Jupiter_M

Even if an arc doesn't gain dev attention, having mention made of it by the city scoop could create a lot of attention.

I think that MA judging contests is a great idea, and could be something which is done on a regular basis. It lends itself very well to holidays and special events. Example- around Christmas time, there could be a contest to judge who has created the best MA holiday arc.

Having organized contests before (the RL kind), here are a couple of things to consider so to avoid huge headaches:

1) All judges need to be using the same criteria to judge. This criteria needs to be made available to people (before or after the contest). People need to feel that there is a rhyme and reason behind who is selected winner besides a couple of selected people thinking it is best.

2) A judge should not be leaving feedback, save a simple note to inform that the arc has been played.

3) The perceived quality of judges will have a direct effect on how many people decide to enter. Asking people to play a judge's arc does an excellent job of two things at once with also providing judges with compensation.

4) I think it would be a good idea to add other categorie;. like best costumes for a custom groups. This isn't a suggestion to dilute the overall winner, but to also recognize other aspects of the MA.

Feel free to kick those around, and do whatever with them.

What I love about MA text blocks is it encourages punchy material.

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NPC descriptions - do you read them? What should be listed there?

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A quick description of the powers (better to limit to just primary), and a little flavor. If it takes more than 5-10 seconds to read, time to trim.

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Clues - do you read them?

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I'm still deciding on this one. I say only put in relevant to story material. But, this is a great place for flavor, and I don't think that many people actually read all the clues in a mission.

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NPC dialog - In general I like one line of dialog per group, two or three for rescues/allies and bosses. That's enough for flavor without becoming clutter.

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Clutter becomes background noise. This can help immersion by causing us to do something we normally do everyday, tone out background noise. Keeping it short is best.

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Mission conclusion middle missions - if the mission does not end an arc, how much do you put into the mission successful text?

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Enough to keep the story moving. You did this- it had this result- and now you are going to do this.

You have something better you want to publish, or really hate something so much that you would rather leave that slot empty than have that arc associated with you.

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I'm still working on my first arc to make it "just perfect" and I'm finding good advice in this thread.


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Glad to hear it.

I find one of the most important things in writing is knowing when to stop editing. I have never written, or drawn, anything that was 'perfect' or even good. Simply stuff that did enough of what I wanted it to, so that I felt it did what I wanted it to. By the time I am done with something, I have usually found so many different (and better) ways of doing it, that it would require almost starting completely from scratch to do it the new way.

In the spirit of the thread, I'll add a couple of snippets of advice.

1) Give yourself permission to create garbage.
This is maybe the best advice I can give to anyone doing anything creative. No one creates great material on the first try. And expecting that out of yourself is going to frustrate, and limit your creativity.

2) Don't get attached to your material.
Creativity is a learning process. And if you're doing it right, what you used to think was pretty good should start to look very flawed.

3) When creating a mission- always, always, always, start with what is most inflexible (i.e. this IS an arc about catgurls), and work your way down to what is most flexible (i.e. I'd really like for the final battle to be in an abandone warehouse). I prefer starting with creating the groups first.

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With regard to dialog, I would add the caveat that too much in-mission dialog is a bad thing. The problem is this: in mission dialog usually fires before the player is in visual range, and it all fires instantaneously. Having patrols have conversations is nice, but having long conversations with more than one statement/answer loop just gives the player alot of random bubbles on the screen that often obscure each other.


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I agree with you. However, I'll add my own caveat that it works wonders in creating background noise. Patrols should almost never be a source of critical in-game information, but should be used to enhance the flavor of the mission.

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I'm mostly interested in the story aspects of arcs. After running through several MA arcs, I have compiled a list of pet peeves.

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I agree with your pet peeves (even though I like multiple ambushes, I always make sure to mention it in the description).

Let me add a couple of my own.

1) Exposition Dump - Nothing says 'I am a weak writer' better than having a massivly huge amount of text given by the contact prior to the last mission. The story is supposed to be told within the missions themselves. If a contact needs to go into some long diatribe just so that everything makes sense, then the story needs to be reworked.

2) Contact saying too much/too little - People play the arcs for the missions, and not for the wonderful way someone has found to turn a phrase. Huge blocks of text will go unread, and small blocks tend to not give enough information (naturally, there are exceptions to this).

