Geek_Boy

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I have a confession to make.

I didn't realize that, until today, reading this thread, that not-rating an arc actually assigned it 0 stars, as opposed to "No Rating." This is doubly-bad because I like to "flip through" the first few bits of MArcs to see if they interest me, and duck out if they don't. I always assumed leaving them with 0 stars just meant they were unrated and didn't actually do anything to the score.

I don't know how often this happens with other people, but there are definitely at least a couple of us who got misled by the ratings interface. Either way, I'll be stopping that habit for now.

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Not rating does not give zero stars.

Hilariously, I've gotten a 1 and a 0 (maybe two 1's) today even though I'm sitting at 4 stars.

One was from someone who I'll let stay anonymous who wrote me the longest, most hilariously bad review I've seen since John Petric saw Def Leopard a few years back.

Well, except he can be entertaining on purpose.

It was obviously given because this person wanted to prove that some of us saying that the ratings griefing is systematic should reconsider and instead think that we deserved those 1's and 0's. They have a novel approach, though. Everyone else just told me I was full of it and ignored empirical evidence. This guy actually went through the trouble of playing my arc and thinking he was proving a point.

The other one never responded though, so it's either him again, a cronie, or I moved up the list too much.

Tickets divided by ratings, mostly.

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Plus, imagine what would happen if all zero rating were instantly nullified/ignored/cleared from the system...

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If they were all just changed to ones, I think we'd have a few instant Hall of Famers.

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I'm not looking for your sympathy.

What if, for example, someone had a level pacted toon that sat idle while the other half of the level pacted toon played for several months.

Then the idle level pacted toon logs in and levels up very quickly. Should that character be subject to discipline?

And are you saying that your friends got multiple characters many levels by exploits but avoided discipline by not getting to 50 during the frenzy? It sounds that way.

If your friends found themselves subject to discipline next week, would you be upset?

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No, I would not. They made their very obviously lousy bed, they can lie in it.

They won't be though, because they're only targeting certain people who did crazy stupid things.

If your character was level pacted and you didn't know what was happening, contact CS. They can open a ticket, maybe de-level it if something inappropriate happened, maybe clear you of any and all charges and remove any disciplinary action, and you can be on your way.

Let's see. I'll only promote my own because my sig appears, but here are some others:

Heroic:

Footsteps Initiative by @Muu (#2291)
The Footsteps Initiative exists to partner up established Heros - like you - with a group of youngsters, thereby allowing the newer Heroes to benefit from your wisdom and experience. Registering with Footsteps is your chance to help shape the next generation of costumed vigilante.


A Tangle In Time by @jjac (#2622)
In an Oranbegan ruin, untouched for hundreds of years, lies a fragile relic that can bend the very rivers of time. Your mission is to tamper with it.

Uncreation by @Muu (#6832)
It is possible - through no fault of your own, and due to circumstances completely out of your hands - that you are about to destroy the Universe.

LOST DOG by @6x (#9500)
A young boy has lost his dog Scruffles, can you help track him down?

Time and Time Again by @Doc Photon (#43060)
There is disloyalty and betrayal in the Council. Mutiny is in the air! But what do the Nictus and a myserious time traveler have to do with it? Contains one climactic AV fight.

One Million Eyes by @minimalist (#71933)
Sign up with MetaConnect, the hot new social networking site for hero-watchers and hero-wannabes! Find out where your favorite heroes have been spotted, and keep tabs on villainy in your neighborhood!

Spring is in the Error by @Witch Engine (#26811)
Spring is in the air and the birds are chirping. It's a time for romance and courtship. Obviously, there's only one thing to do in this situation: help the Kraken find true love in this crazy rough-and-tumble world of ours. (This arc is designed for characters level 5-14.)

Blight by @Witch Engine (#140423)
Someone has been spreading biohazardous material around Atlas Park. You're on the case, but cleanup may not be as simple as it first appears... (WARNING: Contains an EB, and 2 AVs - with AV allies to help you. Designed for high-level characters.)

Okay. I'm getting bored sorting these out. These are some of my faves, though.

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The web that was cast was overinclusive, maybe it was underinclusive as well.

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What? You don't get to play it both ways. Either they only went after people who really, really egregiously broke the rules or they went after every Tom, Dick, and Harry that entered a mission filled with Rikti Comm Officers. Which is it?

Since I know plenty of folks that spent the whole week in there (now, they switched from character to character most of the that time) and nothing happened to them, it's probably the former. If that's the case, then you know people who were disciplined and deserved it. This elicits no sympathy from me whatsoever.

There are some decent and terrible ideas in this thread, but I just wanted to insert a couple things real quickly.

First of all, as devoted forum dwellers, you have to know that Issue 15 is partially going to be about revamping the way we find MA stuff, right? They've said as much. It's in news releases. It's all over this here interwebs. So those of you saying " they won't fix it they don't like us " just need to suck it up and encourage them to get I15 into testing ASAP. If what you want isn't in there or you don't feel they've done enough, whine then.

