'm not surprised it took the Mission Architect to pull it off.

You'll see why when you play it. I really can't say anything more than that, other than it's another great adventure.