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BretC

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Everything posted by BretC

  1. I am so sorry you're having a difficult time with my arc! It's not my intention to cause frustration. I hoped back in to check and see what was going on and it looks like the enemies meant to defend that object weren't spawning for some reason, which was causing the game to flag that object as invulnerable (also for some reason). Realistically under this circumstance the game should either flag the arc as invalid or simply allow the player to defeat the object regardless. Either way, I reset the enemies and ran it again and it should be working fine now. I promise that I tested this mission multiple times. In this case that number was three. In those three tests everything worked perfectly. Do you have a suggestion for how many times I should test my arcs in the future? Also, do you have any tips or tricks for testing my arcs? I generally run on invincibility to make the process easier and occasionally turn on invisibility, especially when I'm dealing with enemies that slow, as invincibility doesn't seem to protect against that effect. Once I have tested a mission normally a few times, I sometimes choose to simply defeat enemies that I believe are working correctly to expedite the process (especially when I'm editing for grammar and spelling, because I always find I've missed something). I'd also like to mention that I run into strange errors all the time. From custom enemies flagging as 'out of range' to character names changing between saves. The game has broken entire missions because of this and forced me to start from scratch. Game is buggy and no amount of testing will fix that.
  2. Basically ambushes can't be paired with anything else, so neither of your examples are allowed. You'll note that if you first set up an ambush to be triggered after mission objective X is finished, mission objective X will be orange for any other triggerable event you set up later. Outside of that, I don't think there are any other limitations beyond what the map you've chosen can handle.
  3. Just hopped in to check and it looks like the only thing that can't be doubled up are ambushes. Everything else can trigger off the same event. I didn't check Giant Monster spawns, but I doubt that they'd be any different since they act like bosses.
  4. Paragon Studios was formed because NCSoft bought City of Heroes from Cryptic (or more accurately, Cryptic sold the IP to NCSoft). In that sense, Paragon Studios is basically the "Not Cryptic" Studios with a slightly more relevant name. The developers (who were Cryptic employees that left to become NCSoft employees), code, and IP were already present when Paragon Studios took over, so financial investment would have been comparatively light upfront. In fact, based on the video I posted, the split may have hastened the game's demise since the new studio was in a more expensive location. I'm sure at the time NCSoft felt that buying the IP was worth it, but we're not talking about when the studio was formed, we're talking about when it was shut down. By then City of Heroes couldn't support a studio and Paragon Studios was closed when the game was.
  5. I don't really know Lineage or Lineage II, so I can't speak to why they developed a sequel. However, Guild Wars 2 was developed largely because Arenanet found they couldn't effectively do what they wanted with the Guild Wars engine and resources, meaning there are other reasons to create sequels beyond simply giving up on one game and moving onto the next (in fact, Positron is on record for pitching City of Heroes 2, but NCSoft didn't bite). As for updates and expansions, it all comes down to "money goes in, more money comes out". Each game approaches this equation differently depending on how much money the producers are willing to give them and how much return on that investment the company sees at the other end. WoW was basically printing money at various points in its lifespan, so in turn Blizzard was willing to pump lots of money into the game's updates and expansions. City of Heroes did not make nearly as much, so their expansions were comparatively smaller. Looking at this debate as anything other than a numbers game of finances is just plain silly. At the end of the day, no matter how well a game seems to play or how well developed the world is or how many fans there are, if the game isn't making money it's not going to survive. City of Heroes wasn't making the money NCSoft wanted to see and so it didn't survive. City of Heroes wasn't able to support an entire Studio all on its own. That's why it shut down.
  6. The first part was to point out the method NCSoft used to announce the closure of their games. Namely that the developers would continue to develop and push the game mere days before it was announced that the servers were shutting down (as is what happened with Tabula Rasa). It's not a surprise that Paragon Studios was blindsided when NCSoft pulled the plug. Lineage was released in 1998 and Guild Wars in 2005. City of Heroes in 2004. At the time of CoH's sunset, Lineage was NCSoft's biggest money maker, followed by AION and Lineage II. Guild Wars was making slightly less money than City of Heroes, but its development cycle was basically over - the last expansion was released in 2007 and Guild Wars 2 was around the corner - meaning there was very little overhead to keep the game running. On the other hand, City of Heroes had to support an entire studio all on its own.
