Cavatina

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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.

So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.

if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?

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Because..theres a whole slew of badges for test mode? >>

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Or because...people actually take some pride in the work that they turn out?

edit: sorry not a dig at you Cav, I realize that by quoting that it may seem like it was, sorry

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Nah. Its okay. I agree with your point too. I tirelessly tested both of my arcs before publish simply because I wanted to be sure they werent buggy or typo filled.

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If you are willing to accept the praise that comes along with a 4-5 star rating, then conversely you need to be able to stomach a few 1-2 ratings that may not include any supporting comments.


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I am sorry but I don't understand what this has to do with this thread.

[/ QUOTE ] Really? People are crying about bad ratings. They need to get over themselves and realize that maybe their story isn't that great.

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I'm mostly crying about the fact even a few 3 stars can drag your arc to 4 star territory where its suddenly buried somewhere around the 90th's page of arcs. even if you have 64+ ratings

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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.

So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.

if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?

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Because..theres a whole slew of badges for test mode? >>

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The problem is the system doesnt allow you to dig through the thousands and thousands of arcs easily

This makes it so finding anything other than 5 stars is an excercise in futility.

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Pick one or several star ratings you want to examine, or unrated, plus your choice of alignment and length. Sort by whatever you like. Hit the page buttons to get out into the middle of things and start poking around physically randomly like running your hand along a bookcase.

It's not handed to you on a platter, it's not even ideal, but it's not really hard, either.

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Yes. But lets be honest here.

More than half of the good content is either 5 star or 4 star. but the way the mission computer works, 4 star arcs, which might have upwards of 60 ratings and be very good efforts, are buried deep on page 83+ Unless people are specifically looking to run 4 star arcs, they;'ll never see it.

Compound that with how the computer tends to space high rating arcs alongside arcs with very few ratings, thereby meaning all the 4 stars with say..30 ratings will show up in about 17 different pages. and all of those are far further down the full list than someones 1 5 star lolfram.

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I use my Patrol XP as insurance against an arc suddenly tossing something horrible at me that murders me in an instant. All my debt burns away as patrol XP! Nice.

I guess to min-max it, papers would still be better, but honestly I don't like papers very much. I'd rather play interesting and engaging new stories, given the choice.

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/signed.

an ma/regen scrapper I was gonna throw away because of boredom with soloing Is now my main Architect toon and has gained 4 levels just doing arcs.

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So let's get this right, the devs went out there and provided the first ever player based content in an MMORPG, and someone's already [censored] about not having enough spots to make arcs?

Sounds like the forums to me!

Here's a tip, make those spots count, and have fun with it.

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All I'm saying is that the mathematics behind the HOF requirements (assuming it is 4.5+ as originally stated in prerelease materials) are unfeasible even for an amazing, high quality arc that's getting plenty of votes. We'll be lucky if we have even a handful of HOF arcs after many weeks based on the ability to knock a ranking down extremely hard with a 0 or 1 star rating.

If I was [censoring], I'd be saying "WAAAAAH WAAAH I WANT MROE SLOTS THIS SI STUPID THE DEVS ARE EVIL AND STUPID AND WHY WON'T ANYBODY VOTE FOR MEEEEEE" or something along those lines. I'm trying to take a more logical approach instead by saying that the current system may not work out the way the devs are hoping, and that it can't be considered a reasonable way for people to earn new slots.

As for "have fun with it", I did have fun with it. Now I'm out of spots. Now I'm not able to have more fun with it. That's the crux of the side issue, which is slot limitations. If HOF remains in its current shape then 98% of the population will have this same problem.

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I already see this coming myself.

I've written two arcs already. both related to my main villain "heroic" character and her family history of crazed superscience. I have a few ideas for a couple other chars or just for general arc weirdness.

Unless I wanna drop one of the two arcs I've poured hours of my heart and soul into. I can only write one more. and with how ratings work, my 4 star arc with 23 ratings, that many people have said they enjoyed, is on somewhere around the 40th page of arcs below everything that has a single 5 star rating, making it near impossible to find. Yay.

Yay.

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I think what bothers me most about the HoF requirements isn't the requirement itself, it's trouble with some members of the playerbase and how they rate.

For instance, I received feedback on an arc that was floating in the 4-5 star range that consisted of "too hard, team kept dying." Since I was online I asked what specificaly was too hard and was informed "it was too stupid hard all the way through." Now, mind you this arc has exactly 3 custom bad guys (all end bosses/ebs) and the rest are regular baddies, so I was curious what exactly had happened. I pressed a bit for more details. Turns out they had a team of 7, one 50 who was getting the missions and six 46 to 48s and were running at the highest difficulty. That means the baddies were +3 to +7 to the majority of the team. Yeah, of course it was "too hard." His parting comment was, "it sux, one star from everyone" and sure enough, in a few moments, I got 5 new ratings and the rating of the arc dropped from showing 5 stars to 4.

