City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

[SuperPheemy]

For those of us who indulge in the City of.. franchise, I thought it might be nice to have a thread where we can advertise those missions that we have created ourselves, as well as receive feedback, etc... As had been mentioned there are some pretty talented storytellers writing missions as players. Such genius can be and should be mined for inspiration for our own tabletop campaigns.

 

So, without further ado I present my contributions thus far.

 

ARC# 77395 - Red Scare

Length: Very Long

Mood: Heroic

- An old villain from the past returns to Paragon City to renew the Cold War

 

ARC# 98374 - Red Dawn

Length: Medium

Mood: Heroic

- The Red Guard returns with revenge in their hearts, and a diabolical scheme in their minds.

 

Feedback and critique would be much appreciated.

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I have no idea of my arc id's, but you can find me under @Lemming, a couple arcs "There's only one Prescription" and "Clockwork Orange"

 

Feedback appreciated as well.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

When you click on the "My Published Stories" tab in the Architect, you'll get a listing of your published stories. clicking on the itty bitty "+" sign next to the title will expand that window, and therein you will find that ARC's ID number!

[Rapier]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I've got one that was a single mission arc, but I accidentally changed the map so it's not so peachy right now.

 

I was going to update it real quick and just decided to add two more missions. It should be going up tomorrow and I'll post the details then.

 

Oh yeah, IT'S ZOMBIES!!

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

When you click on the "My Published Stories" tab in the Architect' date=' you'll get a listing of your published stories. clicking on the itty bitty "+" sign next to the title will expand that window, and therein you will find that ARC's ID number![/quote']

 

Oh, I knew how to find my ID, I just wasn't in position to look it up.

 

Thanks anyhow.

[Rapier]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Ok, all published and ready to go. Feedback is very welcome.

 

The Zombie King arc is: Arc #101219.

 

Mission 1 of the arc seemed to be fairly popular (as things go) and at a suggestion I'm leaving it stand alone: Arc #102819 (Boss is Boss as opposed to AV in Arc).

 

Enjoy killing them zombies!

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Are they Server specific?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

QM

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Are they Server specific?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

QM

 

No arc is server specific.

[Rapier]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Are they Server specific?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

QM

 

 

Nope, they are server universal, and just because it is marked as Heroic, doesn't mean you can't use Villains!

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Nope' date=' they are server universal, and just because it is marked as Heroic, doesn't mean you can't use Villains![/quote']

 

I'm thinking of doing a redemption line of missions for some villains, but we'll see.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Check out @killershrike

 

I've got three up currently:

 

Along Came A Spider: #41839 A Rogue Arachnos Tarrantula Queen needs help. She has gotten word from friends still on the inside at Arachnos that the entire Warburg schism is in fact an elaborate plot engineered by Lord Recluse himself to provide cover for something even more sinister.

 

She needs someone to penetrate an Arachnos base to get some evidence of this, a data disk alleged to have proof on it. Misadventures ensue, starting with contact with a freelancer called Hannibal and his Alpha Team (Big T, Faze, Mur-doc, and a mercenary army of Soldiers), and culminating with an attack on a up and comer in Arachnos the thug known as Pulverizer.

 

Currently 4 missions; I wanted a 5th mission but due to all the custom units the file size is maxed out. It's a pretty challenging arc, particularly if you are set on higher difficulties. Two of the missions require quite a bit of fighting, and all four require a little bit. Melee types do well, more squishy types might have a problem. One of the bosses has high Willpower and will get back up if he spawns as a Boss and is very tough due to Rise To the Challenge; if you are lower level he'll spawn as a Lt however and lose the self rez. Also, you only have to defeat him once to check off the mission requirement so feel free to avoid him after he stands up if you can't put him down twice.

 

Note, there are a couple of other "Along Came A Spider"'s up at this point; check the author or arcid to make sure you have the right one.

 

 

Robotyx Incorporated: #31345 A new high-tech organization based out of St. Martial is expanding into Atlas City. Seemingly unrelated attacks on various tech oriented criminal organizations have been occurring in the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, carried out by a variety of highly advanced robots. Positron doesn't think its a coincidence and he wants you to look into the matter for him.

