Kong_Fuu

Um, the 15s were already on the far left. What did you reorganize?

Usually edits go through pretty quick (1 or 2 seconds), but sometimes it can take up to a few minutes before they go through. I was bitten by that once.

After you hit the "republish" button, don't edit the arc for a few minutes. What can happen is that your changes will be in "publish limbo" waiting for the servers to catch up. You'll hit edit and be working on the same old arc. When you republish that one, all of the changes from the first republish will be lost. It's very annoying to fix a bug and then get a report about the very same bug a week later, especially if it's a really stupid/obvious one.

I think the devs got the clue.

Wouldn't it be neat if you could attach music cues to various events in your mission? Like start regular music when you enter the mission, then switch to the fast tempo "danger music" when you trigger an ambush, switching back when the ambush is over. You could even switch to boss music when you aggro the boss.

I know the devs have pretty much ignored the in-game music since beta, but it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to add something like this to the system. CoH has a lot of different music tracks already, players could work out which ones are reasonably close for various events.

The only way would be to spawn the glowie as a "after X" action, where X is the hostage escort. Sadly, I don't think this is available currently in the MA system (you can see what I'm talking about if you look in the ambush/boss fight sections where it has a "this objective created when..." dropdown).

It's a fundamental problem with Nemesis. He's a super-genius, but your average writer is not. There are three solutions to the problem:

1. Spend a LOT of time thinking through your arc, trying to get into Nemesis's mind and working out subtle plot threads. Preferably you should consult with a few people to help hammer out the plot threads in your arc. This is by far the least popular option.

2. Suddenly make everybody else retarded so Nemesis looks smart in comparison. This is the most common "Comic Book" solution, as Batman frequently becomes a retard when fighting the Joker, and Richard Reed is often reduced to an imbecile whenever Dr. Doom is up to something. The Devs unfortunately use this solution a lot.

3. Just say "It's a Nemesis thing, don't try to understand". This is the MA favorite. It's also the easiest since you don't have to think at all. Just select "Nemesis" from the mob drop down list, say "Oh no, Nemesis is back!" in the text, and you're done.

From this weekend, I have to add one:

Tossing in Nemesis minions for no apparent reason because "He's Nemesis, it's probably some sort of plot, he doesn't have to explain himself".

I swear half of the arcs I ran had me fighting Nemesis at some point, and in none of the cases did the author try to make sense of his motivations at all. It's just "Nemesis feels like taking over Atlas park today" or "Nemesis wants to fight my custom group".

[ QUOTE ]
think you can do mine at some point #1056?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm going down the list of missions in the stickied "Mission Architect List". If you think your mission is worthy of being advertised to the general Victory populace, by all means post it in that thread. It's supposed to be a representative sample of the best that Victory can do.

Arc 136118: "Enter the Yagyu Kage clan"
Rating: 2/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*]This arc caps out at 40, at least on the first mission.[*]"I still need your help the Yagyu Kage clan in Paragon City."[*]"Circle of Throns"[*]What, where did this test come from? Did I miss something?[*]I'm glad I have high defense or this web grenade spam would get old in a hurry.[*]Nice lampshade on the fact that you can't get much variety in MA mobs[*]I'm having trouble understanding why I want to be ambushed on the fourth mission.[*]Energy Drain on an EB?[*]I've heard a rumor that there may be map sizes other than "Huge"...[*]Sorry, but I'm just rushing this one. I try to fight through most MA missions to make sure I don't miss anything, but I'm tired of fighting the same three mobs[*]When in doubt, add Nemesis. Seems to be a theme tonight.[*]Woo, 500 badges! Getting "Heroic" for this arc pushed me over.[/list]Overall: Needs a once over with the spell checker, badly. Then an editor needs to read through it and clean up the grammar. This arc felt a little padded. Using huge maps for every mission really made it take a long time to fight through. I would turn a few of the EBs down from Extreme as well, especially if they're all going to come with huge ambushes. Even on a large team, it's going to hurt when the AV starts the fight off with Aim+Inferno, or Build Up and Total Focus. I was saved by the one-shot code several times.

I am skipping the Chromatic Rangers arc to avoid conflict of interest.

