Mind Forever Burning

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Example - each critter outside of its own .critter file has a reference to the original critter file in SPITE of the fact that the entirety of that critter file is included in any such file. The custom villain group files have this, as to the storyarc files. This would make sense (barely) if the arc editor planned to update the information it has using the content of the .critter file later (which would, of course, beg the question as to why it includes the entire file within itself, but nevermind that) but it DOES NOT. If you edit a storyarc file, and have updated the critters used in it since the last time you saved the storyarc... it DOES NOT UPDATE THE STORYARC with the new information.

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Are you sure? My testing showed that it does, in fact, update the mission file from the .critter file if the latter has changed. I've had opportunity to test this because I have multiple story arcs that reference some of the same custom critters.

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Even the defaults for various fields are nonsensical. The default for time limit on a mission is not "none", the default is "30 minutes". The default for many of the text fields is not blank, its artifact text strings left by the programmers such as "This is the text the PC will see when they enter a mission".

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I also haven't ever seen these problems. Defaults are blank for me, and I've never had a missiond default to being timed. I wonder if something else is going on that you haven't realized is significant.

I agree that the system is confusing; this is one of the things I complained about in closed beta. However, in the devs' defense I think that there are other things I would fix about the MA before tackling this, because while it's confusing, it's manageable once you learn how things work.

AFAICT the number is the number of ratings, not the number of plays. You can see how many people finished an arc by watching badge progress, but I don't know that there's a way to find out if or how many people ran it without completing.

[ QUOTE ][*]This one's a good one. If you have four arcs up, and even if you are currently in the Hall of Fame, you still cannot edit the Hall of Fame arc. This means that, if you have four arcs up, there exist no circumstances under which you can edit the Hall of Fame arc. It can never be edited again. I presume that this is similar to the previous issue: editing requires a republish, which would (momentarilly) pull down the Hall of Fame arc, which would mean you don't have four slots, which would mean you don't have space to republish. The republish button is simply greyed out on the Hall of Fame arc; pushing it generates a message like "we are currently processing your previous publishing request," even if you have not made any such requests.

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I thought that part was explicitly WAI? I know DC arcs work that way. The devs were trying to eliminate the loophole of completely rewriting an arc (possibly introducing an exploit) while retaining HoF/DC status and associated ratings.

Given how the MA has turned out to operate in practice, I would say this is a case of wildly mis-directed paranoia, but there you have it. The devs could at least reverse this decision at some point with no ill effects.

Removed response as I realized it was pointless.

I was thinking of starting my own thread on this, but lo and behold there's already one here.

I took a quick look this weekend at IMDB. For those not familiar (if there is any such person), it's a giant database of movie information. Most relevant to this thread, it's got a ranking system much like what we have for story arcs.

Now, the IMDB rating system is 1-10 instead of 0-5. However, it's reasonable to compare them at a ratio of 2:1 - that is, a 10 rating in IMDB is a 5 rating in CoX, etc. We can then look at what the millions of IMDB users have chosen to do with their votes.

The average IMDB rating turns out to be somewhere around 7. That's interesting, because it makes the margin for differentials between masterpieces like The Godfather and utter dreck like Lost in Space surprisingly small. In City of Heroes, this would correspond to a 3.5 or so - and that's also interesting because ratings near 3.5 are sometimes lumped in with the 4-stars, which is also where many arcs near 4.5 end up, and sometimes lumped in with the 3-stars, where many arcs near 2.5 end up.

So one problem is that the granularity is all wrong. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever for arcs near 3.5 to be in the same "grouping" as arcs near 4.5, yet that appears to be what happens.

The next issue is the HoF threshold, which, as I understand it, is 4.5. The IMDB equivalent to that rating would be a 9.0. As it turns out, the IMDB will show you what the top-ranked movies of all time are, so it's easy to find out how many satisfy the CoX Hall of Fame criteria.

Know how many there are? Three.

Yep, three movies in the entire recorded history of moviedom satisfy the IMDB equivalent of our HoF. That right there tells me we're doing something wrong. Star Wars wouldn't make our HoF; Casablanca wouldn't make it; Schindler's List wouldn't make it.

I really think the devs should look at what IMDB has chosen to do with their ratings. It's the closest equivalent I can think of to what the MA ratings system is trying to achieve, and they've got a lot of experience with it by now (the site has been around at least 15 years, with a huge participation volume). Their rating system is weighted by number of votes, for example**, and ratings are shown to one decimal point.

Good lessons to learn there, I think.

** IMDB sez: weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:
R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 1300)
C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.7)

With one assumption, I would say the best MA arcs now are still going to be good 6 months from now. Why? Because good storytelling is timeless. Other arcs might "catch up" to the good stuff, moving the average up, but the best arcs are so many sigmas out that the average would have to move by an order of magnitude to swallow them.

The one assumption is that the arcs in question aren't totally rearranged or invalidated by a future patch. If a challenge-based arc suddenly becomes a meow farm because a critter's use of a powerset is nerfed, that changes the whole equation - and similarly, if the AI is improved so that something that used to be a challenge now causes ragequit, that would also be a dealbreaker.

