Is there any point to making custom enemies?

When I first resubbed (a couple of days ago) it was with the goal of playing against and making completely fresh enemies, fun maps, interesting storylines, etc. on MA. To prep myself I started playing the higher rated stuff ... and found myself disappointed. Where were the custom critters? The storylines were there of course, but it was woven around enemy groups I'd gotten bored with a long time ago. If I was really lucky the end boss guy was something original, and that was about it. Oddly, I also got the sense that I wasn't leveling as fast as I was used to in the old days of running around King's Row, which coincided with finally hitting some 'custom groups' content.

Then I read the FAQ today about how custom critters only get 75% of xp unless they're set to "hard" and it all made sense. So if you want to actually see the results of other people's creativity you pay for it by leveling slower ... that's not a good thing. Yes, I know, the people making farm maps caused this. It's just very disappointing as a person that is actually enamored with the stated goal of the Mission Architect.

Hot on the heels of that I realized that people kept talking about how hard it was to get people to actually play their missions, and it took the wind out of my sails. So if you combine the reduced xp/drops on the custom critters with the fact that you can work hours upon hours on something that no one ever sees ...

Needless to say, I'm a tad disheartened about using the system as a Creator now. The prospect of spending hours upon hours writing and costuming the entire crew (and I will ... the problem is I like to actually try to make things as epic as I can), and then begging people to play it for months doesn't exactly strike me as "awesome." Is there something I'm missing here? I was really looking forward to seeing and creating new content, but right now it just seems that if you want anything "new" you're penalized for it.

Guess that bit just doesn't sit well with me I'm hoping that I'm way off on something ...

There are loads and loads of custom critter arcs in the MA. They can be selected as something to search for under the advanced search options. If you dove into the Guest Author and Dev's Choice arcs I think you'd find you have a chance to choose standard rewards. Regardless, don't let it put you off making something really good. I'll play it!

Others will address this better than I, but the short version of an answer to the "no one will play it" problem is that there are something like 500,000 arcs posted up by players. I think. It's some huge number like that.

That's a lot of arcs! Just dropping yours off in that pool and waving buh-bye means that's your odds of seeing it played are kind of small. This is why you do, yes, have to find ways to get people to play.

One good way is to form an MA arc playing PUG and start off with yours. Keep notes from these forums about other well-regarded arcs and you'll never have to grow bored with content in this game again.

To address the title:

Custom enemies often come in two catagories:

Decent-Full Experience, Coupled with one of the following: God-like, Nearly Unbeatable solo, downright facepalm annoying or, my personal favorite, simply stupid.

Low-No Experience, Coupled with one of the following: Challenging, decent, beatable, moderately annoying, Balanced, easy.

Devs went completely overboard with their nerfs, unfortunetly, its like I13 pvp, they will refuse to give it back, based on the grounds that they FEEL (Without due reason) that AE is now less farmable. While it may be less farmable, it is overall, simply less active, becuase finding decent arcs with decent rewards is nigh impossible. 'Specially when considering the amount of arcs to sift through.

I will say however, there are a few arcs that are truely entertaining and some of the makers have truely mastered the AE story telling system. SO potentially, yes, customs can be balanced, but its a hard stint to get to that point.

It is not "Custom Critters" that will keep your arc from being played. It is not the "XP is the greatest thing since slice bread" players who will keep your arc from being played. It is not the "Story-schmorie, bring on the phat lootz" people who will keep your arc from being played. What will keep your arc being played is the sheer number of competing arcs involved combined with the very likely problem that your arc, regardless of quality, will settle into the 4-Star Doldrums and be so hard to find even you won't know where it is.

If you want your arc to have a chance at more than a few dozen plays over the course of years, you will have to constantly play agent and publisher for yourself, always promoting it to friends and strangers. You will have to host "arc parties" where you lead teams through it, or create teams specifically to play it before handing over the star to a new leader who wants to read the story. You will have to post about it on the boards, get feedback from other arc writers, and basicaly work on it regularly for months, tweaking and tinkering.

Yes, the XP nerfs to customs were severe. Yes, the severe punishments handed out early in the AE's life were damaging. Yes, it all hurt the AE in general. But none of that is the root reason an arc has trouble finding legs merely minor contributing factors.

To give you an idea what you'll be facing, the three arcs in my sig were loaded on day 1 to day 7 of the AE going live (two on day 1, one on day 7). They had the advantage of having a much smaller pool of arcs competing with them. They all, with a single notable exception, have under 150 ratings (plays are higher but unknown since they don't give us that info) and, until recently all three were in the 4-Star Doldrums despite good reviews from most people who commented when rating. They were all heavily promoted by me and some by others who like particular arcs. The single exception is "Sabrina's Tale" which was nominated for Best Original Story and Arc of the Year last year by the devs, won both, and was upgraded to Dev's Choice plus was nominated in the board's Player's Choice Awards (and took second place for Serious Arc). Even with those advantages, it has picked up 450 ratings and still doesn't have enough to be a contender (rating is difficult to say, since all DCs have a locked in 5 stars showing) for Hall of Fame and I still promote it fairly heavily.

