Bleak_Wanderer

Excellent work!

Twisted how? My old creative writing instructor used to say, 'Show, don't tell.' Example for what I might write:

"The body language and timbre of the voice carry hints of the Yambu of days past - but the intonation issuing from behind that cold mask of porcelain speaks to a different reality in the present. The young hero, once a protector of Paragon's psychic community, has traded her form-fitting spandex for an ornate Carnival costume. Behind all of the ornamentation, Yambu seems somehow more remote and dangerous than she once did."

So it would be just fine-and-dandy with my character if Crey was taking Carnies to test their psychic discombobulator? Goodness me, why?

(Technically, my MM is a villain/rogue, so he'd be perfectly fine with the discombobulator. In fact, he'd probably opt for babies or puppies instead of Carnies, because they're easier to catch. But you get the idea.)

Mission Three

For some reason, I let Crey make off with Yambu. So now I have to go check out this Crey hospital to try and get her back, and to investigate what Crey are up to with these Carnies. Looks like I need to check a Crey computer and (optionally) defeat some Crey experiments.

The abandoned hospital has a very nice creepshow vibe and seems appropriate, if a tiny bit un-Creylike. I find a Crey experiment - BK-201, which is some sort of poor unfortunate eagle-man, struggling in the bonds of a Crey force cage. So I break it loose and it engages me in combat. After stomping on it and some Crey, I proceed deeper into the hospital.


What the heck is he up to back there? Creepy eagle is creepy.

Freed NP-831, unplugged EX-355, swatted KL-462, still looking around for that computer.


EX-355. Emphasis on the EX.

When I did find the computer (apparently Crey stores their secrets in an old beat-up looking laptop on a nondescript desk - nice disguise!), it turns out they're using the carnies to make some sort of cyborg (psyborg?) supersoldiers. Once I got the information I needed, I had to defeat a security chief. I guessed the security chief was set to "rear", so I went hunting around for him toward the back end of the map. Turned out to be a crey hero... took care of him.. And got an ambush by some Crey/Carnie cyborg hybrids!! Handled them pretty easily, but they wiped out my pets while I was typing for the review, so that did put me on the edge of my seat for a second.

Strong Points

I liked the fact that the experiments are captives, then foes. I really enjoyed that final ambush by the Crey Strongmen. Showed a nice interpretation of what the Crey might do with some captive Carnies, and did a good job setting the stage for the next mission.

Constructive Criticism

It should be made clearer why I (since I'm working with the psychics) let the Crey make off with Yambu. Perhaps an explicit statement somewhere that Crey is claiming to be providing for the medical care of these people since they feel "responsible", while the Carnies continue to insist they are being kidnapped? Creates a bit of a more ambiguous he said/she said and heightens the mystery.

It's important to take care with descriptions - I generally discourage writers from telling players what their characters are thinking, as happened in a couple of the experiment descriptions.

For example:

"You don't even know WHAT this experiment is, other than dangerous!" What if I don't care what it is? What if I don't think it's dangerous because I'm a strange visitor from another world, and I'm impervious to harm?

A more neutral style is usually preferred, in which the author writes about the subject, not the player-character. For example,

"This abomination is so unusual that it would be difficult for most people to classify it. The red sparks crawling over its body and the violent howls ripping from its throat suggest, however, that one appropriate classification would most certainly be "dangerous"".

Corrupted critter description could use a little work:

"Critter failed validation and melted into a goo"

I really, really feel like the one line description for the Crey strongmen at the end of this unit was a huge missed writing opportunity. Really a nice chance to put some wonderful detail in there for the story-focused player. These Crey-Carnie hybrids are the answer to the mystery that's been building for several missions now - it would be nice to have a more powerful narrative payoff.

Mission Four

Looks like the records I recovered from the abandoned hospital had a wealth of information on Crey operations. The Crey are messing with the Carnies at a secret laboratory in Eden. It appears I can expect to encounter a lot of these hopped up Carnie cyborgs when I get there.

It also appears my job will be to recapture the former Carnies while taking care of the mad scientist behind this whole mess. Wonder if I'll get to see Yambu again? Yep - my objectives are to free Yambu, defeat the scientist, and capture all the former carnies.

