Judgement_Dave

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(Not a reply to the person above, just a new post)

There's a lot of loud whining in this thread.

It reminds me of children complaining "It's not FAIR!"..........








.........when deep down they know it really is, they just don't like it.

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That comparison is so totally unfair!

I'm gonna hold my breath until I turn blue if you don't take that back.

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The fact is closed beta failed.

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TBH closed beta seemed to be working - but then they opened up to Open Beta and then to live a lot quicker than they should have.

The quality of feedback/bug-spotting on the forums seemed, IMO, to drop when I14 hit open and the masses clamoured to make their arcs ready for launch. This meant that they were then more interested in finding out 'how do I trigger an ambush' rather than testing that the ambushes appeared to spawn correctly for various factions/team sizes/reps etc etc

i.e. people moved to wanting to create the mission that they had in mind rather than test that MA mechanisms were WAI.

Sure - some in closed beta were working on arcs ready for live - but I got the impression that there was a better proportion of people testing for testings sake.

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The devs failed to view all potential outcomes before publish.

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I did laugh at that.

You can criticise the devs for failing to 'view' some pretty obvious outcomes/problems before publishing. But it's stupid to criticise them for failing to view 'all potential outcomes' in a system this size/complex.

Once more a patch that throws up obvious bugs on published arcs.

Default mob info/description too long for info field
e.g. Positron (Boss Signature Pets 40-54) has a 562 character default description, and is now raising an error as the custom description field is 300 characters long.

Custom mobs going walkies again
SOme of my custom factions have lost custom mobs (my 2minion/2 lt/1 boss farmyarder faction from Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! suddenly becomes 1 min/1 lt/0 boss despite the individual mobs appearing valid still). Annoying as the custom group still exists and doesn't raise errors, but the variety of mobs drops to unimpressive at best.

Note that neither of these stopped me playing a published arc - they don't invalidate the arc. I only spotted these errors as I tend to check/play all my arcs after a patch and noticed that my custom faction only had 2 custom mobs appearing in spawns. Then the info-length error was spotted when I opened the arc in edit to check that the mobs were still there.

I'm also not sure if the size has had a slight bloat again - as I had to remove a custom mob that had been happy in the arc...

Especially annoying that these both hit a published arc.

I could understand the latter if something had been changed/invalidated on the custom mobs... but as it hasn't this strikes me as a bug.

Makes me wonder how many people will get poor ratings just because the patch half-broke something without explanation...

Both /bugged in game

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I think its kinda wierd how they can miss such a big issue with MA after all the testing put into it. Either the testers are complete morons or NC just hoped they wouldnt find the bug. Because thats what it is a bug.

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Well, the normal testers were testing the system for bugs and seeing if it'd work as intended - but any farming testers who found an exploit would be unlikely to report it, as they'd want to use it once the MA went live.

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I still maintain that most testers weren't really trying to test as much as they were trying to get a jump on creating their arcs ahead of it going live. If any bugs jumped out then they may or may not have reported/bugged them.

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Suspending people for using powerlevelling services is one thing, but for using something developed for the game?

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The only part that mentions account bans/suspensions is this:

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Players who knowingly use an exploit when creating an arc, run the risk of having access to MA suspended, or worse- depending on the severity of the action, their account banned.

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IIRC The EULA has always covered NC being able to ban accounts if they use exploits. So nothing new there.

QR

I notice in the US thread announcing this someone posted:
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I have always been curious if the game could track how fast or even how a toon leveled up (I know we can click a mob to hear how many hours played). It sounds here that more information is available.


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Which reminded me that a while back (IIRC may have been when xp-curve was smoothed) the devs stated that they do have data on how long (in time) characters stay at every level. Between xp earnt or time it takes to level there ought to be a reasonable way to spot characters doing a lot of levelling outside 'accepted tolerances'.

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So I can 'lose access to' (how exactly is that different to deleting?) characters I may have used the MA to level up faster with?

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Is a lvl1 character the same as the level 50 it becomes? Could just be character demotion.

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I wonder as well if the fact that you have the game servers in Germany and the MA servers in the US and then the player in X country has any effect of the lag.

I mean it cant be good that if you want to do a MA mission the data's doing a transatlantic trip every time you load a mission

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Do we know enough about the architecture and dataflow to say that?

Arcs are copied/cached at some point when a player starts to do them - we don't know where this is done. It could be that as soon as an EU player hits PLAY on a MA mission the whole arc is copied to a machine in the EU.

