Lazarus
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Is that supposed to be rhetorical?Originally Posted by thanos316
AE. Ok, what good are the tickets worth after you've gotten every thing from the ticket vendor? Can you cash them in for cash? -
Quote:You're seeing exactly what I said in my post.Originally Posted by Lord of Storms
Thank you all for responding. I noticed that the replies were quick, I am impressed
I have started going through my custom critters and giving them custom powers, trying to give xp closer to 100% (this will lead to a new round of testing the critters, of course). One thing I noticed is that I had to give the higher ups MORE powers to get them closer to 100%, in some cases several times more powers than a standard critter would depending on level... So, to keep the xp up, the Custom critter is tougher, with more attacks, so the same xp compared to a standard critter...
Or am I seeing this wrong?
Also, only give minions and LTs the bare minimum of powers to hit 100% XP. You cannot go past 100% anyway and there is little reason to add more powers unless you are going for a super-hard group just for the hell of it. You cannot give your players bonus XP like the Devs can.
I've found that the overall difficulty of a custom group is more of a factor of the toughness of the minions than anything else. You see them more than any other rank and this leads to more serious stacking issues when it comes to damage, debuffs and status effects. Hard bosses are rather unavoidable and expected anyway, tough minions (and LTs to a less effect) are really what pushes a group into overpowered territory.
So in conclusion: if your custom group feels too tough the first thing you should look at is the minions. A horde of tough minions and an easy boss is much worse than easy minions and a tough boss. -
Why has this stupid thread not been locked yet?
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The XP Penalty is only really serious on Bosses and some Lieutenants, and even then only in the higher levels of the game. Minions get a LOT more slack across the entire level range.
Make sure that you move the slider under the "X% XP at level Y" message to the highest level that you are trying to balance for, assuming that you are using a sensible spread of 10 levels or so. That will help you figure out the minimum number of powers needed to reach 100% XP.
Like I said earlier, minions have a lot more leeway but it also depends on which powers and powersets you pick. That is where the alpha value listed in the info for each power comes in, the higher the value the more it adds to the XP total. Minions have a lower maximum than Lieutenants, which in turn have a lower total than Bosses. The total for Bosses is not much lower than AVs though and the about same as EBs.
Annoyingly it is impossible to reach 100% XP for most bosses unless you add "screw you squishy" powers like Build Up, Aim, Rage, Status Protection, Tier-9 god mode powers, and super-heavy-hitters like Energy Transfer (which can nearly one-shot Scrappers even).
Personally I try to aim for 100% XP on all ranks, but that is hard as you go past level 25. Therefore in the upper half of the level range I aim to have minions at 100%, Lieutenants at >90%, and Bosses at >85%.
Also toss out the presets and use Custom/Custom for everything (which will happen anyway if you use a preset and then start adding or removing powers.) The presets at not very well designed and won't save you much room per critter anyway, plus they throw extra warnings on the arc description (like WARNING: Hard Enemies, Extreme Enemies) even if your customs are friendlies. Plus not all Hard critters are made equal either, as it all comes down to the powersets, so don't deluge the players with unnecessary warnings that may only scare them away. -
They stuck it into the mutant pack to get more people to buy it. Really annoying.
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Quote:I hate Inertial Reduction. I already have a travel power and would prefer that my air control be consistent at all times thank you very much.Originally Posted by macskull
Inertial Reduction. 'Nuff said.
Please stop spamming it at the damn market/wentworths as well. Better yet, Devs please make that area a no powers zone already. -
Yeah such a feature should have been in the arc search right from the start. Private lists, public lists, "players who liked this arc also liked..." and all that.
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Quote:Ask and thou shall receive.Originally Posted by McCharraigin
Lisa tilts her head in thought....actually.....I think if there were a list of AE missions that give ok XP and good tickets, people would play them.
I know I would...heck...I would play for tickets alone.
Is there such a list somewhere?
You can also click the link at the top of my signature, all of my arcs give proper XP and Tickets within the constraints of the AE system. -
Quote:I only use these on Task Forces where the team is low on support or early in the game to solo faster. I don't use them more often because even with 3 recipes per buff, chances are I won't have all the salvage needed for any of the recipes and have to waste time at the market getting something to complete a recipe.Originally Posted by Dementor_NA
1. Empowerment Buffs.
Indeed. My Plant/Fire Dom has Seeds of Confusion slotted to be so easily stackable that it gets used in nearly every fight.Quote:Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
anyone who doesnt respect confuse has not played a plant dominator, i cant imagine not having it, it is, dare i say, set defining.