Yambu was visible from the mission door. I really liked her new custom skin - the Crey reworking of the Carnie Yambu. Did make me feel sorry for all she's been through.



Looks like, after the rescue, Yambu is on my side. Is that because she's "Defective"? ...Hm, not exactly - this mission clue says it was her psychic abilities that allowed her to fight off the Crey brainwashing. A nice little added note about why the Carnival was recruiting pyschics. Fought my way through the Crey cyborgs with Yambu's help, in search of the Crey scientist and former carnies in need of help. In the end, I finished off the evil scientist, freed Yambu, and 'captured' (read: beat up) all of the Carnies.

Yambu lived happily ever after, though perhaps with a little instability in the wake of all that's happened. Formed a nice little origin story for that character - makes me wonder if she's one of @Zaloopa's toons.

Strong Points

Yambu's new duds were cool.

Constructive Criticism

Not deducting points for this, because my guess is it's a filter issue. The Crey custom group is named, "Invalidvillaingroupname". Some of the clues here are again telling me what I think - which I do not like. Not sure if this was a 'kill all' mission - but if so, please reconsider, as those are irritating. Once I've accomplished my goal I don't like being forced to grind minions until I'm rewarded with the right to live. I flew around and cleaned up mobs until it gave me the blue mission exit button, then got out of there.


Overall Impression

Storyline

*****

Excellent story line. The Mission Architect system is a difficult storytelling tool, but through in-mission dialog and liberal use of clues, a nice plot was woven that left me wondering what was coming next from point to point.

I was pleased with the fact that the interaction between Crey and the Carnival was complex and had more than one dimension.

It was also nice to get a complete picture of Yambu's character arc as I travelled a path parallel to hers.

Design

****

The custom designed mobs at the end were awesome, and Yambu's physical progression mirrored her progression as a character, so overall it was fun to watch things develop over the course of the story. In addition, the experiments added nice touches of individuality and flair to the missions. Also, kudos on the choice of the hospital map - that stage was probably the best one in the arc.

The major downside here was the back-to-back Carnies-in-a-warehouse missions. I really would have liked to have seen a little more variation here - but it wasn't enough of a problem to pull the 'Design' rating below four stars.

Gameplay

***

There were quite a few rescues to deal with in that first warehouse map, so that I find myself flying around an empty map looking for the last victim. Resolving that issue would really tighten up the Gameplay experience for that mission. Also found myself killing so I could exit on the last mission, when I really just wanted out.

Detail

**

It was frustrating to see so many great opportunities for character descriptions come up and be wasted with these custom mobs and with Yambu's ever changing form. Descriptions were present, but tended to be pretty basic one or two line blurbs.

There was also a problem with the descriptions telling me what my character thinks, which should probably be revised to a more neutral voice.

Final Rating

3.5 Stars (Rounds up to 4 in game)

A good idea. Fixed.

I was avoiding the filter - but I just tested it and Positron works now, so he's got his name back.

Rookie mistake fixed, and mission editing lesson learned. Thanks!

Fixed.

Fixed.

I've modified the costume for this one. I hope I've made a closer visual approximation of the description. Went with one of the 'Patterns'.. Pattern.. 5, I think, to try to make the arms look stitched on. Recolored the hands and feet... added the flies. Must say, he does look better.



Added corrupted men as well.



The 'captive rescuing' sequence has been revised and shortened. It should also be more informative. I'm hoping it will now play better for most.


New and improved: Waving action!

Positron's dialog revised.

Mission objectives and enemy groups revised to incorporate some of this great advice. Hadn't thought of using bosses in quite this way. This required some changes to missions two and three.

By its nature, the energy that surrounds the meteor strike, the cultists, and the Herald of oblivion animates the dead. This is in keeping with the end-time prophecies of many cultures, where it is said that in the last days 'the dead will walk the earth'.

Whoops! Saved myself a police brutality charge and fixed this.

Glyph text revised on both counts.

Hammers fixed (I hope). One spawnable boss moved over from a different custom group, one new spawnable boss created.

Believe it or not, it was a single ambush set for the 1/2 health mark.

The Void Elementals were Illusion(Hard)/Dark(Hard).

The Void Titans were Battle Axe (Hard)/Shield Defense(Standard).

Resolved. I think I've managed to maintain the cosmetic effect I wanted while significantly reducing the difficulty of the encounter.

