james_joyce

Really fun arc, but I have to complain about the last mission:

I would consider toning down the final boss' power level. Quadruple stacked smoke and web grenades are not fun!

I feel like the last mission should just be a cake walk for fun. The penultimate mission is the real gem here.

Good job!

Vahz hate I understand - they hit hard, and their damage has a toxic component, and you encounter them at low levels. That combo screams annoying.

Oranbega hate I don't really understand. I can understand portal hate - there's often a maze of portals on larger Oranbega maps that get really confusing. But the tileset itself looks great, IMO, and there are a lot of smaller Oranbega maps that don't have the portal maze problem. Other than that, large Oranbega maps have the same problem that all large maps have. No reason to call out Oranbega specifically, unless there's something I'm missing.

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I was alittle surprised by the inability to put non combat objectives on the Atlas Park map. Especially since I've done official missions that take place on the map that have allies.

This kinda puts a stop to a mission idea I had. Anyone know why it's like this?

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My guess is that any missions in game that currently use those maps don't use allies/hostages, so the spawns aren't placed yet. I'm hoping they go through the unique maps and place some additional spawn points just for MA. There are a few maps like this, that don't have certain spawn point types for no apparent reason.

The only way to do it, AFAIK, is to fill the mission with other friendly details. Each detail you add removes a normal spawn from the map. So if the map has 15 available boss spawns, and you use 15 boss spawns, that's 15 fewer normal spawns on your map.

The reason the Space Marines mission was able to only have one EB on the first mission was because there were so many patrols and single allies. Not because the patrols were killing the normal spawns, but because they replaced them. In fact, I think they used all the spawn points on the map, since the EB was clearly a boss detail and not a normal spawn.

oh man, that sucks. That was a great generic group.

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Venture should probably look at DeviousMe's thread for an example of how to review something. Rather than just saying "you're doing it wrong", he says "here's what I thought was wrong and how you can fix it."

Much better than the negativity without correction that I've seen here.

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That's odd - I think Venture's doing a great job of pointing out exactly what he doesn't like about an arc and why.

I mean, he's harsh as hell, but I wouldn't expect anything less of him.

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However, we have raised the ambush limit from 3 to 6.

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w0000000000000000t

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That did it! It's working as expected now, and I published my first mission!

Bananas About Hamlet
Arc ID: 48619

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I like where you're going with this... I'll try it out tonight.

There's no way to reliably do this right now, as far as I know. Getting a bunch of AVs in the same room may be possible on certain maps, but you'd have to experiment with which ones had those spawn points close together, and it would severely constrain your map choice.

This is one of those things I'm hoping they allow us to do in the next iteration of features, because it's more broadly useful than for difficult task forces - think about the Civic Squad, for instance. It's a valuable story telling and mechanical tool, and I'm sure the devs themselves would like it to be easier.

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2) Escort rescues seem to always say the unaware text at the same time as the aware text (I've walked right up to them with stalkers to test this).

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I had one actually work properly in test mode for me today. One, since it went live.

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Wow, really? Could you tell what was different about it? Were they behind a wall or something?

What I'm hoping is that it's relatively easy for the devs to crank out some custom maps based on existing ones - a smaller portal corp map, smaller outdoor maps, smaller nature-overrun office, smaller ruined hospital, etc. I have no idea how long it would actually take them to do that, but it seems like it'd be just as useful for them as for us.

Just played it this morning - I think this is the best arc I've played so far, and I didn't expect to like it 'cause I'm not a huge fan of hard sci-fi. What struck me right off the bat was your clever usage of chaining mission objectives in the first mission - I thought it was a brilliant use for that, and I haven't seen anything similar yet in other arcs (though I'll be sure to steal the idea at my earliest convenience).

Good plot, excellent use of maps (though it's a shame there isn't a smaller version of that office map), and one of the more challenging boss fights at the end of the last mission I've encountered (if it weren't for those elevators I would have definitely died).

BTW, those Willpower bugs are nastier than the Freakshow, 'caue they rez every single time. They go down pretty fast, though.

My only complaint is that I wanted some Simizans and Space Marines to help me out in the last mission, similar to how you had it set up in the first one. Having 12 canon fodder dudes following me, blasting away an EB just felt so damn awesome.

Twelve thumbs up.

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Ok so how do I create the correct battles?

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What do you mean by "correct battles"?

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The problem is sometimes your story just CALLS for one of these maps. You could use a generic, but it would feel strange, and would lack the atmosphere that would turn an above average mission into an exceptional one.

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this.

