Sister_Twelve

I'm not really boycotting NCSoft per se. They just don't have any other games in their stable I really want to play.

Thank you for the work you did on Architect Entertainment, Sean. I still think that it had the potential to be one of best engines for player creativity ever conceived.

And on a completely personal level, thank you for playing and enjoying and choosing 'Night Calls the Weaver' back in February, 2010. It really meant a lot to me that someone who was writing on a professional level experienced my work and found it to be worthwhile. It's hard to explain just how much that validation meant. And I never really talked to you about it at the time, but let me just say now that it was important. And maybe as someone who was a player who became a developer, you already understand this.

It was that sort of thing that made this group of developers unique. Good luck to you. I hope that all of you land awesome jobs in the near future.

- Mike

Thank you for an extraordinary game, Melissa. What was done to you and yours was beyond reprehensible.

I won't be participating in any of NCSoft's 'sunset activities,' if there are any. Any end to this experience that wasn't written and developed by the people who brought us this point is a pointless waste of time as far as I am concerned. You should have been given the opportunity to end this experience on your terms.

You and yours developed the best social game in the history of gaming. There will never be another community like this one.

Again, there are no words other than thank you.

- Mike

Thanks in advance

Night Calls The Weaver
Arc ID#375420
Level 5-10

Ah, well, it seems as though their focus will continue to be to tilt at the exploiter windmill instead of doing things that might increase MA's popularity again. This would have been the greatest tool in the history of online gaming for the player population. Now, unfortunately, it is sadly dead.

Akarist is very hard to solo with my emp/psi defender just because his resistances are so high and her damage output is so low. Nosferatu is a very hard elite boss to solo for almost every AT. There are a couple of others that are very hard to solo for specific archetypes as well, but for the most part with the use of inspirations, just about any AT should be able to solo the generic elite boss.

Which elite boss was it?

I played this awhile back and I think I silently 5-starred it, (but I might have 4 starred it - have to look back through my list), because it had a low enough arc id that I doubted the author was still paying attention to the forum. Without going into detail, I thought it was a compelling story.

Had no difficulty or huge design issues that I can recall. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

PS: Also sort of annoyed at all this because when I first saw the topic, I thought someone new had gotten a DC after months of dormancy, but c'est la vie.

Ah, well, not everyone is going to enjoy everything that you write. Thanks for taking the time to play it even though you didn't seem to enjoy it. It's hard to do much with the review story-wise, simply because most of the things you indicated you disliked were things other reviewers have indicated they really enjoyed. You're right in saying the arc does make some assumptions, but unless you write every arc completely neutral to the fact that the player is playing a character, almost every arc is going to be essentially about the narrator of the story... ie the contact... or about characters that appear inside the arc.

I've always felt that with notable exceptions, the vast majority of the dev created content is very sterile for that reason. Is an arc like Union of the Mask going to resonate with every player? Probably not. Especially with players of characters who raise the objection you raise... ie, 'but my character doesn''t have a family!'

With Night Calls the Weaver, I probably did as much or more of this, especially since I wrote the arc in second person and the arc is essentially about the player's character, although I tried to put as few words in the player's mouth as possible and tried to make the player's responses as 'neutral' as possible or tried to phrase the responses in such a way as to allow the player to apply whatever inflection he or she chooses to apply to them.

I will freely admit that this style of arc creation is not going to appeal to everyone. Venture would likely 1 star every arc I write for this reason alone. He would call it powerposing and, to a certain extent, he would probably be right. But there is an essential difference between writing a scenario for this sort of game device and having the freedom to have your player sitting across the table from you.

If you are going to do it, you need to resolve yourself to writing scenarios that really don't have much to do with the player's character at all except in a sort of philosophically generic way that might apply to anyone who calls himself a hero... in other word, in my opinion at least, resign yourself to constantly writing sterile material that is only sold on its plot content. And occasionally you might write a really good plot, but for the most part, you're going to run into a lot of player dissatisfaction because the players of this game have seen this sort of thing for years and are already disenchanted with the material coming out of MA anyway.

