Silver Gale

Well, the nay-sayers have been proven wrong. The rating system is not actually as bad as that, and despite the alleged masses of griefers and malcontents giving 1 and 2 star ratings to everything, within a week of I14 launching a non-DC arc has made it into the Hall of Fame!

...for a few hours. And then later for a few more hours. And then for some minutes.

It seems that arc #2291, "The Footsteps Initiative" has been constantly teetering on the brink of Fame-dom. What a controversial, polarizing story it must be, to be getting so many 5-stars and yet so many 1 and 2 stars! Because surely, nobody would *ever* give it a rating dishonestly, just for the sheer joy of watching it vanish from the Hall of Fame?

Okay, so now we know the Hall of Fame is reachable. But here's the problem: authors want to reach the Hall of Fame to get a new arc slot open. The idea is, you make an arc, the playerbase loves it, and they give you more room to give them more arcs.

For this system to work, it's not enough for Hall of Fame status to be theoretically reachable. It needs to be *maintainable*. Your adoring public cannot constantly flip-flop between "tell us one more!" and "stop writing".

Those who believe in the rating system say that eventually, Democracy will win out. The cream of the crop will rise to the top of the ratings, and we will have plenty of good arcs to play. Just give it *time*, man. It's only been a week since launch! The playerbase has barely had time to make enough arcs to completely fill up the 999 pages of the search system. There can't possibly be *one* arc good enough to garner 1000 positive votes from a pool of 130k players in there.

Well, I'm giving it time. I'm giving it three months (from now until June 14th) for an arc to reach Hall of Fame status, and stay there.

It's entirely possible, of course, that CoH players are such a discerning bunch that not a single author can make something good enough to merit a Hall of Fame award. The writing in the game is simply top-notch. I know that after running Vivacious Verandi's arc, or Stephanie Pebbles, the bar of my expectations is raised high.

Because it certainly isn't possible that the rating system places too much power in the hands of low voters, or that the requirements for HoF are unrealistic. No, if in three months the Hall of Fame has not had a permanent resident yet, it can only mean one thing: none of the players are good enough writers, and they don't deserve any more than the three basic publishing slots.

Edit: Added sarcasm tags for clarity. Everything that's italics is meant to be read in a sarcastic voice.

Yes, that *is* a lot of sarcasm.

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A thing I was actually hoping for was some sort of review collection or something. For example, say Venture rated something at five stars, and Talen rated the same thing at one. Why those ratings? What did they like and dislike?

Or if Venture and Talen both rate something at five stars (or four, or three, or one, whatever). They could be doing so for different reasons.

So I was hoping to be able to sort of triangulate on whether I'd like a certain arc or not, given that nobody shares exactly my tastes, but several people have displayed signs of being close to some specific parts of it.

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If you want to find stuff you'll like, you're better off looking for "recommend an arc" threads or starting one yourself. Reviews are more of a way for the author to learn what they could do better in their work.

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(I swear there was a name for this, where the community in general benefits most from a resource if everyone uses it sparingly, but there's a net gain for each individual when they take up more of the resource, so everyone ends up taking up as much as they can and nobody wins. No idea what the name was, though.)

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Tragedy of the commons. I think.

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Ah, thanks, that was it. (Google is sadly unhelpful where all you have to go on is "that thing with the cows and the shared pasture".)

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Hey... who says everyone in Los Angeles reads the New York Times?

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Yes, getting a lot of plays on your arc requires mentioning it in as many threads as possible, but think of the bigger picture. If every reviewer has to put every arc in their queue, there might as well only be one.

(I swear there was a name for this, where the community in general benefits most from a resource if everyone uses it sparingly, but there's a net gain for each individual when they take up more of the resource, so everyone ends up taking up as much as they can and nobody wins. No idea what the name was, though.)

I kind of assumed the point of having several people making review threads was to get more arcs reviewed, not to have a few arcs get 2-3 reviews each.

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I feel suspiciously like I'm standing at the front of a classroom. You don't need to be afraid of custom enemies and defeat alls inherently, you just need to give me a good reason for either of them. And neither of them should serve as a purpose unto themselves - a defeat all is not justified just by being a defeat all, you need to give me a reason I'm rooting out everyone. And a custom enemy group is fine as long as it has a purpose that is not simply 'look cool and be hard to kill.'

