Judgement_Dave

MA arcs auto SK/exemp to minimum/maximum levels.

So if an arc is set to use level 54 mobs then even a level 1 is auto-SK'd to 50 without needing a mentor. (Think it'd be 50 anyway...)

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Dinging 50 has no value at all anymore.

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Don't farm and that 50 ding means as much as it used to.



Ok - the lessening of debt, patrol xp, a smoothed xp curve etc may mean it doesn't mean quite as much as it used to.. but it's certainly not devalued as you say if you play the game rather than take the PL-express to 50.

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An excellent point using a good example! Though for clarity I must point out that Khaine is referring to the arc of Ee-Ai-EE-Ai-Oh! (arc id:3662) and not one of my other arcs.

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Just so that I'm sure I got it right. Khaine used your arc Ee-Ai-EE-Ai-Oh!, which has an arc id of 3662 (three thousand six hundred and sixty-two), as an example and not any of your other arcs, such as The foul-mouthed Handyman! with arc id 1076 (one thousand and seventy-six), To Save A Single World with arc id 83744 (eighty-three thousand, seven hundred and fourty-four) or the one with arc id 83747 (eighty-three thousand, seven hundred and fourty-seven) which is named Marketing Opportunity?

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That looks right. Although you can test for yourself when the servers are live again by following these simple steps:

1. Go to your local Architect Entertainment building and access the mission computers.

2. Search for arc 3662 or Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! or even Judgement Dave.

3. From the search results, select Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! (arc id 3662) and press the PLAY button.

4. Play the arc and, assuming it is the correct one, enjoy a 4th wall breaking look at how the residents of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles deal with the PLing/RMTing/Farming problem (at this stage you can laugh, groan or just grin inanely - as the author does whilst playing this).

5. Now's the hard part - you have to rate it honestly and send comments/abuse/promises of undying love to the author whilst still either laughing, repeating a 'meh' sound or slowly rocking backwards and forwards, holding your kness and grinning inanely (again, the author prefers to do the last of these).

6. Just to be sure that Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! (arc id 3662) was the correct arc referenced by Khaine, you can then try searching for and playing:

* The foul-mouthed Handyman! (arc id 1076) which is a 1-mission arc containing double entendre and workmen stereotypes. This mission, whilst raising a smile, doesn't contain Statesman at all - so probably isn't the arc refered to by Khaine.

* To Save A Single World (arc id 83744, author name: Electric Barbarella) is a 5-mission serious arc which, whilst being heroic, doesn't have Statesman in it anywhere IIRC. Of course, my memory may be wrong, so it could be a good idea to play this arc just to check that it wasn't the one that Khaine referenced.

* Marketing Opportunity (arc id 83747, author name: Electric Barbarella) is a 4-mission serious arc of a villainous persuasion that certainly doesn't contain Statesman. But given that it is linked to the arc To Save A Single World (arc id 83744) and you've come this far you may as well play it. In for a penny and all that!


These steps ought to convince you that Khaine was talking about Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! (arc id 3662). But, as I say, don't take my word for it when it's so easy to go and check for yourselves!

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To me mission arcs should involve the player as the main character. The story should include a start, middle and end like any story should. An excellent example of this is JD's arc. You are involved in stopping the bad guys not statesman, he even appears in a certain guise to give you the mission.

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An excellent point using a good example! Though for clarity I must point out that Khaine is referring to the arc of Ee-Ai-EE-Ai-Oh! (arc id:3662) and not one of my other arcs.

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Just because an arc was made in beta doesn't mean it's likely to be better than newer ones - just look at the Dev Choice arcs.

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It's a bad idea to look at Dev's Choices.

I think that the devs wanted some dev's choices, partly to test that the dev's choice system worked and partly to get a few dev's choices in the system when it went live... The devs didn't know how well the MA would take off/be received and getting some DCs there was probably seen as an important part of showing what could be done and what you could aim for (regards recognition)...

Also, the DCs were chosen pretty early. I think the devs were impressed at the inventiveness of people trying out the MA. But the early inventiveness wasn't always quite as inventive as it could be as the authors were still learning the MA system. So the arcs chosen aren't really pushing any limits...

