Bleak_Wanderer

@Apolinus reviews...

Black as Midnight
TL;DR: Excellent. Top 5% of arcs in the game. Five stars.


Introduction and General Comments

The level range for this arc is listed as 22-27 according to @SupaFreak, so I brought my level 24 Warshade, Shadowjackal. He's a minor toon of mine - I play him for fun, so he's primarily slotted with SOs and I haven't paid tremendous amounts of attention to his build. It's tough to get a low level MA team together these days, so I soloed this one. I ran it on +1 x 0 difficulty.

I did not read any of the other reviews of the arc before typing my own so as not to bias myself - so if my comments echo those of another review, @SupaFreak can rest assured that's an independent confirmation of the other reviewer's idea. As a result, I may ask some questions that @SupaFreak has already answered somewhere - I don't necessarily expect a response to any redundant questions I may have asked (or any questions I've asked, period.) Everything here is for SupaFreak's benefit.




I like the contact, Xeronyx, because he's distinctive enough to be interesting - the shades + mask effect (not sure if this is actually shades + mask or a trick to suggest a glasses shape that doesn't exist in the character editor) makes him unique, and his wardrobe contributes to and helps to anchor the atmosphere of the arc - which is a tough thing to do because you keep popping into this AE building that isn't involved in the story at all. (My point: @SupaFreak does a good job trying to overcome the narrative-shredding effect of being pulled into the AE building again and again, and uses Xeronyx to weave as immersive a story as one can using the AE system.)

The hard work and attention to detail put into this arc are evident from the first click. The mission objectives are all color coded. The maps for mission one (and each subsequent mission) appear to have been hand-picked - carefully chosen for their specific layout, and it seems @SupaFreak has even gone to the effort to choose maps that will reliably spawn mission elements in the same place so that he can have a predictable gameplay experience. (In one mission, you are told that sounds are coming from somewhere "ahead and to the left" - very nice.

There are also lots of custom enemies with appearances that correspond roughly to the challenge they present - and plenty of custom allies and cleverly scripted events (exploitation of "rescue" mechanics to make nearby characters say lines of dialog at story-relevant points in time during the mission).

He also makes extensive use of clues to provide regular missions summaries so that the player does not get lost in the arc and so that players who are not the team leader can try to keep up with the story.

Mission One

Right from the get-go, @SupaFreak starts weaving a unique story. He's got named characters who are referenced by the contact as if they are known personally to him and have their own traits - being referred to as the "less experienced" heroes. I really liked the idea of being called in to rescue these neophytes who may have gotten in over their heads. He also tries hard to give each character his or her own voice.

I was very impressed with the game mechanics exploited to create mission target waypoints on the map - Ravessence essentially escorts the player to Deadfall's location in a refreshing reversal of the intended use of the game mechanic.

I liked the allied spirits floating around - they looked cool.

Mission one closed with a boss battle against Phantom Strike. He was not maddeningly difficult, and it was a fun fight. He was very believable as a Tsoo boss.

He and Shadowjackal traded blows.



And Shadowjackal learned important lessons about not letting your foe get behind you...



Before Shadowjackal put Phantom Strike down for the count and finished the mission.


Mission One: Constructive Criticism

1. Minor concern:

The text, "Xeronyx joins his teammates in what appears to be their combined magic and failing tech efforts to track or combat something unseen," was confusing to me. I went in and then read the clues and it made more sense - my impression now is that Xeronyx and his crew are engaged in some sort of continuous struggle in this graveyard, and that you keep returning to their position to interact with them while they're fending off whatever unseen forces are there.

I may just be dense, but it took me a while to put that together.

Then more questions come to mind:

- Why is this fight going on? Who are they fighting? Why are the attackers motivated to come after them? I can take guesses, but that story isn't really gone into much throughout the rest of the arc - my character gets engrossed in his own endeavors.

- From a story construction perspective, what is the narrative purpose of having the team engaged in battle in the graveyard?

- Why do they have time to stand/sit/lay around and chat with me if they're under constant siege?

Perhaps some of these will be answered in sequel arcs.

2. Possible minor correction:

"Xeronyx's cell phone makes what seems to be a 'powering on' signal."

Very nitpicky issue here. 'Signal' reads kind of funny in this line. Made me stop and spend a few seconds thinking about whether that word fits. You 'get signal' with your cell phone. Cell phones could be said to 'send and receive' signals'.

Devices can make audible tones which people could refer to as a 'signal'.

But the more common usage here (that would keep me from thinking about this for five minutes) would be 'sound'. This would avoid confusion with all of the other meanings of the word 'signal'.

"Xeronyx's cell phone makes what seems to be a 'powering on' sound."

Wouldn't have thought twice if I had seen that. Did think twice when I saw 'signal'.


