Discussion: Issue 14: Mission Architect - FAQ
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2009-02-26 13:02 in Developers' Corner
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I think one main area you would want to avoid is too much text. If your descriptions and story is too lengthy that may cause a player to exit immediately. I know I will be trying to streamline my story...it will be difficult to find that balance of just enough story and fun missions... 
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This is a difficult balance. There needs to be enough story to draw the reader in, but not so much as to push them back out again.
Now, for test mode missions I'll run with my wife, daughter, and/or other friends and family, I'll probably keep the text much shorter. We'll gather in the SG base for a better mission briefing first, then go run the missions. RP potential is great.
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Brevity and economy are virtues of good writing. I'm not saying that all mission texts should (or even could) aspire to be Hemingway six word stories. But be like Harvey Pekar and foster a knack for knowing when there are too many words on the page.
(Note that I direct this to myself as much as I do towards the poster above or anyone else reading...)
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?
Loyalist *chokes on it* ... scum!
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I thought of a question! With so many account wide unlockables in the MA, are the tickets going to be account wide/tradable? If some of the more awesome unlockables are pricey, it might be difficult for someone who doesn't stick to one alt to unlock them.
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When people play your arcs, tickets earned that way go into a pool.
You can then claim tickets out of that pool onto any character.
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Thats how Merits should be. On redside and Blueside.
Please consider.
[/ QUOTE ]You the player create and upload Mission Architect arcs, not any specific character. So the rewards for other people playing your arcs could not be awarded any other way and still be fair. But, according to what we know so far, MA tickets your character earns while you play other people's arcs will not be shared.
The official stand is that your characters do not have any special link simply because they are all your characters. And the rewards you earn while playing a specific character belong to that character. That would also seem to be the rationale behind costume and weapon unlocks being character-only, and Vanguard merits being untradeable. Those all represent accomplishments of that specific character. (I personally wish costume unlocks were account wide, but they're not.)
Vet rewards are awards to the player, not to a specific character, so those are usable on all your characters. This does appear to contradict the "no special link" rationale, but that's still the official stand.
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In particular, going to nuke a character that just 'wasn't working', and only having a dozen merits -- not enough to even try to gamble for a recipe -- makes me sad. 
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In the Premeritous Epoch, I had this problem when nuking characters who had obtained early anniversary badges...
Not saying your complaint is illegitimate. Just pointing out that "there's always something" for folks like us (fellow RPer and concept builder extraordinaire here ) who tend to fall in love with our characters, even when they don't work so well...
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I think one main area you would want to avoid is too much text. If your descriptions and story is too lengthy that may cause a player to exit immediately. I know I will be trying to streamline my story...it will be difficult to find that balance of just enough story and fun missions...
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This is a difficult balance. There needs to be enough story to draw the reader in, but not so much as to push them back out again.
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I plan on doing a reasonable amount of this through clues and in-mission dialogue, since those can be shorter bite sized chunks. If you learn bits of information from computers or bulletin boards as you go along, it spares you from having to have a six paragraph mission complete clue.
The other side of this, of course, is simplicity of premise. If your basic mission arc needs more than one sentence to explain what it's about, at least "OOC" to another player, then it's probably going to be too text rich.
Finally, if you have to go heavy text, I'd think doing it in mission 3 or 4 would make more sense than 1 or 2. Get people into your arc and "plot-committed" before trying to make them care about your breathless prose. The player will only get invested in the arc if he feels like he's actually doing and learning these things. Letting your contact figure everything out and spout out long swatches of backstory is another way of saying "you're just here to watch my cutscenes, boyo." If your arc isn't 1-2 missions long, your first mission's intro isn't likely to be very involved.
As an example, in the notes I've written for one of my more involved Redside arcs -- one with twists and turns and some nice crunchy story and pseudocanon -- my first mission comes down to "hey, I've got a line on a nice bank heist. You in?" Nice, simple, normal enough... it's what happens during the heist that makes the difference.
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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.
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How will level scaling work? Will every mission automatically scale to your current level (+ difficulty, team size, etc.) or will it be predetermined by the "architect"?
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This is complicated. Every critter has a level range where they are valid. When you make a mission, all of the level ranges must overlap at some point. If you are outside this level range when you go to play the mission you will be brought up or down to the level rang of the mission.
Example, I use critters A (1-54), B (34-45) and C (40-48). The level range of the mission is (40-45).
If I am level 5, I will play mission at level 40.
If I am level 50, I will play mission at level 45.
If I am level 42 I will play at level 42.
If I am level 5, but have set my difficulty to max, I will play at level 38.
Note: I said mission here, not arc, each mission has an independent level range.
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Additional question about this, relating to custom critters: if I create a CC faction and make multiple minions/lts/bosses, will I be able to give the individual ones their own level ranges, or will I need to set the mission level range appropriately?
For example: can I make a group that spawns Minion A at lvl 1-25 and minion B at 26-50, so that when a lvl 20 player enters, he/she will face Minion A, but if someone at lvl 50 enters, he/she gets Minion B? Or will I have to set a selected level range for that entire group of custom critters?
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
i love what i see so far although are maps searchable meaning if i know there is a floating crystal in one. will i be able to narrow it down to all maps with crystal's in them?
sincerly yours:
Bzald of TopTen
I think it is about time for a FAQ Revision
@Blood Beret(2)Twitter
I am a bad speeler, use poorer grammar, and am a frequent typoist.
