Jim_G

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But then, I've also fought villain groups that, without killing me outright and unfairly, kept me on my toes, off balance, scrambling to neutralize threats and respond to emerging situations.

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This is certainly what I'm going for, but it's pretty tricky to achieve.

I had an interesting personal experience yesterday that highlights many of the issues in question. I created a second build on my VEAT widow , so he changed from being a scrapper to a hover blaster.

Wow. I had previously play-tested this mission with what I thought were a wide range of character classes, but this one build had almost the opposite experience in every way. The sections which had been easy before (large numbers of low-level opponents) were now challenging and required a lot of attention to play successfully. The sections which had been difficult (individual bosses) were now trivially easy because of the character’s control powers. Once the boss was chain-held there was zero risk, although it did take awhile to whittle away at him with my mediocre attacks.

In general I'm more concerned about creating critters that are too tough than too easy. People who want a challenge tend to already have the difficulty level cranked up.

I work for a company which is heavily involved in "Web 2.0" issues, and the evolving concensus is that you get much more accurate results by datamining then you do by polling. Polling inevitably leads to small numbers of people having a disproportionate affect on your results. It happens even when the people are answering as honestly as possible. People with strong opinions who go out of their way to express them in a poll are not average. One person put it that as a certain numbers of users are reached " the entire structure of engineering discussions has shifted heavily into the realm of statistics and controlled experimentation."

I will say that I personally find the MA exceptionally convenient and easy to navigate There are several substantial advantages, since you can:

1) Drop missions at any point, and for any reason.
2) Search for missions with allies.
3) Run the same missions multiple times until you develop a winning strategy.
4) Create customer groups that are especially easy or difficult for your current character to defeat.

But since these advantages have been listed before in this thread I'm not sure I'm adding much to the discussion by bringing them up again. We seem to kind of be cycling through the same basic points.

I have to agree with Arcanaville's observations and conclusions. MA missions are so much more convenient than standard missions it would take an obvious and large decrease in rewards to get me to stop playing them.

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]I would be surprised if all the punishments for past offenses haven't already dropped. I'd also be surprised if anyone fessed up to losing an account, or even just levels, because they'd be identifying themselves as one of "the worst of the worst".

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I see your point, but it seems to me if characters were getting locked than the boards would be full of people complaining. There were people swearing up and down they would leave if they heard somebody ELSE's character was locked, they were so upset.

So I agree that any pending punishment has probably been executed, but right now there's no evidence anything happened. Good.

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Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.

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Do we have a single case of this actually happening to anyone? It appears to me players are still assuming this is going to occur, but every day that goes by increases the chance the devs are going to calm down and be more reasonable.

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You can think PvE critters damage scale vs players damage scale is within the same time/risk reward spectrum but you would be pretty lonely in that assesment.

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You might be right. What do others in this thread think?

I do speculate that the large crowds of people standing around in the MA seem to be evidence in favor of my opinion.

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In additon to the fact that for this increase in time/risk the reward is the same which nobody in there right mind thinks is somehow equal/fair.


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It’s true that they added a ranged attack without increasing the reward. However, this was to compensate for the fact it was possible to hover above the critters and blast them with zero risk.

My assessment is that adding a ranged attack made the critters more difficult, but still well within the range of risk/reward offered in the rest of the game. And I’ve already given my list of all the things I like better about MA missions.

I find many posts in this thread to be really surprising.

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Regular mish's are the way to go again. At least you get salvage drops and recipe drops.

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My experience of the MA is that the tickets are resulting in MUCH better loot than the standard missions. That's true even though I never get near the 1,500 cap that some people apparently find so shocking that they had to go to a local emergency room and spend the night in the Intensive Care ward. I also find it pretty easy to find missions which any of my characters can complete, as long as I am willing to change the difficulty level.

I am not sure how to explain the discrepancy. Are people not using the Bronze Reward Roll to get themselves recipies? Are other people less likely to quit a mission if it's too hard? I really don't know.

Off the top of my head, here is a partial list of all the benefits to MA missions over standard missions.

-You get to know the mission goals before you start playing.

-If you don't like the mission for whatever reason it's a snap to quit and move on to the next one.

-People seem to naturally be using the maps which are easier to navigate. I’ve almost forgotten how much I hate those twisty blue tunnels.

-If you want to team there's usually a group of people standing around right in the MA.

-You get enough tickets to buy new enhancements, reward rolls, and salvage pretty easily.

