This is a game.
MA is there to facilitate player created content for a game.
So, it's not just about story. The stories are set within the context of a game. Therefore, challenge level is very much a primary consideration in design.
As a MA author, story could be said to be my top priority. But tinkering with challenge level is always part of my development process, because that's a big part of what the experience is about. Missions aren't there just to be filler between blocks of text.
This is a game-driven, immersive environment. Building content around challenge is just as valid as building it around story. The best content will give attention to both.
The Cape Radio: You're not super until you put on the Cape!
DJ Enigma's Puzzle Factory: Co* Parody Commercials
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Welcome to the world of CoH.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh I have been here....... doesnt make all things right in the world. Some policies are just wrong.......and need to be modified.
Not one sentence in all the dialogue did I make fun of race, creed, color, foul language........... nothing.
Unless bunnies by themselves are offensive......... maybe its because the player is mad they dont have a furry tail too!
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the hatred runs deep. especially when they get lost in the burrow!
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
The results are in........it wasnt banned it was bugged according to the game support. I just have to figure out whats bugged about it. 
I heard if something gets banned it is removed or flagged..........though I dont know for sure.
View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com
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Welcome to the world of CoH.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh I have been here....... doesnt make all things right in the world. Some policies are just wrong.......and need to be modified.
Not one sentence in all the dialogue did I make fun of race, creed, color, foul language........... nothing.
Unless bunnies by themselves are offensive......... maybe its because the player is mad they dont have a furry tail too!
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the hatred runs deep. especially when they get lost in the burrow!
[/ QUOTE ] HAHA An evil bunny! ......................gets bat *hides behind back* holds out carrots........... :P
View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com
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So before any other changes, bans, etc, IMO what the MA needs is the ability to publish and arc for play, but not have it come up on searches accept under specific terms, like a global name search.
This allows me to make a tough as nails mission to kill my firends fire tanker, share it with him cause my friend will know to search under my global for it, but not have it come up off general rating, lenght, etc searches if its not truely intended for general player use.
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I like this idea. Another player and I discussed previously how a nice 'wish-list' type of feature would be to someday have multiple publication levels, i.e. publish something so that only, for example, members of a certain supergroup, or even specific other players (or characters) could enter it. For those missions that one writes for a specific character or characters, rather than for public consumption. I gather that what happens now is that the author of such an arc just publishes it temporarily, then unpublishes it when it's been played. This was the other player's idea; I take no credit for it. Your solution seems to achieve the same thing, and is much simpler, although I would probably make it 'searchable only by ID' as opposed to 'by globalname.'
Of course...this does not address the issue of farming and very rapid power-leveling, and there seems to be a consensus, at least based on what I've read on the forums, that those are issues that require addressing. I guess I could just write a mission designed to get my friends to 50 in a few hours (if I knew how) and publish it so only they could find it. Maybe that's a fatal flaw in the idea, or maybe it's something that could be dealt with by other means; I really haven't the foggiest. But coming strictly from the perspective of somebody who enjoys having an arc written to advance my character's story, or doing the same for others, I like your idea.
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I will contact support. Hope it works out. Thanks for all the comments. Yes it was all bosses, mainly so we could fight a comparable warface on the hardest setting only LOTS of clones. It gave us a good challenge with him having EM.
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Well, I'd reconsider the all-boss theme. That is a common tactic for player-made farms. I don't know of any official content within the game where everyone is a boss, so it could be considered exploitative since there's nothing official to which you can compare it.
[/ QUOTE ]For some reason, this is how Ashley McKnight's level 30 mission spawned for me on my dark/fire brute. I had such fun playing it I refrained from completing it for four levels - the bosses were purple when I started, yellow when I finally finished.
Kinda a weird anecdote, but I guess my point is, I 'farmed' that map for the fun.
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Well, I'd reconsider the all-boss theme. That is a common tactic for player-made farms. I don't know of any official content within the game where everyone is a boss, so it could be considered exploitative since there's nothing official to which you can compare it.
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This is not quite accurate. There are many open zones that effectively have all-boss spawns. In particular:
<ul type="square">[*]Croatoa has a place where 12-16 Red Cap bosses are standing around on platforms. There are a couple of minions hanging around too.
[*]Croatoa has another place that has pairs of bosses just standing around waiting to be harvested.
[*]Crey's Folly has a couple of square miles of 3-4 Freakshow boss spawns.
[*]FBZ has dozens of places where you can get 2-4 bosses of all stripes, just milling about all over the place. In particular, it's very easy to get soldiers of Rularuu bosses out your ears in the Storm Palace.[/list]
A properly outfitted character can easily solo these spawns and make oodles of rewards. These spawns are sufficiently distant from one another that a solo character can make a route that takes you through non-stop bosses. The presence of minions and lieutenants in some spawns are icing on the cake; they all just die off from your AoEs without you ever attacking them directly, dropping inspirations like mana from heaven, allowing you to become essentially invulnerable.
