Hellguard

Arc Name: Looking Back: A Fifth Anniversary Celebration
Arc ID: 110993
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Hellguard
Difficulty Level: Easy to Medium
Synopsis: Travel back in time to each of the first five years of City of Heroes to rescue VIPs from each time period and foil a plot to weaken Paragon City itself!
Estimated Time to Play: 45 minutes to an hour (5 missions, no defeat alls, 2 EB/AV fights with allies provided)

This arc is not supposed to be SERIOUS BUSINESS; it's intended to be light-hearted, but it does have a story behind it. I've sprinkled in some in-jokes and other memorable moments from the last five years (some of which won't make sense to newer players or those who don't frequent the forums), but there is plenty of room for more. If you have any favorite moments from the last five years that you'd like to see included in the arc, let me know and I'll do my best to work them in.

This arc will be moved to the Test Server at some time after the actual anniversary date (unless the response to it is overwhelming) so play it on Live while you can.

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I think there is a dedicated channel for self promoting your MA, but I haven't seen it yet.

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Yes, there is. It's called MA Arc Finder, a public channel for discussion of all things MA, as well as promoting your arcs. It's cross-server, so it wouldn't be the best channel for forming MA teams, but for promoting your arcs it's great. We've got a nice number of people in the channel, and it's a very friendly atmosphere.

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This has always been like this. Cap is 9999. Anything over only counts for the "over the cap" badges.

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Re-read the OP. He mentioned that he was nowhere near 9,999 tickets.

Arc Name: Victors Online
Arc ID: 97980

Faction: Heroic

Difficulty Level: Medium to High (three EB/AV fights, but there are allies provided to help should you need them)

Synopsis: A corrupt video game company is stealing powers from real heroes to make their upcoming game more realistic!

Estimated Time to Play: 45 minutes - 1 hour (4 missions total)

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It seems it's been happening ever since I published when we launched. Would re-publishing clear it up? I haven't tried for a few days.

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No idea. Re-publishing doesn't seem to have any effect on the bug that Wrong_Number and I have reported. Like I said, it might be something entirely different from what you've got going on.

Have you looked in your actual storyarc, critter, and group files on your hard drive to make sure everything looks alright in them?

When did you first see this happening?

This isn't quite the same thing as I and others have seen since Friday's patch (see my thread here and Wrong_Number's thread here ), but it might be related.

There *was* a patch on Test during Open Beta that broke custom factions in the way you're describing, but I haven't seen the "All Custom Critters" bug since it was fixed on Test.

I've got a couple of screenshots that illustrate this bug in my thread on this subject here . I'm glad you've gotten confirmation from some others (at least two others besides me, since you said three ) since no one I've talked to (besides you) seems to be seeing this.

Maybe it's because most arcs tend to just have one custom group? This only seems to happen when a mission has two or more custom factions.

I /bugged it in game, and I also PM'd Pohsyb about it; I'll let ya know if he gets back to me.

Here's a couple of screenshots from my arc to illustrate this bug.

In this one , the mob called Asmodai is in the incorrect faction. He should be in a faction named The Fallen, but instead is showing as a member of The Host.

There is another Asmodai pretty close to him (pictured here ), which is showing up in the correct faction (The Fallen).

Two of the same mob in the same mission showing up in two different factions. And mobs which *should* be in The Host (friendly allies) are (at least right now) showing up in The Fallen faction.

They all con correctly, no matter what faction it says under their name. I've looked at the actual critter, storyarc, and group files on my computer and everything appears correctly in them. No evidence of mismatched groups at all.

I would just ask everyone to check out any of their own arcs that feature more than one custom faction and see if they're seeing the same thing. Like I said earlier, a friend and I were seeing the same bug in her published arc (although we were doing the arc separately, and we each saw the bug affect different mobs in her arc), so it can't be just me this is affecting.

There was a somewhat similar bug during Open Beta for a bit, in which some custom mobs would end up in the "All Custom Critters" faction; not sure if this is related to that somehow. I didn't notice this happening on Live until after Friday's patch, so I wonder if that had something to do with it.

EDIT: Removing all of The Host allies (or battles, or captives, etc) from the mission does result in all of The Fallen mobs remaining in their own faction. It's only when I mix in two or more custom groups that I'm seeing the factions messed up. I've got an arc I'm working on for my wife's birthday in which I'm using our friend's characters as allies, and there are several different factions (due to them belonging to various SGs), and in that one the factions are switching around so much it's not funny.

Well, now I'm convinced it's not just me. Playing through a friend's new arc, I saw the same thing happening with two custom factions in their mission. There were battles between two opposing factions, and both of them showed up as members of the same faction.

My friend was doing the arc separately from me at around the same time, and noticed the bug with the hostage in the first mission (the hostage took on the faction of his captors). For me, the hostage had the correct faction. There doesn't seem to be any consistency to it.

I wonder if something in yesterday's patch could have caused this bug, and that's why no one seems to have seen it? I'll be playing through other arcs this evening and try to pay attention to various factions...

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I'll check it out. I get off work in 1 hour.

Does that mean I'm posting from work?

Shhhh! Shh! They might hear.

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Thanks.

Finally heard from one other person in-game who's seen this happen, but so far most people just act like I'm crazy.

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Is there something I can go look at, something published?

What does it do when you substitute out the custom baddies and replace them with, say, Arachnos? Does the friendly's faction still show up wrong?

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No, I think I tried that last night and I believe the custom faction was fine then. It seems to be only when I use two custom factions in the same mission.

I'll go ahead and publish what I have real quick. If you have time to take a quick look and let me know what you see, I'd appreciate it.