Trial account limitations

AFAIK The individual mobs spawned at a set rank and level are the same no matter how many are in the team.

e.g. a lvl40 AV will always be the same whether it's for 1 man on challenge level 5 or for a team of 8 on challenge level 1.

I only popped into GW for about an hour or so of their birthday celebrations... but just the minor addition of having fireworks going off in a few locations made it feel like it was celebrating IMO.

Having a few birthday-drops (minor buffs from things like pieces of birthday cake) and a small gift to players with an attached RL-value (a £5.99 inventory slot thingummy) felt a lot more than CoX did.

Funnily enough it's the fireworks and birthday drops (that cost little more than some dev time) rather than the RL-value gift that I thought added the most to the birthday...

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After having played this game since it's release I have cancelled my subscription.

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Excellent news!

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I am now in the process of making my first television pilot and, quite frankly, there isn't enough time to even think about playing any more.

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Damn shame!









Hmmm - I didn't go and get all confuzzled again did I?

All the best for the future Mr M - I hope you'll pop on to let us know details of when/where the pilot airs.

Can I has ur stuff neway?

Being reactivation week I've mentioned CoG in 3 or 4 US threads... So hopefully it may get a few more US players posting missions there.

Where is everybody?

Not some kind of nod to the Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) book The Regulators is it? Seem to remember that's got a link to a child in it - though memory says younger than 12.

If only you'd managed to get to The Seven Ages of Super-man - curse The Bard for not being limited to five!

If you want a real challenge that would be a bit odd and hasn't been done yet AFAIK, you could do something that I've been thinking of doing since Beta but haven't got around to yet...

Do a multi-arc truly branching story and make it available for download as the source files...

The idea being it runs like the old fighting fantasy game books:

Starts with arc1:
Sets scene and ends with you finding 2 or 3 clues... Mission return text and souvenir states:
* If you want to pursue clue1 then move to arc7
* If you want to pursue clue2 then move to arc16
* If you want to raid another base then move to arc10

If a mission/arc is failable then the mission fail text can show a different path/next-destination to the success dialog...

Of course you could also include non-arc text/files if you wanted to make it a full-on interactive/multimedia experience... If you have webspace you could maybe even set up some pages/sites for clues to reference...

* If you want to talk to MAGI about clue2 then read file: cbva568.txt
* clue2 mentioned 'ArtiPrin Corporation' maybe it's worth finding out more about them online? (with further info at a pre-constructed website to drop some clues...)

You could throw in a few hastily thrown-together dummy arcs and dummy files to help stop anyone cheating and peeking ahead...

You probably get the idea... though to do it justice it could become a massive task. But you asked for a challenge.

Nice little guide on the US forums: A guide to making story arcs.

Minor?

Textual bugs (that I've /bugged ingame) on both Statesman's info (in IP) and the defendable object in the memorial on the CoH cape mission.

There are more - but those are the two that come to mind.

I can understand text errors being at the bottom of the list, but, hell, give me 3 hours editing the dev-created text and we'd get rid of a shedload of errors...

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Removing the mob breaks any 'legitimate' arcs that used the mob. As MA practically is I14 any changes that break a reasonable number of legitimate arcs could be argued to break I14.

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True, hence me saying: as long as we get them back....I guess this is where better communication comes in. As for saying that breaking a few arcs effectively breaks I14 that's just blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
You remove a mob: people get irritated and some arcs will need correcting, that's litterally all that will happen. The only way to break I14 would be to remove the Architect altogether....something I sincerely hope they never do.

I'd love it if they were able to fix any exploit elegantly in game without effecting some other part of it, but the whole thing seems so interconnected that unfortunately I suspect the only way is to remove it and deal with it seperately.

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Way I see it:
- You remove a mob and break some arcs;
- authors alter broken mobs to use another mob;
- Farmers move onto next easiest mob;
- Devs nuke the next mob breaking some more arcs;
- authors alter broken mobs to use another mob;
- Farmers move onto next easiest mob;
- Devs nuke the next mob breaking some more arcs;
etc

Every time the devs remove a mob the total number of available mobs is reduced. So the total number of mobs that will be picked up on by farmers is smaller. So, if mobs are used in pretty much equal amounts by legitimate arcs, when the next mob is removed it affects more legitimate arcs.

And why remove the mobs at all? Doing that also reduces the diversity of legitimate arcs - as 1 mob is removed the author of an affected arc either:
- edits the arc to use one of the smaller set of admissable mobs (reducing mob variety);
or
- unpublishes the arc (reducing arc diversity).

