Discussion: Issue 14: Mission Architect - FAQ
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2009-02-26 13:02 in Developers' Corner
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I asked directly about public comments with our ratings, and told:
"There are no public comments available. It has been considered but will not be in for release."
Bummer.
Well, it's pretty obvious that this is a highly desired feature, so we can only hope they will implement it later.
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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.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
I don't remember if this has been answered. I much prefer to publish under a pseudonym, or anonymously. I do not want my in-game friends looking for my material and playing it, just because it's got my sig. At the same time if an author publishes an arc, I really do want to be able to flag that author for "find me more by this guy" or "please do not ever let me see another one of these again". What name will be showing up on our published arcs?
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As it stands now the system of being able to rate arcs without an investment of time is flawed.
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I agree it's a potential problem. I wonder if it would be possible to measure the time someone spent running an arc before they reviewed it? That way you could establish a split conditional: either spend X minutes in the arc's missions, or complete it before you're allowed to review it.
It's not perfect, but it should at least discourage people from slapping ratings on arcs just for the sake of rating them. At the same time, if you run across a truly horrible grindfest of an arc, you need only give it a good college try, then declare it hopeless and vote it into oblivion.
-D
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I asked directly about public comments with our ratings, and told:
"There are no public comments available. It has been considered but will not be in for release."
Bummer.
Well, it's pretty obvious that this is a highly desired feature, so we can only hope they will implement it later.
[/ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]Nor did I intend to imply that it was a unanimous desire. But if you've waded through this thing, you know it's something several posters have expressed a desire for.
We will be able to send comments to the authors. That has been confirmed. But being able to leave a short comment along with our ratings would make them MUCH more useful.
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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 share these concerns. Three arcs isn't much from a storytelling perspective. If the only way to tell more stories is for one of your three stories to become extremely popular, I think there is going to be a lot of frustration. I have no problem with awarding extra slots for HoF arcs, but I would also be more comfortable with alternate ways to get additional arc bandwidth.
On a side note: does anyone know if HoF status is permanent once granted? If a bunch of people run a HoF arc and think it was garbage, can their votes drive it out of the Hall? None of the comments I've read have addressed this.
On the one hand, I would hope not; it would open up all kinds of logistical issues. But on the other hand, that seems to set up an odd situation where early buzz may well be better than later accolades. Once a bunch of people give an arc middling reviews, you're probably better off scrapping it than leaving it up there in the hopes that it was merely ahead of its time.
All the more reason for us to have alternate means of gaining arc slots.
-D
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
One thing i hoped i would be seeing more of in COH is the type of activity like in the Midnight Club, where you stumble across a clickable object like a book on a shelf (like a glowy that doesnt glow). And you have to find all of these mysterious hard to find clues to get a badge. And it actually stimulates you to think instead of "go to this place, defeat this dude, rinse and repeat". Will those kind of objects be an option in the MA?
I would love to create a complex puzzle arc, or something like a scavenger hunt riddle type of arc.
Something else I have not seen yet: I know we have lots of maps to chose from, but can we add objects, walls, rooms, buildings, stuff, etc. to maps similar to the way the base editor works?
Be sure to drink your
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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 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.
[/ QUOTE ]
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 assume that they'd use your @Handle if they were going to attach any name to it. It's not like those are super secret any more, what with the ability to pop the global name of any random person you pass on Paragon's streets these days.
@Mindshadow
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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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Allow rating only if you have completed the arc, or completed at least one mission in it, OR if you have died in the arc. That way a character must at least have tried a bit before rating it.
Limit an account to making only one rating every hour. Allow them to "delay" a rating if they rate one arc, then immediately run another and finish it in 20 minutes, but don't allow them to put a rating vote more quickly than once per hour.
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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.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Allow rating only if you have completed the arc, or completed at least one mission in it, OR if you have died in the arc. That way a character must at least have tried a bit before rating it.
[/ QUOTE ]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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Limit an account to making only one rating every hour. Allow them to "delay" a rating if they rate one arc, then immediately run another and finish it in 20 minutes, but don't allow them to put a rating vote more quickly than once per hour.
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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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I asked directly about public comments with our ratings, and told:
"There are no public comments available. It has been considered but will not be in for release."
Bummer.
Well, it's pretty obvious that this is a highly desired feature, so we can only hope they will implement it later.
