so just to be clear - never test your missions
By
BackFire,
Posted on: 2009-04-11 12:36 in Mission Architect
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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.
So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.
if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?
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It's an understandable point.
I use test mode for the badges, and don't need the loot that much. It is also a sense of pride in that I refuse to publish anything which I do not feel is fully polished.
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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.
So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.
if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?
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But then you don't get any of the delicious, delicious badges that come with testing.
As for putting unfinished stuff up for the public to view, I find that no one ever plays my arcs anyway unless I ask them.
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advertising helps.
After I advertised my arcs a bit to friends and people in my global channel hangouts I started to get a slow stream of people I didnt even know trying my stuff, and the comments have helped tremendously
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I'm finding that a decent way to get people to try your arc is to try theirs. When you send the feedback about what's broken/bugged/wrong/etc, you are likely to engage them in conversation. Mention that if possible, you'd like them to run yours and see what's wrong with it.
Having people just randomly run my arc has resulted in 0 actual playthroughs. The few ratings/runs that I've gotten have come from doing exactly what I've described. Some have said they'd run it, but haven't (yet), so it really is hit or miss, but you have a better chance than just waiting for someone to run it.
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it is really simple to click unpublish, edit the local copy, then republish.
I really wish that publishing it ran a great risk that people would play it. I have 2 published arcs - one has been played once (and rated 4 stars) and the other never played.
And I put Test in the title if it isn't finished.
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It's not even a matter of ratings, for me. If I published a half-baked arc, and even one person played it and thought it was crap, my reputation would take a hit. If word spreads, then I've gone from one person disliking my work to several. And that'll happen for every one person who plays the arc. My name's exposed on every arc that I publish, regardless of whether I unpublish and republish it, and most people have better memories than you'd think.
If such a method really works better for you, then great. But for others, things aren't so black and white.
I have to disagree with the original poster, I may only test my arcs once and fix any of the outstanding bugs before publishing but I have add my vote for the badges. You get a lot just by testing your own arcs, and as to those who publish half baked arcs to get tickets to unlock content I say this:
Why not play someone elses arc? You get tickets from those too and help support the system as a whole if you rate and/or comment on them. The only purpose of playing your own Arcs solo, that I can see, would be to rate your own work and I find that unethical. Granted no one's taken a look at mine other than the exploiters who want me to rate there's yet and a single vote could help, but that isn't for me to make.
Sentimentality?
>.> I published a nearly polished arc to test with my sgmates without them having to do it without the benefits of tickets and xp. Then I got stuck...my bf gave me my first 5 star rating ever..and if i unpublish that I will lose my stars! So I just include a note that the last two missions are clunky and buggy and I really would appreciate feedback, ideas and patience.
Normally, I think a mission should be close to polished before publishing....buh BF gave me those stars!
And if you unpublished and redid it, he wouldn't give you 5 stars again? Dump that chump! 
Dec out.
He would give them to me again...but these are my FIRST stars! ...I don't really expect anyone to understand...
Heh, it's OK. I get it. It's like businesses that frame the first dollar they make. Nothing wrong with sentiment. 
Dec out.
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I have to disagree with the original poster, I may only test my arcs once and fix any of the outstanding bugs before publishing but I have add my vote for the badges. You get a lot just by testing your own arcs, and as to those who publish half baked arcs to get tickets to unlock content I say this:
Why not play someone elses arc? You get tickets from those too and help support the system as a whole if you rate and/or comment on them. The only purpose of playing your own Arcs solo, that I can see, would be to rate your own work and I find that unethical. Granted no one's taken a look at mine other than the exploiters who want me to rate there's yet and a single vote could help, but that isn't for me to make.
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For the bolded part above, I'll make this comment. Apparently the Devs think it is unethical as well. You cannot rate an arc you created.
When I started looking at needing tickets for some things in my arc, my first thought was to go run some arcs created by other players. I started looking at Very Short arcs that were by people I knew or knew of from the game and the forums.
I think I had the tickets I needed after the third arc, so I just went and finished my arc then. It got me some badge credit, the tickets I needed, and got some goodies for the arc creators as well. Win/Win. At that point, I bought what I needed for my missions and wen't back to editing my arc and testing/re-editing/testing/re-editing/testing ad nauseum.
