Olantern

I'd been looking for this thread for a while, but I couldn't find it until today. You might consider trying my first arc, "The Love Talker," #20242. Despite being a "modern" Croatoa story, the only really "modern" element is the use of Skipper LeGrange as a contact. The story structure and maps are a pretty standard "rescue from Faerie" story, although there's a twist involving the main villain's identity that I hope mythology mavens will enjoy.

At higher levels, you might try my other arc, "The Heart of Talos," #175660, which extensively features the creations and servants of Hephaestus. However, it's set pretty firmly in the canonical universe; it deals with the Warriors and their artifact smuggling. Also, the custom faction hits very, very hard. I'd call them comparable to Cimeroran Traitors with a couple of extra tricks. Bring friends.

Not mine, but some I've done and can recommend (sorry, don't remember arc #'s):

1) Vanguard AQUA, posted upthread. Neat and interestingly-varied custom Coralax; watch out for stacked Impales.

2) Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space. Probably doable in the upper teens. No, it's not serious, but it is definitely "horror," loosely defined (Ed Wood is the contact!).

3) Small Fears. Can't remember the author. It's a pretty creepy arc with an explicitly horror theme. I recommend saving it until a higher level, though; its custom enemies hit hard.

4) The Zombie Apocalypse Task Force (I think that's the name; check the Community Digest for some posters about it). The zombies in this arc, while they appear in hordes like the currently popular zombie apocalypse types, are explicitly supernatural creatures. I think a monster hunter would find them natural adversaries. Though the arc's marked as good for teams, and I imagine it is, it can be soloed without too much difficulty at, I'd guess, 30 or so and up, due to numerous, powerful allies.

One additional issue that I don't think anyone's mentioned yet is that the new ranged attacks tend to throw off the AI of mixed ranged/melee enemies. For example, yesterday, I did an arc featuring enemies called Gun Bunnies. As the name implies, all them, minions, lieutenants, and bosses, uses Assault Rifles, but each of them had a melee powerset, too, which varied from unit to unit. For instance, the minions were Assault Rifle/Martial Arts. By their behavior, I could tell that some were set to prefer ranged and others to prefer melee. The problem was that the Martial Arts minions appeared set to prefer range and stood back throwing shuriken instead of shooting with their Assault Rifles. Thus, effectively, the new ranged attack was frustrating the author's intent to make a balanced and story-appropriate enemy. It doesn't make much sense when something called a Gun Bunny doesn't want to use its gun because its AI is telling it to use that more powerful throwing star thing all the time.

Now I MUST do this arc with my primary blaster so I can hear the characters call him "Kid Kid Eros."

Thanks for the feedback, PW! It's nice to read a more thorough analysis than someone can fit in the Feedback Tell box, and, of course, I'm happy you enjoyed it. Two notes of interest: "Love Talker," and, indeed, a lot of the first mission, are sort of relics of the original form of the story (it's from a Kid Eros comic script I haven't gotten around to shooting yet). I wanted to go into detail about how Skipper deduced the creature's identity based on Bridget's note and the fact that the Cancanagh smoked a cigar, but I was banging up against the text limit as it was, and the player's already bombarded with information as it is. I like the idea of a blog or text message as a clue. I wanted to work the Irish saying, "She who meets the Love Talker must weave her shroud soon," into the arc description, but it wouldn't fit. Second, I find it interesting that the Souls got themselves killed when you ran it. When I tested the arc, and when I've done it on teams, the Souls seem so powerful that I feel like the players have nothing left to do. In fact, that's why I gave Aillen Dreadful Wail. All told, the variety in performance probably means the Souls are Working As Intended.

More importantly, I wanted to mention to anyone reading this thread that I also ran "Celebrity Kidnapping," and it's wonderful! Aside from being hilarious and well-plotted, it has what's probably the most interesting use I've seen so far of a chained Escort goal in the second mission. In fact, someone who hasn't created any missions might not even notice that that's what it is. One small suggestion: since "Holiday Inn" is a real chain, you might want to change the celebrity's last name. Maybe you could spell it "Holliday." I sort of like the idea of naming her something like "Vacation," but that's just my weird sense of humor . . . At any rate, all of you readers out there should play it (and Axis & Allies, too).

