My AE team last night

Last night I was on my new Mace/Shield Brute (very awesome, but rather end heavy), level 6 at the time. I was back in Mercy after having gotten my Raptor Pack and saw a guy broadcasting for more members for an AE arc team, so I said 'why not!' and joined.

We ended up with 8 people, ranging from level 2-11 (the Star was the 11), and a lone 28, with most of the people seeming to be new to the game. The leader said the arc we were going to be doing was one we made, and we'd be sk'ed up to lvl 40 for it. When we started, it turned out the enemy group was going to be the Rikti- and we quite quickly found out that a group of lowbies is no match for an alien army, especially when the Comm Officers opened their portals, doubling the number of Rikti in the first group (to add insult to injury, a Guardian bubbled them all... my poor accuracy!).

After wiping a few times on the first 2 groups, we decided to try another arc. Unfortunately that arc was set to be 1-54, despite having enemies that started at level 10, meaning not only were we scattered over about 26 levels, no one would be getting any experience. We decided to try again, so we exited and disbanded. I started looking through the missions list and found one that sounded nice, it started at level 10 for 3/5 missions and 16 for the other two.

After waiting a bit for a reinvite from the original leader (and never seeing him come back out of the data stream), I decided "what the hell!" and broadcasted that a sub-10 AE team was forming and started inviting peopl. Pretty quickly we had 7 people (my brute, a corruptor, 2 stalkers, and 3 Masterminds) and we started the first mission.

For the first mission we were fighting the RIP on the large bank map, and the entire time we were knee deep in their bodies- the spawns were large, and strong enough that we had to work hard for every victory against them. It was a blast, we had a few deaths, but that didn't slow us down, it just made every victory sweeter. Eventually we cleared the RIP, got the goods, and got out.

The second mission we were having to stop a RIP+PPD crackdown in Nerva on some Marcones. There were RIP everywhere, patrols of PPD and RIP wandering around. This mission, like the last, was a true battle- we weren't able to just steamroll over everyone like is so common in this game, we had to actually work hard for our victories. We eventually completeled all the objectives and stuck around to clear some more groups.

The third mission in the arc was a mix of PPD, RIP, and Wyvern in some offices. We took out the first group of PPD without much issue, then started moving to the upper floor- and I ran right into the middle of a large group of RIP, it was a mad house as we were trying to get up the stairs to fight the RIP as they were just unloading on us from the above their little chokepoint. We had a couple deaths but were able to get them back onto their feet... except right when we were had only a few members of the RIP left a large group of rather angry Wyvern ambushed us! Already being weakend from the fight with the RIPers, we were fighting a losing battle, and eventually each of us fell.

But worry not! We just went to the hospital, and regrouped, easily taking out the few remaining Wyvern. We continued through the mission, the entire team having to be on our feet because we never knew when a group we were fighting would get reinforcements! Eventually we cleared everyone, but unfortunately the mission was bugged and the Wyvern Commander wasn't on the map . We petitioned and waited a bit while everyone went to train up, and then decided to just play a different arc instead as we had no idea how long it'd take. We quickly reformed and started a new arc. We got through two more hard missions before I decided to call it a night.

That team was the most fun I've had playing this game since I had first started. We weren't invincible. We weren't effortlessly mowed down. The enemies acted realistically (reinforcements! what a novel idea! ), the enemies were dynamic, and varied. CoX for the first time in a long time had that 'new game' feel, where you really don't know if you're going to win, you don't know what to expect, and every moment, whether in victory or defeat, you're having a blast.

I love AE, both the 'bad' and the good... because if it wasn't for that first "bad" team, I would have never been on the best team in years.

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Yeah. Some good stories about AE. We need more like this...I mean AE story arcs that pretty much build like story arcs not PL farms.
And yeah for good PuG teams stories too.

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Good stories just don't get the attention If I had named my thread "stupid AE teams!" I would have twice the views and 4x the comments

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It is a good story. I read it every time someone posts something new. Its just not akin to my experience and I really couldn't add anything constructive to it other than I envy the circle you travel in.

I wish my game experience was more similar to yours, but I've yet to really see it in any MMO I play. I read stories like this but never experience them.

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Doc Mech-Nec (Exalted): 50 Bots/FF MM
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Good stories just don't get the attention If I had named my thread "stupid AE teams!" I would have twice the views and 4x the comments

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Ain't that the truth. There are a LOT of great story arcs in AE land. Some people just dont take the time to find them.

