MrOsterman

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it's on the Wish List.

So far the devs haven't said anything in regards to earnable/purchasable slots aside from getting something to Dev's Choice or Hall of Fame.

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I have a feeling that about 6 months from now they'll find a way to do that for those that are putting out decent arcs that aren't HoF or DC material but still seem to be popular. It's to keep the interest up. If they feel that people are quitting CoX because they're tired of not having enough venues to share user created content then they'll create more slots.

Just as they gave us more character slots...

It'll just take time.

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What would be really nice is if the devs would copy all existing published arcs over to test, then run a validation utility against them all. If any come back invalid - fix the problem with the code before releasing the patch.

But nah, way too much trouble for them to bother I guess - put the onus on the players...

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Which is one place it should be.

With World of Warcraft there is a TON of user made content in the mods that people write for the game. I actually can't play it vanilla any more. I need my interface mods, my bag mods and to a degree my quest helpers.

But when a new patch comes out they let everyone, including mod developers, get on the test server, and it's up to the mod developers to test their own stuff out and see if it works. It is not the responsiblity of WoW to do that, and I kinda don't see it as the responsibility of us here. We have 3 maybe 4 arcs to maintain. If they could at least flag our broken arcs so we can know they're broken with the patch then we can go in and fix them.

I like the work done on the plot and the contact info.

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The above is the sad reason why the devs keep thinking the way they do. whenever any1 tries to honestly talk to the devs about the issue of farming the otherside makes 10 pages worth of flame and the thread is locked. I tried once, the people get lolsomad

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Hey. BOTH sides are guilty of making it a mess. It's not the pro nor the con's fault. People just get worked up and it's a mess. You might ~feel~ like you're on the side of reason and rationality but funny thing: Both sides think that.

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What damage will occur to the game or its players if farms were "permitted" to exist?

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This is a massive hot button topic that will turn this thread into the worst kind of flame war.

The Developers believe it would be bad for the game. They said "don't or you'll have to go". It's their sandbox so sometimes we suck it up and accept their judgement. Whether or not we agree won't change the outcome and all it does is whip people up into a frenzy of Biblical proportions.

You might not understand it, but honestly both sides (pro and anti farms) have very very passionate reasons for thinking what they do, and honestly no good will come of another public debate/ rehash.

I'll send you the short form in a PM if you want it but don't bother trying to have a rational discusion on it on the forums.

TRUST me.

I'll humor you.

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- Tell the Player the Plot Upfront
Do not string the player along with just enough info for each mission. That makes it seem random and made up on the spot. Tell the player what the plot is – but feel free to change it. “First you must find out Big Bad’s plot from his minions, than you must stop his plot, then you must defeat Big Bad.” This tells the player there is a story, it gives the early missions a purpose in the overall arc instead of just being filler.

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Okay now let's get down to the brass tacks of it:

Yes, you say "feel free to change it", but that's a single clause in a massive push towards saying in effect to stick to the story and tell them the story at the onset. Or rather let's look at that opening sentence:

"Do not string the player along with just enough info for each mission."

RIght there I disagree. Why? Because why would a contact need me, the hero, to do anything other than go directly after the big bad if he already knows everything there is to find out? He'll just send me after big bad from the beginning.

While you do acknoweldge that these are general guidelines to your preference in Arcs, I disagree that a good arc has to lay out a story from start to finish, as you say "“First you must find out Big Bad’s plot from his minions, than you must stop his plot, then you must defeat Big Bad.” " This is the recipe for a boring arc because it looks at first blush like just another "go defeat this guy we all know you're to defeat.

The only suspense we can create in a linear story line like a mission arc is where the plot is going to go. We can't create suspense about success or failure. NO matter what we're going to succeed, or at the worst, fail a mission, and then go on to the next one anyway. The only 'fail' in CoH is to simply give up going back into the mission after rezing at the hospital.

So I disagree with the opening premise of that entire section. If this were my guide to writers I'd say "tell the players exactly what the contact knows at that point in time." THen I would follow up with "make sure you, the writer, know the entire plot so that you can see the early missions with hints as to what is to come later. Ensure that any surprises can be looked back upon and the clues are more obvious."

