PRAF68_EU

That would support my intuition, that the bug is with defendable objects.

What I think must be happening is the defendable object is failing to flag a spawn point as taken, when it spawns. which means that another defendable object, or another kind of spawn that uses the same type of spawn point has a chance of spawning at the same point.

In the situation where you have just one defendable object, you might be able to solve the problem by making sure the defendable object occurs after any rescues, escorts or allies.

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That's b/c of those dupli-cars? You reproduced them? I hoped it was just me

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Yup. Reproduced reliably. Multiple Defendable objects spawning on top of each other.

I din't have time to investigate if it was a problem with the map, defendable objects generally, or just defendable cars. That's tonights job.

Just a note, The Steel and Gold affair has been taken down because of a map bug. Thanks to 3dent for helping me find it. Shame I can't fix it .

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I would disagree.

Nothing in MA is game canon - except inside the writers head.

The fact that is set within a virtual reality environment surely precludes anything in MA from being game canon?


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Canon says that anything that happens inside MA is in a Virtual Reality, therefore it never really happened.

If it never really happened, it can never contradict canon.

If it can't contradict canon, it must be canon.

Ergo eveything in the MA is canon.

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Come on man, at least have a discussion.

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We've had it. To many times to count.

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why can't explain to me why you bring in another side to the game called Villians when they are actually not required?


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I agree. They aren't required.

And open world PvP wouldn't change that. It would still just be the red side vs the blue side, only spread over more zones.

NPCs make much better villains than players. Why? because the role of the comic book villain is to be beaten by the hero, to show how strong/brave/clever the hero is, and what fun is it to play a character whose only destiny in life is to always be beaten?

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I just wish everyone would stop using the bloody ships.

Last night I picked 4 on the trot that were all inside ships.

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It would be very difficult to tell a story about pirates in the caribbean without at least one mission set on a ship.

I play on both Defiant and Union. Send a gobal to @Frosty Robot, and if I'm free I dig out an apropate character on the right server and help you test stuff.

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How many novels have you read where the hero just happens upon the main villain in the corridor outside the toilets?

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I wouldn't know because most authors don't bother to tell us. It's not important.

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You'd have to in order to make even a single mission with more detail than your average radio mission.

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I think that says more about your limitations as a storyteller than any limitations of the MA.

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It would have been pretty lame if you encountered Infernal in the connecting cave, a couple hundred meters to the left of his portal.

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You don't have to. The Infernal's lair map has one spawn location designated as "Back", which is right next to the location where the portal goes. You want an AV to spawn at that spot on that map, all you have to do is set it to Back. Or if you want it to spawn in the corridor outside, set it to Middle. It works fine on that map, I know, I've experimented with it.

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Also, just to make sure. You know this is a -visual- medium, right? You don't have to -read- a description of the map, because you can actually -see- it?

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Wrong. This game has always had a limited range of maps (we are spoiled now, there where very few mission specific maps when I first started playing). It is assumed that the player supply some imagination on thier own. Go to the theatre sometime. That is a visual medium, but will see actors suggest a wide range of locations and situations with a minimum of sets and props.

Technically, eveything in the MA is cannon, as it all happens inside a virtual reality machine...

Making story arcs is much more fun than actually playing the game anyway.

I'm happy to help test stuff, but I'm back at work now, and don't get to play for very long.

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The costume parts look really good. Considering how long and how often people have suggested costume change emotes, though, I'm a little annoyed that they couldn't put a couple into the game proper before starting to sell them in the booster packs.

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It's all about the money, to tell you the truth, I'm suprised that NC haven't pulled the plug on CoX for not making enough. They've already killed two of the other games I used to play.

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It's making more money than most of thier games. Afaik only GW and Linege II make more, and then its not that much more.

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but is it really that hard to ignore?

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Yes.

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Go to a warheouse and defeat a load of Lost, or Freakshow, or CoT.
These NPC's that we fight are the Villians right now

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Indeed they are, and a very good job of it they do too. They are stupid, and are defeated in large numbers, just like proper comic book villains. And they don't bounce around like mad rabbits spouting leet trash talk.

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However, he is faithful to the Nictus, so who can say?

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Don't really think so. Requiem's Nictus symbiote, Dirge of Entropy, appears to be something of a renegade itself.