 

You face off with the dangerous Shock-bots, Blitz-bots, Volta-bots, Cadre-bots, and Enforcer-bots in various venues discovering more clues as you go along, culminating in a set piece battle with a new Arch-villain Robotyx itself.

 

This is a very tough arc, maybe too tough (I've toned it down several times already). A lot of the bots are Electric / Electric combos (different variations), so END sapping is prevalent and a few mezs as well. Its best faced by groups.

 

 

The Manimals of Dr. Morrow: #53411 Freakish man-animal hybrids are snatching people off the streets, and Manticore is requesting your help to save them. That accomplished he tells you about a dangerous scientist, Dr. Birgitte Morrow, who was working on a supersoldier program splicing human with animal DNA for the gov but took her research rogue when the gov pulled her budget due to lack of results.

 

She hired thugs to snatch unmissables off the streets; homeless people and dregs, and carried out experiments. The results are manimals; though these hybrids do gain advantages from the animal DNA spliced onto them they suffer reduced intelligence and impulse control. Morrow trains them like attack dogs and uses them to further her obsession.

 

Now armed with a small army of bestial servants and hired thugs she has grown more bold, and is very dangerous.

 

Along the way you'll meet a couple of other heroes Manticore is tasking to help out on different aspects of the efforts against Dr. Morrow, the icy Hypothermic and the scrappy RE-ZA; they can help you in the final battle against Dr. Morrow if you like (and its advised; Dr. Morrow is an elite boss rather than a AV, but she's a Thugs Mastermind (Extreme) with a Debuff secondary, and she also calls for reinforcements as her health falls -- very dangerous fight).

 

If you try to fight your way through the missions this is a very tough arc, particularly the second mission, but if you concentrate on the mission objectives and skip misc mobs its not as tough. This is mostly a straight up lethal / smashing threat, but one of the types of Manimals, a bat hybrid, is sonic / sonic.

 

The Thugs are all Lt level Thugs Masterminds with various secondaries, so keep an eye on them.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Did I kill the thread?

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Did I kill the thread?

 

I don't think so. I finally cleared an evening up and was going to go thru some arcs.

[Manic Typist]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Wait... WHAT?

 

 

You can make quests and storyarcs???? I got out of the game waaaay long ago...

[lemming]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Wait... WHAT?

 

 

You can make quests and storyarcs???? I got out of the game waaaay long ago...

 

It's the latest issue. It's pretty cool.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Did I kill the thread?

 

On the contrary, I went ahead and played "Along Came A Spider.." this afternoon. It was five-star fun! Especially when Big T comes down to attack. My only real critique was that the endgame mission was a little abrupt and too short. I'd recommend ending the ARC with Mission 3, expanding Mission 4 to something longer and more dramatic, or adding a Mission 5 wherein the characters and the Alpha Team turn the tables on both the Patron and her rival.

 

I tried to be vague for sake of spoiler-sensitive folks. If you'd like a more detailed critique, go ahead and PM me.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

On the contrary, I went ahead and played "Along Came A Spider.." this afternoon. It was five-star fun! Especially when Big T comes down to attack. My only real critique was that the endgame mission was a little abrupt and too short. I'd recommend ending the ARC with Mission 3, expanding Mission 4 to something longer and more dramatic, or adding a Mission 5 wherein the characters and the Alpha Team turn the tables on both the Patron and her rival.

 

I tried to be vague for sake of spoiler-sensitive folks. If you'd like a more detailed critique, go ahead and PM me.

 

Yeah; the main problem is the custom groups and units, and dialogue text have got the file size maxed out. I could maybe squeeze in a 5th mission but I would have to cut something out, and I would have to use a built in group or one of the custom groups already included.

 

Im hoping at least one of my arcs gets promoted to free up a spot so that I can do another Alpha Team related arc.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I so feel you there. My second ARC is only 3 missions long because of space requirements (and it's still at 99.xx%). Originally I had a custom Contact, a custom Rescue, two groups of custom villains.. etc.. Sadly, I had to make do with prepackaged contacts and only one group of custom villains . I'm just hoping that eventually the devs will open up more space for missions, and maybe allow for custom map making (Hey, a fella can dream!)

