Ledain

Hm.. Anything but Shield Defense? I certainly learned that the hard way!

Regen's probably the best bet, unless you wanted to add an additional attack power instead, like Earth Control.

Just remember, you won't be able to please everybody.

Are these just regular spawns? Or are you using advanced objectives, like patrols or battles?

If they're objectives, then you probably have them set to rogue, in which case they will attack anything on the map.

If not? Then it might be a bug. It'd be the first I heard of it, though.

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it is really simple to click unpublish, edit the local copy, then republish.

I really wish that publishing it ran a great risk that people would play it. I have 2 published arcs - one has been played once (and rated 4 stars) and the other never played.

And I put Test in the title if it isn't finished.

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It's not even a matter of ratings, for me. If I published a half-baked arc, and even one person played it and thought it was crap, my reputation would take a hit. If word spreads, then I've gone from one person disliking my work to several. And that'll happen for every one person who plays the arc. My name's exposed on every arc that I publish, regardless of whether I unpublish and republish it, and most people have better memories than you'd think.

If such a method really works better for you, then great. But for others, things aren't so black and white.

No problem. Good luck getting the mission size down. I know what a pain in the thumb that is...

Just finished the arc.

There were some bits of dialogue that waved yellow flags, just like you thought. Mostly the censoried cursing. While censoring makes the actual word itself disappear, it still leaves the same impression as if you'd not censored it at all. If you can rephrase those lines in a way that gives the same effect without relying on the curses, and possibly even makes the situation seem comical, then you'd be in business.

I'd say the same for all the talk of "killing," though it's not quite as big an issue. It tends to steer strictly towards a more mature audience, when you could be using terms or phrases that aim more towards a middle ground.

Other than that, I'd advise you to run through your text, and do some spellchecking. The Alpha Men had no character descriptions to them, so you may also wanna add one in.

As for the arc itself? I enjoyed it. The story was different and well structured, the missions offered a good variety without being too difficult, and the custom characters were unique rather than copies of already used enemies.

A 5-star rating well earned. Was there anything else in particular you wanted feedback on for this arc?

Ouch... Mapservered at the end of the second mission...

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In my mission it's the opposite, inactive and active dialogue occur simultaneously as soon as you come into visual range of the entity.

My only concern is that people are mentioning these bugs as negative elements in their feedback and I don't know how to alter them...

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Yeah, I'm seeing that in the first mission. If it's becoming an issue, I'd suggest picking either one dialogue, or the other. Or even none at all. They're just patrols after all. But, it's up to you.

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One such entity is explainable like that, but it also happens with patrols and battles.

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Assuming the patrols and battles have no conditions before initiating, the inactive dialogue may be set to fly as soon as the patrol/battle begins. You can consider it a bug, or perhaps a feature that they should have added a setting for.

I've found problems in my own missions where the inactive dialogue for bosses won't launch until the boss begins attacking. It's a little depressing.

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

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As said above, I have too much pride as a writer/designer. I'd never make a work publicly available unless I either felt it was perfect, or wanted to get feedback from others.

That, and the badges.

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Also as soon as the player enters the floor on which there is any npc with dialogue, the dialogue is spoken. Both active and inactive simultaneously no matter how far away the npc is. Is this something I'm doing?

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Is it an ally with a Single setting for the surrounding enemy? If so, it's because the ally event is activated immediately, because the surrounding enemy group doesn't exist -- IE, is already defeated. I had a problem with this as well, and ended up having to add an easy enemy group in order to solve it.

I just got home from work, so I'll test out your mission in a few minutes and try to come up with some feedback.

Kinda like the snake eggs in that early Villain mission on Mercy Island, right? I'm curious to know, as well. Hmm...

Yeah, it seems like the animations issue is just a bug. Same with the ally AI. I'd say the inactive dialogue as well, but it seems to work fine for other people.

So I guess, all I can really do is tweak the generic enemies, and see if I can't get a working indoor map. I think I may have come up with a way to improve my mission's description.

Then I just really need more people to try the mission out, and give me the feedback accordingly.

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First of all can i get the arc ID it will be easier if i can see it for myself.

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The arc ID is 2583.

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<a href="The EBs all seem to ignore the starting animations I've set for them. Each one always appears to start with the default animation." target="_blank">This might help</a>

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Link's not working...

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The ally has a habit of standing just outside its own attack range, giving the impression that he is just "standing around." This is probably the biggest issue this mission has.

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Make sure they are on Aggressive other wise they don't do much.

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He's set to aggressive. He just stands a step or two out of the range of his melee attacks. Kind of like a player mashing their attack buttons when they're too far from the target.

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Keep them as EB you can put in your descrption somthing saying "NOTE: This contains a mission with 7 EB and an AV you can try to solo it but i recommend a team of X" This way they know and they can't really complain.

