Lycaeus

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Any tips for what to look for in the selection screens to find actual arcs? I'd like to be able to run things that aren't just Dev choices - those may be great, but I'd also like to have a hand in finding the next up and coming great picks - which means I need to know how to delve into the unknown masses, and yet still come up with gems, or at least missions with actual stories.


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I'm going to ignore the prejudice against farms in this thread, I support all non-exploitive playstyles - sometimes I want to kill a bunch of the same mobs in an attempt to get to the next cool power quickly, sometimes I'm looking for a durned good story. Variety, spice, life, and all that.

Tips for finding that durned good story:
1) Using the clunky MA search system (which is the main problem why people are finding stuff they don't want to find)

- Go for the 4 star ratings.
Farm maps tend to get 5 starred by a big group of people who are just happy to have fast moving teams. Story arcs get picked apart, with good ones getting 4-5 on average and a couple of poor scores from people who just didn't like it.

- Go for the zero stars when you want to find undiscovered treasure.
Use the description tips below, but you have to sift through quite a bit of stuff - drafts, tests, the works.

- Find long or very long (4-5 mission) arcs.
Generally, people who took the trouble to make that many missions have a story (with plot changes between missions) to tell.

- READ the descriptions.
Is it in full sentences? Spelling and grammar look alright? Does it actually make you want to play it to find out what's going on? Do they bother to specify what's in the mission, EB/AV, choices, SFMA tag, story-focused, whatever?

- Check the groups used. A mixture of standards/customs, or just one type? Most arcs that tell a story will mix both or use a hefty mix of standard factions unless it's a faction-focused story.

- Maps used can be a hint. Small sized maps, or big sprawling outdoor ones?

- Using a couple of random keywords can be a good way to cut things down. "choice" will net you a bunch of arcs that might set up a fail/success choice at the end. Searching up a faction might get you faction-focused stories. "mercenary" "robot" or whatever else you feel like.

2) Use third-party recommendations.
There's a mission arc review area in this very forums. There are websites for arc authors to advertise their arcs, and only those very keen on sharing their stuff will take the trouble to register and type in their arc details.

Before I stopped messing about with MA, the sad thing I noticed about the DC arcs were that they were chosen early, and locked so that the author couldn't edit it further.

This means that many of the DC arcs on the front page of MA only show off bits and pieces of -early- potential, while being chock full of missing mob descriptions and spelling errors that story-focused people tend to notice and mark down ordinary arcs for.

Being locked and uneditable, the author is also unable to react to any changes on the Test Server and tweak the arc for playability. Over time, the custom mob changes and so on are steadily making the DC arcs more unplayable.

I've found a lot more clever and well-written arcs that have barely 10 plays to their name, written much later than the DC arcs. Their only sin? Languishing unnoticed in the deluge of other creative work. I sent all of the authors a personal feedback of praise, but not everyone thinks to do that.

I'm not surprised that DC arcs provoke quite a bit of jealousy and thus attract more criticism. What makes one author lucky enough to have a dev play it and like it and dev choice it, while another doesn't? It's a lottery. Pure random happenstance.

What makes it worse is that Hall of Fame doesn't work. If there were a lot more HoFs than DCs, I don't think anyone would think anything of the DCs except maybe that the devs have odd tastes. As of now, DC seems the premiere recognition award to strive for, and a lot of the early ones don't match up to what players would rate 5 stars.

Let's add on to that the creation of anything involving the MA system:

Involves considerable effort to populate and choose maps (which may be gone the next patch), and fill in good writing into all the blanks, using a clunky, character-limited text editing interface (for those who are serious about it),

plus the repeated runs to test for balance/challenge factor (which can again change without warning from patch to patch)

all in an attempt to either enjoy the map for oneself (except repeated playthroughs may just hit an invisible tripwire that calls CS attention to your map)

or to attract other players to your arc for fame and recognition, with a borked rating system, a proportion of players who are no longer interested in playing anything MA due to reasons stated above, and the added risk that as you get more popular, people may mark you down or find something in your arc to "report for content."

Following which, your arc might get pulled due to overreaction about possible farms (be it CS following their hunches or a player reporting what they perceive to be a farm) or some other nebulous "you know it when you see it" guidelines.

My personal reaction? Meh. Too much trouble for now.

