Judgement_Dave

Gratz on your cakeday!

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I was on tenatious, as a scrapper heroic is a bit too easy.
Edit: And I was solo

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The 3 boss guards may have been th eserver throwing a slight wobbly then! The guard group has minions/lts/bosses.

But obviously as a scrapper heroic wasn't a bit too easy for this mission!

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Make a post decrying how no-one will know about your arc (tick that one off!)

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Every little bit helps

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Indeed it does - so why does your signature not mention your arc?!

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It was quite depressing to see that it was number 90148 in the list. Nobody is going to stumble across that with 90k coming before it. The number of 'test' and 'incomplete' arcs that have been published is ludicrous and completely masks anything written with any sort of attempt at a storyline.

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What do you mean #90148 in the list? What do you mean 90k coming before it?

If you mean it's arc id is 90148 that's one thing, but it doesn't mean that there are 90,000 before it or that it'll appear 90,000th in a list to any players.

Many. many arcs have been removed/unpublished so there are nothing like 90,000 before you. It almost seems petty to also note that arc ids start at something like 1000, so that's 1k off the count as well...

You can see approximately how many arcs there are live by going to the last page of th ebrowser and multiplying th enumber of pages by 20 (the number of arcs per page). I say approximately, as there's probably arcs being published/unpublished as you do this...

At the time of writing, there were 1258 pages of arcs, so about 1258*20 = 25160 arcs published and valid.

And the main way you'll appear at the back of the list is if people order by ascending date order.



BTW I'd say that the best ways to help people stumble upon the arc are probably:

- Join City of Guides and get it listed there - the site is still growing/starting but it's a lot better than any other MA search/review sites I've seen. A listing there should get noticed by other authors/reviewers.

- Announce the arc in the MA announcements thread here.

- See if Col Blitzkrieger is kind enough to review it - though he is honest, so be ready to take criticism!

- Pop the arc in your sig and occasionally post to the boards - so only board members will see it, but better than nothing.

- Make a post decrying how no-one will know about your arc (tick that one off!)

None of these are surefire get-a-million-plays-in-minutes methods but every player who plays and likes your arc raises it up the ratings ranks...

Oh - and if you want depressing, do a search on 'Enter Title'...

Note that I have had feedback stating that the end confrontations of To Save A Single World are not soloable:

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I enjoyed this arc until I hit the last stage when I came across an Elite Boss with a 3 Boss bodyguard.
I seriously would not consider that to be soloable.


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Source at City of Guides
What rep/teamsize were you on?

The end bosses are both EBs and the guard group has a mix of levels.

Soloing on challenge levl 1 (heroic/villainous) I have always seen the EBs downgraded to bosses. You also have an ally who is naturally a boss, but may be downgraded on low reps.

IIRC this has always been very soloable even with my squishies (e.g. a lvl27 controller or various levels of blaster) with me usually facing EB + non-boss guards with a lt ally!

If the boss was an EB with 3 bosses as a guard on heroic/villainous then the server spawned incorrect mobs - i.e. a bug! If you were on higher difficulty then it doesn't invalidate the arc being soloable at lower reps!


Given the trend for cramming EBs/AVs into arcs I try to avoid them, or make sure that you have some assistance available for EBs!

I also try to test solo on a wide variety of ATs/levels - before the last 2 levels were complete I even ran through with various team-build defenders... they had a hard time, and chewed insps at points, but even they could just about manage...

I try to err towards story and a too-easy-for-some arc rather than a too challenging arc - you can always up your rep if it's too easy, but if it's too hard then people drop out and the best story in the world is tarnished/unread if the player feels they are banging their head against a brick wall!

Responding to points from tells that may be raised by others, on To Save A Single World:
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One thing that did seem wrong however was one of the 5 having survived to come here.


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Well that was set up from the start, though space willing I may try to make it a little more obvious (maybe using the Scientist who knew Red Flame in TSASW #3 or a clue in MO #4).

