Doctor_Gemini

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I am pretty sure you get tickets when people rate your arc: 20 tickets for 4 stars, 25 tickets for 5 stars. Whether or not they finish the arc doesn't seem to matter.

Admittedly I don't have a huge pool of data, but that's my understanding.

So it's hard to tell whether someone finished when they rated (though you can use badge progress as a hint), and when they rate, how they rated, unless they give you a 4 or 5.

I'd actually really like to see anonymized statistics on what people are giving as ratings for my arcs. I realize it might be hard to truly anonymize it in the presence of named feedback, but I think I would find it very useful.

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I know how you get tickets for an arc being rated and I know where to collect them.

What I seem to be being told is that someone just playing all the way through your arc gives you tickets therefore if someone rated you 0, 1 or 2 stars and you get no tickets they did not play all the way through.

Otherwise, I still have no idea how these people know that someone rated their arc anything at all and did not play it.

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You're missing his point. If someone played his arc through, he'd get tickets for the play-through. If that person then voted a 1 or 0-star for his arc then that'd be a difference in opinion.

But when someone doesn't even play the arc, but still votes a 1 or 0-star then that's griefing. And the author can tell when his arc is or is not getting played by the number of tickets he can collect from the MA guy.

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I wasn't aware missions gave you tickets for simply someone playing it through. I know I've never received any and most of my ratings have been 5-stars. I don't see anything about it on the Wiki, either.

Regardless, though, I would expect that a large number of people who do end up giving 0 or 1 stars never complete the arc. That's not a good measure of whether or not someone is griefing you.

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What's your highest rated arc? You ever been on the first page with hundreds of votes? Know anyone who has? If not, then you have no idea what you're talking about. When you have x number of plays and y number of tickets, it isn't hard to figure out the average rating. When "someone voted on arcname" and you get no tickets, it isn't hard to figure out what's going on. When groups are openly admitting to 1 or 0 starring arcs just to get them off the front page without ever having played them, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

My guess is that you don't have anything with more than a few dozen votes, so you haven't seen it. But hey, since I didn't write everything down as I saw it happening with my own arc (just did the math in my head, said wtf and went on my way since there's nothing I can do about it) I guess it's just maaaaaaagic.

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And, again, what you're saying is "No one could possibly 1-star my arc because they don't like it, therefore it's griefing."

That does not constitute proof, or even a reasonable assumption.

but whatever floats your boat, guy.

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I found the "Captured (Energy Field)" was missing for my captives when I went in to fix everything in my arcs (on two accounts) that this patch and the new power assignments broke. Same animation?

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In my case it was the Captured Casting Law Rune....or something like that. It's still on the Boss list, but not on the captive list.

On the plus side, the captive list had Captured Casting Shield, which is the effect I originally wanted and it was not on the list before.

I also found another problem. My end boss had been set as an EB (spawning as a Boss for single player heroic). That was more powerful than I wanted him, given it's a low-level arc, but, it was better than upping his power levels over normal.

Now that they've reassigned which powers you get at the higher settings, I was able to make one of his powers Hard, and drop him to Boss level (Lt. for single player on Heroic).

Tested it with a 6th level toon, and he spawned as a blue 4th level Lt.......which of course made him a joke, regardless of his powers.

WTH???!!!!

I have noticed that most of the time when I'm awarded a badge for publishing a mission, that it doesn't publish, and I have to hit the publish button a second time.

And before someone comments on that, yes, I have checked to make sure it was not published twice.

I noticed that a captive you free in one of my missions lost her animation (and it's no longer on the list of animations for a captive despite being on the list for bosses), which she had no trouble performing before.

Additionally, under her name it now gives her group as "WXYP Radio" (not the exact callsign for the station I don't think, but that's not important). I thought it used to say "captive".

There's no way to give her a group, other than to make a custom character for a captive to rescue. I'm sure the group listed for her now is whatever her template belongs to, but it sure makes for an interesting non-sequitor in the mission.

If you select the text you want colored and right click, a menu comes up that allows you choose colors and other enhancements.

I pretty much agree with you. That and they won't need to change HoF at all if they quit averaging the ratings and weigh them instead.