We don't have 20 or more slots until pretty late into the game. Plus the game seems to love to get stingy at times and leave you with several empty slots for a good while if you're eating them like candy. Then there is the combination mechanic, which only works with 3 inspirations of the same type and size; not very helpful when I have a small blue, a medium blue, and a large blue.Quote:Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
INSPIRATIONS
For the love of god, people--if you wipe, and are laying on the floor dead, and I can't trade you a wakie because you are DEAD with a FULL INVENTORY, I'M GOING TO LEAVE YOU THERE. It's even worse on level 50 characters. Really? You have 20 INSPIRATIONS that weren't useful in a fight you just lost?
Because of all that I like to save them for when I actually need them. Fighting minions is not a time to be chowing down on inspirations. Fighting tough bosses, EBs, and AVs are what they're for in my opinion.
Because most of the vet pets suck and die in the first AoE that gets thrown at you. Plus they cannot keep up if you like to sprint from spawn to spawn like I do on Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers.Quote:Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
I'm surprised at how few people use the little empowering vet-pets. Considering the lengths people go through to squeeze out a few points of defense, here's a free way yo get 3% and an endurance boost on top of that!
I don't use binds as there are very few things I would want to use on all my characters besides the default ones. Plus I have a hard time remembering all those binds. The only macros I bother with are target macros on my Dominations for quickly picking out Mages, Nullifiers, Spectral Lords, etc...Quote:Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
Another one for the list:
Macros and Binds - While I think a lot of forum users do make use of them, I am constantly asked how I am able to find NPCs or glowies so quickly (/macro Find, "Target_name computer" - edit name as necessary), or how I can type so fast in the middle of combat (/bind NUMPAD6 "Listen up $target, you are going down next")
Sounds like the most annoying team ever, drone jams in every g'damn door. Also chances are that everyone else is here to fight, not watch a third of the team do all their work for them.Quote:Originally Posted by Blood_Beret
V. 3 decent MM's on a team. Everyone one else can sit back and enjoy the ride.
/signed 1000xQuote:Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Because it seems a lot of people are about speeding through things as fast as possible and getting as much XP as possible in the minimum amount of time. That....doesn't really work with AE. Authors don't necessarily follow the devs' unwritten rules for mission creation (Anything important is at the back. Objectives are marked as "Defeat bad guy" and "get the thing" in the nav bar. "Seek clues" and "get the thing" means a blinky. Reading anything is unnecessary, the mission is idiot-proof.) The newer missions we get in Praetoria and tips break those boring old rules, but AE authors were doing it first. Plus you get no mission complete XP and no patrol XP.
This doesn't matter if you're 50, since tickets are a constant, steady source of inf; to (mis?)quote Nethergoat: AE allows you to print your own money. This does however require that you have some idea how to spend those tickets and how to use the market.
And we come to the last hurdle: Unless you read the forums or are a member of the MA Arc Finder global channel, finding good arcs to play is a massive pain. You find something that looks interesting, click Play, and it turns out it hasn't been updated in a year and you get creamed by the named boss and his five clones in the first room. Or it won't even start. Or the author has no idea how to design a custom group balanced for the arc's level range (tip: If you see "level 1-54" and "Enemy group: custom" in the same arc, skip it) and you die horribly on the first spawn. Or the author has taken lessons from the crappy, outdated i0 Dev content and the first mission is a lead-out on a four-story lab map with multiple elevators. And you only get that outdated, poorly balanced, poorly thought out arc after sifting through four pages of farms, spelling errors, Extreme everything, one mission one-note jokes that aren't funny (usually containing the aforementioned 1-54 custom group) and "look how cool me and my SG are."
tl;dr version: Playing AE = effort, Path of least resistance = paper or Council Empire farm.
By the way, to anyone reading this who wants to try AE anyway, there is a newly stickied thread in the MA forum, "A Contact Tree for MA Arcs (by level range and theme)" A lot of those arcs are really good, and none are farms or badly written and plagued with typos. -
Nosferatu has always had a running problem. A few years back I was trying to solo him on my Rad/Traps Corruptor in the Mender Lazarus arc. The moment he got hit by my Acid Mortar he took off and ran all the way across the map.