[/ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]Nor did I intend to imply that it was a unanimous desire. But if you've waded through this thing, you know it's something several posters have expressed a desire for.
We will be able to send comments to the authors. That has been confirmed. But being able to leave a short comment along with our ratings would make them MUCH more useful.
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I'm only really concerned with comments to the author. I must have missed where that was confirmed, I'm really glad it's in. I wonder how those things are sent...
I'm much less worried about public comments. In that case I'd be more tempted to have them open up a Player Content section of the boards and have feedback postable there.
Well, comments to author shouldn't be terribly hard even if they don't make a system for it.
Use mail, include mission title.
I don't know if it's been suggested (too lazy to read through 10-15 expanding pages) but instead of 1 starring content right away if its terrible, why not have a separate rating for bad content such as this? If it horrible, flag it as such, if X number of players do this, it gets some sort of icon in the mission list indicating it is a horrible arc.
Also, Y number of good reviews could cancel this out if there are too many people abusing the system, and as soon as a player marks Z number of arcs as horrible that end up getting good star ratings he is no longer allowed to use that rating, possibly account wide.
If this has been suggested, I apologize for my laziness! Feel free to poke holes in my little suggestion too.
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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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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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I don't know if it's been suggested (too lazy to read through 10-15 expanding pages) but instead of 1 starring content right away if its terrible, why not have a separate rating for bad content such as this? If it horrible, flag it as such, if X number of players do this, it gets some sort of icon in the mission list indicating it is a horrible arc.
Also, Y number of good reviews could cancel this out if there are too many people abusing the system, and as soon as a player marks Z number of arcs as horrible that end up getting good star ratings he is no longer allowed to use that rating, possibly account wide.
If this has been suggested, I apologize for my laziness! Feel free to poke holes in my little suggestion too.
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It seems to me that you've simply described the star rating system itself. What else is a 1-star rating for if not to identify an arc the rater thinks is garbage? And the relative numbers of each rating will certainly provide some kind of balance.
As for the second part, different people have different tastes. Just because a person has a distinctly different preference than the majority, that's not a good reason to bar them from expressing that.
You should skim the first few pages for redname posts. That'll give you a pretty good overall picture. An important detail is that ratings will be by account. We will only be able to rate an arc once per account.
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I don't know if it's been suggested (too lazy to read through 10-15 expanding pages) but instead of 1 starring content right away if its terrible, why not have a separate rating for bad content such as this? If it horrible, flag it as such, if X number of players do this, it gets some sort of icon in the mission list indicating it is a horrible arc.
Also, Y number of good reviews could cancel this out if there are too many people abusing the system, and as soon as a player marks Z number of arcs as horrible that end up getting good star ratings he is no longer allowed to use that rating, possibly account wide.
If this has been suggested, I apologize for my laziness! Feel free to poke holes in my little suggestion too.
[/ QUOTE ]
It seems to me that you've simply described the star rating system itself. What else is a 1-star rating for if not to identify an arc the rater thinks is garbage? And the relative numbers of each rating will certainly provide some kind of balance.
As for the second part, different people have different tastes. Just because a person has a distinctly different preference than the majority, that's not a good reason to bar them from expressing that.
You should skim the first few pages for redname posts. That'll give you a pretty good overall picture. An important detail is that ratings will be by account. We will only be able to rate an arc once per account.
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I read through the all the dev posts prior to suggesting this and the issue is basically that unplayable content will be created, and you shouldn't have to play through it to rate it, BUT that throws the doors wide open for griefing. Posi said:
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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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This is my response, a seperate, small system for the truly horrible content, while the real ratings are reserved for people that actually play through content, thus reducing the potential for griefing. The horrible content wont get star rated (probably) but anyone that sees something rated horrible with no star rating would avoid it.
This second rating system is not based on opinion at all but whether or not something is playable, or just so downright awful it shouldn't be played, the star rating is where player's individual opinions come in - when something is NOT so bad that you playing through it is doable.
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<...> that throws the doors wide open for griefing. Posi said:
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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.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is my response, a seperate, small system for the truly horrible content, while the real ratings are reserved for people that actually play through content, thus reducing the potential for griefing. The horrible content wont get star rated (probably) but anyone that sees something rated horrible with no star rating would avoid it.
