Oddballica

Generally who is closest, My 50s will generally get levelled at a relevent place (Which generally seems Ms Liberty since she's usually their first). One character trained with Ms Liberty at every level if I remember right, wasn't that big a hassle really because I didn't always rush to level the moment I levelled.

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The height adjuster doesn't make you giddy?


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Personally I think it's nice, but it's not something I can see myself ever using outside of a novelty thing. Like I say it just dissapoints me that it's in the science booster instead of something more science-y.

I don't mind the character size changer costing money, I'm just dissapointed that it's in the Science booster pack. The pack features less emotes than either previous packs, less costume change emotes than the magic pack and it lacks a science power.


Also this is in because Castle says he couldn't come up with a power that wasn't more fitting to technology in his opinion. To me science and technology are linked enough that it wouldn't matter that much, plus we already have the animation in place for drinking or injecting a formula and powers could be based on that. But more than anything, how is changing your body type any more linked to science than magic, technology or mutation?



It's a nice pack and all, it just feels a bit like it's part of a science booster pack and then a much-demanded general thing stuck on the side (Or vice-versa).

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.... and the old ones arn't? At least these have better textures.

They really don't seem any more expressionless than the old ones, to me.

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What about the smiling ones? Or the ones that look angry?


I'm not saying they all have to be like that, just some.

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Any badges for it?

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Yes - Savior of Boomtown.

Which I thought was a bit ironic, really, considering the state of Boomtown...

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lol

I'm a bit dissapointed by the faces. They're nice, but they're so.....expressionless.

Any badges for it?

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Not just that, but it also included text you might have typed up to that point. It wasn't uncommon to see people saying "wwwwwwweeeeeqqqqeqwesssssdsdadddHi" in globals.

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Oh THAT'S what it was! Last night I pressed the button, started typing and saw this string of text! Didn't know if it was something on my end!

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so. Whats Booster Pack III's theme gunna be?

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Dunno, I thought SexyJ mentioned a while back he wanted more classic tights options, so Natural maybe? Just speculation on my part.

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I dunno, why would tights fit natural more than the others?

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Another problem i have, the end boss in my last mish is suppose to be a EB but keeps spawning as a Lt. how do i fix that?

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In the current version of the MA, custom Bosses *and* custom Elite Bosses will downscale to LTs if you play on heroic (custom AVs will downscale to EBs). This is different from the normal PvE game where Bosses will downscale to Lts, but EBs will generally stick to being EBs. Personally, I think they should have downscaled to Bosses not LTs, but this is an issue the devs have been wrestling with all beta long: custom critters just tend to be vastly stronger than normal PvE critters, and missions that the MA authors make that seem perfectly reasonable to them are often coming up practically impossible to defeat for many players due to skill, archetype, or build.


[/ QUOTE ]I think it goes the other way though, that a reasonable EB becomes an stupidly easy to defeat Lt, which can really spoil an arc.

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I agree with this totally. As a writer by trade I have seen real drek published...but it seldom gets purchased because customers read a few pages and put it back. That writer doesn't see much ink after that and either improves his art or goes back to washing cars or whatever.

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But after those people read a few pages they don't then go off and write a review which gets as much weight put on it as someone who actually read the book properly.

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Yet, first impressions are the most important. MA arcs are not like regular game content. We have more of a choice about whether we do them. Game content we have to do, if we want what follows. I can't count how many times I've rescued Fusionette in the Faultline arc, because that arc is a good way to get the Ouroboros badge before you're high enough to just go to Ouroboros. If we could START with the actual time travel mission, I'm sure a lot of people would.


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I agree with this to a certain degree but I feel that you can only get a 'cosmetic' first impression with CoX missions. You walk in the door and the only judgment you can really make is based on what you initially perceive e.g. map and mobs.

You need to play the mission for a few minutes before you can really rate it. 30 minutes maybe too long as some missions can be completed by this time perhaps 15 minutes.

As for the comments this would be a nice to have option but it maybe open to more abuse enabling players to type whatever they like. I think it most likely you will just have an opportunity to mark it out of 5 for example. Its quick, easy and will minimize abuse.

[/ QUOTE ]We won't have public comments, but we will be able to send comments to the authors. Uncertain if we'll get public comments in the future.

Make up your own example of a truly horrible bucket of chum mission that you can tell in the first couple of minutes, before you even fight one mob, is something the dog wouldn't eat and the cat would bury rather than drag inside. Those will happen. Let us bail and rate them as they deserve without having to endure it one minute longer than we have to. Other than that, trust the players. Don't force us to endure dreck longer than necessary until we prove otherwise. THEN they can start imposing whatever conditions/limits they feel needed.