Mission Two

Can't say enough good things about the map entrance for mission two, which I am confident @SupaFreak chose on purpose. Created just the right ambiance for the mission - I was impressed. No screen shot or detailed description because I want players to experience that nice suprise for themselves.

Brother Dayless got nailed by a low level minion (a Death Mass) early on while I was concentrating on other mobs, so I ran most of the mission alone. I do like Dayless' dialect though - though it's not entirely clear to me (even after reading his description) as to why he's from the 1920s. Does the entire arc take place in the 20s? Is he a time traveler? Am I a time traveler?

Maybe this will be answered in a sequel arc.

The ambush after Tormas got me, but I came back from the hospital and went straight to the final mission objective with no problems (and no sign of that ambush).

Mission Two: Constructive Criticism

1. Possible minor correction:

"You have the tenacity to call me a liar" - Tenacity might be better rendered as 'audacity' or 'temerity'. If you're interested, check the definitions of all three words to see what I mean.


2. Possible minor correction:

"Midnight....
Oh, let me give him the old Broderick, X."


For consistent formatting, there probably needs to be another space between those lines.


3. Story related question:

If Black Maverick died of a stroke as Xeronyx seems to believe, and if Xeronyx is in charge of the investigation (as he seems to be), why are we investigating Black Maverick's death in this manner? Isn't this more of a medical, rather than supernatural question? Sounds to me like this problem calls for an autopsy, not the Midnight Squad.

Perhaps Xeronyx noticed something else unusual about the circumstances of Maverick's death, but if he did it's not mentioned that I saw. Sounds to me like Black Maverick was in a graveyard (not an unusual place for someone in the Midnight Squad to be) and dropped dead of a stroke. It happens. Why are we here?


Mission Three

There are some very nice suprises here, and some very aesthetically pleasing elements. This mission was short, but almost cinematic in its appearance.



The natural light effects combine very nicely with the mobs in this mission.

Mission Three: Constructive Criticism

1. General comment:

Ravenessence says "hon" a lot. I think it would be possible to give her a unique voice using more than just one or two words - her manner of speech begins to grate on my nerves by the time mission three rolls around. Couldn't imagine having her as a contact for a whole arc unless I got to fight her at the end.

2. Mob navigation error(?):

The spectral servants got stuck in the doorway. I have no idea how you would go about fixing this or if you would even want to - the text within the mission suggests to me @SupaFreak might be aware of the problem and might have incorporated it into the story of the mission. Very well.

Mission Four

Not much to say here. Solid gameplay experience, but little to comment on that I haven't said already or won't say below. Very nice custom mobs - it's clear a lot of effort went into choosing them. Everything has a description of some sort or another, which is nice.

Mission Four: Constructive Criticism

1. Gameplay:

I had a Shadowcaster and Disciple of the Mind pretty near camping the entrance door. Combination of psi damage, mez, and heals made this a very frustrating gameplay experience. I eventually managed to take them down, but not until I got held and murdered a few times and had a couple of frustrating near-wins until one of them healed the other or itself (not sure which).


2. Minor clue text issue:

Plural of Shaman is "Shamans" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shaman).

Mission Five

The handy warning and the inspirtation tips in the mission five intro were appreciated - and are definitely appropriate. The fog inside the mission creates a very spooky feeling - especially with the glow of shadowmancers in the distance.

I knew I had problems though when Shadowjackal faceplanted three times on a lone Mastermind powerset mob in the beginning of the stage.



I got sufficiently frustrated that I phase-shifted to squid form and ghosted the map to find the final boss. Travelling around, I found that the mobs were equipped with hold/mez (I think) effects that locked me up quite a few times - and any fights I got engaged in were frustrating due to the extensive use of Dark Powers, which make it pretty hard to hit anything.

I eventually found the final boss, fought him, and died.

So I ghosted to him again, fought him, and died.

So then I developed a strategy, ghosted to him, fought him, and died.

Just didn't have the damage output to overcome his regeneration and other abilities. So I logged onto my main, transferred some inf around, flew to the Black Market, and gleemailed some inf and recipes over to Shadowjackal.

Then Shadowjackal crafted every temporary power in the game except the crappy common attack ones.



(If this image had a sound to go with it, that sound would be insane, maniacal laughter.)

Then I had him go to Wentworth's and buy a bunch of large insps. Four purples, two blues, a green, two reds, and I had a small purple on hand.

Blew the small purple on the way back to the final boss (got held in the cavern).

Final battle was epic. I summoned a PPD ally, buffed up like crazy, and charged in there like Gandalf at Helm's Deep. (I think it was Helm's deep, anyway).



The final boss didn't stand a chance. Stomp stomp stomp with all of my temporary powers and such. Very gratifying after earlier frustrations.

Conclusion

This is an extremely well crafted arc with tremendous attention to detail. The color coding, the architect's knowledge of the maps, and the clever usage of architect mechanics makes this a tremendously entertaining arc to experience, generally.

