PoptartsNinja

The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada
Arc ID: 356628
Keywords: Save the World, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Length: Long
Morality: Heroic
Number of Missions: 3
Description: When the vicious Admiral Silverback of the Space Ape Armada leads his fleet on a mission to conquer the Earth, it's up to you to lead the counter-attack against these savage invaders and save the Earth from conquest by monkeys!


This is an update to my old Space Ape Armada arc. I finally had some time to integrate some feedback, and since the old arc was made before the most recent changes to Mission Architect I was worried that something had probably broken.

This update adds or fixes:
- A new mission, in addition to the other two
- Updated dialog
- Tweaking of minion powers (specifically to remove the excessive number of battle drones the arc tended to summon)
- A new, thematic boss
- Unique (or semi-unique) looks and power combinations for the existing bosses, as well as an update to Admiral Silverback to make him less irritating (Which, coincidentally, pretty much consisted entirely of the removal of 'Rage' from his power list)


... And stay tuned for my next up-and-coming Arc, "The Revenge of the Space Ape Armada!"

An Inferno of Hellions

A Dance of Warriors

An Arrogance of Nemesis

A Spawn of Hydra

A Kill of Skuls

An Invasion of Rikti

An Aspect of Rularu

An Eyestrain of (Rularuu) Observers

A Jerk of Circle of Thorns

A Persuasion of Crey

A Snuggle of Praetorians

A Cell of Devouring Earth

An Eruption of Igneous

A Polyp of Corallax

A Heap of Slag Golems

of Menders Headache A

An Oktoberfest of 5th Column

A Sausage-Fest of Council

A Mythos of Banished Pantheon

A Conspiracy of Malta

A Circus of Carnies

A Dogpile of Redcaps

A Clatter of Clockwork

A Plague of Infected

A Cartel of Forum Posters

I thought I'd show off the Space Ape Armada a bit. They're from arc ID# 356628 (The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada); which was done before the recent AE changes and I'm currently working on revamping. Still, they've all got excellent looks. There are more apes, but these are my favorites.

Keywords: Comedy, Sci-Fi

Minions:
Cyber Monkey:


Psipanzee


Howler


Lieutenants
Irradiape


Baboom


Bosses

Primatorian


Admiral Silverback Himself:

- Overpowered allies. Whether the story is "about" them or not, the player is the star, the NPCs should not be.

- Overpowered required bosses, specifically EB/AV level bosses with lots of defense/resistance toggles, or who fear or confuse. If you're going to use a set with fear/confuse, disable them instead - very few sets resist them and it's no fun to stand around doing nothing because someone's given you a bad case of floating purple bubbles. That said, if the boss is optional, do what you like with it--people enjoy a challenge if they know it doesn't affect their ability to beat the mission / arc.

- Objectives that don't make thematic sense. Am I ok with a kill-all on a ship to simulate you taking it over? Of course. Am I ok with a kill-all on an outdoor map where your goal is to 'find more information about something' or 'complete a specific objective'? No.

An android, built with its powers, would be 'natural' origin; same as aliens are natural origin. If the power is inherent and they were 'born' with it, it's natural. Data is a 'Natural' Android.

An android that was built without powers, but built powers for itself would then be technology origin. If it was granted powers through an accident, it would be science. If it studied magic, it would be a magic android. If suddenly a quirk of its programming or design caused it to spontaneously develop a new ability, it would be a mutant.

A robot, driven by someone else, is technology because the robot is an outside and highly complex external source of power that is itself not an autonomous life form.


... You can do anything you like with the origins. They're general guidelines and are really only limited by personal interpretation, nothing more.

I dunno about you, but I'd love to be able to craft a jar of bees like the ones in Vernon Von Grun's arc. Bonus points if it actually requires Hamidon Goo and a Jar of some kind (perhaps simple chemicals...)

Lord Recluse probably isn't, but his double from the Ninjaverse is!

Cap Au Diable spawns level 17 Frostlings; but is a zone that supports level 10+.

You can't expect a level 10, 11, 12, or 13 to realistically be able to take out a single level 17 minion (and even a level 14 might have trouble with three at once). Even if they do stay and fight, they're likely to be defeated leaving their spawn of mobs standing there regardless; so there are other reasons mobs get left behind other then "laziness".

Is it annoying? Yeah, I freely admit that, but it's only a minor nuisance at worst.

Operation: Charybdis
Author: @PoptartsNinja
Keywords: Save the World, Sci-Fi, Drama
Arc ID: 346845
Length: Long
Morality: Dr. Aeon Challenge (Heroic)
Number of Missions: 4 (really more like 3.25)
Enemy Groups: Rogue Arachnos, Vanguard, Rikti
Description: When an eager young hero-in-training leads you into a world-shattering conspiracy, you soon find yourself assaulted by strange and unexpected foes at every turn. (Warning: May contain themes not suitable to younger players. Possibly soloable, but you may want to bring a friend or two.)

* * * * *

Alrighty, now that the day for submissions has passed, I feel ok advertising this on the forums. I don't really know what else to say about it; I'd appreciate feedback because I spent a lot of time and effort getting it 'just right'.

A few of the elite bosses may be a bit tough, but for the most part they're reasonably uncommon and one of them is an optional fight.


Trivia:
- This arc has monkeys.

Suggestion 1: Shorten any TF that's over 3 hours in length.

Ideally most TFs should shoot for a 1.5-3 hour window to make them friendly to a wider range of gamers who would otherwise not get to experience them (I'm not exactly casual, and I've still only done about 5-8 TFs/SFs in the entire time I've spent with CoH; because they're a time investment I can't afford).