But that's me and that's about as clear as I can get quoting you directly.

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Doesn't make much sense to me. You were looking for 80's cartoon ripoffs, found one and reported it. If it was a "not a good one" ripoff maybe it was/is actually different enough to not violate copyright?

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No....

I was browsing for missions and one caught my eye that Referenced 80's TV. So I checked it out. I expected an homage, or a parody or something. Like maybe we were sent to stop the evil forces of "Vulture" before they could hatch a plot to rule the world.

Instead it was a mission to rescue Sgt. Slaughter, and Defeat Destro and Cobra Commander. And the cobra guys all looked dead on like their 80's cartoon counterparts.

Look, I'm a big fan of parody. I'm a HUGE fan of homage. I played a charcter for a long time who was a nod to Dr. Midnight. Same color scheme, but very different costume.

So it's not like I went to the search and said "I want to find a copyright violation". I actually figured that after ALL of the posts and discussions and Generic Heroes running around that FINALLY we'd be done with people who thought CoX was for ripping off copyrighted material.

Stupid me....

Edit to add:

By "not a good one" I meant that the mission was lame. It was an outdoor map with the nav objectives that were just names, not even "Defeat Soandso". I walked upt Destro stupidly thinking I was there to rescue him or something because he had only half endurance.

Not that it's plot or lack there of makes it any less against the rules, mind.

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Did they replace "Cobra" with "Spyder" as a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world, and then just switch the blue primary color to black and switch the snake symbol for an almost identical spider symbol? 'Cause MAN that would be a rip off!

*ducks*

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~laugh~ Nope. Total and 100 rip from the figures. I was impressed right up the point I reported it.

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I hope you're wrong here. I have given out 1-star ratings, 2-star ratings, 3, 4 and 5. Given that each account holder can only rate an arc once, regardless of how many alts they play, I refuse to believe we have more spiteful griefers playing CoX than players who give out 1-star ratings just thinking that they deserve them.

At least, I sure hope we don't.

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Well 1 stars come in 3 types:

1 - Troll - I vote 1 star because I want to hurt people

2 - Critic without Criteria - I vote 1 star because my standards are so high that I'll find any excuse to drop someone to a 1 star.

3 - Legit - I vote 1 star to crap that deserves it.

And I've played a few missions that really are 1 star material. The text offers nothing to go on, the mission objectives are overly cluttered if existant, the custom mobs are all Lt's, it's full of hidden objectives etc etc.

So I'm all about 1 stars to those who deserve it, but honestly I think that some people try just a little too hard to justify them.

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That said, you have to remember something about this kind of review. By posting your play through unedited you're opening yourself for a harsher kind of critique: Playstyle and commentary.

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Essentially, the type of review he did was a Let's Play, which tends to do a full run-through of a game (or at least a level in the game). It has it's strengths and weaknesses as a review style.

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I wonder though if those people tend to do a runthrough twice?

Hmm.. the wife and I did a 'opening the box' experience podcast of our first moments in Northrend when the Warcraft expansion came out. We sat down, started recording and then started playing, actually talking our way onto the boat, into the new zone, talking about what we'd read with the new expansion and our first impressions, so I do 'get that'.

But we also didn't do so much blow by blow either. Hmm... ya know I was thinking that something like this almost requires two people to play to provide dialogue rather than just one commentator, something like a Skype call recording to go with the video.

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Just remember that great writers break the rules - when it's necessary to the story.

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Hmm... no...

"Good writers follow the rules. Great writers know when to break them."

I agree that if someone comes into an arc and has no idea what to do, it's a problem. But I don't know if I'd call it 'great' to lay it all out in such plain language that there's nothing interesting to it, ya know?

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What does it really mean to have a long or a short mish?
I just made a mish that is 3 maps and used up nearly all my size allotment and it is listed as a "Long" mish, but I have been in several one map "Short" mish's that have taken 3 or 4 times as long as the one I made.

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Remember that the 'size' is the file size for text and custom characters, not the 'size' of the maps or related things.

