People's reaction to difficulty is what pretty much turned me off to making more arcs, even though I enjoy making them and telling stories.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
My opinion, but the short answer to your question is "no." As probably almost anyone here can attest to, on almost any arc I've got where I get regular plays (which is really only about three of them) and I get feedback, what one player complimented, another player complained about. I usually consider the issue in question "just fine" provided the former is happening significantly more than the latter.
To the question of difficulty: if it's a private arc (i.e. I'm not advertising it - it can't really be 'private' in MA), it's typically custom designed to give me exactly the level of difficulty I want when set to whatever setting I usually play at at the arc's chosen security or threat level. Someone else plays it, and dislikes the difficulty, hopefully they'll do me the favor of giving it less than 5 stars, so it vanishes into 4 (or less) star hell and nobody I don't want playing it ever plays it again. If it's a public arc, then my goal is: if it's a complete cakewalk most of the time when played solo by a scrapper or brute set to +0/x1, it's probably about right.
Adding to that, I do have a couple of 'rules of thumb' that I go by for public arcs (which means I *do* break them, from time to time, but I usually try to obey them).
1. If it has the ability to set difficulty, set it to 'easy.' (rationale: let the player be the one who decides the overall challenge level of placed events.)
2. If it's an ambush, don't chain it to a boss that's still alive. And if it's a particularly difficult boss - don't put an ambush linked to that boss in at all (i.e. even when the boss is defeated). (rationale: don't kick em when they're down, and don't replace the excitement of a narrow victory with the irritation of a defeat.)
3. If it caps at 10 or below, don't use an elite boss (rationale: you're *forcing* a pre level 10 character to fight a boss, even if they don't want to fight bosses.)
4. If it caps at 22 or below, don't use an archvillain. (rationale: you're forcing a pre SO character to fight an elite boss even if the maximum they're comfortable with is bosses.)
5. If at all possible, try to avoid placing more than three bosses in a single mission (weaker guideline - I do break this one not too terribly infrequently), and make sure each boss has a different 'area' (e.g. front, middle, and back) set. (rationale: sooner or later you're gonna get a player where both bosses spawn in close to each other, and when boss #1 runs - and he will - he'll go right toward boss #2. The player of the arc will make a bad judgement call, and will chase after boss #1, aggroing boss #2. He'll then blame you for the resulting floor plant, and one-star your arc.)
6. Avoid custom mobs that have more than 50% damage resistance to a particular damage type. Never, ever put in something with more than 70%. (rationale: a player who focuses on that type of damage will play your arc. They will get mad at you for how tedious the arc is, assuming they can finish it at all.)
7. Avoid custom mobs that have build up or aim. Ask your significant other to slap you and make you sleep on the couch if you ever decide: oh, it's okay to give this boss build up because it's not like every spawn has something with build up. (rationale: with build up active, most custom bosses have attacks that can wipe out 75% of a scrapper's hit points in one fell swoop. And putting it on a minion or lt. it pretty much like giving the entire faction a permanent +20% to hit and +80% to damage, since it'll be up for most of the fight.)
8. Avoid giving a custom minion a hold power. Avoid giving a custom lt. more than one, and, if possible, give the faction another two or three lt.'s without hold powers to drastically cut down on the number of times the player will be facing a hold. (rationale: squishies do not like to be held. They perceive it as 'hard.' They never carry break-frees. It's your fault they don't.)
Like I said, those end up being my own personal guidelines, but they seem to work pretty well. I only rarely get someone complaining about an arc of mine being too hard, and even with all of these guidelines, it's even rarer for me to hear someone complaining about the arc being too easy.
M.A. Arcs
Intended for high level play: The Primus Trilogy (Arc #s 10931, 283821, 283825), "Freakshow U" (Arc #189073), Purification (Arc #352381, Dev's Choice!
