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Last question, I promise. I've added an ally to the last mission. Is the mission failed if the ally dies? If the boss is an AV, what should the ally be? Elite Boss or just Boss?
Thanks in advance.
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I can help here.
Allies are not tied to success or failure of a mission. Rescusing an ally can be a mission objective but once that's done you're good. I think the thinking is that an Ally is someone on par with you and if they chose to stay and assist you, that's their choice.
I make most of mine Lt.'s so that they have some HP, and some 'oomph' but not enough to outshine the PC's. The biggest complain with Allies is that they can sometimes outdamage the main characters and beome the centerpiece of the story rather than a supporting characer.
An Elite Boss Ally might really overshine the heroes so I'd err with the Boss. Of course if you're a purist, you should test it a few times and see if you like the results.
Mr O
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Technical question: What I would like to do is have mission four dependent upon success/failure of mission three. Basically, if the players fail, mission four happens as normal, but if they succeed, mission four is skipped. Is there a way to do this?
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Nope. Mission four will occur regardless of the success of failure of the previous missions.
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I've got a custom enemy group (themed lackeys of my mastermind character), and I want to make sure the difficulty is on par with what people expect. Is having the minion and LT powersets on hard a bad idea?
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Generally, you want to keep your rank and file on standard difficulty. I would only recommend changing this if either you want the mob to have a specific power, or you're using an underpowered powerset.
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I have two mid-arc bosses. Should they be elite or normal bosses? I'm afraid at high levels normal bosses will be too easy for a "powerful foe."
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It depends on their purpose in the story. If their primary role is to build your plot, make them bosses. They'll still do their job, and there's little chance that they'll break the sense of urgency you should be building. On the other hand, you could make them EBs in an attempt to create a challenge. But you then take the risk of your plot peaking too early and not being able to recover before the end. This would result in a lackluster and very forgetful AV battle.
Also keep in mind how strong you envision these characters to be; player characters are roughly as strong as a boss, so if you envision them to be as strong as a player this is what you should aim for. This is also very important if you're basing them off character's you've created; folks don't like to play arcs where the author's character is inherently stronger than them. It basically feels like the author is saying he or she is better than everyone else.
As a final thought on the matter, characters with the power of EBs are supposed to be rare in the game. Player characters are the exception to the norm, and as I mentioned we're only at boss level. Make sure there's valid plot reasons for these characters to exhibit such greater firepower.
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The final boss of the arc will be a mastermind, and I'm thinking he should be an AV. Could the combo of MM and AV be too difficult?
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I don't think the combination will be to difficult. That said, remember what I said about EBs being rare, and player characters only being boss level. AV/Hero-level power is even rarer, and you need a good story to explain why/how this character has obtained such power. Usually I only want to see an AV at the end of a multi-arc plot, the final challenge of a plot that's been building for some time.
Finally, if this AV is based on your character, you'd better have one doozy of a reason why he's not at boss level. 
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Last question, I promise. I've added an ally to the last mission. Is the mission failed if the ally dies? If the boss is an AV, what should the ally be? Elite Boss or just Boss?
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As long as one of the required objectives isn't to rescue the ally, his defeat shouldn't impact the mission.
As for power level, first you need to ask if he's really needed; does this ally add to the plot? If not, show him the door. If he does, make sure he's no more than boss level, even LT if he has overly powerful or useful powersets. Your ally shouldn't be a factor in the final fight. The players are the stars of your story, and they should be able to bring down the final boss on their own. If they need an ally to defeat the final challenge, your boss is overpowered; you don't want the players feeling upstaged by your NPC ally.
And as a final thought on all the questions you've asked:
ALWAYS REMEMBER!
Give fair warning of difficult challenges (EBs, AVs, Timed Missions, etc.) before the player enters the mission. Nothing worse than playing an arc only to come up against a fabricated brick wall and having to scramble to complete it.
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...I want to make sure it's right and that people are going to enjoy it.
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That's the most difficult goal you can aspire to accomplish with any content one creates. Good luck.
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Technical question: What I would like to do is have mission four dependent upon success/failure of mission three. Basically, if the players fail, mission four happens as normal, but if they succeed, mission four is skipped. Is there a way to do this?
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This cannot be done with the current MA, and perhaps we will not be able to ever do this at all.
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I've got a custom enemy group (themed lackeys of my mastermind character), and I want to make sure the difficulty is on par with what people expect. Is having the minion and LT powersets on hard a bad idea?
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As a general rule, I'd go on record saying that if you set Minions and Lieutenant power-combinations to anything that's different than the normal in-game mobs have, you may create a nightmare for your players. Consider for example Minions that have debuffing power-sets, even when set on the lowest setting, those Minions, since they appear in large quantities for a team, may cause a lot of trouble and certain AT's may not be able to take that even soloing your missions.
However, some AT's can take custom-critters head no matter the power-sets as long as the critter is a Minion/Lieutenant and players using those AT's may look down on your critters and think you're Story Arc is not enough of a challenge. In short, you can't please'em all. 
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I have two mid-arc bosses. Should they be elite or normal bosses? I'm afraid at high levels normal bosses will be too easy for a "powerful foe."
