Aura_Familia

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Y'all would get a much better reception if a sizable portion of that 10% wasn't composed of the most thin-skinned, arrogant players around, most of whom also labor along under the weight of outsize persecution fantasies.

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zounds!

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I admit I lol'd.

The first step in opening a dialogue on pvp is for folks to understand that pvp IS NOT going to be rolled back to issue 12.

Unfortunately, I'd bet for 90% of the pvpers in these forums that's a non starter.

I can confidently say that unresearched statistic is near factual.

Also with the fact that Posi basically said they are happy with where pvp is (meaning DR and travel suppression is here to stay) then there you have it.

Also Arcanaville's comments up above were spot on about this issue.

When one side of the dialogue (lol) starts off with "you don't pvp in the arena for any significant amount of time, so your opinion doesn't count" you might as well not bother.

Oh and btw, I think most of the changes brought on by I13 were not great.

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Durakken, you can build your own 'green room' inside your base with Leandro's Splasher program. It's how I made an all-white room for Johanna to walk through at the start of my Issue 14 teaser, and how I greenscreened her to drop her into four separate maps that had been overlaid with a filter to make them look like blueprints.

It won't be exactly perfect, thanks to base geometry, but with a bit of cautious camera work, you can still manage circles and sweeps around your character.

As for the debate as to whether this is useful? Well, I could be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet that my 'fanflick' videos have gone a long way for recruiting new players into this game, bringing old players back, and keeping existing players interested.

So kindly don't knock someone else's creative interests just because you don't find it useful in your badge hunting.

BTW, Memphis_Bill, valid reason for in-game demorecording? I've demorecorded at least two dozen separate animation/map glitches to send to GM support when stuff has gone wrong with the game. It's a rather valuable tool because then the support guys can play it back and see exactly what I'm seeing.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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Great response!

And btw, I love all your videos!

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Although, I6 was City of Villains as well.

[/ QUOTE ]Technically, nitpickily, not entirely correct.

Issue 6 (which technically included the CoV content) dropped on Thursday, October 27, 2005.
City of Villains was dropped on Monday, October 31, 2005.

Only those who had CoV preorder were allowed to utilize villainside content before the 31st. But the dates are so close together that many people forget that. (Same with Release and Issue 1 being confused.)

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I suppose you can make the argument that I6 was just Bloody Bay, Siren's Call, and Warburg, but that's kinda "blah" . Would be amusing to claim an issue dedicated to pvp though!

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Wasn't one of the issues (very early issues) before that JUST the arena?

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Very well said. With me, this raises the question, "What is the incentive that is the most common reason for abuse?"

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In which case, I like your idea of the front page being randomly selected arcs.

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I like it too.

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Great deal. Wish I did it.*

*To clarify: I already bought all the packs before this was available. It's a good money saver.

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Bought my two copies off Amazon a few weeks ago.

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Yeah i'm wondering why this is news?

hasn't this been out for a while now?

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Well, if someone leaves a gibberish as a rating comment, it says a lot. Gibberish with one star rating means that rating was posted by an impatient person not playing for story, but for purple epic gear he or she can't find in coh. And probably asks people where are the raids here coming straight from grinder centric mmo's.

As for removing the rating system entirely...What would that achieve? As it stands now, it's next to useless (other than dev approval seal that does seem to warrant some quality). Removing rating won't change a thing, since again, no one would have any idea what stories are good and what are not good. I'll try to give it some thought and put a post up later if I come with any viable ideas.

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As for compulsory comments while rating: the assumption I made here is that rating an arc is *not* mandatory. And only when you do want to rate it you need to put couple words about stuff. So, there shouldn't be a problem with people spamming comment section just to close the rating window.

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My problem is linking stars to comments. If you rate you sure as hell should not have to comment. Not unless all comments are made completely 100% anonymous.

EDIT: and I think multiple people prior to your post have explained why the star system is useless for both finding good story arcs and for the whole hall of fame/badges/opening a mission slot. So again simply remove it.

I've seen only one good idea in this entire thread that can't be gamed and would make the star rating system relevant.

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Why does Statesman even need a mask at this point? His only living relative is also a super hero, and everyone knows about the familial connection between the two. Everyone else who was in his life is either dead or also a super hero. He has no day job. He has no reason to hide his identity.

Take off the mask, Statesman!

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He's not wearing it to hide his identity (everyone in CoH's world knows who he is), he wears it because it's his costume

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And an insanely stupid one at that.

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Yes, none of the outside missions should require a specific rare spawn that could be farmed or camped for...

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If they could figure out how to do that and do it right, I'd be all for it.

But so far most of the open world games I've played (including the other one that folks are openly talking about now) haven't.