Arc 27178: "The Monstrous Regiment of Lesbian Hellions"
Rating: 5/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*] The next mission in the list "Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld" has been pulled, so I skipped ahead to this one.[*]I actually googled for firemullet, I was disappointed that they aren't apparently a real band[*]Statesman is a coward and a wimp?[*]The description is missing on the "Lesbian Hellion"[*]I like the use of $archetype, but the attempt to change my character's backstory in the arc is just odd. [*]...That's an awfully fancy name for a vibrator[*]The end-of-mission popup might have worked better as a clue[*]I have a strong suspicion that Doc Delilah wasn't tough to turn[/list]Overall: This is a solid arc, but it is rated PG-13. I really appreciate how the author did a good job making the mobs look like lesbian stereotypes, but maybe that's just the part of me that's not PC. Do not run this arc if you are politically correct, it will just offend. However, unless you are particularly sensitive this will not be a problem, it's all in good humor.

Arc 1334 "The Great Chicken Caper of '09
Rating: 4/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*]Apparently this is the extra spicy crispy variety[*]It would be awesome of General Tso's personal mobs were Broccoli Guys[*]Note to self: If I ever run across evil mutant chicken feed, don't eat it[*]Oversight: The "Crazy Mutant Chicken" is missing a description[*]It must be some pretty serious mutation to allow the chickens to fly around so much like this[*]The boss "run when I'm low on health" setting was foiled by the large group of mobs he summoned and that came as an ambush. He was mired in his own minions.[/list]
Overall: I liked this arc. The dialog was excellent, the concept was great, the execution lost a point though because I was kind of lost as to how the whole story tied together. Something about nemesis stealing the recipe and then some chicken masterminds taking over the world and what? Still a very worthwhile arc for anybody to run.

Arc 18861 "Save the Victory Forum Superstar!"
Rating: 2/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*]Lieutenants are much stronger than Minions...[*]What do pirates and ninjas have to do with one another? the world will never know.[*]Regen on an EB, on Hard? Ugh. I'm going to be staring at this naked catgirl for a long time waiting for Instant Healing to wear off. Thank goodness she doesn't have MoG.[*]The hostage ran off without so much as a thank you[/list]
Overall: There's not much to this mission. The custom group only has one kind of minion and one kind of LT, there is no story to speak of, and no dialog. There isn't even a real contact for it (the hologram guy just stays as a hologram). It needs fleshing out badly.

Arc 18816: "A Badger's Plea"
Rating:2/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*]"A Minion is no match for a Hero..."[*]Nice commentary in the clues[/list]
Overall: Cute, but kinda pointless. I'd talk about it more, but there really wasn't much to it. The only notable thing was the meta commentary in the clues tab.

Arc 28850 "A Fistful of Deaths"
Rating: 1/5
Notes:<ul type="square">[*]Two EB helpers? Set on at least hard? Probably extreme? There had better be one hell of a fight at the end.[*]Make that 3 EBs and 3 Bosses, all set on at least hard, probably extreme.[*]My allies just defeated Lord Recluse in the time it took me to read the glowie clue.[/list]
Overall:
There's really no point to the story, and you're given such an enormous array over grossly overpowered allies. Any one of them could have soloed most of the mission, although the three that were just bosses might have had trouble with Recluse.

Arc 1672 "Turf Wars"
Rating: 3/5

Notes:<ul type="square">[*]I'm not a big fan of rescuing enemy groups from one another, but this one isn't too egregious so I'll let it pass.[*]Don't Skulls and Hellions already take Supradyne? I thought they just didn't turn into Dyneheads like the Trolls because they're wimps and can't get very much normally.[*]Why are Nemesis troops helping a Skull EB? And a Hellion EB?[*]Lieutenants are much stronger.... On the Overpowered Hellions[*]Is there any point in making the last mission timed?[*]Why is there an Arachnos flyer in AP for a Nemesis invasion?[/list]
Overall:
While there weren't any glaring problems with this arc it left a lot of questions unanswered. Why did Nemesis suddenly take interest in Atlas Park? Why did he let the Skulls and Hellions take all of the Dyne? Certainly even a small number of his troops could have wiped out the Skull and Hellion thieves, so he must have given it to them on purpose, but this is never explained. It's also not explained why such a low level threat like Superdyne can suddenly turn any old thug into a threat to Nemesis, when the Trolls take the stuff by the bucketful and are barely a threat to Skyraiders, much less Nemesis.