Fixed. That objective is now a rescue.

A critical lesson well learned. Thank you.

Agreed and fixed (I think).

Yep, absolutely agreed on the -ToHit - this is why you'll see that many of them have fire based powers as opposed to the seemingly more logical choice of dark.

Thank you again for your very in-depth review. The revisions have been added.

Problems and Solutions

So what went wrong – and how do we fix it?

First, a great deal of the following is a synopsis of what can be found in the following threads:

Hall of Fame Requirements Need Revisiting

Copyright/Profane Question

Bubbawheat's Mission Architect Issues List


I see 5 areas of needed improvement in the Mission Architect system:


1. The content filter.

This is covered in depth here:

Copyright/Profane Question

The content filter has been identified by Aeon as a bug that is in the process of being fixed, so I won’t devote too much time describing the problem here here other than to emphasize that it is essential that it be fixed and proposing a few solutions.

In quick summation, the new (and probably accidental) filtering system is unnecessary (as we already have means of reporting violators and a basic filter such as had been in place for some time is perfectly serviceable), ineffective (because violation is not about words, but about ideas – which must be policed by people via a reporting system), and punitive (punishing legitimate architects capriciously by arbitrarily destroying content they’ve spent hours designing – leading to discouragement and disenchantment with the Architect system).

As an alternative to heavy content filtering, I propose:


A. Emphasis on the reporting system.

Players should receive an incentive for correctly reporting offending arcs – possibly an “Architect Guardian” badge and some sort of bonus. (Either a fixed number of tickets, for example, or a ticket multiplier of 1.05 for every X number of correctly reported arcs.) Care will need to be taken to prevent incentivizing the creation of violating arcs just to earn the reporting cookies – but coming up with creative solutions is what developers are paid to do.

Some system that relies on player reporting is essential, however. The reason is that there is simply too much content for developers to police, and as mentioned above, filters are wholly ineffective at policing content. You need human intelligence sorting out the good from the bad – and the only way to do that is to crowdsource it via your player base. Which means incentives for reporting.

Of course, you’ll still need an NCSoft employee looking at those arcs with the most reports and making the final determinations – but this is a system that allows you to manage your time most effectively and set thresholds.


B. Severe penalties for being correctly reported multiple times


Players who are reported three times for infringement content violations should either have their mission architect privileges revoked or should be banned altogether. While banning paying customers sounds like bad business, it’s important to keep in mind that these individuals will constitute a very small minority of the total players. Most folks value continued playtime over making infringing characters.

Further, banning players may be bad business, but getting sued is worse.


C. Severe penalties for griefing or exploiting via the reporting system


As discussed above, we need to avoid incentivizing the creation of violating content for the sake of accumulating the positive rewards for reporting.
One way to do this is to implement a system whereby players who accurately report (i.e., report content that is eventually removed for violation) have votes that count more the more accurate they are. Conversely, players who routinely report content that does not infringe have votes that count less.
So if I’m good at reporting violating content, every time I report someone it will count as 1.5 reports.

Conversely, if Joe Griefer likes reporting people just because he didn’t like the arc, his votes will count as 0.01 reports (eventually).

This allows players who are serious about helping to maintain the integrity of Architect Edition most effectively draw GM/Dev attention to the problems.
For the mathematically inclined, this might look like:

[My Reporting Power] = 1 + (.05*# of times I’ve reported content actually in violation) – (.10 * # of times I’ve reported counted found not to be in violation).


2. Incentives and rating systems. (Hall of Fame, etc.)

Players on MMOs are driven by two elements: Incentives and fun.
People have a deep biological drive to achieve rewards. This is why you can get away (for a while) with, for example, building an entire system of shinies and currencies based entirely around endlessly grinding on two levels that take less than an hour each to play through…. And people will do it ad nauseum.

However, for long term viability, you need a variety of experiences for players to participate in – and you need incentives tied to participating in those experiences.

One of the primary flaws in the handling of the Mission Architect system has been NCSoft’s failure to properly incentivize participation.
This failure has the been the product of a fear of exploitation of the system for farming purposes.