)Intended for low level play: "Learning the Ropes" (Arc #100304), "Cracking Skulls" (Arc #115935), "The Lazarus Project" (Arc #124906)
My personal opinion:
* You cannot make an arc that is perfectly balanced for every player or every team. On multiple arcs I've gotten feedback from players where one says it's too easy, and another says it's too hard. Striking a balance between these two is best; however, since "too easy" is mildly disappointing to the player while "too hard" may mean the player either ragequits or can't complete the arc at all, it's better to err on the side of "too easy".
* I used to review arcs on whatever difficulty my character happened to be set on at the time. Then my soft capped SR scrapper on +2 x8 difficulty started an arc with custom characters where every single one of them buffs or debuffs, and got stomped flat. My scrapper could handle +2 x8 difficulty just fine even against fairly difficult "standard" models like Arachnos and Cimeroran traitors, so I felt this custom group was clearly too difficult ... but I did not feel that I could say "Your mobs are too hard" with authority when I've purposely amped up my difficulty to the max. So I lowered my difficulty to the default and tried it again (and still felt they were too hard, but that's a nother story). Now I mostly run AE story arcs at default difficulty. However, I don't think you can expect all players to run your arc at the minimum difficulty.
* I do like putting AVs and EBs in story arcs, especially in the final mission, but I'll usually put allies in the same mission to help out if the AV is difficult. AVs and EBs should be used with restraint in low level arcs, however. I had to force myself to make the "big bad" of my level 5-10 arc only an ordinary Boss.
* Support powers are dangerous to players. Use them sparingly. I recommend either limiting them to lieutenant rank and above, or if you must give them to a minion, make sure no more than 1 out of 3 minions has them. I feel that custom enemy groups where every single enemy has a buff or debuff set are always unbalanced, and it is Not Fun for the player to watch the bad guys non-stop healing/buffing each other. Personally, I prefer to make custom minions only have an attack set and no defense set (well, Regen, which is very close to no effect at minion level).
* Control powers are kind of a tossup for me, though some people feel more strongly about them. Personally, I always carry break frees when I'm playing squishy characters, because I expect to get mez'd some. Some players are also enraged if enemies have mez protection; this has some justification as those powers tend to negate controllers and dominators.
Just my opinion. Hope that helps.
@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!"
I don't have any guidelines. I usually build whatever customs I have to fit a concept. Then I play the arc with the MA team. They subsequently stare at me pointedly during the first mission and I say, "Oh."
I design all of my arcs as though there were only one difficulty setting:
+0,x1,No Boss, No AV.
I also design all of my arcs as though they are being soloed, as that's the type of superhero comicbook I preferred when I was growing up and reading them, and still do, to a large extent. When I play, I solo for the vast majority of the time. That's not such a problem when it comes to review comments, however, since my story arcs are mostly soloed it would seem. Since the narrative delivery systems of the MA are slightly skewed towards the mission leader, and teams tend not to be in it to read mostly, the solo story seeker is my target audience.
But the Difficulty settings can cause a whole heap of woe to a MAuther. My arc The Echo's last mission is a classic case, as evinced by LJ's recent experience playing it at his usual Diff setting of +0 x3. The last mission at x1 features a chain of 15 Freak Boss fights, each of whom spawns as an Lt with 1 minion accompanying. This alone can seem like a daunting trudge to a player, but ramped up to x3, the minions multiply. I'm not number cruncher, so I don't know how many Freaks LJ had to fight through in that last mission, but I can well imagine how tedious it seemed to him despite the undeniable (rofl) excellence of the prose in the clues that followed each spawn victory
Those objectives are set to Easy already. I could engineer it so that the Freak Bosses spawn with no accompanying mobs at all under any circumstances, but then they'd seem a bit sparse. Having that single minion with them adds just a little bit of atmosphere and challenge to the map. Any more, however, and people start nodding off.
I guess this isn't really going anywhere apart from hopefully opening up a discussion about the Difficulty settings and their effect on the plays of arcs. What do other MAuthors think? What do you think as an author and as a player? What's your 'default' setting? What do you think the default setting for CoH is (if there is one at all)?
You can't please everyone all the time. What one player thinks is 'too easy', another will see as 'too hard'. Is it possible to balance an arc so that it caters for all?
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)