The strongest negative feelings I had about the arc came in the later levels, when it became significantly less solo-friendly. One could argue in the new AE climate of today that solo-friendliness is (sadly) pretty integral to player-friendliness.

In later levels, I kept flashing back to Kidou's "Guide to Making a Balanced Enemy Group" thread. I felt as though there were a lot of holds, mezzes, and -tohit powers flying around on minions, and eventually this drove me to just ghost to the objectives in the later missions, because each fight was a slog to get through if I could make it at all. I was reminded of the suggestion to substitue "Dark" powersets for something else like "Fire" in order to minimize player rage.

This could have to do with me using a Kheld I rarely usely to solo the mission.

This could have to do with me having the difficulty set at +1.

I recognize that mission difficulty is a philosophical consideration up to each author - but the frustrating experience I had in the later levels of this arc made me think about going back and altering my own arc a bit. I don't have any holds and not much -ToHit in my arc, but I have a few "challenging" ambush spawns that were fun to make and made me feel good when I made them... but which may just not be right for the player experience.

I also kept having questions. Some of them are listed above. Another question that kept coming to mind was: Who are these benevolent spirits? Where are they coming from? What are they doing here? What is their purpose? Perhaps this will be explored in future content. If so, nice tease.

I look forward to seeing more from @SupaFreak - and I believe some of his innovative approaches to mission design may become the standard for the construction of quality missions. I may try to apply some of what I've learned from playing his arc in my own mission design.

Ultimately, summing together the entire experience: The detailed narrative, the high-quality color-coded objectives, the intricate and clear description of the storyline through the use of clues, the clever use of game mechanics, and the detailed cahracters and costume designs, I believe this arc to be among the best 5% in the AE system. It is clear that a tremendous amount of hard work and storytelling elbow grease went into the contruction of this arc. Therefore, I give it a rating of Five Stars.

How about trying to concentrate on a manageable list of (seemingly) minimal effort fixes that require a one time investment of effort and would yield tremendous improvements in the quality of the system, thereby attracting more players?

Such a list would be largely automatable solutions that once implemented would increase incentives for both players and mission architects and would be sustainable in the long term with minimal maintenance over what is already being done.

Ideally, that thread would include links to a list of rednames who could be contacted and encouraged to read it in the hopes that a few of them might pick it up as a side project one month, bang out a few of those fixes, and see if it revitalizes the system.

In a perfect world, those who believed in the utility of those suggestions would participate in creating a groundswell of encouragement directing NCSoft (and by extension, the devs) to attend to the requested fixes in a timely fashion.


....That's the best solution I've been able to think of. Frankly, given the current level of success (not a whisper from the devs and a lot of understandable skepticism from a jaded AE community), I don't think it deserves a cookie...

...but I'm open to hearing a better solution.

What I'm not ready to do quite yet is throw my hands up and go run another iTrial.

Awesome - thank you very much.

Thanks, Bubbawheat! Added a link to the post up top.

Alright.. I promise.. promise I'm not trying to make you grind your teeth on purpose. And I continue to appreciate your time.

Got a couple of questions though.

That seems like it would make it quite easy to report those players for five-star-clubbing, since you can see the tag right their on their arc descriptions.

Now, I suppose all they'd have to do is move the five star club to an off-site message board and post the arc names there...

Imagine if you could just report those messages or those players, the same way you can if someone is being obscene. And then those people would lose their MA privileges.

I could see a properly functioning reporting system reducing the population of badgers to,

1. People who are dedicated enough to work out some sort of off-site message board.

2. Groups that only coordinate amongst themselves, as it would be too risky to go ask random players for help due to the reporting function.

The question I have is, would this reduce the number of badgers/5-star clubbers to a small enough population size to be inconsequential. (The same reason the "merits for reporting" might not work - not enough violators to worry about.)


So you don't think that if everyone who reads this thread sends a message to every redname I listed and tells them to look at this because it's an important issue that it will matter?

Why would the rednames conspire to neglect a feature so aggressively? At some point, it becomes more work to ignore than it is to just implement a few fixes.

Especially when, once those fixes are implemented, the system remains hands-off (or becomes more hands-off than it already was).


That's my point. These people, no matter how mindless and grind-ey they are... they watch movies. Some of them read comic books. They consume stories elsewhere - I think we can convert them.

If architect worked the way it ought to work, more people would participate.

I know sites that work using premises similar to those I've described. They have their flaws - their five star mafias and their popular players - people who get voted 5 stars just because of their name, rather than the quality of the content.

But you know what? Thousands and thousands of people use that system daily. They play the content. They rate the content. They consume the stories. They communicate.

I'm not trying to create a system that is free of problems - any system will have flaws.

I'm trying to encourage the devs to return MA to being something fun for the majority of players - something worth maintaining and adding features to.

Right now, it's something broken, neglected, and largely unplayed. That thread Venture directed me to was essentially all the people whose opinions I've come to respect the most while lurking expressing the desire to abandon MA.