I believe that the 'length' of the mission arc is based on the ground territory of the maps you use, not on some analysis of the objectives. It could be but I'd be surprised. I've done some 'short' missions that took an hour because it was one objective just spawned another which spawned another.

I personally don't mind 'long' as long as I have the time for it. Most 'shorts' feel like jsut one catchy mission, but not a lot of story or RP.

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Don't know what your hidden agenda is, but I don't believe a word you say.

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I've read the entire review. I've read the paraphrasing. I've read the rebuttal.

Frankly I put HA in a group which is neither critic nor troll, but someone who simply is overly critical. Teachers come at assignments two ways: Either they look for ways to mark a perfect paper down, or they look for ways to mark a mediocre paper up. Most are the former. We give kids 100 points and then knock off points for various mistakes. Even when we write up complex rubrics we still find ourselves saying "but if they make this mistake it bumps them down".

Of course in the context of ~this~ discussion, the only difference between a stretched for 1 star and the spiteful 1 star is that the spiteful happen a LOT more.

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I was just informed in my arc thread that this was coming up. Thanks for confirming.

But what do you mean by "...already seen stuff get renamed on Live", exactly?

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Squee!

I am officially shelving Beer Bad until we get that so I can sitck in some werewolves who are not all Council/ 5th column.

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Second suggestion: Save our missions on the server, not on our computer! When I read that the file was limited because the file was to be downloaded on the server or something like that, it made me wonder. It also have the disadvantage of being lost if something happens to your hard-drive.


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If you publish the mission it puts it on the server. You can still edit and republish there. The only problem I know of is that if you want to make a change in the custom groups you have some problems with being sure the right local information is available.

It makes it a little trickier but you can do a lot of editing on the published mission live. But now that I think on it I'm not sure how changing the custom critters works when it's updated if you're not at your 'main' computer.

Hmm....

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Something was changed by the developers in a patch that occured after the story was published, and the change invalidated the story in some way.


For example, the author used a map that has since been pulled because it needs to be fixed.

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They REALLY need to document that in game better. I went through a dozen missiosn looking for one I could actually play. Drove me nuts as all the ones that looked interesting with 4 stars were 'broken'.

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If your missions keep getting pulled by the GMs, there are three possible explanations.

1) It is a farm.

2) It contains offensive material. You should have also received an e-mail if this is the case. If you republished this mission without removing said offensive material, you should have been banned.

3) The mission violates the EULA by being a derivative work. If you wanted to retell the Dark Phoenix Saga, and filled it with X-Men, this is not the place to do it.

Don't do these things, and your missions should be safe.

That is all.

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QFT

I thought I found a fun mission to run based on 80's cartoons. What did I find? A total rip off of GI Joe, and not a good one. Seriously, how much clearer do they need to be about the rules for copyrights? I've been here since nearly the start of it and I've lost count on the number of times we've gone around on the EULA when it comes to copyrighted material.

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*sigh* Once again? What once again? I assumed it was a defeat all yes, back when I PLAYED IT.

Mandu, I am going to say this in the nicest way possible: GO away.

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Stomp... dude...

He meant "once again" in the form of "I'm saying again for everyone that missed it that..."

He wasn't implying, I don't think, that you spent multiple hours going on about his defeat all that wasn't a defeat all.

That said, you have to remember something about this kind of review. By posting your play through unedited you're opening yourself for a harsher kind of critique: Playstyle and commentary. A reviewer generally has time to read, and re-read a review, often playing through the mission twice if they want to be sure they get all their details right. By doing a 'as I go along' video you are going to be open to people saying things like "dude, it's RIGHT THERE".

Now that said, I think the concept of the video review is awesome and I'm even tempted to do something like that myself if my computer can handle the video captures in chunks or to pare it down with the editor later.

Not to rub salt in the wounds and I'm a little late to the party, I think neither of you is blameless in the mini flame fest that brewed up but neither is horrifically at fault. Mandu got defensive because of his percieved unfair rating and you got defensive because you felt that people weren't appreciating your efforts to bring something new to the table, and to give up your time to review someone else's arc.

I'd say if you like it, stay with it, though. It's a really catchy idea and you might get a following if done right.

