Hall of Fame is not realistically attainable

[ QUOTE ]
The devs must must mantain an air of imparitality...

[/ QUOTE ]
They must?

I'd rather the developers err on the side of good missions, no matter who makes them.

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You'd think that, but people [censored] when they did.

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My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City

So let's get this right, the devs went out there and provided the first ever player based content in an MMORPG, and someone's already [censored] about not having enough spots to make arcs?

Sounds like the forums to me!

Here's a tip, make those spots count, and have fun with it.

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@Rylas

Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.

[ QUOTE ]
Players should NOT, should NEVER have the ability to affect the gameplay experiance of other players like this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well then, good luck on developing your own MMO.

[ QUOTE ]
And whatever my rating criteria are. it doesnt matter, its my rating criteria. As long as I dont 1 star or 5 star everyone which the devs have said is a no no, anyhting I want to do is my choice.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yup. You're correct there.

Just like it's my choice to have a low opinion of people who think that story designers should be able to read their minds. Or who have knee-jerk reactions to particular power use without consideration of story, concept, or intent.

Now having said that, I am going to offer an apology to you today. My initial post in this thread responding to you was rather rude. I stand by the point I was making, but the way in which I made it was uncool.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

Im just saying anytime its happened in past mmo's it ended badly, with players lining up on both sides of the issue and firing shots.

Why do you think they took away stars for forum posters.

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Boycott Ncsoft if they close down Coh.

[ QUOTE ]
So let's get this right, the devs went out there and provided the first ever player based content in an MMORPG, and someone's already [censored] about not having enough spots to make arcs?

Sounds like the forums to me!

Here's a tip, make those spots count, and have fun with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

All I'm saying is that the mathematics behind the HOF requirements (assuming it is 4.5+ as originally stated in prerelease materials) are unfeasible even for an amazing, high quality arc that's getting plenty of votes. We'll be lucky if we have even a handful of HOF arcs after many weeks based on the ability to knock a ranking down extremely hard with a 0 or 1 star rating.

If I was [censoring], I'd be saying "WAAAAAH WAAAH I WANT MROE SLOTS THIS SI STUPID THE DEVS ARE EVIL AND STUPID AND WHY WON'T ANYBODY VOTE FOR MEEEEEE" or something along those lines. I'm trying to take a more logical approach instead by saying that the current system may not work out the way the devs are hoping, and that it can't be considered a reasonable way for people to earn new slots.

As for "have fun with it", I did have fun with it. Now I'm out of spots. Now I'm not able to have more fun with it. That's the crux of the side issue, which is slot limitations. If HOF remains in its current shape then 98% of the population will have this same problem.

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Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
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!

[ QUOTE ]
You'd think that, but people [censored] when they did.

[/ QUOTE ]
Those people should be Old Yeller'd.

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But you can still create as many missions as you want can't you? I was under the impression that we could create as much content as we desire. Its just that we're limited to 3 slots for publishing?

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[ QUOTE ]
But you can still create as many missions as you want can't you? I was under the impression that we could create as much content as we desire. Its just that we're limited to 3 slots for publishing?

[/ QUOTE ]

Semantics. I could write eighty thousand novels and never show them to anyone except my neighbor, my dog, and my mother, but getting them published is another matter. And the end product is the focus in both metaphors -- getting your missions out there to be played (and without destroying your work just to make room for more).

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Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
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!

[ QUOTE ]
As for "have fun with it", I did have fun with it. Now I'm out of spots. Now I'm not able to have more fun with it. That's the crux of the side issue, which is slot limitations. If HOF remains in its current shape then 98% of the population will have this same problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

Given the potential for revenue, this might be the intention.

Reading about the various criteria being used to judge, I am not seeing the HoF as a stamp of quality (Something that Dev choice at least provides). There are too many mentions of people giving, what might otherwise be a great arc, 1 star due to things like not liking the power choice selections. This makes it seem like anyone wanting to create something, which caters to the player who wants more difficult missions, has to endure the possibility of being given a one star by someone who finds paper missions hard.

Methinks that that the ticket to the HoF is to make the missions easy to complete.

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Someone is going to do a good install tool that makes it simple to grab an arc from a website and copy it into the appropriate folders. I believe the .storyarc file contains everything necessary, as it automatically reads in the necessary critters, so this tool is trivial, and not actually necessary -- it can just make it easier.