An arc I'm working on calls for a desolate wasteland landscape, and the only maps that fit the description are the outdoor ruined city maps. They're all pretty huge. If they ever release a smaller ruined city map, I'll switch to it in a heartbeat, but for now I have to make due with filling my large map with interesting details. Not easy to do when there are 60+ spawn points.

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I've specified things to be at the back of the mission, only to have them show up on the second floor of the map, only because the way the elevator linked maps work, the second "floor" is actually the fourth area, and deepest section of the map. (or ... thats my theory of what happened anyway)

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yeah, those labels are screwed up for a lot of maps right now. But keep in mind that if you fill up your available "back" spawn points, the game will spawn any additional "back" spawns in whatever spaces it can find. So make sure you haven't used up all your back spaces.

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Set up Ms. Liberty as a rescue, not an ally.
When you rescue her she says she needs to find her girdle and runs off.

This triggers the glowie quest to find her girdle.
When you find her girdle it triggers her as a solo ally - when you find her again she can fight because now you have the girdle.

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The problem with this is that you can't chain a collection detail right now. All collection details need to be in at the start.

You could spawn a destroy object detail, make it a magic box or something, and say the girdle is in there, though.

I'm hoping they're working on this, but it's hard to say. I think the best case scenario is that we get to choose what spawns at the existing spawn points. I don't think we'll ever get to place our own spawn points at arbitrary coordinates. Both are possibly abusable, though. I'm thinking they have to put it through the wringer before they'll let us do it.

The map is available under, I think, Unique > Unique > Jewelery Store 02 (if I'm thinking of the right one)... however, the sensors are NOT there. It's just the map.

What I'm hoping they do in the next release or so is to give certain maps map specific events... so the events on that map they could put the sensor and vault door back in, and add the events sensor triggered, vault at 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, and vault destroyed.

I'm guessing they have no way right now of tying events to maps, though.

There are a couple bugs with unaware dialog.

Boss unaware dialog seems to work fine - it triggers when you approach but before you aggro just like you'd expect.

Ally unaware dialog (both enemy unaware and the ally itself), however, seems to trigger when you aggro the enemy group, at the same time as the ally aware dialog.

If you set a boss to "ally" you can't reliably get him to say anything (although I've seen the dialog trigger - I just can't reproduce it reliably) - I'm not sure this is technically a bug, but I'd like ally bosses to exhibit the same behavior as normal bosses.

Finally, if you create an ally and set the difficulty to "single" so that the ally spawns by himself, it will complete immediately. I'm hoping that's a bug, too - it'd be useful to have an ally not surrounded by enemies that completed when you approached. Its dialog, however, seems to do OK.

f(0_0)

But... but they give real rewards rather than tickets.

Isn't that, you know, better?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you can only use the office -> sewer map, not the sewer -> office map.

Seems like it'd be really easy to include both, though, so maybe it's there and I just haven't found it.

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<ul type="square">[*]Players can no longer place Cimeroran “Immunes Surgeon” Minions in custom missions. Any missions that specifically include these critters will now be invalid, and will have to be edited. Do NOT “Unpublish” your mission, or you will lose your Arc ID and ratings. [*]Players can no longer place Council “Transformation Capsule” Bosses in custom missions. Any missions that specifically include these critters will now be invalid and will have to be edited. Do NOT “Unpublish” your mission, or you will lose your Arc ID and ratings.[/list]
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Might be a good idea to mention if these'll be back in or if they're gone for good.

My understanding from beta was that they'll be back in as soon as you guys find the time to make no-xp copies for MA, but I could be wrong.

The fastest way to get tickets is to play other people's missions. You can unlock everything there is to unlock in a couple dozen arcs, probably fewer.

You also get tickets when people play and rate your mission highly, but those are obviously more difficult to come by.

All the unlockables are unlocked account wide, as far as I know.

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There's the one map of Primeva, but I don't know where to find it in the MA. :\

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I believe it's unique &gt; outdoor &gt; Primeva.

It's a nice map.

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However, removing all fights and leaving the mission with 8 patrols keyed to appear off a boss fight and 0 fights produced a mission that was EMPTY, save for the boss at the end. Defeating the boss resulted in swarms of Arachnoids (picked at random off the top of the list) to swarm the entire map. Score!

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Excelsior. This is exactly the type of thing I wanted to do.

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Failing that, what would be a good way to approximate a "You have to fight your way out of here!" mission?

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I think you'll have to use an Escort objective so that you have to lead them back the entrance. I can't think of another way to do this right now.

I think at this point we should probably start a thread in Suggestions/Ideas that compiles all the new details and settings we want included in the MA. Although I'm sure the devs have wish lists of their own that are probably similar to ours.