How Will the Latest Patch Affect You?

Huh, i wonder how the thread went from "how does the ally XP nerf hurt your arc" to Venture telling people how to make their missions?

On the whole, going to the back then back to the front does seem a bit cheesy, even though I've been tempted to use it myself. The only time I can think of the DEVs doing it was in that one mission on the Khan TF where the glowie you need to click after you kill the boss winds up near the beginning. And chaining objectives on a large outdoor map to send players on an easter egg hunt sounds like a good idea until you actually PLAY it.

So while I agree with Venture in general, I do think he's being far too negative. If someone wants a sequence of events in their mission, they should be allowed to do it. I mean, we're limited to FIVE missions... if you want 10 plot points to happen in a certain order, something's going to have to give. If i want to rescue two hostages and have one say "hi" to the other or mention them by name, I have to have the objectives chained or else players will run into a situation where person B says "hi" to someone who isn't there (of course, this is easily broken if you lose the first escort.. we really need the ability to make dynamic content). Funny that Venture of all people proved to me that Players won't play the way you want them to when he once blitzed through a linear map full of guys he had to rescue... which humorously enough broke the spawn points and made it so the final AV wouldn't spawn XD

Chained events are a great tool in MA and can be used in all sorts of ways to make a story more interesting. Some examples from my arcs:

Death to Disco! - Dr. Disco Fever does not spawn to confront the player until a certain amount of Disco Records, 8-Tracks or Cassettes have been destroyed. Classic villain stuff.

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society - A safe glowie containing an antidote does not activate until the person holding the combination is defeated. I also used this in my Blappy arc when the player needed one of the bosses passwords to get into the computer.

Another arc I used chained events to spawn a puzzle type game using destructible objects. The puzzle needed to be correctly done to send the Big Bad away.

I use chained events and enjoy coming up with interesting ways to use them. I have been impressed with ways they are used by others that I may have never thought of myself. It would be crazy to remove such a great tool from MA imo.*


WN

* Note - People may notice I always use imo rather than imho. The reason is my opinions are never humble

Now back on subject.

My arcs that were unaffected and give full exp:

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society
Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed!


Arcs that were hit and now give less than optimal exp are:

Death to Disco! (Many battles in last mission)
Trademark Infringement (Captives)
Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids! (Captive and Battles even though they contain no friendly NPCs)
In Poor Taste (Ally and Captive in last mission)


WN

Well, let's look at the affected objectives in just my most recent arc.

Mission 1:
- Ally (control but not buff)
- Ally, wandering (offensive, will kill steal if you give her the chance)

Mission 2:
- Ally (control, not buff)
- Captive

Mission 3:
- Ally (offensive, will kill steal if you give him the chance)
- 3 Captives
- 2 Battles that include friendlies

Mission 4:
- Ally (control but not buff)
- 7 Captives
- 3 Patrols, friendly

Mission 5:
- Ally (control but not buff)
- Ally (offensive, will kill steal if you give him the chance)

Yes, I'd say that arc is pretty much broken now as far as XP is concerned.

Night Calls the Weaver appears to be giving full rewards all the way through.


The Union of the Mask gives full rewards for the first 4 missions, then experience is reduced by 95% for mission 5 because there are a lot of color battles going on in the background and the character has the option of picking up both Back Alley Brawler and Swan during the mission.

The Long Road Back is only giving about 60% experience all the way through for reasons I can't figure out. Even in missions where there are no allies, captives, or battles and the character is fighting stock Vahzilok mobs without changes, the experience is nerfed.

Oh, well. At least the only one of them that was popular anyway doesn't seem to have been affected.

(Though Venture and I have seemingly different concepts of popularity... if my non dev-choice had as many plays as his do, I'd be jumping up and down. )

"All in the Family" (# 128109) has two places with a loss.
* In mission one, there's a lieutenant-level custom ally to rescue at the back of the mission and take her to the door.
* In mission three, a boss-level Family Consigliere critter spawns in the front to help the player defeat a boss-level Martial Arts Longbow critter (in case the player sucks fighting MA Scrappers...).

Brokering the Brickers (# 37724) has no allies at all, so it's untouched by the patch.

I ought to make that third arc, now, but it seems I'll need to work around the need for allies.

Unaffected:

Deth Kick Champions, 390856

Currently unaffected. I edited this to remove some ally boss spawns meant to represent spectators; they were only inserted to add flavor text.

Ecloga Prima: Hæc excursio in lingua Latina, 309162

Currently unaffected; a simple glowie hunt.

Welcome to the Future, 326600

Currently unaffected: this arc currently serves only as a personal sandbox to test mob concepts.

Affected:

Death by Snoo-Snoo, 247372

Entirely ruined; ten captive rescues; one's a dummy to prompt an immediate ambush on entry.

Who is Kidnapping the World's Greatest Philosophers, 253920

Entirely ruined; based entirely on captive rescues.

Lesbian Hellion Liberation, 208830

Second and third missions ruined; all contain ally rescues, and in the course of the second mission you summon large ally patrols to represent a breakout in a prison camp.

Jerk Hackers!, 162492

Third mission badly affected; it contains multiple hostage rescues. They are there only for flavor, and I can cut them out though.

I have already unpublished The Great American Skull Fry! The entire mechanic of the first mission centered around multiple allies, who were meant to follow the players and fight by their side (or die trying); at least one was basic to the plot, and it could not be rewritten to omit them.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

No apologies required. I have since moved on. I know my arc is a descent arc, regardless of what Venture says. And I've had several players tell me it was fun. That is praise enough for me. Did I ever say it was unique or original? No. But what is? Everything has been done already. Everything else is a derivative of something that has already been done. Even the dev's choice arcs are full of derivative stories and mechanics. But, I accept that as a fact of life. A wise man once said, there is nothing new under the sun. Venture is obviously just a negative person. I've known plenty of those, and my response is always to ignore them once I realize that.