Then, you'll have a website where entire .storyarc files are uploaded. Since they're 100k at max, the amount of storage they'll take up is utterly trivial. Presumably this site will have a search mechanism making it easy to find arcs. Having a facility to rate arcs would be helpful, too.

You want to play someone's arc, you download the mission (using the tool or just by manual save into the directory), you fire up CoH, you publish the mission, you play it, and then you unpublish it.

Less satisfying than an all-in-game mechanism, but not unworkable.

Personally, I'm currently building a website for searching storyarcs; authors can register their arc by uploading their .storyarc file, which my site parses and extracts out useful stats, so you are not having to type in manually how many missions, how many bosses, whether you have AVs, etc. Ratings can be entered on the site. I'm contemplating allowing people to choose to archive their .storyarc file on the site, too, so it can be played by others even if it's eventually unpublished.

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In the OP it states that an authour can only get Dev's choice once, but I've just read Mod 8's post 'Dev choice: becoming the chosen one', and it says that you can get mulitple DC's.

Has a red name said that DC is only obtainable once per author or it this just speculation?

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[ QUOTE ]
For instance, I received feedback on an arc that was floating in the 4-5 star range that consisted of "too hard, team kept dying." Since I was online I asked what specificaly was too hard and was informed "it was too stupid hard all the way through." Now, mind you this arc has exactly 3 custom bad guys (all end bosses/ebs) and the rest are regular baddies, so I was curious what exactly had happened. I pressed a bit for more details. Turns out they had a team of 7, one 50 who was getting the missions and six 46 to 48s and were running at the highest difficulty. That means the baddies were +3 to +7 to the majority of the team. Yeah, of course it was "too hard." His parting comment was, "it sux, one star from everyone" and sure enough, in a few moments, I got 5 new ratings and the rating of the arc dropped from showing 5 stars to 4.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been there Red, but in my case it was someone complaining that my arc was too hard to solo...on Invincible. That arc is also marked in the description as "Challenging" too, go figure.

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<QR> I think the rating system should be taken less seriously by many people. I'm sure it'd be nice to get into the Hall of Fame but should it be considered the end of the world if the odds are heinously against it? No.

Three slots is plenty for me at present and if I ever get more arcs that I want to publish I intend to rotate them, so having my current arcs published and my others ready to replace them when I choose. You can bet dollars for donuts that it's completely intended to sell arc slots further down the way. It's just good business, and a model used by NCSoft previously (character slots for example).

I enjoy rating others' missions, and feedback is a good way to improve the overall quality of the arcs available.

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K5K - The Killbot 5000
A Spanner In The Works Part One, ArcID: 336662, A Spanner In The Works Part Two, ArcID: 336665, Enter Japes, ArcID: 96001
In The Darkness Creeping, ArcID: 347709, When Dimensions Collide, ArcID: 412416.

I think they might have changed their mind in late beta after all the griping started.

So they might not have changed the wording on the post

I really would like to get official clarification on this.

I for one dont think its even remotly fair to allow anyone to get more than devs choice. That changes it from 1% of the player base to more like .5% since they will likely look at previous publishers first.

And honestly how are we to know wihtout complete transparency that a dev isnt giving out DC's to their friends.

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Boycott Ncsoft if they close down Coh.

[ QUOTE ]
I know I have a list of powers that gets an automatic 1 star from me.

Any summoned pets, glue arrow, caltrops, confuse, basicly powers that really slow you the heck down really tick me off.

So no matter how good a story is any of those powers show up and its a 1.

[/ QUOTE ]
How do you even play the game at all? That rules out a lot of the standard enemy groups:

Malta, Knives of Artemis, Carnies, Sky Raiders, Rikti, Paragon Police, Circle of Thorns.

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Ritki and Sky raiders arent that bad, and carnies you need a largish team before you start seeing illusionists in any numbers,and there is a badge for it, so thats different.

Also freaks, Cimerions, council and probably a bunch of others I cant think of at the moment.

And I was saying this to get a rise to show that players are all going to have their own way to judge so no matter how good or how bad your arc is, the ratings arent always going to make sense

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Boycott Ncsoft if they close down Coh.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So let's get this right, the devs went out there and provided the first ever player based content in an MMORPG, and someone's already [censored] about not having enough spots to make arcs?