The ITF 'feels' about the right length for a TF/SF, it feels like time well spent rather then time that could be better spent doing something else; it's hard without being frustrating (most of the time); and even if you fail it doesn't feel like a total waste.


Suggestion 2: Pity Merits.

Grant a small amount (3-8 or so, depending on the difficulty (NOT length)) of "pity merits" once per month, to make people less likely to simply farm free merits) for quitting or failing a TF. This makes failing a TF sting a bit less, and will encourage people to try them rather then looking for optimal builds / team combos; and makes casual players more likely to give the TFs a try rather then avoiding them in favor of more stable forms of team play.

I doubt this is going to happen: The crux of the issue seems to be: If they allow inspiration trading; they also allow enhancement, recipe, salvage, and influence/infamy trading.

Since they went out of the way to emphasize that, in GR, rogues can't use Wentworths and Vigilantes can't use the black market, I doubt there'll be any change to the item share codes to make sure the markets stay 100% separate.

I'd still love to be able to 'pass a wakie' to an unconscious hero, however.

The greatest difficulty becomes: Is the chase scene scripted, or unscripted?

If it's scripted, that makes it into essentially quicktime button-mashing "press 'X' to not die" sequence (the problem with these; if they're in any way common, they quickly become annoying and unfun, especially for people who don't have the quickest reflexes); while if it's unscripted it simply allows the player to come prepared and utterly decimate the person he's chasing in a few seconds.

A chase scene would also very likely penalize melee classes, especially the ones with no supplementary ranged attacks (Axe, Mace, Martial Arts, the Swords, etc); while forcing other sets to take the supplementary ranged attacks (which are typically awful) in order to have any chance at success.

That said: I would LOVE to see scripted police chases tooling around Paragon. And since cars in paragon move slower then most people can run, that'd still create a situation where the players could help out by blasting away at cars and helping in the chase; or to simply ignore them the way they do any gray mobs. There could even be a "police chase in progress" message that pops up; that creates a scanner-like mission if you defeat the car.

... and it could even be a good way to add the Freakshow Sportaur and Nemesis Horsemen to the game; as well as a way to make Sky Skiffs look like they're actually good for more then simply randomly exploding in Striga.

It would be pretty hilarious to launch claws attacks with a staff, however.

I'd like to see some added patron pools, hopefully we'll get some in Going Rogue, but I think it'd be possible to add some with what we currently have in game; by giving people a chance to join an 'outside agency' to thwart Lord Recluse's Operation: Destiny

The current patrons are covering:
Cold (Mako)
Dark (Ghost Widow)
Electricity (Scirocco)
Energy/Equipment (Black Scorpion)

Patrons:
Ambassador Kuhr'Rekt (Mental Mastery type, Rikti drone and/or Rikti Monkey pets)
Requiem (Fire Mastery type, 5th column pets)
Baron Zora (Force Mastery type, CoT pets (perhaps behemoths or spectrals); perhaps longbows for brutes/stalkers)
Nemesis (another natural/equipment type patron, auto-armor instead of a toggle armor for squishies, special shots (that don't cause redraw with AR / dual pistols, and give everyone else a Nemesis Rifle), Jaeger pets, etc...)

... the only downside to adding more patrons, of course, is that it requires more work then simply having doing a patron arc unlock access to multiple sets of patron powers. Of course, I'd rather have choosing a patron simply open up all of the patron pools now (rather then requiring a team-unfriendly arc every time a character hits 40), but I can live with the current system and the current patrons.

... but having a few more that cover some of the as-yet uncovered types (fire, mental, force) would be nice.

And that works for every Archetype except defenders, because Defenders are inherently more varied because of the massive differences inherent to their primaries. Ideally, I think defenders should simply get a damage buff while solo, and an endurance discount that scales to the number of people on the team; which doesn't penalize the sets without healing for preventing most damage before it happens (i.e., Forcefields, Sonic, Cold, Fire, Dark, etc). The downside to this is it makes Rad/Sonic even more attractive for soloing.

But this is a speculation thread about buffing the inherent abilities in general; and therefore I'm speculating.

Whatside? Planetside!

... I picked it almost completely at random, because Planetside was my first MMO-type game and one of my friends told me to 'just pick a name at random'.

Honesty, Vigilance is about being /vigilant/ and adapting to specific needs...

... but Vigilance as it stands is custom built for Empathy, and benefits the other primaries not at all.

Really, Vigilance should change depending on the Defender's primary to be more suitable to that primary:

For example:

Empathy would keep the current Vigilance (the end discount for injured people)
Forcefields would really benefit from a global self-damage buff (10-15%) since Forcefields is unable to debuff enemies for more reliable damage. (we'll call this 'vigilance 2')
Kinetics could offer the defender a low-mag (say mag 3) immobilize / hold protection
Cold Domination could get a permanent HP increase (which is thematic, and Cold doesn't really need help as far as I can tell)

and finally

Radiation could automatically respec you to the Sonic secondary when you start the game (haha, I'm joking, really--Rad just doesn't need the help so perhaps it'd keep vanilla Vigilance too)

The downside is, setting up a bunch of different powerset-based 'Vigilances' would be a lot of work. A lot of work.

... but other then Vigilance and Gauntlet, I really don't see any issues with any of the inherents as is; especially with Defiance's recent buff. If tanks got a small, say, 1% bonus to defense for every enemy beyond the first that was attacking them (as the enemies get in each other's way--like invincibility except capping at maybe 6% or so), that might help 'em out a tiny bit in those total-party-wipe situations.