The map location placements (front, middle, back) are often pretty messed up, depending on the map.
As for the "clue on first glowy" problem - yeah, that bugged me too. The best workaround I found was to hide the one real glowy among 7 red herrings - if you give them all the same nav text they all show up as one set of objectives in mission.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
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The map location placements (front, middle, back) are often pretty messed up, depending on the map.
As for the "clue on first glowy" problem - yeah, that bugged me too. The best workaround I found was to hide the one real glowy among 7 red herrings - if you give them all the same nav text they all show up as one set of objectives in mission.
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Unfortunately (for now) the 'Clue on click of first glowie' isn't a bug; it's working as intended. Remember that what with got with the MA was basically the tools the Devs use in a nicer wrapper; and it seems the Devs to date, hadn't designed a collection mission that gave a clue at the end of a completed collection objective. It remains to be seen if they'll change the behavior (they haven't as of the I15 build that's on the Test server; but the only workaround is to write your clue to account for the fact bthat it'll be delivered on the first glowie, rather than the last.
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The best workaround I found was to hide the one real glowy among 7 red herrings - if you give them all the same nav text they all show up as one set of objectives in mission.
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I'll try that. It seems to me when I did that on an earlier mission, it said something like "7 Search crates, 1 Search crates," but maybe I put one under plural nav text and one under singular.
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(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
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The map location placements (front, middle, back) are often pretty messed up, depending on the map.
As for the "clue on first glowy" problem - yeah, that bugged me too. The best workaround I found was to hide the one real glowy among 7 red herrings - if you give them all the same nav text they all show up as one set of objectives in mission.
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Unfortunately (for now) the 'Clue on click of first glowie' isn't a bug; it's working as intended. Remember that what with got with the MA was basically the tools the Devs use in a nicer wrapper; and it seems the Devs to date, hadn't designed a collection mission that gave a clue at the end of a completed collection objective. It remains to be seen if they'll change the behavior (they haven't as of the I15 build that's on the Test server; but the only workaround is to write your clue to account for the fact bthat it'll be delivered on the first glowie, rather than the last.
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So you're saying the Devs use the trick KeepDistance recommended? Because I know I've had missions where I run arround searching numerous crates, computers etc., always getting the message, "You find nothing of interest," until I click on the 12th one or something. Seems odd they would tie their own hands like that rather than just giving the clue with the 12th of 12 glowies has been clicked.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
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The map location placements (front, middle, back) are often pretty messed up, depending on the map.
As for the "clue on first glowy" problem - yeah, that bugged me too. The best workaround I found was to hide the one real glowy among 7 red herrings - if you give them all the same nav text they all show up as one set of objectives in mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately (for now) the 'Clue on click of first glowie' isn't a bug; it's working as intended. Remember that what with got with the MA was basically the tools the Devs use in a nicer wrapper; and it seems the Devs to date, hadn't designed a collection mission that gave a clue at the end of a completed collection objective. It remains to be seen if they'll change the behavior (they haven't as of the I15 build that's on the Test server; but the only workaround is to write your clue to account for the fact bthat it'll be delivered on the first glowie, rather than the last.
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So you're saying the Devs use the trick KeepDistance recommended? Because I know I've had missions where I run arround searching numerous crates, computers etc., always getting the message, "You find nothing of interest," until I click on the 12th one or something. Seems odd they would tie their own hands like that rather than just giving the clue with the 12th of 12 glowies has been clicked.
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No, infor what you're describing (which is possible in the MA now); you set up TWO collections - one that is the 'dummy objects' with nothing and has the 'item not found message' and make that one non-required; then yiou make a second collection that is required with one object; and an associated clue; and make that second collection 'required'.
End result - upi have a 'Find the McGuffin' in your Nav text; as well as a number of 'dummy glowies'. as long as you pick the same objet for both, every glowie looks alike.