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Well, obviously *I* feel they're justified, otherwise I wouldn't be using them, but you'll make the call yourself when you play the arc.

A Jaunt Into Dataspace, #1438

Levels: 30-50
Morality: Neutral
Difficulty: Soloable on a Defender

I'm a bit hesitant because the arc starts off with a Defeat All with custom enemies - two of your major peeves. (At least it's a Small map?) It's only three missions, though, and no AV/EBs. I'd really appreciate an in-depth analysis of the story, what works, and what doesn't.

589 to 622 since I14 release!

I kind of wish my badge char wasn't a defender, soloing is really slow and I have to avoid arcs with AVs (which is a lot of them).

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I'm glad to see a positive response to the pack. The high collar cape & hood from the 2nd pic, is also available for the female. Enjoy!

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That would imply the very nice coats are, in fact, *not* available for females. C'mon, Jay, you ported the tuxes and the civilian suits over. Don't squander the faith I had in you.

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From this point on this is live...
have fun

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"A Jaunt Into Dataspace" is Live, too!

A Jaunt Into Dataspace
Arc ID: 1438
Summary: Go rummaging through Crey's files with a little help from a friend.
Length: Medium.
Difficulty: Very easy solo. One optional difficult boss fight in Mission 2. Should scale up to provide a decent challenge for bigger teams.
Focus: Story-driven.
Tone: Light-hearted (some jokes, not entirely silly)
Does It Tell Me What My Character Is Doing/Thinking? Yes, a few times.

Notes: The AE search claims it's "Long", but I can solo it on my Storm/Elec Defender in 40 minutes.

My goal was to make this arc as fun as possible. The main focus of it is the middle mission, where you're searching through Crey's file servers. Every glowy has at least a 50% chance of holding something interesting, so if you like to read clue text you will not get bored!

There are a few places where I mention what your character does or thinks, so if that's your pet peeve, don't play this arc. (I have no way of knowing if your character *does* care whether they're in a database or file server, or they don't know any forensic accountants/happen to be a forensic accountant themselves.)

Edit: Apparently the Dataspace Security is very annoying to mid-to-large teams. The Lieutenants have Elec Blast and Kinetics (only at Standard, but it still means Transfusion for everyone), so it can get pretty sap-heavy. Looking into ways of fixing this.

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I feel like someone should have put out a press release way back then saying:

"Oh, we just HAPPENED to remove the 5th Column at the exact same time that we released the game in Europe. Yeah- that's the ticket. Oh, and any future references to them will be retroactively changed to 'Council' instead of '5th Column'. Oh, and if the 5th Column ever DO come back, we're just going to call them Italians. But hey- it's all coincidence. Did we mention that Nazi is a bad word? No? Well it is."

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Because if the conspiracy theory *was* true and they *had* changed it because of the European launch, they couldn't just come out and say "yeah, we're releasing the game in Europe, and our lawyers/marketers told us that a game with Nazis wouldn't be very well received there, so we're changing some stuff". Because... well, why say the truth when you can construct a web of lies and deception that you'll have to keep up for years afterwards?

Arc Name: A Jaunt Into Dataspace
Arc ID: 16056
Faction: Crey, Custom
Creator Global: @Meagen
Difficulty Level: No AV/EBs, Soloable. Should scale up and be more challenging for bigger teams.
Synopsis: Rummage around Crey's files and see what they have on you.
Estimated Time to Play: 40-60 minutes
Link to More Details or Feedback: Feedback thread

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But it isn't any copyright that blocks use of the name, it's Trademark - while somewhat similar, it is a very distinct and very different thing.

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Actually, what blocks the use of the name is a text filter made by the CoH devs.

