3dent

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Just hit republish.
I thought the same. But you don't need it. Republish lets you do whatever you want to an Arc without unpublishing it and letting it lose ratings.

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Well, it doesn't. Although the OP's case is probably a bug in need of fixing anyway, (and this is not the only situation when an arc is reverted/jumbled for no apparent reason) you can't do serious editing on a published arc as easily as on a testmode arc. Backups are clunky to do and restores without losing the ID aren't possible, reordering missions for easier playtest is risky, external edits are impossible...

Good luck!

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But then the OP goes on to perpetuate the drama by making supposed "counter-drama" posts. Thing is that it doesn't work. The OT is a classic case of trying to change someones mind. Which doesn't work unless you have influence over the person you are speaking to, which you probably don't since you are on polar oposites of a topic you both have strong feelings about. If you'd ACTUALLY wanted the drama to stop, you'd have shut up about it, because what you are doing here with the OT is dragging it out. Salt in the wound. Dragging it out. Beating a dead horse. Get it? If you want it to stop, wait till the people who are moaning have actually quit the game or is so ashamed they haven't that they just stop posting about it. Eventually, though, the drama dies down. IF YOU STOP PICKING AT IT.

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Good point and I'm doing just that, effective immediately. Itt was just that I felt some people, about whose opinions I care misunderstood me, and wanted to clarify my position.

If anyone has any comments/questions/flmes directed at me, they're welcome to use PMs.

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As paying customers who have supported the game in various ways, financially, and vocally and many of us tried to keep the doomsayers at bay, we have every right to express in reasonable - if at times - passionate ways why it's time for us to stop supporting the game and move on to pastures new (or at least move away from existing pastures.)

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No argument here. Absolutely none at all. You have the right, you may exercise it. And I have nothing personal against you or any other quitters, quite to the contrary, I liked your posts.

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There's a very good reason the front page is flooded with them and it's not simply a "bandwagon" but it may be that yesterday was the catalyst that caused a chain reaction. It could have gone two ways.

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There was such a reason. But now... However you call it "bandwagon" or "chain reaction" doesn't change it, - in my view it reached the point where it's just as much fueled by the threads themselves as by the actual reasons. All I wanted to was to make people stop and think before doing all those dramatic pledges, to leave or to stay, that's all.

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Oh and I fixed the title for you

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???

P.S. Don't remember if I said it to you, but your farewell fic was great.

Yes, you have little control. That isn't much of an excuse though, it seems. Quote from the OP: "random maps that don't accomodate the number of objectives and thus simply don't work and have to be restarted till a map that can accomodate is randomly picked"

It isn't the only possible cause of that bug, in fact I doubt it was caused by random maps (since if you pick a random map you are seemingly limited to lower number of objectives than any particular map has)

Yet players (including me) don't blame the devs for MA bugs, they blame us. They have every right to. And so, doing our best to make missions that don't trigger those bugs is something that simply has to be done.

I work as a software developer, BTW. "This is a bug in the framework we use" is a valid excuse to ask for more time or to not to promise complete solution, but it isn't an excuse for the bug itself/not doing your best to fix it or to work around it.

That said, pestering the dev team about fixing MA has to be done too.

Good luck, GR. We'll miss you. Even those who only knew you as a mod.

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Us long term veterans are saying goodbye out of courtesy to the people we never see in game but chat to on the forum. Some we agree with, some we don't. some we love, some we hate with a passion. We are giving our reasons for going and try to do it in a constructive way rather than saying "this game sux".

Have you not noticed the pain between the lines of the leaving posts? People have made friends, met partners, had children, moved house, lost loved ones with CoX as a place to retreat to and escape the pain, or brag about the rugrat, or just to escape from real life for a while.

Friendships change and alter in life. Some get stronger and others fall by the wayside. CoX is a friend that for many of us has moved in a different direction than we wanted and lost its way. we have tried to explain our problems but the friend isn't listening so its time to part. Thats not to say some or all of us won't be back at some point. I'll probably pop my head round the door in a few months time to see whats happening, but for now allow the people who have put three, four or even five years of their lives to say their goodbyes.

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Excellent point... Except for that 10 farewell threads on a single day thingy. And similar "epidemic" when Brighton dev team was fired.

I have nothing against farewell threads as such, or farewell threads caused by recent events, but don't you see that the entire first page consiisting of them (at the moment I started to write the OP) is a bit... Unusual, to say the least?

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They should leave the speeches to you, your better at them.

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/signed

This is why we love War Witch.
War Witch for president!

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Both /signed. War Witch, you're amazing!

I'm 3dent on this forum and in game chat, I already said all I wanted to say on I14 and I15, and I absolutely refuse to make ANY dramatic pledges and participarte in that nonsense any further in any way except by mocking it.

I may quit this year, or I may not depending on multiple factors, some of them beyond my control.

Seriously, people, half a year ago the grognard thing to do was to leave for US. Now it's leaving for CO. Or, rather making dramatic posts about it, whether the poster actually quitted varied widely.

