Ultra_Violence

There are different definitions of "farm".

1) A mission which gives you all the rewards/badges you might be after.

2) A mission which levels you 10X faster than you should level.

I don't think anyone has a problem with 1, the problem is with 2.

IMO a type 1 arc with a good story is awesome and everything you could ask for in a MA arc. There are a lot of them however with no description, no text, just a bunch of mobs, a bunch of glowies and a bunch of hostages. And heaven forbid you say that the mission needs work.

I wasn't aware there WAS a way to make a complaint about that. Obviously you can't help that I have gotten the same complaint before (someone who said last mailbox was untargetable but what they had was a "painted" mailbox that was part of the background)

I is possible someone make a complaint about content (report for content)? Remember some people are very sensitive especially about language, sex and race, but you can also be reported for drug references, copyright etc (lol technically it is a copyright infringment to use the words superhero or supervillain).

If it's that my guess is the only way to clear is to republish or perhaps unpublish. If you can't get an answer here you can always petition.

This is the same arguement that was used against Power Diversification. Players know what they want better than the Devs, and it still isn't true.

Many players (people) will happily shoot themselves in the foot if there seems to be a short term advantage in it, regarless of the long term consequences. This is evidenced by players in FPS who only play in God mode then complain that Hard mode is too easy lol. Or by people who went on missions with pre-nerf Fire Tanks and stood at the door for 4 hours a night collecting experience, then complained CoH is boring. Well DUH!

Your aren't meant to reach 50 in a few hours. This cheats you of the game playing opportunity and undermines the basis of the game. They need long term players paying monthly fees, this isn't a charity. So the Devs walk a tightrope between making "good" progress and making "too good" progress.

It is also unrealistic to say that players ALL like MA superleveling. Even saying most like it probably isn't true. Like anything else some like it, some hate it and the rest ignore it. There have been just as many "Stop the Farmer" threads as there have been "Save the Farmer" threads. Too many of both.

There was a "bug" with writer badges that gave you credit when you played your own story arcs. I know I reported it because I like my story arcs (particularly one) when I noticed that the counter was going up each time I played.

Wasn't sure if that was on purpose or not so I sent the Devs a note. Getting to 100 plays of your arcs by playing your own arcs 100 times may not be what they really want to encourage.

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I still think those chat options should be defaulted to on... or off... they seem to be really inconsistant on which ones are "Enable to allow messages" and "disable to stop hiding messages"... -.-

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Dear Devs, we've been begging for this for a long time now. When will it happen?

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More than that I feel that chat options should be account wide rather than per character. Sure I can load and save things but there are definite disadvantages to that until you really got your knowledge of the system together, plus you still need to remember to do the load.

Can anyone think of any reason you would want to see opposing chat on one character but not another?

Doing a bank Mayhem when the hero ambush doesn't spawn. Petition figuring lttle chance they will arrive before time runs out.

5 minutes later GM_LEONARD asks if I need help. I reply. He says "Are you receiving my messages?" I reply again. He says I appear to be inactive and leaves.

I try with other players and THEY can all see me so I was connected properly as time ran out. Sadness.

I can only assume that GM_LEONARD didn't have his villain chat turned on. We always suspected they liked heros better now they won't even talk to us. LOL

Make sure GMs have all their chat turned on please.

Created a 30-54 Carnie mission in the MA and it works fine for villains but is broken for heros. The mission auto levels you to 30 (or if your 30+ leaves you alone) but spawns all mobs at 40.

Apparently Heros aren't allowed to fight level 30-39 Carnies. I suppose I could add a 40+ boss but this should work correctly.

No you can trigger ambushes on completion. Which means the completion of all objectives in a set (i.e. if there are 10 glowies ambush after 10th).

I wrote an arc with a defendable object and there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid being buried in mobs. I get 4-5 mobs on object and as soon as I attack another 6-10. This is solo on level 1 with object mobs set to easy and no ambushes. Basically I get hard no matter what I select on the mission.

I created a test mission and it works correctly but no matter what I do (including deleteing and saving the mission without the defendable object, then adding it back in.

Has anyone else run into this and have a work around? I couldn't find anything on boards.

This likely falls into the same classification as modifying the map files which are made to be modified.

The fact that this thread has been left up means that

A) Moderator hasn't killed it.
B) No one has contacted those involved

I would be surprised if the Devs weren't interested in the results. Seems to me the BEST case would be in include these improvements in the regular game at some point (right now MA doesn't need any new issues lol).