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It's easy: Just don't sweat the small stuff After the first mission team I could have just quit in frustration (and optionally come to the forums to complain and feign that I'd never had far worse before the AE was introduced). Instead I stepped outside my comfort zone (I've never been a leader ) and in turn was greatly rewarded for it.

To paraphrase something that someone once told me: You'll never experience greatness if you're comfortable.

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I usually try to only complain about my own shortcomings when it comes to being frustrated with a game mechanic. You are right about the plethora of topics outlining the same thing though.

I find that I'm so used to soloing and doing things on my own, that when someone does join it messes with how I like to play.

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Doc Mech-Nec (Exalted): 50 Bots/FF MM
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Alts: 32
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Huzzah!

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Nice to get a responsible opposing viewpoint to all the AE doomsaying around here.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

I was expecting something more Part_Troll style, but congratulations to the OP on his evening. Clearly, there is more going on at the AE than farming.

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Oh, in case anyone is curious what arc I was doing last night, it's called "Ripping out Reform" (ID: 1006). I'd definitely recommend it for any Villains team sub 10, far more entertaining than newspapers, and much more fun than the lowbie arcs IMO. Easily 5-star material.

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I spent most of the today writing my first real AE arc (ID#259862), and then tonight I formed a team to run it!

It was a bit harder forming the team tonight, but it still didn't take long. I ended up with 6 people all between 9-14 (I had written my arc with a minimum level of 16, intentionally so I could get anyone 16 and under for the team ). When we entered the first mission we were greeted by the sight of a rather large group of Wyvern. And as the Masterminds were setting up, a nice patrol decided to wander in, and sit right in the middle of the first group (ugh!)... we waited a bit and the patrol just stayed there, and kept taunting us like they were gonna walk a few more feet and aggro on us... but they stayed still.

We decided to eventually try our luck, and we went in- I was smashing anything I could see with my mace (might have clipped a zombie or two's heads ), and I was went through my entire tray of inspirations (mostly purples). We had nearly defeated the mob+patrol, but with about 5 heavily wounded agents left, they were able to finish our group off. Not a great start, for my team and my arc!

Being the brave little villains that could, we went to the Hospital and regrouped, easily killing off the few remaining Wyvern! From that point on the missions went much better, although still had several close calls. Eventually we got to the final mission in the arc, and the chaos of the last mission was simply awesome!

Leading the team again tonight was loads of fun (again ), and I learned quite a bit for my arc- I'm gonna rework a lot of the text to sound better (reading it while playing it is quite a bit different than reading it in the Architect UI!), I'm also gonna tone down most of the missions, and definitely tone up the last mission (3-way battles are a bit easy, although awesome to experience ).

I recorded a demo of the last mission, but unfortunately it craps out right before we get to the final room (with loads of ragdoll glitches along the way... and also custom colored NPCs don't have their custom colors )... plus recording just that part alone is 3.9 gigs in fraps! I should probably lower my resolution

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Yay for posts on what AE is really all about! The few times I've formed up teams and found suitable "real" arcs in our level range, I've had the kind of fun you've described.

It just goes to show you that if you don't let the dirty farmers and powerleveled noobs get in your way, you can still have lots of fun with AE arcs.

--NT

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They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!

If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville

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we quite quickly found out that a group of lowbies is no match for an alien army, especially when the Comm Officers opened their portals, doubling the number of Rikti in the first group (to add insult to injury, a Guardian bubbled them all... my poor accuracy!).

After wiping a few times ...

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not only were we scattered over about 26 levels, no one would be getting any experience.

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unfortunately the mission was bugged and the Wyvern Commander wasn't on the map .

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That team was the most fun I've had playing this game since I had first started.

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God bless people with patience and low standards. I'm glad you enjoyed the experience. I envy the feeling. But what if you had a similar problem with that 3rd mission, the one you'd picked? What if you kept picking missions and they wouldn't start, but wouldn't say why? How much would you have been willing to wade through in search of a couple minutes of the game playing the way it should?

A couple weeks back (aka within the last 2 hours of my net playtime) I gathered up a real team and we ran around Steel doing real missions. It was fine, but with not many people around the level spread was a little awkward - workable, but that perfect spread where SKing just doesn't quite cut it. Plus you know, I've done all those missions to death. I was leading and optimistically suggested we try something different in the AE. The other members were - surprisingly - rather unexperienced with the AE. So we gathered up all full of hope.

