So this is the problem the Devs deal with, eh?
By
Alexandria2000,
Posted on: 2009-04-09 08:38 in Mission Architect
I wouldn't go and start making changes off the first opinions you get, unless they're blatant mistakes.
Evaluating the difficulty using your own characters is limited. Evaluating the difficulty according to how you evaluate the general public's skills... is an art.
But difficulty aside... is it fun? that would be my deciding factor.
One of my first comments on an arc complained about glowie clipping issues and fine details of spawn placement - things it's basically impossible for MA writers to correct!
Maybe Issue 14's title really was "Well, let's see how YOU like it" 
@Mindshadow
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One of my first comments on an arc complained about glowie clipping issues and fine details of spawn placement - things it's basically impossible for MA writers to correct!
Maybe Issue 14's title really was "Well, let's see how YOU like it"
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Hee hee...
I went for a comedy arc. I've gotten good feedback on that...but if it's too hard/easy...sheesh...
This could kill 100% of the complaints on this message board that deal with things like this. The old, "if you think you can do it better....do it" nugget applies.
Balance is hard as heck. I've debated turning my EBs into B's many a time because even if *I* can solo them to death within a minute, not everybody can. (Mercs/Traps MM.)
But I keep getting such a wide range of feedback ("too easy" "too hard" "just right!" or just "This rox") that I'm inclined to leave things as-is and hope for the best.
I'd like to think that any glaringly obvious balance problems -- say, having LTs that massively buff their allies to the point where it's doom day on doomtown with extra doom, or putting Willpower on every minion, or having three hard ambushes all tied to the same EB -- would be easily to spot in the feedback. Hopefully that'll be the case once the initial rush of speed players dies down.
Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
Mission Architect Works: DIY Laser Moonbase (Dev Choice!), An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge (2009 MA Award Winner!) and many more! Plus Brand New Arcs for Issue 21!
Balance is only harder for players due to the overly high damage scale custom critters have as well as not being able to choose exactly what powers a critter gets.
if / when those two things get made more customizable, balancing will be much easier.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
I've put some comments in my description to the effect of "Easy to solo" and so forth, so I can set an expectation from the browser. Its going to be difficult though, because how hard or difficult the mission is will really depend on the users skill level, build, and archtype.
I do feel just a little bit sorry for what the devs go through now.
Something also to consider is the player may be having a bad day [or conversely a good day] and having more trouble than they really should. Most ratings are going to be one shot/one chance really. So keep in mind that even if a single person found it too hard, it may not be because of your mission being too hard 
.
Let's Dance!
I suspect a lot of people still don't know about the Ninjitsu bug. There's also the lack of nuance that the playerbase usually has. You know how people only seem to make characters at maximum or minimum height? The same principle applies to their custom critters.
I gave a pretty grouchy review to one arc where even the minions and lieutenants were set to Extreme. This doesn't actually make them harder; it just makes the fight more tedious. I still wasn't in much danger, but the chain mezzes and widespread resistance needlessly slowed me down. Then I was given a very long tech lab "defeat all" mission against these guys.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball
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I suspect a lot of people still don't know about the Ninjitsu bug.
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That's the big problem I'm running into. There have been three arcs now that I've had to quit early because I couldn't take down one Ninjitsu Lt. I can't say "make the enemies a different powerset" because the set clearly fits the concept (say, a spy-esque KoA-style group), but I can't finish the arc to rate it. Hopefully that gets fixed very, very quickly.
We'll always have Paragon.
Some people have made some mobs which are really, really rough. I fought a red boss the other night on my IO'd out DM/FA Brute. This Brute can slaughter purples. Boss had Radiation Emission combined with Electrical Melee. So I got hit by the Radiation debuffs followed by Thunder Strike.
...
If your boss can one-shot a decent Brute I have no idea what it does to other players. Sheesh.
We'll probably just all end up making stuff we like and hope for the best.
I did just scale down a few of the critters in mine just in case. (I can always tell myself they aren't a problem for me because I'm just that awesome. )
I had a similar problem. My arc isn't difficult to solo as far as I'm concerned and I solo'ed it myself just fine with my TriForm PB/WS characters. However, I neglected to acknowledge that since I was playing a TriForm Kheldian, between all my forms, I had self-teleport, flight, self-heals, self-buffs, some crowd control, some DPS and some survivability. So basically, I was a mini-team soloing my own story, of course I wouldn't think it was difficult.
I then take along my wife and a friend, and we travel through my Arc. First and 2nd missions were very easy... as expected. We then came to the 3rd mission, where my custom-made Vampire Bunnies live... and then, after the initial laughter (they look pretty funny) and the initial shock (their Minions has MindControl/DarkMiasma powers) dies down, we're left with a mission that effectively, only my Kheldians could handle!
