Twoflower

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Clear out all your local MA files and then edit the mission and see if you can correct it that way. I had weird issues with an arc and was able to fix it that way.

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I'll give this a try tonight. I know when I was checking out my DC arcs on test, I'd open them in the editor to verify that the right version made it up, and the powersets seemed right on critters, but they weren't when I played. I suspect the editor uses local versions of identical enemies rather than what's ACTUALLY up there, or some other craziness.

I bail out of any arc I'm in which has a cargo ship. (Unless I'm on like mission 3/4/5 and may as well see it through.)

Ships are HUGE. The game thinks they're small, but nope, it will take you quite some time to slog through these things if you don't have stealth. Huge, and very annoying, with spawn placements you have to be careful to work around or just grind your way through if you want to move forward. And glowie placement... don't get me started on glowie placement.

I get WHY they're used (plenty of good story reasons to hop a boat) but mechanically they're just tedium incarnate.

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It's not mathematically impossible to keep a five star rating. Looking at IMDB there's three movies that's done so (has a rating of 9 and up, which would translate to 4.5 rounded up to 5).

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Apples and tungsten. A 1-10 rating, you can vote and say "This isn't flawless, but it's amazing" and pick 9. That 9 helps you get an average of 9, yes.

On a 1-5 rating, you can votet and say "This isn't flawless, but it's amazing" and pick 4. That 4 helps you get an average of 4, not an average of 4.5 -- it can ONLY hurt your rating, it cannot help it.

A better comparison would be to look for the number of 9.5 ratings on IMDB, since the only rating which can get you there is a 10.

But even if a 9 was enough...

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The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974). Those are the only three movies ever made that manages it, however.

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So, in the whole of recorded history, only three movies would deserve a COH Hall of Fame under our criteria. Groovy!

It seems it's been happening ever since I published when we launched. Would re-publishing clear it up? I haven't tried for a few days.

I've been pegged for this enough times in my feedback that it's getting annoying, and I need a hand...

Arc is the one in my sig, the Psychotropic Hydroponic Freak Out. I have three bosses -- two are generic bosses from the Hippies faction, but given names. The third is also in the Hippies faction but is an EB.

Everything looks absolutely fine in the editor -- opening the goals in tab 2 shows them as being in their faction, not in All Custom Characters. But when people go to play the arc, they see them as All Custom Characters, not as Hippies.

What's going on here? I've republished several times, and I'm editing the one that's up there (not a local copy), everything SEEMS okay... but it's not.

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Apparently there is a way to keep a 5 star rating. Just add the string "JSNTS" into your arc description. Go ahead and search on that.

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What's with that, anyway? Just Say No To Supradyne? I've seen it pop up in a lot of arcs.

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It is still up, but I cannot edit it. Which is not great, because it has a couple of text errors I would like to fix.

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MA usability fail.

At this point, I kinda don't WANT Hall of Fame. If it's this volatile and it could lock me out of editing my own arcs (not even HOF ones, but just other arcs I publish!) I'd rather wait for whatever vetreward / microtrans / craftable slots the devs inevitably add. They'd be a LOT safer to use.

Why no feedback on low ratings?

A friend and I were grinding out one-mission arcs last night, trying to get the Escapist badge. We ran a LOT of really, really horrible, stupid, poorly written, or just boring arcs. We handed out some 2's, 3's, one or two 5's, mostly 1's.

Very rarely did I give feedback, thoguh, because I fear retribution. Many of the arcs we did were clearly 15 minute efforts by 12 year olds and I didn't want backlash voting against my arcs if I pointed out that I didn't enjoy the arc and why.

I mean, is there anything constructive you can say about a mission where you have to go murder prostitutes because they're "nasty"? c.c

It's not just grief voting. Every non-5 star vote will pull you away from the average you need to maintain in order to have five displayed stars (4.5+). So even if someone felt your arc was really good but not perfect, and by their internal voting standards that's a 4, they've just hurt your rating.

This problem is the reason why we don't have a Hall of Fame arc yet despite having several 999+ arcs. We had one... and it kept wobbling on and off the HOF thanks to be mathematical implausibility of a 4.5+ average.

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So the idea that you have to have an average of 4.5 star rating
is a myth. Good to know. I'm glad we're not at the mercy of some
players that 1 star just for the heck of it. If the Devs decide it's
good enough, so be it. That raises my hopes just a little bit.

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Mixing things up a bit. You DO need a 4.5+ rating to make Hall of Fame -- a problematic rating given 1-star bandits. However, DC can be granted to any arc the devs like regardless of rating.

Blaster sets are using Defiance, allowing all or most attacks to be used even while mezzed. This makes play very difficult for control-focused characters.