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Now, there IS something inherently lame with a hero contact handing you a task and doing nothing himself due to a lame excuse, may as well ask for help for you to go with him, not just hand you his laundry list.

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What if my hero is lazy. Maybe he's level 46 and he's used to sitting at the door while someone else does the hard work.

More seriously, though, one of the things I might do if I were going to use my own hero as the contact is to have him be running missions parallel to your own, so that both of you are working towards the goal. Obviously, in such a setup, you can't have the contact hero be doing the glamor work while the player is doing the grunt work (unless, of course, that is the running joke of the arc, and the player knows it going in)

"While I go check the situation on the Mission Monitor Board, Super-Jim is going to go tag the Freakshow boss with this radio transmitter..."

Even the more serious scenario would not require the contact hero to be there in the final mission. In fact, in a lot of ways it's better if he isn't. The bad guy you've been after might be in one of two different places and he goes off and does mission B, while the player, who is supposed to be the protagonist of the story, ends up where the real mastermind of the plot is and takes care of him.

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The fact is, it has nothing to do with griefers nor with people who have impossibly high standards.

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That's a fact? It looks like an opinion to me, but what do I know?

Meanwhile, maybe you can explain this to me. The second time my arc made it to the front page of the search listings, I got a "someone voted on arcname" from somebody who had already voted on the arc. Since it's a fact that every single rating is legitimate, what happened there? Did somebody who hated the arc before nonetheless play it a second time? Was this vote from the Memento guy?

It must be something like that, because apparantly the fact is that nobody one-stars arcs without even looking at them.

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Actually, that's an artifact of bad editing. I had originally made some comments about conspiracy theories and that sentence was much longer. I gutted the middle and neglected to take the first part out.

Still, people claiming griefing do have a higher burden of proof, and I'm not seeing anything that even comes close to circumstantial evidence.

Your second paragraph is fairly nonsensical to me, and only helps my point about paranoia. I don't know who Momento guy is, but if he 1-starred your arc the first time then 1-starring it again does not change it's overall rating. You can change a rating you've given, you can't add a second one to an arc.

And I hate to break it to you but there are people, for various reasons, who do replay arcs, even those they hated. I know I often turn off the "don't show arcs you've rated" button because there are some good ones I'd play again with another toon. I've never seen anything on the interface that tells me what I rated an arc.

As many as I've played so far, the odds are good that I would not realize whether it was a good or bad one from the description. I'll remember them when I get into them, and if they've changed for the better I will re-rate them.

I don't know what crystal ball you've found that allows you to know that this person, or anyone, 1-starred an arc they didn't even look at, so I don't even know what you're talking about there.

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Either there are some people with impossibly high standards who will only play whatever hits the highest pages, or there are some complete and total dinks out there downvoting arcs in order to get theirs into a higher position.

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While it does soothe an author's ego to believe bad votes are the result of some conspiracy to hurt their arc, The fact is, it has nothing to do with griefers nor with people who have impossibly high standards. It has to do with the fact that people have different tastes and look for different things out of the MA.

Just because a few dozen people think a story arc is great does not mean everyone should, or will.

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I want shoulder pets as missle weapons.

I absolutely love when the redcaps get thrown at you and land on your shoulders. I want to be able to do the same thing with kittens and pandas!

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I'd love that too, so long as the pet does little damage and makes a nice Splat when it hits.

If you double-click 1-star it rates the arc 0-stars.

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From this weekend, I have to add one:

Tossing in Nemesis minions for no apparent reason because "He's Nemesis, it's probably some sort of plot, he doesn't have to explain himself".

I swear half of the arcs I ran had me fighting Nemesis at some point, and in none of the cases did the author try to make sense of his motivations at all. It's just "Nemesis feels like taking over Atlas park today" or "Nemesis wants to fight my custom group".

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Is that any worse than Nemesis' actions in dev arcs?

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Growth Defensive set -- I wanna be 40' tall!
Shrinking Defensive set -- I'm 1/8th of an inch tall!
Mapserver Control
Omnipotence -- Nothing can harm me; one hit defeat for anything!
Wall Crawling
Swing Lines
Super Speed Swimming

EDIT: I should note that at least some of those are available as a Dev, but my live account sure doesn't have 'em!

