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I don't think there's anything wrong with having a large number of tags. The purpose of a tag is to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Sure, the first thing we were interested in was arcs that were about story, but why not be make it easier for people to find stories by genre or challange level or having a team if that's what you're looking for?
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Because the simple existence of the tags isn't enough. People have to know what they mean. And if there's a million of them, a lot of folks will just look, see it's a lot, and go "meh, I'm not reading all that" (if, indeed, they look at all and don't just think "what are all these different letters? I dunno, guess I'll skip it). It was easier to get spread around when it was just one. I like Twoflower's "primary" idea, though.
Pretty sure you're not wanting this to be a "cliquey" thing, right? Widespread is what's called for.
Dec out.
I'm all for a handful of top level tags - the genre ones seem to be trying to do a job that the mission description + list of enemy groups could handle
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I started thinking that at first too, Dec. But after seeing how many folks here on the forums jumped on the bandwagon, it started to sound more reliable.
In the least, the people here on the forum and on the wiki now have a tool to work with, to help them find arcs they may be more interested in, or even that suit their level range. Yeah, most of the in-game community may not even find out what they are, but even so. So long as the authors using them don't get carried away, and still add a convincing enough description, I don't think it's going to hurt how many people play the arc. By that logic, there's no reason not to have the tags.
Also, with how popular the idea's become, and even changed, it's highly likely the Devs have already taken notice. Should they ever need ideas on the tags people want to see, they have all the information up in two convenient locations.
I've got three tags stuck to the end of the description for my current work-in-progress. Still trying to think what tags would work well with my current arc.
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I started thinking that at first too, Dec. But after seeing how many folks here on the forums jumped on the bandwagon, it started to sound more reliable.
In the least, the people here on the forum and on the wiki now have a tool to work with, to help them find arcs they may be more interested in, or even that suit their level range.
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I think that's where my disconnect comes from. Initially, it was to virally spread a tag to let people avoid the plethora of farms out there. It wasn't FOR "us". It wasn't for the people who come to the forums. It wasn't for the people who go to the Wiki. Those are both very small minorities of the game. It was for the general populace.
Now, I can't help but see it as something promoting insularity. If you're not one of the "in the know", you're left out, thinking "WTF".
Yeah, it's nice for the "in the know"s to have a bit better toolbox to work with, but I think the original idea has been fairly obliterated in the typical nerdy obsession with minutiae that's inevitable (and I'm not pointing fingers, I'm OFTEN very much as guilty of that kind of thing as the next guy/gal).
I just think a nice idea for the general populace has morphed into something for "us". And that concerns me. Still, I guess we'll have to see how things actually pan out.
Dec out.
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I just think a nice idea for the general populace has morphed into something for "us". And that concerns me.
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I can see what you're saying. The difference is, the "us" is meant to be the "general populace." I don't believe anyone's intending to use it to label themselves as a member of the "elite," or anything.
Until an official system is implemented by the devs, this is really the only thing we have to work with. Until that time comes, we just have to keep trying to refine it, and spread the word so that more of "us" know what's going on.
The alternative is to not do anything... Which people are perfectly welcome to do. It's not an enforced system. It's just something a few members of the community are trying to develop as an alternative.
Oh, certainly, and I in no way think anyone did anything in the matter intentionally. And I'm not at all saying "This sucks! Stop it!" I just...I don't know, felt a need to express what I was seeing and my viewpoint on it. To offer a different perspective, as it were, not to step on anyone's toes nor to take the ball from their hands. I'll still be promoting the original tag as I have been. I just know how often things can unintentionally change from the viewpoint of "the outsider" and thought I should at least mention it.
Dec out.
Victoly. We're getting a proper tagging system in I15.
Here's the question, though -- will it have a dev-defined limited taxonomy of terms? Or will it be player defined, and therefore there will be no standards and plenty of synonyms will be deployed? How will the search system work; if you put "story" in the box, will it find "story" tags AND missions that say "This doesn't have a STORY" in the description? etc.
The long and short of my pile of questions -- I think this thread could still serve a good purpose, to help us make the most of this new system. We may not need the four letter codes we've been developing, but we ARE going to need some agreed upon standards for how to name our tags for ease of searching. Stay tuned.
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I was thinking the exact same thing Twoflower. We'll just have to wait and see what the new system looks like. I'm kind of hoping for a dev-defined list, maybe with a pull down list myself. I know it won't be as versatile, but hopefully descriptions can cover what the tags miss.
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SLMA it is. I realize that soloability is subjective, though, especially when the first "SLMA" tagged arc I tried contains an Elite Boss, guarded by a Boss-ranked Nictus Dark Nova. Leandro, was that on purpose?
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One boss with two Lts on Heroic; two of them only have Melee attacks, only the Dark Nova has ranged attacks. So, even on a squishy, I can kill the nova either by pulling or just staying out of range of the other two mobs, then take out the dark dwarf, then taking on the boss.
Soloable doesn't mean cakewalk to me.
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All the threads on farming missions triggered an idea.
The farming is about doing the same mission over and over again, right?
Anybody familiar with the Country Song "Mr. Mom"? (By Lonestar).