I propose the following solutions:

A. Make architects want to generate quality content.
Why do architects spend countless hours and their creative energies generating content at no charge? How can we make them want to do more of that?
If you go to this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=221800

You will find that they are motivated by two factors (listed in order of importance)

I. Recognition

II. In-game Rewards

Pages and pages have been written by architects seeking to improve the system whereby their efforts can be recognized. Nothing is more rewarding to an architect than to have players play through and express enjoyment of their content. (So this will tie into point B – making the players want to play and rate quality content.)

We need to fix the system we use to recognize what architect achievement.
First, Dev’s choice:

If you’re not going to have the Devs actively participate in regularly choosing Dev’s choice arcs (once per month at minimum, rotating the developer who pics), then you need to scrap the Dev’s choice recognition. Let the players who earned a Dev’s choice keep their extra slot, but remove all references to Dev’s choice in the game. Having a system that is clearly no longer being utilized throws up a big red flag to players telling them that Architect Edition (and certain elements of the game in general) are being neglected. It’s a reminder of a broken promise. Either choose Dev’s choice predictably and reliably, or remove all mention of it henceforth.

Hall of Fame:

First, in order to vote, players must be required to play through the entire arc. It’s only fair, and will cut down on people 1-starring arcs out of frustration that they can’t find a glowie (not the designers’ fault) or that the arc doesn’t have some arbitrary component they were looking for so they quit playing.

The Hall of Fame limit needs to be changed – I propose (as an example) an absolute number of 200+ 4 OR 5 star ratings –AND- at least 1000 total replays of any kind. This will recognize that content that players keep going back to enjoy again and again – the best of the best. It will also be far more achievable than the current HoF limits. The numbers are flexible – ideally, an arc should make it into the HoF every three to six months or so. That means if the game runs for 10 years, a total of 20 - 40 arcs will be in the all time HoF. Not an unamangeable number for a “Hall of Fame”. As the current HoF is, this system can be automated.

There needs to be a level of recognition under the Hall of Fame – a ‘Player’s Choice’ level (not to be confused with the Player’s Choice awards run by players on the boards). This should be awarded once per month (120 total over a ten year span - .032% of the total number of arcs currently extant – but a chance to win every month for competitive architects.) The requirements for this award would be as follows:

I. For consideration in a given month (February, for example), that arc must have been published during the month immediately preceding the month for which the award will be given (January, for example).

II. The winning arc will be that arc which accumulates the greatest number of 4 or 5 star plays in the month of the contest.

III. On the first of each month, the winner for the previous month will be announced, will be showcased on the CoH website main page, will be mentioned in the GMOTD, and will be placed on the featured tab of AE.

IV. To integrate AE with more recent content, to grant a large influx of plays as a reward for winning Player’s Choice, and to incentivize playing in AE, playing through the previous month’s Player’s Choice Arc in AE should grant a one-time per month reward table that allows players to choose either a Notice of the Well, a Rare IO enhancement recipe, or a Rare Incarnate component as rewarded by the iTrials.

V. An arc that has been flagged as a farm (see "Farm Flagging" below) should not be eligible for consideration in Player's Choice or Hall of Fame.

VI. (Optional) Sufficiently high quality canon-related Player’s Choice arcs should be considered for integration into the main story of the game at Devs’ discretion. I listed this as optional because it would require Dev involvement in AE, which takes time and effort.

Architects also need more robust in-game rewards for crafting quality arcs. A modest income of tickets for plays is not an acceptable reward – these people are breaking their necks to produce quality content.

For every 10 five star ratings an architect receives, one Architect Merit should be granted (yes, another currency). Architect Merits should be able to be exchanged for extra slots, at a rate to be determined by the Devs. This will reward players who consistently make highly played, quality content with the ability to do more of the same.

Architect merits should also be able to be exchanged (in whatever quantity the devs think is appropriate) for a reward table allowing the user to select from rare IO recipes, a synthetic hami-o, a notice of the well, or an incarnate component as produced by the iTrials. The cost for these elements can be chosen by the devs – but the point is, this would represent a huge incentive to generate good content. It would also not detract extensively from the popularity of the iTrials – not everyone has the skill or ability to generate five star worthy AE content.