Something needs to change.

I'm not saying my proposed solutions are ideal. I'm saying they're better than where we are now.

Farm flagging will allow those people who want farms to go pursue their farms, and it will remove those farms from eligibility for consideration on Player's Choice and HoF.

Incentives will motivate some players and some architects who otherwise wouldn't to participate in the system - and among those, there will be good players and good architects who will discover or re-discover the system.

You and I may disagree on the solutions - but I think we have similar goals.

And I don't think it can hurt to scream at the rednames one last time.

The only other alternative is to give up - which I see some of you have, as you're planning to let your subscriptions lapse.

All I'm asking is that you spend the final few weeks or months giving them hell.


And we don't know how many of these guys are out there until we can get them into the MA building.

Agreed. That's why I've written an open letter to the Devs in the first post of this thread and listed potential solutions to the problems the community has identified.

I understand the dynamic you're trying to point out - my response is that it's that very dynamic that is AE's fatal flaw.

The first step is identifying the problem.

Now, either we come up with a way to fix it, or it's doomed to be neglected by the Devs.

The Devs absolutely have to implement the solution - but it would be nice if we could think up a functional suggestion for them. We've got a lot of brain power we can reach out to here, so it's worth considering.

You don't think a system for reporting the five star cartels would work at all? (Perhaps you can enlighten me as to the history of such attempts?


Yep - that's a problem. And (hopefully) those who infringe are so rare that any reward would be meaningless.

I can see your point there - perhaps rewards for reporting aren't sensible.


I mean the CoX community. Us plus the Devs.

The Devs respond to our needs, inasmuch as our needs dictate their profits.

Things are already broken - so we need to identify those things, recommend fixes, and ask loudly enough that it's made a priority. That was my goal with this thread -to do something productive with my time rather than complain.

I don't doubt that it's been tried before - but I think this is our last shot, if it's not too late already.

The key to drawing their Devs' attention is making the Mission Architect a viable option for a large section of the playerbase again. We're talking 40% or more playing MA when they log on.

That's a tall order.

I'm trying to figure out how to get that done.

The Devs have pretty strong motivation to implement a working MA system if we can convince them of it - limitless free content is a pretty sweet deal from their point of view.

We just have to come up with workable solutions to the issues that don't require gobs of time and money.


Frankly, I'm beginning to doubt they have the manpower.

Any solution we come up with needs to be self-sustaining once it's implemented. Otherwise, it can be screwed up by neglect - and we're right back to bases.

And I've tried to suggest a solution by having arcs unplayed for 90 days be hidden or deleted and arcs with 2 stars or less and a certain number of votes be hidden or deleted.

Yep. That's another core problem with the system.

Solutions?


Double digits isn't a lot.

No, but sadly, they are for most people. Some kind of shiny to work toward is what keeps people coming back to the trough, playing the content for endless hours. Look at the iTrials for an example.

Combine the grind-motivating rewards from an iTrial with the endless novely of MA and you have a recipe for success. We just have to figure out how to solve the problems and then sell those solutions to the Devs.



Yeah, as long as you've got a sharp ear. I really wish the ENTER dialog would layer ON TOP of the character creation window. Ah well.



That's why we have to convince the Devs to bring the casual users over, utilizing the methods I've suggested.

I can't think of a better alternative - and a fatalistic attitude strips me of any power to change the situation, so I'm not ready to go there yet.

This "random task" idea is fantastic. This could be exactly what is needed to encourage players to play less-played material.

Absolutely agreed. That, and if this problem stands, it runs the risk of completely destroying any utility of AE - but since Aeon has already said a fix is being worked on, that does seem somewhat unlikely.

I agree badges must be used judiciously.

I think we need to figure out a way to tie badges to achievements you can't "do as quickly as possible and never touch again".

Here's what I'd like to do:

I'd like to tie badges and rewards to well crafted arcs and appropriate behavior. If you craft an arc that a lot of people genuinely enjoy, even if you "do it as quickly as possible and never touch it again" who cares - you made a great arc. Or if you achieve goals that move architect system toward what you and I are thinking about when we envision the ideal AE (for example, by honestly reporting legitimately infringing content), I'd like to see a reward tied to that.

The trick is how to provide positive incentives without playing into the hands of players who are "faking it" and gaming the system.

How do we get the system to recognize when players are doing what they ought to do, and when they are just forming a "five star rating club" so their account can get the "Made a Good Arc" badge?

That's the core problem undermining architect right now - finding a way to reward legitimate players and crafters without motivating farmers and speed-badgers.


NCSoft needs to demonstrate that they promote that sort of behavior, though - because they're trying to establish a record of seeking out and eliminating infringing content. I presented the "reward for reporting" as an alternative to the "absurdly restrictive filter" that could be something they could still hold up in court and say, "See? We are making a good faith effort to stop infringement."

