Twoflower

Ugh. I feel your pain -- I had a similar problem back when I was working on it in beta. I've long since turned AutoSave off and just started regularly saving my work as I go. It's easier and safer than relying on an autosaver that doesn't know what I'm truly up to or how best to archive it.

Yes, SO's can't be obtained earlier than level 22, just like the way things work in normal stores.

I haven't experienced 1/10th of the XP gain compared to normal critters. If that was true, why would farms of custom bosses have been so popular? Even with boss XP, they'd have produced far too little XP to be worth it.

Please show your work. Where's the proof for this? Not anecdotal, let's see some numbers.

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Would be nice to get some more lower level content one of these days though.

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Absolutely agreed. That's one of the main reasons why it's such a chore to level -- the lower level content is either unsoloable (much of the hollows, several Oakes arcs), in annoying to navigate places like Mercy Island, or just becomes a dull grind since you've done it fifty thousand times. Some new lowbie content would be welcome.

This is one thing I can see the AE used well for -- creating new content focused on lower level characters, so they have something ELSE to do on their way up to the more varied mid and high tier content. Unfortunately custom critters are murder incarnate to a lowbie, so we're stuck with staple critters, but some good writing can work around that and provide something interesting to do.

The answer is never farms. The answer is better content, so you don't feel you HAVE to farm to get anywhere AND experience new things.

Fortunately in the clarification post, Positron noted that only the most hardcore exploiters are gonna face punishment. Anyone who snuck a few levels in or didn't know the difference should be fine.

If they didn't wave SOME sort of stick, that would set up a mentality of "Look for every day one exploit you can find and hammer it as fast as possible before the devs can patch, and you'll be A-OK because they can't touch you!". That's a dangerous mindset to have, since it effectively neuters the devs ability to punish and encourages even MORE rabid attempts to game the system.

Patch by patch, we're getting AE back to where the devs wanted it to be -- a way for players to create arcs that are equivalent to playing the dev-created arcs. Not a way to make arcs that are twenty times more rewarding.

The AE is not "destroyed", it's being brought in line with the rest of the game. If you dislike the way XP works in the rest of the game, go ahead and petition the devs to rescale XP, or to provide some sort of autolevelling buy, or whatever. I'd be behind that; I'm sick of levels 1-20. But don't think an exploit oversight is the way to go.

Characters with fly powers only fly if they have no other means of reaching the enemy or following the ally. They don't simply constantly fly. Have you tested this by breaking line of sight by flying up near the ceiling or out of range yourself?

I've got an arc where you construct a moonbase complete with death ray platform and successfully ransom Paragon City for ONE MILLION DOLLARS, if you're looking for classical evil + getting away with it. See sig for details. Oh, and one where you wade into a commune and just start beating the holy hell out of some hippies.

Yeah, it's kind of a pain. My DC arc used Hard on a few LTs, which is now REALLY! hard instead of just adding a few marginal powers. I've adjusted all my normal arcs, but my DC arc is pretty much stuck where it is.

See the "Dev's Choice: Becoming the Chosen One" thread sticky'd at the top of the forum. There's no specific process, but there are things you can do to improve your chances.

Where are you seeing ratings? I'm kinda confused here. I tried exporting from the published version to a local copy, but there's nothing in the storyarc file that's related to the ratings.

It also depends on the enemy type. For instance, the Family has some real screwy level problems... at the earliest range, Marcones may not spawn for hero teams at all, and at the upper range you could have the team -10 or the enemies at -10.

What's the actual composition of the custom faction in question? 46 is an awfully weird start point.

Hey, I'll bite. I like discussing far more than I like hammering out endless flawed analogies and yelling at people, which seems to be the pastime of choice 'round these parts.

The problem is that tickets are not really that difficult to get. I crank 9000 tickets with ease, certainly easier than 9 bucks. And as we've seen, people can and will always find and exploit the fastest ticket generators imaginable.

The end result would be people buying slots with tickets 95% of the time, which means lots of space being taken up but no new investment in the hardware to store it all. The whole idea behind microtransaction slot buys is that the money goes back into the system to compensate for the extra load that extra slots put on it.

Still, I do like the idea of increased file size being part of the packages. I'd love to see that as an option when the buy-slots go up -- although there may be a technical limit to how much data the mapserver can run at once for a player, so we'll see.

Comments are /tell'd to you through the global chat system. So, you'd get them stored up if they happened while you were offline, then told to you on login. If you're online, you get them live. The comment does not include what rating they gave you.

Yes, but hostages aren't just skins -- they're full blown critters who happen not to use their powers.

That's why all the civvies are actually "bosses" in the Civilians faction who only have Brawl. They're never expected to use it, but they still need to exist at all ranges.

So, for Ghost Widow, the game has no version of her at the earlier levels, ergo you can't use her as a hostage even if she's not gonna be slamming people with 100 mag mezzes.

All that got shut down are exploit-using speed level farms. The other 99.9% of the game is just fine.

As for your questions:

High 30's is fine. Not everybody is at 50.