Like Heraclea, I'm leveling a scrapper primarily on MA missions. When I'm looking for an arc of a specific level, I just search for factions that spawn at those levels. For instance, I've found some pretty good low-level content just by searching for the term "Hellions."

I'm getting ready to begin construction of my second AE arc. I have several different arc ideas sketched out, one for high levels, one for roughly the upper 30's, and one for the 20's. Trying to pick just one got me to thinking: which level would you, the MA creation community, like to see more arcs covering? Of course, Custom Critters span all levels, but I find many of them are so powerful that they don't work well in content designed for characters below about 25.

Thoughts?

Greetings, fellow Libertyite. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at "The Love Talker: a City of Heroes Faerie Tale," Arc ID 30242, when you get a chance.

I played "Axis and Allies" this morning and enjoyed it immensely. (There should be a feedback tell from @Djinniman waiting for you.) I particularly liked the map choices. I was, however, disappointed that Gen. MacArthur did not have his trademark pipe (okay, a cigar, since he can't have a pipe).

Liliaceae:
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I think the best solution would be to preserve ratings when an arc is unpublished, in case you wanted to republish it again later.

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Karl_Rove_Man:
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I'd like the Devs to give it a month.

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These two things. To me, the term "republish" doesn't mean starting over, but as things are structured now, it might as well be. If republished arcs retain ratings, though, I'd like to see a "last date edited" line on arcs so I could see if one had been improved since I saw it last.

Perhaps more importantly, the MA system is so new that no one, including the devs, really knows how any aspect of it, including HoF and DC, will work. Give it time for them to build up some data.

And, further round-table introduction:

I am Olantern, author of various CoX comics, the only one of which currently still exists on the internet is "One Light," linked in my signature and on the CCC website. While real-life concerns have kept me from completing the screenshotting process on succeeding issues, my primary series deals with Kid Eros, a hero who deals with romance-related problems. Despite the slightly silly premise of using a cherub as a hero, the stories are fairly grim stuff, dealing with big-time themes like the meaning of love and heroism.

Unlike some of my fellow CCC'ers, I'm not a technical person; I'm a writer by training and inclination. I'm always happy to help with any questions anyone has on structure and story. Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in the CCC!

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Ok, we know.

We should have had said something more by now, about Issue 13. But… like all great architectural endeavors, Issue 13 is taking on a life of its own and we’re not quite ready to spill forth all the information.

So, just a quick note to say thanks for your patience, even though we know you may not really be patient. Trust us, it’s coming; we’re working on it – and there’s more great stuff coming (like you haven’t heard that before, but really, we mean it!)



Thanks!

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Thanks for the update!

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Does anyone sense another i6/i7 mega-gap-due-to-troublesome-tech in the offing? At this point, I don't expect i13 until February. Fortunately, there's plenty of stuff to do between now and then.

It does make me worry a bit more about the effect on CoX of the mass desertions that are likely to result as subscribers flock to the various new superhero MMO offerings next year in search of that mythical "new shiny."

Additionally, as one of the posters above mentioned, I find it amusing that the major features that get announced in advance (City Vault, base raiding, etc.) suffer delays, while excellent, unannounced features show up all the time. No wonder the devs don't like to announce things.

Thank you all very much.

I'm working on editing some demos to create some screenshots for a comic, and I've run into some problems.

I am using Zloth's demo launcher to view the demos and Balshorr's editor to edit them. I can launch a demo from the list in client_demos with no problem. I can also edit any of those demos in the demo editor. I can save those demos with new names, as well, which is what I've been doing, in case I want to go back and make a different set of changes to the original. When I do a "save as" in the demo editor, it appears to create a new demo file. However, I can't launch that file with the demo launcher; it doesn't even appear in the list from client_demos. What am I doing wrong here?

Also, how and from where do I use the demodump feature to collect those screenshots?