So, after a few recommendations from my wife (basically it was like CHANGE THEM or else), I toned down my Vampire Bunnies so they would use a much more docile power-set combination. However, it seems like my "work" was not yet done.
You see, for the last Boss in my last mission, I have the player fighting a 'Hero-class' enemy. Without giving up too much of the story/setting, you're there to set someone straight... and the fight kinda went south for some people on some characters when they tried to solo my arc.
I checked the editor and could not see any way to tone-down the difficulty of the End-Boss, so instead, I did the only fair thing I could do, which was to put a secret-Ally in the mission! It is now up to the player whether they want to work towards getting that secret-Ally to come and help them against the End-Boss, or not.
The story itself also flows naturally, I believe, so that if you beat the End-Boss before you meet the secret-Ally, things still seem reasonably logical. So I'm happy with the results. All this by the way, was on the Test Servers, and the Arc made the transfer to the Liver Server quite intact.
It remains to be seen yet, how people will rate it. So far, I've gotten 5-stars from one anonymous voter who did not comment on my arc. I have an idea who he might be, but that's besides the point.
The point is... yes, balancing content is a DIFFICULT job, but I think that if a TriForm Kheldian can reasonably solo an Arc, it can be declared solo-friendly. If a Kheldian will repeatedly have problems with it then it requires re-balancing (if and only if it is meant to be solo-friendly in the first place), but also, keep in mind that sometimes, to balance your work, you don't necessarily need to tweak things down, sometimes you can build on that and add some secret-weapon-type thing like a secret ally.
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
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So, after a few recommendations from my wife (basically it was like CHANGE THEM or else), I toned down my Vampire Bunnies so they would use a much more docile power-set combination. However, it seems like my "work" was not yet done.
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I checked the editor and could not see any way to tone-down the difficulty of the End-Boss, so instead, I did the only fair thing I could do, which was to put a secret-Ally in the mission! It is now up to the player whether they want to work towards getting that secret-Ally to come and help them against the End-Boss, or not.
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That's not a bad idea. (Runs to AE to edit) I've got an Ally in the 2nd mish...but it's a mission goal...I should change that to "optional".
This is a nice direction of discussion.
I add allies and its up to the player to ditch them or not. Its ALSO the authors responsibility to warning that an arc has an EB/AV and that it may be a challenge. As an author I ALSO feel its to the authors benefit to include an ask in the description to lower difficultly if not looking for a challenge.
It is the PLAYERS responsibilty to read the above and lock away the e-penie when visiting the field analyst/fateweaver to lower the difficulty when needed.
If you on whatever AT cannot do an MA mission on Level 1, then leave a note to the author stating same and your AT and powersets as well as SO or IO build.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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I checked the editor and could not see any way to tone-down the difficulty of the End-Boss, so instead, I did the only fair thing I could do, which was to put a secret-Ally in the mission! It is now up to the player whether they want to work towards getting that secret-Ally to come and help them against the End-Boss, or not.
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That's not a bad idea. (Runs to AE to edit) I've got an Ally in the 2nd mish...but it's a mission goal...I should change that to "optional".
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Yeah, optional allies are a great solution to the difficulty curve. If most people can handle it but some have trouble, throwing in an optional ally people can recruit can help.
@Mindshadow
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The Devs have to be smirking somewhat.
I take a week to build up a two mish arc. I place some custom mobs.
I ran a test with a Scrapper. Hmmm...they seem too easy.
I ran a test with a Defender. Hmmm...they seem too hard.
I ran a test with a Controller. Hmmm...they seem about right.
So I got a few people to help me test it.
They said it was a little too easy. I changed it around a little. Added a few bosses.
Now I publish it on live.
Got two tells yesterday saying it was way too hard to solo. (one was a lvl 22 Scrapper, one was a Defender) So I dialed the bosses back slightly. (Very cool that one of them said he didn't rate it because it would have been a "1" to give me a chance to work on it.)
So I'm at a loss. I still think it won't be a problem for a team. But it might be too much to solo. (Or not...my Scrapper still laughs at it.)
The Devs have to be smirking somewhat. "Have fun balancing your missions guys! Enjoy the feedback you get!"
(plug: arc #2649)
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Well the easy answer and the one the dev's use for almost every mission and enemy type is to downgrade it to be really easy.
Seriously, balance it around an ice/ff controller solo'ing it and you will be doing what the devs pretty much do.
If you want to make something harder then do what they do and put a big disclaimer - "this needs a team" or w/e.
*note I don't think you should actually do this, but if it makes you feel better if the devs dropped most of the existing missions they have done into MA they'd be 1 star material...The ones that would score well would mostly have the - need a team - disclaimer.
All I every hear is people whining about trying to solo the vanguard mobs in vanilla and custom critters can smoke them...
Every time I put in a EB I place an optional ally in the mission at a place where you will always find them before you get to the end. (It does no good if the EB is blocking your path to the Ally, like I saw in one arc).
