Authoring Karma - play unrated arcs!
By
blackjack_NA,
Posted on: 2009-04-22 24:53 in Mission Architect
My guess for the unfinished, yet published, arcs is that they want to earn tickets while testing -- perhaps to unlock more content for other arcs.
Me, I play other people's arcs (focusing on unrated arcs, I might add) to earn tickets to unlock more content.
Side note on missions with little text: I've actually thought about that for SG missions. The briefing will come at the SG base for RP fun. But those arcs will have limited lives in the published arena -- or may only be played in test mode.
But that might be part of what we're seeing; people making arcs that they want to play themselves, but don't feel the need to flesh out the story because they know it already and the arcs are temporary.
[ QUOTE ]
My guess for the unfinished, yet published, arcs is that they want to earn tickets while testing -- perhaps to unlock more content for other arcs.
[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly. Why test in test mode after you have all the badges? You can test a published arc AND get rewards at the same time. At least the authors are polite enough to let you know up front what they are doing.
I was running unrated missions.
Now I have a small thread on the other board and am reviewing low level arcs for people.
I'm torn between reviewing arcs on the boards where I can provide more feedback - and running unrated missions.
[ QUOTE ]
If players only play highly-rated arcs, newly written ones will never get reviewed. If you are an arc author, please take the time to search for "unrated" arcs and find several that interest you every time you play. That way all of us who are trying to make good arcs can get a chance to be seen.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry, buddy. I only play arcs where the author tells other people that the arc is available to be played. It indicates a certain confidence in the product and a willingness for other people to see it. How many people publish an arc just so they can get rewards while testing it?
Might want to check the other forum with "Mission Architect" on it. Putting a thread there, even if nobody replies right away, is an alright way to get some visibility if you don't want to go shout from the rooftops.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
I saw all this kind of thing when using Lionhead's "The Movies" back in 2005-2006. "Too many movies," and "How do I get anyone to view my movie when there's already 20,000 others uploaded?" and "Why is my clever work getting no views, while this slapped together junk is near the top of the charts?"
Creating one's own machinima easily (relatively) was awesome It had the same loopholes and challenges though in terms of getting exposure for the massive amount of user-generated material. I remember I had one movie that visitors trashed me on, but I extracted the constructive suggestions and improved my work. But when I re-uploaded it, I couldn't get anywhere near the views I did the first time I uploaded it (I could see something similar happening here if you Published an arc, took it down and improved it, and then re-published it only to see nobody was playing it on the 2nd go around)
In Lionhead's case, their now defunct Movies Online web site helped that (to some extent) through extensive categories (you didn't have to fight to get to get fair visibility in a group of, say, 20,000 films overall, just the 5,000 in the category your film fell into). I think that thread here asking arc creators to slot their work under genres is a great step in that direction for COH.
Another thing they did (my memory is foggy now, and since The Movies Online was unplugged a while back, I can't really check this), as I recall, was you got to do and upload a small poster for your movie (some like me just used cropped screenshots, others used art like many of the flyers here). There was a scripted "promotional window" at the sight that cycled through newly uploaded user-created films (clicking the poster, as I recall it, let you view the movie at the web site - so I don't know how that would work with COH, unless it was a web page "within" the game). Your poster only showed for a certain # of days before it reset, but it was great in terms of getting at least a temporary burst of visibility when you uploaded something.
I'm sure the focus has been on the tools and the basics, and there's still improvements and enhancements to be made there.
Hopefully someone is also thinking about ways to fairly give more visibility to everyone's work, without forcing everyone to become a Public Relations Agency to do so. I'd love to see some sort of in-game web browser that is strictly for viewing an in-game site that makes some effort to feature new missions, missions by category, missions that aren't getting any plays at all etc.
[Meson and I are, or were, in the same SG for a long time. 
]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My guess for the unfinished, yet published, arcs is that they want to earn tickets while testing -- perhaps to unlock more content for other arcs.
[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly. Why test in test mode after you have all the badges? You can test a published arc AND get rewards at the same time. At least the authors are polite enough to let you know up front what they are doing.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's assuming people do all their arc building and testing with just a single character, which is not very good as it reduces the chances of finding balance issues.
[ QUOTE ]
Both of these points are especially true because of the hideous number of arcs out there that shouldn't have been published at all. For every serious entry I've found, there are six farm missions, four lame arcs with a custom villain group but insufficient or zero text/story, and three that the author marked "unfinished" but published anyway (what's with that?).
[/ QUOTE ]
During open beta I lobbied for getting tickets in test mode for exactly this reason. People are publishing their arcs so they get rewards, plain and simple. There is nothing to stop them from doing this except shame.
You also have to publish your arc if you want someone else to be able to test it without you, or if you want someone else to be the team leader so they interact with the contact (because there's no easy way to make someone else be the leader of a TF).
This calls for another flag on an arc: "ready for prime time."
If players only play highly-rated arcs, newly written ones will never get reviewed. If you are an arc author, please take the time to search for "unrated" arcs and find several that interest you every time you play. That way all of us who are trying to make good arcs can get a chance to be seen.
Also, many folks are trying to make good, interesting arcs but need feedback on what is missing or doesn't work.
Both of these points are especially true because of the hideous number of arcs out there that shouldn't have been published at all. For every serious entry I've found, there are six farm missions, four lame arcs with a custom villain group but insufficient or zero text/story, and three that the author marked "unfinished" but published anyway (what's with that?).