I kept trying for the life of me to find missions that weren't "Extra Long" and should accomodate our range. 4, 5, 6 in a row just wouldn't do anything. We'd go into another and it would be way too difficult for a few teen-levels. Back out, reform, and click another 5-6 not starting. They're waiting patiently for me this whole time, as I'm looking for something non-existant in the 1-20 range.

(I btw made a short story of my own when AE first came out. After some patch it stopped working, and damned if I want to dissect to figure out why. So my own work was out.)

Anyway, we finally find one that seems workable, with enemies scaled down to our level. Only to eventualy find out it relies on a destructible object which was +18 to us.

Terrible, terrible experience. And we were a casual team, not farming, not PLing, not specifically built for power. Just a pick-up group of casual players and a former fan (me). We played OK together when there were enemies to fight. Isn't that the type of group that should have been benefitting from this huge 3-expansion-worth system? Instead I ended up apologizing to everyone for leading them into the AE building where fun goes to die.

Seriously, if you can withstand overpowered enemies, no experience, and mission-stopping bugs, and still call it "the most fun", then either you are a wonderful person who sees sunshine in everything, or you really deserve to experience some actual fun sometime.

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I recently built a VERY short mission called "How many ninja's can fit in a casino" designed to be played at almost any level.

I was able to fill the casino with a surpising number of invisible ninjas. A team should have a good time clearing the ninjas out, but I haven't fully tested it yet.

"Dorothy is Dangerous" has a tough AV at the end, and I'd reccomend it for a team of 20+

"Scary things", (my only arc)has a door ambush... so go in all at the same time, I'm still tweaking the creepy little girl in the second mission to be less dangerous, but its still pretty fun.

and Judgment is something I'd only recommend to a well thought out team of high level. its as tough as I can make it and still have reasonable chances to complete. every one of the ten AV's in that mission has succeeded at least once in team wiping, and I get messages all the time saying they loved it.

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God bless people with low standards.

[/ QUOTE ]You know, that's generally considered an insult? Not a very friendly way to start off a post. Also, you're apparently quite confused, as the first two quotes were about another team, and IMO, were nothing to be upset about, teams fail on occasion, it's not the end of the world. Also, the third quote wasn't due to the AE arc, but due to a spawn error that can and does happen on any mission in the game. And it, as well, wasn't a big deal, we sent a /petition, went to train, waited a minute, then moved on.

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But what if you had a similar problem with that 3rd mission, the one you'd picked?

[/ QUOTE ]If you go into the detailed info, it says the level ranges for each mission in the arc. Also, LFMA is a player-tag used to denote lowbie friendly mission arcs.

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Seriously, if you can withstand overpowered enemies, no experience, and mission-stopping bugs, and still call it "the most fun", then either you are a wonderful person who sees sunshine in everything, or you really deserve to experience some actual fun sometime.

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I've been on countless teams where we've absolutely dominated everything in the game. I've been on all Rad super teams where nothing was a challenge, everything just fell over right before us, including most of the AVs in the high-end game. Lots of big numbers orange numbers. Debuffs everywhere. Buffs abound. It was the pinnacle of performance!


And yet, they were dreadfully predictable, because it was extremely easy.

Read my original post again (no, skimming doesn't work, read it). On my team, we were fighting to win. We weren't able to simply push buttons, we had to actually work on beating them. Normally whenever I'm on a team, I'm also reading the forums at the same time, or reading one of several blogs, or reading the latest issue of LWN.net (lots of obscenely technical articles, most of which I can barely understand... I wouldn't have it any other way )... in the middle of combat (especially AV fights).

3, Alt tab, read for a second, alt tab back, 2, alt tab, read, alt tab, 4, alt tab, read, alt tab, target new enemy, f, alt tab, 1, alt tab, read, alt tab, ctrl+2, alt tab, read, yada, yada, yada! That's all the teams I've been on.

