Acronym for Story-focused arcs for easy search

One obvious problem is that if I looked at a mission with the description tag "SFMA", these letters mean nothing to me. Well, they could mean some stuff, but it'll all be guesswork. I keep trying to associate it with something about Science Fiction, possible due to the SFWA.

I'd probably get into the habit of tagging stuff "story", though. I know this is likely to get mixed up with the "non-story" search results, but it's clearer.

At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue

Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~

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At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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That's what I'm afraid of this system turning into. There's limited enough space as it is; the "Description" field should be exactly that, a "description", not a keyword dump. I'd rather dump the keywords if it would put my arc or desc limit over the top, but then I risk losing the "market". And this really only benefits players who READ the forums...

Looks like Greyhawke got something stickied to start a discussion there on how to make it work. I'll chime in there constructively, but yeah, I'm not fond of this idea. =/

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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.

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*shrug*

Rate it down like you would any arc that contains an inaccurate description, no different from if the arc description promised puppies and suitability for low-level non-melee solo characters and you open the door and AARRGH LEVEL 53 GHOST WIDOW

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@Mindshadow

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One obvious problem is that if I looked at a mission with the description tag "SFMA", these letters mean nothing to me. Well, they could mean some stuff, but it'll all be guesswork. I keep trying to associate it with something about Science Fiction, possible due to the SFWA.

I'd probably get into the habit of tagging stuff "story", though. I know this is likely to get mixed up with the "non-story" search results, but it's clearer.

At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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Once a day I explain in Help what it means, and ask enyone who says 'ooh, thats a good idea' to spread the word amongst their SG etc. This helps. At ione stage KHTF didnt mean anything either.

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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One obvious problem is that if I looked at a mission with the description tag "SFMA", these letters mean nothing to me. Well, they could mean some stuff, but it'll all be guesswork. I keep trying to associate it with something about Science Fiction, possible due to the SFWA.

I'd probably get into the habit of tagging stuff "story", though. I know this is likely to get mixed up with the "non-story" search results, but it's clearer.

At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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Once a day I explain in Help what it means, and ask enyone who says 'ooh, thats a good idea' to spread the word amongst their SG etc. This helps. At ione stage KHTF didnt mean anything either.

Eco.

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Much the reason why for my description, I put in the description as normal, then put:

SFMA = Story Focused Mission Arc

Pretty difficult to misunderstand what that means.

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yep, I did what Steeple did (and posted about it earlier on this thread). That means you also have "Story" in your description as a bonus

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Doing the same on my arcs that have the room in the description, and using the shorthand tags for those that do not.

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Yeah, if space allows, this is a good idea - that way, people will see the acronym associated with its meaning on a few or a lot of arcs, and the ones with only space for the SFMA alone will be understandable.

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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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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Just did a check and SFMA arcs are now up to 5 pages. Most of them being of the "very long" variety, this should be enough to keep most people occupied for quite some time.

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Q. Just wondering Posi, where are the new dance emotes we were told would come with GR?
A. Positron: Whoops, my bad.

1387 badges, and counting

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SFMA = Story Focused Mission Arc

Pretty difficult to misunderstand what that means.

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Indeed. I added "SFMA [Story Focused Mission Arc]" to my description. When the idea gets broad uptake and acceptance, I can drop the bracketed explanation, but for now it's not a bad idea to include if you have the space to do so.

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Q. Just wondering Posi, where are the new dance emotes we were told would come with GR?
A. Positron: Whoops, my bad.

1387 badges, and counting

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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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ALthough I too have had my issues with the dev's actions or lack thereof from time to time, I think we *have* to give the devs the benefit of the doubt. I think we have to treat them better than this. Until proven otherwise, we need to assume that the devs will NOT remove missions based on XP even as them do remove missions that break the rules. We need to trust them at least that much.

Similarly, we need to amit that people who are looking for XP mission (non rule breaking ones) that they have just as much of a right to easilt find them as people looking for story based ones. The goals are of equal importance, so lets accomplish the tagging of ALL valid missions with appropriate tags.

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For Great Justice!

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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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A major problem with the search engine they use is that if you look for NF that will also find:

iNFluence
iNFamy
coNFerence

etc..

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For Great Justice!

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One obvious problem is that if I looked at a mission with the description tag "SFMA", these letters mean nothing to me. Well, they could mean some stuff, but it'll all be guesswork. I keep trying to associate it with something about Science Fiction, possible due to the SFWA.

I'd probably get into the habit of tagging stuff "story", though. I know this is likely to get mixed up with the "non-story" search results, but it's clearer.

At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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The problem is that a LOT of missions use the word "story" in their descitpions. The player-created tagging system (until the devs come up with one) needs to be one that won't lead to false positives.

