Ankylosaur

Refined and republished the blueside version and added the arc id to the title.

Made several changes to the mobs to reduce the number of plant/mez type powers for the fisticuff-types. Really happy with where they ended up in my tests.

Made some modifications that have made the mission 4 mobs more manageable. I realized I had done something of a bad practice and made many of them all defense (Super Reflexes or Energy Armor) based. In addition to adding another ally, I also tweaked one of the custom named AVs a bit. A little worried they are not enough of a challenge now - but think I am closer to getting the balance right.

Well, I certainly can't think of a way to do it. The best I can think of is to find a map with a small location that has spawns near one another.

A complicated and involved story, as the name suggests, it still feels as creative as ever and great to revisit after so long.

You inspired me to create this:

Dug up the post that got me thinking about this... Mine took a different direction, but the post got me thinking this direction so thanks Marine X!

Bumping this resource as I think I noticed a few newish Hellion/Skulls missions out there and thought the authors might want to expand the level ranges...

Mender Lazarus knows the entire multiverse has ended before and believes only you can prevent it from happening again. Help him prevent the end of the multiverse! SFMA --- This was a combo of a few ideas I already had in the back of my head with one someone mentioned around when Homecoming went live. Its a little cheesy but feels good to have done. As always eagerly open to any and all feedback. Here's some things on my mind: Tips: I put in tips to help players. Do I have too many tips in there? Are they making the player not think? Balance: Worried about the balance of the mobs in mission 4. I did some testing and though you have many AV allies, it was not the breeze I expected. Are the custom mobs too tough? Optional Fights: There are LOADS of AVs in here but most are optional fights. Most missions only require a glowie / destructible object but give you an option to fight lots of mobs/AVs if you want to with support. Is there enough challenge to be fun? Morality: Is Vigilante the right morality setting? Felt like neutral was not right but not sure what is... I think I squashed the most obvious issues, but if you run into any, please let me know.

Moved the arc to my main again, losing some 5 star reviews but gathering it under one account. New arc ID: 25870 Someone has already played it and given it 5 stars - so off to a good start! That player also gave me great feedback and I added some things to provide better direction to players trying to find the Robot Field Testers in mission 1, through both the mission pop-up and the Nav text.

I recently moved it to a new arc ID # to consolidate under one account. Its new ID is 25869 - updated the title of this thread too. The old number had two 5 star reviews - shame to lose those, but what can you do... Old review of this... http://web.archive.org/web/20120905124437/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=4353952&postcount=729

Stumbled upon old guides in the way back machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20120905041527/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=233077

More details: http://web.archive.org/web/20120905164349/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=233538

Thanks for giving it a run through! That's good feedback about the morality not sittign quite right with you. I struggled with the right balance of Soineanu's pursuit of knowledge and fame and how much he cared about making progress for the outcome vs. the recognition. The "For Science" bit was a nod to the awesome Von Grun contact and arcs. Should probably make a pass at the story to make Soineanu's motivations a bit clearer; I'll definitely need to make them a bit clearer for myself I think too first. 🙂

On a semi-related note, in my last arc I played around with using the HTML color codes to color and scale bubble-text of bosses and allies in missions. The AE editor does not support this (via a right click that is) but it did seem to work most of the time if you only used the open tag and not the close tag. I had the need to represent one single being's voice speaking through several different boss enemies and I thought color-coding could help there. Its the "most of the time" that is issue though, which is I am sure why the AE Editor does not officially include it. On testing it worked a lot, but then once in awhile revealed the HTML tag as part of what the person said without coloring it - as far as I could tell without rhyme or reason. I ended up going with All Caps instead and just saying I AM SOANDSO every time, which is not optimal but worked well enough. The lesson for me with the AE is to accept what you cannot change and get creative within those constraints. 🙂

As to item one, if a map doesn’t support it, you just have to get creative. You could use a floor item like a trash can and say they were thrown out or a safe and say he knew they were important so secured them. or a destructible item file cabinet or something completely different - like stealing the files from a destructible item police car on an outdoor map. Alternatively, just using an office building or some other unique map that you can somehow work in is an option. As to 2: no. Workarounds could be that he escaped on his own or with help after you “captured” him, or have him run away early - at say 3/4 health to give him the best chance without him being a required mission objective. To make that work, you probably want to trigger some other required collection item to appear once he is at 3/4 health so the mission doesn’t end before the fight. Of course just because he tries to flee does not mean he succeeds.

Depends on what you mean by helpers and follows. If you want the ally to fight with you, then make sure they are not on follow but rather on aggressive or fight defensively. If you mean you want them to use their powers on you - like heals - then only the first ally you find will do that. On live they added that in an effort to diminish farming.

OK - hopefully fixed - realized the problem was that I required the player to exit at mission door in addition to escorting them there. Still some quirks with mob placement on this map, but hopefully you don't encounter them. The waypoint is still broken, but the mission completes when you get them to the Flier and I hopefully have made that clear in the nav text. I tried the alternative of using allies and requiring exit and it was ok, but not what I was after. Also made several other tweaks to bring a bit more life to the dialog. Thanks again for the feedback! Pretty confident that the ride past mission 2 is smooth - the remaining maps are more predictable. Hoping you give it another go!

