scholarman

Long gone from these forums, but always close by in my heart....

Thanks. For everything.

Whenever I click on "My Creations" in the Mission Architect, I get an assertion failure and my client crashes. This is... disconcerting.

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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....&PHPSESSID=

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That worked like a charm -- thanks!

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There is a way to launch CoH from the Terminal, which probably would include -demoplay, but I haven't yet tested it.

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Where can I find the Terminal launch method? I'll play with it and see what I can do.

I've seen a number of allusions to -demoplay on the Mac, but no actual methodology. Is there some way to actually do this? Obviously, we can't just add "-demoplay (filename)" to an alias pointing at the exe file on our side of things, so is it possible to do?

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Heh, I was born in 87.

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Heh, I graduated high school in '88. I have doodles older than you

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I graduated in '86. I have college memories older than Robo_Knight.

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First mission: "Rescue the hostages". You get in and it's "15 Fusionette clones to lead out". And each one you rescue spawns a nasty ambush. Forcing me to suffer through that or to collect debt just so I can give it an appropriate rating, is Not a Good Thing. (If you think there won't really be missions that are that bad, I honestly envy your optimism. You are a better person than I am.)

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Amen. Sadly, but still. There will be some missions that are nigh impossible right from the gate -- sometimes with warning (I expect to see a lot of "not for the faint of heart" warnings in mission descs) and sometimes because the architect will think it's funny. Whatever I think about weighting ratings and the like, there has to be a mechanism for a player to say 'oh [expletive] this,' punch out and rate.

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So if I play 5 short, sweet, truly worthy arcs in a single play session, it'll take me 4 hours of game time to rate each of them? And if I continue to play MS arcs during that time, each one adds another hour before I can rate them? That would discourage rating arcs at all. Also Not a Good Thing.

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Also agreed. We want people to be able to rate stuff, and we want to make it as painless as possible. Putting roadblocks up for ratings is not a good idea.

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Well, comments to author shouldn't be terribly hard even if they don't make a system for it.

Use mail, include mission title.

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Never underestimate the power of (in)convenience.

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I don't desire it. I think comments should only be seen by the mission author. When you go to write a comment, who is the target audience? The author, or other players? I'd much rather see people giving feedback to the author than to the rest of the audience.

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I can go either way for this. But a button allowing the player to e-mail the author with comments might be a nice thing.

On a related note -- we don't yet know if our names are going to be attached to our arcs, and if so, which name. (Character who entered the information, global name, forum account, name on our credit card... ) I sort of hope global names aren't public on the system, or at least can be opted out, but it's a wait-and-see kind of thing.

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I think one reason I disagree with some posters is that I don't see the Hall of Fame as a way to get around the limit of three published arcs. If you want your arcs to have a good chance of getting elected to the Hall of Fame so you'll have more room to write, we do not see HoF the same way.

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Actually, we do see it the same way.

I think that the Hall of Fame should reward truly excellent missions. Period. End stop.

I would much, much rather have a means by which I can go through a process, or a hoop, or gateway to earn Arc slots, because I honestly think that three slots is insufficient. This could be through badge acquiring, mission unlocking, finding or buying a recipe, unlocking one through tickets, veteran award bonuses, or good old fashioned "pay $15 and get 1 additional Arc slot."

I'm going to write the best arcs I possibly can, but the chances any of them will get one of the golden rings is negligible. At the same time, unless one of the arcs is rated low enough that it's clearly just not performing well, I'm not going to want to put that much energy into an arc and then pull it down in a week because I have six more arcs sitting on my hard drive. That's especially true if I want to do sequel arcs -- I'll want people to have the chance to play the introduction as well as the sequel.

Tying ratings to the only way to have more than three published adventures (aside from Dev fiat) clouds the issue of ratings, IMO. It encourages mission architects to write to the crowd instead of developing what they want to develop, in hopes of grabbing the brass ring. And it means that when I'm rating a mission, I'm going to feel badly if I rate it as a 3 instead of a 4, because I know it'll knock it that much further down from Hall of Fame and the benefits accrued. At the same time, it gives disproportionate power to curmudgeonly types who consider a 3 something you have to go above and beyond to earn and who live in 1s and 2s.

A lot of that becomes mitigated if we have alternate means of increasing our slots.

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I'm not against it at all. Remember I'm the one that said I was fine with that as long as it didn't take time away from other more (subjectively) important things. And you agreed.