The issue I came across is I wanted the player to find 4 Glowies (among 10 total glowieas so 6 were fake); and have the clue appear AFTER the fourth was found and also trigger a hidden goal and spawn an ambush, and some patrols. problem is, the clue appeared after the first 'real' Glowie was cliecked; so I had to re-write the clue to add - you'll need the remaining info for the other on-line terminals to determine te exact location in this building, etc.
Overall it worked as I still maintain a 4 star average (it's the arc in my sig); and one recent one said that it plays like a TF, and liked my story (it involves the 5th Column, and I also play like they've just returned, but it was written during I14 open beta and published to live back on 4/15/09) BETTER than the new TF that's a part of the I15 beta on the Test servers. 
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I must have tested the mission five times, tweeking things here and there, and without fail, the "middle" object spawned on the fourth floor of the map and the "back" object spawned on the second floor.
[/ QUOTE ]I just had someone review an arc I did and express disappointment that the final collection item was right near the beginning of the last mission. I thought maybe I had the soawns set to "Any" but... nope. It as set to "Back" and just decided to spawn on the 2nd floor of a 5 floor building.
This has been something that has been driving me out of my mind. (not a very long drive, mind you) I've tried a lot of different maps. Sometimes it all works fine, then I run the mission again and it's all messed up.
I've also had a few instances of enemies getting stuck in ceilings. So far, I've at least been able to get at them to hit them. There's one lowbie Outcast mission in the Hollows that I always seem to have that problem with but I can never reach them. Of course, it's the guy that I need to beat to get the key to open a door, so I have to send a petition to have a GM get him 'unstuck'. Depending on how busy they are, I have to wait around for them to reply. It's very annoying.
No AV/EBs Deal with The Devil's Pawn-207266 Slash DeMento and the Stolen Weapons-100045 Meet the Demon Spawn-151099 Feedback
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I wrote a story yesterday with two collection objectives. I wanted to do my best to have these object collected in a certain order, but since you can't set one collection to start after the other is completed, I decided to put the first one in the "middle" of the map and the second one at the "back."
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I've had precisely this problem with a couple of missions I designed, with the "real" clue spawning in front instead of in back, after all the red herrings were collected. And it seems the problem persisted intermittently even after I tested it successfully! Arrrgh.
I've even gotten one bit of feedback telling me my boss won't spawn, though the objective shows up in the Nav window. I don't know if this is related, if the map I chose was too small, or what, but I sent off a petition on the matter and haven't heard back, so I'm still waiting. I don't want to unpublish the arc until I know I'll be able to publish again in working order.
Some of these bugs seem to be intermittent, and testing the mish (even multiple times) doesn't help. I ran through the mish mentioned above three times, and each time the spawns worked, but I'm still hearing from players that there are problems.
Also, there are some maps that seem to "swallow" objectives such as collectibles/destructibles. I built a mish on the meteor-struck outdoor Atlas map and put an A-Bomb in it. It was a timed mish, and while the timer began counting down, the A-Bomb was nowhere to be found. And yes, I paced every inch of that map, so I know there was no A-Bomb. I had to scrap the mish entirely.
Is it just me or are the object location placements out of whack? Maybe it's just on certain maps?
I wrote a story yesterday with two collection objectives. I wanted to do my best to have these object collected in a certain order, but since you can't set one collection to start after the other is completed, I decided to put the first one in the "middle" of the map and the second one at the "back."
I must have tested the mission five times, tweeking things here and there, and without fail, the "middle" object spawned on the fourth floor of the map and the "back" object spawned on the second floor. It was driving me crazy, so I swapped middle and back for them, and they spawned where I wanted them to.
I've heard that all the floors on a multifloor mission are actually on the same horizontal plane, so maybe that's what was causing this peculiarity?
And speaking of collections, is there any way to keep the clue from awarding when you click the first of say 8 glowies? If I want people to search through eight file cabinets, it kind of defeats the purpose for them to always find the info they are looking for in the first cabinet. That never happens when I'm in a mission!
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon