Police Woman

If you want the player to defeat the big bad guy while de-powered, instead of a head-to-head fight while depowered consider having the player either outwit the bad guy (e.g. the bad guy overreaches by absorbing too much power and dies of hubris), or have the player somehow win due to the power of friendship (allies or common people show up to help). I think those would be the most tropey ways for a super-person to handle being depowered, though it might be tricky to represent in Mission Architect. Still, thought I'd throw it out there in case it sparks any ideas.

Poster Girl (a level 49 energy/SS tanker) versus Despoticus! Neat ideas in this arc, and I love the Superman homage idea, but the plot could pull these ideas together better. The enemy group reusing standard mobs was fun, I especially like how you played with their size. Some story arc suggestions (these are all purely my opinion; feel free to use what you like, ignore anything you don't like): Some typos/suggestions:

I had a fun time playing All That Glitters 1.1: Missing in Mercy (arc id 34842). I thought it was a great intro villain arc, and I really liked how the dispossessed Praetorians were used, along with the many canon red-side contacts that you got to interact with. The way the various NPCs were chained together to "introduce" you to the next NPC was nicely done. I did think the arc ended in a weird place, and I would've liked a more climactic final mission. Also, found some typos, in case you want to make updates:

If I label something SFMA (story focused mission arc), I basically mean that it isn't a farm, and there should be a story with some sort of plot. There should be enough writing to make me think I'm doing a "real" mission and not some half-finished test. I don't usually make each mission a complete story - using the TV show analogy, each mission is one "act" of the show. I will usually follow something like the Three Act Structure where the first mission introduces characters and setting, the second mission develops further and gets more exciting, and the third mission is some sort of climax. You're allowed 5 missions per arc, but IMHO you don't have to use all 5. If you do, try to make sure there's a reason for the extra missions and there's enough content to fill them. That said, I don't always follow that formula exactly. I have one story arc where the whole "story" (such as it is..) is contained in a single mission, and another story arc where every mission corresponds to one of the traditional Task Force Commander task forces so is arguably a complete story, just with a framing story linking those missions into an arc. I personally like a story to be contained within a single arc, with a clear beginning, middle and end. As a player, I'd like the plot to be wrapped up, the bad guys arrested and the problem solved, by the end of any story arc. As a result I haven't made any multi-arc epics (so far...) but some authors really enjoy making those. Your mileage may vary!

I had fun beating up tons of Nazis! I thought the middle of the arc dragged a little bit pacing-wise, missions 2 and 3 both seemed to be "find the thingy... Nope, we lied, it's in the NEXT mission!" You might consider cutting one of those missions to make the story tighter, or else rewriting one of them to be different than "find the sarcophagus ... oops, sorry, it's not here!" to avoid being repetitive. You may also want to change the default "Accept" message to custom text, something that supports the story, like "I cleared the outside of the ship, I'm going in!" I had fun fighting all the custom bosses, but found the final encounter with the Nachzehrer to be pretty hard. It IS the final boss so maybe that's OK. However, the third time it spawns, it used both Unstoppable and Siphon Life, so it healed a LOT and dragged out the fight to be very long and annoying. I was able to solo it on a heavily IO'd level 50 brute, not sure how squishies will fare. Sounds like you know it's hard and intend it that way though! Overall I had fun. And now, screenshots of ... Action Girl versus the 5th Column! (Spoilers for the arc) Some minor typos:

Thanks much for running this contest and playing through my story arc! The history and LGBT themes were really fun - I learned a lot about 17th century Rhode Island while doing research for this story arc.

Thanks for organizing this contest! For your consideration, I'd like to submit: Arc ID: 68284 Arc Title: The Unexpected Witch Author Global: @PW Discord Handle (If relevant): yaj2 Number of Missions: 3 Level Range: 25-34 Description: In colonial America, Abigail McCollum asks you to find her missing nephew, who has gotten lost in the magical woods outside of old Salamanca.

I vaguely remember seeing something similar when a patch invalidated some of the custom NPC groups or custom characters that I used to have, due to powersets changing or something, resulting in the story arc becoming broken without any obvious change on my part. You might try re-checking any custom characters you have to make sure they are still working, or removing custom characters from your arc until it becomes testable.

Thanks for the play-through! I'm sorry you had to restart the last mission. I can't fix soft spots in the terrain, but I've now removed Fran's ability to fly, in hopes of reducing the chance that they get stuck - I think the "walking" logic seems to do a better job of staying above ground on uneven terrain. Thanks again!

The Unexpected Witch (arc #68284) In colonial America, Abigail McCollum asks you to find her missing nephew, who has gotten lost in the magical woods outside of old Salamanca. This is a first-playable draft of a story arc that I plan to submit to the LGBT+ Histories contest. I like getting player feedback and often make changes based on input, so any feedback on the story, the gameplay and/or the writing would be welcome! I'm planning to submit to the contest on Wed 6/25/2025, but I'll be sure to incorporate any suggestions or corrections that I get before then.

Yeah, there are some in game, but as mentioned above I think they are usually NPC hostages. They look something like this:

Is there any chance of adding one of the female PPD officers as a costume option? (For admittedly selfish reasons.)

I write a lot of low level arcs and I agree that custom characters are often too hard for characters under level 20 - especially when the arc has factions that are entirely custom characters. But custom characters are a big part of the fun of Mission Architect, so I try to use a few to give a story arc more flavor. For a low level arc I'll try to make the custom character's powers fairly weak; avoid giving them two attack sets, or defensive powers giving high perception. I also try to use a mix of custom characters and low level standard characters to make missions more balanced. A technique I like to use is to make a custom character that's member of a standard enemy group, then treat the custom character as a "boss" objective, like this: This spawns exactly 4 "Vahzilok Bride" enemies (and despite being a "Boss" objective they are still only "minion" difficulty); they're optional objectives, so the player doesn't have to track down every single one, but there's enough that the player will definitely see them. They are surrounded by regular Vahzilok so the player character doesn't get overwhelmed by the custom characters. This can also let you give your NPC fewer powers that award less than 100% xp without it being too noticeable, since the standard mobs will still award full xp. Another trick I use is to construct a "custom group" out of mostly recolored/renamed standard NPCs, like this: These Corrupted LARPers are actually a mix of Luddites, Warriors and Circle of Thorns. Since they are canon NPCs, they are already balanced against their respective level ranges, and award full xp. The major downside is that most NPCs are very recognizable as belonging to a particular faction, so it may be hard to get the exact look that you want by doing this. Hope that helps, and happy architecting!

So I really liked @ZamuelNow's suggestion to link the mediporter mission with Roy Cooling's arc, and I made some changes to incorporate that idea. Changes based on feedback: Thanks for the play-through and the ideas!

I've noticed this too. It does not seem like you can select a renamed/recolored standard character from a custom group as a boss. On my "Efficiency Council" arc, when I wanted to reuse a Council boss I had to select a "Council" Vortex Cor Leonis Archon as a boss and apply the customizations directly to that objective (renaming the boss and its group).

I guess it depends on whether you see the other players sitting around looking for farms as a noisy nuisance or an opportunity to lure them into a story focused arc. 🙂

Because I play CoH instead of going to therapy, I present for your consideration, ripped from the headlines: Content warnings: real life has made me want to beat up fascists in CoH, so this arc has a strong political slant. I marked it "Ideal for Teams" since I'm trying to make a story arc that would be interesting to do on a team - there's a couple AVs, there's lots of Council to stomp, and I'm experimenting with the "no clues" style suggested on this forum, to see if that helps the flow. However, there are NPC allies to help against AVs, and a decent soloer can certainly do this arc. I'd be interested in any feedback to make this story arc better, more fun, or more topical. Thanks in advance!

Most weekends I'm tied up in the daytime, but I stopped by the RWZ AE at 330pm Eastern last Sunday; I know it was way past the event time but I was hoping to catch anyone who was still running story arcs. Maybe another time!

How are people enjoying the "no clues" style? Is it making for better gameplay or do you feel like something is missing? I was pondering trying the "no clues" style in an upcoming story arc, but would be interested in peoples' reactions.

I noticed that my "Manticore Task Force" custom group had gotten broken, so I made some updates and republished this arc. Check it out if you like workplace comedy!

My current idea is that, because people like joining AE farms ... make something that looks like a farm, but sneak an actual story into it. It would basically be a Trojan horse story arc. It would need visually interesting custom characters, lots of stuff to kill for xp, have few or no clues, all story information revealed in NPC dialog that everyone can see. Not sure if this would work, but I'm thinking about trying it.

Thanks very much for this bug report! I was not aware that these arcs had gotten broken, and the root cause was as you suspected, a standard Warriors mob I had included in custom groups used by these story arcs had gotten invalidated. I tested all my other published arcs and found one other arc that was broken (although the third arc was broken due to a custom character somehow getting invalidated, I think because they changed the robotics powerset). FIXED: Talos Vice (arc #1337) Two Tickets to Westerly (arc #1678) Attack of the 50 Foot Villain (arc #46840) Thanks again and let me know if you notice any other problems!

Scenes from the MA team running Bricked Electronics:

Most of the AE story arcs I've played are heavy on mission briefing text, clues and linked objectives, all of which are pretty hard to follow when on a team, so story focused mission architect has seemed more like a solo activity to me. I'm not afraid to start teams, but the only (non-MA) story arcs I really go out of my way to start a team for are Tina McIntyre, Maria Jenkins and Flux's story arcs (because everyone loves beating up Praetorian arch villains, and everyone loves beating up Frostfire). So for solo SFMA content, I mostly post here on this forum to promote it. It's not a great way to reach new people though, because a player reading this forum is presumably already interested in Mission Architect. For team based SFMA content, not sure? What makes a good SFMA story arc for a team? I love doing the Frostfire mission on a big team, but it's closer to a farm (hordes of mobs to kill, lots of exp and levels) than a story (barely any text to read; I guess we have a cut scene where Frostfire tells you he's not just a regular villain, he's actually very Complicated?).