Perhaps in I15 or Going Rogue, they'll put in more flexibility for choosing powers and branching dialogue choice systems for better storytelling, and/or have worked out all the "farm/not farm" kinks.

I'd prefer that -some- xp/rewards remained in challenge missions so that people who aren't lvl 50 (I play lots of sub-50 chars, lvl 35+ is more than enough to start testing one's build) have something interesting to play and still progress through the game.

It doesn't have to go above and beyond what a "normal" mission arc awards, even if the risk faced is higher.

That said, if the only workable solution is to remove xp entirely from challenge missions or stuff that comes so close to the line that it would get banned as a farm or an exploit otherwise, then yeah, take the rewards away completely.

Less people would play it, less often. But it's still there for the novelty and challenge factor for those that want to.

I would play them, but probably not as often as having -some- rewards, with lvl 50 characters.

Give him a really bright noticable aura in his costume?

Give him a powerset that makes him glow like a disco ball?

Or /ff or sonics with the big dispersion bubble. (That might be a little too laughably noticable though )

Singles should show up if they are lieutenants.

Single minions seem a little low if you're using the standard group of Paragon Police, and default difficulty level 1.

You can indeed test with a team, even on unpublished arcs. Grab some friends or helpful people from globals, and invite them to a team. You can hit the 'test' button on your local arc and that should start it. They won't earn any xp or tickets, but they get virtual ticket and other testing badges.

Trial Account Restrictions

Unfortunately, it does seem like trial accounts are not able to start or create Mission Architect missions by themselves.

There are quite a lot of restrictions on trial accounts that can be annoying to players who actually want to try out the game (no tells, fer example), but we also faced a huge influx of gold (influence) spammers who were using these trial accounts to disrupt everyone's gameplay experience, hence the steps to curb this.

My best suggestion, since you can't use any global channels on a trial account is to use the help channel. "/hc <message>" Explain your trial account status, and ask for someone helpful to show you some of the good mission architect arcs.

Sitting around in one of the AE buildings speaking in local might work, but that's just going to get you swept up in the latest craze of farm teams. Not exactly much story in those arcs. And not much point if you're restricted to progressing past lvl 14, hey?

For actual arc creation, you're going to have to pony up some cash, alas. This is probably because they didn't want people publishing arcs from trial accounts. You can see a bit of the UI from the issue 14 trailer if you're just interested in seeing how it looks.

Probably nowhere is it completely compiled.

You could jump around and read up all the contact's mission text on Paragon Wiki or Red Tomax (http://coh.redtomax.com/story_arcs/) and see if you can put all the Nemesis stuff together and make some sense out of it all.

http://coh.redtomax.com/factions/fac...hp?faction=nem

The collectibles shouldn't take up any spawn space. Not sure about the others. Seems unlikely at a guess, though one would have to take out all of the objectives to confirm. The boss and ally may take up a spot, maybe not.

Mostly it's the number of people walking into a mission setting the number of enemies that show up at a particular spawn point. On odd difficulties, a soloer gets 1 minion and 1 lt, or a 3 minions. On even difficulty levels, it's the equivalent of 4 minions, or so.

Spawn points tend to be already set for a particular map and can be quite spread out.

Setting the enemy groups surrounding the boss and ally to 'hard' might increase the number of enemies spawning there.

I recall that my own experiment put one surrounding custom boss at easy, two surrounding bosses at medium, and I didn't dare go to hard to find out what would appear. :P

Ambushes are another way to increase the number of enemies appearing, I believe, but be careful of overwhelming the player.

Put in a Defeat Boss objective. There should be an option to type in a new name for that particular boss.

As well as select the exact type of boss from a standard group, and (pet peeve when it's missing) type up a new mob description up to 300 chars long.

Been leveling a brute redside, and found some outstanding story arcs with a 'villainous' tag. Had to be quite picky about easy-to-fight enemies as well because a brute that hadn't reached stamina, and with only DO slotted defence tended to end up with a green and blue bar race to see which one shrank first.

Arc ID:111022
Name: Doctor Geist and the Scientific Method
Author:@Scuzzbopper
Morality: Villainous
Synopsis: Description: Help Wanted: Research Assistant. Apply to Doctor Geist, Fort Cerberus , Mercy Island. Opportunities for advancement! Excitement guaranteed! Reasonable pay. Must love SCIENCE!