The way the autoleveling works is that it will spawn enemies in relation to the mission holder's level. If you started the mission for your team, it spawns around your level. If your level is too low for the mission, you get auto SK'd up to the minimum level of the mission. If your level is too high for the mission, you get auto EX'd to the maximum level of the mission (and earn no XP, just inf).

As for your teammates, they will be autoSK'd to the minimum level or autoEX'd to the maximum level if they too are out of range -- but remember, enemies spawn around the mission holder's level. So if you're 35 and they're all 30 and the minimum level was 20, then they're now facing +5's. You'll still need to SK as usual.

1-54 means that the mission will work at any level -- probably a custom group, or something like the Council which exist all over the spectrum. No auto SK or auto EX, and again, it spawns around the mission holder's level. I do recommend if you're fighting customs, though, that everybody have SOs. Custom enemies maul lowbies to death.

As for most benefit for time invested, just make sure the missions you run don't have anybody AutoEX'd. Those people will be in the cold regarding XP.

Tanks+Healer is overrated. Buffs are better than heals and generally any AT combo that covers the team support and damage spectrum will do fine. This is COH, not WOW. We're far more flexible.

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As opposed to PLing/farming being illegal? As in against the law?

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Please don't make me do a tired old "fixed that for you" modded quote.

I specifically said exploits and cheating, not farming. I've run plenty of Council newspapers to farm my way up from one level to another when I don't feel up for stories, and there's nothing wrong with legitimate means of gaining XP.

1-50 in three hours is not legitimate. It does not take a rocket scientist to determine it is not legitimate. It takes three pinches of common sense.

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Basically this thread is all about QQ I can't make what I want. Get over it!

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...why yes, that is a very constructive and helpful insight, thank you. I shall promptly get over it.

Oh, wait -- I already HAD, if you'd actually read my posts instead of stampeding in to achieve some sort of Internet Alpha Male Dominance. Even with flaws, I'm okay with the system and its promise for the future, and I'll be using it more once the next issue releases with more fixes and changes.

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Go to warehouse click glowie

Go to cave destroy object

Go to cave kill everything including that one stuck in the wall so you can't target it.

Go to out door map kill everything and click glowies (Wow a real iconoclast here)

Yep new and innovative for sure.

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Sounds to me like you're bored with the entire game itself, given all missions official or MA based use similar objectives.

For that matter, you're probably bored with MMORPGs in general, given other games also have Go Here Kill These Guys, or Kill X Of These Guys, or Go Here Click This Thing.

New hobby, maybe?

The devs haven't said anything about that yet, so we don't know. Since we don't have ANY true PVP-based missions, MA or otherwise, I doubt the structures are in place yet that they could then copy into the MA.

It would be pretty cool, mind you. Just don't expect it to happen tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure "Oh snap, wrong map" is a bug, the kind they can fix. When they intentionally invalidated maps in the past, they weren't swapped with some random thing which then crashed your game or had weird behaviors -- the arc just invalidated itself, period, and you had to go pick a new map before you could play it.

I'm in favor of some means to get through the 1-20 slog, too... but a LEGAL means. Be it some sort of veteran reward, accolade, or microtransaction to speed up the process. If you guys want to petition the devs to introduce some way for folks who have already 1-50'd the normal way several times to get there faster in some game-friendly manner, I'm right behind you.

Relying on explots and cheats to do it, however, is not kosher. It's never been kosher and they've said several times not to go that route. This isn't anything new.

Ick, and that's a Dev Choice, meaning it's locked down from fixing...

Well, BABs posted that they're looking into the problem, so presumably a fix will be coming for arcs which cannot be fixed manually to shorten canned enemy descriptions or adjust maps.

Well, originally the PPD were designed never to show up outside of the Mayhem Missions, which are capped off in distinct 5/10 level ranges. That's why they change so drastically from level to level. Maybe in the future the devs can flesh it out and expand their ranges.

At the very least, I15's tool to let you forcibly constrict levels means you could make a mission based on the Psi Cops, which is meant for 35-45 characters. While things that go all the way to 50 are nice, the game does need some low level, mid level, and high but not max level content too.

It seems a lot of arcs were invalidated by text size bugs and missing maps with the latest patch -- any one succumbing to that problem will APPEAR valid, but won't start.

Authors, run through all your published arcs, make sure they're good to go. I did mine last night (tuning the powers as well, since the loadouts changed).

I'll agree with that, as well. If anything, as an artist, I THRIVE under limitations. As a kid I'd make games with crap like Turbo Basic and push that thing right to the envelope, and have fun doing it. Limits help guide you, help you write stories that match your resources and use them to the fullest.

So, MA's limits, while chafing, are ones I can work with. Low size? Make each custom count. Not many goals? Chain them in interesting ways, make the story compensate for the simiplicity. Etc.

It's the external factors -- the craptastic rating system, the signal to noise ratio -- that are out of my control as an artist and thus frustrate the most. But I like what I'm seeing in the works for I15, which are addressing those issues, and that means in the future the MA should be more workable.