Stormy_Defender

This thread needs to get stickied. I'm generally finding it rather useful.

AE System
--------
Welcome to Architect Entertainment -- Neutral
Death for Dollars! -- Neutral
Bare Knuckles of Rage (9304)
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
--------
Birth of a Fossil -- Heroic
*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
--------
*

Comedy
--------
The Extadine Lab -- Heroic
The Great Chicken Caper of '09 -- Heroic
ParaCon -- Heroic
The new and improved Lord Recluse Strike Force -- Villainous (though I wouldn't recommend against a hero )


*

Comedy/Drama
--------
A Super Team is Born -- Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749) -- Neutral
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings -- Neutral
Lawyers of Ghastly Horror -- Heroic
How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- Heroic
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare -- Neutral
It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding (9059) -- Neutral
TURG FICTION: Ghost in the Machine, Act I - Heroic (althoughs romantic villains could try this too )

*

Crime/Gangs
--------
The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (16809)
*

Drama
--------
*

Global Domination
--------
Axis and Allies -- Villainous (10597)
*

Heist
--------
Celebrity Kidnapping -- Villainous (20161)
*

Historical (Realistic)
--------
*

Historical (CoH Lore)
--------
*

Holiday
--------
*

Horror
--------
Small Fears -- Heroic
Dark Dreams -- Heroic (18914)
*

Large-Scale Crisis
--------
A Hero's Halo -- Heroic
This Is War, Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz -- Neutral
Win the Past, Own the Future - Heroic
*

Magic
--------
The Amulet of J'gara -- Heroic
Chains of Blood (5492) -- Heroic
The Magical Miss Fitz (5079) -- Heroic
*

Military
--------
Redoubt Operations #1: Fires over Kalago -- Heroic

Red Storm Rising Arc 4912 Heroic
*
Misc. Adventure
--------
The Portal Bandits -- Heroic
*

Mystery
--------
Blowback (18575) -- Heroic
Dream Paper -- Heroic (13030)
Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep -- Heroic (16797)
Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams -- Heroic (13064)
*

Mythology
--------
Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld -- Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) -- Neutral
*

Nemesis Plots
--------
Brass Reaver: Part 1 -- Neutral
*

Player-Chosen Outcome
--------
Hunting the Dark Dragon
*

Sci-Fi
--------
Adventures of the Space Marines -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 -- Neutral
Netrunner -- Heroic (14434)
Above Mars: Part 1 - The Wellington -- Neutral
*

Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
--------
The Meatgrinder -- Neutral
*

[ QUOTE ]
Well, the reason Hoarathos gave me so much trouble is because I'm an idiot.
I logged in today and happened to check my challenge rating.... and it's on Relentless (5).
Like I said, I'm an idiot.

Going to go at it again tonight on lowest setting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, yeah, I could see that causing trouble. I will say, though, even if you lower the difficulty, take a long a team. I'd like feedback on team runthrough now that I've adjusted things a little in the second and third missions.

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry, Eco- I must not have seen it.

And Stormy, I apologize for the tone of my review- it was late, and I was cranky, but had to stay up or risk throwing my whole schedule off, which leaves me off-kilter for weeks >.<

So yeah... came off grumpier than I probably should have, and certainly more so than your arc deserved. My comments on the mechanics still mostly stand though... and if you didn't set any ambush on the boxes, where were they coming from? Because I was keeping a sharp eye out for 'em by the fourth box, and I saw them come motoring in from halfway across the map (three Fir Bolg minions each time).

Like I said, the writing overall was quite solid- I enjoyed it, although I kept expecting Miss Fitz to betray you >.>

[/ QUOTE ]
Heh, no worries. It was solid criticism in my opinion. I'd rather get told what is wrong than what is right. Helps get things fixed.

As for the ambushes with the boxes it has to be a bug. I just reran the arc after doing a few fixes and the firbolg still come charging in once I start working to save a box. I have nothing in my mission structure related to ambushes on those boxes. I really wonder if there's something occurring with coding in the map. War Witch is the one that could swoop in and say if the map causes ambushes, I suspect. I'm going to experiment a little with that mission and swap maps out and see if that is indeed the case.