Once I was finally satisfied with it, and had gained several Virtual Badges in the process, I published it then ran it live.
Of course, at that point I found an error so I hit the Edit button and made a minor correction. Now I need to figure out how to get rid of the duplicate arc with the same name and wrong data. Oddly enough, the incorrect one has a newer ID number. I would have thought the edited version would get the new number, but I guess it makes sense to the programmers somehow.
I'm definitely going to have to look for more information on how to correctly Edit a published arc without changing the Arc number or getting a duplicate Arc with the same name but a different number.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Oh, that's easy. Don't edit it in the saved unpublished arc, edit in the published arc (Under "My Creations/My Published Arcs" I think it's called, buttons should be there to do so). Do not "unpublish", do the "republish". It retains the ratings.
Dec out.
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it is really simple to click unpublish, edit the local copy, then republish.
I really wish that publishing it ran a great risk that people would play it. I have 2 published arcs - one has been played once (and rated 4 stars) and the other never played.
And I put Test in the title if it isn't finished.
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It's not even a matter of ratings, for me. If I published a half-baked arc, and even one person played it and thought it was crap, my reputation would take a hit. If word spreads, then I've gone from one person disliking my work to several. And that'll happen for every one person who plays the arc. My name's exposed on every arc that I publish, regardless of whether I unpublish and republish it, and most people have better memoreis than you'd think.
If such a method really works better for you, then great. But for others, things aren't so black and white.
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Amen to this. I have one published arc right now, and I started working on the sort-of-sequel to it before I14 hit Live, but was not sure how to do one bit. Now my published arc has somehow made it to the first page 
with good ratings, and I am really going over the second one. Even if the first arc never gets to Dev's Choice or HoF, people have liked it, and I don't want to publish anything that doesn't meet the same kind of standards.
I had one guy do a global friend so I could let him know about the second arc when it is done and he can check it out. So it is going to get tested a lot before it gets where anyone else can see it.
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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I've got two arcs published right now, I'm working on a third and I've probably played through the first levels of those two at least a hundred times, and they don't even have any clues or timed events, I just wanted them to be as close to perfect as I could get. The first mission in my second arc was tested as every single bank, jewelry shop, pawn shop and casino map before I settled on the University basement after testing several other random small maps. If I have a strength as an author, I want it to be my writing but the tools the MA offer us are invaluable and should be cherished, but most importantly used as intended.
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The only purpose of playing your own Arcs solo, that I can see, would be to rate your own work and I find that unethical.
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You can't rate your own arcs.
Reasons for playing your own arcs after publishing:
1. You enjoy it (I've had a lot of fun going up against my own custom creations).
2. Quality assurance/testing (No matter how polished an arc is, there's always a possible typo here and there that you missed the other bazillion times you went through it).
3. Inspiration (improvements to my arc have occurred as a direct result of running through the current version and getting ideas in the process. Actually experiencing the play-through helped in better determining where the story should go).
Every play-through of your own stuff has the potential for granting insight, even after publishing.
The Cape Radio: You're not super until you put on the Cape!
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I'd be too embarrassed to publish an arc if it wasn't good and polished. I'm essentially showing myself off, and I wouldn't want to present myself as sloppy and unable to spell properly. If I'm gonna soak up criticism, I'd rather it be because nobody likes my narrative. I know I can republish, I prefer to do that only in the case of a surprise bug or minor typos.
Really, if I need tickets that badly, I'll just go run someone else's arc, which is, y'know, the whole point of the MA. You get heaps and heaps of the things, you really don't need to farm for them - you can profit AND have fun.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball
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The only purpose of playing your own Arcs solo, that I can see, would be to rate your own work and I find that unethical.
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You can't rate your own arcs.
Reasons for playing your own arcs after publishing:
1. You enjoy it (I've had a lot of fun going up against my own custom creations).
2. Quality assurance/testing (No matter how polished an arc is, there's always a possible typo here and there that you missed the other bazillion times you went through it).
3. Inspiration (improvements to my arc have occurred as a direct result of running through the current version and getting ideas in the process. Actually experiencing the play-through helped in better determining where the story should go).
Every play-through of your own stuff has the potential for granting insight, even after publishing.