But the chosen arcs are better than 'pick map, fill with faction X, add kill all and glowy' which is maybe what the devs were expecting many people to come up with...

Also consider that a dev's choice arc is locked and no editing can be done by the author - so these arcs have been locked in the state that they were in even if the author sees flaws or improvements that they would like to make.



BTW On a similar note - in beta the HoF requirements were dropped to a low point to try getting some HoF arcs for testing. So it doesn't really mean anything if an arc boasts that it was a HoF in beta... sure it was - but we were testing.

Actually I think they started arc ids from 1001.

As an aside, I'm guessing that this wasn't to 'reserve' numbers 1-999 for any special use, but was to help when searching for arcs by id. As the search looks for substring searching for arc id '1' would bring back any arc containg '1', insisting that arcids are 4 characters or longer minimises the substring problem.

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For some reason I was under the impression that when you republished your arc after editing it, the number reset. Obviously, if that's not true, there's a case for the low numbers having had more playtesting.

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No. People still get confused by this...

See here.

Republishing preserves the arc id and any ratings.
Unpublishing and then publishing again gets a new arc id and restarts with no ratings.

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I'm still not 100% sure I agree with the idea that arcs created in the beta are more likely to be better than arcs created in the game itself, though - that seems a little tough on people who weren't in the beta.

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Arcs originally published in beta could be better as they've had more time for feedback and edits but this only counts if:
* The author gives a damn;
* The arc has been played and feedback given;
* The arc was published with errors/improvements yet to make.

i.e. arcs from beta will only really be better if continual improvement can be made along the lifetime of the arc - which isn't the case.

Some authors would have published any old tat quickly just to bag a low arc id, and haven't been bothered to return and improve the arc.

Some arcs haven't really been played much - or if they have, then feedback may not have been given (or received, thinking of the EU/US comment bug here..) Without feedback what improvements is the author to make?

Arcs may have been published pretty much as good as they ever could be... Even feedback may not be acted upon, as you can't please everybody all the time, so a comment that you think is important may be dismissed as irrelevant to mass-appeal by the author. The arc may have been tested to Hull and back before publishing.

Some of the beta arcs had well over a month of development/testing before I14 went live - and getting testing/feedback was, IMO, easier then (a more focused group in closed-beta and email comments made US/EU commenting work). So some arcs made during beta should have been polished by the time they went live...

But it is true that arcs going live today that weren't even started until I14 was live could have had nearly a month of testing/feedback/improvements...

Low arc id/Beta arcs counts for zilch now.

BTW - Is Shakespeare's work considered great because it was written well when first published or because it's had hundreds of years of tinkering to improve it? Does Umberto Eco write terrible works that no-one appreciates because his works haven't been around as long as Shakespeare's?

Happy Birthday both CoH and Damsel

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umm why does everyone hate farming?

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There's an obvious answer to this...

...It's because they haven't played the short humorous storyarc that's an antidote to farming.



That's right kids - It's JD's Blatant Plug Time!!!

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Of course, if you don't like farms you could always try shutting one down...

YES - IT'S A SHAMELESSS PLUG FOR 'Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!' arc 3662

Consistently voted 'funniest arc between 3661 and 3663'!

Hear what the critics said:
"mildly amusing"
"Nearly funny"
"stop pestering me to play your <censored> arc - welcome to /ignore n00b"

With reviews like that you know you can't go wrong!


Brought to you by the House of Mohawk - the mark of quality humour... though not neccessarily high quality.

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It's a short-3-mission arc with JD's sense of humour, but it also has some good points.

The real comments have included:
"Highly amusing and well thought out."
"Genuinely funny and really well observed. Especially as I was playing this in Atlas, surrounded by people asking for farms and PLs whenever I exited while I was playing this....."
"that actually made me laugh out loud. Well done, very funny."
"Now THAT was a laugh! XD"

There's other comments/reviews for this mission on City of Guides.

This Arc advertisement was brought to you by JD's Paragon Plugs - THE place to go for all your electrical power supply, cavity-wall shelf-fitting, water obstruction and hair-replacement solutions...




