imported_CrazyCorsaire

It's a mixed bag. Overall as people get more skilled and they enhance the AE interface/toolset more, stories will get better.

There are still people honing their stories having never published. Also, there is the one hit wonder thing too where someone has for years had a story, movie, etc. in them that they've wanted to tell and you may be seeing some of these already.

I think the quickest answer to the question is how good are the dev choice arcs compared to the 999+ plays 4 star SFMA arcs out there? I have a strong opinion, but it is skewed by a limited number of dev choices existing in the pre-40 non-custom mob hero area.

Then again as the writing becomes more sophisticated so will the expectations.

edited to add an epiphany... solution to Hall of Fame: disconnect it from the star rating and have a simple extra checkbox "Vote for Hall of Fame Status" arc gets 1000 votes and it's in permanently. Sorta off subject but wanted to trap the thought as it spawned from this question.

Not certain if it is the one you mean, but one long rectangular city map is:
Unique
Outdoors
City Map 02

If it isn't then your best bet is to flip through the Unique Outdoors maps to find the one you want.

To get this working, I have my custom ones in one group and then pull those in along with regular critters into a new group.

But when I made a custom group, put regulars in it, then create characters into it, it wipes my regulars out.

I think with either approach, if you edit and creatures it will wipe the group again, but that could just be faulty memory on my part.

From reading the thread on why no power customizations, rooting seems rooted in the closed animation system in the game. Something in the anniversary chat made me think they are working on redesigning how they manage animations and such. If they change from a fire and forget model to a more scripted kinematics one, then unrooted attacks would likely open up as a real possibility. Maybe in their I18 radar sights.

Check out the thread that's been stickied called MA Player Resources. Someone even has an offline editor they wrote.

They should weight the scores, like 10% if no enemies are fought or glowies clicked. 30% if some activity is done but no mission is completed.
Then 50% if at least one mission is completed.
100% if at least half of the missions are completed.

Would need at least 50% to reward any tickets on the rating.

There needs to be a way to accumulate values for "This is unplayable." I went into one arc with a level 8 that had 3 EBs spawned within 50' of the entrance.

I'd like a Hiro style walk-through ability to check initial static placements and an interact to trigger mob speech, interact text, or fire triggers. This should include selecting the "player" level and difficulty setting.

Or at the least thumbtacks on a blow-up of the mission map showing object and spawn placements. And in game objective re-ordering.

I'll keep branching and interactive dialogs on my wish list for now.

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... But how do I let the people that play my arc know that the villains and heroes I use are created from whole clothe and not from my character list? Will people just assume that Mocker and Manta-Man are mine and one-star me? Have I fallen into a reverse creativity trap?
Ahhhh the angst of a starving artist.

[/ QUOTE ]

Simple, make sure you are letting the player be the hero of the story. What I personally skip are variations of:

"You will find out about how cool SuperMegaKent-El is and how he fell to earth in a rooftop garden. Then you can help him stop his arch-nemesis JakeIsABigFatJerk."

Actually, I skip anything that isn't level 42 with MEOW in the title or description.

Those com guys seem to payout boss level experience.

A +4 gets a 1.9 xp multiplier
A +1 gets a 1.2 multiplier

e.g.
@ 31, a normal minion is 240
An lt is 800
and a boss is 2400

800 x 1.9 = 1520
2400 x 1.2 = 2880

Roughly twice the xp.

It's great that you mention Luck Charm. Did you know pre-i14 that Luck Charms were selling for 40 to 70k? The typical supply qty would hover at 1000 and the demand at 5000.

Now, post-i14 it is down to 20-50k? And it is still moving dowwards. Supply is up to 2000 and demand is starting to move down as the price meets people's expectations.

We're in a heavy adjustment market. People can temporarily tweak prices when the supply is under 200 on a salvage, but most people interested in really making serious money aren't messing around with salvage. They learn about purples and such where they can turn a 1-10 million per market slot profit. A stack of "manipulated" common salvage would be lucky to make 20k each or 200k for a market slot. With tickets, anyone can get any common with minimal effort.

Right now while the market is adapting to i14 and there are random shortages prices can get freaky for people who for whatever limitation are unable to take thirty minutes to run AE content and cash tickets for salvage.

This is a wacky market. It blows my mind that anyone would pay 200k for a common level 20 damage io that I can buy the raw materials for 5k and make for 10k?