  7. I didn't mean to push any buttons when I said that, so sorry for the raised blood pressure. Anywhoo. Most of my info came from Death of a Game: City of Heroes, which does a reasonable analysis of why CoH was shut down. Income is covered in a graphic that shows exactly how much CoH was making for NCSoft at the time of sunset (it wasn't much). It covers a couple of other topics such as the importance of a Korean player base (and how City of Hero's failure in Korea had an impact), the shelf life of the game when it was first pitched to NCSoft, and the state of NCSoft MMOs at the time of CoH's sunset. Overall it's a pretty balanced look at the state of the game when it shut down and makes it clear that NCSoft made a decision they had thought through. The link is below. None of this goes into the rumored events surrounding the closure of the game, including possible code leaks to Cryptic, so it's possible there were even more factors that went into the final decision we'll never know about. Comparing anything to WoW is a bit of a fool's errand imo. They're very different games and obviously a lot more people preferred whatever WoW gave compared to CoH (I was not one of them). The fact is, it was more successful. Comparing them doesn't change that fact. Edit: I forgot to add that, yes, there was a lot of content the devs were working on at the game's sunset, but NCSoft is fairly notorious for shutting down their games with little to no notice to the players or even the game's developers. Auto Assault, Dungeon Runners, and Tabula Rasa all received similar treatment in that regard. And I'm not sure you can really say that NCSoft doesn't continue to milk their cows long after their expiration date since both Lineage and Guild Wars are still active.
  8. Before it was revealed publicly that the City of Heroes code was accessible, there had been a rogue server running secretly for years with an NDA for the players and everything. Someone on this secret server eventually decided the knowledge should be made public, broke the NDA, and here we are. Outside of a few minor rumblings when the public servers threatened to do something NCSoft specifically didn't like (giving access to live characters for example), the company has been basically silent - neither giving permission nor handing out cease and desist orders. Yes Homecoming (and others) are trying to get the IP to end the limbo in our favor, but I doubt NCSoft is interested in restarting the game at this point. It was barely a money maker when it was live and there was no interest in South Korea, their primary player base.
  9. AE arcs uploaded to the game server are available on all the Homecoming servers. Same with all cross-server content like the Auction House. However, they are not uploaded to other groups' servers (such as the 4-Chan server). If you want to post there, you'll have to do it independently. I am curious how local saves will work as the various servers develop in different directions, though, They all seem to direct to the same local folder (at least on the two servers I play). So far Homecoming hasn't really touched AE content, so it's hard to tell what'll happen. To the original point of the forum: it doesn't look like there's a list exactly. There's a couple acronyms you could look for that I've seen floating around. And while a forum-based list would be good (at least better than nothing), I think the devs should see if they can get a story/farm tag built into the in-game search function somehow.
  10. While I don't have any official response to this (and am not a dev so standard grains of salt apply), a large part of Homecoming is the idea that these devs don't want to risk rocking this boat (we are, after all, on borrowed time until someone can gain control of the Co* IP). Utilizing characters from the live servers was a sticking point early on and got a hard no from NCSoft, so I do believe that someone (maybe the Homecoming devs maybe not) has access to all of our live content, but Homecoming doesn't want to touch any of it lest they get the dreaded cease and desist order, Personally, I've gotten an invite to a private server that supposedly has my old characters on them, but I declined so I don't know how true the offer was.
  11. Replaced mission three with the Nerva Primeva map and made some tweaks to the objectives/briefing to accommodate. Played through it a couple times and the spawns were good. It should no longer include a 15 minute scavenger hunt. Apologies! Arc is now #18203. As always, hope you enjoy!
  12. Yeah, I wasn't sure how that mission was going to play out. I tried to telegraph the actual mission objective as best as I could, but I also knew what to look for as I was testing it. I just didn't want it to be five missions of Rularuu caves and that was the only outdoor shard map available. I'll look at other possible maps in the next couple of days and try a different approach. Thanks for the feedback! That said, there's a thought in the back of my head that I should just leave it as is. I don't think the current end lives up to the hype. 🤣
  13. To the one person who played Ominous Horizons (thank you for the five stars!), part 2 is now posted! Arc #18086 #18203 titled Red Sky at Morning. "Double Mint is back! With the Circle still a threat to supers and citizens alike, it's time to search for a way to get those affected by the Circle's new daggers back on their feet. It seems Double Mint's found a lead from another dimension..." As before, it's built for 50+, ideal for teams, and set to neutral. If you're interested, I highly recommend playing them in order since the second arc assumes you've played the first. Let me know what you think!