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And yet, the reason I no longer even go to the AE buildings anymore doesn't seem to be on their list of stuff to fix. People who 0 or 1 star peoples arc for absolutely no reason other than to be mean. It has happened to me with all of my arcs so far.
People say, "Just make them for your friends". or "Don't worry about the stars".

It is pretty damn hard to have strangers play my arcs when people come along and low rate my stuff.
I don't ask my friends to play my stuff. I want HONEST ratings. I am sure if I asked them to rate it 5 stars they would. BUT that defeats the purpose of me working hard on my arcs. It's like cheating in a final exam.

Anyways, I could go on and on but I will cut this short and say... Something should be done about ratings griefers.

I haven't step foot inside the AE building for a really long time. I turned off my comments mail from the story arcs because people really were sending me tells like "i hate you" or "i 1 starred you because i hate you on the forums".

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I agree they should do something about the ratings griefers, but holy crap do you need to grow some thicker skin. Or maybe just some skin even.

Every time I've seen you post, it's a "someone done me wrong woe is me" situation or thread. I can remember the first time I saw you post a thread about the MA and the first thing I thought was "Wow, I should go vote her 0 because I really dislike her on the forums."

Of course, the difference with me is that I only thought it and didn't do it. I prefer the honest ratings too and only like to hand out ratings based on what I played. Your arcs honestly didn't sound all that interesting to me based on what I personally enjoy, so I didn't play them or vote for them one way or the other.

If you've turned off your comments, then they can't get to you anyway. Just ignore what your arcs are doing if you're going to get yourself in a twist about it and enjoy all the great ones out there. Heck, enjoy some of the terrible ones too. Finding something really bad can be like watching a Godzilla movie you get to punish the film makers for at the end. Go collect your tickets every so often, play them if you enjoy them, and maybe go outside once in a while. The weather's beautiful right now.

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It is not all griefers. Some people out there are just hard graders especially for 5-stars. They are like teachers who don't like giving 100% for anything. I can understand. They play a 5-star and ask themselves "sure it's good but does it deserve a 5-star?" as opposed to playing it and saying, "wow this is really good so I'll give it a 5-star". It's not unfair, but just tough.

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You're not getting it. I'm not saying "this only happened to me" or even "this is a theory of mine."

Everyone I know whose arc has gotten to the first page with any significant number of votes has seen the exact same thing happen. You're getting nothing below a 3 star, ever (because your arc is obviously pretty good). You're seeing constant messages giving you 20 or 25 new tickets as the ratings keep coming in. You can do the math on ratings vs. tickets earned and it averages to four point something.

Suddenly, your arc is sitting under the Dev's Choice. In my case, I probably had around 300 votes at the time, so that was a heck of a lot of 5 star ratings. The moment it pops to that first page? 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, etc.

So you're bumped down to 4 stars as an average and the 0's and 1's instantly stop. Not slow down, S. T. O. P. You never see a rating below a 3 again, but that is a one out of one hundred kind of vote. Almost exclusively 5 star votes with the occasional 4.

Now, let's say you get back to the front page (which I did again around 350 or so votes). Guess what instantly happens? 0's and 1's until you're back to 4 stars and then they instantly stop again, never to return.

It isn't that this mythical group of really picky players only browse the first page, it's that they ratings grief in a vain attempt to get their own stuff more attention. This isn't a theory of mine, it's something that people have come out and said they do out of their own mouth-breathing pieholes.

The 3's and 4's aren't griefers. The 1's and 0's that only appear when you hit the front page are.

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I wasn't disciplined. But yet I do feel affected because people I know were. I'm sorry you feel that if it doesn't affect you that those it does affect must be babies.

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If you know people who were disciplined, then you have to know that they really egregiously broke the rules. I know people who farmed what seemed to be 24/7 for that week and not a singly solitary unit of XP was taken from them. So these people you're claiming to know (which I think are mostly mythical since everyone seems to know somebody, yet nobody knows anybody) must have really, really deserved it.

So yeah, I'm sticking with the whiny babies. If one of those folks I know who just looooooved the farming were to come to me to whine about losing some XP or being probated or whatever, I'd just tell them to suck it up.

But of course none of these folks did get in any trouble since they were (as Positron stated in the first place) only going after the people who were really going insane with it.

I don't know one single, solitary person who has quit. I do know a few who have resubbed and we have some honest to God new folks that have joined, too. So any anecdotal evidence that the sky is falling is easily shuffled off by mine that it is, in fact, still there.

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And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

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On the other hand, this is a video game on the Internet. I'm wholeheartedly ready to believe that people are maliciously voting things down.

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Since there are people out there saying "I'm maliciously voting things down," and I've seen the evidence with my own eyes, I'm inclined to believe it, too.

Gotcha. I don't really agree with you since I still see plenty of that, but okay.