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If maps have a problem, even if we don't know about it, then okay, drop the map, fix it, and put it back. Preferably, do that in the same patch, so we won't notice it missing (though it might have a different ID number on it, so we'd still have to Edit an arc to fix it, like how costume parts would get changed, even though the end result is the same).

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Identifying and fixing the problem might not be a quick and easy task. The whole thing is still pretty buggy and "in development", by say September I bet everything will be going much more smoothly.

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With the state of base raids, COP trail, items of power, I'd say 2 years from now.

But that's just me.

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The Crey clone lab map, and a few others...take a look through this thread for a more comprehensive list.

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I know I've been saying this till I'm blue in the face, but it REALLY bothers me when they do things like that and don't list them in the patch notes.

Yeah, yeah I know they've been working on improving the patch notes.

For how many years now?

I work in a Research and Development group for a non profit and the number one thing we are FORCED to do before ANYTHING is released is to make a list of all CHANGES and things that were taken OUT so that our customer service group doesn't start getting lambasted with calls from angry customers, complaining about missing features.

Seeing as how we aren't talking about 100s of maps here, I dont' get why it's hard to simply LIST which maps have been taking out. Not asking for a list of the exploits caused by having them in. But I don't understand why a list of what was removed isn't published WITH the freaking PATCH NOTES.

That way authors can go in and preemptively fix their maps, instead of having players find the author's missions with maps that suddenly make no sense for the story or worse yet, are suddenly unplayable, with no advance warning to the author.

I would think that's even more critical for DC authors, with the way they have to get those updated, if at all.

I'm sorry but stuff like that in software development pisses me off.

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It was pulled in the 5/5 patch...we theorize it has something to do with the number/location of spawn points. It'll be back.

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Was it listed in the patch notes as being pulled?

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Yeah, that would be counterproductive for the farm builders. They'd be attracting exactly the wrong sort of people...kinda like inviting the police to tour your meth lab.

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heh.

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Rating system could use a tweak.

First issue: rating without leaving comment. It makes improving mission hard, since creator has no idea how the people rating mission felt about it. Making it compulsory to leave a comment while rating mission might solve this.

Second issue. Rating system in general. So far, I tried a couple of player made missions with a friend. Results were a mixed bag. While dev approved missions were ok, using star rating system to pick other mission was a disaster.
We tried about 4 different five star ranked missions to find...well.

I will say only this: most of them gave impression of being put together by almost illiterate person aged 7-9, during five minutes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that people shouldn't try their hand at making a mission, but system that allows 'missions' like that to get 5 stars is flawed. Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas as to how to improve it at the moment.

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issue 1: someone would then just type "a" or "4sfde4r3ewdfd3" just to be able to close the window they didn't want to leave a comment. I could only get behind 1, if EVERYTHING was completely anonymous.

issue 2: how to improve it? get rid of the star system.

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Well the rating system doesn't seem to be working terribly well.

I kinda like the thumbs up/down, abstain idea floated, it might work, but you wind up with a great deal of range there.

I think the rating could be improved by several steps
A) Holding off showing stars until after 5-10 ratings. That way an early 1 or 5 star doesn't doom/reward things.

B) Post a list on the rating page of a sample of what the stars are supposed to mean- do you start at 5 and work down? Is 3 "average"? 2 "shows promise, techical issues" so folks are on the same page.

C) You will get variability. Perhaps throwing out the top and bottom 10%..or even 20% of ratings, so that just 8 or 6 of the first 10 count might be useful.

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The only ones I could get behind are A and maybe C.

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The autocomplete on entry missions are just a bug in MA that should be fixed. An Ally goal set to to Single is not a legitimate goal, and arcs containing them should not be publishable. If there are similar immediately completable goals they too should inhibit publishing.

The goal is not to take away your right to poke someone in the eye. It's to eliminate griefing and voting cartels who can vote up undeserving arcs that they never even entered.

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Okay, see, this right here... if something like this happened, it'd infuriate me.

If you're taking away options and tools from creators in order to combat abusers of a lousy ratings system, your priorities are entirely skewed, and Mission Architect is, at that point, an utter failure.

The goal of Mission Architect is to facilitate player-created content. That's what it's about. Ratings PVP is not what it's about. Taking away from the former only to make the latter more difficult isn't a viable solution. And that's all you'd be doing.

"An Ally goal set to to Single" is a legitimate goal. Sorry. I've used it for story effect multiple times. Have I ever made it the sole objective of a mission? No. Would I care if it were changed so that it couldn't be the sole objective? No, I wouldn't. But you wouldn't fix anything by doing that.

Because then all anyone would have to do is add one glowy to the front of a small map to achieve practically the same insta-complete result.

So, what then? Make it so you can't place glowies up front? Okay.

Then people will make missions that can be easily stealthed, with just one glowy to click.

What then? Remove glowies entirely? Make it so you must fight a boss in every mission? Even if you went that far, people would just make a totally gimped boss to fight.

