Silver Gale

I second the notion that these are all "aspects of the game", not playstyles. Any player can find some of them fun and hate others.

Asides from those already mentioned, there's the "working out how to beat challenges" aspect. Meaning for example finding ways of achieving Master of STF/LRSF, or defeating the new Hamidon when it was new.

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...what the hey?

I figured that the logout system is standard NCsoft policy. Most other NCsoft games, like Guild Wars, are aimed at the Korean and Asian markets, where most people play the game with their friends in public internet cafes. There, it's a very handy safety feature to deter random strangers from messing with people's accounts.

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Except Guild Wars *has* a "log out to charselect" feature.

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I find it funny that I'm -basically- Forum Cartel, since I agree with a lot of the Cartel members. Meanwhile I don't have 1/3 of the posts B_I does.

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That just makes you a mindless sycophant of the Forum Cartel, one of the many faceless drones they send out against anyone who displeases them.

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I've found that that's pretty much how *most* of the "veteran" posters run business around here. They *may* have a bit of something "constructive" in their answers to you "n00bs" (if they feel like it that day), but it's wrapped in so much flaming [censored] that you can't tell what was actually helpful about the post.

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Flaming [censored]? Really? I think your standards for what constitues "flaming" must me much, much lower than mine.

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So it isn't just me? The same people which you referred to as "forumistas" are following me around agreeing with one another regardless of how idiotic it is? Hmmm.

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Yes. In fact, the entire Forum Cartel has made it their goal to drive you from the game by contradicting everything you say on the forums. And also cutting your brake lines.

Things that are still on the "never going to happen" list:

* Raising the level cap
* Open PvP in all zones
* Merging servers
* 50-only content

Who knows, maybe all those S&I newbs will end up having the last laugh!

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I don't know how to ask this without sounding like the ultimate D-bag... so I will just come out and say it: Venture, how is it that you have become the self-appointed critic and venerated "deity" of mission writing? Why does anyone care what you think?

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You should ask CaptainAmazing, he's the one who's asking Venture permission to create a new character. I'm still trying to figure out if he's concern trolling.

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Wait just a minute. Venture's been at this longer then ANYONE. Why wouldn't I ask him? Don't assume, it's dangerous Venture's got the know how to figure out whats right and wrong to use in this game, the following behind him shows you as much. He tells you whats good and bad, and even Positron has endorsed him o.o!

HOW, is that trolling? o.0

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Various people - including Venture himself - have explained to you, *repeatedly*, that just because he started his own review thread first and got a single "nice job" nod from a redname does not make him any sort of authority on what goes into MA arcs or on anything else in the game. And yet here you are, *asking him permission* - not even to write a particular storyarc, but to *roll a character with a particular concept*.

The only explanation I can see is that you're trying to "teach Venture a lesson" by playing the part of a hopelessly naive forumgoer who will not do anything ingame without Venture's permission. You're expecting him to go "Oh noes, the poor confused easily-swayed players are treating me as the go-to authority now, I guess I should stop posting so they can go back to enjoying the game however they like".

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I don't know how to ask this without sounding like the ultimate D-bag... so I will just come out and say it: Venture, how is it that you have become the self-appointed critic and venerated "deity" of mission writing? Why does anyone care what you think?

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You should ask CaptainAmazing, he's the one who's asking Venture permission to create a new character. I'm still trying to figure out if he's concern trolling.

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what you guys need to do is put up a "best of the best of the best of the best" list... so i do not have to wade through 70 pages to find your 5 star arcs...

i am lazy, i want you to do it for me...

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That's not a good way to go about it. 5 stars just means one particular reviewer liked it best - for example, "Hearts on Fire" got 1 star from Venture, and 5 stars from Talen_Lee. It doesn't mean one of them is wrong, it's just that if your tastes are closer to Venture's, you might not like it, while if your tastes are closer to Talen's, you might like it. You should read through the reviews and see if they mention things that you like or dislike.

If you're *really* lazy, start your own "give me some arcs to play" thread, saying what kind of arc you like (story, humor, challenge, etc.) and wait for the authors to tell you about the stuff they made themselves.

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So..do we have a consolidated list yet? o.o If we do maybe they should post it in the help thread so people know what to use and not to use, I think that could save alot of trouble and anger from new ma arc makers...

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There should never be a consolidated list. Ever. No one should be telling people what they can or can't use in their arcs.

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There's a great quote in How Not To Write A Novel: "We do not propose any rules; we offer observations. 'No right on red' is a rule. 'Driving at high speed toward a brick wall usually ends badly' is an observation."

Quarterstaff melee.

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My main complaints about Dominic Deegan are better summarised by others. Check out this amusing analysis.

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I think you misspelled "bile-spewing troll" there.

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Do we really need another arc about a glitch/virus/someone hacking into the Architect mainframe? Apparently the system was coded by drunken toddlers with brain damage for how easily it craps out.

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Or, y'know, Dr. Aeon. Which amounts to pretty much the same thing.

Arc ID #: 1438
Arc Title: A Jaunt Into Dataspace
Length: 3 missions, 40-60 minutes
Difficulty: Easy solo, difficult on teams
Description: Dataspace: It's Not Cyberspace! While we're waiting for the no doubt sinister truth about the architect to be revealed, why not use it to take a look at Crey's fileserver? Yeah, it's hacking, but they probably deserve it.

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Missions where you have to defeat a boss.

Missions where you have to defeat everyone.

Missions where you have to find a particular object and click it/destroy it/protect it.