Thanks for the feedback. Was worried about that. I may need to switch them from escorts that you take to the mission door to allies and just force you to exit with them. That map is the one I had the most issues with - from mobs marked as front appearing in the back or middle, to the escort marker being off (for me it appeared as the exit of the building as opposed to the exit of the mission). But interesting maps can make for interesting missions, so wanted to leverage it. I found if I took them to the Arachnos flier it register as mission complete, but obviously experiences vary.

Dr. Andros Soineanu's field research team has gone silent while investigating the Devouring Earth for Arachnos. Help him recover them and continue his research for Project Fury: Plant-Hybrids! - SFMA - Solo with provided allies. --- This arc is my attempt to make something new from the Devouring Earth and Hamidon lore. The DE is a tough group to make interesting because there is not much room to insert any personality or motivations. Fortunately, hidden in the mob are a couple of unusual things to tap into, and I came up with an idea to give them some ways for my mob to have a voice - but we'll see if it works or not. I had actually started the idea for this before the servers shut down, but other than the early mob design and a few maps, not much had been done. In fact, the story was very different, had a few different maps like Thorn Isle and The Abyss, and included the Circle of Thorns. Most of the invention and new direction has happened over the last couple of months. This has gone through hours of work and testing, but there are so many things to look at I am sure there is a typo or two somewhere - hopefully no glaring issues though. A few of the AE quirks I just had to accept in the end as a trade off - I did my best to have no police cars inside of buildings but in the end there is only so much you can you do. 🙂 Oh and I really hope we get the Nature Defender set one day - one of the mobs needs that. 🙂 The ending was a surprise, even to me - it just sort of revealed itself as the right choice given how everything came together, but we'll see how others feel. Would love feedback as am I sure it bears several passes and more refinements. Your eyes and experiences will help make it much better. If you give it a go - thanks in advance for trying it out!

I think you may have found all the options... For an airport hanger, you could place some destructible Longbow Chasers in a large warehouse to help imagine the effect - but that it the only idea that comes to mind... For one of my arcs I had hoped for the Sky Raider Hanger on Striga which is what I think you may be remembering with Cap, but its not an AE map.

Many great ideas above. Here’s a few more I particularly find myself wanting the praetorian “bosses surrender” type option when they get to 25% they become invincible and tell you something. similarly, bosses “betray,” and become allies Forking mission paths to giving meaning to failing a mission destroyed object spawns something (destroy and egg or stasis tube or cocoon, etc and selected mob appears) destroyable items as collection items Using AE to generate player submitted radio missions for Khalisti Wharf

Thanks for playing the arc and for the kind compliments! So glad you both enjoyed it! Replies to Feedback As to map brightness, its an interesting point I've not paid attention to. Maps 1 & 4 are outside - does time of day change in those? Wonder whether they start synced with the zone you are in. I've always disliked map 5 but like I say it just fits too well. I might poke around though and see if there is some other map that makes it a better experience now. The ghosts in Mission 1 are supposed to speak to you when you approach, but because of the current (known) bug, they all speak when you appear on the map and you may not be close enough to them to notice them when you do. That's why I added the tip, but you really need to be right next to them (they're escorts) for them to show you the way... I added them originally because its a massive map to have a glowie on, but glad you found the crown. As to mobs appearing lower difficulty than the mission text, this mission is so old, that bosses could not be set lower for soloing when I first created it. So if Bosses are "off" then the Elite Boss is just a boss, and Calystix would be easier too. I tested it all with Bosses on though. As to rehash, its true - based off lore that bit is just part of the same story really. but when you have a tank that can spawn Slag Golems - you have to work that in somehow. Plus the Slag Golems are pretty perfectly suited to map 1 - more-so than anything that appears there in game. 🙂 I looked into the Nav bar bug and I think this may be an AE bug. In AE you can give multiple different objectives the same Navigation Text (Plural). In this case, both Elizabeth and Barracuda are set to "Captives to Rescue." This should then appear as 2 Captives to Rescue in the nav bar before you rescue one, then switch to the Navigation Text (Singular) which is unique to each of them (Rescue Elizabeth or Rescue Barracuda.) I checked the file and their text is correct, so it seems like it may be just picking the first in the list instead of the right one. Trivia It is absolutely true that all coral on earth spawn on the same night once a year - how weird is that? https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral-spawning.html The group in mission 4 is actually from the lore - they just never appear in game so I got to design them all-custom-like. This is their second iteration as they were designed originally before the (very obvious to use) costume pieces they have today became available.

This is incredibly exciting and much appreciated! I have several from live that you have helped see the light of day again. Three have won one or more player contests. They all have hours and hours of work in them and they have all been updated since publishing them to Homecoming. (Updated as I moved several to my main account) Rularularian - 848 - @Ankylosaur The Serpent Beyond the Horizon - 854 - @Ankylosaur Save the Diver, Save the World - 855 - @Ankylosaur Condemning Croatoa - 25869 - @Ankylosaur Robolution - 25870 (Redside) & 27314 (Blueside) - @Ankylosaur

Made a few tweaks to this one, fixing a typo from Scrapyard's text (thanks for pointing out), getting more representation for Coral Warders/Sentinals, and introducing another Coralax minion... Also added a tip to the intro pop up to compensate for the "they all speak their intro text when you enter the mission instead of because of proximity" bug. In case anyone wants to give it a go, feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.