Twoflower

Seems to match my experiences.

DevChoice = 999+ plays. (Well, it is page one, and it's humor.)
1-Mission, Funny = 500+ plays.
5-Mission, Funny = 110 plays.
4-Mission, Serious = 100 plays.

I'm trying to write my missions to shoot for a 3 mission average from now on. I don't think the 5 mission epics are gonna go anywhere fast in terms of playthroughs and ratings.

Still, hopefully the future buy-slots will have a pretty high maximum alloitment allowed... then I wouldn't mind slapping up some epics few people play through, since hey, I'd have room.

I'm still failing to see what any of this has to do with "Hey guys, where can I find the patch notes?"

We have other threads for the unrelated discussions. Let this one go.

From what I understand in the discussions during open beta, Play Fighting style battles aren't possible because they can't line the animations up between the two groups right. A lot of hand-fudging goes into play when they do these in the official missions, which the MA is not currently capable of.

I'd like to see this in the future, though, most definitely. Battles are a pretty useless tool; they don't always convey the dialogue, and they theoretically take XP away from the player.

Okay, in an effort to stay on the damn topic...

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Just to list the issues I have with the MA -

1. Limited publishing slots. Have to throw away ratings, stars, etc. to publish.

2. Ratings system: Too volatile and open to griefing.

3. Small file size. Not that I want a ton more, but 100k is just a little too restrictive. I'd get along find with about twice that.

4. Limits on objective types (can't lead hostage to WP, can't set a specific boss w/a specific onjective) and bugs (Hostages changing groups, Boss animations not working)

5. Removal of mobs unique maps from the system with no timeline for replacing them (and at least in the case of maps, no announcement that they were even removed).

6. Signal to noise ratio. Trying to get something played a lot without a large SG or Voting Cartel is like winning the lottery.

All in all, the MA is an interesting idea, but with the limits on the system, I'm not sure if it's worth the time.

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These are all legitimate complaints, and ones that I agree with completely. I want more slots; I've filled mine and I have 7 more arcs waiting in the wings, even with the devchoice I managed to land. Fortunately, buy slots are coming... these are not an option for everyone, but they at least are fair, in that anyone COULD get them. If they tied them to some broken metric like ratings, that'd be rageworthy.

The ratings system is terrible, but I think the search improvements coming are going to help. Right now the primary means to find arcs is Sort By Ratings, which is worthless. With tagging we should be able to actually narrow down what we want and ignore the ratings. I also expect hall of fame changes; the current one's unworkable.

File size limits, I'm with you there. More is ALWAYS better. But I've done plenty of good stuff within the current limits, and while I'd dig more, this can be worked with.

More objective types are likely coming. The "turn hostage evil at destination" hints that they WILL have leading hostages to glowies eventually -- it just didn't make launch. The faction shift is the sort of thing that makes more sense at a glowy than a door, after all.

Removing maps is a shame and I do wish we had confirmation they'd come back, agreed.

S/N is a pain in the [censored], but again, I think improved search is going to help here, as is the annihilation of completely identical junk arcs of an agricultural nature.

Now, all that aside... my advice? Fold for now. For NOW. I'm doing the same, I mean, I have no slots so there's really no point in working any more in the MA in general. But I'm not quitting for good since a lot of these issues are either being addressed in I15 or are likely to be addressed in the future.

It's more a matter of waiting it out for the tool to reach the state you want it to be in. There's nothing wrong with putting it aside and focusing on something else in the meanwhile, but I don't suggest abandoning ship forever -- what you want addressed is going to be addressed at some point.

I'm sittin' pretty on my newly-adjusted arcs; I adjusted all my enemy powers to be reasonable. I don't see any destruction here.

Oh, do you mean you can't farm the same LT-xp granting minion over and over? Shame if that's all you ever wanted to do, I guess. ...if that's all you ever wanted to do why are you even playing the game? Progress Quest sounds more your thing.