Starting "5 star clubs" and "You rate me 5 I'll rate you 5" agreements should be a reportable offense just like griefing or obscenity - and should result in loss of MA privileges at a minimum. Allowing players to report other players for "five star clubs", and allowing them to report players who tag arcs with "five star club" notices - and revoking MA privs of "five star clubbers" - will limit the 5 star clubbing to those violators dedicated enough to coordinate via some off-site message board or system. There will always be exploitation and abuse - however, the system I propose will get players into the MA building, where currently there are none. I've got to believe that's better than letting this feature die.

B. Make players want to find, play, and accurately rate quality content – without promoting farms.

Players are driven by incentives. We need to provide encouragement to players to participate in the Mission Architect system. We need to give them a reason to seek out and accurately rate good stories – and we need to give them a reason to play architect arcs.

That means it must be easy to find, plate and rate quality arcs and there must be a reason for doing so.

The problem with motivating players to play in Architect, historically, has been the issue of farming. If Architect rewards are made superior to rewards elsewhere in the game, players will simply go to Architect to play farms, and will rate farms highly, and the storytelling aspect of Architect will die. Consequently, Architect rewards have been lowered to be less attractive than the rest of the game.

Predictably, this has led to emigration from Architect Edition toward the content outside of Architect, leaving AE devoid of players.

The solution is to tie rewards for players to participating in the architect system – not killing mobs in Architect levels.

I propose the following methods to upgrade the player experience and direct player attention to the Architect system:

I. Farm Flagging

When architects create an arc or when players rate an arc, there should be a radio button that they can click to indicate the arc is a farm. If a given arc accumulates over 50 unique “farm” votes, or if the mission architect flags the arc as a farm, the arc is flagged “farm”.
Farms should be hidden from the MA interface unless a player specifies they are searching for Farms by clicking a toggle in the search window. Farms should also not be eligible for "Hall of Fame" or "Player's Choice" awards.
Alternately, farms could just be deleted outright by the automated system.

Misusing Farm Flagging to grief legitimate non-farm arcs should be an offense like griefing or obscenity that is a bannable / MA privs revocation sort of offense.

II. Remove Arc Clutter (Thanks to Sister_Twelve for the core idea for this point):

The system should automatically delete or hide from searches any arcs that have 0 plays in the last 90 days.
The system should automatically delete or hide from searches any arcs that have an average rating of below 2.0 over a 90 day span.
(Optional) The system should automatically delete or hide from searches arcs that are flagged ‘Farm’ (see above).

III. Reward for each play and rating

We can see the power of providing a reward table at the end of a mission. The BAF and Lambda trials are a testament to the power of such reward tables to drive player participation. Unfortunately, the current system of incarnate rewards is tied to only two trials – creating the sensation of an endless perpetual grind on the same two pieces of content.
Imagine tying the power of a story-end reward to the Architect Edition. Now, players are being driven by this powerful incentive to participate in unique stories – and there will never be a grind, because new content is being developed all the time.
Reward tables could be varied to incentivize a diversity of behaviors:

• Provide a reward table granting one uncommon or rare IO enhancement recipe or INF for the completion and rating of any arc that has less than 25 total plays so far.

• Provide a reward table granting one rare IO enhancement or 20 threads or INF for every play-through of an arc the player has never played through before. Odds of getting a better reward could improve with increasing length or complexity of the arc, incentivizing players to seek out more intricate arcs and incentivizing architects to put more thought into their work.


• Provide a reward table granting 10 (-1*number of replays) threads for every replay of an existing arc within a 1 week time period.

• Provide a “notice-of-the-well” style special reward for playing certain categories of arcs on a rotating basis (like the Weekly TF, except for MA arcs). This suggestion is employed above as a means to incentivize the monthly “Player’s Choice” arc.

• Advertise these benefits and the monthly Player’s Choice arc aggressively.

• Provide badges for # of unique arcs played and # of arcs played that had less than 25 plays when the player played them.
The more players play and rate unique content, the more rewards they reap. It’s not tied to the number of baddies they kill, so this reduces the incentive for building farms. The more powerful the positive reinforcement, the more likely players are to participate.

IV. Reward for accurately rating quality content

Provide players with a reward if they give 4 or 5 stars to an arc that goes on to become a Player’s Choice arc. (An ‘Architect Rater’ merit, for example, that may be exchanged for a reward table roll. Or a number of tickets. Or a badge. Or some combination of the above.)