[Enforcer84]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Sounds awesome sauce.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

On the contrary, I went ahead and played "Along Came A Spider.." this afternoon. It was five-star fun! Especially when Big T comes down to attack. My only real critique was that the endgame mission was a little abrupt and too short. I'd recommend ending the ARC with Mission 3, expanding Mission 4 to something longer and more dramatic, or adding a Mission 5 wherein the characters and the Alpha Team turn the tables on both the Patron and her rival.

 

I tried to be vague for sake of spoiler-sensitive folks. If you'd like a more detailed critique, go ahead and PM me.

 

Ok, I trimmed some stuff down and reorganized the custom groups, getting rid of a couple of small ones entirely (they were being used to control spawns and were redundant), and I was able to cram in a large scale 5th mission involving a retaliatory strike on Alpha Team by Arbiter Sands. It's got 4 custom Arachnos bosses I whipped up, and is kind of crazy with pitched battles between Alpha Team and Arachnos. It's hard to test since the mission is published and its the 5th mission in the arc, but I had a couple of favorable run thrus with it last night.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I'm outpacing the 100k limits on ARC size . On the one hand it's a minor quibble, part of the challenge of designing levels for a Computer Game is making the most out of limited resources. On the other, it's forcing me to break my story down into separate ARCs and I only have three. I figure that this will be resolved with the passage of time, and more space and more ARCs will be allowed. Or I can always lobby for Dev's Choice and get bonus ARCs..

[Rapier]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I'm an old skool MUD Coder. Bitmapping is a way of life. Looking at the custom critter design I could pack the details within 1k with plenty of space left over.

 

Unfortunately, coders have gotten really lazy with technology. Feel free to use 30 or 40k when 10k will do. Everyone has plenty of RAM and RAM is cheap.

 

Each custom critter is taking up about 7k. If you've got 10 mobs (a decent number that does a halfway decent job of providing variety) thats approx 70k. You've taken up 70% of your space with nothing but critters.

 

About the only way to get a nice long 5 mission arc is to either narrow down the variety of mobs or use a stock group...which (no surprise) people are kind of tired of.

 

It would be ok, if each mission after the first added 50k to your file size. Now I can add 5 more mobs and keep my text descriptions slim!

 

The only real choice right now (and I've seen a couple) is to publish them all separately. Separate publishings actually has a couple of real important points in its favour. Namely testing. You've got Missions 1 - 3 pretty well tested but you don't like that culmination mission in your arc, so you make a couple of changes...now to test it you have to work through ALL 3 previous missions. That's just dumb.

 

Now I'm hearing all these rumours about how they are surprised about the number of strictly farming missions. Really? You're surprised? What, are you new? Do you mean to tell me that they are actually surprised by the thought of people creating farming missions? Heck, I saw that coming when I first heard about player created content! Rumours are abounding that we are going to get no XP for AE missions. Which makes them dubiously useful. It's just silly.

 

From a system's development standpoint, they made a few serious huge errors in their design. They didn't consider the needs of the system or its use and utility. They seemed totally dumbfounded that user created content exceeded stock content within a few days. Duh! There really isn't that much stock content, in comparison.

 

But I'm just ranting....

[Killer Shrike]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

Im pretty happy w/ the Arc over all, I just wish I could make more than three arcs at a time.

 

 

The REAL problem imo is that there is such a glut of material that its very difficult for material to even get noticed. And if the first person to play the arc gives it a low star rating, thats pretty much a death knell.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

That's why I started this thread, just to get a teensey weensey bit of exposure. The CoH forums are flooded, of course, so that route is like shouting into a gale.

[Arkham]

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs

 

I finally logged into CoH since the new issue came out. I published one of my arc's from beta. Don't have the arc # off hand, but its called 'Pirate Shinobi Magic'. It has pirates, ninjas, ninja pirates, and piratin' ninjas, and a piratin' ninja dinosaur. It is very silly.