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If you're judging something before you've even met a mob, you can't judge it fairly. What if they have a suprise planned? Some people might one star if the mission says you have to rescue Faultline and Fusionette, what if there is more to it than that?

The idea that you have to play the whole arc to give a review is a bit much, true, but the idea that you can judge an arc based on not even meeting the first mob is just as silly. It makes a mockery out of having a review system.

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Time spent. If you're in a mission for at least, say, 30 minutes you get to rate it, even if you don't complete it. You can still rate a completed mission that was done in less than 30 minutes. Missions that are abandoned prior to the 30 minute mark cannot be rated.

Of course, 30 minutes is just an arbitrary time frame. Testing and datamining could probably arrive at a much more elegant number that would serve the purposes of both preventing rating griefing as well as allowing horrible missions to get properly trashed.

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You know there will be missions that you can tell in the first couple of minutes are unrefined, unfiltered raw sewage. Make up whatever example you want -- I've been using "Rescue the 25 Fusionette Clones" for that; make up your own if that doesn't work for you -- it doesn't matter what example it takes for you to be comfortable with it. You KNOW there will be ones like that.

If I can't quit as soon as I can smell what it is, and give it an appropriate rating, that is Not a Good Thing.

If the whole thing turns out to be way better than it started out, then the more persistent people will balance that out.

But if the author doesn't want the quick-deciders to bail at the first whiff of effluent, then they just need to give us clues that we should persist., or clean up the beginning enough to keep us going.

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Your more persistent people argument doesn't work, as your score will keep people away from playing it. Why would anyone play an arc that got rated one star when there will be ones scoring much higher?

And that to me is the problem. Someone can walk in, walk out, rate it basically due to first impressions and kill the arc. That to me is more of a bad thing than the idea that someone has to actually play some of the arc before rating it, since one involves people putting effort into game content.

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I asked directly about public comments with our ratings, and told:

"There are no public comments available. It has been considered but will not be in for release."



Bummer.

Well, it's pretty obvious that this is a highly desired feature, so we can only hope they will implement it later.

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Awww


For me, this makes ratings not being equally weighted more important.

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Just for fun, here are some numbers.

The devs said you need to average 5 stars, but they will round up. So if you get one 4 star and one 5 star, that would be 9 stars over two ratings, for an average of 4.5. Rounded up, that's 5. So...

For each 4 star rating, you need ONE 5 star rating to keep your 5 star average.
For each 3 star rating, you need THREE 5 star ratings.
For each 2 star rating, you need FIVE 5 star ratings.
For each 1 star rating, you need SEVEN 5 star ratings to keep your 5 star average.

Unless people are feeling very generous, I don't think we're going to see all that many arcs in the Hall of Fame. Any rating other than 5 is a vote against Hall of Fame status.

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Slight disagreement in your sums. If they're rounding up, 4.1 becomes 5. So I believe I'm right in saying a 1 rating would need four 5 ratings.



And even if they've said that, I wouldn't be suprised if it isn't a hard rule. If an arc is averaging 4 but is getting very good marks in general and has been played by a huge number of people, I wouldn't be suprised if that made it in even if it's ratings are lower.

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There's a small chance that a Red name will contradict me, but I'm pretty sure that they will retain all rights, just as they do to the characters you create in COX.

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/this

If you have personal attachments to your arcs, or think they might make a great story or novel or webcomic sometime, then use loosely shifted variations in the MA. I'm creating all new characters and organizations, just against the possibility that the personal material I'm otherwise referencing (some of which I've published) might be useful to me elsewhere down the line.

Besides, it's fun to come up with new things.

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It's not hard to tweak something enough that it's different anyway. Take the character in your head, modify the background, change the surname, maybe a different hair colour and boom, different person

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Here's another test case.

Someone writes a five issue arc. He puts a ton of content into it, and builds everything extremely well. His biggest failing is he writes too much -- his mission acceptance text is three screens, his clues are all huge, but for the person who actually reads it, it turns out to be beautiful and poignant.

Let's say in this hypothetical that he does this so well that essentially every person who completes the fifth mission finds himself in tears, and every last one of them five-stars the arc. It is, in the end, a triumph.

But 200 people who launch into the arc see a big block of text to start with, snort, think "oh, no way," and drop the arc, one-starring it with the attitude of 'tl;dr.'