Yes, I can blame him. It was an off topic comment that did not help the original poster get the original question answered. It's just typical forumite RAEG!!1!!! and it's a sad, sad thing.

I'm all for locking this topic. The question was asked and answered and all further irrelevant, off topic stuff (including this post itself, natch) helps no one.

Unfortunately, no. Only method to kill rank and toggle powers is to remake them, as noted, which eats space.

...y'know, all the original poster asked for was some patch notes. Just saying.

No. I love playing arcs for their stories, but I want my story with a side order of forward momentum on my characters.

Complaints are never shown to players -- just the GMs and the author. Unfortunately, they cannot be removed from the arc at this time, so you'll have to grin and bear looking at the list even for the stupidest complaints that the GMs are also ignoring.

My one-mission hippie stomp got flagged as "Obvious farm, lots of buffers" despite the enemies ALL being armed to the teeth with attack sets and weapons and controls and AOEs... it's boggling.

Sweet, sweet relief.

Of course, prepare for the forums to become an unusable pile of wailing and gnashing of teeth at your oppression of hardcore exploiters supposedly unharmful 1-50-in-3-hours playstyle, but hey, you're wearing power armor, you can take it.

I'd love this, but the problem is that the in-game music only comes in two forms.

A) Neighborhood transitions between zones.
B) Looping sound effects positioned right at the door of the mission. Walk away from the door, music fades away; walk back, music returns.

There doesn't seem to be a genuine "Background Music" system in the game's engine itself. Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see this added, just not sure the event hooks are in place to allow it.

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At least this one's pretty organized. Bullet points do help sort the concerns.

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LOL Even Mein Kampf could seem reasonable if done in power point.

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...six posts in and we already have Godwin's Law. This is why we can't have nice things.

Fine, lock it, if nobody's gonna be civilized about this.

At least this one's pretty organized. Bullet points do help sort the concerns.

The issue is not disk storage, or AI routines. It's the indexing system.

The devs are erring on the side of caution, since the search system broke down several times in beta under less load than we have now. Indexing all that data, plowing through it when users search, etc. eats up a lot of processor -- more and more if there are more arcs to search.

Hopefully, datamining has shown they can squeeze more out of the system, and the pay-slots will open a LOT of slots (and not just "$10 for one more slot, and that's the max").

I'm pretty much unable to use the MA now that my slots are full. I have 7 other arcs waiting on my HD to be uploaded when I have space, but it's not clear if I'll ever have that much.

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

L50 Mercs/Traps MM, Difficulty 2. She's farily tricked out, so if I can't effortlessly solo the mission then I tone it down. If I'm getting pounded reasonably hard, or pets are actually dying beyond the occasional Tier 1, then even if I can get through the mission odds are good that most soloers will hit too much of a brick wall.

Other than Aim/Buildup and Darkest Night, I'm not seeing a huge problem with these. By and large they make sense to me and finally standardize what level grants what (lowest=S/L protection and basic attacks, next up=controls and such, etc.)

Translation -- Zwoof took a mission for a lower level, was auto-exemplared, only got Inf as a result, took this as an insult and one starred it. Hooray for misunderstanding

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That's one big problem I see with the rating system right now: people know that the author won't have a chance at an extra arc slot unless they rate them 4 or 5.

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5, actually. A 4 will only hurt your rating when it comes to the Hall of Fame, because it's set to 4.5. The ONLY vote which can help you is a 5.

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It'd be really nice if the reward for an arc that was 'decent fun' were a new arc slot, or a fraction of one. Say, for every three arcs with a 3.0 or higher rating by X amount of people, a new arc slot would open up.

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A reasonable measure, I agree.

Victoly. We're getting a proper tagging system in I15.

Here's the question, though -- will it have a dev-defined limited taxonomy of terms? Or will it be player defined, and therefore there will be no standards and plenty of synonyms will be deployed? How will the search system work; if you put "story" in the box, will it find "story" tags AND missions that say "This doesn't have a STORY" in the description? etc.