The only problem with that is most of those suggestions require a fairly large amount of Dev effort (they have to build textures, geometry, etc... for the mall), and the devs just don't have anywhere near the kind of time to do it. I mean look at the past few issues (and the upcoming one!), it's clear that they haven't had anybody on zone (map!) construction duty for a long time now, and all of the art resources appear to be directed towards costumes.

Arc 36984: "V'Kta A'Cha Vox'm"
Rating: 4/5

Notes: Why can't Onus rescue his own friend? "Safe zone in Orenbenga" seems like a contradiction in terms to me but oh well. Targeting drone on the ally means his aggro range is approximately 8 maps wide. You can forget any idea you might have had about engaging a single spawn at a time. Glue arrow lasts for an eternity when an Lt fires it. Is it really necessary to set the AV on extreme so it gets Unstoppable? Is this elite boss ally set on extreme? He has build up and most of his sheilds. Why am I even fighting? My Ally is one-shotting everything.

Overall: This arc was cruising for a 5 until mission 4. Setting an AV/EB up to extreme is not something to be done lightly. Then on mission 5 your allies could easily solo the entire mission. Some of the regular mobs were using powers that should be more carefully considered like Glue Arrow, but that wasn't a dealbreaker for the solo scrapper. The storyline was good.

Arc 34399 "What are we doing tonight Iggy?"
Rating: 3/5
Notes: The second mission is called "Steal the Council Technology", but you're fighting the 5th column.

The only clue you get as to why this might be is:
[ QUOTE ]
Eagledon had a plan to subvert villian evilness by subverting them the Villians to his Security Reformation Center. Thanks to your work this device is permantely[sic] out of commission

[/ QUOTE ]

At this point the only thing you have done is busted a guy out of jail.

If one boss fight is good, 6 is better right? On a side note, I have never understood why so many Kheldians went into the PPD. Is there some sort of racism in Paragon City that prevents them from getting non-government jobs?

The Martian faction has a naming scheme where every mob is "Martial X", which is strange for a faction that mostly relies on energy blasts and Pain Domination (on the bosses).

The Final AV's dialog only makes sense if you're playing as the guy you rescued on the first mission. Perhaps he was supposed to be an ally on this map?

Overall: This arc needs a good once over with an editor. While there was some story poking through, there were a lot of unanswered questions at the end. If cleaned up, I think this could easily be a 4 or maybe even 5 star arc.

Arc 28712 "Television Land"
Rating: 4/5
Notes: Nice map selection, The EB ally at the end is a bit overpowered, but then so is the final boss. Power Sink on an EB/AV is gross. Last mission is timed, but the timer is set pretty high.
Overall: This arc has a pretty well designed custom group, but the storyline is sparse and it suffers a bit from a "Lets go to this map, ok, now lets go to this map." feel.

The only good thing about the flashback badges is that you can get more than one at once. The bad thing is that trying to do so can make it take forever to get through missions (Oh, they're buffed, I'm debuffed, my enhancements do nothing, and I'm stuck using only the powers from my primary/secondary?).

The Buff/Debuff ones are particularly gruesome in the lower level story arcs, where even if your enhancements are working, they don't do much.

I'm still disappointed that we can't make our own Kongmobile for getting around. I know it would be balls given the insane layout of Paragon City, but iconic vehicles are a superhero staple!

Although you might be able to fake Wonder Woman's jet by introducing a "driving" flight pose.

I've always said that the affordable Holodeck would be the end of civilization.

Now excuse me while my character goes to play in the virtual Kiera Knightley/Jessica Alba mission.

If your queue isn't full already LaserJesus, I have an arc that I hope you will enjoy:

Arc Name:Go Go Chromatic Rangers
Arc ID:40686
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Kong Fuu
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: Show a bunch of Sentai-style do-gooders how things are in the Rogue Isles
Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes