My issues

I have to say, first and foremost, that I was probably one of The most excited people for the MA in the game. I have a BA and a Masters in writing and I've been addictedly involved in this game since the tail end of the first year of its release. I was THRILLED about it.

I havent created farms. I've made and run story-driven arcs. I love the idea. On test I made a successful four mission arc and copied it over the live server. I've since made five more arcs, on two seperate accounts (mine and my nephews) and spent hours on the damn thing. One of my arcs has 45 ratings and sits at 4 stars, others are around 20 ratings and 4 stars.

Over the last week I've becme more and more disillusioned with the MA. Reason #1 is the inability to get any sort of consistent feedback and always stay at a constant four star rating inspite of every message I recieve saying they loved the arc. That issue I could live with, since some idiots in the game selishly grief, and sometimes people are looking for different things. You can't please everybody,and I recognize that. The Devs were told they needed a better interface while this thing was still on test though, and instead of waiting to release it correctly, they gave us the mess of an interface we have, which results in the issue above.

Today's patch pretty much has left me utterly deflated, however. I mean, ready-to-quit-trying style deflated.
Custom critter changes that make zero sense, applied to arcs that are already published, altering -if not totally negating- important aspects of arcs is simply unacceptable to me. It hit me the hardest in the arc I was working on finishing, which is BASED around luitenants who spawn gang war. Well...that wont happen now. They'd have to be bosses...which won't work either for that storyline. So I wasted about 6 hours time building three missions of an arc that probably needs to get scrapped. Why? Because I assumed that the Dev's product was tested BEFORE launch, and these issues would have been addressed. I could go and work for hours trying to fix all of my arcs, custom critters, replace the now missing maps since this patch, etc. but in all honesty, I feel like its not worth the work since who knows how long it will last before they break it again?

The saddest part is, the AE has actually shown me how BORED I am with running the same content over and over for the past several years. That COULD have been a good thing because there was going to be endless content, but now...well...lets just say that idea is tarnished at the very least.

Before everyone commences with the flaming because I voiced my concerns over today's patch and the MA system as a whole, let me tell you a little about myself. I've played the game for four years. This is my first MMO ever. I have brought two other people into the game over those four years. Ive been in the same SG since I started. Im a member of the largest channel on Justice with regular teams from that channel as well as my SG. This isn't some loser complaining just to complain. IVe been an ardent CoH supporter, but this whole issue, the one I was most excited to see, is leaving a really sour taste in my mouth for the whole game.

I need to say this as loudly and clearly as I can. . I love this game. Period. But Im seriously worried about the way the Dev team is handling the entire implementation of this issue. Im about ready to walk away from the AE, only now, with the full realization of how bored I am with the normal game content in the back of my head. This is surprising to me since I LOVE the Devs overall and really feel like, especially since Paragon Studios went on its own, they made some awesome additions to the game. Im hoping that's simply because they dev team had to balls to do what no other MMO has done, and that's give the kids the keys to the kingdom.

I hope the kids can handle it and the Devs can see it through.

Heh, somehow my global got renamed to opprime28.

Seriously though, I could not have said it better myself. Somehow grief starring others seems like an acceptable method to keep your 5 star cartels going, and now the Gang War nerf.

The only difference between you and me, op, is that my arc was published. And instead of unpublishing it and losing my arc # and ratings, I've got to put in a disclaimer saying that if you are squishy, quit now because Gang War, which is a central part of one mission but supposed to be light hearted and funny, is now some fight to the death hair pulling tooth-gnashing session.

Minions before, bosses today. All for a bunch of guys who pop out and grant no xp. Devs please fix.

And oh yah, don't make maps go poof. And stop bloating my arcs with default text boxes that go 'over limit.'

Trust me, I feel your pain. I had to redo custom units in 5 arcs that were up (two accounts) and it took me most of the day to make them even remotely on par with where they were, in attempting to create units that were even remotely balanced in comparison to official in-game units.

Pum, I've played your arc with the sudden room full of gangwars from the Face. That mish rocked.

I hadn't even thought about how this would affect that. Man, that sucks.

What I don't get is that I hadn't come across any powersets in missions that seemed that out of balanced unless the charcter put two idiotic powersets together and left both to extreme (not counting the ninjitsu bug that they knew about on test and still brought to live .) Why did they even make changes at all? The worst parts of it are that the changes were a)retroactive and b) the patch notes don't even fully address the changes so you have to go searching for what was changed.

Honestly, even the PATCH to fix things is being mishandled in this issue.