The Moro of the Story

[x7urnp1ke]

Arc ID 15165

Neutral

 

Hello!  I just finished my first ever story arc.  It's called "The Moro of the Story" and starts off with the kidnapping of a young girl.  You are sent to find out who took her and discover it was ninjas!  A lot of ninjas.

 

I had fun with this and did a whole lot of testing with different character types but the difficulty will vary depending on your playstyle.

 

I hope you enjoy it too!

 

Badges Available: Gamer, Poor Impulse Control, Workaholic, Extractor, Destructive, Assassin

Edited September 12, 2019 by x7urnp1ke

[Sakai]

Sounds good. 

 

What is the lvl range?

[Kyksie]

Generic plot, sparse text, a weak custom group, some spelling errors, a defeat all on a big map. The only high point is a few touches of humor.

 

This isn't a terrible arc but it really isn't great.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Kyksie

[x7urnp1ke]

On 9/7/2019 at 1:18 PM, Sakai said:

Sounds good. 

 

What is the lvl range?

Custom, all levels.

[x7urnp1ke]

22 hours ago, Kyksie said:

Generic plot, sparse text, a weak custom group, some spelling errors, a defeat all on a big map. The only high point is a few touches of humor.

 

This isn't a terrible arc but it really isn't great.

Lol, it was my first go at it, but thank you for letting me know your thoughts.  Do you remember where the spelling errors were?

[Kyksie]

Sorry not offhand. I think one was in a minion description?

 

It's not a horrible arc, at least not compared to some trashfires I played on the live server. Just kinda blah.

[BretC]

On 9/9/2019 at 4:31 PM, x7urnp1ke said:

Custom, all levels.

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.

Edited September 12, 2019 by BretC

[x7urnp1ke]

23 hours ago, BretC said:

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.

Okay.  Umm... well I didn't set specific levels, they are supposed to adjust to your level.  So level 1-54.

That's what I meant by all levels.

 

I went back and looked at that experience slider you mentioned.  I didn't move it at all so it's set at lvl 25 right now on all of them.  Minions are at 75% and 88%. Lts, Bosses, and Elite Boss are at 100%.

 

I'm new at this so if there is something I'm missing let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Edited September 12, 2019 by x7urnp1ke

[x7urnp1ke]

On 9/11/2019 at 2:10 PM, Kyksie said:

Sorry not offhand. I think one was in a minion description?

 

It's not a horrible arc, at least not compared to some trashfires I played on the live server. Just kinda blah.

I took a look and couldn't find any spelling issues but maybe I just didn't see it.  If anyone does come by something that looks weird, drop me a note! 🙂

[BretC]

1 hour ago, x7urnp1ke said:

Okay.  Umm... well I didn't set specific levels, they are supposed to adjust to your level.  So level 1-54.

That's what I meant by all levels.

 

I went back and looked at that experience slider you mentioned.  I didn't move it at all so it's set at lvl 25 right now on all of them.  Minions are at 75% and 88%. Lts, Bosses, and Elite Boss are at 100%.

 

I'm new at this so if there is something I'm missing let me know and I'll see what I can do.

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).