See where this is going?

The ratings system is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. The problem is not the abusers. The problem is the built-in incentives for abuse. Any solution that doesn't involve removing those incentives is not a solution, as the abusers will always find a way around whatever obstacle you implement.

I want MA to evolve into greater functionality and versatility, not less. I'm already wrestling with its current limitations. I want to be able to do more with it. Watering it down for the sake of propping up some ridiculously broken ratings system is just... completely befuddling and "bass ackwards" to me. It's entirely the wrong direction in which to proceed.

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This. I wouldn't bat an eye if the silly star rating system was stripped out of the MA forever. Just give folks the option to buy or earn as a vet reward or run a shot tf to get a new mission slot.

Also make it so that you can tell how many times an arc has been abandoned or played.

The ratings system is an epic failure.

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...That's *not* stoked about Going Rogue? For me, I see less pros and more cons. Like, if defenders make their way to villains, corruptors will most likely be ignored. People will prefer Tankers to Brutes. Am I just being overly-negative?

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So long as they don't turn the regular game into City of MishMash and keep the mixed game in the Praetorian world then i'm not particularly worried about it.

That being said and even if its only in the Praetorian world, I hope they only allow 1 rogue character per account per server per direction and disallow them from epics/patron pools if they switch.

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You haven't read the press release have you?

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Am I just being overly-negative?

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Honestly? Probably. The devs have a history of working towards balance in the game. I'm pretty sure they won't screw anything up very badly, and for 90% of the population the expansion will rock. (9.9% probably won't care one way or the other.)

Of course, I'll go on the record to say that there will be a contingent of people who will insist that this will destroy the game. They'll be very vocal about it, there will be a lot of bickering in threads about it, Mod 08 will have bloody fingers and chunks of skin on the mouse and keyboard the week it's released for locking threads.

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???

I'm try to figure out what the issue is. Seeing as how we've had co-op from lvls 35-50 for how many issues now?

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I considered editing my post to remove the potential that this was a bug, but I refuse to believe it is a bug. ANYONE testing the cap would catch this on their first attempt. I cannot believe a huge nerf like this went into production without a single competant tester finding this. I can only conclude this is working as designed.

Further ... my initial post concludes that it's NOT efficient to continue to kill mobs after mission completion, hence discouraging anyone from doing this.

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You assume it was on TEST long enough for anyone to reasonably test enough so that any such work arounds could be found. With how fast patches now go from TEST to LIVE that would be a bad assumption.

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"Kill All" is pretty much [u]the lamest mission criteria of all time[u] from my viewpoint and should [u]never[u] be used.

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THIS.

Although I won't take off stars for it, I have DEFINETLY quit and not rated or simply NOT PLAYED arcs that have kill alls. Unless there is some compelling reason for it, (of which the arcs I've played already DON'T have one) there really is no reason for a kill all.

With the recent cap on in mission ticket rewards there's even LESS incentive for me to bother with arcs that have Kill Alls.

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Unless a map is full of a custom faction made only of bosses you are not going to hit the ticket cap, even with a kill all.

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Yes but what of the mission bonus?

Anyway that was just an ADDITIONAL reason to avoid them.

Them being kill alls is reason enough.

There are enough stories in the MA that there really is not reason to have to trudge through a kill all. And most of the kill alls I've seen are woefully unnecessary.

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"Kill All" is pretty much [u]the lamest mission criteria of all time[u] from my viewpoint and should [u]never[u] be used.

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THIS.

Although I won't take off stars for it, I have DEFINETLY quit and not rated or simply NOT PLAYED arcs that have kill alls. Unless there is some compelling reason for it, (of which the arcs I've played already DON'T have one) there really is no reason for a kill all.

With the recent cap on in mission ticket rewards there's even LESS incentive for me to bother with arcs that have Kill Alls.

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This is one reason why a quits/plays display would not solve things in and of itself. Different people have different 'instant quit' criteria, ranging from Kill-Alls to Vahzilok.

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Actually it would work, if it had nothing to do with getting a 4th MA slot or badges.

The inherent problem with the stars system is that it is linked to a reward that you have NO OTHER WAY (so far) of getting except being dependent on the whim of the playerbase. That concern is valid.

But it is separate than being able to avoid dreck in the MA.

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I'm afraid that problems with changes affecting the playability of the mission are inherent to the whole MA concept. As long as the devs are changing the system, those changes will affect the way our missions play. It happens to their missions all the time, and they know how they use all those resources.

One of the major problems is the devs have to make changes in a matter of hours to terminate exploits or remove missions that cannot be completed because of bad spawn points. So they have to yank a map, or an NPC, or an emote from MA instead of fixing them because they don't have the time to do it "right."

Over time the problems will be less intrusive, but for a while they're going to break a lot of missions with every patch. And it won't be possible for them to document all the possible ways things will break because they don't know how every mission uses the things they're changing.