Should those 200 people, who didn't even try to make it through the opening text -- who didn't even read it -- get the same weight in their reviews to the 200 people who went through the whole arc and breathlessly 5-star it? Does it really deserve an aggregate 3 stars when half the people didn't spend more than three seconds on the opening screen?

If we assume this arc was 5 missions long, and assume a weighted vote based upon number of missions started, that would mean the 1-star votes by the people who never went through the front door would be worth 20% of a full vote, whereas the 5-star folks would be worth the full vote each. So, at 400 people rating the arc, with 200 not having done anything in the missions and ranking it the worst ad 200 having done all 5 missions and ranking it the best, the average rank at the end is 4.3 stars. Assuming this rounds down for being below 4.5 (not a safe assumption -- we don't know how they're going to round these things), that would have the arc rated 4 stars at the 400 player mark. A player looking for a good arc would see that and think it might be worth a chance, whereas the 3 the arc would get before would make it hopelessly average.

At the same time, if these trends continued to 1000 players, then there would still be enough nay votes to keep it out of the Hall of Fame -- which means that the half who refused to play it at all would have their opinions registered and noted, rather than disenfranchising them.

It's a pretty simplistic example, but hopefully an illustrative one.

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Well, personally something with too much text probably wouldn't get a 5 from me


But otherwise yes, I agree with you. Someone who actually played the whole arc has a more valid opinion on the whole arc than someone who didn't last a single mission, since they actually played the arc, so why should their scores give an equal rating?


I just hate the idea of a system where a fantastic arc might get some terrible early scores because of a minor issue at the start, which instantly means the arc is dead to most people because to most people a low score will mean a bad arc as opposed to something with something that bothered people in the first story.

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Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.

*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.

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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.

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But how can you rate something if you instantly leave it? Would you put weight in a movie reviewer who walked out of a movie after 10 minutes? What if the arc starts a little slowly?


People are going to be putting a lot of effort into these arcs, and some people might instantly get 1 starred by someone after a badge. Instantly their arc is stigmatised, as nobody is going to want to play a 1/5 arc.



If people aren't going to be expected to play the whole arc, IMO they should at least be made to have done a certain amount. Maybe you have to complete a proportionate amount of missions (1-3 missions needs one completed, 4-5 needs two maybe?), or maybe a time limit.

[/ QUOTE ]There are going to be arcs posted that you do NOT have to finish to know they're garbage. If I run into a second Fusionette, that I also have to lead to the exit, and there was nothing in the mission text to tell me that, I don't have to go any further to know I'm NOT going to finish it, and I AM going to 1-star it. I no longer care if it's "Rescue both Fusionette and her sister", or "Rescue the 25 Fusionette clones".

If it's supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek challenge, then the writer needs to put enough info in the mission text for us to be in on the joke. Otherwise it's not a good story.

(I wonder how many actual "Rescue the 25 Fusionette clones" stories are going to show up.)

Your reviewer example is not very good, because any actual reviewer would either say he didn't watch it and can't rate it, or he would say why he walked out after 15 minutes. And my trust or distrust would depend on those reasons. I've enjoyed several movies that every review I saw panned, because their reasons for panning it told me I'd enjoy it.

I'm not seeing anything that confirms we'll be able to leave comments with the ratings, but I'll be surprised (and disappointed) if we can't.

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But that means you're going to one star it based on 20% of the arc. If the rest of it is good, wouldn't that maybe deserve better than 1? Similarly, what if this gets explained after? If you're going to one star for something that would be explained or shown to be relevent the second you leave, doesn't that show the problem in the system?

And my point with the reviewer is that someone who leaves after 20 minutes has only seen the start of the movie, so how can they truly rate the movie?



I agree with you on the comments, I definately want that. Seems a little unfair that if I mark an arc down for, say, writing a novel in every single text box (Which is a bad thing IMO), I want to be able to tell them that this is the reason

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Oh! Better idea... Is there any way you can give certain ratings more 'weight' than others? If someone rates a mission without playing it, it would have a low weight against the total rating, while someone who completes it has a greater effect on the overall rating. What do you think?

*EDIT* This could count more towards the badge, too, in some way.

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I like that idea too.

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Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.

*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.

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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.

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But how can you rate something if you instantly leave it? Would you put weight in a movie reviewer who walked out of a movie after 10 minutes? What if the arc starts a little slowly?


People are going to be putting a lot of effort into these arcs, and some people might instantly get 1 starred by someone after a badge. Instantly their arc is stigmatised, as nobody is going to want to play a 1/5 arc.