Arc Name: Save Orphanage from Fire
Arc ID: 3366
Faction: Custom
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Meagen
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: The orphanage is on fire! You need to get all the orphans out!
Estimated Time to Play: 40 minutes

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Does the text actually describe him speaking to her? because the narrative seems to imply (if I understood it correctly) that he switched "builds" mid-battle. Are we going to get a power that actually lets us switch builds mid-battle on a very very very long timer?! or is this truly Positron hacking, or... perhaps as Rick said, Positron went for a little chat with Valk before re-engaging in battle?!

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It says "I was able to successfully use the second part of my new build". Earlier he talked about two major changes between his solo "array" and his normal one, 1) replaced Mutation and Fallout with Aim and Proton Volley, 2) replaced Irradiate with Cosmic Burst. Hence "the second part of his new build" is the newly acquired Cosmic Burst.

There wouldn't be any reason to swap to a team-support build in the middle of a solo EB fight, anyway.

Also, I want to know why we're letting the Vindicators keep the secret of Dual Builds when everyone knows they're in cahoots with the Arachnos Arbiters. Cahoots, I say.

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If I were Positron and a known villan supervillan scientist had made a device that could warp reality, I would not be testing it to say "its safe to use for fun fellow heroes", I'd be finding someway to take it and HIM down.

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But don't you see what this means to science? It could mean actual advancements in the field of science!

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Oh for Petes sake..its just a game!
Go on a date!
Take the significant other out for dinner or a movie..

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My SO lives 2 hours of flight and 3 hours of car ride away. We're gonna need a longer maintenance.

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I'm sorry, but I had to laugh at this from the linked article...

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"In WoW if you wanted to get a specific item, you would just end up farming the same boss over and over again. It doesn't work that way in City of Heroes."

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I guess it is true. CoX players don't really farm the same boss over-and-over for specific drops; the farmers in CoX just farm the same mission/enemy-type over-and-over again for specific drops.

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Farmers farm behemoths because they're the easiest to kill, and thus produce the most salvage/hour. Point is, you don't *have* to. You can get a Pangean Soil drop from any Behemoth, any council soldier, any Cimeroran traitor, or any other number of Arcane enemies. You don't even need the Pangean Soil in the first place, because you can just buy a set of SOs with your Influence and still play the game.

The power icon for Freezing Rain was fixed. Not sure about any others. Someone who doesn't have the Icon Fix Pack should check.

I don't think you can represent this as such a clear-cut "everyone wins!" strategy. If you're successfully using this to earn Influence, then you're essentially exploiting some other player who is more lazy or less informed about relative IO recipe prices.

Whenever I work on crafting badges, I always put in bids that are lower than the price of the recipe at crafting tables, but higher than the price merchants pay for it. That way, I don't have to pay quite as much for my crafting badges, but the player selling the recipe is also better-off than they would be otherwise. *That's* a true win-win strategy.

I'm not too bothered, though. I'll always outbid anyone who uses the method outlined in this guide.

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You can't tell people "be a collector, of some stuff." That's incompatible with the collector mindset, and a good game designer should acknowledge the target audience they are targetting. If the devs are targetting people who care enough to pursue some of the badges with no meaning beyond collection, and will happily ignore all the ones that are designed to be out of reach, they are targetting a phone booth: there aren't bound to be lots of people like that.

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Really? So stamp collectors don't collect stamps unless they can have every stamp ever made? Coin collectors don't collect coins unless they can have every coin ever made? Heck, some people like collecting junk simply because they like collecting things, and not because they want to have everything ever made in the entire world. In fact, I would think a lot of collectors would be disappointed if they ever got everything because then there would be nothing more to collect.

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I think a lot *more* collectors would be disappointed if you found an item of the kind that they collect, but that they don't have yet, and waved it in their face saying "you like it? huh? huh? well too bad, you can't have it! nyah nyah! you should be happy with the ones you have already, it's not like you need every X in the world!".

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Will invention salvage be storeable in the salvage racks in bases?

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This is what I'd like to know. With the current system, people in my SG who have no interest in crafting can drop their Base salvage in storage, and once enough of it piles up, I get my precious credit towards the Fabricator badge by refining the salvage.

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Personally, I think it's fun when GMs are pulled, it's something different to fight.

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If you think fighting the (non-Giant) Monsters is fun, why don't you... I dunno... go and fight them on Monster Island?