Missions where you have to find a guy, beat up some bad guys around him, and lead him back to the missions entrance.

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so basically every arc ever written up to and including canon.

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See? They *are* overused!

Missions where you have to defeat a boss.

Missions where you have to defeat everyone.

Missions where you have to find a particular object and click it/destroy it/protect it.

Missions where you have to find a guy, beat up some bad guys around him, and lead him back to the missions entrance.

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The custom enemies are a problematic; in one case they're a pack of dark blast-kinetic corruptor-things. The opening alpha would make Dark Regen not hit, and would then be followed up by a damage-sapping debuff alpha.

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Argh. Enemy balance is the bane of my existence in this arc.

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Small update: I changed the Energy Blast/Sonic Blast minions in the first mission to Energy Blast/Regen, and the Dark Melee/Dark Blast minions in the second mission to Dark Melee/Regen. /Regen on Standard gives Minions slightly better regen, recovery, and Stun resistance - it's the closest you can get to "does nothing".

I also updated the description to say "small teams beware", because it seems that no matter what I do, teams between 2 and 4 are going to have a lot of trouble.

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The arc isn't too long, and while it features a defeat all against a custom enemy group, the explanation is reasonably acceptable. You need a sample, and a sample can't be gleaned from a few key entities. It'd be nice if we could have a 'defeat the majority' function, but that would lead to thorough people finishing up in the first 51% of the map.

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If I could design this any way I wanted, this would be a plain square white room with a single mannequin that provided just enough challenge to be interesting, and the "hidden patch" would be an odd-colored patch on the wall or something.

Sadly, the closest thing to "plain white room" is the Tech tileset, and that would make the first two missions too similar.

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The story then wends on to what has become something of a typical story; the Doctor wants you to do some technological frippery and remind you that yes, the entire AE system is nothing more and nothing less than a free-to-play MMO with sinister intentions, which is, I suppose, what the devs are going to do with it ('Ahah, it was all a nemesis plot!'), not something I want to be reminded of.

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I was kind of going for "the Architect is more or less what it seems, except it lets the Doctor send you into Crey servers". As in, *you're* actually the one using the Architect for nefarious purposes against *Crey*.

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The custom enemies are a problematic; in one case they're a pack of dark blast-kinetic corruptor-things. The opening alpha would make Dark Regen not hit, and would then be followed up by a damage-sapping debuff alpha.

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Argh. Enemy balance is the bane of my existence in this arc. I can solo it just fine, on a Storm Defender (I'm reminded of a /tell I got from someone in Beta, the disbelief evident: "You gave my arc 2 stars because you couldn't solo an EB with a Stormie...?"). And sadly my SG are all excellent players who become an unstoppable force of nature when teamed up, so they're useless for establishing the actual difficulty of an arc.


As to writing the Doctor, I was going for a "computery" voice, not entirely "artificial" but someone's who's been living as data for a couple years now and it's starting to reflect on her. I guess I could design her a more fancy avatar? Possibly replace her with a different hacker who I can write any way I like as long as I do it consistently?

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While the plot unfolds predictably and enjoyably, none of the contact dialogue particularly stood out to me as being exceptionally good; it seems the best dialogue was saved for the second mission, which had me and my wife laughing quite hard.

A good, solid arc, with a spectacular highlight in the second mission that unfortunately doesn't take the rest of the arc's lead and continue getting better.

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Thank you very much. That's plenty of food for thought, and maybe I can make this arc even better.

I keep the "mission complete" contact dialogue to an absolute minimum, one generic sentence or so. The reason is that if a team is running my arc, anyone on the team can read the "mission offer" and "mission accept" dialogue in their Mission window, but only the team leader sees the "mission complete".

Aside form that, instead of cutting out text, I just use less custom groups.

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Because the mass public will cancel out idiot votes by jerks, as long as what you've done is GOOD.

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So if we don't get any Hall of Fame arcs in, say, three months, it's because nobody among the 130k players can make a single thing that's good, right?

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Here is the interesting question: If you Edit and Republish your story while a team or person running solo has only completed say 3 of the 5 missions, does that Edit & Republish kick the players out? Will the players have to start the arc all over again or will they be able to just pick up where they left off?

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Positron mentionned at one point that if you depublish an arc while someone is running it, the person still gets to finish the arc. I'm guessing that means any person running the arc gets their own temporary copy of it. Which in turn would mean that if you edit an arc while someone's playing it, they can keep playing the old version of the arc and finish it if they like, but they won't see your changes unless they finish/drop the arc and then start it again.

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I haven't checked, but I doubt it yet. The Cyborg pack stuff wasn't in there.

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I've seen a lot of Cyborg stuff in MA arcs, even back in beta.

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Yeah, there was apaprently a bug early on that applied the Laser Eye auras to custom critters even if the arc author wasn't trying to do that. Then some of those arcs got Dev Choiced and became uneditable...

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because it means that everyone who's done anything for Azuria, whose starting arc features an object going missing, seems to think it's hilarious to represent her as losing a few thousand items daily.

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There's also the Wheel of Destruction, the pieces of which you bring to Azuria *specifically* to keep them out of the hands of the Banished Pantheon, and the Banished Pantheon gets them back the *moment* your back is turned.

I forget if there's other instances of "The MAGI vault has been broken into!" in CoH lore, but still, those two incidents don't exactly inspire confidence.

I'm very happy for you, now WHERE'S MY SUPER BOOSTER II?

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And........she has spoken.

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Net worth of my opinion: somewhere around 1.4 Eurocents.