What I liked:
Great writing. Use of canon characters. The whole humorous 'mad scientist' vibe and how the contact used 'the scientific method' to dictate what missions to do.

Arc ID:43104
Name: Dirk's Ravens
Author:@wf
Morality: Villainous
Synopsis: In the aftermath of the Rikti War, a rogue U.S. general, betrayed and abandoned by his country, is raising a private army to take revenge against the government he once served.

What I liked:
Great writing. The shades of grey morality... I am a villain 'rescuing' someone for the contact, but was it really good for that someone ultimately? The moral choice at the final mission - sort of between lawful evil and chaotic evil - do you hold to your word/contract and pull someone out of a sticky situation, or abandon them and save thy own skin...

One thing that was slightly off-putting was Dirk's Ravens themselves, sort of like versions of Charlie's Angels with different colors as prefixes. Seemed slightly cheesy, as I don't actually like Charlie's Angels, but it is just a subjective reaction. (I like mad scientists fine, you may like Charlies Angels, etc.) It wasn't obvious character or SG insertion or anything, you as the villain are still the main mover of the arc.

Arc ID:128109
Name: All in the Family
Author:@Zereck Goldmoon
Morality: Villainous
Synopsis:A Family capo has gotten a task from his bosses that could very well push him to consigliere. He has asked for you because of your reliability and loose morals, and he wishes for a number of unlucky witnesses to be put in the morgue. However, this isn't any old hit, and the capo may be well regretting ever entering into the mob...

What I liked:
Great writing. Moral choice at end of arc - mercy or true villainy.
Miss Westin Phipps? Well, this arc comes pretty close. And more importantly, you can choose whether to take that final depraved step...

(I was playing a robot following the function of its programming, and obeying orders. A tool that can be used for good or evil depending on who is in control. But boy, it was hard on the player to carry that final mission out. I did feel guilty as heck! )

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And if you liked my recommendations... (or if you are the authors) because I am very picky about high quality writing and I 5-starred all of them without hesitation at the end of the playthrough...

...I will put in a shameless plug for my own arc in my sig below. I do not think my formatting or my writing matches up to the above standards, but maybe only 10% worse, hey?

Thanks for the comments!

Yes, Ernesto Hess does indeed talk in clipped sentences. I glanced through Paragonwiki and tried to simulate it. Glad I succeeded somewhat because I tend to wall-o-text on my own.

(I come from a UK-style upbringing so a couple of those weird spellings tend to slip through. To make matters more fun, hanging around on the intarweb converts other words into US spelling automatically. Thanks for catching that anonymous typo, though! Will go fix!)

Nav bar text is just a personal thing. I like mine clear and spelled out. Less mysterious, but easier for teams to know what to do. Ditto being redundant on the boss defeat, I'm scared of essential stuff flying right past a chaotic team.

The note... I spent a while pondering. Hess is not exactly a reliable contact (he is a double agent in the Council, and his second loyalty is not exactly heroic either) and to assume every hero would happily pass Hess the note immediately seemed like putting words into their mouths. This way, one can assume a gap of seconds or hours/days passing before Hess brings the note issue up.

Clues on certain boss defeats: They certainly could be there. I was winding down on exhaustion just filling up the required texts the first go, but I can certainly add more fun stuff another pass around. Thanks for pointing that out as a gap to fill.

Final mission-wise: Yes, the flamethrower and ally AI is horrific. They act just like mm pets (AIEEEEEE, I'M ON FIRE.) Alas.

I will see what I can do to adjust the allies. I'm not adverse to giving one of them a control boost, but I've seen them massacre the end boss by themselves if they synergize too much and have too high hp. I don't want to steal the player's thunder with allies. They are really just meant to get underfoot and soak some of the MM pet fire so that the player can focus on the EB.

The blaster taking aggro problem I did encounter on my playtest runs with a 47 AR/elec. As of now, the only suggestion I can give is the one my blaster uses on practically every other EB out there, 3-4 luck shield, a breakfree, however many reds you feel like, and flame on... A blaster's complete lack of mitigation minus IOs bonuses and utility skills can be tough.

