redicicle

Arc Name: Collective Trouble
Arc ID: 77996
Faction: You fight The Great Endarkenment and his minions
Creator Global/Forum Name: Red Icicle
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: The Great Endarkenment has stolen Mankind's Collective Unconscious and it's up to you retrieve it before all of Paragon falls back into the dark ages
Estimated Time to Play: 40 minutes

A story-driven arc that spans 5 missions. Help JC Grulan locate and retrieve mankind's Collective Unconscious before the villian, the Great Endarkenment, can drain it and cause all of mankind to fall back into the dark ages.

Several Easter eggs are stashed throughout the missions, including in the dialog, names, clues, etc, which reference everything from history, psychology, and famous (and not-so-famous) quotes.

Post your findings Here

Good Luck

By way of further update from the Developers [from the boards]:

Removed Prisoners (level 30-38) from the list of creatures that could be placed in missions. Any missions that become invalid after this change will have to be edited. Do NOT “Unpublish” your mission, or you will lose your Arc ID and ratings.

Click Here for the link.

Well, I received the Official word, which was as follows:

"Greetings,

On April 15th, the Prisoners were removed from the list of enemies that could be used in Mission Architect missions, so any storyarcs that used them prior to this change will need to be republished without them. At this time we do not have an ETA for how long this will last.

Please be sure to let us know if you have any other questions by updating this ticket.

Regards,
GM Datum
City of Heroes/City of Villains Support Team"

Unfortunately, no real explanation.

My guess: They intend to add them into an unlockable pack for 900 tickets.

I've been referred to a senior Customer Support Representative. I'll keep everyone posted

But why?

I built an Arc with the Prisoner group. I played the Arc live last night. Now, Arc invalid. I checked and the Prisoner group has been removed. Did the Devs remove the prisoner group?

I'm building a 5 mission story arc. Can I test just one mission without having to run all the previous missions? For example, can I test only Mission 4? If so, how?

Thanks.

I've been building my Arc. When I test it, complete one arc, and return to AE, it freezes. I'm not running any other programs. I have 3gb of RAM, a Geforce 6600 graphics card; intel duo chips, and a relatively new motherboard. I've even cranked down the graphics settings, with no luck. Any ideas?

[ QUOTE ][*] Players create content in game through a computer terminal within one of the Architect Entertainment buildings. Architect Entertainment is the name of an in-game company that’s developed this type of ‘simulated experience’ for heroes and villains of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. You can think of this like a holo-deck or a simulated mission tool. Players go to these facilities that are spread through out most of our zones and interact with a computer that walks through the creation process. Here is where they pick all of their options for a mission as well as write all the dialog and build their custom characters. Once they’ve gotten their story together, they can test it out and see how it plays. Once they’ve gotten it perfect, they can publish the story up to our Arc Server. This server is cross shard and cross game. So, any content published will be seen by everyone on every server, regardless of where they play.

[/ QUOTE ]


Here's my little beef about this system (from the Blue side perspective). I don't really care for the "entertainment" or Holo-deck explanation for this tool. If I'm role playing, would a hero actually go to a store and make a "simulated" game for other heroes to play? This doesn't seem to really fit into the general theme of the game-- fighting bad guys-- not simulated bad guys.

Basically, I'm playing a game (COH), where my character makes a game (Simulator) for another gamer to play? I don't get it.

My suggestion for the back story for the mission architect would be the following:

Evil is spreading faster than our contacts can deal with the problems. Hero Corps requests all heroes of Paragon to identify and defeat all signs of evil, even the new threats that our present contacts do not know about. If you come across a new threat (IE the one you build in the mission architect creator) enter it into the "mission Architect" computer and hopefully other heroes can help in defeating these ever-growing threats.

Even if you don't know of new evil threats, check the "mission Architect" computer for wrongdoing to stop. (e.g. playing other players' missions)

I just don't think we need to build into the lore of COH that players build simulated missions. For example, if the missions are "simulated" why would you receive merits and/or salvage?

Does anyone else think like this?

PS: I love the idea; I'm just not fond of the backstory justifying the mission architect.