Finally, I apparently encountered a bug in demo capture. I recorded a demo on the Cimemora tileset map with the underwater area of a character sitting on a huge rock in one of the side rooms. When playing back the demo, though, that rock doesn't appear. I assumed it was part of the map itself, but I suppose it could be an entity of its own. However, there's no command to spawn such a rock in the demo file. All of this makes me wonder: what is this rock, and why didn't /demorecord capture it?

Thanks for any advice you all may have.

I found this guide in the Guide to Guides. Like the others for the RSF, it's old but not necessarily outdated. I imagine people attempting their first RSF are still using it and the other RSF guides. Therefore, I just wanted to add one note based on my experience today with my first RSF.

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4th Strategy: Everyone form on top of the globe have some one pull to the top of the globe. (This is the worst Strategy I have seen or heard of. The Pro is 2 of the 8 heroes can't get up there. Con is they come up the globe from all different sides
and usually wipes the whole team.)

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While I wouldn't recommend this for a Master of Lord Recluse's Strike Force run, this can be a fairly effective way to recover from a bad pull that brought most or all of the heroes. Try a pull first, but if you get all the heroes mad at you, consider forming up atop the globe rather than resetting. This is especially true if you've been able to take down Numina in your first attack. My team, with a decidedly non-optimal mix of AT's, did very well with this strategy. Yes, we died a few times, but at least we didn't have to worry about Manticore and Synapse while taking out the tanks.

Our team consisted of:

a SS/WP brute (the primary aggro magnet)
a DB/WP brute
two plant/thorn dominators
a dark/dark corruptor
two necro/dark MM's
and a Crab Spider (me).

We defeated them in the following order:

Numina (on a pull to the side of the plaza which drew all but Posi and Sister Psyche)
Positron (after a failed pull that drew all of them, we reconvened atop the globe and defeated him)
Sister Psyche
Citadel
Statesman
BAB
Manticore
Synapse

The two dominators managed to confuse BAB when his purple triangles were down, which helped greatly with Statesman. Even one or two hits from a level 54 hero hurt, even against another level 54 hero.

I guess the upshot of all this is that there is more than one viable strategy for the RSF, despite the design of the last mission.

(Credit for the globe idea goes to my teammate Vella, one of the MM's. )

Thank you very much! That's exactly the information I needed.

While working on yet another comic script, I realized that I wanted to feature a very, very large custom character, about twenty scale feet tall. I can make the costume and get the necessary data for the character's appearance with a quick demo, but, obviously, the costume creator wouldn't enable me to make him as large as he needs to be.

Assuming I make a demo of the character, is there a place in the character data in the demofile where I can reset the character's size to something larger than what can be made with the in-game costume creator? If so, which line is it?

Thanks for your input.

Lovely work as always, BlueBattler.

My one recommendation for you would be to use more dialogue attributions, particularly when a character first speaks within a scene or when more than two characters are talking. Because you're generally good at giving each character a unique voice, it's usually possible to tell who's talking once a line of dialogue is finished, but readers find it helpful to know who the players in a conversation are as soon as possible. Otherwise, you have a phenomenon writers sometimes refer to as "Brenda Starr dialogue," where the dialogue is like unattached word balloons coming from a cityscape, and it's unclear who's supposed to be speaking.

Again, excellent work. I particularly like the portrayal of Synapse.

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Can anyone verify a Stalker AS prior to the bomb vanishing (and it appears to drop back down from the top of the screen when it reappears).

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I can verify this. It happened to my stalker several times last in Cap. Only an actual AS causes the problem. Regular attacks from Hide work fine.

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And they give zero XP and Inf if you somehow manage to destroy one.


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Incorrect, unless it's been changed since the first live invasions last year. They do give experience and influence, but not much more than your average giant monster, and most people seem to believe fighting those is a waste of time. Further, the Dropships move fast, can't be slowed, hit extremely hard, require around 30 or so characters to bring one down, and essentially require you to have a flight power and preferably ranged attacks in order to even scratch them.

