All 3 of mine are now languishing in 4 star land, and haven't been played in weeks.....
I feel your pain. When I did a rewrite (and had to unpublish/republish ) on my 'Deal with the Devil's Pawn' last week, I got a flood of action that had me at 5* through 13 plays. Suddenly, I got a message that someone had rated it, but with no tickets. Now, it's up to 16 plays and is still languishing in 4* limbo. I can't figure out why someone out of the blue would give it 0 stars, but apparently they did. My other 2 arcs are also in the 4* category and all activity seems to have stopped completely over the past few days. 
No AV/EBs Deal with The Devil's Pawn-207266 Slash DeMento and the Stolen Weapons-100045 Meet the Demon Spawn-151099 Feedback
Alot of this floats around easy 5 star ratings.
I've given 4 5star ratings out the 100's of arcs ive rated the first time. I have upgraded 6 4stars to 5 after dialog with the author about my critques and thier re-submittal.
(Only given 2 1star ratings.)
A 5 star arc needs to be 5 star worthy. Tight plot. No typos or grammatical errors. Good descriptions on customs (if used). Variety. Good humor if leaning that way or solidly challenging if leaning on the serious side.
I've doled out alot of 4 stars to really good stories that had some minor but noticably flaws. And if those get fixes (and Im not talking plot changes, but small things like typos, etc..) upgrade.
Any player rated system like this is doomed to fail because of the different standards the judges have. The auto-5's vs those that actually take notes and write nice long messages afterwards.
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
I may be wrong but if you don't get tickets for a rating they could have rated anything below 3, right?
So if you are sitting at the brink of going from 5 to 4 then even a 2 might bring it down. I wish the author could see the exact score to 1 or 2 decimal places. That would ease the blow or let you know how many 5's it would take to recover. Of course what I'd really like is to know is how many votes I got of each rating. It's basically impossible to tell. Oh heck, who am I kidding, I want all the stats - how many plays, how many completions, the whole ball of wax. 
My first arc got zapped on the 9th and 10th vote (assuming a party since they came in simultaneously) and now 4 weeks later it's only gotten 2 more votes (both 5's).
My second arc was my first experience of having a story lots of people seemed to really like. I have to say it was very exciting logging in each day and getting such nice tells and seeing that I had 4 or 5 plays overnight and still at 5*'s. That went on for a full week until that fateful 50th vote. I'm glad for it even if the ride seems to be over now. The great part is that it was all strangers. My friends won't be running it until our next villainous SG meeting on the 16th.
And really, I feel silly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a 4 star rating or average, I should feel proud of both but instead I feel disappointed. It's dumb.
[ QUOTE ]
Alot of this floats around easy 5 star ratings.
Any player rated system like this is doomed to fail because of the different standards the judges have. The auto-5's vs those that actually take notes and write nice long messages afterwards.
[/ QUOTE ]
Have to agree I'm afraid. The really hard part for me is the "challenging" part (both of mine are serious). One person's challenging is another person's killer. I tend to err on the side of caution so I'm sure some of my lower scores are due to that. But when I get tells like "low levels can run if cautious" and "EB was tough but we won!" within an hour of each other, I feel like I probably hit the nail right on that.
And like I said, I value the 4* votes. I see it as a B which is fine in my book. The only problem, is the way the search defaults, you get very few plays once it drops to an average of 4. I for one, now that I know, will be jumping to page 10+ when I'm searching for an arc to play. The medium-play 4* arcs are probably where most of the excellent content is.
Well, that and from some reviewers or people commenting on their arcs or sig-lines in these forums.
[ QUOTE ]
All 3 of mine are now languishing in 4 star land, and haven't been played in weeks.....
[/ QUOTE ]
Interesting. Did you mention their numbers in this post? Nope, do you have them in your sig, nope. But let's just ignore that and play it up to people not playing your mishes.
And this is everyones fault and we should care why?
You see people like LaserJesus and PW constanly advertising their arcs, and their hits show. No one said it was going to be an instant gravy train. They put alot of effort into promoting their arcs, you may want to take a mission clue from them.
I'm in the same position, I need to advertise mine more, but I sure as hell at least know the problem.
My point was how surprised I was at the emotions I felt between publishing and when it did the inevitable crash into 4-star land. I wasn't expecting to care as much as I did.