  14. Hey all! I just posted the first of a series of arcs I've had in my head since AE was first announced. The description reads: "Double Mint, the face of Comiskey Gum, normally basks in the glow of camera lights and the calls of fans for autographs or one of her iconic bubble-gum shields. However, today she seems on edge. Something big has happened and she's looking for super-powered allies to help her out." It's built for 50+ and ideal for teams. I've set it as neutral, though it has a slight hero bent since you're saving the world. I'll post the second arc later this month or early next month. Let me know what you think!
  15. While there's no glowie kitty cat option, I'd look through the defend an object options (in the advanced mission objectives drop down). There's a couple objects that are interesting and could fit what you're going for generally. For instance, there are a number of box options. Maybe it's Schrodinger's Cat and you have make sure the mean, nasty people don't bust open the box and risk the little guy coming out dead. Most of these options are also in the destroy an object mission objective, so maybe the cat got stuck in a Rikti Incubator or a Snake Egg (somehow) and you've got to destroy the object to free the cat. Or you could just make a cat-like character and have the player rescue him/her/etc. from... Devouring Earth? Sure, why not.
  16. Are you sure you've selected tickets as the reward instead of standard rewards? Otherwise I'm not sure.
  17. I also don't think Penelope Yin was ever added.
  18. I don't believe so, no. Maybe someday, but it's got a trigger system built into it to open the back room, so it may take some programming to get there.
  19. AE critters, unfortunately, aren't smart enough to adapt to a player's level. They get what you give them and that's that. Based on what you've said, if a level 25 character ran your arc, they'd get 75% normal experience for each minion defeated (which means they're a bit easy for a 25), 88% for lieutenants and bosses (still easy), and 100% for elite bosses (could be just right or too difficult). Moving the slider won't make the enemy more or less difficult to defeat, it just tells you the percent experience a player will earn at that level. CoH generally has a system where arcs are set for a range of five levels (1-5, 6-10, etc). My suggestion is set the bar to the upper end of your desired level range and pick and choose your powers for each custom critter around that. For example: say you wanted to use the Lost and Vanguard enemy groups in the same arc. You can't do much with Lost since their skins are not super available for players, but at the same time the Lost maxes out at 30 and Vanguard starts at 35. Well, Vanguard is an enemy group where most of the costume options are available to the player, so it's possible to just recreate the group (more or less). So you've got a Vanguard Soldier made and ready to go. To make sure the NPC is balanced for your level range (let's say 26-30), set the slider to 30. Is the experience below 100%? Throw a couple other powers in there until you reach 100. At 100%? Great! Now slide the level up a bit. If you're still 100% at 40 (or even 35), you've probably overpowered that soldier and you need to take a skill or two away. It's a tough balance, and I've only seen a few people actually try and get custom enemies to work in their target level range, but it makes it so much nicer for your player (and why I generally focused on 50+ arcs when making my own). Also keep in mind that AE enemies tend to hit a bit harder than dev-balanced enemies as AE enemies basically get copy-paste power sets from the players with maybe (maybe) some fine tuning. There's a few individual powers out there that can be unintentionally strong (Invulnerability's Invincibility and Savage Melee's Hawk for example) because they weren't balanced correctly back end. That's not really specific to what we're talking about, but it is something to keep in mind (and why play testing custom enemy groups is important).
  20. Sorry, not Radio as in Police Radio. Radio as in RADIOOOOOOO! Free Opportunity! It's a red-side contact in the 10-14 range. The model is also used in a Tips mission in a way similar to what you're looking to do, which is why I suggested it. It should be among the regular contacts list, though you may have to scroll a bit. That said, I'm sure there are other ways to do it depending on the needs of your arc. In a similar vein to Radio, you could use a Praetorian Clockwork model that's been hacked or there's a Seer in the Prae arcs that just picks up random thought chatter and struggles to filter through what she 'hears' or maybe you could pull of a Weird Sisters style group (Marvel mutant quintuplet sisters who share a hive mind...sorta). The point is, your contact has to use the same model throughout the arc, but that doesn't mean you can't still accomplish what you're aiming for. You just have to be a bit creative.
  21. There's no way to change the model of your contact midway through the arc. That doesn't mean you can't have multiple contacts (Radio is a good option), but you can't change what a player's character interacts with. Edited for clarity.
  22. Custom characters don't mean all levels. They're balanced around a certain level range based on what abilities you've given them. A custom enemy that is built to give 100% experience at level 50 is going to be tough for a character in the 1-5 range while a custom character that gives 50% experience at level 50 won't be worth the effort for a max character.
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