Ultimo

I'm just looking for something simple to implement. Whatever works.

Something that's bothered me since back in live is that Radio Missions all eventually say "Events here are beneath your notice." Shouldn't that be MY choice? Shouldn't I get to decide what's beneath my notice? You see, I have many characters, and I usually assign them a "home" zone. For example, my Batman-type character ostensibly resides in King's Row the way Batman resides in Gotham (both are kind of run down, gritty places), but he can't fight crime there anymore. The same is true of other characters. So, my suggestion is that something be done either to make Radio Missions accessible at all levels in all zones (which shouldn't be a problem, since they scale to the character's level anyway), or that we be able to exemplar ourselves DOWN to whatever level we like (so my L50 character to go to King's Row and play at L10, if he so chose). I think making Radio Missions accessible would probably be easier, but I'm not a programmer. Either situation would be acceptable.

Uuuuuughhh. Just CANNOT get the balancing right. Since it seemed the enemies were too easy, I added a couple of powers here and there, and now they're completely unplayable. A slight tweak, and they go from doing 40-50 damage per attack to 500-900 per attack. They're now basically oneshotting my Brute. If he can't stand up to them, how would my Controller manage? My Mastermind? Just impossible to balance this damn thing.

Hrm. Went back to my Electric Control/Traps Controller version of him... I do kind of miss the big gun, but he does FEEL more like Mr. FF, if that makes any sense. Is there a temporary power that I can get that could simulate the big gun?

So, a bit of an update. I've been tinkering with some custom characters. One uses dual pistols. He's an Elite Boss. My L23 Blaster took him on in an AE mission I'm working on, with Invulnerability active, so I could test things. Fighting this boss was one of the things I need to test, because someone tried the mission and said he was weak and trivial to his L50 Sentinel. In the time it took for my L23 Blaster (Beam Rifle) to defeat the EB, the boss had inflicted over 14k damage to him. The Blaster has 628 health. The boss was doing more than 200 damage with his most elementary attacks. His heavier attacks were doing nearly 500 damage. How are we supposed to balance our characters when they're so overpowered... and yet not overpowered for other characters. It's daunting, and frustrating.

Thanks for the feedback and ideas! I can see #1 working... the Galactus vs Nullifier idea could work really quite well, since one of the heroes to be rescued is a Reed Richards homage character... #2 probably wouldn't work, because the child of the big bad is based on Kalibak... and he's not the most diplomatic, relatable type. #3 is nifty, as a fan of HG Wells (indeed, I have a gang of low level villains I've named "The Noobs," one of whom is named Herbert G. Verne), but I don't want to wipe out the Brass Men... plus it's kind of been done before. Moreover, I love the idea of having Dr. Vazhilok working on the side of the angels. #5 is kind of the direction I had been going in... but I'm not sure quite how to get there. The idea is the heroes would do something to draw out the leaders of the Brass Men, and then draw out Malephar himself by defeating them. As I say, I just don't quite know how to get to that point... but you've given me some great ideas to work with!

Ok... I've got some mission stuff figured out. However, my problem now lies with the STORY. Now, I'm going to describe the story, so if you would rather not see it (spoilers, of course), then that's fine... don't read on. If you do read on, perhaps you can offer some advice regarding how to progress the story.

I love making the custom characters... when I was younger, my brother and I used to make our own comics, and we had a HUGE stable of characters. I love adding them to the game. The trouble, as usual, is balancing. So often characters I make are either far too powerful (ie. too much damage) or far too flimsy... or both. My version of Darkseid got his butt handed to him with EASE by my Mercs Mastermind... but was utterly overwhelming to my Psi/Psi Dominator. SO tough.

Ok, I'm starting to come up with the plotline. I hope it holds up alright, but the real point is just to give us that Avengers/JLA style invasion battle. I'll put up a more complete version with all five missions sometime soon. Stay tuned! What I might do is just set it at L50 (so everyone and everything defaults to L50), that should make it accessible to everyone... I hope.

Ok, this set completely changes when you get Storm Cell. In fact, I think it really ought to be the tier 1 power, it's just so necessary. Beyond that, WOW it's a spectacular set once it gets going.

Excellent, thanks. I knew most of that, and actually already got it working... though I didn't know such characters wouldn't give xp. That's worth knowing. I try not to use it, but in some cases it's really needed to get the full flavour of a character. I mean, a character like Darkseid would need great strength and invulnerability, but what about his Omega Beams? In such cases, that he wouldn't use them as much is even a benefit. Anyway, good info, thanks.

Did some more testing... I'm not sure what more I can do with the bad guys... you found them easy, but you're level 50... my level 30ish Tanker and Brute had no trouble. My level 22 Defender did... alright, but was in tough against the bosses... and FORGET trying to take on the visiting villains... Tonight I tried my L23 Controller, and he couldn't hurt much of anything. Got killed over and over by the generic bosses, let alone Tasker and Marko... who would ignore his controls, of course, being EBs. It's a hard balancing act here... I want anyone at any level to be able to play it... but I don't want it to be a cakewalk either. The minions are supposed to be cannon fodder the heroes would blast through in great numbers with ease (much as we see the heroes in the movies doing against Chitauri and Parademons)... Keep in mind too, Marko and Tasker are low ranking bosses. Later bosses will me substantially tougher. But as usual, I'm open to suggestions.

Ok, I'll see about tweaking further. What's your thoughts on the different map? I'm concerned it will be a mission people can just ignore all the bad guys and fly straight to the boss...