The bottom line is that while they do give rewards, the rewards aren't that impressive. The only real reason to fight one is to enjoy doing it. I know that Liberty's Dropship raid last year was the most fun thing I've ever done in this game.

This receives the Kid Eros seal of approval. Nice job.

Thanks to Koschej for posting this and to Castle for getting it into the Digest. Long-term, I agree; Koschej and Niviene probably do need to have their non-moderation posts preserved and accessible somehow.

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Do any other games have an "Offline reward system"? What is that anyways?

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From what I've heard, some other games have something called "Rested XP," where characters either gain xp just by existing on the server or gain xp when other characters on the account gain it. Naturally, the xp gained isn't as much as it would be if the character were earning it himself. In the General Discussion thread on this topic, someone proposed Rested Inf, which would, I guess, work the same way. Neither of those ideas sound great for CoX to me- they either push characters toward a non-existent endgame (the leveling up IS the game) or could cause widespread inflation. But I'm just some guy posting on the fora, so, really, what do I know? Besides, I suppose the devs could come up with something else, too.

Universal access would strongly suggest base upgrades to me, even if they weren't specifically mentioned in the announcement. Side-switching also becomes slightly less of a pipe dream.

Finally, some thoughts about "the IP." I wouldn't read any potential CoX/something else crossovers into that. "The IP" just seems to be NC Soft shorthand for "all products related to CoX." To me, it suggests new or additional ways to promote the game through other products. I wouldn't be surprised to see a "Freedom Phalanx vs. Arachnos" console game or a boxed expansion or other restricted-access content coming sometime within the next fifteen months, but, again, what do I know?

Beautiful as always. As in all the other Samuraiko videos I've seen, the animation, sound, and text are all perfectly coordinated. I particularly liked the use of the Greek lettering in the concluding title shot.

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My spin on it would be that CK's ramshackle body is a reflecton of his self image.

Or it could be that his madness keeps him from making a more perfect body ... or it might be that his powers only work on scrap metal and junk, essentially ... and that he wouldn't be able to animate a more refined form ...

I would like to see what you come up with, though. I did play around with the creator myself to try to see what CK as the Clockwork Kid would look like ...

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I was thinking much the same thing.

In the third Kid Eros comic (still to be screenshotted; the first is below and the second "in the can"), the King projects himself into the psychic plane, the place referred to in the Carnie arc, "Upon the Psychic Plane." Because the psychic plane is supposed to reflect mental states rather than physical reality, I felt like I had to come up with a unique rendition of the King, one that reflected all the aspects of his mind. I haven't built the character in the costume creator yet, but he's described in words as "a young man in armor with a scar across his face, glowing with energy." That is, he looks like the armored Clockwork Kid described in BlueBattler's story, but his face is horribly scarred, mirroring the mental scars on his psyche. Of course, I also wanted to shock Kid Eros (and the reader) by having the "real" King look suprisingly different from the brain-in-a-jar we all know and love.

I'd really like it if there were some damaged robotic parts available in the costume creator, so I could extend this idea further, but it looks as if the face will have to do for the moment.

Kid Eros in "Crush" will appear as soon as I get the screenshots taken and find a new place to host my comics, probably sometime in the early fall.

I am disappointed by this announcement for the following reasons.

I don't want to hear other players, and I certainly don't want to be expected to talk to them. The thought of having to listen to my SG friends' Texas accents every time I team with them makes me cringe. Worse, I don't want every pick-up group I join to expect me to be listening to them whining, breathing, making crude jokes, etc. Additionally, I like being able to scream senselessly at the game/other players/the enemies/the weather/whatever. I have people looking over my shoulder all day at work; CoX time is my time to cut loose. Finally, I don't have a microphone and don't want to wear a headset when I play.

This is the first feature I've ever heard about that's not only filled me with apprehension but also made me wonder if I will continue playing. I'll have to wait and see what it's like when it's introduced, but for the moment, I'm more pessimistic than usual.

I'm happy for everyone who thinks this is a wonderful thing, though.