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That's a matter of personal choice really. For myself, I try to never use EB/AV enemies unless the story itself requires it. In other words, if I'm making a Story Arc for the sake of the story, I let the story determine what enemies should be in the missions.
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The final boss of the arc will be a mastermind, and I'm thinking he should be an AV. Could the combo of MM and AV be too difficult?
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That depends on what power-set/difficulty-setting combination you use. If you make it a Nercomancy/WillPower AV set on the highest difficulty setting on both powers, it could be such a nightmare some people may never want to play your story again, and others would absolutely love it! This too, depends on what AT's and builds the team brings to play your story.
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I've added an ally to the last mission. Is the mission failed if the ally dies? If the boss is an AV, what should the ally be? Elite Boss or just Boss?
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The mission will fail if and only if you've actually set that Ally as a goal that is required for the completion of the mission, and the player(s) let the Ally die.
About the level that an Ally should be to balance an EB/AV in the last finale fight, that also depends on the internal balance of combat you're going for. For example, I have a mission where the end-boss is a tough EB, but the Ally I put in there is a DarkMelee/TrickArrow Lieutenant (with TA set on Hard or Extreme). This was done so that the player(s) should actually keep the Ally alive if they want to benefit from her debuffs against the EB. This of course means that the player(s) have to constantly pay attention to the Ally and make sure she doesn't die because the AI was too dumb and brought her into melee range of the EB.
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Thanks in advance.
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Enjoy the game and the creation process, and I hope I've helped a tad.
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
Thanks everyone, that's the kind of advice I was looking for. I stopped playing about a year and a half ago, and just got back into it last week. I've never gotten a character all the way to 50, so I don't know what they're capable of handling. Your comments have been very helpful. The MA was something I didn't know about until last month when I started thinking about playing CoH again. MA is something incredible to me, I always loved the creative aspect of this game and this takes it to another level.
I think I'll downgrade all the elite bosses to just boss, and the AV to an elite boss. He is based off one of my characters, but he's supposed to be the evil genius behind the entire Kaison Corporation. It just wouldn't be climactic if he was just a normal boss.
The ally is going to be my Kinetics defender, who will only be throwing buffs around and rarely some energy blast.
I understand the damned if you do, damned if you don't philosophy of the difficulty. I think I'm going to set the custom critters so that one powerset is hard or extreme with the other being standard. That way they can be difficult, but not impossible for the casual group.
I plan to do plenty of testing before I actually go live with it, but it seems hard to find people willing to help test since there's NO reward to test mode. I have a mastermind who at least makes it soloable.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
If you want to offer rewards and still have people testing with you, you could publish the arc, collect a team, do some test-runs on the published arc and unpublish the arc when you don't want people to play it.
I will say however that even though I thought my published story-arc is complete, PoliceWoman reviewed it and convinced me there's a lot more work that I could (and probably should) do to not just polish, but rather flesh out the story in it. This means I'll probably have to lose the rating and the ID of the Arc, but that's OK too, I've gotten used to the idea that I'd have to publish/unpublish and republish some Arcs eventually.
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
This is off topic, but when I'm testing I noticed that I never see any dialog pop up from the enemies.
This could be related: When I played before, I had macros to make my pets say things (funny/RP related). Now I don't see those balloons pop up, but I'm sure I'm entering the commands correctly.
If you guys could fix either of those problems, that would be GREAT.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
I know there have been several changes to the in-game text system (both input and output), so using colours in dialogs for example is largely broken if you're using keybind files. I also know macros specifically are having issues, although since I don't use them, as I use binds instead, I'm not sure what these issues are exactly.
Not having NPC speech bubbles come up, that's something new for me actually, so it would be a good idea to test and see if NPC speech bubbles come up when you play published story-arcs?
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
Ally death only matters if the ally is an Escort.
A normal ally can keel over without jepordising the mission
#2409 - The Mystery of the MAGI vaults. Azuria has contacted you to help her stop the thefts from the MAGI vaults.
#68054 - Out of the gutters. Left for dead, you swore that you were through with being a victim (alt villain beginning story)
I'm currently in testing on my first arc, and I had a few questions before I publish it. If I'm going to do this, I want to make sure it's right and that people are going to enjoy it.
My target audience is high level, mid-large groups.
Technical question: What I would like to do is have mission four dependent upon success/failure of mission three. Basically, if the players fail, mission four happens as normal, but if they succeed, mission four is skipped. Is there a way to do this?
I've got a custom enemy group (themed lackeys of my mastermind character), and I want to make sure the difficulty is on par with what people expect. Is having the minion and LT powersets on hard a bad idea?
I have two mid-arc bosses. Should they be elite or normal bosses? I'm afraid at high levels normal bosses will be too easy for a "powerful foe."
The final boss of the arc will be a mastermind, and I'm thinking he should be an AV. Could the combo of MM and AV be too difficult?
Last question, I promise. I've added an ally to the last mission. Is the mission failed if the ally dies? If the boss is an AV, what should the ally be? Elite Boss or just Boss?
Thanks in advance.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.