Or else you write content that appeals to the widest possible portion of the player base possible. No not every character has a family. No, not every character even cares about his or her family, but by and large, the majority of people in the world do and the loss of that family would be devastating to them. All writing to a certain extent presumes that the reader will either agree with the premises established in the story or else that reader will probably dislike the story.

You appear to disagree with the premise that the wholescale slaughter of nearly every hero's family simultaneously would result in a lot of those heroes going off the deep end looking for revenge and that the collateral damage from the event would be extreme. Hence you didn't really buy into the story. The vast majority of the players who have played it appear to believe that this premise is a pretty likely outcome of the hero's failure. Unfortunately, I can't change you not buying into the overriding premise of the story, so there is just not a lot that I can do to really 'sell' this story to you.

At any rate, hopefully you'll play some more of my arcs in the future, (assuming I write any more), and hopefully those stories in the future will have premises that are easier for you to buy into and the voice of the narrator and dialogue of the player's character, (assuming I give the character any), will be easier for you to identify with.

Thanks for playing it, Bubba. I'm glad that you seemed to enjoy it. I, (obviously ) didn't get the same thing from Dr. Aeon's original post that you did. I didn't think that he necessarily wanted to see factions at lower level than normal, just that he wanted elements in the story to be different than what you would see in CoX. I thought that I accomplished that with the narrative structure... that the story was actually told in a sort of 2nd Person perspective rather than the normal 1st person - Narrator voice that the contact normally assumes.

At any rate, I think you've done a great job with this project. (I was really disappointed when you did the switchover from the arcs from the first contest to the arcs from the second because my entry into the first contest would have been the next one reviewed. ;p)

Thanks again. It is always great to be told you did something well.

Alrighty, I've been doing some thinking and I have come up with what I consider to be a workable plan that might address many of the problems that we have all identified. There have been quite a few threads floating around the forums in the past few days asking a variety of questions about MA. A lot of this will address what I consider to be the concerns of the average player, not the AE expert community. It has become more and more obvious that those of us who devote a lot of time and energy to AE are not numerous enough to sustain a healthy player population for the feature. Wrong Number's statistics support this assertion.

Here are the most common complaints that I've seen from players:

1.) "I could not find a good arc to play" - this is BY FAR the most common complaint I've seen regarding MA and probably the single greatest contributing factor to the loss in popularity of the feature in recent months.

2.) "The arc was not what I thought it was" - this comes from players on both sides of the story/leveling divide. Most of the time, they will simply exit the mission and select another, although some have indicated a propensity to rate an arc down if there are elements in it that they do not like. Some will downrate for the presence of custom enemies, some will downrate for reduced rewards, others for other technical elements, others for too much story, others for too little story, etc.

3.) "Rewards are not good" - common, probably a little less common after I17, but still common enough because of the ally hotfix and other exploit fixes in the past.

4.) "DC/HoF arcs are broken" - This leads to the perception that either the devs are not careful in their selection process or that the material players are capable of producing simply is not that good. Having played through numerous arcs by a wide variety of authors, I can attest that this is not true, but my word or even all of the words of those who populate this section of the forum is not enough if that perception becomes widespread and entrenched.

Okay, so dealing only with these 4 items, let's identify the underlying problems and look at what is possible and come up with a possible plan.

1.) Arc Clutter
2.) Unfriendly Interface
3.) Player Disinterest/Distaste for the Feature
4.) Outdated Arc Honoring Process

Can these things be addressed in meaningful ways? I believe they can. Some of this will be a repeat of prior suggestions by me and other players, some of it might be relatively new. I think each step in the proposed process will be necessary to address one of the above identified problems.