I suppose there's not much detail here... I'm just trying to avoid re-inventing Dawn Summers (or worse, Jar Jar Binks).

I'm trying to incorporate a minor character into a larger story line. This character is supposed to be young and a bit over-eager.

My worry is that the player is going to get annoyed with him. If that happens, it could be a serious wallbanger because caring what happens to him is part of the motivation to continue the arc. With that in mind, I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on how to make the character appealing.

One thing I'm definitely thinking about is avoiding overdoing it. I'm not going to throw him the idiot ball; he's young and inexperienced, naive even, but not stupid. I'm also going to avoid too much "gee whiz" language, although I think a certain amount of it is necessary to establish the character.

Other thoughts I've had: maybe the character gets in over their head and needs rescuing (a la Fusionette); maybe the character looks like they're getting in over their head and turns out to do all right after all (they rise to the occasion).

Thoughts? Cautions?

There's a separate forum dedicated to this kind of thing. Also, I'd suggest you join the in-game global channel "MA Arc Finder" as it's the channel version of that forum.

Rodion:

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I'd like the devs to figure out a way for us to demarcate a section of an existing outdoor zone and specify our own spawn points.

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You:

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What I'd like is the ability to make our own outdoor maps based on the existing zones. Basically, we'd choose a World Zone that currently exists, then select a size (small, medium, large), shape (square, rectangle), and then move that portion to wherever we want to on the real map.

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I think you basically just restated Rodion's suggestion.

I think Corsaire may have misunderstood what I meant here. I'll give a concrete example.

Let's say I'm creating a faction of witches, called "The Fearsome Coven". I re-use some of the witches from the Cabal faction along with some custom critters with appropriately witchy powers. I create the Fearsome Coven successfully, and when I create a mission where they are adversaries, everything works as expected.

Then I create a mission where you have to rescue some members of the Fearsome Coven from their arch enemies, the All Righteous Crusade. But I can't add the Cabal witches as captives and still have them be labeled "The Fearsome Coven" - they don't appear under that faction, so you have to add them manually from the Cabal faction, and they end up being labeled "Cabal" in the mission.

I think this is just a bug. Sigh.

Something weird happened to me the other day where the MA UI got really, really messed up. Things I clicked on did not give me pop-up menus appropriate to the context, options were in the wrong place. I have no idea how I got in that state but I had to force-quit the game (the menu wasn't working) and restart to clear it up.

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Trying to keep your four digit number is like paying attention to your post count on the boards. It's ultimately meaningless.

Ooo, you're at 1400! Which means...nothing at all, really.

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1400 is not nearly as good as 1337

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I could forgive the ratings shenanigans for someone who wanted to keep 1337... particularly if the new version involved the Freakshow.

Is the ally a custom critter or a stock critter that you re-used?

Someone already did an arc based on that riddle idea - I think it's called "Grim Riddles".

Also, someone made an arc that's a tutorial for the MA itself. I thought that was pretty clever.

Someone else made a custom arc for their son's birthday.

I'm afraid I'm going to keep my own crazy ideas to myself for the moment. Big work in progress.

I'm trying to add regular critters to a custom group, then add captives from that custom group to a map.

I want even the critters I stole from standard groups to appear under the custom group's name when they're captives (the group name gives context to the situation, and it should be the same context for standard vs. custom critters in my custom group).

But the MA won't seem to let me do this. When I edit the mission, the regular critters just don't appear in the list of available critters in my custom group.

I swear I saw a tip someone mentioned on how to do this, maybe even within the last two days, but now of course I can't find it.

Anyone have a pointer?

That makes sense. Thanks.

I wouldn't recommend it though. If you accidentally unpublish, you won't have a way to restore the story arc if you don't have a local copy.

I know Tyrant's lair was in the MA at one point, but now I can't find it. Anyone know for sure if it was removed, or if I'm just being dense?

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My initial thought with editing live was to be able to copy/paste dialogue and clues...

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My experience with cut and paste has been less than stellar. Frequently the editor seems to scramble letters together on paste. Very frustrating.

*headdesk*

Of course I have custom critters with now-completely-rearranged powers. Thanks for the forewarning.

You mean so that it had a completely different plot, characters, etc, etc, but the same ratings?

Doing that is another straw on the already-broken camel's back of the ratings system. If you think the system can be salvaged, things like this should be disallowed, but at this point I'm not sure I care, personally.

As far as I know, yes, it's still screwed up, although the patch on Test may help a little as it adds ranged attacks to many melee sets.

The ability to communicate is critical in nearly every aspect of life. In MA arcs one of the main ways you communicate with the players is through your written word - so in my opinion, the ability to write is critical to the enjoyment of the story.

Not everyone focuses on the writing, of course, and the other main method of communication - through the action and mission structure - doesn't have much if any focus on writing. Still, badly written text is going to alienate a large part of the playing audience. If they really didn't care about the story at all, there wouldn't be much reason not to go back to the farm of the month.

Why does Dark Armor make it hard to line up AS?