If they change one NPC by adding or removing a power, there might be 100 missions that will be affected adversely in the minds of the authors. Another 500 authors might not think it's a problem. The only way to avoid it is to stop changing things. But we all want new features and fixes all the time.

Software maintenance is a fact of life. Every time software is changed, someone should run a regression test to make sure that things are still working the way they should be. NCSoft isn't going to run regression tests on our missions, so we're going to have to do that ourselves. Yeah, it sucks. Welcome to software development!

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In software development you also make sure you build a list of all the changes being. i don't think anyone is asking for them to check all our misshes.

But when they remove a MAP or change how something works, LIST IT CLEARLY in the patch notes. That way the authors are alerted and can go back and fix their arcs.

I think that's all that's required.

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I don't mind it, but most people I've talked to actually have conniptions about exemplaring, even on TFs and Oroborous and such. For some reason they forget how to play toons that aren't 50s.

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If I wanted to play a toon that wasn't 50, I would bring a toon that wasn't 50 into the MA. It's simple as that.

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"Kill All" is pretty much [u]the lamest mission criteria of all time[u] from my viewpoint and should [u]never[u] be used.

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THIS.

Although I won't take off stars for it, I have DEFINETLY quit and not rated or simply NOT PLAYED arcs that have kill alls. Unless there is some compelling reason for it, (of which the arcs I've played already DON'T have one) there really is no reason for a kill all.

With the recent cap on in mission ticket rewards there's even LESS incentive for me to bother with arcs that have Kill Alls.

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However, I don't think a reasonable person would argue against the fact that since the custom critters are indeed tougher than PvE critters, It does indeed take more time to kill them mob for mob.

This is not because customs have more hit points, but because of the amount of additional damage you take and the adaptive tactics to deal with same.

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Remember that the original intent was that this was to be the custom *boss* generator. Extending the system to allow you to create custom lieutenants and even minions was a great stretch goal, but it wasn't originally intended to be balanced for this, and still really isn't.

The expected standard is a short series of missions with mostly stock enemies, and a custom boss as the "big finish". If you're *choosing* to play (design) missions that use entirely custom creatures, presumably that's because you feel the non-tangible reward of getting to fight something out of the ordinary is worth the added difficulty. If you don't like the tradeoff, pick different missions: it tells you what enemies are featured in the chooser for a reason.

Mind you, I'd certainly appreciate more control over difficulty as they develop the MA going forward. My Easter-themed mission had entirely custom enemies with color-themed attacks, and it's very hard to create a "green" minion that's not dangerous in quantity for instance. I just hope that the humor value makes the added difficulty worth it for at least some people.

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The problem with that is if the person can't get past the first mob without being 2-3 shotted, then the humor is lost right at the star of the missh. They're not going to see the any humor in being owned, not matter what is written in the missh.

Not saying your missh is like that, since I haven't played it, just making a point about it.

My question to some folks would be, can your missh do without the uber hard custom mob to tell a good story?

From what I've been seeing is that most folks could tell the same story without using custom mobs.

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By requiring that you spend some amount of time in the mission or complete at least the first mission before you can cast a vote, the devs would eliminate most of the opportunities for griefing.

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With the changes recently made to custom critters, for some this would be impossible.

Again NO.

If an arc creator hasn't tested his arc to make sure that the first mission doesn't require a tank, scrapper, or brute to be even completable, that's not something that deserves to be played before it's rated down.

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Perhaps I was insufficiently clear. I said, "By requiring that you spend some amount of time in the mission or complete the mission" I mean that as an either-or.

If you gave it your best shot and spent five minutes in the arc and found that you couldn't get anywhere because only scrappers and tankers have a chance, then your vote would be registered. I also said that the amount of time required is a good topic for debate. Even a time as short as one or two minutes would be sufficient to put a crimp in griefing.

The autocomplete on entry missions are just a bug in MA that should be fixed. An Ally goal set to to Single is not a legitimate goal, and arcs containing them should not be publishable. If there are similar immediately completable goals they too should inhibit publishing.

The goal is not to take away your right to poke someone in the eye. It's to eliminate griefing and voting cartels who can vote up undeserving arcs that they never even entered.

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As long as the number of "quits" is also clearly visible I have no problem with the suggestion.

As I said before if it doesn't then I'm not for it.

I should be able to at a glance tell if it's something that I want to waste my time on. (And clearly the star system isn't helping that).

For me the best way to do it would be to just show the number of plays and quits, then folks can do whatever they want with the useless star system.

EDIT: Of course the actual REAL best way is if everyone published missions that appealed to wide range of folks and not just scrappers, brutes and tanks, and didn't have stupidity that counts for humor in some circles.

Of course then we'd have cured most disease and have world peace.