Question/Suggestion on Level Range of stories

I've only been playing the game for about a month, so I don't know whether my issue is a technical issue or an author issue, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

I've been enjoying playing through a variety of AE missions (while trying to figure out the best way to avoid the farms and find the actual stories), and I always check the "My Level" box when searching. I've run into a "problem" on my low-level characters with some of these stories: while the mission description itself says, for example, "1-54" and all of the enemies therein are indeed scaled to my character's level (let's say level 9 or 10), it's clear that the particular enemies chosen and their associated power sets were originally designed for higher-level encounters.

The result is that the enemies have powers, even at their scaled-down level, that my low-level character has no defense against. So my characters repeatedly get their butt handed to them by mere Minions of the same level. The two most common examples of this, that I've seen, are Knockdown/Knockback attacks, and defensive abilities that grant deflection. This has resulted in my being forced to abandon otherwise good, interesting stories purely because my character either spends almost the entire time lying on the floor and standing back up only to get knocked right back down again (because enemies are typically in groups of 3 and they take turns knocking me down), or I watch in frustration as I attack, only to see "Deflected!" over and over again, with the result, again, of my dying repeatedly — not because the enemies are doing big damage, but because they're surviving long enough to hit me so many more times. If I am able to beat each group of enemies anyway, my hit points are still so depleted afterwards that I have to wait around while they recover, and since the Rest ability is probably still on cooldown from an earlier fight, that means just standing around doing nothing for several minutes while I wait for my health bar to fill back up. And that's just boring. I know the trick of stacking Luck inspirations to improve survivability, but I can only carry so many of those.

The obvious (to me) solution is to avoid using enemies with these kinds of abilities in low-level stories, but that's where my uncertainty about "technical" vs. "author" issues comes in, particularly in cases where the story is supposed to be appropriate for all levels. I seem to remember seeing something — either in the original AE tutorial mission you get at level 5, or in a loading screen tip — cautioning authors about this very thing, i.e. "Scaled-down enemies will still have their higher-level powers, so use with caution in low-level missions" or some such wording. But I can also see that being a problem when trying to create a story that is suitable for all levels - an author doesn't want to be stuck using just Skulls/Trolls/Hellions/etc. So perhaps the best solution is to write stories with narrower level ranges, using enemies appropriate to that range, instead of "1-54" and trying to make the same enemies fit every level range.

I dunno the solution; I'm just tossing my thoughts out there.

Of course, all this leads to another question. As I mentioned, some of the stories I've had to abandon for these reasons were genuinely well-written and interesting. I simply couldn't do them at my current level, but would like to go back to them once my character(s) have suitable powers to deal with the enemies. In these cases I prefer not to rate the stories, since I haven't completed them, so I just dismiss that window when it comes up. Does "no rating" = "zero stars"? I hope not, because I'd hate to be damaging the rating by not voting.

No rating means no rating. It's impossible to award 0 stars.

And yes, it is an author problem. The level of a mission can be set manually. Some people are under the mistaken impression that setting a level range of 1-54 for a custom group arc will make the arc accessible to more players, when really all it means is that it's balanced for no one and clogs up "my level" searches for everyone. Custom critters are very difficult to balance for low levels to begin with, but trying to make them also give decent rewards at high levels means they trounce lowbies. Yes, your solution of narrowing the level range is the one most experienced authors use. Sure, it means a lowbie can't play your level 35-54 arc, but it also means that once that lowbie hits level 35 the difficulty of the arc will be properly balanced for them.

I personally skip over any arc with an excessively wide level range, unless it's all standard groups such as Council, 5th, or CoT, which span a huge range but swap in different critters at various levels to maintain balance. You can't do that with custom critters though.

Also, be sure to leave that feedback to the author. Someone who's taken the time to write an actual story is more likely to take your feedback and adjust their mission to the appropriate level range.

Many authors are unaware of issues like this, so leaving constructive feedback really helps.

One tip that kinda works. In that only a small section of authors actually used this tag, but search for the tag "LBMA" which is supposed to be used on arcs that are suitable for low level play. Alternately, you can check PW's contact tree for MA arcs stickied at the top of this forum for a list of arcs along with a suggested level range.

[strike]Hey Bubbawheat! I did your "Apprenticeship in the Fine Art of Revenge" on one of my level 5 villains last night. Really enjoyed it [/strike]

EDIT: D'OH! And upon visiting AE again, I realized that wasn't your arc (and I got the title wrong).