Red Flames bio in MO states: "No-one knows which planet Red Flame came from, but her natural control of flame lets her protect Tau-Phi-71 as part of The Five."
The idea was always that Red Flame appears dead but isn't - and all due to the wizard-doping of being an alien (with amazing regenerative qualities).

And when you defeat her she says: "I will burn you for eternity. You cannot snuff this flame so easily."
Why can't you snuff the flame so easily? Because she can regen/resurrect... so there is a set up there, though fairly subtle.


Paraphrasing next point:
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It wasn't clear in mission 1 of TSASW that Red Flame wasn't a friend of the Council.


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Of course, most of the story is based upon mistaken belief that Red Flame is a villain as she turns up at a Council base when you're investigating there.

If you could spawn bosses without any accompanying enemy group then I would... as it was she has to have some baddies around her - which is one part I'm not too happy about. But it's the only way under the current MA engine.

However... she is set as 'Rogue' so she will attack Council units and I've seen her attack patrols and even the base commander once (hey - I was on a squishy and had to beat a strategic retreat).


BTW - don't know if you spotted these touches:

* Red Flame has a different info screen each time you meet her, she goes through:
--- mission 1: "This must be a new villain aiding the council."
--- mission 4: "Red Flame is a heroine trying to save her home dimension of Tau-Phi-71. After initially believing her to be a villain, you need to gain her trust..."
--- mission 5: "Red Flame is trying to save her dimension from Crey interference."

These are all different to her info in MO#4.

* The clue when you disable/destroy the security console in TSASW#1 reads:
"As you disabled the security console you noticed that the alarm system must have some wires crossed - it wrongly identified the security breach as a physical breach at the front door rather than computer hacking. Hopefully the Council won't realise that you were after their data..."

It actually identified the breach as being at the front door as it was Red Flame breaking in that triggered the alarms... your hacking was not detected. This is never made more explicit - but hopefully some will notice it and make the right deduction that maybe it was something/someone else - pointing to Red Flame maybe not being with the Council...

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No, personal opinion. Some subscribers do like official PvE content and a continuation of the 'City of' Story over farming missions and Ego-boost arcs.

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What is the difference? And what is "ego-boost" arc?

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I think that in Ego-boost arcs ML is referring to the arcs that some people throw up that serve merely to star one of their existing in-game characters as a near-invincible super being.

e.g. if I did an arc starring 'Judgement Dave' as an extreme/extreme AV and the text, if any, tells us he's the all-powerful, beats-up-gods-for-fun, bestest hero in the multiverse.

I've seen some posters refer to these as 'Mary Sue' arcs/stories. Which TV tropes tells us came from fanfic:
The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment.


Regarding what is the difference:
Wanting the official PvE stories continued is fine, and we need them developed. But it is poor and misguided to see MA arcs purely as 'farming missions and Ego-boost arcs'.

The whole raison d'etre of this thread was because there is and can be some great arcs/stories created in MA (even with the MA-engine limitations we have at version 1) but the sheer volume of ill-considered rubbish makes reliably finding the quality works nigh on impossuble. This goes whether you want story/rp/challenge/humour/etc.

And I have absolutely nothing against farms/badging arcs/missions if the author has taken a few minutes to throw together even the flimsiest reason for killing all those badguys... without that I fail to see why we need 1000 authors to publish practically-identical farms...

Some of the stories in MA will rival or exceed the devs official output - that's inevitable. It's sad that many can attack or ignore them merely over the fact that they're non-canon. To some extent: So what?

A good story is a good story.

And many do try to stay within the bounds of established canon, and so are practically canon. If a story is good (or even great) and you'd accept it without blinking an eye if the devs had done it as part of I15s content then what does it matter that it's been done by a player as part of MA content? Heck - if the player is consistently writing arcs of great quality that stick to canon they might even become a dev one day...

One of the harshest criticisms I have of what could be created in MA is that the 5 mission limit (and to a lesser extent the 100k limit) do necessitate producing shorter arcs. Not usually a problem, but some good plots really do need longer if you're to build up tension, throw in the odd bit of misdirection etc...

