Aura_Familia

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Do you mean to say StratoNexus that there are several ways to grow a character and some ways will always be more (or less) profitable than others? Do you mean to say that you play MA story-arcs for the work their Authors have put in designing a plot, clues, dialogs, custom critters, and you don't just play for rewards?!

OMG man... what are you?! Some kind of a Logical Vulcan or something?!

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This points to the fact that its up to PLAYERS to make sure that their missions can appeal to a wide range of folks.

What I seen repeatedly however is some mission authors build it, then only test it with their most IO'd out uber toon with uber defense.

And then they wonder why they get no plays or 1 stars.

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The problem with giving well written, even exceptional arcs 4 stars, is that even though this is by all accounts an excellent rating to give a story arc, if the writer is hoping for the arc to eventually become player's choice, that 4-star rating is actually a punishment. Each 4-star rating requires 2 5-star ratings to counteract it, or it will never see Player's Choice status.

This is probably a big reason why there's no stable player's choice arcs - even people who think they are being kind and generous by 4-starring an arc, are ultimately punishing that arc writer's chance of the arc staying there.

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Another possibility is that the folks who rate it 4 stars feel its good, but NOT good enough to be player's choice or hall of fame, and definitely not Dev's Choice.

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So wait, the less the team seems to need a Defender, the more you want the Defender to be able to act as a Blaster? Um, so just get another Blaster.

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This.

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I have to ask you Gear, why do you play the MArc's at all? There have got to be more lucrative ventures out there for an 8-man team.

Or do you perhaps, play it for the challenge? That your team is at risk, they you once again feel as though your character's are struggling for their lives? That the outcome is not so clear?

If I had played through the games content countless times, had a team of friends that could basically plow through anything the game could throw at me, I would find coming across a challenge that I and my team could not survive the first time around, that we actually had to rework our tactics and approach to the situation differently from what we had grown accustomed to.

To me, that in and of itself would be the reward, not so much the trinkets and baubles.

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Each person defines fun for themselves.

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Yeah, go figure. Content they are going to sell us, as the second expansion the game has ever had, may eclipse the 13th free content improvement they've released.

Gasp!

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huh? 13th? don't you mean 14th and 15th.

Point is they haven't even fully announced what's in 15 or when the expansion might actually come out and what's in it.

Don't think it's a good sign about 14 if folks are more excited now about it then issue 14.

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Arcs that will likely get banned:

Any arc where you are beating up a minority only, whether it be lesbians, a certain race (gee..the devs violate that with both the Tsoo and the banished pantheon... go figure) or a certain social subgroup (Is neonazi-bashing just as bad as what the neonazis do? That's one of the reasons the fifth column got pulled in the first place.)

Arcs about certain politically taboo or hot subjects. (Hunting down Iraqi terrorists or employees of an abortion-legal clinic)

Arcs involving child abuse, sexual abuse, Misogyny (although apparently misandry is perfectly alright as evidenced by the carnival. I guess some genders are more equal than others)

Arcs involving, torture, [censored] (of any gender) necrophilia, or any deviant behavior or crimes more serious than a willingness to kill(In the abstract) and steal stuff.

Any arcs which, through storyline or even misinterpretation of available information, might hint at this sort of behavior.

so, when are the carnies(misandry), vahzilok(Torture), Tsoo(racial profiling), and banished pantheon(Racial and religious profiling) enemy groups getting removed from the game?

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Clever. Very clever.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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That's very, very harsh way to put it and opening can of worms is not something I desire to do...
...but in this case I have to agree.

While I am not that "glad" that people get their arcs banned, it doesn't make me jump around and go "Woah! Hot crap Dave, they got their arcs banned!"

However,I feel that everything has it's time and place and MMO, no matter how lovely the people you play with are, is not exactly great for voicing these kind of things.

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As an aside, I laugh at the whole freedom of speech thing being thrown around.

There is no freedom of speech or expression within privately owned entities.

The Boys Scouts of America cases (however unfortunate) shows that.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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Now, the original intent was not to evangelize for a political opinion, only to play with the forums theme of Lesbian Hellions. Politics only appeared on the scene when I was forced into explaining why this story was not in fact some kind of attempt to stir up hate for lesbians or anybody else.

I don't think that serious themes are off limits in MA, either. Tongue in cheek humor is more my shtick, but "Who is Kidnapping the World's Great Philosophers" has a serious as well as a funny side.

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Problem is most folks don't visit the forums. So for them it DID turn into an evangelism of a political opinion. In fact I visit the forums EVERY DAY, for the last 2+ years and I just heard of the joke by reading this thread.

That is the danger of basing a story off an in-game forum joke. There is not way (even for those who visit the forums regularly) to know if someone has heard the joke or not.

From a MA creating issue (let's leave the who whether it's offensive or not or political evangelism or not), I would 1 star most arcs that do that. I should NOT have to be in on an in-forum or out-of game joke to "get" your arc. I would consider that bad mission creation no matter the topic.

EDIT: Put another way, imagine if you had to know about a certain rare story or in-game joke to get the plot of a movie you went to see? You can't tell me you would think highly of such a film.