Sounds like the forums to me!

Here's a tip, make those spots count, and have fun with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

All I'm saying is that the mathematics behind the HOF requirements (assuming it is 4.5+ as originally stated in prerelease materials) are unfeasible even for an amazing, high quality arc that's getting plenty of votes. We'll be lucky if we have even a handful of HOF arcs after many weeks based on the ability to knock a ranking down extremely hard with a 0 or 1 star rating.

If I was [censoring], I'd be saying "WAAAAAH WAAAH I WANT MROE SLOTS THIS SI STUPID THE DEVS ARE EVIL AND STUPID AND WHY WON'T ANYBODY VOTE FOR MEEEEEE" or something along those lines. I'm trying to take a more logical approach instead by saying that the current system may not work out the way the devs are hoping, and that it can't be considered a reasonable way for people to earn new slots.

As for "have fun with it", I did have fun with it. Now I'm out of spots. Now I'm not able to have more fun with it. That's the crux of the side issue, which is slot limitations. If HOF remains in its current shape then 98% of the population will have this same problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

I already see this coming myself.

I've written two arcs already. both related to my main villain "heroic" character and her family history of crazed superscience. I have a few ideas for a couple other chars or just for general arc weirdness.

Unless I wanna drop one of the two arcs I've poured hours of my heart and soul into. I can only write one more. and with how ratings work, my 4 star arc with 23 ratings, that many people have said they enjoyed, is on somewhere around the 40th page of arcs below everything that has a single 5 star rating, making it near impossible to find. Yay.

Yay.

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Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!

Arc ID 58363!

By definition, a Deve very well could give out DC's to their friends and there would be nothing wrong with it.

The only criteria is that they like the arc enough to DC it.

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Story Arcs I created:

Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!

Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!

Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!

[ QUOTE ]
All I'm saying is that the mathematics behind the HOF requirements (assuming it is 4.5+ as originally stated in prerelease materials) are unfeasible even for an amazing, high quality arc that's getting plenty of votes. We'll be lucky if we have even a handful of HOF arcs after many weeks based on the ability to knock a ranking down extremely hard with a 0 or 1 star rating.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am reasonably certain that if HoF is datamined to be essentially unachievable, the devs will lower the requirement. However, there's no way to be certain what the "correct" level is until the devs have a better handle on the level of player participation in the ratings system and the way players decide to rate on average. In fact, none of us can know that, since none of us really has any real idea what the pertinent variables are yet: the MA hasn't existed on live long enough to make reasonable predictions.

---

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

[ QUOTE ]
Im just saying anytime its happened in past mmo's it ended badly, with players lining up on both sides of the issue and firing shots.

Why do you think they took away stars for forum posters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh. You're totally right about the stars.

I think 90% of the problem you're touching on is because we don't have the option to turn off certain powers from our custom critters. I may want a specific difficulty level, but that just means the villains chain-blind you forever and ever, for example. I'd like the fire/fire tank in my arc to be as tough as possible, but dear doG don't let him rez! As it is now, that's not possible.

I'll give poor ratings for crummy story telling. But for selecting powers that I don't like, most I'll do is quit and not rate the arc. Malta has some awefully annoying powers, but their arcs are the best in the game. Because of the story.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

[ QUOTE ]
In the OP it states that an authour can only get Dev's choice once, but I've just read Mod 8's post 'Dev choice: becoming the chosen one', and it says that you can get mulitple DC's.

Has a red name said that DC is only obtainable once per author or it this just speculation?

[/ QUOTE ]

If we take the thread on 'becoming the chosen one' as the last official word on the matter, it IS possible to get multiple DCs.

I feel Twoflower's pain, but he does have 25% more slots than most of us already, so it's a little difficult to wholeheartedly sympathise, especially considering I didn't see any of this 'fix the system!' from him on test where he had 6 or more DCd arcs and was sitting pretty at the top of the lists.

he's not the only one who likes to write. I'm lucky enough to be extremely slow and careful in testing my arcs before publishing, so I haven't finished my second and probably won't for some time. I'm a perfectionist in some respects. I'm still considering a radical change to my one published arc, but am waiting for more feedback before I do. If I do decide to go with a change, it would be deceiving of me to let the ratings I have so far (5 stars, 5 plays at last check) stay, as the arc will be quite diferent in tone. So I'll unpublish and republish.