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My issue would be why cant I find any CREATIVE, story-driven missions in the MA? lol

"American Welcome", here I come!

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Eeep... the pressure.

Neverwinter Nights shipped with a powerful toolset for module design. I "worked" for nearly an entire summer vacation on a module for it (an adaptation of I6 Ravenloft) and I loved every minute of it. I worked roughly an 8 hour day, then put in another 4 hours play testing it each night when my wife went to bed. It was the most fun I've had on a summer Holiday in years.

What you'll find fast is that the single most frustrating thing for people with the AE missions is that finding an audience is harder than telling the story. No matter how good I tweek American Welcome it will always be just one of a thousand 4 star stories floatting around. I think it's good but it's getting it noticed that's hard.

But for the rest we're not doing the dev's jobs for them, we're doing the job we love to do which is develop content we like. And if any of the kids here are good at it, getting a story to be a developer's choice award is a nice little feather in the cap for their resume into the world of game design.

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xactly - thank you for saying it better than I have.

It doesn't matter what actually happens in the arc. What matters is that the player believes that there is a story which they are going to see. Of course the author knows there is a story - the player does not.

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A lot of my gut reaction on that point is that I'm not a fan of giving away too many hints in the first act. I like stories that evolve over time and only at the end do you see all the pieces line up. I find those stories interesting myself. So my read on the guide itself is that it overplays the 'tell the player there's a story' and downplays the power of a good well placed plot twist.

But that is also ~my~ preference. I do agree that you have to have a story and that it's important to communicate to the player that there is a story here, that this isn't just some glop he should slog through to do so. I generally use the missin description to communicate that and let the contact seem as surprised as the player at the twists.

But that's me.

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You shouldn't tell about Plan B. I say that you should feel free to change the plot.

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If you're open to suggestions I would go back to the guide and rework this paragraph/ point. You say that you should feel free to change it but you also emphasis for most of the section have a clear plot for the player to follow.

You also put a lot in clear objectives when sometimes a little ambiquity is just what the story needs. Rather than say "Defeat Muck Face" as an objective, "find and arrest the criminal mastermind" puts a different focus on the mission and doesn't tip too much of the story.

Likewise, if the plot hinges on a surprise, such as finding out that the contact is the big bad, then having "Defeat Contact" appear in your nav bar all but ruins the story from start to finish.


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The get there and the planet is blown up and the plot changes - perfectly fine. Luke knew that there was a plan and what the big picture was. It changed, and he found out it changed.

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I disagree heavily. He had no idea what he was in for. He didn't have a clue that delievering Obi Wan and this droid would lead to him joining the rebellion.


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Note that in Star Wars Luke doesn't start out knowing about the secret plans, the rebellion, etc. But the audience does. The movie starts off with text about the Death Star, and Leia being captured.

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Yes but in that context, the Arc in CoX is both the protagonist and the audience in one. There is no means to have 'audience' knowledge seperate from character knowledge. So if you want a twist to be a surprise to the character then they have to be a twist to the audience as well.


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Detective stories do not start out "look around the office and see if something happened". They start off with someone being killed and the detective knowing from the start the crime committed, its importance - then they try to figure it out.

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Not all of them do. Some of them, and I'm think of Film Noir here, start off with a gumshoe just getting hired to follow the cheating husband of some skirt. Not all start off with the dective knowing the scope and depth of the crime they're investigating.

Look even at modern mysteries, like CSI, and how often something starts out as the investigating one murder and in the process they find something much much bigger.

I think my issue with the 'guide' as such is that it establishes what seem to be hard and fast rules that are not quite universal. Even the Star Wars example shows how powerful twists are to a story. Luke at first thinks he's just cleaning up some droids. Then he finds out he has to track down Ben. Then he finds out he has to help Ben go to Aldaraan. Then he finds out he has to join the rebellion.

But what doesn't happen is that when he gets the hidden message, Princess Leia says "you there boy, you're going to join the rebellion and save the universe." All she does is give him the first hint: Go Find Obi Wan. That's it. No more. In fact, they even truncate the message so that ALL he gets is that first hook.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot good in this guide but personaly I prefer missions that bring suspense with them.