Everything is meant to scale down to lt level on heroic. If you would like the Malta bosses as bosses, do try it on rugged. Don't blame me if you faceplant, because my blaster certainly did quite regularly - I had to make sure shocking grasp and cryo freeze ray stacked on the bosses or else, ouch. Hence, recommended for 40+. Malta can be ebil.

Thanks again for the feedback, and for the playthrough! Good to know what folks encounter through their runs!

Oh, I don't know, there was an arc I played where I had to rescue some lady 4 times, and the green rescue text kept alluding to it. You rescue X. You rescue X....again. You rescue X, this is starting to get annoying. X says 'Oops, I'm making a bad habit of this, aren't I." etc.

I was greatly amused. Maybe not sympathetic, but amused.

Depending on the drama quotient level, I might actually -hurt- the young fellow or let him do a noble sacrifice sort of deal. Maybe he traded places with someone in a kidnapping and that's gonna cost/scar him later on. All the better if the hero's initial annoyance/negligence provoked the action.

It's more than a little hard to do without decent branching choices, I would think. So yeah, run with whatever you're thinking and let the chips fall where they may - no one is going to universally love/hate a character.

Even Fusionette and Westin Phipps can draw completely different reactions.

Hero Therapy

Interesting arc. I liked the forced level ranges actually, as it gave a sense of progression. But certainly doing it as a 50 lets you feel that shift most keenly.

The little nightmares patrols/ambushes certainly do live up to their name. Was somewhat under-equipped as a blaster to deal with them in mission 2, without most of my AoE tools, but got by from a distance after one trip to the hospital. Had to get the ally to deal with most of them the next few times, stacked kinetics can be scary.

I got the sense that I was moving through a very feminine kind of mind, perhaps all the end bosses being female until the last mission, perhaps it was just all the junk littering the second mission.

(Maybe it's just me, very personal reaction here. Didn't quite feel like -my- mind per se. So it was a bit of a struggle to immerse. I can see it working for certain kinds of character backgrounds though.)

Everything was quite functional and playable. Not too difficult or insane or anything. Thank goodness for optional allies. I liked the touch of each boss you defeated coming back to help you on the next one.

Found some of the object placements quite funny/cute. Seeing a car in the sewers, and the parking ticket stand following that was classic.

Couple typos I noticed listed below...

Mission 3 intro text:
Typo - I have 'tne' feeling that (the)

Mission 3: Happy memory collection item
Typo - Something broke 'you' concentration (your)

Mission 4: Ending mission text
Typo - explore the other aspects of 'you' mind (your)
Typo - if you ever have a 'recurrance.' (recurrence)

Decent writing all around. Can't quite shake a creepy feeling from that Therapist though. As if he's got an ulterior motive for making me mess around with my head. The 'hamburger and fries' bit freaked me out. Maybe that's a sequel opportunity right there.

Hope it helps. Can't really comment more because it looks very functional already as is. I can just give my subjective reaction to playing it, that's all.

Please give mine a go some time as well. (See sig.) Rugged is a good standard. Heroic for an easy solo run. Unyielding for an epic feel, but don't blame me if you die. Thanks!

I do not believe my arc is the uberest challenge ever (see sig), but I would be most appreciative if your group tried it out and gave me some feedback as to how tough/easy it felt.

The standard enemy is Malta, so if you're playing it in the late 30s and not 40+, this may add on to the challenge factor slightly. Go for unyielding difficulty to raise the spawn sizes. Feel free to ditch the completely-optional NPC allies in mission 3 and 4.

The first mission and last should be the trickiest. The first because of high extra aggro possibility due to map layout, and the last should have a fairly fun end boss fight.

Thanks!

I think the critical levels to test are level 4, 3 and 1.

Why? Even difficulty levels: tenacious and unyielding add on an extra enemy to every spawn. That can really make for some unexpected synergies if you're using customs.

I do a few runs on unyielding, assuming that tenacious will look the same, just easier-con.

Rugged gives the middle-of-the-range, bosses will be bosses, the extra mob will not be there, you can assume Invincible will look the same plus AVs being AVs instead of EBs (Besides anyone playing on Invincible alone and dies, asks for it.)

Heroic should show the easiest level your arc can drop to. Bosses turn into lts, probably EBs into bosses too, iirc. This can have some unexpected survivability issues with NPC allies sometimes.

