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The only stories possible to tell are simple, silly stories
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As much as I would like to see the things you're asking for, I'm afraid I cannot possibly agree with this. If you need some well written stories, PM me and i've got a list by my desk (i write them as I go along) of all the fantastic arcs i've played thus far. I empathise with your frustration, but a lot of sneaky authors have found workarounds until MA2.0 is released
Yes, we can write top of the line, novel quality stories, but unless you have only one objective, the random element makes the story seem ridiculous (barring some incredible miracle which makes everything spawn where you want it, but like I've said in some other thread, it only spawns correctly once out of 100 runs, because of Random.)
Be sure to check out the MA: Help Snippets, Tips and Tricks thread, I've already posted a few work-a-rounds to beat the limitations.
Yes, the limitations suck, and I've certainly had to rewrite a lot of my objectives because of it, but if you're willing and flexible then you'd be surprised of what you can do with what we have now.
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It's quite possible to write a top of the line, novel quality story where it isn't particuly important exactly where the critters and objects are.
How many novels do you read that say "Dr Desparo was standing in the third room on the right, 2.4 meters North West of the left hand starecase. His doomsday machine was in another room, 10 meters further down the corridor, underneath an abstract painting? Most of the time, that sort of detail just isn't nessassary to the story.
I really should do something about this signature.
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The only stories possible to tell are simple, silly stories
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As much as I would like to see the things you're asking for, I'm afraid I cannot possibly agree with this. If you need some well written stories, PM me and i've got a list by my desk (i write them as I go along) of all the fantastic arcs i've played thus far. I empathise with your frustration, but a lot of sneaky authors have found workarounds until MA2.0 is released
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Mine uses a few workarounds. If you want the boss to flee without failing, make him/her the victum of a rescue mission, for example. Using clever animations you can make it look like they are giving orders, for example. Please try my arc 
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Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.
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Yes, we can write top of the line, novel quality stories, but unless you have only one objective, the random element makes the story seem ridiculous (barring some incredible miracle which makes everything spawn where you want it, but like I've said in some other thread, it only spawns correctly once out of 100 runs, because of Random.)
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To me this sounds more like you have a couple of ideas that need specific placement, and because you can't do it (or can't spot how to do it - there may be a workaround) you're stating that only silly arcs and farms are possible. That's almost throwing a tantrum.
There's plenty of serious stories that can and are being told.
So there are limits - work within them. Some limits can seem a right-royal-pain at first but can help tighten up your story telling...
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How many novels do you read that say "Dr Desparo was standing in the third room on the right, 2.4 meters North West of the left hand starecase. His doomsday machine was in another room, 10 meters further down the corridor, underneath an abstract painting? Most of the time, that sort of detail just isn't nessassary to the story.
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IIRC it was that level of detail describing rooms where nothing happens that made me give up on both attempts at reading Anne Rice...
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
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How many novels do you read that say "Dr Desparo was standing in the third room on the right, 2.4 meters North West of the left hand starecase. His doomsday machine was in another room, 10 meters further down the corridor, underneath an abstract painting? Most of the time, that sort of detail just isn't nessassary to the story.
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How many novels have you read where the hero just happens upon the main villain in the corridor outside the toilets? And that's after he's rescued his girlfriend from behind some crates just as he walked into the building. And what's weird is that he walked in with some allies, but when he got inside they were already spread throughout the mission, standing around looking lost.
But yes, yes. I know you can work around the limitations. You'd have to in order to make even a single mission with more detail than your average radio mission. That's why I say it's cheap. We should'nt have to work around cheap limitation to make missions of the standard we're used to seeing. It would have been pretty lame if you encountered Infernal in the connecting cave, a couple hundred meters to the left of his portal. Or if Siege had been standing around behind a generator up in the top right hand corner of the map.
Also, just to make sure. You know this is a -visual- medium, right? You don't have to -read- a description of the map, because you can actually -see- it? When I mentioned "novel quality stories" (or whatever) I was reffering to just that. The Story. The map layout is a COMPLETELY different matter, and is as you would know if you'd read the post, the issue.
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IIRC it was that level of detail describing rooms where nothing happens that made me give up on both attempts at reading Anne Rice...
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The thing is that descriptions of empty rooms isn't part of The Story. It might be IN the story, but it's just fluff to fill out the pages. When I mentioned a "novel", I didn't mean that it should -read- like a novel, but that the story would be good enough make a novel FROM. Right? This is not a novel we're talking about, that was just an analogy, this is a game. Where you don't have to read descriptions of how things look, because you can see it.