Anyway, he seems to be working against Arkhan and her goal of total nictus domination in the keldian story arc.

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So if anything a warning (but not an error) should be issued for exceeding number of spawns in a preferred area. One of those 'You might not mean to do this or understand what the outcome will be' kind of warnings that programming languages are sometimes fond of.

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That would apply to pretty much anything in the MA, or indeed most game editors. They don't require the same level of total idiot proofing as full buisiness applications and stuff.

IMO, finding out what the instructions you put in actually do is what Test Mode is for.

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Hey people,

Im confused about something, say I want to make a level 50 mission, but populate it with hellions.
Is there a way to put these mobs at level 50-53, instead of having the person who plays it exampler down to level 14?

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Yes. Make your own custom Hellions.

The banished level 20-30 have a lower boss threshold than most groups. I think 40-50 BP follow normal rules.

I think they are all in unlockable character packs.

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The simple fact of being able to place more bosses than there are spawn points IS a bug. It either should give you an error, or it shouldn't allow you to place that many, yet it does.


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If you try to place more bosses than there are boss spawn points it does return a bug.

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Take my Return to Disco arc. I use that old Hellion "Rave" map, similar to the old PDP map. On it I have 1 ally, 3 bosses (including the AV), and 2 ambushes. According to the map definition, I should be well within the limits for that map, right?

So, I put my Ally at the front, and a boss at the front, middle and back (AV at the back). The first boss is meant to spawn on the Ally, and each boss has an ambush.

So why does my Ally spawn at the back, and my AV is regularly appearing in the middle? Why does the first boss, triggered to spawn on the Ally completion, appear at a random position on the map, and rarely actually comes to get you? I had to go looking for him!

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Because of this:

DANCE RAVE: 10 allowed ambush, boss, patrol or destroy object details. (1 Front, 5 Middle, 4 Back)


So once the single front spawn point is filled, your mob gets bumped to the next available spawn point.

It's WAI. F/M/B is a preference, not an order.

Just because it doesn't work the way you think it should doesn't mean it's bugged.

It's quite possible to write a top of the line, novel quality story where it isn't particuly important exactly where the critters and objects are.

How many novels do you read that say "Dr Desparo was standing in the third room on the right, 2.4 meters North West of the left hand starecase. His doomsday machine was in another room, 10 meters further down the corridor, underneath an abstract painting? Most of the time, that sort of detail just isn't nessassary to the story.

You need to use at least one standard critter that has level reange of 54-54.

E.g. one of the AVs fro RSF/STF.

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"so, I was going to Dr. Strange's house, and what did I find? Another Starbucks!"

Wow, that's crazy. I'm assuming it was just the place that you were teleported to was wrong, and the mission door was somewhere else. Or were you teleported to the right place but the right place wasn't there anymore?

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Teleported to right place. Door (and building) gone.

Don't usually go in for this rebranding lark, but I have to admit, it's a better name.

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I didn't say it would be open world PvP. It could be toggled on and off like other MMO's.


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Which it what open world means. And the effect is you get idiots doing the chicken dance, blocking you path, and otherwise doing thier best to grief you into PvP with them. And then thire is the obnoxious and imersion breaking trash talk, which is best kept as far out of sight as possible.

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Is there a specific reason why you don't want access to other areas in the game?

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I can access any area in the game I want to as it is.

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Are you afraid that if Villians were given access to say Talos Island they'd all go there and never use the villian areas?


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Spreading a small number of players over a large number of zones would make the game effectively emptier than it is already, yes.

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if merging the servers offered that why is this such a abd thing?

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It doesn't though.

Merged severs = loss of French and German support, and sends out the signal "dieing game" to all and sundry. Not to mention the resources that would have to be alocated to facilitate character transfer (the game database is not set up to alow for this at the moment).

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I thought MMO's was all about community and social activities, more people brings a larger community surely?


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MMOs mean different things to different people. Not everyone is in it for the social aspect. There are several good essays on the subject floating around on the internet.

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Could this warning be written in bold letters somewhere?

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There is.

...which would have pushed back issue 14 to 2010.

Fixing all those maps is a big job.

of course they could have either:

Limited players to generic maps only, or;

Removed the F/M/B selector.


I expect they prefer the long term solution of making a player map editor than having somone work though all the maps rationalising F/M/B.