Rather than treat every architect like a criminal, why not reward good players for doing the right thing? (If we can find a way to do it without having people exploit the reporting system to earn those carrots.)


(Emphasis mine)

How do you propose we do that without some means of positive reinforcement?

But way up on the list of liabilities worrying the people holding the purse strings over at NC Soft. We have to find a concrete way to alleviate their concerns if we are to get our AE back.


How do we bring back the ones who left?

How do we bring in new people to breathe additional life (and quality content) into the architect system? What do you recommend?


That's true, but I think for the sake of AE, it's important to encourage the generation of new content and of players playing new content.

A balance needs to be struck between encouraging playthroughs of well established content and encouraging playthroughs of new content.

Right now, the balance is weighted too heavily toward encouragement of playing established content - if I build a new arc and don't promote it, it's liable to sit there for months with no plays.

That's not a whine - I realize it's on me to promote it - but new Architects will feel more encouraged if they get more plays earlier on in their newly built arcs. And more architects building quality arcs is a good thing.


That's why I included the "farm button" provision. If I see an arc that's a farm, I farm button it and it gets deleted or hidden from the search - and is rendered ineligible for the Hall of Fame / Player's Choice consideration.

Did I not make that clear enough? *considers going back and editing...*

If my "farm button" is a bad idea, can you think of something better? I'm just trying to figure out some kind of solution, here.


How do we breathe life back into AE without rewarding players for playing?

More people using a feature = Life for that feature.

NCSoft is a great company that cares about their customers - but they don't see "quality storytelling experiences for their players" - they see $$. They will direct the devs' time based on those features being utilized by the largest number of players - which means we have to find a way to motivate people to use architect edition for its intended purpose.

That means incentivizing participation in the right way while not incentivizing going through the motions just to farm stuff.

Maybe. But I suspect there are some folks who are good authors out there but who are trapped on the iTrial hampster wheel - who could make seriously good quality stories with the proper motivation.

The way we avoid bringing in an influx of crappy storytellers is we only reward the telling of good stories. (Player's choice system + Farm button.)

This sort of behavior should be reportable and should be grounds for stripping of MA privs.

Can't think of any other solution off the top of my head.


My concern is that they also keep them out of AE.


Then how do we lure more players to AE, thereby directing the Devs' attention to the AE feature as something that deserves to be preserved and improved?


Again - I'm grateful for your input.

Thanks, Bubbawheat. I see your point. I've changed the text to read 'delete or hide from searches' to reflect the full range of options available.

How active is the AE community?

* We have built websites – that are still active and in use - dedicated to playing and reviewing arcs, like @El Furioso’s City of Heroes Mission Review

* We have players regularly producing video reviews and playthroughs of AE content and posting them to Youtube – thereby creating free, crowdsourced marketing for CoX properties on other websites. See Bubbawheat’s “On your M-Arc” Thread and Youtube Account.

* We have players and groups working on innovative ways to continue to improve the Mission Architect gameplay experience. See @SupaFreak’s Operation: Integration thread.

* We have player groups actively creating and promoting events, in some cases scheduling events that rotate between various servers and in other cases sponsoring contests for the generation of quality content. See @BackFire’s
Ænvasion thread and The American Legion’s Monthly AE Author Contest.

* Players continue to play, review, and promote other players’ arcs. See ArrowRose’s Excellent Arcs thread and GlaziusF’s CoHMR Aggregator thread.

* Since the inception of Mission Architect, AE players have generated a tremendous volume of content:



(Thanks to Dragon_Surge for pointing the image out to me and Kotaku for the original infographic.)

Not to knock anyone else – but I challenge you to find another community in the CoH environment that generates as much free content, free advertising, discussion about the game, and interaction among the players as Mission Architect.

Problems and Solutions

So what’s the problem?

As great as it is, the current level of activity in AE is only a fraction of what it could be and is representative of the tenacity, dedication, and frankly, patience of this valuable group of creative players.
A quote from respected MA community member and Player’s Choice winner, @PW (PoliceWoman):

A quote from respected MA community member and Dev’s Choice winner, @Bubbawheat:

A great deal of the following will be a summary of what can be found in the following threads:

What keeps you away from AE arcs?
Hall of Fame Requirements Need Revisiting
Copyright/Profane Question
Bubbawheat's Mission Architect Issues List
Mission Architect Feature Suggestions


Looking (very-unscientifically) through the player responses to the first four pages of Bubbawheat’s thread:

What keeps you away from AE arcs?

