TheHangedMan

I need to create a timer for the Mission Architect. Something that will take between 30 and 90 seconds to auto-complete. Is there a Mission Architect document out there somewhere with how to create a timer?

OK only a few more days before I can fully use my hand from the car accident. I did manage to work out the names of the hostages. Ms Doe A Deer, Ray GoldenSun, Mia Name. Fa LongLong and the rest of the gang will be my musical hostages. I did want to put a cave mission in because the hatred of cave missions was one of the main topics of discussion for a long time.

One of the stranger things is when you think about the game and musicals you eventually get to the Rikti and how much they have meant to the game. For some reason I just keep seeing some Rikti Squads somewhere mentally sending Who :: Short Shorts and We :: Short Shorts. I blame onion sausage pizza before bed for that idea.

How about a Co-Op Horde mode adventure with the NPCs vs Heros and Villains

Each wave would change with what spawns and gets Progressively harder. Players would try to outlast the horde as a group and would need good teamwork.

Two of my favorite adventures in the game are a lot like Horde mode with the Terra Volta Trial and the Red Caps.

I would like to see Horde mode use some of the less used groups like the Mooks and Malta Group. You could even have Horde mode for player bases if the game would support it without lag for the larger groups.

I think I have it set up the way I want it.

Act 1 - Sewer Teams
Act 2 - Positron TF
Act 3 - Arachnos vs Longbow
Act 4 - Council & The Fifth Column
Act 5 - Rikti Invasion

It looks like I can work about six lines into a conversation. Here is a bit of silliness I came up with for Arachnos

The Arachnos Women they say are might fine
They give them mental powers and spider behinds
Oh I don't want no more of Arachnos life
Gee Mom I want to go home

I am working on an arc which a series of musical parodies about the lives of my favorite people in COH, minions. I already have several pages of notes for Minions the Musical but I am always looking for betters ideas . If I use your song parody idea then I will add you to an encounter in the last mission listing the thank you's. To give you an idea of what I am doing here are a few of the many ideas I already had .

If I beat the Statesman (If I were a Rich Man)
Its not easy being Green (sung by the Trolls)
Oh my darling Superadine (Oh my darling Clementine)
Its a small crime after all (Its a small world after all)
Clockwork Man (Particle Man)

So if you have an idea for a song that would be about the every day life of a minion I would love to hear your ideas.

This was something I worked on a while back and I have nearly finished. Its a long 3 part horror arc where I was trying to make something like the Shining for COH. At least one Boss has hold attacks so bring break frees. The story is based on the Teddy Bear's Picnic which is actually pretty creepy if you go read the lyrics.

What has a bow and is contantly plotting your downfall?

Your Archerynemesis!

Forget magic, forget science! The Cheapness add on pack would be the best ever

New Costume Options : Armor made from old pizza boxes , Newspaper Triangle Hat, Snuggy I found in the trash

New Melee Temp Power : Hit em with a sack filled with , a melee power with random animations showing sacks filled with doorknobs, bricks, old dolls, unpaid bills, or diapers hitting the target.

New Ranged Empty Bottles attack power - Take out your enemies with an endless supply of thrown soda and beer bottles

New Mace Weapon Options - Stuff I picked up I am gonna bust over your fool head (2 by 4, broomstick, Rock, Ex Wife's Figurine Collection)

New Task Force - Lord Recluse's Deadbeat Cousin Task Force . Once a week on Saturday Lord Recluse's deadbeat cousin hops into his Arachnos flyer with the busted tail light and the broken exhaust pipe with the smoke pouring out and heads to Kings Row to steal people money and search for partially smoked cigars. This week the terror comes to an end!

New SG HQ tileset for small SGs - "Cardboard Box I found in an alley ". Various sections of the box have power area, workstation, and defences all drawn on with a crayon.

Why walk all the way to Miss Liberty from the AE building to train? The new Waylon McCrane online school of heroing and taxidermy will level you up without that long tiring trip to train.