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Then.... um... awesome!

I feel like we should go out for pizza now.

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To do a solid to the next person, who can pass on something that looks like crap and spend their fun time having, well, fun?

I'd want others to do the same.

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Speaking as a potential 'next person?' I'd rather you actually know the subject you're reviewing before you do me said solid.

Besides, having your review be weighted to reflect your relative lack of engagement in the arc wouldn't change the fact that when I went looking for reviews, some folks out there 1-starred it. It's not like you're blocking a flurry of 4-star reviews -- or more to the point, if you are then maybe there was something to the arc you didn't get a chance to see.

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Because this isn't my job?

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Then why review it at all? Why go out of your way to review something you don't want to play? Why not just ignore it and play something you do want to play?

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There's a small chance that a Red name will contradict me, but I'm pretty sure that they will retain all rights, just as they do to the characters you create in COX.

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/this

If you have personal attachments to your arcs, or think they might make a great story or novel or webcomic sometime, then use loosely shifted variations in the MA. I'm creating all new characters and organizations, just against the possibility that the personal material I'm otherwise referencing (some of which I've published) might be useful to me elsewhere down the line.

Besides, it's fun to come up with new things.

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And as someone who plans top make a lot of use of the MA to create arcs (I used to GM V&V and Champions in years past and will be trying to translate some of my adventures my players enjoyed); I don't have a problem with that.

the 'Hall of Fame' and 'Dev Choice' arcs should be the real 'cream of the crop' stuff, not the 'better than average stuff'.

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This is probably the nub of my issues with some of this stuff -- because you're entirely 100% right. The Hall of Fame and Dev Choice should be prohibitively rare.

Which leads to an issue with:

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Everyone has 3 publish slots; and that should be enough to get the gambit of 'above average' missions out there.

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I'm going to write way more than 3 arcs. I know this to be true. And sometimes I'd like to make one a sequel of another, and build off of them, and do all the rest.

I'm more than happy to drop some money on additional arc slots, the same as I'm happy to drop money on a character slot when I want another character on Pinnacle or drop some money on a Flight Pack when I don't feel like shlepping at L2. (Though with the upcoming 60 month reward, that's going to become a thing of the past, I suspect. I can hoof it for 5 levels, dagnabbit. ) But I'd like the option, even if it means spending discretionary cash, to build a library of published arcs assuming they don't get rated 1-2 to begin with.

Darn it, NCNC -- let me spend my money with you! I'll only waste it on food and buying my wife things otherwise!

And, like Dromio, I'm coming across as taking this more seriously than I do or indeed than it should merit. My apologies for that. I promise you, I'm having a good time and I'll try not to bog the discussion down into flames.

Blame it, in part, on an insidious combination: Mission Architect has fired my imagination more than anything in any game, MMO or otherwise, in three years, and my only outlets for it are in a notepad and talking on here.

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[I think the important thing is that there be an option for adding comments to ratings. If you get a bunch of one star ratings, but the reviewers take the time to write "wall of text" or "grammar police" in the comments then you have somewhere to start.

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This I 100% agree with, totally and fully.

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This is not a test case. I don't think you can make something up and call it a test case.

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Um... a test case is a set of variables and conditions that tells a software engineer whether or not his program will operate correctly. I listed the conditions and variables and projected the result. That... is actually what a test cast is. You're free to develop a test case to demonstrate why your thesis is superior to mine.

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Even taking it seriously I'm not totally sure this is a worthwhile argument. The Academy may try to tell people that Chariots of Fire is a great movie, but Star Wars is still going to be what people want. A lot more people read Stephen King for fun than read the Odyssey. And there's nothing wrong with that.

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I'm unsure of the relevance -- especially since we're discussing a variance of opinion between people who played it the mission versus people who dropped it at the mission text page. Whether we're discussing Stephen King or Homer, if you picked up the book, read the first quarter page and then dropped the book on the table and declared that it sucked, I'm going to figure your opinion's not comprehensive.

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A good mission, or a great mission, like a good/great movie or book, should be well rounded enough to at the very least not turn people off so much in its opening acts that people put it down or leave.

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But your methodology treats, among other things, unevenness the same as it treats real active badness. It takes an initial flaw and expands it to condemn the whole.

You're probably right -- my test case wouldn't belong in the Hall of Fame. And as I said, it wouldn't end up there if it continued tracking in the conditions laid out. However, it clearly doesn't deserve to be described as mediocre either -- especially when half the sample has literally not reviewed it at all.