Ok! I've revamped it a bit, and changed the map (let me know what you think... one of the things I liked about the original map is it's SMALLER, so the bad guys aren't as spread out... but the new map being bigger means they're not likely to infringe upon each other...). It SEEMS to be working ok now... I also tweaked all the enemies, as well as the bosses. I need to tweak my super allies... they're still just too strong. Mega-Troll's Hurl power does 100% of my health every time he uses it, and that's just not manageable when he's spamming the thing every 10 seconds and following it up with even MORE damaging powers...

The wandering heroes seem to be a problem, because they might wander into, and then defeat, objectives the PLAYER has to defeat. Perhaps if I put the "wandering" heroes in as BATTLES, where they're fighting some enemies in a static location... That way, they wouldn't wander into the objectives, and if the players needed the help of the NPCs, they could lure them back to where the heroes ARE.

Got it sorted... took a few reinstalls, but I got it sorted.

Once upon a time, someone provided a link to a list of powers for AE characters, and I can't find it. The idea I was tying to fulfill was to create a boss character with a melee primary and a defensive set (eg. Super Strength/Invulnerability), but then to add powers manually to the critter file in the game folder (so, I could make a "Superman" with eyebeams and frost breath). The person (I don't remember who it was) provided a link to a list of sets and powers that I could add to the file. Does anyone else remember where the list is? I've done a search, but I can't find it... my search-fu is weak.

One of my favourite things is finding creative ways to use the limitations of the AE system to my advantage. The biggest problem I have is with the damage output of the custom NPCs, especially once they get to Elite Boss. I just hate leaving awesome looking powers OFF the character because they're broken.

Ok, I had to unpublish it, it's become unplayable. Every time I try to run through it, the last two bosses refuse to spawn. Tasker is dependent on the Executioners being defeated, and Marko on Tasker being defeated... but Tasker won't spawn. I suspect it's the wandering heroes... If THEY defeat an objective boss, it might prevent the player being credited with it, and thereby break the mission (since the player can't complete objectives the NPCs already defeated). I'll have to tinker some more.

Ok, I've made some substantial adjustments. I discovered that I can have multiple identical boss objectives (in this case, they're all Lieutenant level "bosses"), and use that to trigger the "final" boss. So, I've replaced many of the patrols with these bosses. I should also say, I'm looking for feedback regarding the difficulty of the foes too. The minions are meant to be individually weak, but strong in numbers (ie. they can heal each other, but not themselves, and the lieutenants and bosses just add other buffs...) The Elite Bosses... well, they suffer from the design of the game... I tried making them Bosses, but they're too fragile. As soon as I make them Elite Bosses, they become oneshot machines, doing ridiculous amounts of damage. I don't want to imagine what Arch Villains would be like. The result is that I can't take many of the powers without making the EBs utterly overpowering. But... I will consider any feedback on the subject.

To flesh out the villains... The Brass Men are a combination of my old Warhammer 40k Chaos Legion, mixed with Parademons. Marko is a minor general, as is Tasker. Later bosses are FAR more challenging and are based somewhat on Darkseid's elite (including Steppenwolf). They're all still kind of works in progress. The main, final bad guy is Lord Malephar, the Primarch of the Brass Legion, and he's based substantially on Darkseid. Taken together, they're actually enemies of Super-Star, my Superman homage (who might turn up in the mission, it selects allies randomly). My goal with characters who resemble existing ones is to make them resemble without outright copying... As such, some may end up being adjusted as I go. Like I say, it's all a work in progress. The actual text intro into the mission is yet to be written, what I put there for now is really just a placeholder to give some context for the mission for testing. I appreciate all the advice! Thanks!

So, I went to update my Defender's build to use Storm Blast, but discovered my version of Mids doesn't include the set. So I selected the update option and updated the program... which closed itself during or after the process, but now it won't launch at all. Anyone else have this problem? Is there a fix, or do I have to redownload and reinstall the thing?

Great suggestions, thanks! The wandering heroes (and villains) were there more for flavour, but also to make some fights easier. When soloing, you can lure tough foes into one of the ally groups. The wandering foes are a good point. Not sure how I would do "fixed pockets," do I put them out as bosses, perhaps pick a generic boss minion or lieutenant as the "boss" and have them as objectives? I could then make THOSE the objective of the mission and be rid of the Defeat All...? On that point... is there a way to set a series of objectives as an objective to unlock a final one? For example, suppose I put out a number of Lieutenants as Defeat Boss objectives, say 10 of them. Is there a way to have a final boss, an ACTUAL boss, like Lord Marko, appear only after all 10 lesser bosses are defeated?

So, I'm planning out a story arc, and one of the missions is expected to be an alien invasion of the city. The mission I'm working on is set in Steel Canyon. I've published it, just a single mission, in order that people can playtest it a bit and offer feedback. Please give it a try and let me know what you think. What I'm going for is a titanic invasion battle, similar to what we saw in the Avengers film (the first one). I've added a few wandering heroes who are helping out, you might recognize them 😛 Anyway, try it, and let me know what you think of it. It's posted under my ID, @Ultimo1

I made another version of him that was Electric Controls and Traps, but I rather dislike the Traps set. So many of the traps are really difficult to get anything out of. Poison Trap? Oh look, the enemy all went the other way, or the team already wiped them out. The Devices set for Blasters is a little better... but only a little.