Edit: well nuts. Swapped to another map and I get the box ambush. =\
Am I missing a setting someplace that is causing this?

If I can't get the ambushes to vanish should I just swap the protect to a glowy that you click to "save?" it would still be optional. That map is too big to send people running around on for glowies while keeping it fun.

[ QUOTE ]
Test MA ARC: ID#13886 The Magical Miss Fitz

Just tried this one.

The dialogue is great. Had me grinning by the second sentence and chuckling by the end.

I only made it partially thru the first mission as I was running solo and this is made for teams (and CLEARLY states so).

The first mish is nice and short. The only thing that had me wondering was why the hostages just stood there after being rescued? I thought they usually ran off.

Going to try and bring a team the next time I run this one. It's got me interested how the rest of the story unfolds.

@Stormy_Defender: Took your advice and switched out Thunderhead for something close, but less annoying. Also changed a few other things.

[/ QUOTE ]

@dumok

Thanks for the review. =)
I have no idea what is wrong with the silly civilians in mission 1. I've noticed in other missions that hostages will both run or not run off when rescued and I can't find a setting to make them do so. Maybe it is a pathing issue with the outdoor map?

Sorry you couldn't make it through the first mission. You're not alone in that. You are the first to take a villain AT in so it is good to get feedback. Though I really thought an MM wouldn't have that much trouble. They always seem to blow me up in PvP. Was Hoarathos running on you? He seemed to like doing that against my defenders when I'd debuff his accuracy. Anyway, I generally like to think my stormy is pretty sad when it comes to EB fights so I tend to figure that if I can get through the missions with her then most people can. I should reassess that, I suppose. I have pondered dropping the demons down to EB level so they'd be bosses for soloist, but having run the arc with a team, I can honestly say it is far more chaotically entertaining and weakening the demons would take away from that. It's sorta the curse of MA, as I think most people will be playing arcs solo but I wanted this to be a fun and short little challenge along the lines of Katie Hannon.

To the question you posed in your PM regarding whether it was supposed to be First or Frost. It is meant to be "first demon". I didn't want the nature of a demon to be revealed until you got to it. So they are listed First, Second, Last in the nav window. But now the cat is out of the bag. The horror.

[ QUOTE ]
- Second mission pop-up, 'farmers could loose all they own'- got an extra 'o' there, should be 'lose'

- Second mission, 'protect the boxes'- basically decided 'bugger it' after dying to the third ambush on the friggin' box. I don't need everything in the area spontaneously deciding I have to die for trying to protect the bloody box. Especially since they were merrily trying to kill one another a few seconds ago. Just... no. You really, really don't need multiple ambushes on all five of those boxes. It's either murderous or a tedious annoyance, depending on how they catch you (and... five boxes? Why?)

Will try again later.

EDIT- Okay, just one ambush per box. Still doesn't make any bloody sense, still annoying, but I guess the mutant rudolph attack was just an add, not an ambush the first two times.

- Okay, what the hell? Enough ambushes? I don't need... what, three ambushes?.. while I'm trying to fight the EB. Argh. Sorry, that was just an annoying fight.

[/ QUOTE ]

TeChameleon

Trust me. There are no ambushes set on the boxes. There are patrols, battles, a boss, and items to save. The only two ambushes set on that mission are with the demon and those are cacophan, one easy, the second medium--I will scale those both down to easy. I will note that I occasionally get pumpkins ambush attacking as well when I clear some of the boxes. I hadn't actually thought about it until you brought it up here as I just figured I was aggroing nearby firbolgs. But it might be a bug with that map(?)whatever it is I'm buggin it as it isn't supposed to be happening (also, boxes are optional, they just aren't labeled as such. You can go straight to the AV and take her out if you like. The boxes are there more to boost ticket rewards after completion. I will change that and flag it in the nav bar as optional).

edit: Also adding in some helpers that will appear mid-fight in that second mission. Hopefully they'll absorb some of the impact from the ambush spawns.

[ QUOTE ]
- Mission three- Legion is a *nasty* fight. I had to call in help, and even then it was dicey. Rage and KO Blow can halve a Tank's health in one shot, so you can imagine what it was doing to my squishy...