So the point of this thread is to get people who post the same thing over and over and over and over and who beat to death the same topics over and over and over and over to give their opinions on why new COH players should not play like they post.

Does anyone know the person who did the Pumpkin King mission? Could you nudge them to put in some text and finish the mission? I have brought 4 different 8 man PUGs into that mission and everyone always loves it. The only thing is the person who made the mission never put any text in for the boss to defeat. So whoever wrote that people like your mission and wish you would finish it

Triceratops Skull, Raptor Skull or Pterodactyl Skull could be fun

I heard on the radio that the three most common fears are spiders, clowns, and dentists. So what if there was an NPC who had the exo skeleton like the Vaz Meat Doctor for a spider look . The left half of the face and body would be clown makeup and the right half would be a medical gown. The left 3 exo skeleton arms would be waving guns that have a flag sticking out that says "Bang" and the right half of the arms would have a dentist drill in them.

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I believe he was Freedom-only? That may be why people from other servers haven't heard the name.

From what I recall, he spent much of his time droning people, and you know how the PvP community tends to feel about that. Myself, I was amused by his behavior, but I'm rarely in the zones, so I never actually interacted with him.

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He's moved to Infinity.

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and his ego doesn't crash the server?

You forgot a few things

Recruit two of each of the important roles. That way if the healer's baby throws up in the middle of a big fight the secondary healer can step in without losing a beat.

You go with standard groups because the custom made NPCs vary a lot in how tough they can be. Instead of trying to pass off other players as inferior do your homework when posting How To Guides

If you have a group of 7 or 8 avoid missions with hard ambushes. The ambush mobs can clog up and create a zone of death.

Changing Arcs is not as simple as just saying Plan B. Its a pain in the Arc to quit and reform. Gather everyone in an an area where there are few people and quit. Then you can reform the team quickly and easily

Plan on sending one hundred PSTs and then be happy when it only takes 25 to get a healer.

Never play an arc with more than two parts. People always quit and once they leave any new people replacing them will get an error message when they try to enter the missions.

Defeat All + Large Zone = Bored team

Fixed Levels are very important because many times I have to work with what's available. I can't afford to have a miserable attitude like might-y might-erson . I have to be able to get my team to the same level without SKs. I have times when the only people available are 15 Blasters and a Trick Arrow Defender. I have times when the healer's baby throws up on the carpet during a huge fight. I have times when the only tank is level 3 and has never played a tank before.

I spent a bunch of time testing out custom builds on the empty test server. I am not discouraging custom builds because I don't like you or I am stifling creativity. I am discouraging custom builds because they are not balanced and if your custom builds team wipe a PUG I have to spend 15-45 minutes rebuilding the team sending hundreds of tells.

I need the MA to work for the people playing not just the person creating.

If anyone has any open mission slots I need some missions for my PUG teams. I am afraid that all you will get is a 6 to 8 person team will run your mission at least once. The other catch is that some parts of the MA do not work well for PUGs and I need missions without them.

Requirements
Mission set to a fixed level between 16 and 30
No more than 2 parts (very Important) I get a lot of ppl looking to play for 1-2 hours before work or sleep and long missions don't work and never have
No Medium or Hard Ambushes (they do not scale right for 8 ppl groups)
I would prefer you used existing groups except any bosses. The custom powers are fun but very unbalanced and can turn an 8 person mission into a butcher shop.
No defeat alls on large outside zones (for example defeat all on Skyway), it makes players bored

Some of the factions I am specifically looking for which have few missions (adding your custom boss to these is ok)
Fixed Level Winter Horde
Fixed Level Fir Bolg
Fixed Level 5th Column
Fixed Level Security Guards or PPD
Fixed Level Sky Raiders (very popular)
Fixed Level Mooks, Batzuul, Coven, Rogue Robot, Slag Golem. Prisoner, or Wyvern

Please do not use these groups (their 8 person spawn gives too many team wipes)
Legacy Chain
Snakes
Malta
Carnies *eep*
RIP
Shivans
Trolls
Luddites

If you are making a custom critters be careful with willpower, regeneration, and Invulnerability as they are out of balance with other standard powers. Be especially careful when combining Mastermind Pets with Holds or Attacks because you can create an NPC with double or triple the damage of a normal AV


Sorry to cut out some popular things but after 40 levels and 20,000 tickets of running 6-8 person PUGs I know that these things work, people enjoy them, and they want to keep playing.