There is also apparently a problem if the mobs haven't noticed you yet. I have seen they say $name in their text for the unaware dialog. I assume this is because they don't have a target.

Only seen it in others missions though never bothered to test it outmyself. Could be they have done something I can't imagine wrong.

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I soloed a Assault Rifle/Devices AV (as Heroic)
And I ALMOST beat Nemesis AV (also as Heroic)

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Yes but could you DO that with an Assault Rifle/Dev character?

Unlikely without a Shivan and lots of inspirations, even then...

My opinion is that for non melees Player AVs are pretty much undoable without an ally. That said with a PROPER ally (and used properly) you can have some fun. A MM ally can make for a fun fight and if you are smart he will keep all the aggro off you.

What I prefer is an optional ally. Put him out there label mission as AV with optional ally. So if people want to solo they can otherwise they can get help. With a Boss ally my Dominator took down an actual (non-downgraded) AV but it was hard going.

In what reality did Street Farming get elliminated because of player complaints? I remember distinctly it was DEV complaints and they never nerfed street mobs they (effectively) depowered mission mobs making them more desirable. Only difference was that you got full debt outside. If you aren't dieing there is no difference in experience from when CoH went live.

Devs wanted players to play a story not just button mash street thugs. In CoV they didn't even set up zones to do street hunting like in CoH.

The same goes for the mission players were abusing. It wasn't due to player complaints but due to DEV complaints. Best example was that Power Diversification and Fire tank nerfs were announce after someone told Statesman to stop attacking mobs in a mission that he was just slowing down the Fire Tank. He apparently took a dim view of being told to guard the door.

The Devs play this game and if you team with random people you may well be playing with one. They have a vision of how the game should be played and will enforce it regardless of what "whiney" players say.

In ALL the cases the OP listed there was a LOT more whining by players after the change than before it. After the announcement of Power Diversification the wailing was crazy bad. For good or bad, if they were just going by posters complaints the game wouldn't look anything like it does.

Before you complain about whiners make sure you aren't one.

MA needs some tweeks. To say otherwise is unrealistic. Hopefully they won't go overboard with the fixes but so far the Devs have been very open to rethinking and rebalancing.

As I understand it. Boss will not spawn in same place as any other object (each spawn point is only used once). So if "Back" room is small the Patrol may be using only spawn point before boss can spawn.

Either move Patrol to middle or remove all triggers on boss spawns and just put him there from start.

Now if there are 2 back items I can't say which is assigned a spawn point first - the first entered (first listed top down)? That is only guess I have as to how it could work. So making sure Patrol is listed below boss might make a difference but I'd try that last. Sounds like you are desperate though lol.

5 year badge is per character! OH the humanity!

I don't know if it worth the trouble of logging on all forty some characters, some of whom haven't respec'd since diversification, (well yet anyway). Or just live without. What is worse is IF I log them all on I will want to move them all to new Day Job positions and probably get sucked back into playing 1 or 2. Drat!

Plus all the new characters I make after this won't have the badge unless I start creating them now (which I've done before filling a server with characters to play later). I go get back and play them but inevitably I end up wishing I'd done something different with 1 or 2.

Actually Rest DOESN'T have a long refresh. Once you get SOs it is almost always up. If you get SOs and Haste is it up practically before you can fire off your next attack.

IMO that is poorly thought out designing Rest to be useful after 22 when you rarely need it anymore.

What everyone seems to be talking about is an unevenness in the game. 1-19 most ATs are driven by END considerations, then at 20 Stamina and 22 SO's eliminate the driving force of the early game.

It should also be pointed out that you level FAST from 1-20 even solo and/or on Heroic. Even with travel times and END issues that experience bar just shoots up. Post 25 unless you increase the difficulty you will be forever leveling at Heroic, until in the 40's you are crying big super tears.

So the increase END availability post 22 ends up leveling the leveling so to speak. The main issue is that it is like playing a different game which is a definite problem for the mad key punch crowd ("Tactics? Never heard of it. Sounds boring.").

I agree with some of this, at low levels Enhancements, etc don't help much and for the most part no one has access to powers to offset the increased END burn rate (if 22+ your power uses 10 END with a 33% reduction vs at level 2 it uses 10 END with an 8% reduction). This is complicated by lack of Stamina and reduced damage (no SOs for you) for a 1, 2, 3 punch to the gut.