I couldn't do that on this team. I had to actually pick my targets, and not just 'boss first' or 'sappers first' bs that's passed off as strategy far too often! I had to watch who was attacking what, both ways. I couldn't just focus on killing as quickly as I could, I had to spread my attacks out over multiple targets to hold onto as much aggro as I could. But I also had to watch what attacks my team mates were using to keep them from gaining too much aggro. I also had to watch out for ambushes walking in on us. And at the same time, I had to make sure I didn't get slaughtered, because a lowbie Shield brute can only take so much before dying. It was a challenge, and it didn't merely rely on giving the enemies more HP and more damage. Everyone on the team was doing a great job playing their characters, it was a good team, and the missions were well designed, some how built just right to challenge us just the right amount without simply overwhelming us without mercy. We did lose some, like I said... but the sweet taste of victory doesn't not exist unless you also have the bitter taste of defeat to compliment it.


That is why I said it was the most fun I've had playing this game since I started. It had that new game feel that you get, before you know how the system works to the point that you can do it in your sleep, it's simply a reflex (one that I can use while reading an article on the fanotify API... you know, just some light reading...).

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First of all, no offense intended. I think you got that I didn't mean it that way. And I had edited my post to say "patience and..." so as to avoid the cliche, but I guess you were reading me before I'd changed that. But I meant what I said, you were willing to push past bad experiences until you got those good fights which I happen to think everyone deserves every time.
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I had to actually pick my targets, and not just 'boss first' or 'sappers first' bs that's passed off as strategy far too often! I had to watch who was attacking what, both ways. I couldn't just focus on killing as quickly as I could, I had to spread my attacks out over multiple targets to hold onto as much aggro as I could. But I also had to watch what attacks my team mates were using to keep them from gaining too much aggro. I also had to watch out for ambushes walking in on us. And at the same time, I had to make sure I didn't get slaughtered, because a lowbie Shield brute can only take so much before dying. It was a challenge, and it didn't merely rely on giving the enemies more HP and more damage. Everyone on the team was doing a great job playing their characters, it was a good team, and the missions were well designed, some how built just right to challenge us just the right amount without simply overwhelming us without mercy.

[/ QUOTE ]Up to AE coming in, I'd say almost every single play experience I had was like that. (OK maybe not with the unknown ambushes.) But I like pick-up teams. I play many varied characters with different strengths and weaknesses, and love assessing the situation to see how I can apply what power to solve the given problems. I would quit teams that were too routine because I wanted (and knew I could find) a more unique and challenging experience. If I wanted to play with other good players we would otherwise challenge ourselves (all defender STF for example) but most of the time I could form a pickup team from whoever's around and as we all imperfectly try our best that's enough variation and challenge.

But I can't find that experience anymore. Good to know it still exists, but I don't have the patience to push through bad sessions and then ignore them to be all shiny about an eventual good part. What I'm saying to you is that I probably would have quit after the first team, and never gotten to the second one. Or I'd have started to enjoy myself again and then been crushed that the mission was bugged. I'm glad you found a good team. I think you deserve that every time.

But when you get right down to it, you can't guarantee me that you can log on tonight and repeat that experience. You can run the same mission and try to form a similar team, but doing that precisely removes the element of discovery which you enjoyed in the first place.

If you try to form a team you will find teammates who only want to farm, or have an aversion to entering the AE, or got to level X with no idea how to play their character because all they know was PLing enemies that don't fight back. As you look for a mission you'll find ones with inappropriate difficulty, bad level spreads, broken objectives, and routine objectives long before you find another great one.

And if you're willing to push through all that, then more power to you. But I am not, and more power to you. AE makes good things possible, I don't deny that. But they're so hard to find. By Contrast - I can log on right now, and be on an 8-person team inside a mito farm in under 2 minutes. If I don't actively seek a farm I'll end up on one in 5 minutes. If I join an AE team that doesn't use the word "hami" or "farm" at all, there's a 90% chance that's still what they're going to do. And the fact that people are successful at playing the game "wrong" (so to speak) while it's so hard to find your good experience is [u]backwards[u].

That is my point. Any system where people have to trudge through bad experiences in blind hope of a good one is a [u]bad system[u]. It's bad because many people won't stick that long, and it's bad because the people who do deserve better.

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If you go into the detailed info, it says the level ranges for each mission in the arc. Also, LFMA is a player-tag used to denote lowbie friendly mission arcs.

[/ QUOTE ] I know about posted ranges, but I click through page after page seeing 1-54 or 50-54. I did not know about the tag, that may help so thank you. I think a recent patch (they're all recent to me) allows searching by level, but it was no help that day.

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