[ QUOTE ]
If i have to go through the damn portal corp map one more time to find one glowie and a boss right at the end, im going to scream.
There are smaller maps to choose from! Save the big ones for missions that have lots of objectives!
Sheesh.
Eco.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm admittedly guilty of this..but only in my final mishes and only because I feel the final base of my AV should be well..large. >>
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QR - Im in an arc now. first mission, 2 objectives. find a glowie, defeat a boss. theyre on different FLOORS of the map, I'm story focussed, on my 50, and Im stealthed. running all over the place is not fun, especially on the first misison.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
|
[ QUOTE ]
If i have to go through the damn portal corp map one more time to find one glowie and a boss right at the end, im going to scream.
There are smaller maps to choose from! Save the big ones for missions that have lots of objectives!
Sheesh.
Eco.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think that's a problem with the tech lab tilesets in general. They're alot larger than the apartment counterparts.
Of course, when I was using Apartment-City of Heroes, Small Random,I somehow got a 7 floor apartment map... That was annoying since it was an escort mission [and I, a MM 
].
Let's Dance!
Hm, you know, I need to add that to the tutorial if I can find a good guideline. There's a temptation to put in a large map so players will have lots of space to play around in (plus it feels so grandiose)...
What would you say the ideal should be? Small Maps - quick task, Medium Maps - Default, Large Maps - You want players to feel the burn ...?
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I used it in my arc because it fits the environment I wanted AND it has a nice, crisply defined -front- event slot.
Keep in mind there are actually two version of that map with different event anchors. People may have been shooting for different effects with it.
One of my arcs had the Leviathan final map.
I decided that it was just... too... BIG... even though you're supposed to feel like you're trapped in an unearthly realm.
So I swapped it out for a smaller map, something only slightly less creepy.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
[ QUOTE ]
Hm, you know, I need to add that to the tutorial if I can find a good guideline. There's a temptation to put in a large map so players will have lots of space to play around in (plus it feels so grandiose)...
What would you say the ideal should be? Small Maps - quick task, Medium Maps - Default, Large Maps - You want players to feel the burn ...?
[/ QUOTE ]
it should be based on how many objectives you want the player to do. Basic spawns are filler. after a small map of basic spawns they are not generally fun, just tedious.
If you have only one objective use a small map.
Only use a large map if you have number of objectives or story that needs it. A story should be tight - it should be the size it needs to be and no larger or smaller.
If you want to fight more enemies it is easy enough to start another mission.
I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm surprised I had to look so long to find a thread.
I'm really questioning whether any of the designers of the maps I've played (maybe 25 so far?) have played CoX for anything length of time.
I'm solo, picking very short and short missions and have really only run into one that was even close to being challenging but fun.
Most of them have been huge maps with spawns of a yellow minion and orange LT. (or worse) seemingly all either on top of each other or very close to each other. And the mobs are godly. What is the fun in having my Robots (I'm playing my MM) single shotted by an LT? And since the spawns are so close, it's basically a supposedly "short" mission on a giant map with a gazillion spawns to kill or *try* to avoid to find the goals.
I guess these are a blast to have mob after mob in a perfect group that doesn't have an issue handling anything at all.
I haven't tried to build one of these, so I don't know what issues there are. But I'm on the easiest difficult and these "short" missions are brutal and LOOOONG.
The "length" descriptions are misleading. My missions are all "very long" because I use 5 missions and 98% of the available space, but they're almost all short maps (I think each arc I've done has one "long" mission on an outdoor map).
[ QUOTE ]
Most of them have been huge maps with spawns of a yellow minion and orange LT. (or worse) seemingly all either on top of each other or very close to each other.
[/ QUOTE ]
None of that is the doing of the maker (except choice of map). MA has no control over any of that. That's a function of your difficulty selections. It's not a good idea to play missions with custom mobs on Invincible all the time.
Dec out.
Where's the Portal Corp map?
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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.
I've got an arc up that's a SINGLE mission, not that much of a chore -- that one mission has multiple bosses, multiple objectives, and a big fight at the end. Plenty of stuff to be contained in the Green Fog Office Map, despite it being 7 floors (two of which are tiny). So you get your money's worth and it's not too sparsely loaded with stuff to do.
And I STILL got pegged with a 1 star rating from someone last night who told me "ur map is too long make it less floors". I CAN'T make it less floors, it's a unique map! Agh.
Don't get me wrong, these should be used sparingly, but they DO have a useful purpose.
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I used that one for a single on test that I'm adding a couple of short missions to the beginning for live. I thought it was 5 floors.
Dec out.
[ QUOTE ]
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.
I've got an arc up that's a SINGLE mission, not that much of a chore -- that one mission has multiple bosses, multiple objectives, and a big fight at the end. Plenty of stuff to be contained in the Green Fog Office Map, despite it being 7 floors (two of which are tiny). So you get your money's worth and it's not too sparsely loaded with stuff to do.
And I STILL got pegged with a 1 star rating from someone last night who told me "ur map is too long make it less floors". I CAN'T make it less floors, it's a unique map! Agh.
Don't get me wrong, these should be used sparingly, but they DO have a useful purpose.
[/ QUOTE ]
The trick, of course, as others mentioned here, is to make it interesting if you have to use the big map.
My current use of the Portal map is an escort mission, and an optional boss. Of course, I didn't think the Portal map itself was too big [maybe a medium], but having to re-evaluate that now having read this thread.
Let's Dance!
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
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.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
Same here. Portal Corp Lab, Rikti Portal map...they're perfect for my story but there are no smaller versions of them. And I don't cram the last one with objectives (just get to the end and defeat that boss, everything else between you and her is totally optional and can be skipped) so that people have the choice of fighting through or stealthing to the finish.
So far the "mission X is too big!" complaints have been very rare.
Do NOT use the Recluse's Victory map (or whatever the alternate reality TF map with the Recluse Statue in Atlas is called) for a "Defeat All" mission.
And then populate it with custom AVs you didn't mention in the description.
The only short thing about that mission was how long my team played it.
Well if you're after tickets and such assuming you are. Isn't that the whole point of a big map? Kill the spawns, get more tickets.
Unless you're one of those people that likes to ghost everything and prefers the mission bonus, which I really don't understand why. Just seems like a waste of time to me.
Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.
[ QUOTE ]
Well if you're after tickets and such assuming you are. Isn't that the whole point of a big map? Kill the spawns, get more tickets.
Unless you're one of those people that likes to ghost everything and prefers the mission bonus, which I really don't understand why. Just seems like a waste of time to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
I like to ghost on my 50. He doesnt need any more XP, he's fine for inf, he seems to do just fine for tickets even stealthing, and I prefer narrative to fighting.
Sometimes, I've discovered through the Ma, as it happens, I'll get so sucked into the story that I'll stop stealthing and fight. I cleared all in the last mission of Project: Perilous (I'll keep pimping this arc shamelessly until it gets Dev's Choice, imo it's superb) just because i was enjoyuing the ambience and story so much i wanted to make it last as long as possible.
If that happens to me, then it's a cert that i'm impressed. Usually (on my 50 anyway), the mobs in between me and the next clue or bio are the waste of time (although with the new custom critterss I'll always have a go at some of them when i first encounter them, to see what they're like in a fight). That being the case, endless floors of just running past mobs bores me to tears.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
|
Sometimes you just don't have a choice. Try finding any kind of "small" outdoor map. If you need a couple of non-destroyed city blocks that isn't obviously Atlas Park or someplace in the Rogue Isles, your choices just aren't that great.
It can get frustrating. I have this story that deals with stopping a villain who is interfering in the origin story of Galaxy Girl. Now, I don't expect to be able to pick "Constellation Row" but at the same time, it can't look like Atlas Park or Mercy Island either.
To really tell the story, I WANTED to show the progression of events leading up to Galaxy Girl's "birth", meaning chained objectives.
Yeah. After trying it a dozen ways I just gave up on that idea because it was too smegging boring running from one end of the map to the other trying to find the next objective. In the end, I finally ended up with some non-required objectives for flavor, and only two required objectives, which really should be chained but even chaining two of them was just too much boring work as a player.
Which then leaves the player asking "Why am I scouring twelve city blocks just to find two objectives?" Well, there just ain't any other maps to use, Mr. Player! If I had a two-block-square map, you could bet that I would have used it.
I did fill out a lot of the rest of the space with some battles that at least make the ambience a bit more interesting than acres and acres of mission enemies standing around waiting to be harvested.
[ QUOTE ]
If i have to go through the damn portal corp map one more time to find one glowie and a boss right at the end, im going to scream.
There are smaller maps to choose from! Save the big ones for missions that have lots of objectives!
Sheesh.
Eco.
[/ QUOTE ]
If there is another map that starts you at a portal and looks like your at portal corp I will happily do so.
Until then, all my objectives are set to Back, and I have an ally at the front that tells you they are all on the top floor.
I may be the target of your wrath, MrCaptainMan, and I'm sorry. But the thing is, there are only two Portal Corp maps, they're both the same size, and in fact they're both the same map except for which end you start at.
The story makes so much SENSE to be taking place at Portal Corp, a regular tech map wouldn't quite match. I'd love to have a small one, just like I'd love to have smaller outdoors maps
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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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.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
If i have to go through the damn portal corp map one more time to find one glowie and a boss right at the end, im going to scream.
There are smaller maps to choose from! Save the big ones for missions that have lots of objectives!
Sheesh.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)