Toyega

You could have the intro message impart the dialogue you need (if it's long enough) and then have a click-glowing thing (set for front) that spawns the Ally NPC (also set for front). I think the Ally has to spawn with guards, however.

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Is everyone in this thread trying to play against custom foes at their usual "purple-foes-or-nothing!" difficulty settings?

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No, my tests are all done at difficulty 1. And it's not that the minions are so hard they kill me (they don't). But what they do is so much more damage than normal minions (like Hellions) that I end up having to stop and rest so often that it's not fun. Then the rest power doesn't recharge before I need it again...and that's even less fun.

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Now, costume-wise, she was wearing the "sporty top" in black on pinkish skin. She was not actually shirtless in the topless sense.

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That would be my suggestion for suggestive material: try to find a creative way to add it that's visual, or otherwise part of the game environment.

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An even easier way to fix it would be to allow us to pick pool powers for enemies

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I'm all for that (doesn't really help me now, though). I'd also like access to the weaker level 1-14 powers for minions/lts/bosses that locks custom mobs into this level range for lower level mission arcs.

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It appears that the story was "inappropriate content that involved going out to defeat enemies because of their sexual orientation."

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I can understand why they'd want to avoid the hassle that such social/political/religious themes would create. You could (for instance) substitute "Christian" for "Lesbian" and open up an entirely different can of worms. Not to mention what happens when you start combining social/political/religious buzz words into "Chistian Lesbian Nazis" or some such. So then it takes hardly any effort to create something (even a title) that's offensive to most anyone.

Selecting different maps has helped cut the minions down to fewer spawns, and fewer 3-groups. I also tried mixing in pre-made Hellion minions (which can work for one mission in the arc), but that's sort of hit or miss for which minion spawns. I'll try different ratios of custom-to-standard minions on different maps and see if anything makes me happy.

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Your best bet is to just leave everything easy until the mid or late thirties.

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I'm at a loss for how to make them easier. I tried turning the minions into Lts (so the group was all Lts, no minions or bosses), thinking that would change how many of them spawned...and I ended up with a map full of Lts, in groups of 3.

You probably got reported a lot just for having "lesbian" in the title. That's just the sort of "button word" that people are going to report, regardless of context or intent.

I've been trying to use a custom group for my low level solo arc (levels 1-14), but since the patch, it just isn't working. No matter what power-set I use, they do way too much damage. The "weakest" I've come up with is melee/melee (like War Mace/Mace). But then they still do too much damage, they just fold like paper when you hit them. Which makes single minions a laugh, 2 minions more or less okay, and 3+ minions no fun at all.

Is there any way to flip this around: higher defense, low damage (or fewer attacks)? The whole point of using the custom group is for "color" and "story".

My test character is a level 2 Scrapper (Claws/Regen) straight out of the Tutorial zone.

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried with my very first test mission: have it set so the player searches "X", doesn't find what he's looking for, so then "Y" spawns for him to search, and so on.

I'd like to see them tweak the rating system into something that can actually be used as a tool for connecting players with the types missions they want to play. Maybe something as simple as adding different categories--like "Story", Solo", Group", Challenge", "Extreme", "General" and what not. Then when you publish the story, you can flag it with as many of these you think applies. So that when you do a search, it will only list mission that match your tags in the order that you listed them.

Something else that might be useful (though maybe not possible, due to space) is player comments that can be viewed by other players.

I would think you'd be fine with lower-level missions, since there's not really a risk/reward issue. The pre-made foes are weaker (by design), the levels are fast (again, by design), and ticket rewards (near as I can tell) are pretty low. So I can't see there being much concern for exploits at levels 1-20.

Edit: In fact, one issue with creating low-level missions is making them easy enough--especially if you try and use a custom group.

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Infinity

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My character is on Infinity. So it's a small world. After all.

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If you consider 5 hours per level "quick"

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You miss the point--it's not about "quick". It's about balance. Know why there are more Scrappers than Controllers? Balance. A level 50 Controller is a lot better (and rarer) than a level 50 Scrapper.

Why do you think that is?

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*sigh* Can we at least attempt to stay on topic here?

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Dude...are you on drugs or what's up? You're the one that went off topic.

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You cannot pick out half of a person's sentence, pretend that it is a whole sentence (and thus has a different meaning), and then reply to that.

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I can do whatever I want.

See? Your whole sentence. Means the same thing. All your other sentences? Meant the same thing. Go back and list where I "wronged" you. Go back and take the sentences I quoted and say where they didn't mean what I quoted them to mean.

Dude. I've done this same thing with 1000's of other people and you're the first that ever cried about it.

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most people will find that anything gotten for free will soon be discarded as worthless.

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This is the absolute truth. It's human nature. It's how things work.

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And I say again...stop misquoting me!

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Uh...everything I quoted you wrote. Don't like your own words? Stop writing.

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If you're going to take excerpts from a post

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I take the part I'm replying to. I don't want to debate 20 things with you, ok? That goes on forever. I argue one thing.

Otherwise you get, "Well what about...?" and "Doesn't your being wrong about X make you wrong about Y?" And really silly crap.

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I fail to see how your comparison of the Illiad to the MA

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It's what Homer had to work with when he wrote the Illiad. He didn't have a 50,000 word dictionary. He couldn't (for instance) tell you that the "elite" Greek Soldiers clashed with the "peasants" of Troy--"elite" and "peasant" weren't in the Greek language.

So when your "elite" boss spawns as a weaker mob, or your Archvillian makes 10 of himself...it's because, like Homer, your tools are limited.

His was language.

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Again I ask...why

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Well it's before and after. What were players doing before, and what are they doing after? You and I can argue about it, but the devs have the hard numbers. And I think they see it's warped.

Things evolve, especially creative things. I'll give you an example. When Homer wrote the Illiad? He didn't have a 50,000 word dictionary. He had maybe 5,000 words.

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Regardless of how you spin your opinion

Are we also to ban story missions in the Architect because they reduce the amount of players for "traditional" arcs?

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Oh I love the MA. I think it's a great tool for whatever--story, farms, personal arcs, SG arcs, or just goofing around.

However, you have to be blind to not see that this affects the rest of the game. And, I think, out of all the choices, farming should be done away with--it'll make everything else better.

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I was one of the many hardworking individuals providing free Battle Maiden farms to players in need.

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And that was you and how many people? How often? Once a week? Twice? Once a day?

You see, there's a difference. Once a week or twice a week is an "event"; every day is a play style.

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This seems like a very selfish argument. "I don't want you to farm because then you're not filling spots on MY team doing what I want!"

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It's not a selfish argument because before MA, you were, in fact filling out my team. There was a middle ground where people farmed, but most people just played. And I'll guess you were in the "just play" group...which meant you teamed with me, and roleplayers, and noobs and (probably) someone's mom.

That doesn't happen now. The balance has shifted to farming, and the fence sitters (people who "just play") have gone to farming and that's about 75-80% of the population.