To make a boss run away without failing the mission, can't you just uncheck the bubble that says that defeating the boss is necessary to completing the mission?
As for bosses not spawning next to objects, I have to agree that is EXTREMELY annoying. You would even need it in the example they give for the spawn chains: that a boss shows up after you get his treasure, complaining about how his treasure alarm keeps going off. I have one mission published and I think the story is severely hampered because the final boss doesn't spawn next to the object after you pick it up.
And I'm definitely with you on bookmarks and tags, as I have been since the moment I first started using MA.
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How many novels have you read where the hero just happens upon the main villain in the corridor outside the toilets?
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I wouldn't know because most authors don't bother to tell us. It's not important.
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You'd have to in order to make even a single mission with more detail than your average radio mission.
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I think that says more about your limitations as a storyteller than any limitations of the MA.
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It would have been pretty lame if you encountered Infernal in the connecting cave, a couple hundred meters to the left of his portal.
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You don't have to. The Infernal's lair map has one spawn location designated as "Back", which is right next to the location where the portal goes. You want an AV to spawn at that spot on that map, all you have to do is set it to Back. Or if you want it to spawn in the corridor outside, set it to Middle. It works fine on that map, I know, I've experimented with it.
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Also, just to make sure. You know this is a -visual- medium, right? You don't have to -read- a description of the map, because you can actually -see- it?
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Wrong. This game has always had a limited range of maps (we are spoiled now, there where very few mission specific maps when I first started playing). It is assumed that the player supply some imagination on thier own. Go to the theatre sometime. That is a visual medium, but will see actors suggest a wide range of locations and situations with a minimum of sets and props.
I really should do something about this signature.
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How many novels have you read where the hero just happens upon the main villain in the corridor outside the toilets?
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I wouldn't know because most authors don't bother to tell us. It's not important.
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Actually this is just plain wrong, most novels when detailing the Final Battle take pains to tell you exactly what setting it is occuring in and what the Big Bad is doing. Especially in comic books.
Having the Big Bad battle in the right room really is important.
That said at the moment you can get it pretty much right (but not always so) using Front / Back etc and tweaking / fiddling about.
It would be nice it there was a way to travel onto the map and see the spawn points as some sort of targetted spot / placeable thingie and assign a particular Mission Event to occur at that spot. It should also avoid any potential exploits in giving full control of Spawn Point positions to players.
Option to make a boss teleport away, or run away without the mission failing. There are loads of missions in which this happens, so the function is already in the game.
Option to make bosses spawn on top of blinkies and destructables when that objective is complete. Too annoying when you for example have to destroy a cloning tank, but when it's destroyed and a boss is supposed to emerge from it, the boss spawns across the whole map...
Option to make Battle objectives not deal damage to each other until the player shows up. Nothing is more disappointing than entering a room and seeing a ton of mobs lying around being dead, when it's supposed to be a huge battle going on. Showing up just as the dessert is cleaned off the table, sort of thing. I've yet to use the Battle objective, but through no lack of inspiration for its use, but because it's bloody USELESS.
Option to start the mission with allies, instead of having to find them in the mission.
Option to enter advanced spawn control, so you can manually pick out spawn placements for specific objectives. There's nothing more bloody annoying than RANDOM mob placements. Impossible to make serious stories in the current build, because RANDOM makes everything RIDICULOUS. The only stories possible to tell are simple, silly stories and farming missions. This is to me the biggest bloody stupid flaw in MA. RANDOMNESS MUST GO! (Oh, and note the "OPTION" part. Everytime I've suggested this, I get a ton of grief from people who aparently can't find the enter-button with a map, who can't believe how dificult the mission editor is already. Which it ISN'T. It's EXTREMELY simple and basic and CHEAP.) And whatever you say in response to that, systems like this have been created for an infinite number of games already. (For a finite value of infinite anyway.) And if it's impossible to implement in CoH, they must really have botched the programming job to heck and back, since people with NO BUDGET WHATSOEVER (fan-made) make applications like this for games which wasn't supposed to have them in the first place.
Option to pick search tags for your arc. This makes it dead easy to find other arcs which are similar to the ones you like.
And lastly, just a couple of NESSECARY changes that NEED to be made.
FIX THE ARC BROWSER!
And let us bookmark arcs in the browser!!