If people are going to rate not based on the content itself, but their own poor playing or their own poor choices in building a team or worse, that it was "too hard" to run at +7 then the rating system becomes a joke.

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This is exactly why the rating system was a bad idea. It was taken away from us here on the forums for member rating. Now they give us a rating system for our arcs?

I just don't understand it.

As I posted in the other thread, I feel your pain. I posted my main arc up as soon as I logged in to issue 14 and it contains 4 missions. it would take a solo player about 40-45 minutes to run, if you took your time.

No sooner I posted my arc to the server, 2 minutes later I got my first rating which was a 1 star. So we knew this was going to happen. THis person rated my arc probably because they don't like me or it was just a random vote from someone being a jackass.

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True. One of my first (and only) truly negative comments was "too much end drain, I can't do this" and then a low rating. It didnt bug me that much except they werent exactly very constructive about it. >>

Arc name: Agnes Marks, Scientist Extraordinaire and the Lost Staff of Kimbotoo

arcID 3260
Length: Long
Alignment: neutral
Synopsis: The Adventures of a scientific pulp adventurer in the 1920's as she chases down the source of a mysterious army of steam powered robot minions ((as well as the backstory of one of my rp characters ingame, but eh. ))

Doing valentines mishes. namely The Thorns one. large team. constant wiping due to having 90% offensive toons. Morale dying. Me frustrated. drop fire controller and grab Trick Arrow defender.

Proceed to pwn the living hell out of the mish.

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polite pvpers then we do total idiots who think pvp is the bestest and that it gives them free rein to intentionally mess with roleplayers and pve players and make their online experience hell.

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Really, I've heard badgers wax equally foulmouthed and discourteous themselves in the zone, if this is the sort of messing you mean.

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what I generally refer to is the occasional moron you get on pretty much all MMO I've ever been on who will gladly take time out of their busy pvp schedule to run about spamming channels and telling people how lame they are for roleplaying, or how gimp their specs are.

yeah. Too bad hope rarely works. ;/

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Infinity's already been decided as the unofficial PvP server. Most of them seem quite happy to have us.

If you don't like it, nothing you can do since, as I've said earlier, the PvPers have the right to transfer where they'd like.

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I just hope we get more polite pvpers then we do total idiots who think pvp is the bestest and that it gives them free rein to intentionally mess with roleplayers and pve players and make their online experience hell. Not to say all Pvpers are that way, but that always seems to happen on every MMO when enough pvpers arrive on a server.

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It's a big pain in the butt for legitimate users, but I gather that identity theft for the purpose of funding MMO subscriptions is becoming a big enough issue that banks and credit companies are having to seriously crack down. Still, it's an inconvenience I'm willing to accept, if it means more consumer protection in the long run.

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While I concur that credit card companies should work diligently on preventing identity theft/credit card fraud, I find the following quite worrisome...

<ul type="square">[*] Credit card companies are automatically denying payment without first checking with the customer to ensure that the charge is legitimate.
[*] Customers are not receiving any sort of notification from the bank that potential fraudulent activity occurred on their account and that a charge has been denied.
[*] When players call their bank to see why the charge was denied, there are some cases where the bank's general customer support is unable to tell what is going on and are telling the players that no charge had been denied. It's only when players call the fraud department at the bank that they are able to find information regarding the denied charge.
[*] When players try to get their banks to flag the charge as legitimate on their account, there are some cases where the banks will not allow charges from NCSoft to be permanently flagged as "legitimate" on their accounts and banks are forcing the players to call to okay the charge every time the charge comes due (making it quite difficult for players who have monthly subscriptions). There are other cases where the banks are outright denying any charges from that specific IP (even when the customer calls to say it's legit) and will not allow the charge to go through in any way, shape or form.[/list]
Banks should work with customers, not against them, in their fight against credit card fraud and identity theft. When banks begin working against customers by making it difficult or impossible to allow legitimate charges to go through, it's really crosses the line of being cautious and becomes paranoia.

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The thing is..its not generally in the banks interest to do that. Its the same reason most larger banks have highly draconian methods for processing bills in order to falsely create overdrafts. Theyre more interested in getting, and keeping, your money, so that they can invest it, than if you're actually enjoying your banking experience. Credit fraud makes them lose money. therefore its something they'll do anything to stop.