I treat not doing anything as effectively unpublishing the arc as it will be invalid and cannot be played (and may not appear in searches).

When the mob is eventually edited and returned to the MA it may not be clear to the authors who had affected arcs (returns don't tend to make the patch notes - if the authors even read them) and a number of arcs that were edited to remove the original mob may not re-add the mob. Many of the original arcs will not be restored to their intended state.

You don't get the same effect by nerfing rewards on a mob rather than removing it entirely. Nerf rewards drastically whilst a more permanent solution is found and the arcs remain valid but the mob becomes unattractive for farmers.

When Prisoners were removed it messed up a few peoples arcs that I know of. The patch notes never mentioned when Prisoners were returned. If it hadn't been a bee in my bonnet I may never have realised that they were back... heck if I had space free in the arc for 2-3 custom prisoners I would have made them - probably resulting in a much harder time for soloists/squishies which would have gone against my general design intentions.

Maybe we'll have to agree to differ on this...

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I'm bored witless even trying to get the second Hall of Fame badge... 25 plays through Footsteps Initiative will kill me, let alone 250.

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Or you just wait for more arcs to make HoF and for them to stay there (sure that the intention was for them to stay once they'd been made HoF).

The thing about badges is that they'll still be there in a week, or 2 weeks, or 20...

So there's no need to grind/race to get the badges in the first 5 minutes.

Enjoy the game and the badges will come.

Many happy returns, Mumsy!

Cheers for the review Leese. Glad you mostly enjoyed it.

In light of your review I have slightly changed a few things in mission 3 and republished.
[*] I've added this line to the end of the description "Last mission contains an EB, though you also get an ally!"
[*] The fire/kin farmers in mission 3 have regained a lt and minion that they used to have. These were taken out when the arc suddenly shot to over 100% when I14 went live - and it wasn't just   shenanigans causing it... But then sometime later it suddenly changed to reporting the size as c.75% so I can now put them back in.
[*] Hens/Roosters have lost flight (see later).
[*] Lost an ambush and lowered difficulty of remaining (see later).


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Should I play it?: If you have an armour set and mez protection, or want a challenge on a squishy, you should.

I played this arc on tenacious, as Jacintha, my lv42 Archery/Elec/Elec blaster. BTW, this is the character I mainly want to level ATM, so unless you give me some indication that the arc won't be squishy friendly, I'll be soloing your arcs on a blaster.


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You'll see later on that I've addressed some points that you raise about the final mission, but I think this is a point that we may differ in expectations/design philosophies.

I try to design for Challenge Level 1 (heroic/villainous) - and I try to make sure my arcs are reasonable to solo at that level by most characters.

By 'reasonable to solo' I mean that of course you may have a struggle depending on AT/sets and team/solo build - but it ought to be possible even if you need to chew a few insps and have 1 (or maybe even 2 deaths)... After all, an arc should always have some small risk of defeat.

Anything that takes many deaths, needs constant boosts from 4 or 5 insps or feels like banging a head against a brick wall is too hard...

To check that, this arc was tested/played by me solo on the following:
- 50 NRG/NRG blaster
- 50 ill/emp troller
- c.27 earth/rad troller
- c.25 dark/dark scrapper
- 50 DM scrapper
- c.35 kin defender

There may have been more (and some of these had multiple runs through the whole arc) but none of these felt too hard, although some did feel the pain. Also, IIRC, none of my test squishies have any real armours/mez protection past using lucks and breakfrees (though a few also have the leadership pool which helps a little for defence).

Which makes me wonder if it's because I've missed a big issue with the sets you used or if a big part of the issue was using challenge level 2 (Tenacious) which will effectively give you 2-man spawns (more LTs iirc) and puts the EB back up to EB, rather than boss as it would be at CL:1.

I suspect that playing at CL:2 solo had a fair bit to do with it - but as the official position has always been that CL:1 is the normal difficulty that's what I try to balance for.


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[*]The chickens have Minion and LT versions, with Martial Arts and Flight, which means hover is useless. (bearing in mind one of the designed purposes of hover was to stay out of melee range) They do a lot of damage, and with 2 in a spawn they can perma-stun you.


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Oh ok then... they don't fly anymore. (Or at least shouldn't - I republished with hens not flying).


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[*]The sheep have TA/A, and WILL immobilise you.


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Hey - you know I'm a sucker for a poor pun - so Ram Beau had to be done... that meant archery skills that can drop helicopters. Though I did jiggle the difficulty as previously they immob'd you and pretty-much-perma-blinded you as well. That really wasn't fun being unable to see any mobs!

