LaserJesus

Oh come on now. That's sad and I feel for her, but that's not even worth bringing up. There's no way for the developers to have known that unless she's been PMing them details about her personal life. Even then, that has no bearing on whether her arcs fit the criterion for being a Dev's Choice: whether the developers think they're great.

Whatever mang, Task Force Mutternacht is awesome. I will fight this whole forum.

But, as a counterpoint, that map is used A LOT. Even by me <_<

EDIT: Also, the arc totally should have the romance tag. The relationship between these two villains is the complete focus of the story. Just because it ends terribly and the player isn't part of the romance doesn't mean the arc isn't about a noir kind of romance.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt when playing it myself. It was a nice arc, but in the wrong category. It would have been placed better with the lowbie arcs.

I'm nominated for Heroic, Lowbie, and Comedy. I only get one vote.

I'm not? Sad face.

That one is rather specific. You're now on the list.

My affectations of egomania aside, the main issues with AE have been expounded quite a lot in this thread, and I mainly agree with these main ones that have been said quite often.

1) Broken arcs, arcs that were published by players just to try out the new system, and arcs that have just generally been left to languish by both the author and players need to be swept clean from the interface. Whether by unpublishing automatically after no plays or edits after a certain time period or a clean sweep of all arcs (except Dev Choice and Hall of Fame arcs, since those arcs confer extra arc slots) to have them all republished fresh, this would go a long way toward making it easier for a player just wanting to find a freaking arc and PLAY the damn thing.

The sweep is easier to implement, but messier. Any arcs by players with inactive accounts would be erased, with no guarantee of them having an up-to-date copy saved on their computer. The former would be the better option, but would take more time to implement. With this method, arcs by inactive players that are liked by people in the playerbase could be saved by them simply going and playing the arc. Sure, there will probably be some gems that no one found lost, but you have to keep in mind: nobody is finding them now anyway.

2) Replace the star ratings with a like/dislike. The star ratings are functionally useless. People generally won't want to search for anything less than what is rated the highest, because common sense says that if something is rated higher, it is better. However, the star ratings are not being handed out only by people who are trying to suggest to other players whether this is a good arc or not. They're being handed out by people who are just playing an arc for entertainment. When they beat the arc, the window will pop up and say "Rate this arc!" and they might say "Hey I had fun. This guy should get some tickets." and rate it a 5. They might have quit the arc out of frustration at a boss they couldn't defeat, or an enemy group they hate. The window pops up. They rate it a 1, because they're angry at the arc and, by extension, the author.

I used to be of the opinion that I should just rate things however I felt like, because my stance was that the concept of a 5-point scale wasn't broken, but that the fact that the interface so greatly emphasizes 5 star arcs over everything else by virtue of them being listed first was broken. However, rating things less than a 5 makes authors upset, and they put a lot of work into their arcs, so I now generally rate 5 or nothing. It's not like the sorting will sort itself out due to my actions or anything. What WILL sort it out, however, is by not using the stars as the default sorting mechanism, and the quickest way to accomplish that is to remove stars altogether and use another method of sorting the arcs, with the like/dislike numbers listed as an indicator of how many people enjoyed it.

3) The search interface is garbage. The last two were longwinded, but this one needs little else added. Honestly, guys, just look at YouTube, and do that. It's the most successful big ol' pile of user created content in the world. They're doing something right. Rip them off.

Those are the big 3, in my opinion. 2 and 3 seem to be common points that people bring up. 1 seems controversial, but I say there's nowhere to go but up, and it's the quickest option to take to give some immediate benefit to the ease of using MA. And honestly, if they implement a like/dislike rating system, the ratings will have to be wiped anyway.