So, overall:

The writing's actually pretty good, although the occasional lapses into California Valley girl are a bit odd for a kid who's supposedly grown up in Rhode Island.

[/ QUOTE ]
She is just supposed to sound dingy. Valley Girl is kinda universally known as dingy so that's what I went with. Also, I don't know how dingy girls in Rhode Island talk. I'll have to visit someday and take notes.

[ QUOTE ]
The mechanics waver between 'infuriating' and 'why am I even bothering?', though- you're way too ambush-happy, and the EBs are aggravating at best; bear in mind that a lot of people are going to be soloing at this stage, and throwing up a brick wall on every mission won't go over that well.

Overall, I'd say tone it down a little- since you're auto-exemplared down, a lot of characters won't have their full arsenal anyways, and running into enemies like Legion who can goal-kick your head in all of three shots when you can't even hit elude... well, may as well either quit or looooooooooad up on the inspirations (I used most of my tray on the first two fights, along with Eye of the Magus, so Legion was a very unpleasant surprise).

[/ QUOTE ]
Per your thoughts I dropped Legion down to Hard/Hard. He'd been Extreme/Hard and I hadn't thought it that much overkill on my playthroughs with my various characters. But I suppose they are all mostly all IOed/Purpled out so I should factor that in what players would normally have in that level range.

Thanks for the excellent feedback. Will be doing some tweaking to make it a little more tolerable for soloist without hopefully wrecking it for a team.

[ QUOTE ]
lemme give this a try.

Arc: Dark Dreams
ID: 18436
Length: Medium
Missions: 2
Descriptions: A frantic 911 call about shadowy monsters invading an office building during thier annual Father/Son Day sets off a story of where these strange monsters came from and why they are so interested in a young boy named Seth McNiel.

(First attempt at an arc. Tried to make it solo friendly)

[/ QUOTE ]

Trying to run this right now with a mid-level scrapper. Will post a write up once I'm done.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> REVIEW BELOW </pre><hr />

Alrighty, that was actually tough for my scrapper, but it was a good challenge. Ran into some things you might want to fix or add to:

Mission 1:
Maybe add a clue to the rescue of Thunderhead. I always like to know how people get caught. Replace Thunderhead with another "helper." He kept using gale, blowing the little baddies all over. Annoying if you are melee. That's about it for that one.

Mission 2:
Infernia is using Seth's model and powers. Instead of getting a fire-shooting helper I get a boy that brawls everything and then dies. Seth's bio has a typo: Who should be whose. Shadow Beast is mean, but that's probably a good thing. Thank you for not giving him dark's heal. =)

Overall I liked the custom mobs and your choice of maps. This arc had a good feel to it. Just needs some debugging.

//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\

Also, still would like some feedback on Arc 13886
The last mission has been fixed up. Was having trouble with circular dependencies, but Leandro helped get that squared away so objectives now pop in the proper order.

[ QUOTE ]
I guess now I post my arc for judgement:

Arc Name: Mission: Muffet
Arc ID: 15390
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: (@)LLamaBoy
Difficulty Level: Should be soloable by essentially everyone on Heroic, could be more challenging in a team or with a higher difficulty.
Synopsis: A short adventure of betrayal, loyalty and danger. Starts with an unexpected recruit to the Malta Operative.
Estimated Time to Play: Around 30-60 minutes depending on personal clearing preference and reading speed.
Link to More Details or Feedback: Discussion thread

Be honest, thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

Since it looks like people would rather promote than contribute reviews I'm running this right now. Will throw up feedback once I'm through. I'll go through this thread and look for people who followed the rules. If you have a review posted I'll try and get to your arc.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> REVIEW WILL GO BELOW </pre><hr />
This was a pretty fast mission arc to run through. I used my storm defender even though she tends to not get along very well with knives.

Good idea for the knives to be infiltrated by widows. KoA's one of those groups that hasn't had much in-game lore built around them, so they are good to work with if you want to be creative with a story.

First mission was easy to ghost through. Knives and Malta were occupied fighting each other so I just went and found my primary target and took them and their party out. Had a hard time keeping track of what all the dialogue being shouted was. Proximity of some of the battles led to a lot of message bubble spam appearing on the screen.