I see the following (Complaint - Number of times it’s mentioned in pages 1 – 4)

Poorly written/poorly designed arcs – 20

Search function is difficult to use effectively – tough to sort wheat from chaff. 20

Too many farms/exploits/exploiters – 14

MA rewards are inferior (No shards, No threads, Lower XP, No Purples, etc.) – 14

Arc Rating System is Flawed – 11

Architect is a “game within a game” – 5

Developer content outcompetes MA content – 4

Patches/filters kill arcs – 4

Author interface is poorly designed - 4

Too many dead arcs – 3

Nothing is wrong! – 1

No incentive to write arcs – 1

The whole system is poorly implemented – 1

Of these 101 complaints, fully 68% could be fixed by changes to the arc search and review system – add reasonable incentives for properly reviewing arcs, and you could fix over 80% of player complaints.


Search and Review, Arc Recognition, and Ratings Systems Fixes

We need to fix the system we use to recognize architect achievement and make it easier for players to find good arcs.
I propose the following measures to help players sort good arcs from the ‘dross’:

I. Farm Flagging

90% Automatable – Minimal Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

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.
Players who wish to farm could still search for farms simply by clicking an “include farms” radio button. If you really want to cater to the Farming community, you could create a “Farmer’s Choice” award available only to arcs flagged as “Farm”.

Letting Farmers search for Farms and hide story arcs would stop quality story-driven arcs from getting voted down just for not being farms.
Alternately, farms could just be deleted outright by the automated system.

Paragon Staff Post-Implementation Involvement: Enforcement:

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):

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

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.

The ‘Work in Progress’ distinction should be removed. If an arc is a “Work in Progress”, it should be local – not published. All ‘Work in Progress’ arcs should be hidden from the search at a minimum and possibly deleted.

The only arcs visible should be “Looking for Feedback” (which should be a tool authors can use to get opinions from friends/forum members and should be open to comments, but should have no star ratings attached) and “Final”.

III. Revise the Ratings System

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

When an author clicks the “Final” button, this begins a period of time governed by an automatic counter (a week? Two weeks? A month?) during which that arc is “Under Judgment”.

The star system remains in place, but actually feeds into a behind-the-scenes “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” binary vote system.

1 or 2 stars = “Thumbs Down”. 3, 4, or 5 stars = “Thumbs Up”. This should fix some of the bias inherent to the “star ratings average” approach.
If, by the end of the judgment period, an arc has more “Thumbs Up” ratings than “Thumbs Down” ratings, that arc retains its Final status and (provided it isn’t flagged as a farm) becomes eligible for “Player’s Choice” and “Dev’s Choice”.

If, by the end of the judgement period, more people have rated the arc 1 or 2 stars than have rated it 3, 4, or 5 stars, then that arc is returned to its “Looking for Feedback” – still published (with all previous votes removed), but hidden from people who are searching specifically for “Final” arcs. Players can try again to submit the arc as “Final” at a later point in time (Two weeks? A month?).

This will automatically sort a great deal of the good arcs from the ‘dross’.

IV. Reward for accurately rating quality content

90% Automatable – Minimal Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

For a ratings system to work, you need players to play and rate arcs with the genuine intent of rating accurately. It makes sense that to do this, we need to incentivize playing and rating accurately (not just rating some random number of stars for the sake of pulling down incentives.)

Provide players with a reward if they give 4 or 5 stars during the “Under Judgement” period to an arc that goes on to become a Player’s Choice or Dev’s Choice arc (see below for details on Player’s Choice and Dev’s Choice). (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.) This reward should be competitive with rewards achievable outside of the architect system. Meaning it should include the possibility of purples and incarnate salvage (shards and/or threads and/or components).

Personally, I favor a system like the Architect Ticket system, where the player can choose between either an IO reward table (including purples) or an Incarnate Component Reward table such as they would see after a Lambda or BAF (with sufficient participation). Players lower than fifty could be forced to go with the IO option, players 50+ could have the Incarnate options.
Because the frequency of arcs achieving player’s choice or Dev’s choice will be low, Architect Rater merits would be exceedingly rare, so this will not unbalance the system or draw an inordinate number of players away from trials. What it will do is incentivize players to go over to the RWZ AE in between trials and run a mission or two to get a shot at that occasional very rare incarnate reward roll.

The “Judgement System” period would encourage the playing of new arcs over older, more well established arcs – thus giving exposure to new content while simultaneously filtering out the junk.

Additionally, 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 during the judgment period) 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).

Paragon Staff Post-Implementation Involvement: Enforcement:

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.

IV. Develop a Recommendation System / Random Task Button

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

We also need to develop an automated recommendation engine that will recommend arcs to players, based either on their expressed interests, arcs they’ve played in the past, or on a set of under the hood metrics. The recommendations from this engine would replace the current front 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.)

You could combine these two ideas by providing incentives for players who play recommended arcs.

I know this system can’t be especially hard to implement, as CoHMR has one – “Looking for a mission? How about…”. If a CoH fan site can do it, I have faith that the devs can.

More generally speaking, arc conclusion dialog reward tables could be varied to incentivize a diversity of behaviors without encouraging architects to create farm missions:

• Provide a reward table granting one rare IO enhancement or X threads or INF for every unique play-through of an arc during the “Under Judgement” period. 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. This could just rotate automatically.