Typically until around level 14 I don't even turn Defenses on unless I am forced to because they are just unmaintainable in most cases. This allows you to put all your END into attacking. Also I rely heavily on Nemesis Staff/Wand and Sands of Mu. These powers do a TON of damage at low levels much more than you can do with any of your abilities.

FYI slotting attacks with END reduction doesn't work any better than slotting it with Damage unless you are missing a lot. Doing X% more damage or using X% less END leaves you in same place more or less. Sometimes with damage you will have overkill sometimes with END Reduc you would just barely miss a kill the have to attack 1-2 more times to get a hit. It evens out. The reason it works at higher levels is that you can max out one or both of them.

My suggestion if they wanted to do something is to have a Temporary ability you get at level 1-5 either automatically or via a mission that gives you an END boost for say 60 seconds on say a 90 second timer with no Refresh increases. Then have the power drop at level 20 or after X hours but the later has the ability to be abused.

Story sounds fine. It's the implementation that is tricky.

I'm still waiting to see the Secret Cow Level. Bovine Paragon under attack by "Bullies". Come on you know someone has to do this.

Also note that Dark Armor on even Minions makes them completely immune to holds. This can be complicated if you have other minions which use Blaster (so at standard they basically use all their attacks even when held). A large group of those and no Mezer will like you much.

My solution, only me, is to put in optional allies. If you want to get the ally, go free him if you don't just leave him there. They can even clear rest of mission then come back for ally if they want.

Only problem with this thinking is that if you are using the "bread crumb clues" method to tell stories the Ally's part of the story may be lost or out of sequence.

Additional clues don't have to be from Allies/captives. Allies are overused IMO and can really get in the way of earning experience/tickets. Also note that I often skip them until the end. So if you are counting on me recueing ally at beginning of mission don't count on it.

An alternative is to set up a "boss" who is just a minion or leut. You can overhear him talking before you attack and he will give up text on defeat. By placing him at Front, you can get the info as you enter.

Read the EULA and you will probably figure it out.

No Drug references, no sex references, no racial remarks, no copywritten (non-COH) names, no obscenities (this is one has a VERY wide net, poopy probably qualifies) and so on and so on. A LOT of people fall down on the drug references and get genericized for it.

If someone reports it GM will uphold it. Otherwise you will usually be ignored. Imagine you are writting for a 5 year old. If it is not appropriate for a 5 year old they don't want to see it. (Nevermind that the game is rated for teens. )

The real problem IMO is the defensive sets. Dark gives a Standard mob AV level immunity to holds as far as I can tell. When two Domination holds doesn't hold a minion, something is hinky. On a Boss this makes them crazy hard for mezers.

Also notice that some of the defense sets vary in power significantly. Some get almost all their powers at Standard some get like 2.

Still needs a bit of balancing.

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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

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Truth. I have run missions with a description of 11 or that turned out to be farms (often bad farms). Unless they label them (and use at least the basic principles of the English Language so it is readable).

If they have obviously spent no time on a mission other than designing new mobs (everyone likes their new mob groups myself included lol) then I don't see the point in sending feedback. There's no mission in my mission isn't constructive.

Another reason is you you rate someone poorly and tell them what to do, they may rate all of your missions as zeros. (happened to someone online) So why stick your neck out?

Personally I don't 4 star missions for this this reason. If mission is flat but shows effort 3 starts and comment. Anything below 3 and no nothing usually, I'm afraid of reprisals.

I have been looking for missions that SAY soloable. That at least gives you a fighting chance. 95% of the missions however don't say anything about difficulty.

Fortunately at this point 5% still gives you like 5 pages (searching for word solo) and over half of those are Don't Solo (which is also good).

We have a tool that will allow players to build missions for other players like themselves. If you like solo build solo, if you only like 8 player teams build for that. Only trick is you need to label your mission AND test it.

Even if you label and test it some may complain it is too hard so a difficulty rating is good too.

If would could get some standard abbreviations together MA would be awesome.

Solo/4P/8P - for recommended number of players,
HD, MD, LD - for high medium low difficulty
AV, AV/Ally - for AV in mission, AV with Ally to help you
EB, EB/Ally - for EB in mission, EB with Ally to help you
RP - In context story (fits into the COH universe)
Farm - If you are building a farm just label it already lol

Something like this anyway. In a very few characters you could give a lot of info. At least till next version.