-You can make those purchases right there in the building instead of traveling across the city to find the right vendor.

-There is more variety in powers and costumes since you can use standard or custom critters

-You can play a villain AT and still be a hero, or play a hero AT and be nasty.

Taken together these are pretty substantial, and a reason I won't be leaving the MA building anytime soon. For me the only real draw to go out is specific rewards like the temporary travel powers.

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Why do the devs hate RP??? I pay $15/month, I should be able to play the way I want! If this change is permanent, I may have to cancel my account! We'll see how long CoX lasts THEN!

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People are just going to find a way to do this emote despite anything the devs do. All that's happening is the paying customers are inconvenienced.

Oh well. Based on this tremendous nerfing I predict that the MA is going to be completely empty by tomorrow. The emote system is the core engine of the game, so there's pretty much no point in playing anymore.

Shoot, that's what comes from posting from memory.

An alternative would be for the Search function to include the longer 1000 character Mission Text field, or whatever it's called. But a baked in tagging system would be best.

Great discussion and ideas! I'm at work, but have to chime in.

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I have used tags in blogs for years and I learned to keep things simple. I also learned that tags/keywords lists will grow with every user.

For English searches I would suggest tags like these:

solofriendly
lowlevel
storybased
defeatall
eliteboss


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Those are excellent points, and we need people who already have experience like you for guidance.

I also note that your suggestions are much more understandable than the cryptic 4 letter abbreviations. If a tag system is going to be widely adopted it would really help if it was immediately comprehensible. Consider these two strings:

1: [LBMA][RBMA][TFMA]
2: (lowlevel)(rewardsbased)(teamfocused)

Yes, it takes a few more characters, but which one easier to understand?

I am assuming these tags will go in the 1000 character mission description since they are going to be searched on. Using 20 to 50 additional characters is a fair tradeoff for the tremendous gain in accessibility.

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There are missions that BREAK the rules in the pursuit of rewards. These are the ones being banned.

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Certainly there are a few critters which were allowed in the MA that gave an unfair advantage, such as the Shield Generators. Everyone expected those to be removed, and they were.

Other than mistakes like that I don't think the "rules" are clear at all, although I seem to be in the minority. I have seen other people claim that obvious violations of the rules are 1) hoards of low-level minions, and 2) lots of EBs and AVs.

I watched a strange argument in a PUG in which person A insisted "this mission is obviously a farm and should be reported" and person B said "I wrote this mission, and I did my best to create an interesting villain group with great costumes and powers." Person B eventually convinced A about their good intentions, but person A would most certainly have reported the mission if they had played it on their own.

I expect the devs to design the MA to enforce whatever rules make sense, not to ask me to remember a separate list of rules for what they intended. So far the only explicit rule is not to use the word "farm" anywhere in the mission.

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The perception that Rewards based gaming is breaking the rules is WRONG and it is DAMAGING.

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I completely agree, and well said. As someone who has been playing the game since the beginning, I really want to get my characters up to level 20 as quickly as possible. I don't need to listen to another lecture from somebody who bought the game last week that I "need to slow down and enjoy the game for what it is." I understand their perspective and don't bother to argue, but wish they wouldn't try to convince my that I'm wrong for not wanting to read every line of text for the 50th time.

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. . I want a true dev powered metadata system.

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I completely agree. Coming up with some agreed upon tags is a great idea as a stopgap measure, but I was kind of surprised the devs didn't include a tagging system in the first place. Haven't Flickr and Delicious been around for 5 years or more? Don’t the devs ever go to sites like YouTube?

I also believe the devs when they say they didn’t expect as much content as we’ve been creating. But even if the creation rate was 10% of what it currently is, a tagging system or folksonomy would have really helped. Heck, if they just created a simple RSS feed for new and republished missions we could probably use Yahoo Pipes to do it ourselves. It seems like an awful lot of the fan base works in the IT industry.

>Legitimate "challenge" arcs look very different from farm missions.

They often do, but there's a large gray area in between. I created a mission with fairly low level minions for some of my level 5-10 characters. It was fun, and still a challenge.

Then I tried it with my Peacebringer. Whoops! My minions had no ranged attacks and just ran around helplessly as I rained death from above in Nova form.

If you tried this mission with a hover-blasting character, it probably looked like a farm. But that's wasn't my intention, and I only discovered this by trying a few different ATs.

Well, those specific idea you mention are all rather interesting and plausible when it comes to motivation of the characters. Certainly small time hoods and drug dealers still have their own moral standards.