Well, in tribute to that song, I suggest farm missions be tagged "BarneyMA".
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There were a few tags I was seeing that I had no clue what they were. This thread helped a lot...
I just hope the i15 upgrades make actual Categories you can flag your arc as to replace these sometimes Cryptic tags in mission description. Had one guy telling me SFMA meant SOLO focused mission arc but I kept saying I only heard it being called STORY focused...ack
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I think that's where my disconnect comes from. Initially, it was to virally spread a tag to let people avoid the plethora of farms out there. It wasn't FOR "us". It wasn't for the people who come to the forums. It wasn't for the people who go to the Wiki. Those are both very small minorities of the game. It was for the general populace.
Now, I can't help but see it as something promoting insularity. If you're not one of the "in the know", you're left out, thinking "WTF".
[/ QUOTE ]
That's my biggest problem with the tagging idea, honestly, because it leaves out a sizable majority of the playerbase. (This is a forum-built concept, so even if it were to spread to any of the various community pages it would still be a mystery to most players.)
I'm encouraged by the Dev's announcement for I15 however; taking the community's idea, and incorporating/streamlining it there, is the best of all worlds if done correctly. I look forward to seeing how it'll work in I15, to everyone's benefit.
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I've been seeing the Tags in MA for a few days and had wondered what they meant. It doesn't take a genius to think to check on the boards to see if someone knows or to post a question.
I've nudged my SGs/VGs toward this thread and the Paragon Wiki Page so they can start using them too. I'll be updating my published arc with tags when I get home tonight.
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I was wondering why the Mid-Level arcs are [MLMA], the High-Level are [HLMA], yet the Low-Level are [LBMA]. I realize that it stands for "LowBie", but why not be consistent?
[LLMA] is better, in my opinion. Not everyone uses the word "lowbie".
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Can I make a recommendation for a tag on WIP arcs? I know that sometimes I have to publish an arc so someone else can be able to read all the text (like the still busy or mission complete text) that only the team leader can read. Others might want to publish it just so they can get some more in-depth commentary so they can tweak it? Perhaps:
[RDPC] - rough draft please comment?
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Maybe we can do it all in Hexadecimally coded binary. 1's digit might be Challenge (1) or normal(0), 2's digit might be team suggested (1) or solo friendly (0), 4's digit would be Elite Boss (1) or no (0), 8's digit would be AV (1) or no (0). so a challenge arc for teams with both an EB and AV would be 1111 or F. :-) I am sure we could code everything in less than 7-8 hex characters.
I think this would be harder to use than the existing system. I remember when bloggers and others copied the geek codes idea found on the net. Blog descriptions got longer and more confusing and most people didn't get any more readers.
As I said in an earlier reply to the OP:
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These are good ideas but...
you're introducing a whole codeset that people have to learn, and the only place they can pick it up is in the forums. I agree that searches for "story" in a keyword type search will allow stuff like: "this is my farm mish it has no real story". However, the searcher can filter these things out.
I have used tags in blogs for years and I learned to keep things simple. I also learned that tags/keywords lists will grow with every user.
For English searches I would suggest tags like these:
solofriendly
lowlevel
storybased
defeatall
eliteboss
...and so on. If a person types in "story" the search engine in the MA will pick up on "story" and should pick up anything you label as storybased.
[/ QUOTE ]
By and large, the "coded" tags will be obsolete... once I15 hits, and we can add an ACTUAL tag of "story" to our missions. Until then I still recommend using these.
And even after I15, we're going to need agreed upon standards for tags. "Story" is pretty obvious, but "Solo" vs "Solo-Friendly" vs "Soloable" would be three different tags that all mean the same thing and all are appropriate... standardizing will help us.
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Hrmm... Question all >.< (I just now found out about this thread - because I'm slow <x.x>;
but I was wondering:
What tag would we use for Fantasy arcs? (Ie: Swords and Sorcery and the like?)
I think the existant Magic tag might be too broad to cover that.
Do we have one and I'm just missing it? (I Ctrl+F'd the thread for Fantasy, but didn't see anything) or do we need one?
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So, has anyone noticed an uptick in the number of plays your arcs get after adding tags to the description?
Not really.
Didn't see this thread before my post. Just want to suggest "Autosk" as a tag, and, especially "AutoskXX" where XX is the level it brings everyone up to. Makes it so much easier to select missions for a team without having to worry about sidekicks and mentors.
great idea... just add a tag for FARM missions... they will never really totally go away... so might as well add a tag for it so that people that do not want farm missions can flag the search engine NOT to find farms... I think most people making those borderline farms that are not farmy (lol farmy) enoough to get banned would do this...
also it would give cox more info to datamine
So this thread has gone with no posts for a month, and IE 15 added tags within the game. Perhaps it is time to unsticky this thread?
I don't think there's anything wrong with having a large number of tags. The purpose of a tag is to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Sure, the first thing we were interested in was arcs that were about story, but why not be make it easier for people to find stories by genre or challange level or having a team if that's what you're looking for? Though I would imagine that people would want to put all the tags that apply, so like Twoflower said, they'd want to use SFMA, then maybe tag about genre, cannot, etc.