Custom critters: What % to shoot for?

I've been playing through a lot of arcs lately, and one of the things I noticed was that some authors aren't taking advantage of the new (from April 28, 2010) %XP calculations for custom critters. Sure, their customs were giving good XP, but dayamn I hit the debt cap fast as a casual soloer.

So, maybe the MA community together can hash out a consensus as to how much % to shoot for on customs, under this new system?

100%, so that players get the highest rewards possible?

75%, the old Standard setting, which is high enough that most people won't notice the difference?

40%, which frees authors from having to take the overpowered blasts from melee sets?

My opinion is that authors should aim low. First, I believe it's a safe assumption that if a player loads up a non-farm story arc, it's more important to the player to be able to complete the arc and experience the whole story without too much frustration, and less important to get mad XP, inf and tickets. Second, the fix for allied entities eating up rewards is currently a vaporpatch, and there's no telling when it'll stop being a vaporpatch, so shooting for 100% seems to be a lost cause. Third, I think there's value in being able to transition a team between radios, newspapers, non-AE contacts, and AE, with a minimum of difficulty setting adjustments. Fourth, I know from experience that I suck and I have trouble soloing custom critters tougher than about 40% without turning the difficulty down. For these reasons, I personally aim for 40%.

What does everyone else think? Should I be advising people in reviews to tone down their customs regardless of the XP penalties? Or should I suck it up, stop being a casual soloer, and build tougher characters and team more?

Well, I'm not sure how much me sucking has to do with it. It's not like I die to +0 radio mishes, but I very much die to most +0 custom critters. So it's a comparative observation I'm making -- AE versus radios. If custom critters are above about 40%, I have to fly all the way from the hospital to a field analyst, set myself down to -1, quit the arc, start over, and hope it's enough.

Though, I'll be honest, if I don't think it's worth the hassle, I'll sometimes just quit the arc and move on to the next.

Well, and in addition to the ranged attack in most melee sets not being too terribly bad, in some cases it works perfectly well to just have the secondary as one of the ranged blast sets, and pick one of the bottom tier ranged attacks. That's not always appropriate (e.g. if you want your mob to have defensive powers, or if it just doesn't fit the concept), but it can be very useful.

That said, like Eva, I *always* shoot for 90% to 100%. I'm very reluctant to make something worth less than 90%. But I also try very hard to balance the customs to whatever level range I intend for the arc. If the arc's designed for levels 1 - 10, you don't really have to load up customs with overpowered abilities to hit 100% XP; and if I've done an arc where the level 50s are all giving out 100%, then that's a pretty good sign that the arc needs to be set to level 40 - 50, because those mobs will be too challenging for lower levels.

In effect, a lot of the problem is caused by people who write the arcs being a bit lazy, and just leaving the level range as 1-54, when fine tuning it to the actual difficulty of their mobs would be more appropriate (and my general rule of thumb is X-10 to X, where X is the first level the mob becomes worth 100%, but that's just the way I prefer to do it - it's not necessarily the "right" way).

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Is there a way to actually set the baddies at levels 1-10 when you create the group? Or is the only option to do it in the actual arc?

Nope, custom critters are always 1-54. You have to set the level of the mission to narrow their range.

Right after I17 was released I went through all of my arcs and changed all custom critters to have a custom power selection where they reached 100%, at least somewhere in the middle of the level range.

I have lowered it a bit in some cases afterwards (thanks for your feedback, Rigel_Kent), but that is more closer to 70-80% than go all down to 40%.

I do not think that one should stare blindly at the percentage though - the combinations of powersets can cause troubles perhaps more than a certain percentage of powers from a powerset.

A problem with pre-I17 arcs was that there was not so much room for custom mobs, so the variation of mobs was limited. And with limited variation one may end up with some bad situations. I have played arcs where _all_ minions had powers that stunned, or dark powers or some other thing that was quite bad when multiplied.

With larger size for arcs it is at least possible to provide more variation in power combinations from minions and LTs, which I think can be helpful.

I just found out about the scaling per power thing. Now I try to get as close to 100% as I can without including stupid stuff that would instakill someone. I set my level range as 46-52, so that weak characters can at least have the hitpoints to balance out what is left of the rediculous strength of some custom critters. I have some serious work to rework my Arc, but this new system should make it so that my electric robot guys can't drain you AND slaughter you. And as to aiming low... If made right under the new guidance, you can still aim high and have an Arc that is very much able to be completed by anyone.

Sorry for mentioning that I suck in the original post. It seems to have distracted from my point. Player skill has very little to do with how custom critters compare to dev critters, right? Sucking just means I get debt in +1 radios, and I get debt with +0 (and sometimes -1) 100% customs.

In defense of lower percentages, I see 100% rewards as an illusion, if players have to lower their difficulty from their usual setting. Either the custom critter formula is taking a chunk out of their reward, or the Fateweaver is. The lower percentage just saves them a trip to the Fateweaver every time they switch between custom critter arcs and dev critter arcs.

Also, Eva, you said custom critters' Shuriken/Focus/etc. isn't as bad as it used to be, but I don't see the change. Did I miss the patch note? Was this something that changed in Issue 14 beta?