A good example of a mission which works very well for PUGs is the Winter Horde mission to save the Ice Cream company (if it was fixed level I would run it every week). People really enjoy it and it has enough challenge without butchering an 8 person team repeatedly.

I am not looking for and will not run farming missons. My target is 2-3 hours of play, 4 levels gained, and at least one mission which people ask to play again.

Any decent PUG leader has figured out how to find mission that work well for groups and ignores the rating system. DC and HofF are great for a small clique to pretend they are better than other people. They are great for solo guy who can't hack it in a group , wants to demote stars because a work is mispelled , and give stars for uber text like its a show on PBS . They suck if you are running a group and want to find good missions with XP, variety, some challenge and something that will leave group members wanting more.

That is not a fix-all because its how powers work together.

The dreaded Domstermind Custom Critter has Assault for about 25 damage per second at level 1 . Pets do nearly as much damage and do not use any actions. So a level 1 Domstermind can do 50+ damage per second . Thats about twice the damage of a Blaster, Mastermind, or Dominator. This is with the basic powers and not even with the advanced pets and attacks.

The weakest thing I can find seems to be the Corruptor which combines ranged attacks with buff sets. Assault Rifle at level 1 does 138 lethal over 6 seconds . Force Field does 30 damage over 4.7 seconds. So a AR/FF custom critter Boss at level one does 168 damage over 10.7 seconds with no defences. Its about a third of the damage of the Domstermind.

I finally had some time to go crunch the numbers and run tests on the test server using the custom critter standard set of powers. It seemed very clear that there are some very very weak powers and a few powers which are overpowered when combined with others.

Force Field on Standard (WEAK) - All This powerset does is reduce the average damage over time for the main power and it sometime results in the infinite knockback attack where the NPC will just spam force bolts and not use other powers

Radiation on Standard (WEAK) , this gives you one heal for 15 points while empathy heals 30 points in almost the same time delay.

Poison on Standard . This gives you 3 powers in 5.25 seconds which don't do very much e

Regen on Standard . This power choice adds 3 powers that are always on for 0 seconds delay. So your average attacks stay the same while your defences get better.

Invulnerability on Standard . This power adds 5 powers for 1.17s of delay. The damage over time is barely reduced.

Fiery Aura on Standard . 3 powers 4.67 seconds delay. This gives you 3 powers like Regen but the activation time reduces your damage. This weakens NPCs compared to Invulnerable and Regen.

Devices on Standard - Immobilize and a vey short stun in return for reducing the damage while taking other sets can get you heals or holds.

Dark Miasma - Petifying Gaze and a Heal while most of the other buff/debuff power sets get very little on standard. This set seems a lot more powerful on standard compared to other similar sets.

IMHO it would be nice to have the levels of an NPC linked to an average damage over time so all standard NPCS would do about the same. Archery/Force Field averages 155 damage over 9.7 seconds while a Fiery Assault/Regen on standard averages 180 damage over 4.81 seconds and it has defences while the Archery FF does not. My numbers are based on the level 1 set of numbers from the critter creators.

Ranged Electrical - only get 3 attacks so powers like Force Field really bring down the average damage when combined with Ranged Electrical.

Except for Ranged Electrical , all the melee, ranged , mastermind and assault sets seem to be decently balanced at standard level.

There seems to be a lot of alternate dimensions where an
alternate version of the Statesman is in charge. So what other dimensions could we possibly see?