Proposal:

Step I: Remove the Arc Clutter. There are literally thousands of arcs that are abandoned, unfinished, broken beyond repair, or otherwise not in use in the system at the moment. This is a repeat of a suggestion that I think was initially proposed by Fred, but it might have been someone else. This is how I would implement it.

a.) Make an announcement in the forums that in 30 days, all arcs that have not been either played or edited by the author for 90 days prior to the date of the purge will be unpublished by the system.
b.) Two weeks prior to the date of the purge, make an in-game announcement regarding the purge repeat the in-game announcement 1 week prior to the purge as well.
c.) On the date of the purge, unpublish all arcs that have neither been played nor edited for a period of 90 days.
d.) Repeat the purge once every six months using the same criteria.

Step II: Address the following weaknesses to the MA interface.

a.) Create a distinct tab for 'story' arcs and a distinct tab for 'leveling' arcs. We cannot increase player participation in the feature without acknowledging that different players want different things from the feature than others do. There already exists the function for the player to associate his arcs with certain keywords. It should be possible to give the player the ability to label his arc as a 'story' arc or a 'leveling' arc.

b.) Create a third tab called 'friends.' These arcs would be published, but unlike other published arcs, if a player labels an arc a 'friends' arc, it is only visible to players on any of the player's 'friends' lists. A lot of players have indicated that they create arcs solely as rp tools for their group or as challenge arcs for the group or even as nothing more than leveling tools for their group. This would have the advantage of both reducing the overal arc clutter for the wider community AND making arcs written by supergroup members easier to find.

c.) Create separate tabs for current HoF and DC arcs. If the current stars system is maintained, this will ensure that the HoF and DC arcs do not dominate the first three pages of the interface, but still make them easy to find.

Additionally, I believe that in the event of a patch that renders a HoF or DC arc unplayable for whatever reason, the arc's creator should have the ability to put the arc into a hibernation state until he/she has the time and opportunity to fix it. The arc will still be listed among the Honored arcs, but will not be playable until the creator takes it out of hibernation state.

D.) Create a tab called 'Proposed Hall of Fame Arcs' under both 'story' arcs and 'leveling' arcs. The necessity for this tab will become clear once I reach the next section.

The 'friends,' 'HoF' and 'Dc' tabs will be self contained. The 'story' and 'leveling' tabs will contain all of the subheadings currently in the interface, along with the new 'Proposed HoF'subheading. This should result in players being able to more easily find the type of arc they are interested in playing without having to wade through a lot of arcs that do not fit what they are seeking. Players primarily interested in story will find the arcs labeled story arcs. Players primarily seeking leveling arcs and farms, (not exploitative ones), will be able to identify them quickly and neither side will have to deal with feeling like the interface is cluttered with a bunch of arcs they don't want to play.

Step III: Address the outdated system used by players to honor other players' arcs.

Personally, I think the Developer's Choice system is fine as it stands. However, I would like to see more developers involved in it, but if Dr. Aeon will be the only developer doing it, that is fine too. However, in the planning stages, as others have noted, it was believed that Developers Choice arcs would be outnumbered by Hall of Fame arcs and this has not happened, mainly because it was assumed at the outset that each individual arc would receive more plays.

While I believe that it is likely that arcs will start receiving more plays organically if Steps I and II are implemented, I do not think 1000 plays with a 5-star average is a plausible expectation. Unlike others, I do not think that removing the star system entirely is a good idea, because I think the small ticket reward being tied to the star system as a method for players to give arcs they like a small reward is a good idea.

However, I do not think that getting into the HoF should be intrinsically tied to a star average.

The reason for this is simple. According to your internal scale, you may think an arc is outstanding - 5 stars, but still not think it's worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Consider this for example: You may think that, say, Donovan McNabb is an outstanding quarterback and deserves to be rewarded as an outstanding quarterback. However, acknowledging that he is an outstanding quarterback, you might feel using whatever criteria that he is not worthy of being in the pro football hall of fame.

The same principle applies here.

Use stars to allow players to reward other players for the experience they just had through bonus tickets. And if the player really believes that the arc he just played is worthy of the Hall of Fame, then he/she can take an extra step and nominate it for the Hall of fame.

After 50 such nominations, the arc will begin to appear in the 'Proposed Hall of Fame Arcs' tab under the master heading by which it is labeled, either 'story' or 'leveling.'