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Like I said in the comments thread for that Cracked article: Scott Pilgrim's lack of success was mostly due to it coming out on the same weekend as the most anticipated action film of the summer and a highly anticipated chick flick as well. If it had come out one weekend before or after it probably would have done much better.
Then again, it did have Michael Cera as the lead and I know a lot of people who just hate that kid. Including myself.
Quote:Very much agreed. Sometimes adaptations make changes for the better.Originally Posted by Vox Populi
A movie isn't better just because it's faithful to the source. Someone could make a more faithful version of Wizard of Oz, but I doubt it will be as good as the 1939 classic. Kubrick's The Shining was much better and more interesting than the faithful TV version. -
Quote:They did show up in Serpent Drummer's arc during i10 beta. They were removed shortly before or after that issue went live.Originally Posted by twelfth
Those mole machines also show up in a Vanguard mission I believe. I was ANNOYED when after a good seven to ten minutes of smashing at it that I got zero XP.
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Quote:And the XP-less Mole Machines are still there and all four of them each have Elite Boss hit points. Plus you can't autocomplete the damn mission, you have to go in and destroy all four of them to finish the arc.Originally Posted by Obsidius
In this mission, there are Nemesis Mole Machines that, due to their high number of HPs, had great XP rewards, although they had no attacks. People would farm this mission constantly for the Mole Machines, until the devs removed all rewards from them.
It's a retarded mission where you might as well just park yourself next to a mole machine, put an attack on auto-fire, go watch some TV and come back when the machine is dead, move to next machine.... -
Vanguard Sword, I hear that they're awesome for herding.
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Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Removed some powers from the Void Demon minions and lieutenants. Overall difficulty reduction.
Changes made to "All Consuming":
* Updated to include Void Demon changes.
Changes made to "The Portal Bandits":
* Added a few more Rikti spawns to mission 5.
* Removed Nagan Phantasm from mission 2.
* Added optional defendable object to mission 1.
* Added Nagan Shatterfist (Energy Melee/Electric Armor Boss) to the Nagan Hegemony group.
* Changed Nagan Gravitist from Gravity/Kinetics to Gravity/Energy Assault.
* All Skirmisher and Shadow Squad members received a costume upgrade (Overguard set).
* Removed some attacks from all minions.
* Removed some attacks from select lieutenants.
* Removed some attacks from all Ninjitsu Nagans.
* Overall difficulty reduction across entire Nagan Hegemony group.
Changes made to "Of Futures Past":
* Updated to include Nagan Hegemony changes.
Changes made to "Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together)":
* Updated to include Nagan Hegemony changes.
Changes made to "A Fistful of Suziku":
* Updated to include Nagan Hegemony changes.
* Arachnos Automatons no longer include Mu or Fortunatas. -
Quote:People also come to AE with some rather unrealistic expectations left over from the initial farming craze or they just can't see the forest for the trees.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Threads mentioning AE in the general interest forums usually contain a few "this is how I find arcs, there's a lot of good stuff" posts followed by rants about farming or lack of XP.
- No end-of-mission XP bonus: You probably have better XP/time anyway because you don't have to travel to the next mission, don't have to run back across the map from the hospital, or have to travel across the zone (if not to the next zone) to get inspirations.
- No Salvage/Recipe Drops: Unless you're someone with incredible luck, most of the drops you get are utter garbage anyway. With tickets you can do random rolls for recipes/salvage or even buy the exact uncommon/rare salvage that you need.
Want money? A rare salvage item is only 560 tickets and you can check the market ahead of time to see what is in the greatest demand. Better than having your salvage clogged up with dozens of vendor trash commons that hardly any recipes use. Plus screw paying 100,000 inf for salvage that I can just buy for 80 tickets (uncommon) or do a few random rolls for 8 tickets each (common).
As for tickets, there is a problem in that people hear about the 1500 tickets/map cap and don't understand that a) that is for the largest maps (smaller maps have lower caps) and b) no mission outside of a farm on x8 is going to give you 1500 tickets in a single mission anyway. I can get 1500 tickets running "The Portal Bandits" on x3 and that is for all 5 missions. I think that's still pretty damn good considering that it's a challenge arc rather than a farm. -
Quote:He-LLO? Seriously, I even told Dr. Aeon that they need to make people aware of that fix.Originally Posted by Seldom
If the devs fix it so that missions with ally critters aren't inferior anymore? I'm totally on board. but I won't say for the long hall...the development has made it clear that the efforts of the mission writers is secondary to farm damage control, and they won't spare the rod even if it might bruise the good apples too.