Since I want my arc playable by most people, I tune for heroic to become a general cakewalk - blaster and defenders should get by easily.

On rugged, it should be slightly challenging, smart playthrough with liberal inspiration use should probably see anyone get through with no deaths.

On unyielding, stuff should be exciting, and epic and a challenge. If I die 4 times on a blaster getting through the map, fair enough, but I gotta get through eventually.

I play a ton of doms, and have controller friends, so all my customs have powersets chosen for gaping mez holes without me even needing to test for it. My blaster relies on limited mez for survival anyway, so if the blaster gets by, any stronger control class will get by.

I set my arc to 40+, so I tested with characters in the 40-50 range. Made it easier to limit testing, else I would feel obliged to do a test every ten levels or so just to see what spawned and what powers they have.

My video, O Wretched Man, was roughly storyboarded but with stick figures as well, since I can't draw either.

My version of storyboarding probably doesn't look like anything the pros do, and was more back of the napkin style. Broke it down into scenes, with descriptions of what was happening within, a few stick figures showing who goes where and what.

Mostly it was just to have a guideline to follow when struggling to make the demoedits from scratch. The camera angles were mostly by experimentation. I was going for proof-of-concept by demoediting the entire scene's animation by hand.

In retrospect, I would be a little looser on where the scenes started and ended, as I had practically nothing to cut during the video edit stage, and ended up speeding up and slowing down clips to fit the music, praying it wouldn't be too disruptive.

It's pretty agonizing for sure.

My own solution has been to provide NPC allies for soloers, mostly buffers and set to fight defensive so that they don't overshadow the player, and a tough EB or two that likes to go into melee so they 'tank' from time to time.

Groups tend to lose the allies quickly, or they become practically unnoticable in the mass chaos.

Of course, there are people who LOATHE the thought of NPC allies, so you cannot please everyone. Too bad. Ultimately, I personally like NPC allies, and I build the arc for me first, other players later.

I test with a blaster, defender, and then a scrapper for the heck of it. I find the first two the most important as the blaster is especially vulnerable without active mitigation opportunities, and I wouldn't want any low-damage defenders bored to tears trying to kill a mob for an eternity.

Another trick for ramping up difficulty for teams that I've found is the use of mixed standard/custom mob "custom groups." I left it as random standard minion/lt of a faction, and threw in a few custom bosses. My limited playtesting has shown those bosses appearing in teams of 4+ players, and nonappearance for 1-2 players.

And not to ruin too much of my end boss surprise, but I gave him a custom group of bodyguards surrounding him that was different from his group. This scaled in a surprising manner, but worked remarkably well for my purposes.

A solo player on heroic only faces 1-3 of those bodyguards, a team of four met 9-15 of them to much initial shock&awe. None of them were set to extreme though, so they were very fightable and defeatable.

I'm still waiting to con a team of 8 into testing the spawn rate on that last boss...

I'm 12 hours ahead of EST, which makes time prediction a little tricky. Do have a long Labor Day weekend coming up, though, so I will keep an eye out for folks. Have joined your global channel, so do yell if you see me and vice versa.

Drag the third mission into the first position (over the first mission) and test. Put it back when you're done.

I'll be happy to help test this out. Have a few 50s on Virtue. I'll keep an eye out for you whenever I'm online.

I have an identical problem with checking boss spawns on my arc too, so if there's time after testing yours, I'd love a run through mine too.

I'd specify the difficulty level you did it on, as well as the AT.

Personally, when I hear "reasonably soloable AV," I assume it is an actual AV that is soloable, not the downgraded EB version.

(There are a few, very few, like Indigo which lack purple triangles and can be held and soloed, or perhaps do not have excessive +regen that make soloing AVs the domain of a couple specialist powersets.)

I'd hesitate to venture any judgement of soloability using a scrapper, since they're a premiere soloing class, along with brutes. I know my own perspective on survivability was quite twisted a certain way by having an invul/ tank as main, until I started playing tons of squishier ATs.

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(we) do exclusively MA content nowadays. We don't do it to PL..., we don't do it to farm. We actually search for misisons/stories that sound interesting, make an ID list, play through it, rinse, repeat.

