Twoflower

Thanks. I'm super thrilled about Freedom for AE -- even in the face of bugs or filters or whatever, I'm planning to write a ton of new stories. I'll be sure to announce them here in this forum and will include ArcIDs for all the old ones, too.

It's a valid point, and a perspective I hadn't considered. The core problem is a glut of stories to play, combined with an inability to find the ones you want. Skewing the ratings up or down doesn't change that.

That's why I'm thinking an overhaul based on recommendations and users with similar tastes is key. That way, you're led to the arcs you're most likely to enjoy -- not just "The top X arcs visible in the window sorted by rating."

The fact that people CAN knock an arc down several pegs into the land of obscurity is a flaw with a straight rating system and rating sorted display in general. No amount of bias will change that. We need a new approach entirely.

Gonna take time to get that, time to do it right. As long as this is on the devs radar, and they are willing to accept that what we have right now is not working, I'd be satisfied for now.

One thing I forgot to note:

There's currently an AE bug in COH Freedom which prevents publishing of nearly every arc that uses custom enemies. That's why I hurried this one out the door ahead of schedule with the one slot I had left -- it may be some days? weeks? before I can publish the others I teased in there.

It's perfectly understandable, bug addressing takes time, but there may be some delay. Hang in there, folks, and enjoy the stories we have.

I'm baaaack...

With the release of Freedom and the ability to buy as many story slots as I want, I'm pleased to present the story lovers of AE the first arc in my Twoflower Drives a Dump Truck of Money Up To Paragon Studios Front Door Initiative!

Starting with the Freedom headstart, I'll be rolling out tons of new arcs for you. For now, using the one slot I have left, I present...

I don't think destroying the anonymity of the system is going to fix it. That's "fixing" it by allowing intimidation into the mix, allowing silly drama games to be played, even moreso than are already being played.

The key is to have an anonymous system that allows for depicting a reasonable approximation of an arc's quality. An overhaul to the system, which unweighs the extreme end votes, or collects them in such a way as to allow for relative tastes and interests to be wieghed in. Like Netflix's rating recommendation system, for instance, to use a working example (but not the only way to do it).

(Thinking about it more... a Recommendation engine instead of a Rating engine would be far, far better. The game lets you rate arcs, even using 1-5 stars, but what it serves up to you are arcs that other people with similar rating patterns to you also rated up. Like farms? It'll deliver all the arcs people who also like farms gave 5s. Comedy? Drama? Same thing. It'd understand the whole "Different Strokes Fer Different Folks" thing, and a 5 from one person may not be a 5 for you.)

Of course, that's a hell of a thing to implement. It takes a lot of careful thinking and design work to get it right and a lot of time to code it in a way that won't break. On top of that, you have to decide what to do with the existing ratings, some of which are perfectly valid... it's a non-trivial thing.

If the devs decide to address this, I think they can get it right. Particularly if they work hand in hand with the players and authors, to make a system that suits as many of them as possible. (Can't please 'em all, of course.)

I'm hopeful that such an overhaul will be coming in the Freedom era. Until then, I'll work with what I have.

If an arc isn't to you liking and you want to 1-star it, that's within your right -- but the system right now brutally punishes authors for getting a single 1-star, since it's a slam to their rating that takes many 5-stars to recover from, as WN has endured.

The system itself is definitely broken, and it's something we've said to the devs since the earliest days of MA. It's too easy to rig, too easy to lose visibility, and rarely a good indicator of arc quality.

At this point, though, I don't know how willing the devs would be to replace it with something else. Momentum and lack of resources are a harsh pair; they've got bigger concerns right now than to dedicate considerable backend work to something that's become marginalized.

With Freedom coming up, hopefully there'll be a "vote with your dollars" effect. If enough people buy story slots and MA licenses, if we see more stories and more interest in playing those stories... it may show an overall increase in importance in AE, and in turn developer interest in revitalizing it.

And personally... I intend to plow onward with writing stories. I've finally got a chance to do more writing thanks to Freedom's buyable slots, and 1-stars or not, bad rating system or not, filter or not, I am going to write. That's what I can do on my end to help the health of the AE system.