And that's even though I never created either arc with the intention of having anyone but my SG play them with me.
I know you weren't responding to me but thought I would answer anyway. I haven't advertised really (besides a little blurb in the Justice forums thread) but that's because I always meant them as private arcs. I'll probably do more, for my second one at least, after the SG runs it and I see it perform under more stressful situations than I can do alone.
Yeah, it's a downer. My arc was at 5 stars up until about 60-odd votes. First hit on the 5-Star search returns. Then, as I was playing a mission, I started seeing a string of "Your arc has been voted on" messages with no tickets. About four or five of them within a 15 minute period. When I got out of the mission I was in, I looked and I was at 4 stars.
I'm not saying that I only deserved five star ratings (I've had mixed reviews on it -- excellent and less than excellent -- and tried to work off of any constructive criticism to make it stronger) or even that there was some sort of colusion or shenanigans behind that string of low-ratings. No doubt there were legitimately placed 2, 3 & 4 star ratings in there. But, where my arc had hit over 60 plays (and won me a handful of badges: Acclaimed, Writer, etc) it's scraped up into the 70's for plays in the week since. And I'm certain that's only due to my presence in the Arc rating/review threads on these boards.
Oh well... I can't imagine all that much to be done for it.
Both my arcs have a solid 4 star rating, have gotten some five stars as well, and I would not consider that "languishing in 4* limbo" or "a downer".
The fact that anyone is playing at all and not sending me death threats and internet hatemail is good enough for me.
And say, speaking of the need to get the word out and "sell" your arcs, see my sig down there? See those two arcs listed?
Play them, k?
See how easy that is?
[ QUOTE ]
The fact that anyone is playing at all and not sending me death threats and internet hatemail is good enough for me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ha! As someone who posts regularly on an internet politics board, that's good enough for me too. 
[ QUOTE ]
Don't you just hate it? You post an arc and then ride a crest for a week or so when your story is getting lots of plays, lots of votes, lots of positive sometimes glowing feedback. You are on page one with 5 stars and 20, 30, 40 votes...
Then you get the message that someone has rated your arc but no tickets and you get that sinking feeling. Sure enough you go back to AE to check and now your arc is on page 12 with 4 stars and never gets played again.
What a let down. I can't help but ask why did the one guy hate it so much he would rate it 0, 1, or 2 stars? I know, it's dumb to think like that and there is certainly nothing wrong with a 4 star rating in the large scheme of things but I can't help but feel disappointed.
Ah well, it was fun and exciting while it lasted. Besides, I originally made it for my friends and not for mass consumption anyway. I'll keep telling myself that.
[/ QUOTE ]
4 Stars is a great rating considering how open the system is for griefing. If you have a 5 star arc with under 100 plays you are more than likely "going" to be hit by the grief star bandits.
Be happy with the 4 stars and move on.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I'm surprised more hasn't been said about griefing. There is a lot of that going on, particularly once you've had several 5 star votes. I'd suggest looking at the fact you're getting primarily 5s and write the rest off to either someone that has really unusual standards, or to griefers.
It's been said a million times, and I'll say it one more -- something needs to be done about the rating system. Unfortunately, I don't have the solution, or I'd be rich... or at least well-liked.
The SOLUS Foundation - a Liberty and Pinnacle SG
"The Consequences of War" - Arcs # 227331 and 241496
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The fact that anyone is playing at all and not sending me death threats and internet hatemail is good enough for me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ha! As someone who posts regularly on an internet politics board, that's good enough for me too.
[/ QUOTE ]So do I. Looking at it from that perspective, I guess I'd have to agree, 100%! 
No AV/EBs Deal with The Devil's Pawn-207266 Slash DeMento and the Stolen Weapons-100045 Meet the Demon Spawn-151099 Feedback
I know 4 stars is a good rating. That's why I said I felt silly saying it. 
I am glad that at least a few people had similar emotions. Despite my best attempts, I can't always control how I feel.
Whadda mean you are a human or something.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised more hasn't been said about griefing. There is a lot of that going on, particularly once you've had several 5 star votes. I'd suggest looking at the fact you're getting primarily 5s and write the rest off to either someone that has really unusual standards, or to griefers.