The other approach is to explore how someone can be pulled into evil acts one small step at the time, slowly compromising what moral standards they do have.

My arc was pulled as well. I jokingly mentioned the word "farm" in the description since it was mainly a test missions with a mediocre plot, and it was banned at about 1 AM on Saturday night. I received a very generic paragraph stating that farm missions are designed to give an unfair statistical advantage, and not allowed. I republished the same mission with the word "farm" removed, and it has remained online.

I suspect that either a bot is going through and banning missions with the word farm, or humans CS reps are searching on the term and banning fairly indiscriminately.

I don't think the issue is writing about "failure." More like if you actually have characters do things that are morally questionable suddenly the "ooh, we are such bad villains" playtime fun fades away. For example, just try writing an arc in which Recluse decides to destabalize Paragon by manipulating a character to go nuts and start shooting children in a classroom. Or say, crash an airplane into a building in a crowded city.

Once you picked something actually evil, being a villain isn't such fun. It frequently complicates writing the story since you have to come up with a semi-plausible motivation for why a human being would do that.

At the same time, I could see an interesting story arc that explored this territory. Although I don't know if I'd actually enjoy playing it much. I've never really liked being a bad guy, and I'm really pleased I can use the MA to take a "villain" and make them a hero.

These are great question, for which I have almost no answers.

I have not noticed many posts about missions actually being pulled because of mature themes. This doesn't mean it isn't happening, but given the way people complain around here, I suspect it isn't happening very much. I encourage you to follow your interests, and see what happens.

You are a lot less likely to get complaints if you mention anything contraversial in the mission description, of course.

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I've had reasonable success with playing arcs with my ill/rad controller with just common IOs and SOs.

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Yes, Ill/Rad is so far my easiest character by for soloing anything MA. Being invisible and able to Deceive is very handy. It also seems that an EB or even an AV from a custom group is less resistant to deceive or fear than the standard ones. I haven't done a serious comparison, but anecdotally it seems pretty consistent. Probably depends on the powersets, of course.

LordXenite,

I think playing the arc with other characters is an excellent idea, and clearly you are trying to get the right balance.

At the same time, I have trouble reconciling these two statements from your post.

This:
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I was playing a TriForm Kheldian, between all my forms, I had self-teleport, flight, self-heals, self-buffs, some crowd control, some DPS and some survivability. So basically, I was a mini-team soloing my own story

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and this:
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I think that if a TriForm Kheldian can reasonably solo an Arc, it can be declared solo-friendly.

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A TriForm Khled is one of the most flexible and powerful ATs in the game. Why would use it as a standard to judge how soloable the arc is? To call something "solo-friendly" I would say at least 80% of the most common ATs should be able to solo it, not an AT that's in the top 10%.

Hmm, you got me interested in Bots/Traps now. Here's a quote from another thread about soloing AVs:

Bots/Traps MM: Traps has another strong -Regen power, has personal mez protection and good defense from FFG, which allows you to tank the AV without having to carry both BFs and Lucks. Ranged minions can do damage without having to risk splash damage from the AoEs as you tank.

I know what you mean, although I don't know how deliberate it is. So many of the defensive sets have mez protection built into them. So far I haven't found anything that resists Deceive, fortunately.

I haven't played a brute or scrapper for awhile, and they generally weren't capable of actually soloing an AV. This was back before IO enhancements, though. So there are multiple builds which are that capable these days? Interesting. Especially given that it's now possible to play a brute and never have to do anything "evil" as a villain with the MA.

What are the opinions concerning what ATs and strategies are best for soloing player-created content? My experience was that my Illusion/Radiation controller was MUCH more successful than my Dual Blades/Willpower tank. The tank was not able to do enough damage, especially with all the AVs and EBs that are so popular. There are also several mezz effects like being blinded that the tank has no resistance to. The controller was able to stealth were appropriate, and use Deceive to soften up groups of opponents where necessary.

The MA has raised the bar substantially on difficulty, and it will be interesting to see if this changes AT popularity.

This is a very beta version of a guide to user-created content. Please comment and add suggestions. I know it’s too much to expect, but I’d prefer it if this thread didn’t turn into “wouldn’t it be cool if the Mission Editor was able to (fill in great but impossible feature here).”

Here is what we know so far about the Mission Editor.

“Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall.”

