I recently updated my list of pet peeves, so I thought I'd repost them here:
10. Custom enemies that re-implement CoH enemies that already exist. (Do we really need ANOTHER zombie/mercenary/robot faction?)
9. Player isn't the "star" of the story and/or Badly handled Author insertion. (The player should be an important part of the plot; don't let your NPCs dominate everything and leave the player as just an observer. Also, Author insertion that "makes sense" for the story is OK.)
8. Lack of dialog/clues/description from NPCs.
7. Just not much to do during a mission (Complexity = radio mission)
6. Time wasters (Defeat All on large or annoying maps; lengthy sequences of triggered objectives on large or annoying maps; objectives set up in a way that requires excessive backtracking)
5. Continuity errors (your clue tells me X, but your debriefing tells me Not X)
4. Mission Impossible (custom mobs and/or AVs are just too darn hard)
3. Game over: You lose (even though I do everything right, the arc is scripted to make me lose)
2. Not knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing (what's my motivation for this mission again?)
1. Missions aren't connected into an overall story (an arc needs an overarching plot!)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
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I'm apparently the one person who doesn't complain when the cistern room shows up.|
Originally Posted by GrinningSpade
How do people think about the council caves? I personally don't like them, had some bad times finding the last foe or that missing glowy in there?
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Originally Posted by GrinningSpade
Another thing I realize that I hate quite a lot:
Mission level 1-54 |
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Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
The player told me had had to hit the hospital a couple of times and burned through a bunch of Insp's to do it, but felt "driven to beat this darn arc!" He had a blast with it and felt a sense of accomplishment when he was done. So who am I to set a level cut-off and deny any future players like him the chance to have fun?
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Meh.
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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
1. Missions aren't connected into an overall story (an arc needs an overarching plot!)
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
My only problem with Council caves are the occassional ability for objectives not to spawn and the fact that there isn't a genericed non Council/5th version of these caves. I welcome having more (working) jail maps. And um, what's the cistern room?
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I feel this is yet another victim of our inability to have direct spawn control. There's some cool challenge missions we could do with these if we knew exactly where objectives would spawn.| I don't like scavenger hunt maps. You know, ones like the Tech Labs where three different elevators all lead to three different floors and you will likely have to backtrack all over the place. |
My problem with 1-54 is how our search engine for MA is designed. I generally assume that any arc listed like that to be 30+ though I'll sometimes give the author the benefit of the doubt and try it.
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The blue room with all the water in it. It isn't as bad as some of the rooms in Council maps, when you have blinkies to find and there are a million places for them to hide. Council maps only annoy me when they contain blinkies in some of those rooms.|
Originally Posted by Zamuel
My only problem with Council caves are the occassional ability for objectives not to spawn and the fact that there isn't a genericed non Council/5th version of these caves. I welcome having more (working) jail maps. And um, what's the cistern room?
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The blue and brown caves are also annoying only when they have some of the really bad rooms. There are blue and brown cave maps that are relatively painless. There are also Oranbega maps that I find relatively painless. And then there are maps where I waste half an hour hunting down a blinky. I hate those, and for the love of [deity], don't use "random" cave, Oranbega, or Council maps.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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Dropping my arc is your option of course, I do it myself (for any number of reasons) when I play MA arcs. I'm leaving the choice up to the players, if for no other reason because I've had comments all over the map the difficulty of the same arc. Both my low-level player who wants to play gets to and you get to drop it - no harm no foul there. |
Originally Posted by Lazarus
Your mileage will vary, but for every person who feels "driven to beat this arc" there will be a dozen who will feel like your arc is a waste of their time and move on to something else. It's not like a canon arc where it has to be completed or will sit in the missions window forever, dropping it is an option for AE arcs.
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(And that's not even opening up the issue of teams who have one or more low-level toons SK'ed up.)
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Which is a much different deal as those people have their higher-level teammates backing them up, which is much different than trying to solo critters who are really balanced for a level much higher than what you are.
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Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
(And that's not even opening up the issue of teams who have one or more low-level toons SK'ed up.)
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But they're still choosing to, say, go toe to toe with an AV. Not all "high level back-ups" are built the same - I've died a few times on teams because of that, but I'm not complaining. |
Originally Posted by Lazarus
Which is a much different deal as those people have their higher-level teammates backing them up, which is much different than trying to solo critters who are really balanced for a level much higher than what you are.
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Which makes me ponder another question about the whole level thing (not just aimed at Lazarus here, just in general): How am I supposed to decide which level range is "appropriate" anyways (and for whom, your level 8 warshade or your 45th level controller or your teams of brutes or...)? The only thing I can think is to either make a wild stab in the dark ("Hm, my 25th stalker did ok, so I'll say 20th level and up) or using some long formalized (and silly) list...
Arc Level Restriction List
Standard foes: follow their level range
Custom foes: start at level 20
EB in arc: +5 levels
AV in arc: +10 levels
Any custom with Build Up/Aim: +10 levels
Any custom with Rez: +10 levels
Any custom with Nin (which gives them Hide): +5 levels
Customs with weapon sets attacks (excluding Archery): - 5 levels
Designed for teaming: +5 levels
Designed for solo: -5 levels
Minions with mezz sets: +10 levels
...etc.