Consider increasing the value of the vote for players who consistently rate content accurately. For example, if I consistently rate content that ends up being removed from the system (1 or 2 stars on average over 90 days) with 1 or 2 stars, or if I consistently rate content that is selected for Monthly Player’s Choice at 4 or 5 stars, then my vote should count for more or less, respectively.

[My vote] = 1 + (.025 * Number of 4-5 star Monthly Player’s choice rates + .025 * Number of 1 – 2 star ratings of arcs eventually purged from the system after 90 days).

Starting "5 star clubs" and "You rate me 5 I'll rate you 5" agreements should be a reportable offense just like griefing or obscenity - and should result in loss of MA privileges at a minimum.

We also need to develop an automated recommendation engine that will recommend arcs to players, based either on their expressed interests or on a set of under the hood metrics. The recommendations from this engine would replace the current from page of the search (which showcases guest arcs and dev’s choice arcs that already have thousands of plays) and would encourage players to play new content that interests them. It would not exclusively recommend arcs that already have high ratings or lots of plays – players can search for those on their own. Rather, it would recommend arcs that may have great content but which need more exposure to really take off. Or, it could recommend arcs that players whose votes are weighted heavily have approved of.

For example, it could recommend the most played arcs with under 300 total plays over the last 10 hours (or something similar).

Another idea, proposed by SupaFreak, would be to create an incentivized "random task" button. Players may accept one random MA task every 20 hours, and a special reward could be tied to accepting that task. Doing so would then drop them into an arc with "Final" status. (See SupaFreak's post below for more detail.)

3.Content Integration:

PoliceWoman had a great post on this.

The new content in the game (i19, i20) needs to be integrated with the MA system for the MA system to stay alive.

This is an easy fix – you can kill two birds with one stone. I’ve already integrated my solution into the recommendations above.

Here are the two big problems I hear being complained about on CoH right now (that aren’t bases):

I. Mission Architect is Broken (see this post)

II. Incarnate Content is a Grind and is not conducive to Solo Players' Enjoyment

Kill two birds with one stone. Award threads and incarnate components for playing, rating, and participating in arcs. I’m talking reward tables of the sort found at the end of the BAF and Lambda trial, placed there in order to incentivize Architects to make great content and to incentivize players to highly rate good, story driven content.

See the contents of my post above to find more suggestions.

This would get both the mission architect monkey off of your back, and would also resolve players complaining about the two-trial grind found in the Incarnate system. Everyone is happy.

4.Number of slots.

Wrong_Number mentioned in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=221800 that, owing to her 8 slots being full, her authoring career is over.

This is a bad thing because she’s won two player’s choice awards and an AE nomination for best story.

Other players (winners of Dev’s choice awards, Player’s choice awards), et cetera have expressed the same concern. Their slots fill up, and their authoring career is cut short.

Why would you want to punish the most prolific generators of free quality content in your game?

This is an easy fix, and one I’ve already suggested above.

Award Architect Merits, 1 for every 10 five star ratings an architect gets on a given arc. Allow architect merits to be exchanged for slots. That way, when someone like WN makes an awesome arc, the game automatically devotes more resources to allowing her to showcase her talent and improve content.
You want more slots? Make better arcs.

I don’t see any reason to put a maximum on the number of potential slots earned this way. These players are adding value to the game at no cost to you – in fact, they’re paying you to add value to your game. These high-quality content authors should be rewarded whenever possible and to the greatest extent possible.


5. Patch Notes


Last, but not least, and of minor note relative to the rest, this thread http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=259226 contains quite a few players beating on the drum and saying a truth that needs to be heeded:

For Pete’s sake, when you change architect, let us know what you did in the patch notes so we may adjust and respond accordingly. A transparent dialog with the players will only improve the value of your game and make the community happier.

Conclusion

The player community of any MMO is its greatest resource. CoX has done a fantastic job cultivating a dedicated, helpful community. We're willing to provide you with content for free, we're willing to curate that content, and we're willing to tell you (in broad strokes) our ideas for how to get it all done.

All you need to do is give us the tools to help you.

In this case, that means unbridling the creativity of the Mission Architects, providing incentives for them to be creative, providing players incentives for playing the new content, and then getting out of the way.