MA is what is keeping us here. It's fresh. We can do stories and fight Mobs never encountered before. With the Dev created content having become stale for us, and rarely updated with any consistency in Issues, the Dev created storylines just don't keep us here anymore, right now. We've seen them. Ad nauseum.

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This.

I personally am back for MA. After four years of playing CoX with dedication, all the ins-and-outs of the regular game got too predictable. I knew where the spawns were, the turns in the map, and what the enemies would do. Got boring.

Switched to other MMOs for some fresh air, where mob layout was not as predictable and more tactical thinking was necessary.

Version 1 of the MA changes around at least the story content wrapper and the powersets of the mobs. I'm eager for later versions where we might have the ability to change map layouts and arrange where certain mobs spawn. That would make one of my dreams come true.

I have been entertained by MA as a player, as a critic/reviewer and as a wannabe creator (soon TM).

It's what you make of it.

There are many who use MA to farm and PL and don't care that they're making a huge awful ruckus over broadcast while doing it. If not MA, they'll be doing it with radio missions or in PI. It's a strange mindset of trying to get to level 50 fast (what are you going to do there? PvP? PL another char to 50?) but in some people, it's so ingrained a habit or it's their way of entertaining themselves. *shrugs* I don't join those teams. And quit without a word if I do find myself on one.

There -are- teams who do play MA for stories. Just need to find them.

As for playing through dev content, I'd submit it was probably difficult the moment radio missions came in as an alternative choice. Because the old dev content, while having nice stories sometimes, is very tedious to get from mission to mission. Vets who have done it once or twice will probably not choose to do it again given an alternative, unless they are playing with friends/SGmates who ask them nicely.

Ouroboros provides an option to play through those, solo or in an agreeable team.

One thing we are all discovering: The more options we have, the harder it will be to find a team doing the exact same thing we want to do at any given moment.

But I think it's rather backward to say, well, then let's NOT have those options and FORCE everyone to play my way or else. Because that's rather narrowminded and dictatorial, and people who don't like your way will not stay, diminishing the overall playerbase anyway.

In the end, we just have to be a little more creative finding teams that like the way we play. Specifying what you want to do may be a good start.

I'm not keen with the option of voice chat either.

It didn't take long in LOTRO once voice chat was introduced, to end up with a 'peer pressure' system to have voice chat enabled while teaming - there was an icon visible - so everyone could plainly see that you couldn't hear them, and start spamming text chat, going "turn on your voice-enabled option, please."

Then after you turned it on, immersion was quite ruined with player voices not matching their characters... not to mention, I personally can barely make out what some people mumble through their mics as instructions.

I generally play using speakers, and I don't want to have to adjust my sounds until some idiot's voice comes out loud and boomingly clear to disturb the rest of my household.

And it's a hellacious inconvenience to yank out earphones or a headset to switch. I don't like using voice to talk either, I type faster than I formulate words and convert them into speech. I find generally most players are fine with this non-speaking, but that they want you to be able to hear them (which is sometimes a pain.)

I'm encouraged by that the bulk of the reaction of the CoX community (going via forum response at least) seems to be "meh." That suggests there won't be a wholesale changeover to embrace voice chat off the cuff.

Still, there are fans of voice chat, and I can definitely predict another divisive line being drawn in the sand here. Voice-only vs non-voice-only.

I have tanks on Freedom and Virtue if you need some extra bodies to shift Rikti around. Aggro cap makes it a bit hard for just one person, though if you annoy the comm officers, they will happily make more Rikti too.

Think it depends on what you specifically envision the shot to be. Herding tends to create a packed pile of melee Rikti, running in a line, and the ranged Rikti spread out at the back, not moving until LOS is blocked, then they do the conga line too.

If you want them to run straight at you for any distance, all spread out in dramatic fashion (not conga line piling), it'll probably have to be demo-editing.

30 will add up to quite a bit of work. One possibility is to beg 30 people to move how you want, and then replace the models.

Another way (the way I got my 5-6 Arachnos to charge together) is to mark start and ending positions with /loc, and use Zloth's demo editor to put in every single model's running path.

Firing weapons adds a layer of complexity to the demo-editing as you'll have to specify the effects too.

Oh, one other possibility might be to try and herd Rikti to the forts. If they don't die too fast, they do tend to spread out shooting at the multitude of targets.