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Yeah, I'd thought of that, but the summary in the description is intended to grab attention. If there were a little more than 300 characters of space, I could work that in no problem.


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This has happened to me before to. It could be because you have an open map that the enemies can you right away if it was enclosed they would not notice you because of the walls.

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Yeah, that would make sense. However, I've played other outdoor missions that do not have this problem.

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From what I'm getting this is you have a EB apear one at a time which a way you can get around this is making them come in as an ambush but I'm not sure how this will work. Anther thing you can do is make it so you have all you EBs out and after killing them all the main guy comes out or have so a few EBs are out then after killing them more come out.

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It's a good idea, but it would be difficult to set up, since you can't summon specific mobs with an ambush. Also, if I could set up a Defeat all Enemies objective to activate after the first EB, which acts as a trigger for the final AV to come out, that would work as well. But since it's an outdoor map, that would also make it take even more time than some soloists are willing to spend.

The EB string I have going for the mission right now seems to do the trick, though.

I've noticed a few MA missions giving warnings about EBs/AVs in the mission description. Others can't do this due to the 300 character limit for the descriptions. (My own included.)

If there's no way to include indicators, it'd at least be nice to have longer descriptions so we can manually include these courtesies without inhibiting the actual arc summaries.

If I'm understanding this right, you want the Navigation Text to change upon reaching the boss? I don't think that's possible at this time.

The Mission Architect is finally here! The creative minds in the community are all anxious to publish their works for all the rest of the world to see. Many of these hope to achieve the ratings necessary to receive additional publication spots to they may continue to produce these creative works. I'm no exception.

I decided that, before working on any of the grander projects I have planned, I would start with something short and sweet. Something with a good balance of fun, humor, and awesome, all at the same time. So, I came up with Challenge of the Norse Gods as my first Mission Architect project.

The work was a lot more expansive than I originally thought it would be. I worked on it for well over a total of 20 hours, and couldn't even release a finished product before MA hit the live servers. I ended up having to shave off a lot from what I'd originally planned, due to the file size limitations.

So after some sweat and blood, I created a passable work with an assortment of custom characters and fleshed out with plenty of text. As I post this, the published product is at 20 votes and 4 stars. I keep telling myself that 4 stars is good (though I wonder if I wasn't hit by a 1-star bandit at some point...) but the fact is, it's a far cry from 1000 votes and 5 stars.

I've been making adjustments to it as I go. Many of the voters left some helpful feedback, though several of them related with issues I can't seem to help. Sure, MA just hit live, and I should probably give it some more time to see what others think. But, the designer within me just won't let this go!

And so, here I am, making my first forum post ever, hoping that the other creative minds in the community can offer the advice I need to make this mission shoot off into the Hall of Fame, and possibly even make Dev's Choice. Thanks and cookies in advance for anyone who's willing to try and help with this.



Here's some of the problems that I know are present with the mission. If you have the time to give it a whirl, please do. It's a relatively short mission, and is soloable by just about anyone with the help of the mission's ally. The arc ID is 2583.

- The ally has a habit of standing just outside its own attack range, giving the impression that he is just "standing around." This is probably the biggest issue this mission has.

- The use of shield defense by generic critters causes accuracy issues for many players. I only had room for 3 generics out of the 7 I had planned, so I chose the ones I felt best suited the mission. I can get around this issue by swapping ones in use out for others. I'd considered substituting members from the Warriors in, but that would cause level range issues.

- The use of an Outdoor map makes the mission seem frustrating in length. I picked Forest 02 because it was pretty much the only setting that felt fitting. Well... there was outdoor Eden too, but then you'd have no minimap in addition to the problems already present with outdoor maps.

- The mission might be considered abusable. There's 7 elite bosses, and one archvillain. My original intent behind these bosses was to give the feeling of an 8-man super team among the Norse Gods. At the same time, I wanted each of them to give a real epic feel in their fights, but didn't want the mission to be too difficult. I actually had to tone down their powers for the sake of making the misison soloable, so now some players may find the fights stupidly easy. Should I consider reducing these critters to Boss instead of Elite Boss?

- Originally, I set this mission up so that only one of the EBs was present on the map at once. That would make it harder to abuse the mission, especially since I could not fit in any of the boss generics. But at the same time, coupled with the outdoor map, it makes the mission unnecessarily long for regular players.

- The EBs all seem to ignore the starting animations I've set for them. Each one always appears to start with the default animation.

- The enemy inactive dialogue doesn't seem to pop up until the player has been spotted. I've played through a few missions that other people have posted, and this problem doesn't persist through all of them. Yet, it seems to happen all the time in mine. Anyone else noticed this?



I'll add to this list as further issues come up. I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two at the time of this posting anyways.