• Advertise these benefits and the monthly Player’s Choice arc (see below) aggressively.

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.

V. Revise Dev’s Choice, Hall of Fame, and other means of Special Recognition

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

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:

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 100+ 4 OR 5 star ratings –AND- at least 500 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).

Player's Choice Designation

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 granted persistent “Final” status 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 total 4 or 5 star plays (including those from the judgment period) 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.

Other Issues

This issues aren’t what makes up 80% of the player complaints about the MA system – they are comparatively minor changes that would add to the long-term viability of the system.

Content Integration

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

PoliceWoman (@PW) had a great post on this, which touches on the complaints in Bubbawheat’s thread about how new content / dev content is outcompeting MA.

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. 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.

Number of Slots

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

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 also an easy fix:

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.

To preserve your bottom line, earning slots in this way might only be possible after the first 8 purchasable slots have been bought.

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.

Patches Notes

Not automatable – Paragon staff attention essential.

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.

Get The Word Out, Please

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.
In the Shawshank redemption, Andy Dufrense needed to secure funding for the prison library. So he wrote one letter a week to his congressman for years until he finally wore his congressman down.

I’m not talking about spamming or griefing the devs here. That won’t help anyone – so please don’t do that.

I am talking about creating a steady drumbeat of voices letting them know that this is a priority to the player community. The May developers’ letter tells us they will work on older content if we communicate to them that it is important.

Please, PM each of the following Devs regularly – you decide the frequency - once a week at most, once a month at least - until someone posts in this thread to let us know this is being looked at:

Beastyle
Zwillinger
Dr. Aeon
Black Scorpion
Positron
Baronyx

Acknowledgements:

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

Agreed. Ordered from most productive to least productive, our options are:

[Productive] 1. To discuss the problems and advocate for solutions. ("The filter is busted. Please fix it.")

[Less Productive, but Relevant] 2. To discuss the situation and the nature of the situation. ("The future of AE is at stake!")

[Not Productive, Not Relevant] 3. To discuss people. ("The Devs are Willy Wonka and the game is a messed up chocolate factory - they're trying to weed us out until they have only one super dedicated player.")


Let's look at the need and how they may most effectively meet that need.

The need is to be sufficiently aggressive as it relates to trademark infringement that other companies feel it would not be productive to sue them.

They already have a strong position to begin from -all of Marvel's trademark infringement counts in the 2005 case were thrown out by the court.

Further, the user agreement already forbids creation of infringing material and makes players responsible for compensating any third parties who file suit.

NCSoft has demonstrated a track record of deleting or renaming characters who have infringed the copyright.

So they're on pretty solid footing to begin with. The need for a filter is questionable at best.

However, I agree with you. A minimal filter would not be intrusive and would go far to demonstrate that NCSoft is serious about infringement. No - I should not be able to create an entity and name it "Professor Xavier" or "Batman".

That said, a filter is not the solution and should never be viewed as a solution.

The current situation seems to result from an attempt to make the filter (either the character naming filter or the MA filter) into an automated solution - this will never work.

First, the filter doesn't stop people who actually want to infringe. I can sit there and type in variants until I hit on one that works. Batman, B.a.t.ma.n, Chiropteraman, FlyingMammalMan, CapedKruzader... something is eventually going to work. Then I just set up the costume the way I want it, make him a martial arts technology scrapper, and have him fight a clown in green and purple.

Second, the filter is unnecessarily restrictive in terms of the damage it does to the creative process, given that it only impacts honest players to begin with. I should be able to use the words "Cyclops", "Beast", "White Queen" etc. to name units - because these words are common to the lexicon and could have plenty of meanings that don't reference some specific property.

The real solution to their problem is going to require monitoring by human beings. Period. A reporting system is the only way to catch those actual violations of the spirit of copyrighted properties that really matter. They can't rely on an automated system - so why use one that penalizes people who are legitimately trying to create content for the game?


NCSoft is good at customer service, I give you that.

But they've turned a deaf ear to the MA community - probably for legitimate reasons. In order to succeed, we need to give them a profit-motivated reason to pay attention to MA again.

I think a middle ground is appropriate.

I don't think we're fighting for the success of the game - not enough players care about MA for it to make or break the game.

I do firmly believe if we don't stick to our guns here and show the devs this is important, then MA = bases by Issue 21.

I wish a redname had created this thread, instead of a player.

Actually, ideally, the whole thing would be addressed on CoH frontpage or in the login messages. Yes, I know, advertising your failings is not good business - but communicating clearly with your player base is.

My subjective perception of the level of alarm is different from yours.

I agree that too much alarm can be unproductive because it ends up leading to a lot of screaming rather than anything getting done. We need to maintain a productive, determine attitude.


Agreed.

Question: What motivates the devs?