Dimension where its Christmas every day
Santa-core leads the Xmas heroes against the Devouring Earth and their giant leader the Tannenbaum while Elfitron wishes he could be a dentist

Naughty Dimension - where heros like Miss Libido and War Wench grab and slap the heroes training for levels

Aquatic Telepathy Dimension - Where every hero and villain has aquatic telepathy . The Briny Aqua Boater and Aquatron lead the heroes against Aqua Widow and the Prussian lifeguard army of Lord Aquasis

Reality TV Dimension where the Heros lead by JohnandKatesman face off against the Lord RoadRules and his reality TV army

Discussion Dimension - The Debatesman leads the heros in a very tense set of talks with Arachnos. However a second version of the Statesman, ModEightsman rules with an iron fist.


Dimension of Horrible Puns
Hero Juan, Maamticore,Blue Seal and and many other pun based heroes populate this dimension

Dimension of Plant men
The Grapesman , Posie-tron, and Hedgerow One all lead the heros of this world

If you edit the Prisoners to remove the minions it boosts the XP back up higher , the xp change was made when Prisoners spawned with minions.

Another thing is the individual attacks show their damage ratings but there is no overall rating to compare and see how tough your final design will be . Some people I have talked with a grouped with have no idea how powerful their creations are. It would be nice to have the average damage of the cutom crtiter for all selected powers and a comparison against minion, LT, and Boss that can be used for level 1-54 like Tuatha or 5th Column.

then on the screen you might see

MyCritter average damage over time at level 21 12.37 (stun sleep)
5th Column Minion average damage over time at level 21 11.10 ()
5th Column LT average damage over time at level 21 15.30 ()
5th Column Boss average damamge over time at level 21 19.45(stun)

The "standard" setting for powers is way out of balance. This has lead to people creating farms of wimp bosses and team wipe missions of extremely tough minions. I created standard/standard NPCs and had them fight each other 3 on 3. I was able to create and reproduced multiple sets of fights where "standard" NPCs would crush other 'standard" builds without losing a single character. a good example of this is the storm and device secondary power sets. They effectively half the attacks of the custom critter with very little benefit from the powers used. These weaker power sets need another attack added like jump kick or air superiority to keep people to balance out the average damage over time. I really wish I had more time but I won't have a full list of weaker and stronger sets for a month or so.

Another thing is NC might want to start tracking missions of standard groups with minions removed from the weakest NPC groups like Prisoners, Winter Horde, PPD, Spetsnatz, Bobcat Followers, Malaise Lunatics, Mother Mayhem's Group, and any group I missed with SMG only or Shotgun Only Bosses. This mission structure creates a much high XP and ticket value for the mission but these group's bosses are extremely weak and easily defeated. These missions which people have been trying to hide are very high reward and very low risk.

I created a MA arc where one of the missions had you attack the costume contest in Atlas Park on Virtue. It clearly stated to bring other villains and it was based on the real builds people use. Then I got these e-mails from cretins who were mad because they could not solo the mission.

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I'd just as soon not tell every potential player exactly who & what their primary opponent will be like before they start even playing the game.

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I hate to break this to you but there is no one asking for any AE team looking for extra hard missions or surprise NPCs. As any high play count person will tell you people after a team wipe will quit and log nearly instantly . Then you have too small a group for the mission so you have to break up and reform which is a pain. So any person leading a group who knows what they are doing will avoid your mission like rotting garbage.

I have a chart by my PC which looks like this:
4 Mooks, Wyvern
9 Spetsnaz
14 Batzuul
19 Sky Raiders, Slag Golems
24 Fir Bolg
28 Rogue Robots
29 Prisoners
39 Axis America, Council Empire, Ghosts, Neuron's Robots, Psi Clocks

These are all groups which auto-level up a PUG and have less risk of a team wipe. With these groups I can have a PUG run for 3 or 4 hours and everyone leaves happy. In the weeks of playing (not posting) not a single person has asked me for any mission with any group which can team wipe us. Not one person has ever asked me to run a single mission with unknown enemies. I switch around the groups so the mission vary and people keep playing and staying. The only request I get is to play a mission someone on the team has built because their mission in buried on page 152 of the sort.