I'm not sure I cared for the constant coloring of the faction names in the contact dialogue. Using it once to ID what and/or who will be present in the mission would be nice, but I actually found it made it harder to read through the text when my eyes were constantly being drawn off by colored words every few lines.

Enjoyed second mission. Artemis Widows made for an enjoyable badguy group to fight. Once again, however, I was able to ghost to the glowy and end room with little difficulty. But that does speed things along.

Third mission was quick. Thanks for not using a super huge map. Finding the hostages was pretty easy. When I got to the Mission's back room I didn't see the last hostage: Commander A.C. Teon until after I'd taken out the Matron. Not sure if he was a pet that would have helped in that fight or not, but it was managable so that's okay. I did notice that when I rescued AC that his dialogue cut off, "I need to debrief the h" Might need to edit that a little.

[ QUOTE ]
Arc Name: That Which Defines Humanity
Arc ID: 16628

[/ QUOTE ]

//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//

Going to grab this one and maybe a few others. Need to sort through things. Going to try puttering through a few with the old stormy.


Review:

Played this with my hero, cause I am that awesome. I've not played V-Side up to Westin, so I only know a little about his character. Anywho some thoughts:

The intro to mission 1 seemed pretty wordy. Westin babbled a lot telling me that I didn't need to do this and that and then gave me all this justification on why I should do what he just said I didn't need to do. I think it would have been better to just be short and to the point.

The custom enemies were okay. They didn't do a whole lot to my defender. It was pretty easy to drain their end with short circuit and with hurricane up their focus on melee disallowed much from hitting me. Occasionally one of the Valkyrie Strengths would huck a rock at me, but that was about it. Maybe get a ranged minion or Lt into the mix? Elec or archery wouldn't be too far fetched for valkerie themed warriors.

Was Amy supposed to be in the second mission? The story part of this was a little confusing do to how it played out in the game. Not sure how to fix this with current MA mechanics though. Also spotted a misspelled word in the intro: whither should be wither.

Kill all was fine. Valkeries had a habit of running off on me, probably due to the fact taht they weren't able to hit me. Had to come back down after clearing second floor to find the wounded runners once they'd calmed down and returned to their normal spots.

4th mission was cake. Even though I was a hero I did the bad ending. With no ranged attack I just kept snow storm centered on the Boss to kill her fly and hovered over her pinging away until she dropped. Ambushes that came near got caught in the snow storm too and fell down so I was pretty much untouchable aside from the occasional boulder. Again, adding some ranged sets to the baddies would be a good idea so there is some threat to ATs that can heavily mitigate melee.

Overall I liked the story. Very ebil feeling and I liked the cowardice theme that road along with it. =)

//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//




Arc Name:The Magical Miss Fitz
[color= yellow]Arc ID: 13886 [/color]
Length: Long (3 missions)
Enemies: Custom and regular
Difficulty: Medium-to-Medium High. This arc has 3 AVs/EBs. They are not extreme AVs, however and can be taken down with a small team. Solo, the EBs can be taken out pretty easily even if you have moderate damage abilities. I've run through it to completion with a storm/elec and dark/archery defender for testing. A troller and tank that tested it for me couldn't beat the first EB due to lack of damage, but if you have a high damage troller or tank you'll do fine.
Level range: 25-34
Alignment: Heroic
Author: @Stormy Defender
Time to run: 30-40 Minutes

This is meant to be a somewhat light-hearted romp around Croatoa. It is most fun with a small party of 4-6. Consider dragging few friends along with you if you get the chance. I've gotten pretty positive reviews on this one so far, but I'm still looking for feedback on balance and any grammar/spelling issues that people spot.

Last mission has been given an overhaul and hasn't been tested on a party yet. Last AV/EB could pop in a strange but not inaccessible location. There's nothing I can do about that right now do to issues with chaining requirement. Location could make for an interesting fight, however.

Eeeh, putzing around on test I just breezed through an arc I had built with my IOed stormy. Didn't pay much attention to what the storm cloud was doing, but I didn't feel like I had been stripped of my killing power. Tossed up puffy and it pinged away at things. In fact, had an easier time with the storm defender running the arc than I did with my tank or scrapper.