But yes, back on topic, AE is dead. I have logged in every day since the patch to play, and every time I go into the Freedom AE Atlas building, there's like 3 people in there.

It is very sad.

I do hope so. Really. I hate to think such a cool feature would die permanently.

I know this is WAAAAYYYY after the fact, but I wonder if a more easily implemented, and MUCH more successful and fair fix would have been to simply require allies to adhere to the same "difficulty" requirements that enemies do. If an allie isn't set to full "difficult" or "extreme" level on both powersets then the enemies defeated with aid of said ally give zero xp. That way, an allie is forced to use an attack, and suddenly xp sharing comes in to affect. This would have destroyed the idea of using buff bots to take down henchmen quickly for full xp, because suddenly your xp is split among 15 buffbots. That, or, like regular teams, have allied critters share xp, ticket drops, etc. even if they don't attack, meaning that you're still losing out on XP for each buff bot you have "with you" at the time. This would destroy the advantages of these farms, while still leaving allies in story arcs completely valid and useful.

In other words, Johny X runs a farm where 15 buff bots follow him, buffing him. All 15 stay with him the entire time, even though they don't directly attack the bosses, so the game sees them as "teammates" to Johny X. The bosses he kills, which would give 30,000 xp and 30 tickets normally while solo, now give 30,000 xp and 30 tickets divided by 16, or 1,875 xp per kill, and 18 tickets. This isnt game breaking, and while it make make for easy, boring "farming" of bosses, its no more rewarding than regular in game farming, and really even less so, so people would stop doing it, for the most part.

Meanwhile Sally X runs an arc where the story calls for her to rescue four of the Freedom Phalanx and then aid them in taking down four evil AVs within the final mission. The AVs, which normally give 60,000 xp and 40 tickets per kill, now give her 60,000 XP split five ways, or 12,000 xp per kill, and 8 tickets. This is still "rewarding" while not being even close to expoitative, and allows for players to both use allies for story reasons and not feel somehow robbed of any reward.

Does that make sense? I know its not EXACTLY how the game is coded right now, but I can't imagine why it couldn't be done as easily as the current situation.

I'm new to CoH/CoV and recently started playing AE Missions as I found the overall game play tedious and repetative; AE Missions have been a breath of fresh air. However, having said that I find it ridiculous that as a paying customer the only ingame perks I am given are so slanted and remarkably low I am left wondering by what means others obtained the millions even billions I see some paying on the black market for various items. Sadly, I am going to looking for a new MMO to play. I am looking for a marked variety and a game that doesn't leave the new player desperate to experience the game at his or her own pace whether it means leveling up quickly by forsaking the story or running through town and putting a major beat down on local baddies for cold hard cash or in this case infamy, running AE Missions after you’ve taken a few toons to level 50 and wow this all seems repetitive or just working the market which has the flavor of an exclusive/restrictive club to the infamy strapped who are now forced to pay 500k for hydraulic pistons, and the like . All in all the game play is slow, I'm happy for those who love to submerge themselves into the CoH/CoV storyline but after awhile I'd like to simply play and reap a reasonable reward that doesn’t leave me feeling it’s all for naught after I’ve paid a monthly service fee to play this game.

While I understand the need for the change. It could have been done differently. Such as enemies that don't do damage give no exp and exp not being daisy chained linked by mob groups.

This change hit most of my arcs. I use allied patrols for scenery in all my arcs. What am I suppose to do? Go back and destroy my own work for the sake of exp?

Like most others here. I don't write my stories with rewards in mind. The fact that they'll be penalized now for me trying to make the story more engaging just pisses me off.

What sucks is people don't really care about good arcs. I've done everything possible to get people to play my stuff and in 3 months nothing has broke 10 plays.

It must have been nice when MA just started. Like WN stated earlier look at the plays and dates. Those arcs were released when AE was new, people were interested, and more forgiving.

I've played lots of those arcs in the HOF or near the HOF and they're crap. Even the guest author stuff is just CRAP. Yeah I'm looking at you LOLBAT. They're where they are because of the time they were released.

New authors such as myself never had a chance. The only people I could turn to were my fellow authors. Really hate to say it. But I don't think I've met a much more stuffy, critical, or self absorbed bunch in quite a while.

Guess it is understandable to some degree. We're all authors and we want people to play our stuff. As authors we want to write and not play others arcs when that time could be used on our own. But any person who was interested in seriously writing through MA will eventually leave in disgust.

My arcs... I've spent hundreds of hours on EACH one and that's no BS.

The comments from some of my fellow authors has been laughable to hurtful. It's like Jesus Christ I spent all that time and effort to just be nit picked. Sure I would like some constructive critisism but a little friggen praise would be nice too.

Such as the MA SG that did my Halloween arc. That was a real WOW, what a bunch of jerks moment for me. Saying my costume designs looked like cheap dime store Halloween garb or some crap. Well yeah NO DUH- It is a comedy, the characters are designed after 1930's-1950's Hollywood. Sorry it wasn't Twilight for you. Totally missed the 3 Stooges meets Dracula type thing I was going for.

Not saying that people have to like my work. Of course everyone is different. Really I don't need people to tell me my work is good. I know it's good. I'm almost 40 years old, been around the block more than once, written for years, been in magazines. Who needs a bunch of armchair authors slamming them into the ground?

The sad fact is that the only people you can get to play yours arcs outside of friends/supergroup are this highly critical group that most anyone would be turned off from.

Like I said. It must have been nice to have been here in the beginning when people were more forgiving. There will never be any new authors that stick around and the old authors are falling by the wayside daily.