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[*]The cows are empaths, who will CM everyone around them, rendering my mezzes useless.


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Which is why on some characters I tried to mezz/defeat them before the other mobs! Though mob priority changes according to AT/sets/characters...

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[*]There are also a few spawns of Fire/Kin farmers, which spawn only as Lts. Since they're controllers, they were definitely best left alone by me, as a group of 4 fire trollers WILL perma-hold.


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Non-required battles - so they can be happily ignored/treated as 'flavour'. And once again, there were only so many as you were on CL:2 solo.

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[*]Positron spawns as a Boss-level Hero I think - he was pwned by a group of farmyard animals he aggroed.


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The whole reason I placed the ally in the final mission was to provide soloer support for Old McDonald. Depending upon build you may not need his help - but I considered that damage-light characters could do with a little help.

In all runs that I did I managed to keep Posi alive whether by healing him or just keeping a close eye on him and quickly attacking anything that he aggroed. Losing Posi would have made Old McDonald harder, especially on CL:2.

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[*]Old Macdonald is a Rad/Rad EB, and a toughie. While manageable by himself, he once again proves what I'm calling "Leese's Maxim."

"It's not the EB that kills you, it's the ambushes."

Yeah, he calls three ambushes, a tactic that I generally find to be overkill most of the time. But, in the end, he was beatable.


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Possibly one of the biggest flaws IMO - why hadn't I relised before and why has no-one else pointed this out...

Worse still - I had 3 ambushes set as medium/medium/hard. No wonder I and at least one other player have suceeded before with a simultaneous faceplant with the Old McDonald...

I have downgraded this slightly to 2 ambushes: at 75% and 25% health, and both at easy. Should be more manageable.

I'll also rerun the arc/mission 3 with some other squishies to re-evaluate in light of your comments.

[ QUOTE ][*]Overall, this mission represented a significant and aggravating difficulty spike for me. My philosophy is thus - I don't mind if arcs are hard or easy, but they should be consistently so.

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Rather than a flat difficulty, some variation is probably better - usually with the difficulty ramping up towards the end bigbads.

Of course you want it to feel like it ramped up rather than suddenly leapt up. I appreciate that, at least for your test, it felt more like the latter!

[ QUOTE ][*]Level range is inconsistent - mission 1 is 13-19, mission 2 is 29-35, mission 3 is 40-54. This doesn't bother me too much, but it may concern you.


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Inconsistent, although intentionally so for reasons you may have guessed:

Mission 1: Benchmark to show how poor the so-called heroes are that, even though they're lvl50s, they can't even beat a simple troll boss!

Mission 2: Well if I'm going to include a Hess-alike I had to include it at about the same level range as Hess (though I made sure I didn't try to find too similar a map - I'd hate to spoil anyone's 1st time Hess through spoilers...)

Mission 3: It's the farm... Farms tend (AFAIK) to be run at the high end of the level range.

[ QUOTE ][*]Spelling and grammar were generally excellent. The only way I could mark you down for this would be on your tendency to only use two dots in an ellipsis, and that's so minor I barely see the point.

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Actually if I was making that error then you do see the point, and the second point - but the third is sadly absent.........

To make up, I gave you some extra ones there - and here.....


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Overall I really enjoyed this arc until the third mission, which quickly became an exercise in frustration - not as bad as some others I've played, but bad enough that when the EB died I immediately hit Exit, glad it was over. But putting aside the annoyed feelings the last mission gave me, I think this is a definite 4 stars.

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Hopefully my changes, though minor, may avoid this from now on!

Thanks again for the review/feedback.

Does that mean that they are still available on Test? Or do we need to subscribe to AP Missions-on-Demand service and get the arc files from your own paypal-friendly server?

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these solutions should not be heavy handed like removing the offending mob

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Removing the mob is fine if the fix will break the game in some way, as long as we get it back when it's done.

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Removing the mob breaks any 'legitimate' arcs that used the mob. As MA practically is I14 any changes that break a reasonable number of legitimate arcs could be argued to break I14.

But there are partial measures to address the 'offending mob' that would have minimal impact on legitimate MA Arcs and dev-created arcs.

e.g. Temporarily drop the xp on those mobs - decimate it. They then become far less useful for farming but are still usable.

Of course, this is just a temporary measure still, whilst a better permanent fix is found to dissuade abuse of the system. It can't really be permanent as, as I've said before, nerf one mob that farmers use and they just move onto the next best mob for farming and the only people really adversely affected are those who used/faced the mobs without exploiting them.