I think we'd end up with a lot of arcs residing at "levels 40 and up". Which would be a shame.
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Probably, unless they have standard foes mixed into the group.|
Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
Arc Level Restriction List
Standard foes: follow their level range Custom foes: start at level 20 |
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EB in arc: +5 levels AV in arc: +10 levels |
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| Any custom with Build Up/Aim: +10 levels |
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| Customs with weapon sets attacks (excluding Archery): - 5 levels |
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Designed for teaming: +5 levels Designed for solo: -5 levels |
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| Minions with mezz sets: +10 levels |
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| I think we'd end up with a lot of arcs residing at "levels 40 and up". Which would be a shame. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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I've been doing that since day one. I think players should also be thinking their difficulty settings vs. their toon's abilities just as carefully. |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Or we'd have people rethinking the difficulty of their customs, which is long overdue.
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Still, you make a fairly good argument with your example. I still wouldn't have idea one on how to define my AV between those two examples though (what with how drastically the difficulty settings can affect things) and would like to hear how someone "should do it" to "get it right".
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IIRC, I think I saw either a Dev Choice arc or one with a helluva lot of 5-stars with ranged Mez who where minions AND LT's >.>
| If you have mez protection available and you didn't take it before level 20 then it sucks to be you. As for people without it, if you fill an arc with ranged mezzers they're going to be annoyed no matter what level you set it to, because dev created factions don't have minions with these I Win buttons against squishies |
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I know my toon's abilities. I have toons capable of soloing AVs and regularly defeating their aggro cap's worth of +2 Malta, Arachnos, and Longbow. These same toons have been one-shotted by +1 custom bosses, and annihilated in an alpha strike from a +1/x4 spawn of customs. These arcs were not marked "challenging", and were not set to be played by high-level characters.|
Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
I've been doing that since day one. I think players should also be thinking their difficulty settings vs. their toon's abilities just as carefully.
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That's the main reason I'm opposed to the use of powers such as Rage, Build Up, and auto-hit end drain powers. There is no way to account for the difficulty bump they give, because standard foes simply do not have them. You can't judge your toon's abilities to deal with these powers, because no powerset is intended to deal with them.
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| Still, you make a fairly good argument with your example. I still wouldn't have idea one on how to define my AV between those two examples though (what with how drastically the difficulty settings can affect things) and would like to hear how someone "should do it" to "get it right". |
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Originally Posted by ReclusesPhantom
IIRC, I think I saw either a Dev Choice arc or one with a helluva lot of 5-stars with ranged Mez who where minions AND LT's >.>
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Oh my, quite a few peeves here. S'pose I'll add mine.
-- Having to defeat the mob around the boss for the objective to count.
There's nothing wrong with that, as long as there is a reason to why I must hunt down the guards surrounding the boss. Most of the time, I dive straight after the boss forgetting about the little minions and they run off in the carnage. Leaving me to look for them. Not a big gripe, but a gripe none-the-less.
-- Defeat Alls.
Probably the most common thing on the Architect Hate List. Defeat Alls NEED a reason as to why that mission involves you slaughtering every lifeform you come into contact with. Just chucking them in for the hell of it is not good storytelling.
-- Spelling Errors
Nothing ruins the plot more for me then seeing the author has accidentally spelt a word wrong.
-- Custom Enemies with no descriptions.
If you made the costume, gave them names and managed to string together powersets for them, atleast give your custom mobs a bit of a backstory.
I have more, but I am rushing as there's a Turkey in the oven. 
Username: @Royal
The Alien Tyrant, 357388: Stop the reign of an evil emperor!
Spawning Chaos, 469020: Form an army of Freaks, win the Freaklympics!
The Restarian Front, 363257: Stop the invasion of an alien fleet from another galaxy!
On the subject of custom characters and their backstories, I'd like to add a little note for aspiring architects that these descriptions do not need to be long - and in most cases shouldn't be. So don't be intimidated by the prospect of writing the life story of every minion in your custom faction. All you really need is one good sentence explaining their specific role - anything the players really need to know about the faction itself should be explained in the arc.
It is (near) impossible to make a mission that works for a level 1 character that is still interesting to do for a lvl 50 toon. Or plain to hard for a level 1 toon. There is a huge difference in power levels, think amount of powers available and type and number of enhancements. Trying to make an arc that is good for every level will most likely result in an arc that fails to deliver.
I once got a comment from a player that he had run through my second arc (see the sig) with a level 7 or 8 warshade. Which should work, as I planned it that way (in my possibly naive, early days of arc writing). The arc has a carefully chosen standard-foes group with level ranges from 1 to 50 up until the last mission, where my customs show up. The player told me had had to hit the hospital a couple of times and burned through a bunch of Insp's to do it, but felt "driven to beat this darn arc!" He had a blast with it and felt a sense of accomplishment when he was done. So who am I to set a level cut-off and deny any future players like him the chance to have fun?