It's hard to imagine how our steam-powered friend or an X-files-type conspiracy could be introduced and resolved in a single arc without rushing it to the point of triviality. And splitting up a story into multiple arcs isn't really the best way to do it, as we have no way to ensure that 'chapters' are played in order (which, outside of Ouroboros, the devs can do by placing chapters at different level ranges, following each other at the same contact or at different contacts in the zone-arcs)

I've plenty of criticisms about MA mechanics (e.g. search)...
or the way that the devs handle 'exploits' (e.g. removing entire villain groups, like Prisoners - no - I'm not still annoyed at all - no)...
or the general noise of thoughtless pap created by some players.

But criticising potential stories purely due to being created by someone not employed by Paragon Studios is ridiculous.

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I recently started a new fire rad/kin corruptor team on defiant. Just playing 2 days/week for a few hours and we got to level 20 in no time. As long as there's teams levelling is fast and not nearly as boring as PLing.

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But isn't running some sort of fire/kin or fire/rad superteam almost as bad as PLing. You'd never catch me doing that.























That ain't the team I'm in is it, Sing? Oh $&%*!

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Current list: 1934/1064, 5760/5591, 53951, 75875, 53149, 75015, 48617, 63175, 79274, 23256, 74519, 2505, 79763, 27552, 82059, 60092, 22433 , one of AP's many arcs, 79690, 56881, 83744/83747, 9831/81348, 79300

23 arcs to go, not counting re-listings for people with multiple submissions. Phew! Let me know if I've accidentally missed anyone!


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Wow - you're not too short of things to do this weekend then!

I salute you sir, if you keep going through these and providing the type of review that you have been so far.

Only just come to this today (so I'm glad the 1st mission wasn't taken down yet).
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This is the catgirl who was to be our leader, we shall rejoice and return her to a human so she may lead us.


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Is that referring to last time Maestro tried to turn Paragon women into catgirls or is that referring to plans made 10,000 years ago to turn Amanda into their leader?

We have no idea who smashed the emerald... Enrique says the catgirls came in and got the emerald 1st... but it could be a 3rd party. I think he assumes that it was the catgirls as they were in the building...

Any evidence that it was the catgirls smashed it? (calling CSI:Paragon here...)

If so, do we know/think we know why the catgirls would smash a gem that creates more catgirls?

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The translation is getting difficult, they appear to be fluxuating between different styles of Nekoian. But from what I can gather, one appears to be a holding cell like location, and the other appears to be a meeting point for the Nekomimi.

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How are the styles of Nekoian fluctuating? Are they ones usually seen at different time periods, or geographical region, or cults, etc?

I second the time travel malarky to 10,000 years ago - or better 10,000.1 years ago so we get there just before whatever went on. :P



BTW How come we can't investigate both objects/locations? Is something surpressing timetravel for us? If so, is that something an in-story effect or a gamesmastering effect?

Firstly - thanks again for playing the arc & commenting!

I'll reply to a couple of points in spoilertext (just in case...):
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Only problem I had was with the appearance of Rippers. That was breaking the 4th wall a bit.

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Not quite 4th wall breaking, surely? It would certainly be very odd & contrary to canon if it happened on our Earth - but it's happening on an alternate Earth of relative peace, no rikti, little crime etc... so no reason why Paragon and Rogue Isles would be enemies (after all - no Lord Recluse or Statesman etc...) If the MA editor supported it, I would rename/re-info the RIP mobs, but I don't consider it too bad given the 'an alternative dimension did it' escape clause!

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If you got space, then a bit of pimping up might be worth it. Your custom characters are a bit bare on their info.

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Lack of space was the reason why the info got reduced in the past few days - they did have much bigger info/bios until the size went over 100%! IIRC Each of these arcs come in at over 99%...

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Another small thing was the evidence I had to plant, would be more interesting if you could elaborate on that.

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The evidence was the equipment and insignia picked off the raid leader and his men in the mission before you plant it. This equipment & insignia is mentioned in a clue - I did originally say something along the lines of 'You'll keep this just in case it comes in handy...' but that felt too much like spelling out the obvious. I think that being more explicit could come across as patronising to some players.


