sponazgul

@Police Woman, your thread here inspired me to make a new character and use AE for leveling content (even though the XP is reduced.) I tried running both of the missions you mention in your first post: Talos Vice and Two Tickets to Westerly, but the missions don't start - the contact remains the usual default hologram. I had this happen before with one of my arcs: Clash of the Communist Kaiju. During some update, I believe a Standard character I was using as part of a villain group changed, and that made the villain group Invalid, and that made the mission arc unplayable, it wouldn't start. So, my suspicion is that your two arcs are currently invalid/unplayable. For my story arc, I just had to fix the problem. (I'm trying to remember - I know I had a custom character that was using the Arachnos Soldier Crab backpack, and that became a problem and I had to rebuild the character without the backpack. The villain group that was made up of standard characters - I had to just rebuild the villain group from scratch. I looked at the text file for what had been specified, and used that as a guild for the rebuild. Once that was done, all the errors listed went away.) Please let me know if my suspicions were correct, and best regards.

If there's even the skeleton of a fun story to a collection of radio missions in an AE arc, I'd probably play it. I'd like to see something as a typical patrol for lower characters, and a typical patrol for higher end types.

Ah, thanks for the correct info on the XP amount.

Just ran @LonePhantom777's arc after Police Woman's review. I ran the arc with a level 50 superstrong/invulnerability tank (since this mission felt like an appropriate mission for him) - I enjoyed all of the text from the contact, Astro-Bounder (and his retro-look) and the overall gist of the Scrapnoids. I only gave it 4 stars, since (well, I'll use spoiler-text): Since I ran the mission with a high end character, I'll probably run it again with a mid-range character, and I'll certainly recommend it to my friends.

This set of missions sounds charming! I'm looking forward to playing it with some of my cosmic adventurer-style characters. @Police Woman, thank you for bringing it to the top of the thread.

I'm pretty sure that XP boosters was as usual in AE. I can't speak to the drop rates. I haven't done any real testing, but I think the XP is the same - one known difference to me is that AE missions don't offer mission completion experience rewards, the way normal missions do. So that might be the basis for people saying the AE mission XP vs in-game mission XP would be nerfed. This is just my under-informed opinion. I haven't made a map of Council to specifically test if the minions, LTs, and bosses give the same individual XP as a regular mission Council map.

Hey! Thanks! I appreciate the feedback, and I think I can re-engineer that encounter so the slow-down won't happen in the future. Thanks for the details, I know exactly what you're are referring to. I'm glad you liked the arc, especially : For some reason I don't understand, the final mission can fail and I am not sure why. It's only happened to me a few times, and I'm glad it didn't happen to you. (The times it has failed for me, I'd already completed the objective that really mattered though, so the mission arc still kind of works, even in failure.)

Raikao, for some updated context, you might want to read the latest in Forager's thread for his mission arc. The missions have been updated based on some recent feedback, so the story you run through won't exactly be the same as the story Crane reviewed. (I'll need to go through Forager's updated missions as well, to see what's been changed.)

Thanks for the response! I'm not 100% sure the mom attacked me. I think I was in combat, she ran up and conned as an enemy (at least that much I remember) and I think I took her out, thinking that she was attacking me. So, your assessment that I might have been scared is not something that I can argue against. I'm glad you found my feedback helpful, best regards.

Gah! Typos are my DOOM. Kyksie, thanks for running it, and I'll work on correcting my spelling.

The missions are technically ranked as 1 - 54, but the beginning mission might be rough for lower level characters. (I should really test that out.) Anyway, I recommend higher end folks for the initial testing.

Colleagues, I'd love some feedback on this old arc I revamped, "Into the YOUniverse" - arc 56454. It's a 5-issues, somewhat science-fictiony arc that is shamelessly inspired by a favorite Fantastic Four plotline I love as well as elements from Rick and Morty. Hey, I'll just share the details from AE:

I ran through 65609 twice - once with a level 50 tank (who gets exemped down to 20) and once with a level 33 scrapper (with superspeed, also getting exemped down to 20) The missions are listed as 10 - 20, and I think at level 10, that would be a REAL challenge (yes, I know you marked it as challenging) - especially for a mission arc also marked solo-friendly. Shivans are particularly rough due to debuffs, but I can appreciate their inclusion since it is story thematic and especially because there's a trick to the first mission for success. I didn't mind mission 2, other than: I didn't know what Rule Number Two was. I guess it was a rule against people entering the police station? I didn't mind the overall nature of mission two. In some of my mission arcs, I'll have a mission that's minimal combat and exists to set a tone or provide some information or act as a an enrichment to the next mission. Mission 3, without warning, kicks off a 15 minute timer. I appreciate that I've lost contact with the Detective, and he might not be able to explicitly warn me that by hitting Accept, I'm committing myself to the next 15 minutes to devote to the mission, but I would encourage you to think of some way to communicate that. You don't have to tell me what to think (although I wouldn't mind being given the explicit realization that Shivans breaching the Sea Wall is kicking off an in-game timer.) From a meta-perspective, there are many missions in-game that are not timed but have similar implied stakes. The timer without a heads up will rub some people the wrong way. I appreciated the challenge of the final mission (I'm glad I succeeded on the second time, since I knew the deal) and I don't mind a mission that invites a replay. My chance of success on the second run was much higher on the first run, and I have arcs that I feel are fun to replay. And I have arcs where missions can fail (and I've had people get mad at the failure, but that's part of the game we've signed up to try out.) I feel that the final mission was what you really wanted to do, and I feel that it had more on its mind than was necessarily earned. The contact gives a somewhat earnest speech on success, when I could get that speech while also having ignored optional elements in the final mission is somewhat out-of-step. The mission alignment recommendation for the arc was Rogue, and I'm not sure that that tracks. I'm pretty clearly considered a young newbie hero, and there's no skullduggery or selfish motives afoot. I don't want to get into the argument you are having with the other architects about story structure, but the story does feel light. In fact, you posted a standalone version of the final mission for challenge mode, and that does imply that missions 1 and 2 aren't necessarily impactful. I don't mind it, some people are here for stories, some are here for a romp. I have a mission arc that was 100% designed just for tanks to test their taunt auras on Vahzilok Embalmeds. For fun, there's a story, but I recognize that it's a thin story. With this mission and your previous arc making references to Galaxy City, I appreciate you wanting to build up an arc or arcs that center on the experience of Galaxy City being once in the game, and that's commendable.