To be blunt, if you read an opening mission text and decide it's not worth your time, you shouldn't accept the mission. If you haven't started the arc, you shouldn't start it purely so you can 1-star it. You should just find something you actually do want to try. If you're going to go through and 1-star arcs you don't intend to play because you want to be sure they don't get inflated above what you deserve, you're doing a disservice to the architect and your fellow players.

But, I'm entirely willing to admit that if you accept a mission in good faith, jump in, and decide after playing for a few minutes that it isn't worth your time -- that it is, in fact, bad. And I'm entirely willing to stipulate you deserve the ability to render your judgment on the mission in question.

Why are you so dead set against the idea that someone who does complete the arc may have a better understanding of the arc as a whole, and therefore deserves to have his rating weighted more highly? Is it purely a sense of entitlement? Or do you honestly think that your opinion is as valid as that other person's because the mission creator didn't hold you to the end?

If you believe the latter, I can respect your opinion. However, I can state definitively that your review is worth less to me than the review of someone who played through to the end, just the same as your opinion of a book you've read one page of doesn't count as much as the opinion of someone who finished it. And you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that your less-informed review should be worth more.

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I see no reason to have to finish an arc or a mission to review it. I don't disagree with possible weight given to reviewers that do so, but I'd much rather see other things worked on than adding that.

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Generally, so would I. I'm not obsessed with this. Among other things, I'm proceeding from the assumption that no one will be amused by my arcs but me, and if I ever manage a Hall of Fame it will be a happy day, not an expected one. (I'm not even going to hope that much for Dev's Choice.)

However, part of the issue here is this has an impact on gameplay and experience. If you play through my full arc, I get X number of tickets for it. If you don't, I don't, and I get a poor review to boot. If you 1-star me without playing my arc, then the next person who comes along won't be as inclined to give it a chance, costing me more tickets down the line. Further, if a pile of folks 1-star my arc without playing it, it puts it out of contention for the Hall of Fame, which carries with it my mission slot opening without taking my mission down and almost certainly a badge that can be applied to every character on my account. These things have gameplay and quality of life implications beyond simply my ego.

And so I think it's important they be resolved before the issue comes out of beta.

Here's another test case.

Someone writes a five issue arc. He puts a ton of content into it, and builds everything extremely well. His biggest failing is he writes too much -- his mission acceptance text is three screens, his clues are all huge, but for the person who actually reads it, it turns out to be beautiful and poignant.

Let's say in this hypothetical that he does this so well that essentially every person who completes the fifth mission finds himself in tears, and every last one of them five-stars the arc. It is, in the end, a triumph.

But 200 people who launch into the arc see a big block of text to start with, snort, think "oh, no way," and drop the arc, one-starring it with the attitude of 'tl;dr.'

Should those 200 people, who didn't even try to make it through the opening text -- who didn't even read it -- get the same weight in their reviews to the 200 people who went through the whole arc and breathlessly 5-star it? Does it really deserve an aggregate 3 stars when half the people didn't spend more than three seconds on the opening screen?

If we assume this arc was 5 missions long, and assume a weighted vote based upon number of missions started, that would mean the 1-star votes by the people who never went through the front door would be worth 20% of a full vote, whereas the 5-star folks would be worth the full vote each. So, at 400 people rating the arc, with 200 not having done anything in the missions and ranking it the worst ad 200 having done all 5 missions and ranking it the best, the average rank at the end is 4.3 stars. Assuming this rounds down for being below 4.5 (not a safe assumption -- we don't know how they're going to round these things), that would have the arc rated 4 stars at the 400 player mark. A player looking for a good arc would see that and think it might be worth a chance, whereas the 3 the arc would get before would make it hopelessly average.

At the same time, if these trends continued to 1000 players, then there would still be enough nay votes to keep it out of the Hall of Fame -- which means that the half who refused to play it at all would have their opinions registered and noted, rather than disenfranchising them.

It's a pretty simplistic example, but hopefully an illustrative one.

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If an MA story starts out crap, and there's nothing to indicate it's anything else, I should not have to suffer through the whole thing to call it out.

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I agree.

However, if you drop midway through the first mission of a four mission arc, rendering your judgment based on that first mission... that doesn't change the fact that you haven't seen any of missions 2, 3 and 4.