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I actually found Fallout 3 to be much more immersive than either Half-Life game. It seemed like in HL every time I really got into it and felt like I was really in there, then on of those pseudo-cutscenes would happen and everyone would be calling me Gordon and either having half a conversation with me or just telling me to do something. I had that same problem with Singularity, a much more recent game.
Other games like Fallout 3 and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gave me dialog choices and used a nickname that was bestowed upon me. I felt like I had much more control, even if sometimes none of the conversation options sounded like something I would say. -
Quote:I don't know what arcs you're running but when I test my own arcs most missions give much more than 20 tickets upon completion. I know that at only +0/x2 difficulty "The Portal Bandits" will easily give 1000 tickets per run.Originally Posted by Dz131
I'm talking about the arc completion exp is >>> the 20 or so tickets I get
Plus there is no AE in Praetoria either.Quote:Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
Plus right now everyone's all over Praetoria starting up a ton of new toons. New toons and AE don't mix quite as well as custom foes tend to be tougher. -
Quote:An arc does not have to be Dev Choice to give XP, they just give tickets instead of drops (which is better in many ways as you can use the tickets to buy the exact drop you want in most cases).Originally Posted by Dz131
It seems its the same arc never changing in the MA top list all the time. Im so sick of playing the same arcs because theyre the only ones that give xp and loot.
If all you do is look at the first page then of course you will see the same arcs all of the time, the Devs don't seem to want to listen to our suggestion to move those arcs off to a separate tab and use the first page for a random listing of arcs from different categories. -
Quote:Please please please please PLEASE. Blueside needs it so badly.
Old zones may see an update to make them look nicer -
Many of my arcs started with a "what if" or "wouldn't it be cool if" idea popping into my head one day. The question "What if the Banished Pantheon tried to enslave the Shivans?" lead to me writing "All Consuming" in a single afternoon, then spending a few hours here and there revising it based upon player feedback over the past several months.
My whole "Naga Saga" began during issue 14 beta when I first started playing with the custom character editor and saw that I could import my own characters into AE missions. Then I thought "why don't I take one of my characters and give then their own villain group!" and so the Nagans were born. That group has only gotten bigger as I fleshed them out over 5 arcs and I ended up turning a lot of my custom critters into playable character as well.
Quote:This is very, very much true. The Dev Choice has worse odds than the lottery and HoF is not going to happen unless the Devs finally cut the requirements down from their current and rather insane level. I really wish that they would just let those who want to continue buying arc slots do so and set the limit somewhere much higher than 8 per person.Originally Posted by uberschveinen
The key is to MAKE THE STORY FOR YOURSELF.
You're never going to get Hall of Fame, and almost certainly never going to get Dev's Choice. You're probably not going to get more than a dozen plays. Hell, my arcs have yet to even be rated by anyone, and I know I didn't skimp on the promotion. If you build your arcs expecting a certain result, you will be disappointed. You have to build them for the arc's own sake. If you can be happy being the only person who ever plays that arc, then you'll be fine.
Just write what you want to write, don't try to write for an audience that can't agree on what it wants. -
Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning were each added when they came out for the GR pre-purchase players. Last I checked Electric Control and Kinetic Melee were still not added in yet.
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Quote:Correct, it fell out of the 5-star range a couple weeks ago when it received it's 191st rating.Originally Posted by Wrong_Number
I believe it was: The Amulet of J'gara by @Lazarus Arc ID: 1709
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Quote:It's also telling how few AE arcs involve Nemesis either.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I think it's telling that a lot of villainous AE arcs have nothing to do with Arachnos at all. Many of them involve your villain doing their own thing.
And even better is that he acknowledges that he would never have gotten to where he is at the end without you.Quote:Originally Posted by Cipher
Absolutely! He's a favorite of mine. Even though the arc has you being his Igor, he's so well-written that the arc is enjoyable. He didn't try to browbeat me or belittle me, he just said, "Hey, buddy, let's do some SCIENCE."