Custom critters are, honestly, the least of your concerns when it comes to an arc's success. Making them interesting and balanced is A concern, but pales in comparison to the other factors that will effect the arc getting played. Build good, interesting, balanced (yeah, it's difficult but can be done) bad guys and don't worry about the XP they're worth. The story and your own promotion of it is what will keep your arc going.

Custom Creatures=Less XP. Sadly yes this is true. Hasn't stopped me from continuing to experiment with them. I have come to the conclusion that if I wanted to earn normal Xps I would just run normal content.

AE is all about the stories, or at least it should be. I recently created Tabs that don't involve the rewards. It's not that I don't care, I just wanted to experience a different style of play.

Make your custom baddies and if the stories are good people will come. Or possibly your arc will get lost in the mass along with thousands of other unseen gems. This is really too bad but it does happen.

If you do your best and enjoy the arc you have created that is the reward. It should be enough.

Bashful Banshee

Thanks for the honest answers, folks. At this point I've got mixed feelings about the AE. New stuff is great, but I also like to enjoy character concepts/powersets when I play them, and that doesn't often happen until they mature post-DOs. Perhaps the answer is to avoid playing AE until I don't care about the xp as much (I've got several 50s but there's no magic in the old for me heh), but that seems counter-intuitive to what was intended.

As for creating, I'll see, but I've never been a huge fan of "hey guys check my story out please." I get enough of that in real life I'll be honest: I'm disappointed with the current state of affairs regarding customization. From what little I've seen it seems there are already measures in place to prevent the worst excesses, and tacking on the experience penalty (as well as no end-of-mish xp, even on Dev-approved stuff) dissuades people from playing custom content ... which I thought was the whole point of AE.

Perhaps I've just seen one Skull too many; ah well, such is life.

OP:

It's not, really. If you decide you want your arc to be about story (and custom characters required to fit into that story) you run the risk of having anyone who's even a little bit rewards-focused ignoring your arc entirely.

A small compromise is to make a custom group, and add 1 or 2 pre-existing baddies into it, when appropriate. For example, when making a group of custom Barbarian/Vandals, I stuck 2 Circle of Thorns lieutenants as 'druids'. I picked the ones that were green, so they fit the color scheme.

All very good points.

One thing I have been thinking of ... do you get any kind of architect bucks (forget what they're called) for playing your own mission? I know Creators are supposed to get some kind of reward for people playing their mission, was just wondering if they're excluded from that if they play it themselves normally.

I'm tempted to write arcs specific to my characters, i.e. replicate the "Nemesis" system of CO effectively. But I'm hesitant, as it just seems like quite a bit of work for encounters with my Nemesis that, by definition, I have already scripted out and know the endings too

Perhaps I should get together with some friends and write "their" villainous groups/Nemesis and vice versa ... but again, seems like more organization than I normally posess for group activities

The MA for me is about seeying / experiencing new content. New mobs... new faces... new bosses. It is so hard to find goos ones... So much old farm stuff still there.

I have worked months on mine... And after plugging it from Beta to now only got 35 plays each! Maybe it is hard and yes.. it requeres a team! But they where set on medium to hard from the start and therefore will give full xp.

More so... I see the MA as a challenge above the TF's. If you would do the harder ones on high repp you die.. even in team. A lvl 50 tanker that can solo tf's should have some challenge somewhere... That is where the MA steps in. Challenge and new original content.

The bottom line to me with the AE custom overnerf is that it quite simply breaks the devs stated risk vs. reward scenario.

A custom mob is most times much much more powerful then a dev designed mob, yet yields only a fraction of the reward. Devs cherrypick the powers their mobs get, and the mobs sometimes even offer xp modifiers like 1.2x normal for defeat etc, yet when you make a standard custom mob and cherrypick the powers, you are left with much reduced rewards, and usually the mob is still more powerful then a standard dev made mob...

AE is all stick and no carrot nowdays.

The i17 announcement includes mention to AE improvements, so hopefully they're addressing this situation. They're well aware that the current method of granting XP isn't making anyone happy.

To the OP, I would say, first, I feel for/with you. The MA system has a lot of potential, but has been badly treated so far by some really poor design decisions and players who only wanted to use it as a means for quick leveling.

That said, as others have noted, some improvements are on the way. They haven't announced specifics yet, but I'm hoping that they will include some fixes for the UI so that good arcs with "only" four stars aren't lost in the crowd.

With that said... I imagine that you don't want to be seen as needy or begging (I went through the same), but some degree of self-promotion is required, now and possibly in the future. It's a very large haystack to go hunting around in blindly. Make it easier for people to find and play your arc and they'll reward you with tickets, attention, and possibly reviews.