[QR]
I'd say we are 2-3 weeks for a new overall lower priced market (excepting uncommons which will be priced more like they are actually uncommons than commons.) What's happening now is the crazy chaotic little nueral network that is the market is learning the new prices that the soft caps of architect tickets have introduced.

Part of the process resembles a grade school soccer match where every kid chases the ball/market. This leads to a moving supply spike that travels through the highest return items, as it passes by and homgenizes the prices, the me toos thinking they can profit on the highest price items come in late and get caught with their pants down.

I've been watching pangean soil since i14, it started out at 3-4 million and was the best inf/ticket return for a day. Many people didn't learn this and it saturated. The price crashed to 300k recently. Other rares are getting similar effects.

While the ball is in high rares and recipes, other areas get short supplied and prices spike, then the ball heads over to those areas.

When all is said and done, tickets will functionally have a particular inf value that represents around the 95% cap price (but there will always be ebbs and flows and spikes and daily, weekly cycles.)

I originally was thinking it would be 2-2.5k each, but it's starting to look like it will be closer to 1-1.5k.

Yes, do it. But give a fair warning, e.g. "They are going to be tough, you may want to bring a friend."

climax ... is ... goooo...d

If you make the surrounding group allies, you could also make those heroes and start unconscious. Then you can't rescue them, unless a patrol or some other enemies wander by and aggro the surrounding group. If you just want one at a time, you may be able to give the surrounding group ninjitsu. Of course this doesn't give you any interaction text or such, but it could work visually.

If there is a key point for this thread it isn't so much the choices as the consequences. If you write MA #1234269 about people hacking into the architect system, it may be the perfect device and a great story, but as the 42,712th version of it don't count on getting a ton of plays.

One for the overdone list:
Geeks Gone Wild

Try putting text in both singular and plural. I've seen plenty of optionals showing, including one arc where the savvy creator made the optional navigation text in light blue to distinguish it from required objectives.

nm, wa about to repeat that resist dmg was also

I know in the Magic Man mission I actually ended up with multiples of him at the same time.

If your map is sufficiently large enough and your boss fight is in the back, you could set an ambush at 1/4 health for the boss and have that be the robot ambush location at the middle of the map. Then also place an ambush on the first boss defeat and place that at the front of the map. Then cross your fingers/test that they show up on time.

It's kludgey, but may work. The way Magic Man ran in, I could see that having been the technique for that one.

Welcome, glad it clarified, but sorry it isn't ultimately a solution.

The problem is for MA 1.0 they didn't do any map work, they just exposed the maps they had already in the system. For Freak-Lympics they didn't have a boss, etc. in the last room; so, they don't have a spawn for it. Most unique maps have similar or really bizarre limitations. The object placements aren't as limited, because they wanted to have replayability on any mission and having all the clickies always in the same place wouldn't be too much fun I imagine.

With no knowledge for sure, but I would surely anticipate them "genericizing" the various maps over time to improve the placement options.

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Where are these kinds of details listed, Corsair? I'm not at my home comp, so I can't call it up at the moment.

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Hi EC,
When you are in the mission details and you've selected the map, above the map in the right panel has the parameters for the map. Here they are for freak-lympics (copied from the screen text):
Category: Warehouse
Map: Freak-lympics
Description: Mission Map Details
- 1 allowed any detail type. (1 Middle)
- 8 allowed ambush, boss, patrol or destroy object details. (5 Front, 3 Middle)
- 3 allowed rescue, escort. ally, or defend object details. (3 Front)
- 29 allowed wall collection items. (10 Front, 6 Middle, 13 Back)
- 35 allowed floor collection items. (14 Front, 6 Middle, 15 Back)

Sounds like you haven't really looked.

There are 5 pages of heroic arcs with snake enemies. Only one page of mooks, but they are out there. Just pick heroic, type the group into search and tada.

Check the details on maps carefully: Freak-lympics doesn't have a back position for a boss spawn. Only 5 front and 3 middle.

Sorry, I didn't check the labelling. I just presumed from the Rogue Isles reference. The contact definitely presents the activity as neutral to heroic. To the original intent of the thread, the highest "market" out there is the heroic side.

There's a stickied thread up above.

Allies are middle only on that map, and the middle is huge including the final room. I think the only back location is on the center pillar, but it doesn't allow allies.

Also, if you place them in the mission in the order you want them to be read and deliver the details in a clue, the clues will show in the correct sequence in their clue window, no matter what order they obtained them. If you numbered them it would also show them gaps if they've missed one.