Was I playing wrong? Reading through this thread I feel like I should be filled with some sort of outrage or something.

Second comic is just a rehash of one of the old PVPOnline strips Kurtz did back in '04. =P

http://www.pvponline.com/2004/06/13/june-13-2004/

Playing Dead: Logging out pretty much anywhere while your hero is still KOed/dead.

//it amuses me when I log in and have a character fall flat on their face first thing because I was too lazy to send myself to hospital before I last logged them out. Give me a badge for this bad habit.

/Other people . . .

So, if I make a team up and take them into an arc I built do I get tickets for them playing through it?

Or do the tickets get nullified if the arc builder is on the team?

/hoho I knows nothing at all
//also hohoho . . . as if people would actually team with me =p

Question:

Can a mission be designed with a neutral custom mob faction that will ignore players unless attacked and/or or certain triggers activated?

I'm doubting it as I can't recall there being existing missions with neutral factions, but it's a feature that's on my wish-list, so I thought I'd ask.

[ QUOTE ]
While I'm excited that they're letting me ditch my super soaker for a real weopon, could you PLEASE PLEASE fix the frickin bases already?

Give bases some loving in this issue. Please. Some loving. any loving. Just give it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I was also going to wander in here and ask if "base lovin'" in any form might crop up in this issue. Kinda doubting it, but even a statement saying that it's up on the marker board would be nice.

Invention Storage vault requires control and power, unlike all other storage devices for bases (it's a small amount, but it still uses some and this can be a pain to a small base trying their best to maximize power and control usage). Even the inspiration storage, which can contribute directly to helping defenders in a PvP base raid doesn't require energy or control to place. Since the invention storage vault was introduced I don't think a reason was ever given for why it needs to use power or control. Additionally, as the Invention Storage vault can't be used to share invention salvage between characters or SGmates a control and power requirement seems unnecessary.

Part of the current problem with the trials is that for eden a player within a specific level niche is needed to get things started, and the Sewer trial's auto-exemping problems make it a laughable challenge if you have a bunch of 50s and only exemp them down long enough for them to get the anti-hydra guns.

Either of these issues can either make the trials hard to start (Eden) or not worth the effort due to the potential for zero risk (sewer). Both of these problems, I am certain, have made it so that a lot of players probably have not experienced this content, and it's sort of sad that it may be left to wither away in favor of new content.

Considering that both these trials were once "end-game" content, maybe they should have their difficulty revised, rewards adjusted, and level caps upgraded to 45+ so they can once again fulfill their originally intended end-game role.

What's up with not being able to heal the RV heavies? Is this part of the "There were additional changes to the heavies that didn’t make it into this build. Look for them in the future" type things that didn't get put in with the last patch? If so, there's no mention of it at all in today's patch notes.

After fiddling around with it today for a bit it seems like a tolerable change, so I'm just wondering, mostly, since I know the players hates it when changes are made all stealthy like.

This article describing the class devisions between MySpace and FaceBook has been making the blog rounds right now, but I find it amusingly accurate given the attitudes that have reared their head about MySpace so far in this thread:

http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

" The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art ****," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers. "

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a substitute teacher these days and I've got a fairly good insight into the ways some middle schoolers use MySpace. In my experience, 200-250 friends is about the average for an 8th-grade girl.

[/ QUOTE ]
You visit the MySpace pages of the 8th grade girls you sub for?

/creepy

Aren't you a clever one

[ QUOTE ]
The devs talked too, they didn't just dance - and there were some crazy GM and AV spawns too

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I saw them emit the occasional word bubble clouded amongst a score of player emitted word bubbles. Yay? The GM and AV spawns must have happened after I left. The event just started too slow for me to want to stick around.

Huh...I got bored out of my mind at this "party" ((&lt;-- I use that word most loosely to describe the event)) and took off after about two hours of standing around chatting with a few SG mates who wandered onto test.

Some devs appeared . . . nothing happened. Guess I just don't see the appeal. A dev using /em dance looks no different than a player using /em dance. But I'm old and hard to impress I guess. *shrug*

But others looked like they enjoyed it so I suppose that's what matters.

Changed back again...

/good times