I17 and double the size: 100k -> 200k!

If you don't want, don't use. This dead horse of yours is starting to stink up the joint.

To mangle Arbiter Fabulous, that is woefully inadequate "because I have to play your arcs".

I've reviewed over 150 arcs. I haven't seen a single one that would have been improved in any meaningful sense by adding more custom mobs. I have seen lots that would probably have benefited had the architect forgone using a custom faction and used a stock one instead. Stock factions are better balanced, have better diversity both in terms of number of mob designs and the abilities of individual mobs, and come with a pre-packaged background that is already familiar to the players.

There are two points here that everyone is going to hate but they're completely true. The first is that the custom critter editor was not designed for the creation of entire factions even if that was the intent (if it was, it failed); it was designed to create characters similar to players. The problem is mobs aren't similar to players. The editor will only produce things graphically that look like players, not mobs, which is not what you want when you're building an army as opposed to an individual. This goes for powers as well. You're limited to powers players can actually have and you can only choose two sets, not mix and match across the entire list (which would really screw balance if you could). Nor can you tune those powers aside from assigning mob rank. Look at how many mobs in the game this is not true of. You are hard-pressed to duplicate something as basic as a 5th/Council Boss in the editor. You can't even try to make a Zeus Titan. The simple truth is the system is best used to design individual characters, or at best a unit type to be added to a stock faction.

The other truth people don't want to accept is that providing more choices is not inherently good. If you provide the average user with the choice to shoot himself in the head he probably will. Then he'll blame you for providing the choice, and he'd be right. More choices are better when the new choices have the effect of providing more improved outcomes than worse ones. This isn't one of those changes. Adding more custom mobs isn't going to improve anyone's arcs, and there's nothing else to do with the space, so there's just nothing to get excited about here.

No, you do not. You choose to.

And yet there are a lot of people out there with access to a gun who have managed to not shoot themselves in the head yet.

And as for blaming me, well there are those people who blame Oreo cookies for making their kids fat. They're not right either.

The only way not to would be not to play other peoples' arcs.

Actually, as far as MA is concerned, not only do the poor uses of custom critters far outweigh the good, custom critters enabled people to not merely shoot themselves in the head, but everyone else too. Or maybe you hadn't noticed that it was abuse of customs that resulted in the current Patch From Hell?

For that matter, haven't about 90% of the problems with MA boiled down to abuse of customs?

And by doing so you essentially acknowledge that the majority of them will be crap. No matter what tools are provided, the majority of everything is crap.

Malaise Lunatic farms: Standard critters. Meow farms: Standard critters. Bubble farms: Standard critters. The Mastermind thing: Standard critters.

Also, as Fredrik said, people using customs to farm generally only need one or two.

But not if you could only place them as details.

I hate to break it to you, but we can now have many times more unbalanced eyesores than that: it seems pohsyb (or another programmer) has begun storing custom critter data in memory with more reasonable encoding rather than the written-out english form they've been using before (which is almost, but not quite, identical to the form it exists on local disk). This means a custom critter that takes up 7k on disk might be taking up only 2k in memory or less (I haven't measured explicitly yet, but others have noted the size discrepancy and I know it was on the list of things to do eventually).

Hopefully, the new custom settings will make those unbalanced eyesores a little less unbalanced, or at least allow for people to theoretically make less unbalanced eyesores. Unfortunately, Ultra Mode is likely to make those eyesores now High Definition eyesores. You might want to consider investing in some customized polarizing sunglasses for use during arc reviews.

I heart Venture.

Oh, rapture.

Eh, I only have a GT240 (which I just got today...about the best I could do without buying a new power supply). Limits the damage.

The vast majority of the customs I've seen are none of these three, never mind all of them.

Do you seriously expect to make friends on the internet?

Don't forget, he is also a "Take Everything Literally Guy."

Fun to argue with though, and that's all that matters.

I have and continue to do so! In fact some of us in VU are getting together over the summer for a LAN party and...

Oh wait, you wouldn't know about that because you got yourself kicked for being a meanie head. Nvmnd carry on!