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AFAIK there is no way to set the "Defeat All" objective as a condition of another objective being completed first. If someone knows how to do it though, I'd love to see it so I could make a change to one of my mishes. >.>

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Can we add defeating an ambush to that list of things I'd like to make required objectives? Right now I don't bother with any ambushes after what appears to be a final objective because it's too easy to just 'pop' out of the mission and ignore the ambush.

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There is also the fact that a good arc will get a lot of high ratings, because people enjoy it, and most of us aren't literary critics and will give out 5 stars based on a simple "I had fun." I honestly can't think of a way they could get rid of undeserved 5-stars by friends, except to maybe require finishing the arc to assign 5 stars.

Even anomalous 5-star ratings can sometimes be legitimate, especially with things like Supergroup arcs, or in-jokes, that are designed to appeal to a specific group but are playable by anyone.

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And that's a problem both with getting a mission noticed and getting the 'bonuses' that come with it.

I said it before I'll say it again, tying rewards to things like 'been played' and 'ratings' is just a formula for headaches and griefing JUST like what happened over on "the movies online" when it was up. You had rating cartels working to get chosen movies onto the top 10 and then from there they were able to just ride a high as most people never looked past the top 10 list or the new release page (which changed by the minute).

Same thing is happening here. We get SO's, we get more toys for the AE building, we get 'stuff' if our missions rate well and if we get plays. How do we get plays? We end up on the first few pages by rating.

And if someone gives us a 1 star, then regardless of ~why~ they gave it, it dangs us. It robs us of our chance. Yes frivolous 5 stars do the exact same thing but they do it to someone else, as our arc gets pushed above theirs.

As long as you tie rewards to player choices like ratings you're going to have this, and the super stingy 1 star review and the griefer "i wanna be a jerk" 1 star do the exact same thing.

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And a mission arc is not a movie - if you write one like a movie, it will be bad. In a movie the audience is passive. They watch the events unfold and cannot control them. In an arc the player must feel that they and their character are in control. Arcs where you just do what you are told are lame - people have complained about them for years.

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No. An arc written like a good movie is a good arc. Why?

Because the a good movie doesn't allow the viewer to be a passive observer in the story. It engages the viewer to try to figure out the story along with the characters. It gets the viewer to empathize with the characters on some level either to love them or hate them, to cheer for their success for their failure.

And that's done by keeping the audience involved from start to finish. To switch to a book analogy, it's what keeps them turning pages and deciding to read "just one more chapter".

The more you tell a player about the overarching story at the start the less interested they're going to be in seeing it all the way through. You practically contridict yourself. First you say tell them everything (with the caveat to change it up) but then you say that they hate to be just plain told what to do.

That's because players want to feel like they're involved, that they, the player and their character are figuring this all out as they go along. They don't want to be told "okay, first you need to shut down the factory, then you need to find the secret formula, then go arrest the boss." They want to be told "there's something going on at that abandoned factory", then when they've gotten some clues from it 'decide' that they should probably track down the secret formula. And once they realize the scope of that formula they can't risk letting it's creator walk free. Done right the players don't feel like they're being randomly strung along, nor that they have no choice (even though honestly they don't, the story is linear by design). Instead they feel like they are leading a great story from start to finish.

And again, you say early in the guide not to try to do what the AE missions cannot do, but then you want us to make the players feel like they're being told what to do. All missions in CoX are linear by nature. They all are "here's what you do, go do it" in nature, so there is no avoiding that. So rather than ruining the story for the players by laying most of it out at the start it's even MORE important that we pace the story for them so that they are involved and engaged at it's reveals.

As to not being superheroic, I would also point out to you that in the CoX universe, nearly every criminal organization is superpowered. That means that if a cop sees some Tsoo poking around a warehouse they're not going in. THey're calling a superhero for the 'grunt' work of investigating it. That's a big part of the CoX canon and really can't be avoided. Yes you can write arcs that are epic showdowns from start to finish, but I don't believe at all that it makes for a bad arc to send them off on simpler missions like looking for evidence against an organization (which can lead to somethign epic as a bigger plot is revealed) or to simply rescue some hostages (one of which can lead to something more epic).