Plan for creating content
We certainly don’t know much, but it’s not too early to start preparing. You can establish your themes, characters, and missions goals. Mission text can be written and reviewed by others. You can flesh out the origin stories of your Super Groups and characters, with an eye to make them adaptable and engaging whatever features are in the mission editor (ME)

This guide provides a framework for planning and organizing your early writing, along with some suggestions and speculations on the ME. I am going to use the terms “mission” to cover both missions and “story arcs.”

The ME probably won’t do everything you want
First of all, I suggest everyone be prepared for the editor not giving as much creative control as you would like. I have seen posts in which people seem to think that anything the designers can do, we will be able to do. Some people are even speculating on new mission features that aren’t in the standard game, which leads to rumors in later messages.

All that has been mentioned is choosing to “the map, villain group, and objectives” and writing the dialogue and clues. If it turns out there are some additional features that make it into the final version of the ME, great. You can always add additional dialogue or events to take these into account. It doesn’t really matter if they add a few additional features, because at best we are still not going to be able to do everything they can do.

The initial excitement of user-created content will die down quickly, and thousands of missions will be available to choose from. The popularity of your mission will depend mainly on how engaging the ideas, mission text and dialogue are. Your missions will basically be the same structure as the dozens of other missions already in the game. The ONLY substantial difference will be in the writing.

The paragon wiki lists these as the basic mission types:

• Streetsweep (kill x number of a faction)
• Kill All
• Defeat Boss
• Kidnap/Rescue
• Find Object (click on glowie)

That’s it—five basic missions, although the devs probably categorize these differently. Of these “Find Object” is the most flexible, since clicking on a glowie is described in various missions as uploading a computer virus, stealing plans from a wall safe, or planting false evidence in a desk.

Here are some suggestions and warnings of how to proceed.

List of “Do Nots”

Do not blatantly rip off comics, movies, or novels
[/b]Many of us love specific characters from the comics, and wish we could somehow bring Spiderman/Batman/Wolverine/Wonder Woman/Sparkly Pants the Snuggly Boy into the CoX world. For copyright reasons this is impossible. If we aren’t allowed to even name our characters after them we certainly won’t be able to keep missions online which refer to them. Unlike your character, who only gets renamed, the missions will probably be deleted.

Of course, part of the charm and history of comic books is subtly ripping off other materials. Copywrite law is confusing, but essentially you can use the basic ideas as long as the specific details vary. For example, the idea of a school for mutant superheroes is okay, but don’t make the leader “Professor Zavier” and call the team “Z-Men.”

Do not try to kill the player
This probably will not be a problem since CoX already has code to let the player determine how difficult or easy to make their missions, and the ME will only let us pick from standard mission types. However, it is useful to remember you are not in a competition with the player. If they die during your mission they will not be impressed with your l33t skills at snuffing them out.

Do not establish new game canon
“Canon” is the general term for events which are considered to have “really happened” in a fictional universe.

We are not sanctioned to mess with the existing world of CoX. Most of the signature heroes and groups already have developed histories and back-stories. It is tempting to write missions that add to this existing material. You might have interesting ideas about how Manticore learned archery and why he hates Italian food, but this would conflict with official story arcs which state he loves pizza.

I expect this rule will be flung down and danced upon by many of the uploaded missions. Such is life.

Avoid negative racial or ethnic stereotypes
Be cautious when depicting racial and ethnic groups. What you think is funny might get your missions deleted if there are many complaints.

Do not assume everyone loves your writing
On the one hand, the writing is the main thing that will make your missions stand out. On the other hand, long paragraphs of adjectives do not make for exciting reading. Do not bother to write “The villain Mr. MeanGuy is really, really, really, really, really mean and nasty and bad and mean. Really”

Your paragraphs should be skimmable for readers who are trying to get to the point of the mission.


List of “Do’s”

Do read the text of existing missions
The existing missions were written by people who have been addressing the same issues we face. Reading what they have already done will expose you to many different ideas and methods The easiest way I know is to go to paragon wiki (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Index.php) and look at the mission text for the specific Contacts.


Do create memorable characters
Creating memorably characters that pull the reader in is one of the challenging tasks of any fiction. Creation these characters in a few lines of dialogue in an online game is even more difficult, and beyond this simple guide.

One thing to consider is motivation. Your NPCs might hate a particular group for a very personal reason. Often it’s easier for a player to connect emotionally to a specific event than it is to connect to a general catastrophe. For example, “Darkblade killed my father and turned my sister into a villain” is more engaging than “Darkblade killed dozens of innocent people.” Both sound bad, but one is more specific and easier to visualize and relate to.