Similarly, control sets are using Overpower mezzes, which can make things difficult even with mez protection.

Ninjutsu is applying a MASSIVE! damage buff, far more than any stalker would get.

Melee allies are running up to enemies and... standing there, doing nothing. It seems they don't walk up QUITE close enough.

I'd also strongly recommend giving the users more power to select powers. Certain sets are extremely overpowered in the hands of critters, notably ones that impact perception like smoke grenade -- others render allies useless or unhelpful (detention bubble). Understandably some mandatory powers would be needed to prevent farming, but more control would help us use problematic sets more intelligently.

It's a bit too early to see how this'll pan out -- if recipes will drop to the point where they're too easy to obtain and too hard to sell for any decent price, or if everything will stabilize out nicely. But I do agree that I'd rather do a random roll on tickets (plentiful) than merits (very rare), so I'm glad to see I can get a meaningful reward.

I am curious -- why is there only one feedback thread related to the MA? There's nothing on the MA itself or the voting system.

See my sig. I ONLY write story-based stuff. It's largely comedy at the moment, but if I ever get another arc through DC / HOF or they add microtransactions I'll be able to get my more serious stuff posted.

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Really? That's disappointing. I thought the point of buying them with tickets was to decouple the use of those parts in the MA from buying the expansion.

If we needed to buy the expansion anyway, we shouldn't need to also spend tickets unlocking the parts all over again. :-(

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In-game unlockables and veteran rewards, sure. But we're talking a whole other animal with purchased booster packs. You don't get access to them at all unless you pay, be it for hero costumes or for MA costumes.

And that's fine -- Paragon Studios needs money to keep the game supported. We got Powerset Proliferation by the great sales of the wedding pack, for instance. If you really want the pieces for your MA work, scraping up $10 is not that difficult.

Here's an idea. Hostage spawns a boss in the middle of the map (make sure it's linear). Boss spawns additional ambushes. Presto, you have a good challenge en route to the exit.

I rate this thread 4.3 stars, and thus knock it out of the Hall of Fame. HAH! Take that, Stat 400!

Yes, but he was asking about chaining three to a HOSTAGE, not to a boss.

Also, note that 4 chained to a boss is certain death for most soloers.

Can't be done currently. One ambush per goal, and hostage rescues count as a single goal.

If you mean the ambient panicking citizen NPCs on some maps in the official arcs, no, there is no option for that at the moment.

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the mysterious Cajun Elves

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I would play that arc.

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Lavitae posted something earlier in this thread that I find extremely hard to believe, and I'm wondering if Lavitae was joking or not about being able to BUY more slots to make more MArc's with! Is that even possible to do, or was Lavitae really joking around with us?

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Not currently possible.

Will it happen in the future? It might. We can buy character slots right now and buy respecs, so why not buy story slots? I plan to buy the maximum available if they do this.

Stick to what's relevant to the story you're trying to tell -- that is, to the activity transpiring during the missions themselves.

If you have an eighty page story bible detailing the manyfold mysteries and regime changes and transitions of your evil gang of jewelry thieves, but all the player sees is "Stop the jewelry thieves", there's no way you're gonna be able to fit it in without it being forced.

This is why the origin arcs in normal COH missions have activity that relates to the origins. For Malta, it's Melvin uncovering their roots and you getting clues along the way. For the Banished Pantheon, it's the Wheel of Fire relating to how the Pantheon was banished in the first place. Clockwork King has a few missions that relate his backstory while tying it into the actual slugfest your hero's fighting through. Etc.

Correctamundo. That'd be the Hydroponic Psychotropic Freak Out!. Feedback thread / arc info are in my sig.

I also recommend my two other (albeit longer) arcs, if you enjoyed that one.

(My inbox is full? Jeez. I bet my tickets capped out again, too. I really need to read the market forum and figure out what the heck to do with those things.)

Yeah, but if we were truncating the float, we'd NEVER see a 5 star rating. It's be impossible; every single vote an arc ever got would have to be a 5, because even a 4.99999 would display as 4 stars. And we do have confirmation of stories with 5's, including this one when it managed to keep its HOF, that are certainly not unanimously voted on.

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And it definitely rounds itself to the enarest star amount?

Pff, I wish we could get an official explanation of how the HoF is supposed to work

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Seconded. A lot of the confusion and debate would be instantly cleared up if a dev was to just lay it out and say "Here's how it works." Then we could at least all be talking about the same thing and could form an informed opinion.

All we can go by is the evidence from the one HOF arc that's up there as it wobbles on and off the HOF, between 4 and 5 stars.