Sister_Twelve

1.) Well, like I said, I'm pretty sure my attitude is in the small minority on this one, but I think any decision differentiating an 'exploit' from 'legitimate farming' is likely to be arbitrary and artificial. In fact, it takes more 'effort' to create and use a mission full of buffbots that still requires a player to actively go out and destroy every target on the map than it does to sit in a doorway and chat with your friends. Yet the former is now categorized as an exploit yet the latter never was. So really what is the point?

Eliminate one thing and they will find another way to do it that eliminates effort. Eliminated that and they will find still another. My suggestion is that the devs recognize that a portion of the community will always find such behavior repugnant, while the other portion will never find it repugnant. Partition those two portions of the community from each other and create an interface that will conceal their activities from each other.

2.) By definition, I would not be punishing anyone for anything. I don't see any real sense in it. I think it's pretty illogical that my arcs are being punished for the behavior of players I don't know, don't associate with, and probably wouldn't associate with even if I did know them, but their behavior is what it is... them getting another level 50 doesn't somehow mean that I don't have the few I have. Them having billions of influence doesn't somehow take any away from me. Them having characters loaded down with IO sets doesn't adversely affect me. In fact, as I said, the only time they adversely affect me at all is if they mistakenly happen to open up one of my story arcs and down rate it because it isn't their cup of tea.

Defining something arbitrarily as an exploit is sort of like the congress suddenly deciding that since something is unhealthy for you, it should be criminalized and that everyone should have realized it should be criminalized all along.

I disagree with that. People will do what they will do and as long as the behavior isn't inherently harmful to anyone else, who cares?

So, yes, I think the exploiters, (and to a lesser extent all farmers), are largely tools. And I honetly don't really get what their activities do to give them enjoyment, hey, life is life and it does, so who am I to want to take it away from them?

I just wish they'd have the same consideration and not downrate an arc that is obviously what they did not want to play. Of course, I have no real evidence that it's farmer and exploiters who give me the few low ratings I get, but I suspect by some of the ((LULZ! U SUK! U MISSPELED 'A!')) comments that accompany these that these are probably the players who do it.

3.) I truly think a partitioned UI would probably solve a lot of these problems. I think the biggest issue is that the two portions of the community are just largely unreconcilable in what they want out of MA. As such, the answer isn't to take either thing away. It's to make it easier for each side to find what it wants.

It's in the right section. It's just a really tough time for this sort of thread because all of the members of the normal MA community are sort of seriously bummed out these days because of the experience nerf on 4/7. Most of our arcs were affected by it, so there really isn't much community activity going on right now.

I played through about fifteen of the twenty-six that were listed in Dark Respite's thread with varying levels of interaction with the authors. With authors I did not know, I simply left a brief message. With authors I know very well or at least better, I offered more in-depth critiques or offered additional playthroughs.

Overall, I think the general quality of the arcs for the second challenge was higher than the general quality of the arcs for the first challenge. There were some in the mix that were not quite as strong, of course, as there are in any cross-section of competition entries, but I think that this particular guideline was probably a bit more forgiving than the first one.

Writing a story where the hero must do something evil tends to leads to a lot of stories about heroes doing evil things, with the only real judgment on the audience member's part being whether the 'greater good' in question is worth the hero abandoning his or her morals for.

Writing a story about a character that loses his or her powers is q different sort of animal. The first sort of assumes that the hero doing evil will be the major focus of the plotline, while the second might simply be a characteristic of the contact or it might be pivotal to the plot. Overall, it led to a wider variety of types of stories, which I thing made the second competition a little bit more fun than the first, (even with the restrictively low level range.)

Not sure if this is the type of discussion you were interested in or whether you wanted to talk about specific arcs, but that was my impression of the entire challenge.

Or just respond with the entirely reasonable, "no thanks," if someone decides they want you on his team and then thinks he has the right to 'vet your build' prior to deigning to allow you to join the team that... uh... he asked you to join.

You did that when you solo'd the Lady Gray TF a couple months after it came out, didn't you, Cat?

If the Devouring Earth monsters down on Monster Island count as giant monters, they are soloable. I slowly beat one down with my brute on Virtue one day. It takes a long, long time and is extremely boring to do. I haven't, however, tried to do the same with any of the giant monsters that have names.

Defenders have an inherent?

I was playing Thugs/Poison because everyone told me that was the set that was desirable for the LRSF. And I got to level 12 or so before VEATs came out and I moved on to leveling my widow.