Do notice what engages you while playing
You will probably find you enjoy certain kinds if missions more. I don’t mean disliking “kill all” missions because they are long and you always miss a few, although that is something to consider. Notice or remember what missions seem interesting and draw you in because of the story and objectives. Use these as a source of inspiration for your own writing.

Do link your missions to existing canon
This is the flip side of “do not establish new game canon.” It is possible to make links and references to the CoX universe without contradicting it. Some tricks are:

-Use characters who are related to existing characters, but sufficiently distant. For example, Sally Smith went to school with Ms. Liberty and was always jealous of her. Now she plots against Ms. Liberty and has a plan to kidnap her which you must foil (Defeat boss mission).
-Use characters who speculate about possibilities. “I have a theory that Kheldians were actually genetically engineered by a superior alien race. I just need you to get a few items for me to test my theory (Click glowie mission).
-Use alternate dimensions and time-streams. Marvel has a zombie limited series in which most of their heroes have been turned into flesh-eating zombies in a nearby alternative dimension. “Freakshow have captured Rikti technology in a nearby dimension and are planning on invading! They must be defeated!” (Kill all)


Do provide missions with different moral “alignments”
This suggestion is more person opinion, but I think one way that user-created content can vary greatly from the official missions is that you can flip the moral alignment for heroes and villains. Personally I frequently disliked role-playing a bad guy while in CoV. It would have been great to have alternate missions that somehow depicted my character as an undercover hero. Conversely, there are “heroes” who might be willing to moonlight and do a little work for the Family on the side if the price is right. Hopefully it will be possible to make clear to players where your missions fall on the hero-villain spectrum so people don’t find they are walking down the wrong path.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to take the existing villain missions and modify the text to provide good-guy versions? Or to provide “revision” missions which are meant to be played right before or after an existing story-arch to reveal you did something far more heroic (or more vile) than the official mission description? “Go to Sam Smith. He will send you on a mission to wipe out a business rival, but this is actually a cover story for the real purpose.”

Do make your mission goals clear
If you write text which makes the mission objectives difficult to understand players will not be “challenged,” but they will be annoyed.

Do use a spell-checker
Spel-checkrs are aesy to find in any sotfware. Use them!

Do expect others will use some of your ideas
If you do a good job you can expect other people will borrow, adapt, and downright steal some your best ideas. There will also be some remarkable similarities between stories developed independently. Just consider it a compliment, then go and write some new missions.



Some Web 2.0 ideas in case the devs wander by
User-generated content and ratings is very “Web 2.0.” (Full disclosure—I work for a company owned by O’Reilly Media so I have a slight vested interest in promoting Web 2.0 concepts and practices). The goal, as I see it, is to provide a platform which will let user upload, edit, rank, and tag missions with a minimal amount of intervention from the CoX team.

Here are a few things to consider:

Tags
Tags could come in two forms, personal and public. A personal tag would let me mark a mission with a keyword such as “favorite,” and then see these favorites across all my characters. A public tag would let us place a user-defined keyword on any mission. The advantage of user-defined is that people will always come up with surprising categories that you did not expect. If this were implemented you would find some people very interested in tags like “Christian” or “Anti-American.” On the one hand these tags themselves will be controversial, but they also will let players search for or avoid content that meets their preferences, which leads to less complaints. These tags should be searchable so I can find content quickly. When a mission is uploaded it should automatically be tagged with the name of the author.

Rankings
I would like to be able to rank a specific mission on a simply 1 to 5 scale, but only after I have played. I would also like to be able to change my ranking if the creator uploads a new version that I find better or worse.

Comments
I would like to be able to place brief comments on a specific mission. Because of the server load it would be sufficient to only allow one comment per player to avoid arguments.

Ranking the Rankers
Some people will agree with me about what constitutes fun content. Others, not so much. I’d like to be able to pick specific individuals (assuming that mission rankings are public) as my favorite rankers and see what other content they enjoy.

Et_tu_Brute, can you clarify the last time you played the game seriously? I think you have many valid points, but CoX has changed a lot in the last few years. My first blaster is still languishing in limbo from debt he accumulated 2 years ago, but none of my current characters have any issues with it whatsoever. This is mainly due to changes in the game system. A lower debt cap and 1/2 debt in missions have made the game much more forgiving. Not to mention Newspaper / Scanner missions which you can complete in a few minutes that remove about as much debt as dying gives you.