Hey - gimme points for trying...

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Too much whitespace is nearly enough.

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Aye - Really wish they'd make the <br> double the horizontal break it currently uses - I never use a single one unless it's the difference between publishable size and unpublishable size.

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Polish, polish, polish.

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But there's no servers for that! English, French or German's your lot.

Cakeday Gratz

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Although what you said applies to external sites too, - the more popular it gets, the worse its SNR. Although, on CoG there are actual reviews, which really mitigates the problem.

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Yes and Yes.

The reviews/comments part is a big factor in seperating the wheat from the chaff - although the simple fact that slightly more effort is needed to post your arc on a 3rd party site also cuts out a few people who would abuse the ingame tags.

I'd considered the possibility of a quiz/competition run this way, but thought it'd be better to run it for a set length of time (a week maybe?) then pick one of the correct entries at random...

Otherwise why would anyone start playing it (for the competition) after about 18:10 - as by then someone who started at 6pm with a stealthing soloist is bound to have finished and won!

I'd pretty much ignore SFMA and any other tags ingame unless you want a pseudorandom pick and don't care about the quality. As soon as a tag starts to be used it'll be used by people who don't really care about the content but care about getting more players to play their arcs for the shinies...

My advice at the moment would be to use the City Of Guides missions as a reasonable list to play... I've been working my way through these and there's some good arcs - and you can at least see what others have made of them so far.

I'd guess any review thread/site would give you this - but CoG seems the largest/best I've seen so far.

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War Witch doesn't post on here like she used to, and she got a very warm reception.


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True that she usually gets a warm reception, but a little false to give the impression that she's ever been a regular poster here.

A couple of years ago I pointed out that she only ever posted in bursts and hadn't been seen in a while, and all of a sudden she appeared in a couple of posts over the next day or two then vanished again...

You can see many of the devs post histories by viewing their posts from their profiles:

War_Witch (95 posts in total, last posted start of May last year, after she'd attended the Easter Omega Sektor event in the UK)

_Castle_ (14 posts in total, again sporadic, last post february this year)

Positron (total posts: 2, neither exist anymore)

Ok - we're a small section of their customer/user-base, with an even smaller number who'd give him a hard time, but 2 posts from Posi isn't exactly trying hard...

Even Statesman managed 69 posts before departing from CoX (and, IIRC, the announcement about the IP sale was Nov 6th 2007).

BTW - Whilst States was held by many to be the type of person to keep away from the public, he did the smart thing re: EU boards by posting in threads that weren't game future/mechanics related... So he'd post in threads about comics and HP Lovecraft in the culture boards - that makes it easier to appear like you'll come to the EU boards without needing to get bogged down in arguments over the game...

As a side note, War Witch does appear to pop in to read the boards (or maybe just PMs) every now and then without posting. It's been a few months, but she certainly never used to browse anonymously and I've seen her pop up on the who's online lists every now and then.

Many happy returns, Princess

Glad you had a good 'un

Hope you had a good cakeday, Alvan

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Or is there this new 'American' language all of a sudden?

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All of a sudden???

There's no 'all of a sudden' about it.

Gratz on your cakeday, Necroton

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"CHAOS is going to break loose in-game on our anniversary date"

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Cripes! Haven't Any Original Selebrations!


Ok - it wasn't "Cripes!" originally...

I'm pretty sure that someone (one of the smurfs IIRC) set up a farming channel a year or so ago for much the same reasons. It might still be going.

Can't recall the name of it though (as I never joined it).

ComicsUK-ML-1349448-ML-

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Noooooooo! I'm on holiday away that day, if there is a badge, it had better be availiable for logins all that week!

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Available all of May (as was the case for previous anniversary badges IIRC).

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Wonder when we'll get our official post about this?

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It takes time to translate "CoH 5th Anniversary EU Celebrations! There's a badge." into French and German.

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If its a day of Winter Hordes, Zombie Invasions, Rikti and christmas pressies I'll be pretty underwhelmed too.

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But what if the Zombies drop presents, the Winter Horde perform bombing runs and the rikti rise up from the ground? That would be special.