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Of course with the recently announced Going Rogue, restrictions are about to come off.



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Brutes still won't have claws and therefore: Fail. Fix that an it's all win!

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Yes brutes won't have claws . . . for now.

I agree this doesn't stop proliferation that's needed.

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There are lots of good reasons NOT to implement this game, and I haven't heard any good reasons why it SHOULD be implemented, so /unsigned for me.

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The disadvantages required to make the set balanced would also make it not very fun to play.

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Hmm. I guess that's more a matter of opinion, and would be true in some cases. I personally wouldn't mind being a little slow and even not being able to build fury as well as a melee brute if it meant just... having something different and new.

But what you said about there not being many comic book heroes fitting the profile is probably true. Then again, I'm not too sure that's ever been a concern with CoX. I'm still wondering how fiery healing ever came into play...

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Because it's an mmo.

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Issue 16 will have side-switching.

End of Thread.

-Rachel-

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You're doing it wrong.

It's "/thread".



And yay for getting a "silly" idea into game.

Honestly, I always thought the arguments for not doing it, were the silly ones.

Of course with the recently announced Going Rogue, restrictions are about to come off.

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Ok - so clearly there are a large number of folks who think that it is MORE important to be able to down rate a bad mission than it is to prevent a good misison from being down rated inappropriately. I am not sure you are right, but I think we are down to fairly basic opposing points so I don't see how any more discussion will help.

I do think that divorcing the rating system from tickets and badge awards is probably the correct way to go, combined with a better seach engine that has reasonable tags so you can actually find missions you want to play. I suspect the dev's need to do something like that first, then look to see how it affects the rating system before they make changes to it.

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Yes on the last paragraph: badges, tickets and more importantly the freaking free slot should be totally REMOVED from being linked to ratings.

EDIT: I would have no issue with being forced to play an arc, if it showed the number of quits on an arcs as well.

That would be a great flag to folks to not even bother with such a crappy arc.

I'm sorry but I shouldn't have to play through something painful (my time is MY time, not the freaking missh creators--sorry), and I SHOULD be able to warn others away from it.

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You know - I was thinking about this some more and I wonder if what might be best is some kind of multiple rating system.

Have one set of ratings that have nothing to do with tickets, badges, etc and are can be set whether or not you can play through the entire arc. There could even be 2-3 (or more) different categories - playability, story content, etc. These would be individually indexed and would allow you to be more specific about WHY you down rated a mission without having to get personal about it, which is a problem I have now. I hate giving a mission a low rating without providing feedback but if the feedback is simply 'mission is trash' I am not going to send that. However, being able to just flag the 'playability' rating at 1 star would be nice. You shouldn't even be required to fill in all the ratings - just the ones you think are appropriate for the arc.

Then badges/tickets/whatever can be tied to actually completing an arc, possibly even without having to rate it at the end. Obviously some attention would have to be payed to ways to keep someone from gaming the system by creating instantly finished single mission arcs - but you can do that already and as long as my ability to find arcs I want to play is not linked to a reward system I don't really care how the developers implement the reward system. (Selfish of me - I don't actually design arcs - I just want to play them :-).

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I agree with anything that allows folks to avoid the nonsense that some "creators" put up as missions.

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Ok - so clearly there are a large number of folks who think that it is MORE important to be able to down rate a bad mission than it is to prevent a good misison from being down rated inappropriately. I am not sure you are right, but I think we are down to fairly basic opposing points so I don't see how any more discussion will help.

I do think that divorcing the rating system from tickets and badge awards is probably the correct way to go, combined with a better seach engine that has reasonable tags so you can actually find missions you want to play. I suspect the dev's need to do something like that first, then look to see how it affects the rating system before they make changes to it.

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Yes on the last paragraph: badges, tickets and more importantly the freaking free slot should be totally REMOVED from being linked to ratings.

EDIT: I would have no issue with being forced to play an arc, if it showed the number of quits on an arcs as well.

That would be a great flag to folks to not even bother with such a crappy arc.

I'm sorry but I shouldn't have to play through something painful (my time is MY time, not the freaking missh creators--sorry), and I SHOULD be able to warn others away from it.

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I think that any proposed change to the rating system comes with this understanding: No matter what is done, people will find a way to grief, exploit, and try to do things which are dishonest to the spirit of any quality indicator system. Some people are just jerks; and the badges, and tickets, only act as an enticement for this behavior. I wouldn't blame the devs for somebody's mother failing to raise them properly.

What I read as the major concern of this discussion is: 'How do I ensure that my arc is only being played by people who will actually give it a fair shot?" The best way I can think of is to hide the arcs from those who won't. A preference system wouldn't be out-of-line (and would be an excellent tool for finding what you want). Give players a checkbox to say what kind of mission they are looking for (i.e. no custom mobs, no AVs, or anything with a 'racy' theme), while giving creators the ability to designate their arcs with those same terms (or use the same information that is given in the basic arc description). This isn't a cure-all, but probably more of a stalling tactic to allow more 'honest' people to play before a 'griefer' happens upon it.

