Sente_

Good luck Ghost Raptor in your future endeavours!

[ QUOTE ]
Hardly a trustable metric, is it? You have to USE XFire for it to register, and don't know anyone who does.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course it is not trustable to get actual number of players. It is still a metric that is the same for multiple games, rather than the apples and oranges comparisions one ends up with from various MMO companies. Everyone uses some number that sounds favourable for that type of game, if they give numbers at all.

[ QUOTE ]
having lots of players together in a persistent world is a hallmark of MMOs.

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the criteria that defines an MMO, then we only have one true MMO, which is EVE Online.

In most other MMOs the shared areas could often be described as semi-persitant at best. Interact with pretty much anything in the shared areas of the world except the players themselves and it will be something that will be reset to its original state in a matter of minutes or hours.

But whether a game like Guild Wars fulfills some specific definition of MMORPG or not is really beside the point. It is still close enough that it attracts the same type of audience.

And if discussing how many are actually playing the games, look at the play time statistics at XFire. Guild Wars has currently almost 11000 users per day, while City of Heroes+Villains barely 1000 users.

Last night my last dominator Niefelheim dinged 50, which means that all 6 dominators (covering all powersets) have reached max level.

Would not have been possible without MA story arcs, since I have been a bit fed up with regular villain content

[ QUOTE ]
The way the MA browser currently works, even if your arc had been amazing, it'd still be lost in the torrent that is player created arcs. We've recently passed 100K published arcs...

[/ QUOTE ]

It is just the arc IDs that has passed the 100k mark, not actual arcs. Actual arcs are probably still less than 30k, which is still a huge amount.

To really have any slight chance of getting an arc played and rated is to pimp it in various ways outside of the game itself. Plus also put in some good information so that people know what to expect in terms of difficulty/challenge, any particular levels it is aimed at etc.

Being more upfront with such information will help if someone is reading through descriptions to determine what arcs to play - at least to get some favorable feedback if they decide to play it.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think I'm alone in this (but it's my opinion, so feel free to correct me) but I can't help feeling that the MA has left a lot of people feeling a bit "meh" about the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

No need for correction, opinion is opinion. For me, MA has been a very welcome and fun addition - even with farm/search /rating issues and bugs considered.


[ QUOTE ]
Then there was a sea-change and they made strenuous efforts to give the players what they wanted. Now the pendulum has swung back the other way it seems to me.


[/ QUOTE ]

You mean the various "quality of life" changes they did? Those seems to me that they were some realtively easy changes that they got some time and resources to implement from NCSoft. Other changes may be much more challenging and/or time/resource consuming to implement - it does not necessarily mean that developers do not listen.


[ QUOTE ]
4) We hear a lot about how much the Dev team has expanded. I'm sorry but I'm not seeing that. What I am seeing is the same number of issues per year but the last two have been buggy as hell. In terms of bugs, I13 was the worst since I7. I14 seems to be pretty similar.

[/ QUOTE ]

They have brought in a number of new people who has to learn all the intricate details of something that has been in development for a number of years, while still being productive. Bringing in a lot of new people will decrease productiveness for a period of time until people have at least somewhat mastered their new roles and tasks. I think some bugs are just because new people may still be learning a bit about the implications various changes to the code may have.

Personally I do not think it will matter that much what Paragon Studios may release close to the release of Champions Online - people will still go and try the new shiny if they are interested in that type of game at all. What will matter for them will be what will be attracting players after the initial enthusiasm for a new game has died down a bit.

Personally I look at various recommendations part of the time. For actual searches I tend to include 3,4,5 star + not rated and length from medium to very long.

If someone has made the effort to create a decent story chances are fairly good that there are at least 3 missions in it to develop the story properly.

On top of that I might add certain keywords, such as enemy groups in level range etc.

Compared to getting a regular team which might focus on newspaper/police band missions I find many MA missions a refreshing change, even if they are not top notch.

A limit of 4+ rating with at least 1000 votes is no law or design pattern that cannot be easily changed. If the devs see that no or almost no arc will reach that limit, then I am quite sure they will adjust it, most likely changing the number of votes required.

That being said, I think the rating that Tangler suggests pretty much is what the devs had in mind, otherwise the 4+ would not have been stated IMHO.

A 1-star vote could be a case of ragequit also - someone frustrated with a couple of too difficult arcs, enter the next one, dies and let all the frustration spill out on that one.