If Mission Architect is handled right, it represents a nearly limitless source of added value that will allow developers to get off the content-generation treadmill all of the competitors are stuck on and focus at least some of their attention on important under the hood modifications, quality of life enhancements, and new gameplay features (archetypes, powers, power sets, etc.) that are critical to the long-term success of the game.

I anticipate that my fellow players and AE experts will add their questions, comments, and suggestions below.

If you think this post is worth being seen by the Devs, considering tweeting the URL: http://tinyurl.com/3msepfr to @Positron_CoH and messaging the rednames here on the boards. Links (in red) below go to their message board profile pages, from which you may send them a message by clicking the dark grey "send message" button right under their name.

Beastyle
Zwillinger
Dr. Aeon
Black Scorpion
Positron
Baronyx

Acknowledgements:

Wrong_Number, Policewoman, Bubbawheat, Eva Destruction, AIB, SupaFreak, and many others were instrumental in helping me think through the issues related to this post.

Right - that came to mind as you and I were discussing, actually. I realized the tone between "Black as Midnight" and "Clown Capers" was so different it might not work for characters to move around much between those two.

We came up with a better idea shortly, and all was well.


We're still figuring this all out. I don't want to get too mired down in rules or anything. I mentioned those things because they sound like good ideas to me - not as a way to condemn anyone.

There's also a question about what to do if you want to tip to an arc whose author is 'gone'. (Side question: If an account goes defunct, and the arc is published but not Dev's choice or some special designation, does the arc disappear too?)

Yes and no.

I really enjoyed Black as Midnight. I had seen your global character contest and it had sparked the idea of integration. I needed believable heroes for my arc - heroes who were in a bind, and thought it would be cool to have characters who had been seen elsewhere.

When I messaged you, I was thinking arc-arc integration. I was actually hoping you might allow Ravenessence, Brother Dayless, Xeronyx, or a lesser character to appear (for those that don't know, the characters I've just named are from Black as Midnight, Arc ID 482914).

However, I wasn't clear about communicating that (my fault) - and you got the impression (I think) that I wanted one of your toons (similar to the global character contest). This was a serendipitous situation, though - I got what I wanted - a character for my arc people have no doubt seen somewhere else (out running around in the game world!) - that's arc-world integration - and by including some extra stuff I won't spoil for the players here, we used the same toon to achieve arc-arc integration anyway.

So you had an idea (the contest) that gave me an idea (including a character from Black as Midnight) which, when I communicated with you, turned into an even better idea that allowed us to work together and achieve two kinds of integration.

That's why this whole thing is a good idea - it gets people who want to tell good stories putting their heads together, and that can only mean good things.

I think most integration is best done this way. Like cool easter eggs the players can find that reference other arcs or suggest content they may be familiar with.

It would take a lot of work and collaboration to make a pair of arcs that are so integrated they have primary objectives in common that don't seem... forced or copycat-ish.

It can be done, for sure. But it would take a lot of collaboration from the ground-up, I think.

Wow. Thank you.

This collaborative authorship process was awesome.

Yes. In combination with Ænvasion, if we do enough of this we could see an AE renaissance.


So this is an interesting area when you discuss creative processes.

"Good writers borrow - great writers steal." Rather appropriately, that quotation has been attributed to Wilde, Twain, and others.

Copycatting in terms of plagiarism (and I think that's how you meant it)? Yes, awful.

Adopting innovative practices that make the entire AE community better? Just fine, I think.

For example, the concept of integration - I hope you and I aren't the only ones to do it. I hope everyone does it.

Similarly (to be quite honest), I think some of the game-mechanics innovations and other augmentations found in "Black as Midnight" ought to eventually become "best practices" for creating a high quality arc - just like the idea of writing good descriptions for custom characters.

Thieving content without permission? Lame.

Sharing content for integration? Awesome.

Adopting good practices for making quality arcs? Awesome.

If you like something, ask permission and the author will probably help you work something out.

For clue text, it's as easy as typing.

For characters, they are just a .costume file in the CoH folder. That's a text file with all of the costume information. Make sure to get the format exact - spaces before and after are important.

But if I want to give you a costume, all I have to do is click "save" in the character editor, send it to you, and voila - you've got my toon or my custom character from the AE editor.


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That's just my philosophy.