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I've been playing CoH since beta and I don't think I've seen anything divide and piss off the community (in-game, on this forum, on other forums, etc.) this badly since ED. And this seems worse to me because it was largely due to problems that were known about before the issue went live, as opposed to the vision of a designer that some players didn't agree with.

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Really, it's some whiny babies. 99.99999999999% of the playerbase was unaffected by Positron's hammer coming down, but oh my gawd what if it could have happened to them!? Then again, most of the changes people have complained about have been that way and ended up being for the best, too. ED was hard to swallow for basically everyone, but I've seen no evidence that Positron saying "no no no" on the forums has actually done much of anything in the general populace in-game.

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Not sure if you got griefed though. With very few plays your arc wouldn't be one targetted for griefing by the cartels.

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Like I said, it's only happened when I've been on the front page. I was the highest rated arc, right there under the Dev's Choices when WHAM a glut of 0's and 1's. As soon as I hit 4 stars, they stopped. Then, when I briefly got up to 5 again and took that top spot? Another rush of them.

I've never had anyone admit to less than 3 stars on my arc, but I've gotten a ton of 0s and 1s when I was on the front page, and only then.

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So now that those problems have almost brought down the system

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What does that even mean? All of my arcs work and only one or two of the people I know have had any invalidated for any reason (usually because of a bugged map they removed). How have they "brought down the system?"

And if you haven't played one yet since they went live, what do you know about it anyway?

I haven't done a Hamidon Raid since the new version came out, but you don't see me claiming the devs ruined it because I wouldn't know. I didn't like them in the first place and actually stopped doing them long before the new system went into effect, but whatever.

Happens to me whenever I get to the front page, but I'm looking at hundreds of votes so at least they're only setting me back to a 4.

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1) MA - 100% cool!

2) Dev handling of problems with it - 100% overreacted to.

I figure there's probably one other important percentage to go here:

3) Player Base Upset about #2 - .5%

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I agree wholeheartedly.

I think they're not looking at the old badges because their primary goal is to "fix" the MA and then move on to adding new content. I, for one, would rather have City of Rogues than a few hundred badges revisited.

This is a quick fix to a current problem. The MA arcs that exist only for badge hunting are a problem they want solved quickly, so they're removing any use for them. It's quick, simple, and while I'll miss my badges (especially the ones that let me brag about tickets earned by my arcs), I think it's pretty elegant.

If my memory is correct, one of the devs commented on this by saying he wouldn't wish the system that does cutscenes on his worst enemy. They're apparently a giant pain to code and we won't have access until they find a way to make it easier on themselves first.

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For me it's not about the ratings or how many people have played it but how much I enjoy an arc. If you can play it again and again and never get bored or lose that sense of excitement you get from playing it that you had the first time through then don't remove it. It's a difficult choice but pick the one that you love the least.

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100% this. I only copied one arc straight from Test, and I honestly haven't played it since it went live (Strike! if anyone is curious). It is the arc I have the least attechment to, and I'm not at all surprised it has the fewest plays.

There are two reasons I haven't unpublished it. The first is that I don't have anything to replace it with yet, and the second is that I love me some tickets, so if someone happens to play it and send some my way, I'm not going to complain any.

I have a few things brewing in the back of my mind for a third arc to replace it with, but for now they'll just germinate while I tweak my other two babies (who I love dearly).

@Witch Engine (or is it Witch_Engine or WitchEngine - I can never remember) has an arc where you seem to be losing your mind that is absolutely awesome for this very kind of thing.

Some mild spoilers, but there's even a mission where there are no NPC's that are targetable as enemies.

Fantastic atmosphere and a great but bizarre use of the tools we've been given.

I'd tell you the arc number and name, but I'm at work. He's only got three arcs, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out if you do a quick search.

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I think you have demonstrated that you should be ignored and ridiculed.

"no u"

LOL

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Actually, I think you've proven that of yourself many times over. Or, to put it more succinctly:

no u

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Apparently not the only thing you have no idea about.

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What a fantastic answer when it was you who made no sense!

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Lol do a search on my posts for the past 8 months. Have fun there are only a few thousand of them.

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no u

You claim you're psychic or something and not a troll. You prove it.

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I am sorry that's like ignoring an earthquake. It really doesn't matter if you are paying attention to it, all that matters is that it's paying attention to you.

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What? If you're exploiting the game, then yeah they're paying attention. If you're not talking about flagrantly breaking the rules then I have no idea what you're talking about.

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Yanno every time I have been called that on a topic on these boards, I have made predictions that have proven correct over time. I think when people use the word they mean someone who says something they don't want to hear.

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pics or it didn't happen nostradumbass

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I'm just... sick of all the drama surrounding MA.

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Then ignore or make fun of the people causing it. Problem solved.

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lol Its pretty hard to ignore the devs

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lol you've proven yourself to be a troll 1000 times over on this subject.

It actually is really easy to ignore them if you think they're part of the problem. Why, I play for months at a time without ever accessing these boards or reading a single word they've said. In fact, I know people who have played for years that don't even know who Positron (the dev) is.