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All in all, I am interested enough to try the other side here as well

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Hope that you enjoy that one - it hopefully meshes quite well - the bits I'm not entirely happy about are generally the places I've had to fudge a little due to the MA game mechanics not quite doing what I want...

Hopefully the story in my head meshes well, it's whether I managed to get anything close to that into the arc!

You're doing a fine job here, Colonel, so I guess it's finally time to tentatively submit my own works for your consideration.

I'm eager to have my two serious arcs reviewed, although I obviously understand if a pair can't be done due to time constraints & fairness to other authors. However, if you do get chance... the arcs can be played in either order.

The arcs are:
arc name: To Save A Single World
arc id: 83744
morality: heroic
5 missions, lvl 29 to 40
It's rumoured that the Council is developing a new secret weapon, so you infiltrate a base to find out more - but soon things take a turn for the unexpected...


arc name: Marketing Opportunity
arc id: 83747
morality: villainous
4 missions, lvl 30 to 40
Discrete freelancer required to market Crey services to parallel dimension. Applicants with dynamic, go-getting moral framework preferred.


I stuck notes about these in another thread here...

Thanks in advance - I'm now off to nervously await news of all my.. err.. mess ups.

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Can anyone tell me how to challenge a arc being banned? Bear with me as it does come under the subject of farming. I, perhaps naively, made a mission about farming. The contact is Farmer Giles and you have to rescue his livestock from the evil Old McDonald. All the enemies in the missions are custom mobs with imaginative monikers like Ram Beau, Cow Belle and Hugh Heifer.


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Darn another Old McDonald and Ram Beau - wish you could search mob names within arcs - bet there's loads of Old McDonalds...

Re: challenging... does the arc still exist in your 'My Published Stories'? If so, can you do an edit-republish cycle? I'm guessing that just as 2 autobans makes the next publish have to be passed by a GM if you can edit/republish it'll be seen by a person...

Failing that: send a petition in, maybe? Cite arc id and that it's wrongly been banned as a farming arc...

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The Prisoners group was removed, but it looks like the prisoner mobs that I had in a custom group still remained valid.

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I don't actually know if that's the case - as my existing group only had Lts and a boss from the Prisoners group and since I don't know exactly why the Prisoners were removed it's possible that it was an exploit using Prisoner minions.

If they told us more detail about why they removed the darn group we could maybe judge for ourselves.

Best not tell them though - because the heavy handed let's use an A-bomb to crack a nut approach that the devs use for dealing with exploits would probably mean that they decide to remove standard mobs from custom groups altogether... If it's not WAI I certainly don't have faith in the devs dealing with it in a manner that addresses the root issue and causes minimal disruption elsewhere.

Yeah - a nights sleep and I'm still pee'd off.

These two arcs are now listed at cityofguides - so you can go there to comment, review and find out what others had to say about these!

Well - that was a right SNAFU... prematurely posting the OP, then the devs take out the prisoners group that is used in 'To Save a Single World', then I realise I need to unlock a couple of extras on that account to publish... what a kerfuffle.

Anyway - the arcs are now published, so here's the details including the arc ids:

First, the arc details:

arc name: To Save A Single World
arc id: 83744
author: @Electric Barbarella
morality: heroic
lvl range: 29 to 40
arc info:
It's rumoured that the Council is developing a new secret weapon, so you infiltrate a base to find out more - but soon things take a turn for the unexpected...


arc name: Marketing Opportunity
arc id: 83747
author: @Electric Barbarella
morality: villainous
lvl range: 30 to 40
arc info:
Discrete freelancer required to market Crey services to parallel dimension. Applicants with dynamic, go-getting moral framework preferred.

Additional Notes:
* The Prisoners group was removed, but it looks like the prisoner mobs that I had in a custom group still remained valid. As such I've been able to keep prisoners in the mission - although not the whole 'Prisoners' standard villain group.

The system passed these mobs, no text file editing was involved and the mission certainly ain't exploiting them... so hopefully they can remain in the mission. Sadly though, it does mean that only a subset of Prisoners Lts/Boss has made it in to the mission.