We work with what we've got, don't we?

When my three slots are full, and I'm really truly done with them, then I'll definitely want more slots. I fully expect purchasable slots to be available at some time, it seems impossible to me that NCSoft would ignore this avenue of revenue. I'm content to wait for that for now, and if i get a DC or HoF in the meantime, that's a bonus.

Eco.

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't see any of this 'fix the system!' from him on test where he had 6 or more DCd arcs and was sitting pretty at the top of the lists.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think the statistical unlikelihood of getting an aggregate 4.5 rating on Live servers, with players who aren't self-selected testers and creators, who will one-star your mission because it's not a farm or they don't like the color of your custom critter, had quite hit home yet. I think most of us on Test were being creative and trying to roll with the bugs and provide feedback in good faith, rather than contemplate all the ways in which the playerbase at large can and will be idiots and jerks. As usual, first contact with said general playerbase was... "educational." (Let's count all the farm arcs. You might need a bigger piece of paper.)

But if you want to reduce this to basic self-interest: if a member in good standing of the Sekrit Forum Mission Architect Cartel Axis can't even get HoF, what chance does anyone else have? Well, except for the farm arc makers I guess. Yeah, I really look forward to the first ten pages of HoF being "ez tikts" - Very Short - Freakshow.

---

My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City

[ QUOTE ]
I think 90% of the problem you're touching on is because we don't have the option to turn off certain powers from our custom critters. I may want a specific difficulty level, but that just means the villains chain-blind you forever and ever, for example. I'd like the fire/fire tank in my arc to be as tough as possible, but dear doG don't let him rez! As it is now, that's not possible.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's the first thing I want. I've run up against this problem twice in the two arcs I've worked on. The first time I had to totally gimp a lt to get rid of Smoke, the second time I had to drop a powerset (FF) completely from an ally because there was no way to get rid of Detention Field. (We all know how irritating that one would be.)

Here is the way I'm trying to look at it. (Just me...not saying anyone else should.)

I would love to have my arc well liked just like anyone else. But I'm trying to remember that this is the coolest thing ever introduced into this game. Standing away from myself, it would seem pretty silly to complain that I "only" get to make 3 story arcs. And maybe the "stars" aren't really important other than to my self esteem. Maybe the truth is that I can have unlimited arcs. I shouldn't be that concerned about unpublishing an arc and putting another one in its place. I probably shouldn't worry about losing those 6 ratings.

I try to imagine how much I would have been laughed at a couple of years ago if I said, "Wouldn't it be cool if they let us make our own story arcs? Like design everything about them?...the dialog, the costumes, choose the maps, the powers? Maybe even have up to 5 missions in the arc?"

The first response would have of course been: "Never going to happen"

But if I convinced anyone that it could happen...what would they say if I pointed out the "downside" of only getting to make 3 arcs?

I imagine the response would be something like: "First of all, it won't happen...second of all, three arcs isn't enough? How ungrateful are you anyway? If they give you 5 arcs, you'll complain about that, won't you? Then they up it to 10 and you'll still complain." (Just substitute the argument used when someone suggest raising the lvl cap here.)

So I totally get what you guys are saying...but I'm trying to rein myself in and realize I'm rolling in "win" here.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I didn't see any of this 'fix the system!' from him on test where he had 6 or more DCd arcs and was sitting pretty at the top of the lists.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think the statistical unlikelihood of getting an aggregate 4.5 rating on Live servers, with players who aren't self-selected testers and creators, who will one-star your mission because it's not a farm or they don't like the color of your custom critter, had quite hit home yet. I think most of us on Test were being creative and trying to roll with the bugs and provide feedback in good faith, rather than contemplate all the ways in which the playerbase at large can and will be idiots and jerks. As usual, first contact with said general playerbase was... "educational." (Let's count all the farm arcs. You might need a bigger piece of paper.)

But if you want to reduce this to basic self-interest: if a member in good standing of the Sekrit Forum Mission Architect Cartel Axis can't even get HoF, what chance does anyone else have? Well, except for the farm arc makers I guess. Yeah, I really look forward to the first ten pages of HoF being "ez tikts" - Very Short - Freakshow.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please don't selectively quote from me in order to weight your take on what I said. As I said, I do sympathize with Twoflower, but some of us are in a worse position.

Eco

---

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)