While tanks have the easiest time of it, most scrappers, blasters and controllers can solo the FBZ spawns at level 50, and many defenders can as well. I don't know of locations like these in CoV, so if your experience is limited to redside that may be why you're not aware of these locations.
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That's very true, but your examples are all within full zones and consist of a few individual spawns within that zone. When it comes to missions and arcs, they all have a variety of enemies. My recommendation to likewise use a variety of enemies within your custom mission is based upon two reasons....
1) Since no missions within the game have a single enemy type or consist of all-bosses, you run much less of a chance of getting your mission reported and having any dev action taken upon you. Whether or not you agree with whether or not action should be taken is another discussion, I'm just pointing out that having a variety of enemy types is more in line with the established design of the game and will have less of a chance of getting reported or acted upon.
2) From a player perspective, it's just a better design to have variety. It's more interesting both visually and strategically.
Naturally, if someone wants to just go ahead and create a mission filled only with a single boss character repeated indefinitely, they can go ahead and do it. But you do run the risk of it getting reported as a farm, and if there's not enough creative effort placed into the mission, the support personnel may agree and shut it down.
Like I said, I'm not debating whether or not something should be shut down, I'm just saying that's the way it is right now.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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I will contact support. Hope it works out. Thanks for all the comments. Yes it was all bosses, mainly so we could fight a comparable warface on the hardest setting only LOTS of clones. It gave us a good challenge with him having EM.
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Well, I'd reconsider the all-boss theme. That is a common tactic for player-made farms. I don't know of any official content within the game where everyone is a boss, so it could be considered exploitative since there's nothing official to which you can compare it.
[/ QUOTE ]For some reason, this is how Ashley McKnight's level 30 mission spawned for me on my dark/fire brute. I had such fun playing it I refrained from completing it for four levels - the bosses were purple when I started, yellow when I finally finished.
Kinda a weird anecdote, but I guess my point is, I 'farmed' that map for the fun.
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I've done similar things too. I've had missions I've enjoyed so much that I didn't want to finish them, so I'd reset them and play them repeatedly (often mixed in with other missions) until I outleveled them so much they became boring.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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Of course...this does not address the issue of farming and very rapid power-leveling, and there seems to be a consensus, at least based on what I've read on the forums, that those are issues that require addressing.
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They are only issues that require addressing if you honestly believe that they will be able to stop it. Which the history of this game is you cant. They have put timers on missions, changed the basic nature of powers like with the wolfs, change the nature or taunt, and attacks like Burn, but overall nothing the devs have done put any serious crimp in the Powerleveling, farming communities designs to increase their own leveling rate or rate of rewards.
So the question has to be entertained IMO of exactly at what point will attempting to end the farming, start to diversly effect the general player base. Those that might casually farm even, but overall wanted the MA to have fun with it.
The big cry IMO from the community of "play my way or no way" seemed to be that they felt that when they search on the MA menus, they basicly can not tell the difference between a farm map and a story arc. So they complain that they get so many returns that end up wasting their time if they dont want to farm, or actaully want to expeirence or read a story.
Simply allowing for missions to be published but not directly searchable would help relieve that problem, and allow those that are creating story driven content to see more of their arcs be played more often, but not prevent those that want to toy with the system from pushing the envelope.
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Well, I'd reconsider the all-boss theme. That is a common tactic for player-made farms. I don't know of any official content within the game where everyone is a boss, so it could be considered exploitative since there's nothing official to which you can compare it.
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This is not quite accurate. There are many open zones that effectively have all-boss spawns. In particular:
<ul type="square">[*]Croatoa has a place where 12-16 Red Cap bosses are standing around on platforms. There are a couple of minions hanging around too.
[*]Croatoa has another place that has pairs of bosses just standing around waiting to be harvested.
[*]Crey's Folly has a couple of square miles of 3-4 Freakshow boss spawns.
[*]FBZ has dozens of places where you can get 2-4 bosses of all stripes, just milling about all over the place. In particular, it's very easy to get soldiers of Rularuu bosses out your ears in the Storm Palace.[/list]
A properly outfitted character can easily solo these spawns and make oodles of rewards. These spawns are sufficiently distant from one another that a solo character can make a route that takes you through non-stop bosses. The presence of minions and lieutenants in some spawns are icing on the cake; they all just die off from your AoEs without you ever attacking them directly, dropping inspirations like mana from heaven, allowing you to become essentially invulnerable.
While tanks have the easiest time of it, most scrappers, blasters and controllers can solo the FBZ spawns at level 50, and many defenders can as well. I don't know of locations like these in CoV, so if your experience is limited to redside that may be why you're not aware of these locations.