This second rating system is not based on opinion at all but whether or not something is playable, or just so downright awful it shouldn't be played, the star rating is where player's individual opinions come in - when something is NOT so bad that you playing through it is doable.
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A counter for "people who bailed without completing this arc" might actually be easier to grief than keeping an eye out for 1-star bandits. I mean, what if you keep getting interrupted by other stuff and bail out of MA arcs regularly to go play with your SG, run task forces, etc (MA arcs apparently work like Oro arcs and TFs as opposed to Story Arcs). How do you differentiate between someone who's easily distracted and someone who's griefing? Placing a lot of 1-star ratings takes deliberate action after all, being distracted by shiny things does not.
Now you're introducing essentially a "no star rating" and extra complexity beyond the normal rating system. You do, after all, want to be able to distinguish between people who bailed the arc to go do something else and people who quit because it was awful. How do you phrase the "give it a no star or not" question in a way that makes sense to the average user? People have trouble with a 1-5 scale, and we're now going to add something else?
The problem with these "no star" rating schemes is that they add more complexity without necessarily giving a corresponding benefit. Allowing people to give normal ratings when bailing out of an arc isn't perfect but it's good enough, particularly if you don't think anything which is touched by users can ever be truly perfect.
@Mindshadow
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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.
[/ QUOTE ]
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 assume that they'd use your @Handle if they were going to attach any name to it. It's not like those are super secret any more, what with the ability to pop the global name of any random person you pass on Paragon's streets these days.
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@handles never were secret, just a small QOL change made them easier to see.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
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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.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Allow rating only if you have completed the arc, or completed at least one mission in it, OR if you have died in the arc. That way a character must at least have tried a bit before rating it.
Limit an account to making only one rating every hour. Allow them to "delay" a rating if they rate one arc, then immediately run another and finish it in 20 minutes, but don't allow them to put a rating vote more quickly than once per hour.
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Considering most content will be towards the bad side of the spectrum (it's hard to write good stuff) /unsigned.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
I didn't see this question answered (not sure if it was asked actually) but will trial accounts be able to rate missions/arcs?
[ @Zombie Fryer ][ @Zombie Smasher ]
| Home Server: Virtue |
Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]
| Home Server: Virtue |
Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]
I will seriously try to make an awesome arc (The Slax Task force). I want to make it ridiculously hard without being tedious. Rescue 15 of Fussionette's dumber siblings is tedious. Maybe someone can pull that off in a funny way "Rescue Fussionette's stupid siblings and lead them to their doom" complete with the appropriate self-deprecating dialogue might be enjoyable. I consider it a challenge to author good, challenging content and hope the tools are there.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
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I didn't see this question answered (not sure if it was asked actually) but will trial accounts be able to rate missions/arcs?
[/ QUOTE ]Hopefully not, lest we get flooded with arcs full of RMT ads. (I had to have this pointed out to me, I must admit.)
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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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Dangit - tried to PM Posi - but he is over quota (!?).
Anyway - here is a suggestion:
Posi,
Here is an idea for exiting out of and rating truly horrible content in the MA (but note I did not really think this through fully, but wanted to air it to you):
Allow for a rating of "incomplete" (which does not have the value anywhere from 1-5 - or whatever you use), which is handled perhaps partially independently from regular ratings.
When it comes time to report on the rating of a mission, all of the incompletes are excluded from calculating a final rating, but they are tallied to count how many times a user exited out due to perceived crappitude.
If an MA mission is terminated before completion/failure, they can be given the choice of:
"Hey - I had to leave but plan to finish this at some point". Such a choice would yield no rating at all.
"Hey - I can tell this is a piece of steaming poo from the first mob." Such a choice would receive the "incomplete" rating.
Both choices would not count towards rating badges.
When someone wants to see if the mission is good or not, they could judge these two separately, maybe present the incomplete tally as a percentage of the number of all ratings.
These incomplete ratings would not affect the total (Hall of Fame), but can still perhaps give a clue about truly horrible content.
I'll keep thinking on this a bit. This was off the top of my head . . .
Regards,
mytofi
I've done well assuming griefers will stop at nothing to grief. It's in their nature.
But fair enough; it's arguable that the number of 'casual griefing' that is curtailed would be worth the inconvenience. I don't agree, but I can see the argument.