City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Dev's Choice: Becoming the Chosen One!

AncientSpirit_NA

By AncientSpirit_NA,
Posted on: 2009-03-19 15:56 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

Hey All,

There have been a number of questions on the boards about the Dev’s Choice program and obtaining “The Chosen One” badge. We’ve decided to release a little more information to clear up some of the misconceptions about this program and give players some valuable advice on how to get their missions noticed.

Dev’s Choice is a way for us to recognize stories that represent what the Mission Architect can do best. Those stories are personally selected for Dev’s Choice based on the feedback from the Development Team and they are great for those looking for a fun mission to play.

So what do we consider when choosing between stories when deciding which should be selected for Dev’s choice?
<ul type="square">[*]We found the arc thoroughly enjoyable to play. [*]We want to share that experience with others. [*]The arc found a balance between fun gameplay and a decent story. [*]There’s no apparent way to exploit the missions.[/list]
Having your story selected for Dev’s Choice is beneficial in a number of ways. Dev’s Choice stories do not count against your total published arcs. If you have three published arcs and one of them gets turned into Dev’s Choice, you will be able to publish a fourth. If one of those three arcs gets flagged as Dev’s Choice, you will be able to publish a fifth, and so on. These stories visually stand out in the Mission Browser, and Players can filter specifically for Dev’s Choice content. Of course, the creator of a mission selected for Dev’s Choice gets the rare and coveted “The Chosen One” badge.

Please note that because Dev’s Choice stories are hand picked by the Developers, we want to ensure that the caliber of their content persists. To that end, we lock the story permanently on our Arc Server, preserving it in its chosen state. This does not mean that you can’t change or update your story if you decide to do so after it has been selected. However, you will have to republish this story as a second story, without the Dev’s Choice standing. The original story that was chosen for Dev’s Choice will still be available to everyone.


The final question is “How do I get my story selected by the Developers?” One of the things we’ve noticed while on the Training Room is that certain stories begin to build a buzz. Players talk about them in the chat window, posts start to appear on the forums, the Community takes notice and as such, the Developers take interest. We talk about them in between meetings and over lunch. When we log in to play, we look for these stories we’ve heard about. When we play them and they fill the criteria for what we believe to be the Best of Architect, we mark it as such. Dev’s Choice missions will be chosen like this, organically. But to give you some guidelines of things that can help you get noticed, we recommend the following:

<ul type="square">[*]Get people to play your story – offer to play their story in exchange. [*]Humbly solicit feedback and implement changes based off of what other players are saying about your content. [*]Play, rate and comment on other’s stories, this helps build a community of authors. [*]And finally there will be a forum thread called ‘Dev’s Choice: For Your Consideration’ where players can post arcs they think should be considered for Dev’s Choice. The two guidelines being, you can’t promote your own arc (that’ll likely happen in some other forum somewhere else) and you can’t disagree with anyone else’s suggestion (again, that’ll happen in some other thread).[/list]
We would also like to add that our French and German players will indeed be included in this program. Their stories will be reviewed by a team of French and German natives and the same criteria will be taken into account for the Dev’s Choice status and the corresponding “The Chosen One” badge to be awarded.


So that is the Dev’s choice program. As you can see, it is fairly simple and straightforward; we wanted a chance to reward those who write good stories and a way to point them out to everyone as content that is reliably high quality. We’re very excited about MA and can’t wait to see what you will do with it!

-The Development Team

-Mod8-

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Posted

Thank you.

The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.

 

Posted

Sounds super.

 

Posted

This is welcome information!

Mod 8's posts need to appear in the community digest

 

Posted

They do now!

Ex

 

Posted

Nice work. Looks like you guys have solid criteria from which to judge, and a system to sample the arcs that are generating some forum discussion.

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Posted

May I offer a friendly bit of a suggestion?

Please, PLEASE... mark your mission as hard if it's intended to be difficult. Let everyone know a little bit of what to expect. For example, in my own, it revolves around a single character and her clones, so they're all part dominator. I gave fair warning just in case there are people out there who'd need a lot of break frees to do the mission correctly.

If your mission has a ridiculously hard, extreme/extreme stealthed, one-shotter boss, you should probably warn us. Some like the challenge. But nobody is going to hold it against you if you give us fair warning. It's just a slight bit of courtesy. And this is coming from a supervillain.

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Posted

[ QUOTE ]
They do now!

Ex

[/ QUOTE ]

Still not seeing them

Ironically, this post by you is also not in the digest, nor the post you made in the same time frame to bump the i14 badge thread

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They do now!

Ex

[/ QUOTE ]

Still not seeing them

Ironically, this post by you is also not in the digest, nor the post you made in the same time frame to bump the i14 badge thread

[/ QUOTE ]


These two threads by Mod 8 in this forum must be corrupted in some way. The OPs show a posting date of three weeks ago. The badge thread in this forum had the OP deleted and now it doesn't even show up in the forum even though a direct link to it allows it to pop up.

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Posted

Thank you VERY much.

