City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Adventures in searching - for the villains

ArrowRose

By ArrowRose,
Posted on: 2010-06-15 21:07 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

Ok, it's taken me a while to figure out what to do next, and I'm still not sure, but I was just browsing through the search engine trying to find an interesting arc and I thought that browsing the search engine itself might be interesting, if done right.


*First post reserved for indexing to come later*

 

Posted

Search #1: 4 Star
My first thought was to take a page from ArrowRose's Excellent Arcs thread and I searched for all the four star arcs. Under the default listing was a full page of farms, speed runs, and random titles - probably more farms. Why bother with looking through pages and pages of this stuff to find something good, so it's time to narrow it down.

Search #2: 4 Star, [X] my level
Ok, I'm playing a character in their low teens, so it would probably be a good idea to find a low level arc. So I check the "my level" box and look through the arcs. The first arc is "SAMUARI" with 999+ plays and a 1-54 level range. And again is almost a full page of farms and one real arc, which I've already played and 5 starred

Talos Vice #338380 by @PW
Level Range 12-20
80's detective show tribute written in screenplay form.

Search #3: 4 Star, [X] my level, (more) Villainous/Rogue
I hadn't even realized/forgotten they added Rogue and Vigilante morality settings, and there are very few villainous arcs compared to heroic, so that should narrow things down even more. But I'm still getting a lot of 1-54 arcs, until I get to arc listing #7

Sewer Team Looking For One More #178976 by @Puercostpin
Level Range 1-25
Eliminate the young heroes training in Paragon's sewer systems.

which I shall be playing now, and will review later. I'll be posting my as-I-go thoughts on the twitter links in my sig if you want to follow along.

 

Posted

As you noticed, it is very hard to weed through the 4 star arcs to find the actual stories. I found it helps if you eliminate short and very short from the search.

I am looking forward to seeing what you post here.

@Gypsy Rose

In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest

 

Posted

I narrow it down to the following parameters: 4-stars, Final, Looking for Feedback, Medium, Long, Very Long.

That cuts out most of the farms.

 

Posted

Thanks for the feedback, I plan on using various things to narrow down the arcs and list here the things that work, and the things that don't. I'll be trying to skip the more well publicized arcs and hopefully find some good ones here. I wasn't able to finish the one I tried last night (due to it being late at night, and I crashed and didn't want to start over) but hoping to continue it.

 

Posted

Adding "SFMA" as a keyword in search narrows down a bit also.

When I search on my level, not completed, not voted, LFF+Final and SFMA I usually only get a few pages, enough to quickly look through descriptions of them and pick one.


Other times I add to search only on unrated arcs, possibly dropping SFMA and look through some descriptions and pick one pretty much at random that has some pretty coherent description and is not a 1-54 arc.

[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])

 

Posted

#CoHMA Sewer Team Looking For One More #178976 by @Puercostpin, found by browsing, part of my new AE review project, hopefully.
#CoHMA Contact is Arbiter Leary, with no bio, and orders from Kalinda to take out some newbie heroes in a sewer "hazing ritual" - fun
#CoHMA M1: Though I wonder why the contact isn't just Kalinda in the first place.
#CoHMA M1: Some funny hero names and dialog "need healz", "Gratz " but a little overpowered for "newbie" heroes.
#CoHMA M1: Dr Dethdealer's asking them to follow the tank, and the filler enemy group seems to be <The Lost> so far.
#CoHMA M1: I typed too soon, the group is actually the <Sewer Scourges> who seem to be a mix of groups - next one is an <Outcast>
#CoHMA M1: funny costumes and bios to boot, though Dethdealer laid the holds on pretty thick.
#CoHMA M1: ((One of them is even RP-ing))

This was a funny, short arc with a pretty simple premise as is often the case with one mission arcs. You're a villain going after a sewer team that got split up. It's a little odd that they appear to be fighting on the side of regular sewer enemies instead of the other way around, but it's hard to do that well. And it's a funny arc. It's intended for lowbies, and it was challenging for my level 15 Dual Pistols/Dark corruptor, but doable.