[/ QUOTE ]
There are also those people who simply have different tastes than your 5-star fanclub. I've played quite a few arcs that have received rave reviews from various sources, some I loved, some I didn't care for. You're not going to please everyone, even if you leave griefers, people with very exacting standards and the "I couldn't solo this with my level 10 FF defender, 1 star" club out of the equation.
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
Ratings do not matter at all unless you are doing it for the tickets and because you want to see your mission get a lot of action. If you want it to remain at the top of the heap and get lots of plays there is one and only one certain solution. Make it a 1 mission arc with a simple map.
Those are the missions that see the highest number of plays regardless of if they are good or bad.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
Is there a thread anywhere for promoting your arc? I'd like to give a quick summary of my first one and whatnot but not feel like a jerk trying to push it on people...
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y263/parker_daoc/CoH/layoutcopy.png[/IMG]
[url=http://justicecorps.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=337077&TabID=2821537]Justice Corps[/url] on Virtue Server! ... @Strongwall
[ QUOTE ]
Is there a thread anywhere for promoting your arc? I'd like to give a quick summary of my first one and whatnot but not feel like a jerk trying to push it on people...
[/ QUOTE ]
https://boards.cityofheroes.com/post...Board=villains
You can offer them up in various reviewer threads, a lot of those are QPQ. You can find other arcs to run and post your review of it in their thread, and advertise yours in the process. You can also start your own thread and invite reviews, I did that recently (see sig below) and it was pushed down to page 3 in less then 24 hours, so take that for what it's worth. I did get one play out of it and a glowing review.
You can run other arcs and ask that the author play your arcs when you leave comments. I'm not sure how the general populace feels about this one, I can't decide if it's acceptable or shameless begging. I don't mind it in comments left for me, but I don't do it when I leave comments. Maybe I should.
There's also a thread where you can just announce your arc. And I don't think it hurts to put arc information in your sig and post more on the boards.
Thanks. I honestly don't know how I missed those.
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y263/parker_daoc/CoH/layoutcopy.png[/IMG]
[url=http://justicecorps.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=337077&TabID=2821537]Justice Corps[/url] on Virtue Server! ... @Strongwall
[ QUOTE ]
You can run other arcs and ask that the author play your arcs when you leave comments. I'm not sure how the general populace feels about this one, I can't decide if it's acceptable or shameless begging.
[/ QUOTE ]I tend to write down an arc number if someone leaves it in a comment on one of my arcs. I can't promise I'll get to them but I don't see it as begging.
I don't leave my arc numbers though just because I never think to.
Dude, 5-stars are for suckers.
When I search for arcs to play, I only look at the 4 star ratings. No way am I gonna follow a crowd into a movie theater just to see Titanic.
Larry: Owen, what the hell did you do to my wife?
Owen: Well I don't want to say on the phone - all I can tell you is that I killed her last night.
Count me in as one who believes in 4 star ratings -- and who doesn't think they are limbo. "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" (#1224) now has 175 plays at 4 stars. I never thought more than a dozen people would find my story. Like you, it had 5 stars at the beginning and I thought it was the kiss of death when it fell to 4. But people keep finding it.
The bulk of five star rated arcs, it seems, have very few plays. The more people try your arcs, the more varied their voting styles ... from generous, to strict, to griefers, to everything in between.
Just keep putting your work out there.
[ QUOTE ]
No way am I gonna follow a crowd into a movie theater just to see Titanic.
[/ QUOTE ]
It sinks. A lot of people die.
Go see a movie with some suspense.
And I do the same. I search for 4 stars only too.
Mr. O
Don't you just hate it? You post an arc and then ride a crest for a week or so when your story is getting lots of plays, lots of votes, lots of positive sometimes glowing feedback. You are on page one with 5 stars and 20, 30, 40 votes...
Then you get the message that someone has rated your arc but no tickets and you get that sinking feeling. Sure enough you go back to AE to check and now your arc is on page 12 with 4 stars and never gets played again.
What a let down. I can't help but ask why did the one guy hate it so much he would rate it 0, 1, or 2 stars? I know, it's dumb to think like that and there is certainly nothing wrong with a 4 star rating in the large scheme of things but I can't help but feel disappointed.
Ah well, it was fun and exciting while it lasted. Besides, I originally made it for my friends and not for mass consumption anyway. I'll keep telling myself that.