I was asked about this in beta chat today. I've got eight arcs out there including several DCs, so if anybody's getting piles of feedback to contribute as datapoints for this, it's me.

I rarely see "Somebody has rated your arc," which indicates a low star rating. (Not trying to brag, honestly, just pointing out I haven't seen a rash of one-stars.) In terms of feedback, I haven't seen a single "Bad XP" or "not a good farm" note.

The most common negative note I see is "too difficult," particularly on the Laser Moonbase which is, well, difficult since I didn't set the minimum level high enough to reasonably take on custom enemies. I guess that could mean "unrewarding" since repeated deaths cleave into rewards like an axe, or at least seem to.

Are other authors seeing a rash of 1-stars and negative reviews? Is this an actual problem out there?

Looks like a new patch -- and it's downloading 2.5 gigs of stuff. Prelude to the I21 headstart?

Version number's 2100.201109080039.10.0, corresponding nicely to 09/08.

Necroposting a bit, but I'm having the same problem.

I don't see how lag is the issue. This only hits me now and then -- and like the posts above, it's always one particular mission giving me issues. I can zone anywhere I want, I can hop into my SG base or another map, or run some other mission... but if I try to enter that mission? Locks on the Loading... screen, and I either have to kill the process or wait two minutes for it to spit back "Mapserver Disconnected."

It's not even consistently specific maps. Tonight I did a BAF. Big success! So, I zone back to RWZ, and join another BAF. Can't enter. Relog, try to enter, no luck. It's not letting me in. I can go anywhere I want or do some other mission, but I can't go back to my trial.

What could be causing this? I don't buy lag or torrent programs or whatever; my system is clean and I have no problems with COH aside from occasionally getting a black hole mission like this.

Netalyzer didn't find any unusual lag issues, or anything particularly noteworthy. I'm behind a NAT, which is a pain, but 90% of my missions load just fine, so...

Disintegration helps, and I insert it anywhere I can -- it certainly makes the one guy I shoot at drop faster. But dropping one enemy about 3-5 seconds sooner than I would have without Disintegration isn't really a difference maker. The real problem isn't the guy I'm shooting at, it's all his buddies, who are at full health and busy cracking open my skull to eat my brain candy.

I think the intention is that Disintegration SPREAD means once you're done dealing with your designated victim, all his buddies are Disintegrated, and thus a lot easier to deal with. Backended damage, basically. But with the numbers right now I've never actually had that happen. Maybe in another patch, when the spread chance goes up, it'll actually help me. Right now it's only useful against my current target, and that's not enough to keep me alive.

Sure thing.

Disintegrate is a 10 second long DOT attack. it does good damage on its own over the span of that full 10 seconds, but the real strength is that it applies a "Disintegrating" effect on the enemy. If you shoot someone that's already Disintegrating with another attack, you get an extra effect... more damage usually, or a high chance to knockdown, or a longer stun for the Lancer Shot, etc. Cutting Beam, the cone AOE, gives bonus damage, for instance.

Also, if you shoot someone who's Disintegrating with a single target attack (Single, Charged, Lancer, or Penetrating(snipe)) you have a CHANCE to "Spread Disintegration" to the 3 closest targets. Right now that chance is kind of low, but it's going to be doubled in an upcoming patch.

So, the theme of the set is as follows:
1. Disintegrate someone.
2. Shoot him with a single target attack.
3. Disintegration spreads itself to other targets.
4. Hammer them all with an AOE.

Sounds great, but for Blasters who have no serious mitigation, it seems to me that by the time you get from step 1 to 4, you are probably dead. Beam is not designed to have hard alpha punch right out of the gate, it's designed to set up Disintegration combos that eventually result in beefier damage against your foes.

In addition, if you don't get that Disintegration Spread on your first shot, your target may be dead as a doornail before you can achieve the Disintegration Spread because Blasters do whomping amounts of damage. For Def or Corr, you have more time since, well, you don't kill as quickly and can land more attacks on the Disintegrated target before it's down.

It's worth noting that Lancer Shot, the only hard mez in the set, is a short lasting Disorient with 40 foot range. It does the best ST damage outside of the snipe, though.