3) Poor/No Dialogue - Perhaps nothing can make a mission feel more life-like (i.e. immersion) than good dialogue. Dialogue is my pick for the weakest area overall in MA missions. This goes doubly, triply, and quadruply (if those are even words) for ambushes (unless a sneak attack) and battles.

4) Not making checks to see what the reader would/should know - If the only way to get the story is through the contact, then everyone in teams (save the team leader) will not know the reason for their actions. The missions are what should be telling the story.

5) Not using the Nav bar to give an idea of what the mission is about - Not only does this scream lazy, and give the impression that the author doesn't bother to edit, this can be a huge source of confusion. Being able to determine the objective of a mission (along with the reasons) should very, very, very easy.

I could go on (I haven't even gotten into the poor handling of cliches), but I'll stick with these 5.

/signed

I came to the same conclusion after publishing my first arc. However, I have a sense that this is going to be one of those features we'll be seeing soon in the MA.

I've had that type of thing happen before. This issue was resolved by changing the map. I haven't tested it yet, but I think setting specific spawn points for mobs (front, middle, back) has something to do with it.

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If you are suggesting that total spawn threat can be managed by diluting the pool by an appropriate degree, then I get what you're saying... If you're saying something else... er might I ask what that would be?

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I think you got most of it. In each spawn, I want a certain amount of a certain type of threat present. To do this, I increase the number of mobs in that group.

For example:
I notice that each spawned group tends to have two mobs with radiation infection, but one would be a much better challenge (stacked Rad infection gets way too hard). To lower that number, I create another mob to add to that group level. This is a perfect spot to create a new threat which may be no big deal to those who get pwned by rad infection, but it is a problem for those who it isn't. Thinking that, I create a mob with storm summoning to introduce some knockback. Variety is key.

You can also create weaker versions as I did when I decided that I wanted lts to have elec blasts, but multiple versions of volt sent would be too much end drain.

Determining the threat of a custom group is a huge balancing act. One that I am still very much learning.

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I'm talking about powerset and unit mixes that just worked well together. Interesting and tactical problems without instant lose situatuions are the goal.

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When creating custom mobs, my goal is to create multiple, interdependant threats. If you take out the healing mob, the damage mob is free to pummel you. If the damage mob is attacked first, the healer will be free to heal. I also segregate the threats based on mob level (minion, lt, boss). My goal is to reward those who take the time to analyze the threats, and punish those who run in and mash buttons. My arc, "Collecting the Evil Doctor's Debt" is a good example of this.

Maybe the biggest challenge is how mob spawn rate affects threat level. What I find to be key is creating different versions of mobs in which the more challenging power is replaced with one less threatening; while the secondary remains the same.

The only real problem I am having so far is in trying to create a custom EB which doesn't have the ability to drop players on a bad roll.

I'll throw my hat into this ring if anyone wants feedback on their arcs. Fair warning: I nitpick.

I think that a significant number of the poorer ratings are due to people not knowing what the difficulty of the arc is before clicking on 'play'; and not knowing how much more difficult custom mobs are. They enter a map, get surprised by the challenge. And after they get out of the hospital, give a one-star in anger.

What I have been doing is listing a level range in the title, and giving challenge ratings along with notice of special threats in the description.

example: Title (Levels: 35-50)
challenge: Solo (7 of 10), Team (5 of 10), Custom EB (7 of 10), multiple ambushes)

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You realize that this opens up the potential for a whole genre of MA arcs built around deliberately ridiculous dialog for its comedic value...

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I'd love to see that.

Good criticism is hard to give. Maybe this is a case of it?

About all I am getting about why farming is evil is that it causes people to spam the broadcast channel.

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Casablanca doesntstop being a great film just cos...bubba ho tep is made.

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But the technology used to create it does show its age when something like 'Star Wars' comes out.

Please realize that is entirely possible you received poor ratings from people due to things like them not liking the colors you selected for your custom mobs (assuming you had any).

You could have been the victim of stupidity, rather than maliciousness.

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I got a comment that all of the regen made the mission too tough (at least for lvl 16s).

