Acronym for Story-focused arcs for easy search

How do you search for a mission that DOESN'T have a certain tag? For example, how do you search for a mission that doesn't have SFMA?

Or do we need a NASFMA tag? (Not A)

Or should we just permit the acronym For A Repeatable Mission (FARM) - i.e., a mission not so much focused on story, but on effective, efficient and fun encounters.

Sound like a good contrary acronym?

;p

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For Great Justice!

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It's a great idea. The problem will be getting it standardized by the entire community.

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This is my problem with it, which is why...

/unsigned

I see the need for something like this, honestly. But because there CAN be 1001 variants on a theme presented in any given thread here, the only way we can have a unified attempt at it is by having the utility added by the Devs themselves as part of the engine query. THAT, I'd /sign on.

It's a fair idea, Capt, but one I'd rather see done right by the Devs rather than by forum committee.

(copied my response from another Capt thread where he posted the same thing)

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I kinda felt that way too, Turg, but I think we have to start somewhere. And the MA is filling up way too fast to wait for the devs to put something together for us.

I searched for SFMA this morning and found three pages of arcs. Now, I won't limit myself to those arcs, as I will miss some good content from authors that don't have the tag, but it makes a good jumping off point. To me the tag is at least as good as looking through a post listing good story arcs, and really better since I don't have to tab out of the game to do it. And don't get me started with trying to search through the stories & lore forum. As much as I would love for that to work, it just doesn't do that good a job.

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Qr - fair enough, turg, and a dev-implemented tagging system would get a 'yay!' from me, but until they put one in I for one will use this. I've already got your arc in my queue cos it's recommended by a friend, but there's already plenty if SFMA arcs in the system, so I'll be playing and rating them since it is one way if filtering out some of the chaff.

The more people who sign up for it, the more known it'll be.


Eco

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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)

...

Aren't they ALL story based missions though?

Of course, if not - if there's *some other* kind of NON story based mission out there - if there's some *other* reason people create and play Mission Architect missions - maybe that *other* reason (whatever it is) should have a way to easily pull up mission for *that* purpose?

Just a thought? After all, the SFMA is only ONE kind of mission. Apparently there exist other kinds as well.

Food for thought.

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For Great Justice!

qr - I would say that there are arcs in the MA that don't fall under the definition of story focussed. Test missions fir certain custom mobs, badge-farms, pure 'challenge' missions, simple boss fight setups, these would be examples of things I personally wouldn't mind missing if I was searching specifically for arcs with narrative.

Tags for those types of arc are fine as far as I'm concerned.

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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)

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qr - I would say that there are arcs in the MA that don't fall under the definition of story focussed. Test missions fir certain custom mobs, badge-farms, xp-farms, pure 'challenge' missions, simple boss fight setups, these would be examples of things I personally wouldn't mind missing if I was searching specifically for arcs with narrative.

Tags for those types of arc are fine as far as I'm concerned.

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(slight edit for completeness)

Exactly, not only do we need tags for narratives - we need tags to help people find the *other* kinds of missions.

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For Great Justice!

Also, I think joke missions would also qualify as non-story focused.

This does not include humorous narrative arcs, as long as they have an actual story, as absurd or funny as it may be, and aren't just a series of running gags.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

okay I updated my arc with SFMA - Story Focused Mission Arc

I recommend including the full term in your description so players understand what it means. Hopefully if player see it, they will recognize it as a tag and use it themselves.

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I also recommend that for people who design missions just for fun, glory, and great xp, we should come up with an acronym to more easily find those missions...

XPBM - XP Based Mission?

LCGR - Low Challenge, Good Rewards?

Mostly About XP Mission - MAXMish?

Something would be good - as hard as the story-persuers find sorting through the multitude of published missions, is how hard it is to find these missions among the multitudes of story, badge, ironman, and other less rewarding missions.

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For Great Justice!

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I also recommend that for people who design missions just for fun, glory, and great xp, we should come up with an acronym to more easily find those missions...

XPBM - XP Based Mission?

LCGR - Low Challenge, Good Rewards?

Mostly About XP Mission - MAXMish?

Something would be good - as hard as the story-persuers find sorting through the multitude of published missions, is how hard it is to find these missions among the multitudes of story, badge, ironman, and other less rewarding missions.

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OK...we get the point; you want to be able to search for farms! Great idea...try something like [DOOM] (Devs, Objectively Obliterate this Mission!)

Now, more seriously, should we start breaking down SFMA into canon/non-canon arcs? We should really get something stickied containing all the tags and their meanings.

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I'm being utterly serious. After all, the point of a tagging system is not to just help YOU (you aren't that narcissistic are you?) - its to help EVERYONE find every valid mission type they could be looking for.

And for the record, YOU are the one that brought up farms - I said no such thing. I was very precise. Apparently you feel that only people who want what you want deserve to be able to find what the want easily.

Weird.

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For Great Justice!

Unfortunately a tag such as "XP-based mission" would very quickly be appropriated by farmers. While your giant map populated entirely by Rikti might not be an exploit, it would end up sharing the same tag as a giant map populated entirely by Comm Officers, and would get removed anyway.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

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The problem with that is that the more full-word descriptions you have to use, the less and less room you have left for an actual description.