I've been testing Beam Rifle at 40 in Beta. I'm not sure this is a good fit for Blasters -- but as I noted in my post in the official feedback thread, my only other blaster is an Ar/En who can kill all minions in a single attack, so that's kind of an outlier.

The problem is that Blasters have one modus: Kill Them Before They Kill You. And Beam Rifle is extremely focused on setting up combos with single target focused disintegration and disintegration spread.

I can solo at x2, but even with lots of kiting, range play, hopping around, etc. I am frequently taken down to 30-40% health or killed outright. Not sure if this is par for course for "normal" Blasters or not.

Even if I wasn't getting mauled... Blasters can 2-3 shot almost anyone with Beam Rifle. That means once you set up Disintegration, you have little chance of getting Disintegration Spread going on before your target is dead. This'll only get worse in teams.

Finally, although I couldn't test this since nobody was teaming, I'm not sure how well a ranged ST focused set will work when teamed. Once Disintegration Spread values go up it might improve, though.

Any suggestions for how to make a heavily ST focused set work?

I've been using Bots/Time, myself. It's not a god tier MM set but it is VERY good for folks with a "facepull / provoke" tankermind play style. Everybody slowed and sometimes mezzed + bot burn patches = fun times.

In fact, that's my worry for this as a Defender / Corruptor set; it's very oriented towards overlapping your Time Juncture with your Distortion Field for maximum shenanigans. Everything it does is PBAOE... Temporal Mending, Chrono Shift, Far Sight. You can't fight from the back row with a set like this and claim to be effective.

It's a terrible match for Beam Rifle, I agree there. A few friends of mine have been having some success there but there's so much micromanaging and clicking (who's Disintegrated right now? who's Slowed? who's Accelerated? Where should I be standing to make the most of this?) that it'd probably drive you batty eventually.

There's one thing, and one thing only I crave from the market.

AE story slots.

If they 'crack' the limit on how many purchasable Architect Entertainment story slots you can get, I will craft shutupandtakemymoney.jpg pixel by pixel in MS Paint in thanks. Oh, and they will take my money. All my money.

Thank you SO MUCH for these.

CoH is a game of absolute visual chaos, especially in incarnate trials. Since I prefer to run in mouselook mode, with a button to toggle in and out, I'm constantly losing my cursor -- which means when I need to go click on something or place down a location AOE, I get completely lost. This will help a lot!

I think Black Pebble was probably wrong about Enhancement Boosters. (Shouldn't have used LOTG Recharge as an example; it's one of the most powerful enh in the game.)

They specifically described it as being similar to how you can combine two SOs now, to get SO +1. Let's say you had a Damage (25) slotted, and combined it with another Damage (25), you'd end up with Damage (25+) which is like Damage (26).

So, let's say you used this on your Red Fortune: Defense (30). After, it would become a Red Fortune: Defense (30+), which is basically (31).

That's not a HUGE bonus, it's not "multiplied by five" or "like two of them at once". it's just a +1 level to the slotted IO.

I'd suggest purchasing a dev review of your arc, to determine if it's non-farmy and merits real rewards instead of tickets. But that's fraught with peril (first dude who pays cash and then gets turned down and RAEGs, etc.)

Mostly, I want more slots. More slots. More slots. I want to write more stories. I've been wanting to write more stories since AE was introduced, but the day it launched, I'd already filled the maximum. Let me write more. I'm not making farms, I'm not polluting the pool with crap, I want to contribute constructively.

I will drive a dump truck full of money up to Paragon Studios and upend it over a hole in the roof, so that War Witch can swim around in it, Scrooge McDuck style.

MOAR. Plz. Thank you.

If I have one request for all the new microtransactiony stuff coming down the pipeline...

Let us buy room to write more stories.

I've got the maximum allowed, and two Dev Choice arcs, and I still want more. I haven't written a new arc in over a year, because I'm antsy about deleting my existing ones... but I'd give you money for more slots. I would give you all the money.

Make this happen, devs, and I'll write stories for you until the cows come home. And since the cows and I had a really nasty breakup and some things were said that couldn't be taken back and now lawyers are involved, that's a long time indeed.