At that point, it must receive another 200 votes to achieve HoF status.

What would this accomplish? Well, it would give the player population easy accessibility to the quality arcs through the proposed Hall of Fame tab because at least 50 players will have had to have nominated it. It also removes the tendency to either 1 star or 5 star an arc, leading to more organic averages. This should appeal to posters like Venture, who believe that the current star system is broken because of the tendency of players to over-reward due to the inherent power that low reviews have over high reviews. Divorcing the HoF process from the star system has a number of inherent advantages.

In closing, I believe that AE is one of the greatest tools for both storytelling and leveling ever introduced into an MMO. It has the potential to give us as players a greater sense of ownership than any development team has ever allowed its player base to have. However, it is at a transitional point right now and is in real danger of completely fading from the collective interest of the player because of its implementation. I believe that these suggestions would go far in revitalizing interest and giving players the ability to do what they currently cannot - find the arcs they would want to play when they want to play them, feel like the work they put into creating an arc is worth the effort they expended, and not feel as though what they are doing is a waste of time.

At any rate, that would be my plan. I am certain there are weaknesses in it, but fixing anything starts with a first step.

Edit: Just thought of something.

It is pretty unlikely that every single player who has currently 5-starred an arc will take the time to go back and replay the arc to nominate it for the Hall of Fame, so to address that likelihood and to ensure that the players who currently have a lot of plays and a 5 star average are treated fairly, I would 'grandfather' arcs with 5 star averages into the new system by treating their current number of 5 star ratings as Hall of Fame nominations.

I believe that, at the moment, because of the way the system is described, giving an arc 5 stars accomplishes virtually the same thing as nominating it for the Hall of Fame.

Obviously, for quite a few arcs, this would result in Hall of Fame status immediately, but I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing.

The real problem with writing early level story arcs is that early levels fly by so quickly that if you try to write an arc with any depth to it, the likeliest outcome is that the character will outlevel the range of the arc by the time he finishes it.

Of course, I am speaking of the level 1-5 range here, where you basically gain a level, sometimes 2, every time you enter an instance map. I would say level 5-10, you can write an arc that has some depth to it, but I imagine anyone who starts Night Calls the Weaver at level 5 will probably be level 8 or higher by the time the arc is finished.

In lieu of trying to search through several pages worth of threads to find where the original arc threads were posted, I figured I would consolidate my post-I17 changes in one thread and just give a general rundown of all of the changes I've made. Arc #'s are located in my signature line:

Changes to "The Long Road Back"

- Color formatted the entire arc so that it no longer looks so drab. I finally had the space to do this and it looks much better.
- Slightly altered the appearance of Dr. Louise Symons and tinkered with her powerset so that she gives close to 100% experience, hopefully while removing a power or two that made her very rough for certain ATs to defeat.
- Altered how mission 3 was structured to make it more streamlined and completely removed the ongoing issue with the glowie that would neither blink, glow or make any noise until the escort was taken to the exit.
- Also changed the map of mission 3 to a more predictable one that hopefully will eliminate the occasional issue of having to backtrack. Hopefully, the player will no longer have to do any backtracking at all in this mission and that it will unfold in a linear fashion.
- Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do at the present time about the experience nerfing of mission 4. Because of the way the mission is structured, it apparently counts every time Symons is freed as an 'ally,' so the experience is horribly borked.
- Ditto with mission 5. Even though the OSI extractor you free runs straight to the doorway, she counts as far as experience reduction is concerned.
- Re-added all 6 orphan skins to the 'orphans' group. None of them give any experience, (and were never meant to), but now there is some variety among the children of Heatherford Home in mission 5.
- Created male versions of the Heatherford Guardian lieutenant and the Staff Member minion in the HH Staff group. Both of these do exactly the same things as their female counterparts, so it was mainly a change for aesthetic purposes.

Overall, mission 5 looks much better, but the general reduction in experience makes this a long slog for limited reward at this point. I am loathe to unpublish though, especially since I do not have anything to immediately replace it with. Hopefully, they will institute a more permanent solution to the problem that the ally experience nerf was done to fix soon.