A major benefit I see with this is that it would allow people to avoid content that they do not wish to play (the lesbian hellion issue comes to mind with this), while also focusing on those that they want. This would also give the devs a tool, as they can now ask a person the question, "If you hate arcs with AVs in it so much, why do you keep on playing them?"

This is just an idea. But, I feel that the popularity of the MA lies with people being able to easily find the kinds of arcs they want.

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Best idea in the thread.

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They need to remove the ability to "downrate" arcs.

Let people either select to "thumbs up" the arc or not rate it at all. There are too many arcs that get low ratings not because of anything wrong with the arc, but because of personal taste ("I don't like carnies, 1 star!" "I don't like office maps, 0 stars!")

Good ones would still rise, but arcs wouldn't be as subject to suffering from nonsensical ratings as they are now.

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Only if they display the no ratings as well.

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Except that leaves "excellent but unadvertised" arcs in the same bin as "terrible crap that 600 people have already played and abandoned".

Under that system, I don't want to be the author of the "excellent but unadvertised" arc, and I don't want to be player #601 of the "terrible crap" arc. We need to do something, but I don't think this suggestion is it.

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All you would need is one person to play through your arc and rate it to get it above the "abandoned crap" arcs.

I understand the reasoning behind allowing players to rate arcs they didn't finish, but I think the downside outweighs the up. Mission creators don't just want ratings, they want plays. Players abandoning the their arcs is already punishment to them, they don't need the extra negative reinforcement of one/zero-starring.

(And given that there's a "trick" to zero-starring, that option doesn't seem to be intentional.)

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The negative ratings allow folks to know what nonsense arcs to avoid.

If the system could show number of abandons then I would get behind having to finish an arc to be able to rate it. Until then, not just NO, but [censored] NO!

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... Third, it's not griefing to give someone a low rating. There are a lot of reasons why someone might have given your friend's arc a low rating. ...

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It is griefing to give someone a low rating without even entering the mission. If casting a vote required some kind of time investment, even as small as five minutes, the number of potential griefings would be drastically reduced.

Right now someone could hack the client, the way they seem to have done for sending in-game email spam, and automatically grief every arc in the system.

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.

Actually the Open World content system sucks.

I'm sorry but I'd rather now have to have spawn camping/stealing and waiting for spawns in this game. So [censored] no, to more open world content in this game.

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Unless I'm doing something wrong with my mission, they made a change to the way Force Field (and maybe Sonic Resonance) allies act. I have an FF ally in an arc I'm testing which is supposed to follow you around with the big bubble on to provide some semblance of mez protection for squishies (since the enemies are mez-heavy). However, when I rescue the ally, they turn the bubble off. When I move away from them, it comes back on - but turns off again as soon as I get close.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a new "feature?"

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That was an exploit that has been fixed. While a few poeple were using it correctly and only haveing one helper with the bubble, others would have multiple spawn and after you rescue a few of them you did not have to worry about petty things like getting hit.

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This is getting really annoying. In order to gain a few quick levels, the nitwits are doing everything they can to make the MA completely worthless. MA had the potential for being a fabulous addition to the game, but these jerks are forcing the devs to make it worthless and bland.

These guys complain bitterly about how there's no new content, and then when the devs provide a mechanism to produce an infinite amount of new content, they run the same stupid exploit map over and over again, ignoring the thousands of missions of new content that has been added in just the last month.

With luck this change is only temporary till I15. The FF defenders should work normally if there's just one, but if there's more than one only one should have the FF up at once. Or allow only one ally with FF/Sonic Res to be added to a mission. Or something like that.

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That last line SHOULD have been how it worked from the beginning.

it's looking more and more like possible exploits were not even thought of before this thing hit live.

I don't blame the players for that. it isn't like this is a new dev team or something.

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Uh. How did he deal with ranged characters before?

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Well, some of the new ranged melee attacks are pretty potent, much more so than normal mobs tend to be.

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I would see asininely instead of "pretty".

Just saying.

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Out of over a hundred thousand players, it's pretty much a given that several thousand like the MA, and several thousand don't.

However you slice it, it's more content than any other game has, period. Having trouble finding well written arcs? Check out the various review threads on this here forum.

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Going Rogue just blew MA out of the water afaic.

lol MA.

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yet for a tanker; brute or scrapper it is a non issue

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yeah!
everyone else can eat it!

=P

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Solo with solo characters? Blasphemy!

Though, it'd be funny if this became the "endgame content" everyone keeps wanting. It's really hard and is best done at 50. It also gives reason to have uber billion IO builds.

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Except that whole solo with solo characters line is idiotic. That was not what the MA was only supposed to be for.

The first one who quoted was equally idiotic.

yeah great the MA is endgame content, except of course you can't get purples at all in it.



And the fact that the devs EXPLICITLY stated they want folks to be able to play in it from 1- 50. yeah THAT.

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It's not very heroic to spawn a bunch of minions to die for you.

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Actually if you like at the summoning animations it's more like calling you buddies for backup.

That can easily be roleplayed into a heroic mastermind.

For full disclosure, after all the time I've spent in this game, I personally wouldn't mind if they opened up EVERYTHING to both sides.