Now, if you did something like TagStory, then you could searh for "TagStory" and not come up with any false positives.

What do you guys think, is TagXXXX, where XXXX is a natural short word, a better cleaner and more natural temp solution (while hoping for a dev one) than using acronyms?

SFMA vs TagStory?
MAXMish vs TagXP?

PS. You probably can't put a space or ":" inbetween Tag and Story in TagStory or else the search system would consider them two seperate words and you get false positives again.

Thoughts?

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For Great Justice!

I put a specific portion at the end of my description

Tags: [SFMA][TMARC]

I think I'll go back and add the explanations if I have room.

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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

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At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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That's what I'm afraid of this system turning into. There's limited enough space as it is; the "Description" field should be exactly that, a "description", not a keyword dump. I'd rather dump the keywords if it would put my arc or desc limit over the top, but then I risk losing the "market". And this really only benefits players who READ the forums...

Looks like Greyhawke got something stickied to start a discussion there on how to make it work. I'll chime in there constructively, but yeah, I'm not fond of this idea. =/

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If you do no more than give 5-8 of your precious 300 characters to the tagging idea, it couyld help everyone a LOT. After all, you don't have to multi-tag it - just pick the best single tag that encompasses your mission purpose.

I do not think saving those 5-8 letters will help you if at the same time people who would want to play your type of mission can't find it in the sea of missions, many of which they would ignore if the could.

Also, it may improve your ratings. If I see a TagXtreme (assuming that tag means uber hard mission for the pure challenge) I am not going to one or zero star it, while on the other hand I certainly will if I only find that out once I get inside.

I really would NOT ignore converting some of your description into helping the player decide if your mission is the kind he may or may not want to play. The advantages for doing so in a clear way are obvious, and the disadvantages of not doing so, equally so.

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For Great Justice!

Qr - I'm personally quite happy with SFMA. It has a few advantages over the [TAGStory] IMO - it's shorter, it's already got 6 pages worth of arcs up using it, it's already getting talked about IN-GAME, and...I invented it!

LOL but feel free to use a tag of your own as well if you like.

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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If you do no more than give 5-8 of your precious 300 characters to the tagging idea, it couyld help everyone a LOT. After all, you don't have to multi-tag it - just pick the best single tag that encompasses your mission purpose.

I do not think saving those 5-8 letters will help you if at the same time people who would want to play your type of mission can't find it in the sea of missions, many of which they would ignore if the could.

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Agreed. It's up to authors to decide how specific a tag and how many tags they want to use -- or none at all. The whole idea is to improve your search result placement and get more plays, so it's up to the author to decide if appearing more often is worth the smaller desc size.

At first I was against tags because A) I was gonna hold out for dev tag solutions, and B) I didn't want to sacrifice my description characters given I was at or near limit on all my arcs. But working through my descs last night, I found I could eliminate some wordiness, fit a tag, and still maintain my creative writing's integrity. I'd rather lose some writing redundancy than lose search placement.

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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!

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Qr - I'm personally quite happy with SFMA. It has a few advantages over the [TAGStory] IMO - it's shorter, it's already got 6 pages worth of arcs up using it, it's already getting talked about IN-GAME, and...I invented it!

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There's something to be said for being the first one in the door. Until we get a real tagging solution (I'm sure we will eventually) SFMA is the best way to stand out from the morass.

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@Mindshadow

I'm skeptical, but I'm not above giving it a try (if the acronym is really getting around). I've edited my arc on my local and was going to do the ton of cut and paste to get it to live later today, so...what the heck, I'll give it a shot.

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Dec out.

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I'm skeptical, but I'm not above giving it a try (if the acronym is really getting around). I've edited my arc on my local and was going to do the ton of cut and paste to get it to live later today, so...what the heck, I'll give it a shot.

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You may want to try CFMA (Clown-Focused Mission Arc) instead.

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@Mindshadow

Hee! **honk-honk**

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Dec out.

I am putting SFMA into my mission to help spread it more.

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I am putting SFMA into my mission to help spread it more.

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Think I will too ... after I spruce it up a bit.

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NCIS: Best gorram show in the 'verse.
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I've also brought it up in our SG's chat last night, and I'll continue to mention it. If we're gonna work viral, let's work viral.

EDIT: Also JUST started a thread about it on my SG's boards. We have well over 200 members, so that should get the word out a little more.

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Dec out.

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I've also brought it up in our SG's chat last night, and I'll continue to mention it. If we're gonna work viral, let's work viral.

EDIT: Also JUST started a thread about it on my SG's boards. We have well over 200 members, so that should get the word out a little more.

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Great stuff.

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)