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So are these new power you're promising us slated for I15 or 16?

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An interesting point. Pleasing venture shouldn't be what your out to do, but staying within his guidelines should be?

-C.A

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ummmm....no. He has some good advice and some bad advice. What solely constitutes which advice he gives is good and which is bad is whether or not I agree with him. Which is something almost every player of an MA mission can say as well.

So, use his guidelines if you agree with them, otherwise take what works for you and discard the rest. Granted that I haven't checked today, but my position as Emperor of the World has not been taken by Venture yet.

That is correct.

I gotta hope after you get an enforced break from the boards after this spam-fest of yours.

Cross-posting is also forbidden.

Reading comprehension, on the other hand, is encouraged. Maybe you should stop posting this and try to work on some.

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Now, I originally thought that putting your own characters into a story was a decent idea until Venture came and told me otherwise. He cleared up a few things I had apparently been misunderstanding. It didn't matter how I used them, be it an origin story, a moment in the story where you bump into them and they help you, they are OOC put in as a helper against a tough enemy group or av, it's not appropriate. It's called mary sue, and idiot ball, if I recall. I knew neither of these prior to writing my arcs, but thanks to words and somewhat blunt demands, I began to understand what was wrong with using customer critters that are either mine or the supergroup I'm with. It's simply wrong and not appropriate.


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If in the course of a story you are to fight another costumed super-hero of the B-class that player heroes are, and instead of just making one up I use one of mine, then it is not in any way inappropriate. If I put in one of my toons as an AV/EB, then it's a form of Mary Sue.

The fact is, if I put a super-hero named Candlefrost in an arc, the player has no clue if that is a character of mine or one I made up for the arc. They're going to assume whatever they want to assume.

While I enjoy reading Venture's reviews, Venture's opinions are not all the best to follow...unless your main concern is your arc pleasing Venture.

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I've so far published one and am working on a couple other arcs that happen to involve some of my characters. I don't think this is a bad thing in and of itself. I don't include my characters because they're my characters. I include my characters because I think they either have, or can contribute to, a story worth telling. I don't consider that vanity any more than I consider it vanity for any other author to write a story about characters he created.

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If I write an arc in which the player interacts with a super-hero, whether as a contact, an ally, or an enemy, then yes I'll use on of my own. I like it when other people do the same. The idea that you might just see someone flying around Paragon that you interacted with in the MA is a cool one.

Playing a story about your toons, though (and by "your" I do not mean the person I quoted, it's a generic "your") doesn't interest me. I don't know your toon, don't care about your toon, and no matter how cool his origin may be it's not anything I really want to hear.

If you're going to tell a story about your character, you have to not let the player know that is what the story is about, so the story has to be able to be adapted to anyone.

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I might change the warning dialogue to something like "Reckon you might want to bring along some extra help, but, heck, I ignore that kind of advice most of the time, and things usually work out OK."

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heheheh...I like that.

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I *may* have oversold the difficulty of the last mission. It just has an Elite Boss, and I may have erred on the side of caution, in that all EBs are supposed to be fairly tough to solo. You do have help from Ashley Porter herself in the mission.


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I don't think you oversold it, the warning was good to have in, IMO. I figured the warning was due to an EB, and I don't worry much about soloing EBs with most ATs, it was more a case of facing an EB and expecting more of those knockback heavy 5th column guys, that I really did not want to take on while fighting an EB.

I expect if I'd brought a KB resistant toon I probably would not have even noticed any problem with the 5th column guys.

Don't have anywhere to post screenshots online yet. I'll have to do that one day soon.

The new rating is supposed to replace the old rating.

Actually, it doesn't even take griefing to knock it out. Odds are, any HoF arc is there due to barely having a 4.5 rating. Depending on how it rounds, someone rating the arc 3-star, just because he legitimately thinks it's not a great arc, will knock it down to 4.4. A 2-star will definitely take it out.

The problem may be griefers, but it's also just as likely the flawed system of averaging the ratings.