MA ArcID: 1197
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. Winston Churchill
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As someone who shifts from desktop to laptop and back again a bit, I wonder how 'portable' the architect files will be portable? Refering obvious to pre-publish status .
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Well, if they're anything like the costume creator saved files, they'll simply be text files, which should be very portable, once you know in which directory the game stores them. Since we've been told you can edit them offline, I would have to assume it's probably going to be like that.
I am confused over the level issues, will we be designating the levels of our story arcs for players to see?
Example: Rescue the Fusionette Clones (Level 50)
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As someone who shifts from desktop to laptop and back again a bit, I wonder how 'portable' the architect files will be portable? Refering obvious to pre-publish status .
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Well, if they're anything like the costume creator saved files, they'll simply be text files, which should be very portable, once you know in which directory the game stores them. Since we've been told you can edit them offline, I would have to assume it's probably going to be like that.
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We've been told we can work on Arcs offline, in a text file. I'd assume them to be very portable. Copy and paste into a Word document, or just email the arc-in-progress file to yourself, and you can work on it anywhere.
I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of work on my arcs at the office.
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I am confused over the level issues, will we be designating the levels of our story arcs for players to see?
Example: Rescue the Fusionette Clones (Level 50)
[/ QUOTE ]The level ranges of the enemies in the missions will determine the overall level of the arc. Whatever the final overlap range is, that's the level range of the arc.
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Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.
*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.
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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.
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If you're going to ruin somebodys rating by slapping a one on it, you should have to 'endure all of it'. I've read some books and watched some movies that seemed to suck at first, but after 'enduring all of it' found them to be rather good after all.
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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Brevity and economy are virtues of good writing. I'm not saying that all mission texts should (or even could) aspire to be Hemingway six word stories. But be like Harvey Pekar and foster a knack for knowing when there are too many words on the page.
(Note that I direct this to myself as much as I do towards the poster above or anyone else reading...)
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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring. But I've also seen authors who bog their text down with so much over-description and flowery language as to be unreadable.
Keeping it brief is especially true for MMO writing. Yet how to keep it short and yet give it personality as well will be an interesting experiment.
I don't want all of the quest givers sounding the same (cookie cutter personality with a different face attached), yet bogging the player down with too much text would be a mistake as well.
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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 plan on doing a reasonable amount of this through clues and in-mission dialogue, since those can be shorter bite sized chunks. If you learn bits of information from computers or bulletin boards as you go along, it spares you from having to have a six paragraph mission complete clue.
The other side of this, of course, is simplicity of premise. If your basic mission arc needs more than one sentence to explain what it's about, at least "OOC" to another player, then it's probably going to be too text rich.
Finally, if you have to go heavy text, I'd think doing it in mission 3 or 4 would make more sense than 1 or 2. Get people into your arc and "plot-committed" before trying to make them care about your breathless prose. The player will only get invested in the arc if he feels like he's actually doing and learning these things. Letting your contact figure everything out and spout out long swatches of backstory is another way of saying "you're just here to watch my cutscenes, boyo." If your arc isn't 1-2 missions long, your first mission's intro isn't likely to be very involved.
As an example, in the notes I've written for one of my more involved Redside arcs -- one with twists and turns and some nice crunchy story and pseudocanon -- my first mission comes down to "hey, I've got a line on a nice bank heist. You in?" Nice, simple, normal enough... it's what happens during the heist that makes the difference.
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Nice post. This is my thinking as well. Hopefully we'll be able to add some good hooks as we go, through quest dialog, clues, and perhaps in-mission "drama" text. Something to keep the story flowing and growing as it progesses.
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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring.
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...was only referring to this...
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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring.
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...was only referring to this...
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Heh, I can actually see clever uses for this type of text in-game.
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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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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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Here's a thought: is there something like a "guest book" included with the MA. This way if someone is getting one starred, they potentially can get some feedback:
* "i.e., thought it was a cool premise but mission 1 with those 8 AVs was too much to solo."
* "would've given you 3 stars, but down graded because your spelling stinks!"
etc.
Consider how much people in these forums help each other (despite pouncing on others a bit to hard now and then) in the fan art and fiction sections of this board. Would be nice if some of that feedback could make its way in to the MA rating system. Even if it's a 100 character comment max when you rate an arc.
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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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i though what you said was interesting, out of 100% of writers how many are going to be able to grab you. lets say that a large amount 20% so for every 10 people 2 people will be able to grab you.
btw what do you mean by grab as a example would it be something like this: her eye's darted left to right frantically searching the shadow, the butcher knife felt very heavy in her hands a drop of cold sweet hit the sharp blade where was he at.
i wonder how flexible the system is hmm?
sincerly yours:
Bzald of TopTen
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If you're going to ruin somebodys rating by slapping a one on it, you should have to 'endure all of it'. I've read some books and watched some movies that seemed to suck at first, but after 'enduring all of it' found them to be rather good after all.
[/ QUOTE ]I, on the other hand, have never stuck with a questionable book or movie, and had it improve by the end. 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.
A rating option of no stars, but "Did not finish" would satisfy me, assuming we'll have comments, too.
There is no rating system that cannot be griefed. That's why the devs are putting in tools to help them identify and neuter griefers.
As someone who shifts from desktop to laptop and back again a bit, I wonder how 'portable' the architect files will be portable? Refering obvious to pre-publish status
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