Hopefully when the devs return Prisoners to general use I can replace the custom group with the standard and save some arc space!

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Couldnt have said it better. My thoughts exactly. PLing leads to annoying noob lvl50s. I get my 12 month vet badge this weekend and have 4 lvl50s which had minimal PLing (a few lvls each here and there) and I still feel like there is so much I dont know

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From what I know, MA doesn't award defeat badges, or the achievement badges such as damage taken, etc. If you have any suspicions, just check their badges for badges which a normal person would have gained in their career. :3

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MA doesn't tend to award the 'normal' badges - but that just means that before long you won't be able to use badges as a guide to whether the character may have been PL'd or not as characters doing 1-50 without PL but using the MA will have very few badges.

From memory, so UI element names may be off slightly:

Can't recall that map - but IIRC most Casino maps are quite small - as in one or two rooms so I'd guess that spawn areas (FRONT/MIDDLE/BACK) may not be available.

Would it fit your mission to trigger the boss spawn after a glowy is clicked?

In boss settings you can set the 'Spawn when' to state another objective that needs completing before the boss spawns. This defaults to 'none' - as in don't trigger off anything else - but if you have a glowy you can set it to spawn when the glowy has been clicked.

yeah - like they'll be back quickly.

I'm still really impressed by this move.

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the scorched earth removal method is easier than actually trying to fix the problem.

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And leaving exploits in is easier than removing them.

And doing nothing except laughing that suckers are paying for this is easier than doing anything.



Hell - at least tell us what you do in patches and maybe why. But maybe Posi was too busy writing his didn't we do well post to bother telling us how they're buggering up our arcs...

I'm really not impressed with the way the devs seem to think it's acceptable for long, unscheduled maintenance that removes pretty harmless storytelling assets and doesn't even have patch notes.

ANd the funny thing is: if it's done to stop some sort of farming/exploit all the farmers will do is move onto the next cheap-hit/exploit... it won't stop that, but it will stop peoiple using them for creative purposes.

Stupid bloody 'solution'.

I know - funnily enough I wasn't farming them but they make a darn fine group when using the Zig map for a prison riot...

And no, before someone shouts up that I can make my own: I missed the bit where the devs increased the arc size so that I could try cobbling together the equivalent of an existing villain group just so I could use it at the same level range as the existing group that they saw fit to remove.


Yes - I'm pretty pee'd off - I have spent well over 20+ hrs on each of the two arcs I was about to publish. Losing the prisoners makes one arc pretty bloody pointless. I wouldn't have even started if the devs had expressed a wish to bugger us all about like this.

I spend parts of the last 2 weeks planning a 2-arc series and just about to publish before todays unexpected downtime.

Log back in after the overlong downtime to find that I can't publish as the Prisoners group seem to have vanished.

Doubleyou tee eff.

Bug or have they taken to unscheduled downtime for half the afternoon just to whip out assets because somewhere 1 person did a farm with them.

So not impressed. If it is exploit then this is why you keep things in beta til you're happy with them. CAn't decide if it's better if they're removed in error.

Anyway - in lieu of patch notes I'll just have to assume that my arc has been effed by the devs before it was published. Anyone else missing stuff that makes them as happy as I am?

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I don't mind them taking the servers down between 9am and 10am every morning for regular maintenance.

But if they're going to take them down ANY other times, they need to put an append in the announcements forum. That doesn't seem much to ask, does it?

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IIRC the regular scheduled slot is between 08:00 and 10:00 UK time (usually - it sometimes goes a bit squiffy at the switch to/from BST/DST)

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The servers go down for maintenance every day, always have done.

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Not so AFAIK.

The servers have a maintenance period scheduled for every day, but they certainly haven't always used them every day.

Can you farm with a level 1?

Yes it's easy to farm with a lvl 1:
- kill lvl 1
- spread corpse's fingers and wait for rigor to set.

Hey presto - a biodegradeable garden rake.

Pretty sure that some of the fleshier bits can be used for pig feed and compost as well.