Answer: Their bosses.

Question: What are their bosses looking at when they make a determination in terms of how to direct the developers' time?

Answer: Dollar signs.

Assertion:

The Developers will put Mission Architect on a back burner, as they did with bases, if they feel that they can get away with it. This is not because they are horrible human beings who want to tie your mother to the train tracks as they twirl their moustaches - it's because they are people with a limited number of hours in the day who need to justify their continued employment to their bosses.

Boss says, "What are you doing?"

Positron says, "Spending forty hours a week working on a part of the game nobody cares about."

Bad day for Positron.

Right now, the powers that be are directing the devs' attention to the Steampunk pack and the Incarnate system. Steampunk pack because it will yield an influx of money - this game is moving away from being a legitimate MMO and slowly sliding into the territory of being a paymium dress-up game. Incarnate system because it will (hopefully) draw new players in.

I can't blame the devs for any of this. I have to listen to my boss too. And I can't blame NCSoft for wanting to make money.

What we have to do is make it reasonable for Positron (or whoever) to tell the higher ups that Mission Architect ought to be a priority.

The way to do that is to give him a thread or thread(s) to point at and say, "Here, look at this. It's a good business decision to spend time on Mission Architect."

....To do that, we need to get the player base fired up about MA.

If we can't, then we're done here - aside from maybe a very minor fix or two once in a while along the way (when someone decides to invest 5% of his or her work week hammering out a little issue in between working on the next costume parts pack).

I've seen it happen with my own two eyes. So, yes.

I'm not trying to recommend or enforce and environment where we have to walk around on eggshells, though.

I'm glad that you value keeping a cool head. Please keep in mind that statements like this,

Don't tend to promote an environment of calm and aren't productive. This is because,

1. You're addressing someone who may already be upset with a short imperative - "breathe" - that sounds like a command. People don't respond well to commands, particularly if they've come to a thread in an already aggrieved state of mind.

2. You're potentially misrepresenting the person. It's tough to divine what their state of mind is, but I doubt you or I actually believe that the person is sitting at that keyboard hyperventilating - so they're likely to resent being depicted as an hysteric.

3. You're communicating to everyone who reads your post (and is trying to get a sense of the thread) that you believe there is a heightened state of anxiety in the thread - they'll tend to interpret that and post in kind.

Now, being an individual who values calm, I doubt you meant to do any of that - and that means that even worse than anything, you're misrepresenting yourself when you communicate in that sort of language.

---

All that said, I'll restate that I think there is sufficient cause to express concern to the developers here.

They've made a fairly grave error, where Mission Architect is concerned. While it's tough to know what's going on under the hood, it looks like they've tied the MA filters to the character naming filters (a bad idea) or added terms to the MA filters (a bad idea). If the former, then our problems may have arisen while they were working on the related character naming filters. If the latter, they're specifically targeting the MA system - which is even scarier.

Either way, recent events show a lack of empathy on the part of the devs to the needs of the Architect community and the playerbase at large.

It is intuitively obvious that it would be a smart business decision for them to promote a system whereby players generate quality content for them for free. Yet they don't seem to be placing an especially high priority on repairing this crucial element that makes CoX games unique in the MMO playing field - only players who come to the boards and find this thread to find out have any idea of what's going on - and that information has been delivered in a couple of terse, vague posts buried within the pages of this thread - and even those players who send in complaints are getting somewhat indifferent responses from the GMs. Those response consist largely of, "Change your arc", rather than, "Hold tight - this will be fixed soon."

Some players are reacting to the overall pattern of treatment of the Mission Architect system. PoliceWoman did a good job encapsulating this feeling.

Players have a great deal of time and energy invested in the MA system - Wrong_Number has done a good job detailing why these new developments are a huge problem for the generators of arguably some of the best content in the game.

I'm particularly concerned by GM Roland's somewhat dogmatic assertion that they "can't remove the filter" without adding further detail. Is this a technical limitation, a legal limitation, or a practical limitation? What is being prioritized here and why? (I think the answer to that question is actually, "The steampunk pack. And I can't really fault them, since it will generate revenue. But still, I think they need to be reminded that MA is still important.)

Anyhow, I think there are some productive ideas and criticisms rolling out of this thread - and I don't see the value in trying to mute those criticisms when it's known that around here, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

To sum up, I don't think it's time for people to panic and start dropping their accounts by any means - but I do think a few pointed questions and a little cage rattling is warranted at this point.

I appreciate you drawing attention to this - some folks don't read every post.

I think our concerns remain valid, however.

This update was a pretty serious incursion into our latitude with the MA system - and any efficacious remedy must be similarly expansive, or the net effect will still be an unacceptable curtailment of creative freedom for no good reason.

I feel as though they need to catch significant heat over this, or the solution they implement before considering this "solved" and moving on will be far too minimal and will leave those who wish to use the MA system hamstrung.