The long and short of my pile of questions -- I think this thread could still serve a good purpose, to help us make the most of this new system. We may not need the four letter codes we've been developing, but we ARE going to need some agreed upon standards for how to name our tags for ease of searching. Stay tuned.

Alright, according to a Massively interview just posted, they're CONSIDERING microtransaction slots (and confirmed no veteran reward ones).

Which means my #1 focus feature request is probably not in I15, if they're still at the "considering" stage. Damn.

With the recent changes to what comes in a standard loadout, I think soloability will be a lot easier to achieve. You can pick Standard on all your enemies and they'll present a good challenge without being insurmountable, without key problem powers.

And failing that, the upcoming tagging system will let you tag as "Team Only" or "Soloable".

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Maybe by "selectable reward types" they're referring to the rewards the player gets for completing the arc? Such as choosing between bonus xp, merits, tickets, etc.

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Aha! Yes, I think you're right -- when you read the grammar that way it makes a lot of sense, AND it could apply to current DC arcs. A lot of folks skip DCs because they thirst for tickets, after all.

Alright, that's a positive. It's still a fluffy positive, a nicety, but a positive nonetheless. I do hope there's something in the "Other" pile devoted to slots, though, if not that.

According to the I15 release, we're gonna be getting...

* Architect toolbox allows players to better and more easily polish their content before sharing it with the public.

No clue what this is, so, no reason to get excited about it yet. I could speculate but I'd rather go with what we've been given. If it was actual NEW features, like new goal types or new content, I doubt it'd be described as "polishing" tools, though. If it's just wizards and spellchecks, then eh. Nice, but eh.

* Missions can now be selected for both "Hall of Fame" and "Dev Choice," allowing players to attain both badges. "Dev Choice" missions also have selectable reward types.

I'm not seeing the point of this, given HoF is Unobtainium due to the steep ratings requirement and DC is applying to less than 1% of all arcs. This is a benefit that only a handful of people will see, so why does it merit a bullet point? And who would be dense enough to take what's behind Door Number Two when this is one of the only ways to get a mission slot?

* Enhanced searching and navigation options like key phrase tagging and arc difficulty display help players find the content they're looking for even faster

THIS I like. The playerbase has been calling for tags for awhile, and this should help people find the kinds of content they want without relying on sort-by-ratings or throwing darts.

* New Server-wide Architect Chat channel

Eh. Guess it could be helpful, but players have already made plenty of public global channels for author assistance.

* Plus several other features and improvements to Mission Architect

...THS has me scratching my head. It's a catch-all of "And more!" which means you can't say for certain what is and is not going to change.

I'm hoping we can get some clarification here on what else is making the cut. A lot of things weren't addressed above. Such as:

Ratings -- The HoF requirement has proven mathematically to be incredibly steep. Only one arc to date has gotten it, and it kept wobbling on and off until eventually it fell out for good. Other display issues abound (front page pushoffs when you go from 5 stars to 4 stars, only showing ratings rounded to an integer, zero star ratings causing arcs to plummet, etc)

Acceptability of Content -- Regardless of whether you're pro or anti farming, you probably wanna know more about what's considered acceptable so you know what's safe to build or what's appropriate to report on. Are any changes coming to render the usual suspects moot? Any language offered to clear things up? Is it being kept purposefully vague? (Likely the latter, and I won't lose sleep if so, but stony silence helps no one.)

Slots -- This is my number one concern. All this is lovely and all, but my slots are full. I'm gonna be able to make NO use of your shiny polishing toolbox if I can't write anymore. Microtransactions? Veteran rewards? Accolades? Or are we just getting nothing whatsoever?

As is, I'm seeing only one positive thing (tag searches) and a bunch of fluff, with no attention to the core issues with MA. Hopefully "Other Improvements" is going to address the above in some manner.