I try to make my custom critters as tough as the average canon critter, as much as the powers I want them to have (and not have) allow that, so that people can use the difficulty setting they are used to and not end up too surprised.

Fortunately the AE allows me to make some enemies weaker and some stronger, so I can have simple trooper groups and elite groups, where the former then likely ends up with less XP than the latter, but the I try to have the average in between close to canon difficulty.
(I find it hard enough to judge how strong my critters are against an average player, and to not leave any gaps in the final boss that might make him a laugh for some characters (like a nonflying melee critter) and neither making them unbeatable for characters that are weak in one aspect (like characters that are very hard to hit e.g. or have an insanely high resistance against one kind of damage).)

For a though boss I wouldnt like less than 75%, so he's worth the effort, and I wouldnt want the entire bunch of enemies to give only 40% XP, but aside from that I dont look much on the XP, but more on the toughness and feel of my critters.

Two tricks I've discovered, for making custom critters more palatable, whatever their %XP:

* Mix dev critters into the custom groups. Especially the real easy dev critters, if it suits the story. You know the ones I'm talking about. (Lesson learned from: Non-AE farms. Who says you don't ever learn anything from farming?) Not such a big deal if only 1 minion out of 3 gives a crappy 40% or 75% XP. Just don't make it so low that players ignore the customs and barrel onward to the next spawn of dev critters. (Lesson learned from: bad-XP AI summoned critters, underlings.)

* Make the custom critters, especially the minions, very similar to each other. (Lesson learned from: annoying AI multigroups: Rularuu, Arachnos, Council, PPD.) Instead of difficulty from needing 3 different strategies to fight 3 different minions every spawn, you can add a (similar) power to the (similar) minions instead, so the increased difficulty pays off as increased XP. Let the bosses show the most variety, as their numbers per spawn are limited.

I go for 100% usually. In some cases I don't for story reasons, but usually I go for 100% for the level range. Let me give a few examples:

One of my arcs is intended for soloers that desire a serious challenge. If you have it set for more than one person the enemies get very, very difficult very, very quickly. But on their own you just have to switch up tactics a little bit. The mobs have electric armor and electric melee, I think. The minions do, at least. If you try to herd then tank & spank you will likely have difficulty. If you try to kite, you do a little better. If you have strong control you do the best. Then there are the lieutenants (set as 'Boss' spawns typically) that have Rad blasts & an ally buff set. If you let them stick around they will toast you quite quickly with the help of the minions and other lieutenants. The other lieutenants are stealthed ranged attackers with electric blasts. The bosses which are not supposed to spawn outside of specific 'defeat boss' settings are also stealthers but with Dark Melee. They always have text to let the player know they are nearby and they are not intended to spawn regularly throughout a map. I think that sort of thing is cheap. The spawns were bugged though, so I removed the arc until I can get it sorted out. The EB was /Willpower and a definite challenge for most players with the mix of resistance and regeneration, but it was soloable on a number of my characters (Kat/SR scrapper, Cold/Sonic defender [which felt like cheating almost], FF/NRG defender, and Sonic/Pain corr). Most players found it impossible to complete though so I'll likely revisit the arc at a later time. It's very important that the arc be difficult and challenging but not impossible. That absolutely KILLS the fun factor and makes players feel as though they wasted their time.

In another arc (also down for repairs thanks to wonky text-input) called "Malpractice, the Undead, and You" (or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Embalmed') the first mission seems like a boss farm to some people and they complained to me about it. Thing is... it's not a boss farm. If you read the story then you will understand what is going on. Hell, there's not even that many of them! These bosses were set for 90% I think. Some are melee, some are ranged, and all of them have the ability to self-rez. . . if you're not careful. Now the next missions are primarily set with existing enemies and thus the mobs give 100% experience except for the second mission (I think). In this case it was important that the difficulty and experience both come second to the storyline. Yes, the first mission does give you good experience but that is not what it is about. Half the people that played it complained about the 'boss farm' for a first mission while the second half that played it complained about the 'poor xp' in the rest of the arc. It's not about experience! It's about the story! Grr.

Now in another example I made a mission just for friends to show them how to do specific things and how not to make a mission. I set the mobs for 100% experience and used a map that spreads them out in some places and clumps them together in others. It's important that you not give every mob on a map a snipe for various reasons and it's even more important that if you're going to have a simple 'collection' or 'destroy object' on a huge map you either set the spawn point to a specific area (front, back, or middle; you must pay attention to the map given so you as a creator know where the object can spawn and limit it as much as is feasible) so that your players don't wander all over the map for hours listening for that magic hum. In the case of 'destroy object' goals you can give the object some text that will give nearby players clues as to where it is when they walk or fly by. All of this was accompanied by text that highlighted what one should and should not do. I got yelled at by other players for making an inhospitable mission even though the summary clearly stated that it was NOT made for other players in mind but as a personal tutorial for some friends.

I kind got off-topic here and started venting, sorry.

I guess the moral of the story is this: It is up to you as the writer to decide which is more important for the experience you want the players of your arc to have. Do you want them to have more experience? Do you want them to get more involved with the story? Is there a compromise between the two? Is the compromise even necessary?