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One of the main reasons I play my own arcs is because I know I'll enjoy what I make.
A reason you didn't mention: personalizing arcs for characters. I can create missions designed for both their character concepts and their capabilities. That can greatly enhance the roleplaying aspect of the game. In fact, personalized MA missions may be the only way that I'll be able to enjoy playing my Kheldians in the future.
I usually test my missions before playing them. Even though I don't leave most of my missions published long, I do like to clean up any glaring mistakes before I play them "for real". Plus, I can pick up some badges for playing in test mode.
I always test my missions first a) because it helps you find those mistakes you made or maybe one thing should be tweaked better. b) There's a bunch of badges for testing and c) some people actually take pride and take the time in there work.
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Oh, that's easy. Don't edit it in the saved unpublished arc, edit in the published arc (Under "My Creations/My Published Arcs" I think it's called, buttons should be there to do so). Do not "unpublish", do the "republish". It retains the ratings.
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It's NOT that easy. I had done these steps exactly, and the arc wound up there twice, with the unedited one with a new number.
I'm not worried about the ratings going away if I unpublish, edit, then republish. I'm not doing this for the ratings, just a frun mission. However, having it there twice with two different versions and numbers is a bit of an irritant to me.
Since I'd already advertised the ID # to a few friends, I didn't want to unpublish/edit/republish and then have to send them the new ID.
Ah well. Maybe someday it will all work itself out.
Thanks for trying to help though. It's appreciated even though it wasn't a working solution.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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I always test my missions first a) because it helps you find those mistakes you made or maybe one thing should be tweaked better. b) There's a bunch of badges for testing and c) some people actually take pride and take the time in there work.
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I think you missed the point.
Other than badges requiring test mode - you can still find problems with and improve your arc by publishing it and playing it.
Basically you choose between badges for being in test mode, and xp and tickets for being published.
How is that missing your point though? If you care about your missions, you'll test them despite the lack of rewards, simple as that. There are only downsides to publishing an incomplete or flat-out bad arc, and to individuals that value this game, that outweighs the thirty odd tickets they might get.
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It's NOT that easy. I had done these steps exactly, and the arc wound up there twice, with the unedited one with a new number.
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Bizarre. Some kind of bug, then, is all I can think.
Dec out.
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I think you missed the point.
Other than badges requiring test mode - you can still find problems with and improve your arc by publishing it and playing it.
Basically you choose between badges for being in test mode, and xp and tickets for being published.
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Actually, I think you're missing the point that some (I might even guess most) of us care jack-all about the rewards, and only want finished works available to the public. I CAN publish a half-arsed written book and put out a later printing that's finished, but why would I want people reading the half-arsed part?
Dec out.
Whoever gives their minions Spines as a powerset needs to test more. I got hit for 200 by a spines/(Stalker) minion. I have 726 hitpoints as a lvl 20 Brute, and 20% lethal resist.
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2. Quality assurance/testing (No matter how polished an arc is, there's always a possible typo here and there that you missed the other bazillion times you went through it).
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I have encountered errors introduced in my arc that were not on the local copy, but were present in the published version.
I have no idea why.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~
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Whoever gives their minions Spines as a powerset needs to test more. I got hit for 200 by a spines/(Stalker) minion. I have 726 hitpoints as a lvl 20 Brute, and 20% lethal resist.
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Spines/Ninjutsu, perhaps? The Hide power for the MA Ninjutsu set is bugged, and gives the enemy a +2000% damage increase.
But yeah, even if the creator had no idea, they could've tried testing it themselves before publishing.
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when you test a mission you get no xp or tickets.
but if you publish it and run it you get both.
So unless you already have 3 arcs published, there is no benefit to you to run a mission in test mode instead of publishing and then playing.
if you don't want xp - turn off xp. But why would you not want the tickets at least?
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But then you don't get any of the delicious, delicious badges that come with testing.
As for putting unfinished stuff up for the public to view, I find that no one ever plays my arcs anyway unless I ask them.
[/ QUOTE ]
advertising helps.
After I advertised my arcs a bit to friends and people in my global channel hangouts I started to get a slow stream of people I didnt even know trying my stuff, and the comments have helped tremendously
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