I'll continue to try and produce arcs that are fun and in some cases challenging as well. If anything, I (and others I am sure) would like an alternate way of obtaining the extra slot (1 in 1,000 people and repeated slots on the same user is a low quartile) even if those slots are capped per player.

The "For Your Consideration" section is also great and thanks for that.

This is a positive response from the Developers and Community Mods, thanks again.

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Posted

Are the devs even choosing missions anymore? It always seems to be the same 'chosen' ones.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Are the devs even choosing missions anymore? It always seems to be the same 'chosen' ones.

[/ QUOTE ]

Once it is DC'd it doesnt come down...

Next year we could have 100 Dev Choice arcs.

 

Posted

Any guess when the "developer's Choice: For Your Consideration" forum will open up?

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Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Any guess when the "developer's Choice: For Your Consideration" forum will open up?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was about to ask the exact same question!
it's taking too long..

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Posted

Good information, and not to rain on anyone's parade, but what happens if an upcoming patch/nerf/whatever BREAKS a DC arc?

How does one fix that?


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Posted

So the idea that you have to have an average of 4.5 star rating
is a myth. Good to know. I'm glad we're not at the mercy of some
players that 1 star just for the heck of it. If the Devs decide it's
good enough, so be it. That raises my hopes just a little bit.

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My 50s: 3 scrappers, 2 tankers, 1 blaster, 1 defender, 1 controller, 1 warshade, 1 stalker, 1 brute, 1 corruptor, 1 widow, 1 dominator, 1 mastermind (on Liberty)

Current project

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Good information, and not to rain on anyone's parade, but what happens if an upcoming patch/nerf/whatever BREAKS a DC arc?

How does one fix that?

[/ QUOTE ]

You can unpublish a DC arc to edit it, I am not sure who, but you have to contact * I think * the dev that DC'd it and get him to review the edits and re DC it.

There is a method, but I don't quite remember fully what it is.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
So the idea that you have to have an average of 4.5 star rating
is a myth. Good to know. I'm glad we're not at the mercy of some
players that 1 star just for the heck of it. If the Devs decide it's
good enough, so be it. That raises my hopes just a little bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mixing things up a bit. You DO need a 4.5+ rating to make Hall of Fame -- a problematic rating given 1-star bandits. However, DC can be granted to any arc the devs like regardless of rating.

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Mission Architect Works: DIY Laser Moonbase (Dev Choice!), An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge (2009 MA Award Winner!) and many more! Plus Brand New Arcs for Issue 21!

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So the idea that you have to have an average of 4.5 star rating
is a myth. Good to know. I'm glad we're not at the mercy of some
players that 1 star just for the heck of it. If the Devs decide it's
good enough, so be it. That raises my hopes just a little bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mixing things up a bit. You DO need a 4.5+ rating to make Hall of Fame -- a problematic rating given 1-star bandits. However, DC can be granted to any arc the devs like regardless of rating.

[/ QUOTE ]

Makes sense. I do have a realistic expectation of never achieving
the HoF status, but stranger things have happened.

Home server: Guardian
My 50s: 3 scrappers, 2 tankers, 1 blaster, 1 defender, 1 controller, 1 warshade, 1 stalker, 1 brute, 1 corruptor, 1 widow, 1 dominator, 1 mastermind (on Liberty)

Current project

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Next year we could have 100 Dev Choice arcs.

[/ QUOTE ]

They said in one interview that they were aiming for about 1% Dev's Choice. By that metric, we should be well over 100 Dev's Choice already. I think that's unrealistically high; 1% of the well-written, fully-developed arcs, perhaps.

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Posted

The thing is, AE is about a week old.

The fact is, it takes time for the devs to play through these arcs. And they gotta work too.

Divide out 1000 arcs over a period of 365 days. You're talking about 2.5 arcs a day. We're already above this IIRC.


Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Good information, and not to rain on anyone's parade, but what happens if an upcoming patch/nerf/whatever BREAKS a DC arc?

How does one fix that?

[/ QUOTE ]That happened on Test, actually. I believe pohsyb said to upload a fixed version and then tell him the new arc ID#

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ][*]And finally there will be a forum thread called ‘Dev’s Choice: For Your Consideration’ where players can post arcs they think should be considered for Dev’s Choice. The two guidelines being, you can’t promote your own arc (that’ll likely happen in some other forum somewhere else) and you can’t disagree with anyone else’s suggestion (again, that’ll happen in some other thread).

[/ QUOTE ]

Was this ever set up? I haven't seen it. Maybe I'm not looking in the right forum?

And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Good information, and not to rain on anyone's parade, but what happens if an upcoming patch/nerf/whatever BREAKS a DC arc?

How does one fix that?

[/ QUOTE ]That happened on Test, actually. I believe pohsyb said to upload a fixed version and then tell him the new arc ID#

[/ QUOTE ]

Uh, if you have to keep a free slot open in case one of your Dev Choice missions breaks and you need to upload a fixed version, that kinda defeats the point of Dev Choice. At least the first one. And how many people are going to get a second?

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