At least I would like to believe that rather than deliberate ganking.

There is an entry in Paragon Wiki for the mission architect tickets which covers the mission bonus rewards.

The algorithm for a single ticket drop is a different matter though.

Searching on enemy group names in appropriate level ranges can help find some. Two that I found and played when searching for Hellions (1-14) were these:

Hearts on Fire (id 1472)
Rise of the Iron Maidens (id 3449)

I have an arc myself for the 10-19 range (The missing geneticist, id 2542).

There is no surprise that most of the arcs currently might not be worth the time spent playing them. Anyone can publish an arc in 5 minutes, so that is what is going to happen.

One of the key parts here is what NCSoft will do with their mission browser tool if they keep the mission editor as accessible as now - right now it is at a stage corresponding to early internet search engines. We have not yet seen any google-quality functionality or even anything corresponding to a few other current search engines.

Last I checked, roughly 40-45% of the published arcs were unrated. Of those that were rated 5 stars, around 3% had been rated at least 10 times. I would expect the latter to increase as more people start to play more missions rather than creating them - it is still very early into the release.

[ QUOTE ]

3) Nosferatu runs at 75% HP - this won't fail the mission if he escapes.. Taking down 25% of his HP is much easier. He can't afford to be caught doing what he's doing, and an escort spawn with the main mission objective appears in the path he'll run down, which will hopefully distract the player and let him escape. There will still be a final fight, as that other EB guarding the exit will still be there. Defeat Nosferatu is not a vital objective in the story and if it were possible I'd make him optional, but a required objective (the escort) needs to trigger off him.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps let him run at 75% and trigger an ambush at the same time for distraction and make the escort a required objective?

I have a level 11 Widow which I almost only level through MA and created just before Issue 14 was released. Ticket drops are quite good.

It would be nice with indicators for EB/AV and a level range search though.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm guessing you arrived at that number on the basis that each player needs 300KB of space to hold 3 arcs? I doubt that's true, they're probably compressed on the server.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do not think they are necessarily in the same format as you have on the client side. Various constants and fields that are textual in the client do probably have a more compact binary representation on the server side.

They would likely have a few key fields in the database extracted for various searches and queries and other DB operations. The rest is perhaps in some compact format which is used over the network.

Anyway, 9GB is nothing, so anything they have done would not be because they wanted to save space in the database.

[ QUOTE ]
That's incredibly low key especially for a game that's just about to launch a ground breaking update and a new purchasable box. If I read between the lines I see "we've got an [censored] good product and a very loyal user core, but if this doesn't up the figures I don't know what the [censored] will. If it wasn't for the rest of the interview, I'd be keeping half an ear out with the expectation of an announcement saying NC are selling the game off - but the rest is the normal upbeat marketing talk.

[/ QUOTE ]

The subscriber numbers have been slowly decreasing for a long time if one looks at the NCSoft quarterly reports.
If they manage to stop that, they will probably see it as reasonably successful issue.

They do not really know how MA will work out in the long term. E.g., will people be excited about it for a few months and then ignore it and move on to something else? Or will it continue to bring in new material?
Will it be good enough to help keep players once Champions Online releases?

It makes sense to be a bit cautious while still trying to convey a possitive message.

Will upload my arcs and see that they work, check if there might be something I need to unlock for them.

Will definitely play lots of MA arcs, primarily with villain characters since I have gone though the regular villain content too many times before.

One way to perhaps encourage or facilitate people to give more and better info to the players they want to invite is to allow the team leader to add info that will be sent with the team invite.

After all, if you can provide information that may show information what you may be looking for, why not complement that with adding info to an invite being sent?

The team leader could send an invite directly which would not be blind if he/she bothered to put enough info in there for the receiver to make a decision.

Dominator is by far my favourite AT in this game, have 6 of them covering all the powerset choices, all in 34-50 range.

Deleted a number of them though also, when trying to find combinations that I liked.

While dominators are not that common I do see others in team regularly, although that typically is me + another dom.

As for rare ATs I think the Fortunata path of the Archnos Widows might be more rare, but this is also one that fits those that like doms quite well. Love my Fortunata also and that was my 3rd to hit 50 (two other were doms).

[ QUOTE ]
So yes sar for cerative genuis

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll second the nomination for Sar as genuis