I'm more than happy to give you a chance to register your vote on mission 1. But if someone else actually goes through the 4 missions and discovers that as lackluster as the design was and as crappy as the writing was... you know, that custom enemy group he had in the fourth mission was actually kinda cool and fighting them didn't entirely suck, then I'm going to think his opinion and rating are better informed than yours on the content of the mission arc. And so I think his opinion should be weighted more than yours.

Now, if a first mission is as terrible as we're postulating? I think most people will drop the arc right then and there. So if we give one 'vote' per mission started (not completed) and 800 people drop it in the first mission and 1-star it and 1 guy 3 stars it after the fourth mission and final, that's still going to be the weighted equivalent of 200 1-star votes to 1 3-star vote. It's not like this will open the floodgates to crap.

There's an interesting parallel between this and a recent incident involving Roger Ebert, the current dean of American film criticism. Ebert, for the first time in a very storied career, walked out of a movie after 8 minutes and proceeded to review it. He copped to this fact in the review in question.

The response was astronomical, and the following day Ebert posted a retraction and an apology, then proceeded to watch the entire film through and essentially rereview it. Roger Ebert -- a man synonymous with film criticism, champion of independent film and lecturer (in happier days) on the making of great and bad cinema had trusted his instincts in what would be a stinker, and the result was a loss of credibility and a lot of angry people.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008...me_second.html is the story, if you're curious.

You're many things. Clearly you're bright and well versed. But you're not the Roger Ebert of mission criticism (and neither am I), and if even he can't get away with a snap judgment, then neither can you.

The system should take into account how much of an arc you've seen when you rate it, because in the end you're rating it for my benefit as a player, and I deserve the most complete review possible. If you're lost immediately, c'est ca -- that should count for something. But if I slog my way through five bad missions, my 1-star should count for more.

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And right there is why it's a good idea to weight votes based on how much of the arc one sees. And as a subnote why it might be prohibitively difficult for folks to make it to the hall of fame.

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No. No, it's still not.

If your mission is absolutely terrible, why should I waste my time finding out if you suddenly learned how to spell 3 missions in?

A good writer grabs you from minute one, and in the loose shared content we're talking about, the onus should really be on the creator, not the audience.

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Well, for one thing... because adventure design and prose writing require two entirely different skillsets.

Seriously. If you're judging how fun and challenging a five mission arc where 95% of the time you're not reading anything other than your standard game interface by the grammar skills of the contact text and the blurb when you walked in the door? You're not judging the content of the mission and your rating is flawed at best.

I submit to you an absolute genius at balancing risk/reward, with challenging and engaging enemies and excellent custom characters might not be able to spell worth a damn. Does that keep him out of the Hall of Fame? I think maybe it does. Does it mean that based on reading the mission acceptance text you can tell his mission arc is one of the worst in the MA?

No. No it doesn't. Because you haven't actually played any missions.

And your rating is not as valuable to me as a player as someone who has. No matter how philosophically opposed you might be to poor grammar.

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I disagree, Cyber_naut. This aint a storytelling workshop. If I publish one of my arcs, I expect it to get ripped. Every arc deserves a 1-star rating unless and until it proves otherwise. If you drop five minutes into the first mission, I obviously failed to prove anything.

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And right there is why it's a good idea to weight votes based on how much of the arc one sees. And as a subnote why it might be prohibitively difficult for folks to make it to the hall of fame.

(Which would not be a bad thing at all... were the Hall of Fame not the only effective route into gaining new arc slots. Dev's Choice is a lottery win at best. But then, if we get the ability to pay for new mission arc slots with money or tickets, I'm all for the HoF being more exclusive than Studio 54 in 1977.)

For the record, my philosophy's that every arc is a three until proven otherwise. Not horrid, not great. I'd hate to think I had to go into every arc expecting the worst thing on City of Heroes.

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I actually searched for this but couldnt find it...can we create hero/villain co-op mishes if you hit the contact in RWZ or some such zone?

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They've said that co-op is doable. There's been some implication that the whole freaking thing can be co-op. Which sort of makes sense. If "Architect Entertainment" is the Paragon City/Rogue Islands equivalent of a MMORPG, there's no reason someone who walks into the holoportal in Port Oakes and someone else who walks into it in King's Row shouldn't have the same adventure created -- right down to a solid light representation of their 'team mate' -- in both locations.

Though my understanding is you'll have to adjust the holoemitters to reduce background detail and possibly even shut off sound if you're trying to run your connection over dialup.