For me it's simple, if I feel like playing, I play. If I don't, I don't play. For months, sometimes. I don't see why I need to make those decisions into a show, beyond necessary precaution of warning SG mates of not kicking my toons just yet and similar technicalities. If I want critique dev team's decisions I do so. If I feel that what devs did was justifiable I say so. I don't see a point of turning this simple process into something MORE IMPPORTANT and a way to SHOW THAT I CARE. It's just a game, a very good one, one of the best I played ever, but still just a game.

/signed

This _could_ be abused, of course, but arcs need non-trivial edits from time to time, much easier done locaslly.

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1) A large proportion of beta arcs have lain untouched since beta including the ones that had to be stripped down after the 10% size bloat when I14 went live which caused lots of bugs.

2) Saving an arc locally, unpublishing and republishing an arc gives it a new ID. The reason I know this is because I did it. The arc in my sig was around in beta, has been refined by over 40 playthroughs over the time since beta and has had numerous bugs identified and removed however you won't be able to tell that by arc ID. The reason I've unpublished and republished the arc is simple - it's now in what I consider to be polished enough state to be judged from a clean slate as a finished product rather than a changing arc under constant refinement which is why I've now added the SFMA tag to it. I also didn't realise it would be looked down at for having a high ID number

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1) Well, there is that too, and thwere were many bad arcs in beta too. But on average, I think I'm still right, - those extra few weeks mean something.

2) Unless you need a global overhaul of several missions. you needn't unpublish, - you can edit a published arc, and republish it with the same ID. I unpuublished one of my arcs because it was made unplayable in certain situations by multiple bugs and one of the missions plain sucked, but to just fix dialogue, add clues, etc. unpublishing isn't needed.

ADD| And I didn't say low IDs are the law of the Universe or something, - it's just how the situation looks to me right now, and I don't expect it to last long.

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now please excuse me while I dramatically storm out, then find I've shut myself in the broom cupboard.

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Always plan those dramatic departures beforehand, always After all that's what "dramatic" means, - "scripted"

Good luck! And as I've found myself, taking a break from the game can make it look much, much better, new issues or no.

Pretty much what it says in the title. Yes, it's "rehash and reuse", yes "no one fails them anyway", yes, yes, yes... But yesterday's Arachnos invasion was fun, lag, recuycled villans and badges and all, it was fun to beat those AVs. Now, LR daily invading Atlas will get old quickly... But what if it was, say, Silver Mantis in Steel? With new badge for zone AVs, and, maybe, GM damage rules for them

P.S. Yeah,I15 sucks, Posi is overrated, CO will rule, I'm cancelling a sub. Now I'm leet too, you can take me and this post seriously.

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I think you overestimate how long it takes. Short stories can be written and proofread much faster by those who are in practice and/or have fast typing skills -

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They can, no doubt. They also can be written much slower.

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and a 5 mission arc with large maps can take 45mins to test with the right character (I use my Bane or Stalker to ghost past the non-essential bits of mine to test the encounters/text I need to test).

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I used to think like that. Until these intermittent spawn failures have shown me the error of my ways. At least 3 ghosting runs and one complete playtrough after any major objective change or it's bugged, more for fancy missions with conditional bosses and so on. 5 complete playtroughs before publishing. I'm still to test my 1st arc up to that standard, this weekend maybe. And yes, there was a major problrem I've caught on the 5th run once.

Again, this is probably because I don't know yet what exactly causes bugs and how to avoid them, but almost everyone is in the same situation right now.

RE not liking The Great Literature... I have a different list of writers I can't stand, despite everyone else calling them great, but I do have it. Everyone who really cares does have one, I suspect.

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I think the snakes use a bipedal rig but with invisible legs.

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I doubt it, judging by their animation/physics their tail is rigged too. So, probably, it's based on a standard biped, but isn't the same...

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What are non-bipedal rigs?

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3D models of non-human thingies. Or at least the bones / animation skeletons for them, AFAIK.

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Not entire models, and (often) not just bones, but all their constraints, drivers, scripts, muscles/softbodies, if any, etc. I'm not sure about link between rig and geometry/textures, but think it's a part of a rig too. Although in-game models usually have everything converted to bones, development models may be more complex for animators' covenience.

And non-bipedal means exactly that. Something that isn't rigged the way humanoids with 2 legs (or feet, or even hooves $) ) are. Arachnobots, or Snakes as an example... (they are also non-quadrupeds, making them doubly difficult.)

It's interesting they need a rigger, not just animator. Which, may or may not mean new rigs... Which may (or may not) mean new mobs, that is, totally new, not 2-,4-, 0r 8-legged and 2-10 "armed" we have...

1) I'm not an old player. I don't care about CO. I probably not going anywhere any time soon. I love every bit of MA, bugs, farms and all.

I'm still disappointed by the size of announced features in I15. It seriously should be bigger than just a new TF and SF. New zone, or dozen of story arcs, or TFs for level ranges currently not having TFs or having a censored ones... Of course, if this issue would be here before summer, just a new TF and cossie/MA goodies are OK, but for a full issue? Correct me if I'm wrong but before every issue either added a major faction/zone with their arcs and TFs, new game subsystem, or something along these lines.