Arc 88682. It's very unfinished, naturally, but I appreciate any help you might be able to give. The friendly group should be called The Host, and the enemy faction should be The Fallen. Right now, I'm in the first mission (of the published version) and in some battles, both groups show up as The Host and in others they both show up as The Fallen. They con correctly no matter what it says their faction is, though.

So... no one else is seeing this happening?

I tried out some stuff this morning before I went to work, and at one point the bug in my OP was reversed. Instead of the captive taking on the faction of the captors, the captors were showing up as part of the captive's faction. I've combed over the .critter and .storyarc files and don't see anything wrong in them.

I guess I'll finish the arc and hope eventually the factions "stick."

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I have had this happen with me as well - I had some random NPC's set up to be hostages with a custom critter group; going through the mission showed that not only were the hostages in the enemy critter group, but they ware also members of that group :/. I am thinking I might have to create a custom group called Hostages or something and just put NPC's in there.

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Yeah, but in my case the NPCs showing up in the wrong faction already have their own faction. It even shows up correctly when I read the actual .storyarc file on my computer, but not when I'm testing the arc or playing a published version.

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parody is protected

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In the courts, sure. But not in this game. Parodies aren't allowed in the MA, according to the Issue 14 patch notes.

Got an annoying thing happening with the new arc I'm doing. I've seen it before (once or twice while my Saving Synapse arc was on Test), but it's not going away like it did before.

In one mission, I've got a battles between a friendly faction and the main enemy faction of the mission. In another, the main enemy faction has members of the friendly faction held hostage.

In both missions, the friendly faction cons friendly to me as expected, but the faction under their name is that of the main enemy group. I've edited the characters, the groups, re-loaded and re-tested the arc, and nothing seems to fix it.

Has anyone seen this happen, and if so, is there a reliable way to fix it?

EDIT: Looking over the .storyarc file on my computer, the friendly group is showing up as the correct faction there. Gonna try publishing it to see if that clears it up somehow.

EDIT: Publishing it didn't work either. Guess I'll try taking out the friendly faction and adding them back in...

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And it's bugged. It's giving the hide bonus even when they're not in hide.

[/ QUOTE ]No, the Mission Maker Secondary.Ninjutsu.Hide never puts them in the Hidden state in the first place. It just gives them a flat damage buff.

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Well, they're definitely hidden. You can't see them without some form of +perception. It's just that the damage buff doesn't go away once they're unhidden.

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Im thinking the end of it in Australia, which is normally early April IIRC.

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I see what you're saying now, but the point remains that they really *have* shifted the actual maintenance window to an hour earlier than it used to be. Doesn't matter what country we're talking about.

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Daylight savings time.

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Well, they've never changed the regular maintenance times before for Daylight Savings Time, so I'm not sure why they'd do it now. Also, they haven't updated anything in the Support Center concerning maintenance. The only relevant link there is the news post made in January, stating the 10am Central/9am EST start time.

No big deal to me either way, just saying they really haven't announced a change, or a reason for the change.

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exactly how long is this damned maintenance gonna take?
im from the Gold Coast, Australia.... and havent play CoH since issue 2... reactivating only 3 days ago, im get a server down almost every night at PRIME TIME!!!! reminding me why i quited this game 4 years ago...also...which server is somewhat oceanic? if theres such a thing

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There's no oceanic server. They USUALLY only do maintenance 1-2 times a week. It's been more frequent lately due to patches, the MA coming out, the Magic Booster coming out, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if we got a small patch today.

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Yep, patching now.

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What I would like to see is when you are in the workstation, you get access to ALL the bins that you have permission to as if it were in your own salvage. That way you can quickly see what recipes need what when considering your base storage, and you are more precise on what you need, and what the base might need added.

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Well, this is how it was stated to work, in a preview of the new base additions that included storage, but this feature never even made it to the Test Server AFAIK. Not sure why exactly, whether there was a problem getting it implemented, or they took it out because it might be confusing if you didn't have permission to remove stuff from the bins (and, like you said, *that* problem would be made worse with the separate permissions we have now).

But man, it sure would be handy.

Forum made for advertising your arcs.

Did you unpublish this arc? I was going to take a look at it with a couple different characters (see if we could narrow down any causes or triggers), but nothing comes up when I search by your arc ID number.

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what about custom mobs? I want to balance my mobs to level so i want to make lowbies, mid range and high range.

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Custom mobs always range from level 1 all the way up to level 54. The *only* way to restrict their level range is to place mobs or other NPCs in the mission that are restricted to certain level ranges.

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The main problem I see with MA is that Patrol XP apparently doesn't work with MA missions. Even with the added convenience of never leaving the MA, I'd still rather be getting double XP from radio missions or even normal story arcs.

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Patrol XP isn't double. It's 1.5x.

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Interesting.

I've noticed that when I made custom bosses and set them up as the "boss to beat" at the end that they get mixed into regular mobs with minions and LTs on higher levels as bosses. Why doesn't the engine just spawn more minions and LTs? Do I have to create another boss for it to drop on the map to avoid using my "real" boss?

Anyone know why this happens?

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You have to make your special boss a part of a separate custom group than the main group in the mission, or he'll show up mixed in with the regular mobs. It's like if you're running a "normal" Freakshow mission and you have to defeat a named Freak Tank boss at the end. You may be fighting generic Freak Tank bosses all through the missions, and there's no difference between any of them and the end boss but name, because they're all part of the "Freakshow" faction.

As far as bosses downgrading to lt's even on teams... that's definitely happening. It looks like MA arcs only take into consideration the difficulty setting of the leader and ignores team sizes when deciding whether to spawn the boss as a boss or a lt. This is unlike "normal" missions, where you'll get bosses with a big enough team size despite what difficulty setting you're running the mission on.