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When it comes to people talking about the difficulty of an MA custom critter, I'd be *VERY* careful about making changes based on feedback. You never know the skill level of the player, and could be ruining the challenge which makes your mission good.

That said- I find fire armor, at standard, to be fairly decent. Another consideration is to equip your minions with a healing secondary.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how Dev choice is going to be handled/decided.

If Dev choice is only going to be ~1% of all missions, what happens after that 1% gets hit? Will no more missions be selected? If an arc is Dev choice, does it remain so forever? No offense to those who already have it, but I am certain that more experience with the MA is going to allow for the creation of arcs which are better than stuff which is Dev choice now.

If Dev choice is to be a stamp of quality, and serving the function of letting people know of missions that are good; it needs to be dynamic. It needs to reflect the current status of missions being created by the MA by introducing that new content. Like how video stores used to have employee's picks for movies.

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What is still occurring is the I do it on this level in PvE I "should be able to do the same on MA, blame the author 1 star ragequit.

People still need to recognize MA critters are tougher than PvE critters period.

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QFT

I wonder how frustrated the dev missions team must have been all these years. Unable to implement challenges they have thought up as it would create an outcry as too many people wouldn't be able to complete it.

It is only since the MA launched that I have to think about how I am using control with my Mind Dom. For instance, mobs with mezz protection, but no repel protection is really making tk a gem of a power to have.

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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.

So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.

if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?

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It's an understandable point.

I use test mode for the badges, and don't need the loot that much. It is also a sense of pride in that I refuse to publish anything which I do not feel is fully polished.

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The problem here is that I have run into a couple of missions that I was unable to finish.

One had Akarist set as an AV (downgraded to EB when I played). You did get an EB as an aid, but the designer threw in several hard Ambushes while fighting Akarist and the EB would get taken out before the fight with Akarist was over. (Tried the arc with two different characters and it happened both times). My characters couldn't do enough damage to Akarist to take him out without outside help.

If your mission is set up so I can't complete it solo without calling out Shivans, why should I be disallowed from rating it just because I didn't happen to have one handy? Especially if I've gone through 4 1/2 mission in your arc before stalling out.

Mission arcs that can be impossible to complete SHOULD be rated, and the rating should be less than if they can always be completed.

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What is impossible for you may not be for someone else. However, the creator should have insterted something into the description which would have been able to give you a clue as to the difficulty (assuming they didn't).

I still feel that ratings should only be given upon completion. However, let me modify that by saving that the ability to make comments should remain the same.

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My son turned 7 today, and absolutely loves COH. Evey friday night he looks forward to running a mission or two with me and my friends.

Well, I made a birthday themed mission for him. (Arc ID 22273)

The mission is nothing Fancy, just the ability to make custom characters for the whole "Super Family" to represent the whole family (as allies to be rescued) is great. He gets to run the mission tonight, and I think it will be the most memorable birthday gift he gets this year.

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This is a wonderful use of the MA, and I hope your son is all giggles tonight. With any luck, your team will wipe, and your son will be the one who saves the day.

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Kind of like how saying Bloody in the U.K. is like dropping an F-bomb here. [ QUOTE ]

Lolz. Who told you that? This Englishman occasionally uses bloody in polite company.

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Someone from the U.K. Then again, he might have been joking as he was also trying to tell me that the Beatles song, 'Ticket to Ride' was actually about a prostitute being given a clean bill of health. English colloquialisms, and humor can make communication difficult at times.

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As for "have fun with it", I did have fun with it. Now I'm out of spots. Now I'm not able to have more fun with it. That's the crux of the side issue, which is slot limitations. If HOF remains in its current shape then 98% of the population will have this same problem.

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Given the potential for revenue, this might be the intention.

Reading about the various criteria being used to judge, I am not seeing the HoF as a stamp of quality (Something that Dev choice at least provides). There are too many mentions of people giving, what might otherwise be a great arc, 1 star due to things like not liking the power choice selections. This makes it seem like anyone wanting to create something, which caters to the player who wants more difficult missions, has to endure the possibility of being given a one star by someone who finds paper missions hard.

Methinks that that the ticket to the HoF is to make the missions easy to complete.