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post-MA folio of King Lear

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Thread's gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
It's dead as earth. Don't even lend me a looking glass.

Or, in modern English , k, this thread is now officially derailed.

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folios were compiled long after plays themselves were written and played, with who-knows-what alterations inbetween performances

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Yeah - I knew when I picked the Bard that arguments like this may come up. But Eco/Shakespeare still provide a decent general point regarding the fallacy of older stories being better due to a long history of improvements and updates.

At least Bacon hasn't been mentioned yet - phew!

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It doesn't. Precisely because we aren't talking centuries here, we're talking months. A 5-mission, story-rich arc consists of about 10-20 kb of text, (a 2-4 k words short story) mission objectives needing, say, 20 complete playthroughs to debug them, and "unforseen contingences". Connceiving and writing a decrnt short story requires time. It would vary greatly, but I think 15 hours would be typical.
Playing through requires time, say, 2 hours per complete playthrough, or 40 hours total. Adding some time for unforseen contingencies we get about 70 hours, - a two full-time weeks, for an arc.

So, any worthwhile non-beta arcs what aren't buggy/typo-ridden/just plain uninteresting should start appear about now.

Then, some time for arc to pick up steam, that is, to be played by someone who isn't your friend, SG mate, etc. and get "real" 5 stars... You''ve got the idea.

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"BTW - Is Shakespeare's work considered great because it was written well when first published or because it's had hundreds of years of tinkering to improve it?"

Wait, what? I know there've been some slight tweaks — notably converting archaic to modern English, depending which version you read — but there haven't been *that* many changes since the early folios.

Something like the OED or any other non-fiction book that *does* get updated a lot might've been a better example :P

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I suppose he was ironic. That said, if I recall correctly, folios were compiled long after plays themselves were written and played, with who-knows-what alterations inbetween performances Plus, there are 2 different endings to King Lear, 2nd one being written much later and not even by Shakespeare himself. Yet the play was played almost exclusively with that, happy, ending for a century, because audience liked it better. And never mind that theatre is a bit special case, - each performance is unique, actors learn from each other, etc. So, modern actors may play from the same script as The Globe's actors did back then, but they do it completely differently now.

As for my original statement about IDs, - oh, surely, if the author gives a dam, if the arc was played, if, if, if. But high-ID arcs by definition WEREN't played enough. I know what I'm talking about, I started to work on my 2 arcs literally 5 minutes after I14 went live, and did hardly anything else in the game since then and until the last week (outside of the game, I have a job and 2 hours commute). One of the arcs has no bugs now. Ok, it probably has no bugs, and still has a lots of typos, although I guess that's not as typical.

Got 14 playthroughs (as per badge's counter), 4 (unsolicited) comments (and 2 "official" reviews). And no, I still won't tell the id's, like, ahem, some more agressive promoters do. But I will in my "Open Igorance of the Recent Framers of MEOW!" thread, which is in development.

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For instance, wouldn't a single participant in (say) the battle for Minas Tirith have to stay just as focused during the day whether he's a footslogger or Gandalf? What differs is the story they tell afterwards about their own experiences, not their billing in the narative;

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That's the problem. If, suppose, I've never read/seen LotR, soldier's story which is entirely about how cool Gandalf is won't work. (Unless written by JRRT himself, maybe.) In fact even his own story might not work, if I'm not explained what Minas Tirith is and why should I care.

Which is pretty much what happens when someone tries to make good story arc of this type. (I tried it. 4 missions to just explain who the parties in the bigger conflit are and what they're up to. )

#1, - Write the PLAN first. Plsan ought to explain not just the story, but how you plan to tell it (maps you need, custom mobs, if any, key clues, etc.)

Story is important, but if midway through arc building you'll discover that there's no map exactly like you need, or you need to swap mobs/objectives/whatever to avoid bugs story would need changes. (not necessarily for the worse. Most of plot twists in my arcs grew out of workarounds for MA limits.) That plan would still most probably be altered beyond recognition at the end, but as they say "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

Whether an arc should have a souvenir at all or not may be debatable too, - I personally don't care about MA souvenirs as a player, and unless the arc is extremelly canon-aligned, won't bother writing them either...

Although what you said applies to external sites too, - the more popular it gets, the worse its SNR. Although, on CoG there are actual reviews, which really mitigates the problem.

What everyone said, - try ones with more ratings and not necessarily 5 stars. Also, look at he IDs, - the lower the better. Why? Because playtesting an arc to "no bugs ever" standard currently takes LOTS of time. Especially for something that we were assured wouldn't be needed in the first place. I won't recommend MY arc, but seriously, it literally took 2 weeks (a couple of hours each day) to test 2 missions (ok, next time it would be easier, but still...) No wonders arcs are buggy, - peeople either trust builtin validator too much, or don't have time. Low ID means an arc was in beta. Which means it has been around longer, which hopefully means author had time to both make a decent story and throughly test it.

Happy Birthday!