I'm currently re-working an old arc - Into the YOUniverse. After great feedback you all gave me on my Allegedly, Your Death arc, I wanted to retrofit some of the things in my YOUniverse arc. (I had a defeat-all that I wanted to do away with, and the arc was largely based on a custom-character that was kind of a half-baked placeholder. I've since been working on removing the old character (and references to the character) in favor of a more compelling one (or so I believe.) (I also didn't like a big map I had going early on in the arc, and was afraid it might encourage folks to bail on the arc. I'm working on changing that up.) I'll announce in-thread when the refurbished arc is available. Best regards, and Happy New Year Pat aka @sponazgul (on the forums), aka @\First of Equals (in-game)

This is all good, and I owe @Police Woman an apology for not getting the period (I think I fixed the lets --> let's typo instead but missed fixing the missing . on the sentence. I'll work on adjusting the clue - I think I know what to do about that. You are right, it's clearly a Fifth Column base from the insignias. I can work on that too. Thanks for running it, and I've been meaning to run your arc, since it sounded interesting. I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

Hmmmm, I have a few mission arcs that use big outdoor maps with rescues and allies. (My arc Clash of the Communist Kaiju has 2 mandatory rescue/allies and 7 optional potential allies that become available - 6 Canadian Giant Mechs and a helpful reprogrammed Fake Nemesis - you don't need those extra allies for the mission, they're just there is you want to take on the Giant Monster who spawns as a optional objective for fun.) I'll see if I can bring up those maps in a new test mission arc and see if Ally is still possible on them. Maybe you've encountering this problem on some specific maps.

Clave, thanks for running the arc! I appreciate what you're saying about the first and last maps being large. Both missions though are easier on replay (that's cold comfort for someone doing it the first time) since on replay you know the objective for mission one and the same can be said about the last mission once you've done it once or twice - I'm sorry the final mission ended in failure - I wish that I could increase the time on that final mission, but the next increment is 30 minutes, and that's just too much time, since I want to make you feel like the planet is about to explode. As it is, when I run the arc I try to see if I can beat my record for the fastest successful final mission run. I probably need to do some looking over maps, to see if I can find a smaller map for mission one, that gives the impression of some kind of conflict in progress, and I'm sure I can use a smaller Rikti tunnel map, as long as it can support all of the objectives in the final, high-stakes mission Thanks again, I appreciate the feedback and the details on success/failure. I'm glad you were using a bullet-proof tank, which is somewhat thematic for the mission overall.

To the point where Forager's terse-ness is a negative It's not an impact as part of a game mechanic, it's just an impact on immersing into what's happening.

I definitely want to highlight my appreciation for you doing something novel and cool with the mission objective text.

I went through and figured out the objectives, which had to be inferred from the dialog in the mission objective text. I appreciated that - I've never seen formatting being applied to the mission objective text. Second mission was over so quickly, I felt like I had cheated. Third mission was very straightforward. The fourth mission was a bit challenging, I had been trained by the first mission on how to interpret the dialog of the mission objective text. I think it works functionally for what you are advertising it as - a mission for low level characters to feel like they're just getting started. I was disappointed by the lack of clue text to kind of give a flavor summation of things, or really any text from Forager other than vague "now you do this, now you do that"

Have you tried negotiating with them? (Now I want to try this mission out...)

Uncle, thanks for running the arc! I'll tell you how the flipped color things worked out: I enjoyed putting that mechanic into the final boss' arsenal.

I greatly appreciate you doing the play-through and the feedback here, much obliged!

@Police Woman, thank you so much for the detailed breakdown and the typos you found. That's a tremendous help to me. I'll clean that up soon. I appreciate you running the arc and your reactions

Colleagues, I appreciated the positive feedback on arc 65297 - Allegedly, Your Death - so I thought I'd share an AE story arc that's similar in scope (in that I wanted to make an AE story arc for a certain heroic archetype.) EXPLODING PLANET probably works best with relatively tough characters, but I've run it with low level characters (carefully, but I know the maps so I have an advantage from someone bringing in a low-level character cold.) I tend to discourage teams or bumping up your team size difficulty, unless you are prepared to fail the second mission (I don't want to explain why that might be.) Missions can be failed, specifically the final one, but you've been told that the planet is going to explode. (It's far less likely to explode on you if you run it again.) As always, I enjoy getting feedback on these, and I'm making plans to try out other folks' AE arcs. @First of Equals