Changes to "The Union of the Mask:"

- Removed the boss flight response from all of the bosses in all of the missions. Enough people have mentioned that this is not fun to counter my predisposition that given the stakes, them fleeing makes sense. At this point, I would rather err on the side of playability and fun.
- Tinkered with the power sets of all of the custom bosses. All of them should give 100% experience down the line except for Marshall Brass. Brass does not because of the mission he is in and there is nothing I can do about it without completely destroying the design of mission 5.
- Altered the look of Bloody Vicious slightly.
- Corrected various typos.
- All mission give full experience, except mission 5, which gives approximately 5% normal experience. The mission is designed to be a running street battle and there are numerous mobs of PPD allies and 2 Paragon heroes that the character could potentially free to assist him against Brass. I do not intend to change this mission until there is an indication that the ally nerf is permanent. There are approximately 50 total plot points in the mission if you include all of the family members you could free, the two heroes, all of the patrols and street battles and Brass himself. Mission 5 took several hours on his own to design and I don't want to lose all of that work only to have the basic problem solved a couple of months down the road if they fix the ally nerf.


There are no changes to "Night Calls the Weaver" at the present time, though I am considering doing a couple of minor things like expanding the level range to 5-14 from its current 5-10 range. I believe the natural limit for the Hellions faction is 14, so I think it could sustain that change without any issues. There are also a few minor typos that I have wanted to fix for awhile, but haven't been able to because it seems that my schedule and the good doctor's are extremely incompatible.

At any rate, all three arcs have generally been well received, though the first two still have a very small number of plays. Give them a try if you haven't had a chance yet and if you have, then take another look... it might be better than the last time you played.

Thanks

- S12

Thanks for the in depth review of the arc. It has been quite some time since I took another look at 'Union' other than small corrections for typos and so forth. When I wrote the arc, I was really under the gun time-wise, (it was my entry for Dr. Aeon's first contest and while I was designing it, I was also working about 50 hours a week), and there were quite a few things that I probably didn't think through.

I think I was guilty of doing all three of the 'cardinal' sins with this one... time limits, defeat alls and running bosses, which may be a contributor to why this particular arc has seen so few overall plays. I am going to take a look at the arc again to see whether it's feasible to eliminate one or more of these things... or at least to do as you suggest and give the player a reason to continue if or when he reaches a defeat condition.

I don't think that the capacity for defeat is necessarily a bad thing. I think there are two ways to look at MA in general... as either a gameplay device or as a narrative device and I think how one distinguishes between the two is a pretty important component on whether to include failure conditions. If one views it as a gameplay device, then including failure conditions adds an edge to the game aspect. However, if one views it primarily as a narrative device, then the element of possible defeat certainly remains... but only on a meta level.

What I mean is that, there is certainly the possibility that the character might fail within the construct of the story, but if there are no failure conditions in the mission itself, then the game presumption is that the player will always finish the mission and therefore there is no real game possibility of failure.

In an action movie, for example, within the story, there is the possibility that one of the criminals might shoot the hero somewhere along the way and the story might end in failure, but ultimately the 'script' requires that he succeed because it is written that way.

I am not sure whether or not if I take away the possibility of defeat away from the arc that it would take away what makes Union a suspenseful arc or whether or not it is simply the writing that buoys it at this point.

Ultimately, I think that I will, at the least, remove the flee responses from the boss characters. Thus far, from the limited number of plays it has receives, the fleeing bosses seem to be the most odious element of the arc to the players. Your own review supports this. I think most can buy the time limit and most can also buy the notion that they have to defeat everyone in all of these cells or the result will be disastrous. The idea that the boss characters would run away to preserve their copies of the list seems to be the toughest 'sell.'

At least in game play terms.

Again, thank you for taking the time and I am glad you seemed to have enjoyed playing it.

I turned my rep comments off after going from 3 positive bars into the negative and could only find 2 neg repped posts... one of them a suggestion that a thread devoted to suggestions should go in the suggestions forum.