If people aren't going to be expected to play the whole arc, IMO they should at least be made to have done a certain amount. Maybe you have to complete a proportionate amount of missions (1-3 missions needs one completed, 4-5 needs two maybe?), or maybe a time limit.

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The problem to me is if you let people have 10 arcs they will make 10 arcs, reguardless of quality. Then anyone who wants to play the arcs will have a tougher time actually finding these missions, which isn't good for anybody.

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But that's when having a rating system comes into its own. If you can sort the billion arcs by average rating, and filter your sort to "arcs developed in the last week", for example, then you'll get all the newer arcs that have been rated 4-5 stars right up top. This makes having a 4 star rating an advantage instead of a disappointment. As it is, either you get 5 stars or you have to consider putting a bullet in your 4 star arc that gets a few hundred people playing it a week because you want to put something new up.

No matter what happens, there's going to be a ton of dross. If getting 5 stars is ultimately unattainable, you either sacrifice creating new content to keep your popular but old content up or you yank down something people like and give up any chance of building more than a couple of related arcs.

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But your argument only works if people play your arc. A rating system only works if people play your stuff, and people are less likely to play your stuff if they can't find it under a wave of stuff, a lot of which being substandard. A small number of arcs per people makes it more likely that your arc will be found, and encourages players to spend more time on making great arcs over putting out everything in their head IMO.
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While a small number, hopefully three will ensure people put a real effort into the ones they do, which makes the quality of the system as a whole better and thus makes it more likely people will use it, which then makes it even MORE likely that people will play your story.

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Either you get a strong enough rating to keep your story up high, or you get buried in the masses. There will be hundreds -- thousands -- of story arcs on this thing within two weeks. There will likely be 500 good story arcs copied over from beta on launch day. (And huzzah for that. As a player I'm looking forward to devouring some of these storylines.)

3 arcs is just too limiting. There isn't room to build multiple storylines on a theme, and there isn't room to build multiple one-storyline-themes. I can accept that we might need extraordinary measures to get more. (Vet rewards, redeeming astronomical numbers of tickets, or just plain plunking down cash at the NC barrelhead.) But there should be those options in the game, somewhere.

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I'm sure they'll put in ways eventually, it'll just be a gradual thing. If you let people build up the number of arcs they can have it'd mean that people can build up the number of arcs they can do, but there wont be a tidal wave of them straight away.

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Will the MA affect Defeat badges? If I make a mission with the Cabal, can a villian earn the defeat cabal badge?

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No, No.

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Sorry pohsyb, but you just killed any interest I had in the MA.

It was the perfect opportunity to fix several mistakes and oversights re: Defeat Badges, but now? Meh. No real interest in it. That's not to say I don't recognize and appreciate the fact that a LOT of work has went into it, but two steps forward, one back IMO.

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If we are able to make maps just to get badges easily, what is the point of badges in the first place?

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Do I even bother trying to get story worth of a hall of fame or devs' choice award? Are there any other rewards other than getting my story arc a promotion? If that's all there is to it, then I'll probably stick to creating rapidly cycling story arcs for my characters, and not worry about the ratings.

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It wouldn't surprise me if there were badges involved, but that's not my interest.

I want to build. Among other things, I want to build on the foundations I set up in the first place. If I create a new enemy group with a story arc, I don't want to have to remove that story arc that creates and establishes them to have room to post a story arc that develops their story. At the same time, I don't only want to tell stories about that villain group.

Heck, before these things were even announced, I actively outlined five story arcs I wanted to do if at all possible. And sure, I can build them, but I don't want to spend a week building a story arc that then I wait to see if maybe -- just maybe -- the three I have up will promote.

I don't know. Three just seems way too few to me. Five, maybe. Seven would be plenty. But three?

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The problem to me is if you let people have 10 arcs they will make 10 arcs, reguardless of quality. Then anyone who wants to play the arcs will have a tougher time actually finding these missions, which isn't good for anybody.

While a small number, hopefully three will ensure people put a real effort into the ones they do, which makes the quality of the system as a whole better and thus makes it more likely people will use it, which then makes it even MORE likely that people will play your story.



That is kindof my growing worry on this, will this be a system where people spend more time making arcs than playing arcs, and really good arcs can lost in the flood? Kindof demoralising to know you will spend days working on something nobody will play

Nothing specific, but I'd like to see casual items that one might find in living quarters or similar.

Aww, seeyas.