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NF = Not Farm.

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QR - Go ahead and suggest a suitable tag for other types of arcs, that's a good idea.

Could I suggest that you post it in its own thread?

It would get more people seeing it then, if it was in its own thread called 'PCMA - Pure Challenge Mission Arc acronym for easy search' or whatever.

I'm glad to see this SFMA taking off somewhat. I intend to run some of the SFMA-tagged arcs tonight.

On a slightly more ruefully depressing note, I see that the creator of Greedy has a rather more loose definition of 'story focussed' than some, as he's tagged his arc with SFMA even though it is by his own admission a badge-farm lol.

Eco.

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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)

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Unfortunately a tag such as "XP-based mission" would very quickly be appropriated by farmers. While your giant map populated entirely by Rikti might not be an exploit, it would end up sharing the same tag as a giant map populated entirely by Comm Officers, and would get removed anyway.

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There's nothing to stop a farm from containing "story", or "drama", or anything to mis-flag it if they chose to do so, too. That's why I don't see this system as being viable.

1. It bases its validation on what the community decides, which is mercurial at best. The "description" should be for the "description", not as a rummed-up keyword box to guarantee the most hits (either from the badge cartel, the forum cartel, the haterz cartel, etc).

2. The Devs could offer a hard set of queryable values for their missions that would allow mix/matching of different tags (like the current system, that lets you search on 3, 4 or 5 star arcs at the same time).

And sure, any system is abusable; I just think the suggested method is less capable and more abusable than a hard-written flag from the Developers. I'd rather see everyone's energy go into THAT rather than encourage a workaround designed by twits like us.

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Story vs SFMA? Just use them both for now if there is room.

Pretty soon the noobs will be asking "What does SFMA mean?" but somehow they will already have it in their arcs.

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I'll agree that SFMA may not be the ideal way to find what we are looking for, but for those of us who are putting arcs in late(me for example, still working on it), I want to be able to find and be found by likeminded individuals. I want to be graded by people who like the story more than the tickets or xp.

Essentially, SFMA is advertising to your target demographic. There is nothing sneaky about it. Just want to get the word out.

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And sure, any system is abusable; I just think the suggested method is less capable and more abusable than a hard-written flag from the Developers. I'd rather see everyone's energy go into THAT rather than encourage a workaround designed by twits like us.

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I agree that a hardwired tag system put in by the devs would be great. Until that happens, ther'es not miuch harm I can see in doing this. even if the SFMA tag gets misused by farmers etc, it wont be used by all the farmers, so there'll be less crud than comes up under a clean search lol.

I'm not sure what you mean by putting effort into the devs system. I agree with it. What else can I do?


Eco.

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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)

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Story vs SFMA? Just use them both for now if there is room.


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Yep, totally.

Eco.

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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)

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There's nothing to stop a farm from containing "story", or "drama", or anything to mis-flag it if they chose to do so, too. That's why I don't see this system as being viable.

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Its still easier to weed through the mistagged arcs than it is to weed through 20,000 arcs without tags. I don't think most people will want to mistag there arc intentionally, as a player going in expecting one kind of arc and getting another is going to rate the mission appropriately.

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And sure, any system is abusable; I just think the suggested method is less capable and more abusable than a hard-written flag from the Developers. I'd rather see everyone's energy go into THAT rather than encourage a workaround designed by twits like us.

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No argument that the devs could do it better with the tools they would have available. The devs would also have an easier time of setting up exclusions, as in "Don't show me arcs with SFMA". But they cannot do it NOW. Until the devs get something in place, there is nothing wrong with the players stepping up. It doesn't exclude the devs from adding the function later. In fact, it helps the devs determine what kind of tags the players would like to see.

From the dev side, I would like to see the tags be a series of checkboxes, rather than a menu selection, so that you could select multiple tags, as some arcs cover more than one aspect.

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why would a farm publisher want to put a story tag in their description?

Griefers might do it with bad stories - but there are plenty of bad stories already. And ratings should take care of that issue.

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For the same reason they put "This is not a farm" in their description. They're hoping to slip it past the radar. By the time they finally get it into their heads that IT DOESN'T WORK, the tag will be meaningless.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

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For the same reason they put "This is not a farm" in their description. They're hoping to slip it past the radar. By the time they finally get it into their heads that IT DOESN'T WORK, the tag will be meaningless.

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I don't think it'll be quite that bad. A few bad eggs will get in, obviously, but I doubt that 20,000 arcs are gonna get tagged SFMA.

I'm doing fine playing the SFMA arcs that are already up. Haven't hit a dud yet (beyond the previously mentioned Greedy aberration lol).

Eco

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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)

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QR - Go ahead and suggest a suitable tag for other types of arcs, that's a good idea.

Could I suggest that you post it in its own thread?

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I put up a thread here to discuss what types of tags we might want to see as players.

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For the same reason they put "This is not a farm" in their description. They're hoping to slip it past the radar.

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Some will do this. But most authors of farm missions still want people to play their arcs, and rate them at least a 3 to get them tickets. If they hide them too well, they won't get played by their target audience, and they will not get any benefit from others playing them. Of course some just want the mission published so they can play it with their friends, but they don't need to co-op other groups tags for that, they know their arc ID.

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