Anyway, usually any feedback I get on difficulty is specific enough that I can tweak the problem. It helps a lot if the person provides their level and AT/Powers as well.
Oddest complaint ever was someone who said that one of my arcs was very hard to solo...on Unyielding.
Well, good!
I test everything at Tenacious/Malicious so I'll have bosses around the base level and all adjustments are made from there. If Hard difficulty is actually "Hard", then go cry more.
Eventually I just went ahead and added to the disclaimer on one of them "May be challenging." You might wipe the floor with my critters or they might wipe the floor with you. That is the only warning you're going to get for that arc.
I'm considering making a few of my secondary builds into gimpy versions to test my arcs. Pretty easy when I'm only spending inf for enhancements on the primary build in most cases.
If my no-enhancement controller can survive, even barely, I think it should be about right.
Also, I've found the best solo balance is to add optional allies that are 1-on-1 equals to the boss of the mission. Therefore allowing an epic boss battle that can be reliably soloed.
All that is planned fails. All that is born dies.
All that is built crumbles. This will always be true.
But memories remain, And that is beautiful.
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So, after a few recommendations from my wife (basically it was like CHANGE THEM or else), I toned down my Vampire Bunnies so they would use a much more docile power-set combination. However, it seems like my "work" was not yet done.
[/ QUOTE ]
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I checked the editor and could not see any way to tone-down the difficulty of the End-Boss, so instead, I did the only fair thing I could do, which was to put a secret-Ally in the mission! It is now up to the player whether they want to work towards getting that secret-Ally to come and help them against the End-Boss, or not.
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That's not a bad idea. (Runs to AE to edit) I've got an Ally in the 2nd mish...but it's a mission goal...I should change that to "optional".
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I had to do the same thing yesterday. The Boss, though not specifically chosen to be super-tough (after all, I WANT the Heroes to win the day when they play it) just became a pain-in-the-[censored] to balance for different ATs and Powersets.
So, I did the ally thing to work around it.
LordXenite,
I think playing the arc with other characters is an excellent idea, and clearly you are trying to get the right balance.
At the same time, I have trouble reconciling these two statements from your post.
This:
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I was playing a TriForm Kheldian, between all my forms, I had self-teleport, flight, self-heals, self-buffs, some crowd control, some DPS and some survivability. So basically, I was a mini-team soloing my own story
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and this:
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I think that if a TriForm Kheldian can reasonably solo an Arc, it can be declared solo-friendly.
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A TriForm Khled is one of the most flexible and powerful ATs in the game. Why would use it as a standard to judge how soloable the arc is? To call something "solo-friendly" I would say at least 80% of the most common ATs should be able to solo it, not an AT that's in the top 10%.
Just ran a friend's arc that culminated in a EB with Necro/DM that supposedly wrecked most players and got him some bad feedback. I steamrolled the guy; apparently my AR/Storm was an ideal match, since I flattened his minions with FR+FA, and melted the EB with Snowstorm/Hurricane/Ignite. Most of the time, none of them could hit me, and they went down after a while.
Point is? It's really, really easy to make matchups that are terrible, one way or the other. I'm thinking it'll take a lot of practice and experimenting to figure out optimal balance.
Optimal balance? Hmm shall we ask the devs about that one.
There is none. Best you can do is make it balanced as you see it, give plenty of warning about a challenge EB/AV, put an ask in the description for the player to ADJUST their diff level as warranted. Even the devs can't make it balanced for all peoples skills set, AT's, powerset combos and difficultly levels.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Optimal balance? Hmm shall we ask the devs about that one.
There is none. Best you can do is make it balanced as you see it, give plenty of warning about a challenge EB/AV, put an ask in the description for the player to ADJUST their diff level as warranted. Even the devs can't make it balanced for all peoples skills set, AT's, powerset combos and difficultly levels.
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Just to be clear, "ask" means "adjust your diff as needed"? (I may not be up to date on the abbreviations. )
The Devs have to be smirking somewhat.
I take a week to build up a two mish arc. I place some custom mobs.
I ran a test with a Scrapper. Hmmm...they seem too easy.
I ran a test with a Defender. Hmmm...they seem too hard.
I ran a test with a Controller. Hmmm...they seem about right.
So I got a few people to help me test it.
They said it was a little too easy. I changed it around a little. Added a few bosses.
Now I publish it on live.
Got two tells yesterday saying it was way too hard to solo. (one was a lvl 22 Scrapper, one was a Defender) So I dialed the bosses back slightly. (Very cool that one of them said he didn't rate it because it would have been a "1" to give me a chance to work on it.)
So I'm at a loss. I still think it won't be a problem for a team. But it might be too much to solo. (Or not...my Scrapper still laughs at it.)
The Devs have to be smirking somewhat. "Have fun balancing your missions guys! Enjoy the feedback you get!"
(plug: arc #2649)