Personally, I think they have got it wrong in using unlocking stuff in the architect as a reward for making and playing stuff. Stuff would get made and played anyway: it wouldn't give an incentive for players who whern't interested to use it. They should stick with something that has no effect on your ability to create the content you want to - i.e. Badges.
This is clearly something that could be changed if we make our objections known though.
The only justification I can see for having unlockable stuff in the arachitect is to avoid spoilers, you shouldn't be able to uses stuff you havent encountered in the main game. As ong as this was account wide I wouldn't have a problem with it.
I really should do something about this signature.
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So quit whining and leave.
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We never tell people to leave - we give them a hug, hold their hand, and tell them everything's going to be fine 
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If you are so bored/cross/tired/annoyed with the game that you can come onto the forums and say that the last issue had nothing worth having in and looking at the info given so far say the same about the next issue, is there any point in continuing?
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Yes.
Some of us play the game for the game, not the new issues. I didn't think much of the last few issues either and don't really do anything from them, I'm still currently having a blast (with Issue 1 or 2 content, in the form of my WS).
Just because someone is unimpressed with an Issue doesn't mean in the slightest they're unimpressed with the game.
I would like a 20-35 co-op zone in DA though 
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So, even if everyone in your SG group gives you five stars on an Arc, you still have the other hundred thousand plus players to balance it out.
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Hooo boy, where to start.
I've published short stories on sites with rating systems, and none of them work. First of all, few people rate. Getting one vote for every 100 view is typical. On the sites where voting is rewarded or mandatory, most people just give the same rating to all stories. (Or they'll give whatever rating is closest to the story's current rating.)
Now, that's the issue of getting valid votes. The second issue is to get views. People use the rating system to select what to read (or which missions to run). This means that stories with a high rating will attract more votes, while stories with a low rating will get very few.
Thirdly, there's going to be a lot of missions, so any particular mission is going to have a practically neglible chance of getting votes from people who choose mission at random, or without regard to the rating.
Taken together, this means that a poor mission with 40 immediate supergroup votes of 5 stars is going to stay at 3+ forever -- it will, slowly, attract votes of 1 or 2, but with a block of 40 5s it's going to take a long time before its rating has sunk below 4. (It'll take 14 votes of straight ones to bring it down below 4 -- but in reality a mission, no matter how bad, won't attract nothing but 1s.)
A really good mission, without any votes from friends, who happen to get a couple of unlucky votes of 3 to begin with, will never climb to the top. It just won't attract enough views, and with that votes, to do so.
(And this doesn't even take into account people gaming the system by systematically giving low rates to storys that compete with their own or to people they don't like.)
"Wisdom of the crowd" rating systems doesn't work online, at least not on their own.
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The only justification I can see for having unlockable stuff in the arachitect is to avoid spoilers, you shouldn't be able to uses stuff you havent encountered in the main game.
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Well, surely to avoid spoilers we'd have to make it so that you couldn't play missions that has stuff you haven't encountered in the main game.
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So, even if everyone in your SG group gives you five stars on an Arc, you still have the other hundred thousand plus players to balance it out.
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Hooo boy, where to start.
I've published short stories on sites with rating systems, and none of them work. First of all, few people rate. Getting one vote for every 100 view is typical. On the sites where voting is rewarded or mandatory, most people just give the same rating to all stories. (Or they'll give whatever rating is closest to the story's current rating.)
Now, that's the issue of getting valid votes. The second issue is to get views. People use the rating system to select what to read (or which missions to run). This means that stories with a high rating will attract more votes, while stories with a low rating will get very few.
Thirdly, there's going to be a lot of missions, so any particular mission is going to have a practically neglible chance of getting votes from people who choose mission at random, or without regard to the rating.
Taken together, this means that a poor mission with 40 immediate supergroup votes of 5 stars is going to stay at 3+ forever -- it will, slowly, attract votes of 1 or 2, but with a block of 40 5s it's going to take a long time before its rating has sunk below 4. (It'll take 14 votes of straight ones to bring it down below 4 -- but in reality a mission, no matter how bad, won't attract nothing but 1s.)
A really good mission, without any votes from friends, who happen to get a couple of unlucky votes of 3 to begin with, will never climb to the top. It just won't attract enough views, and with that votes, to do so.
(And this doesn't even take into account people gaming the system by systematically giving low rates to storys that compete with their own or to people they don't like.)
"Wisdom of the crowd" rating systems doesn't work online, at least not on their own.
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Indeed.
In fact they dropped it from these very forums (rating posters) because they were next to useless.
Hopefully they'll change this system in Beta and just give us access to everything. If they're worried about inappropriate content or use of their AVs they'll just have to police it properly.
Players will be able to publish somewhere around half a dozen or so Arcs up to our Arc server. An Arc is anywhere from one to five missions.
This is, to be honest, ridiculous. It's as if it's designed to make people lose interest in the mission generator. Yeah, sure, you free a slot if you get a mission into the Hall of Fame or Dev's Choice, but most players won't get there (getting into the Hall of Fame is going to require networking more than mission writing) -- and this system ensures they won't stick with it until they do, either.
Surely a time-limited system would be better? Say, limiting uploads to one mission a month or something?
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Players will be able to publish somewhere around half a dozen or so Arcs up to our Arc server. An Arc is anywhere from one to five missions.
This is, to be honest, ridiculous. It's as if it's designed to make people lose interest in the mission generator. Yeah, sure, you free a slot if you get a mission into the Hall of Fame or Dev's Choice, but most players won't get there (getting into the Hall of Fame is going to require networking more than mission writing) -- and this system ensures they won't stick with it until they do, either.
Surely a time-limited system would be better? Say, limiting uploads to one mission a month or something?
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You can take arcs down as well though, Posi said that somewhere. So really its not that bad, you can unpublish poorly performing / received ones afterwards.
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You can take arcs down as well though, Posi said that somewhere. So really its not that bad, you can unpublish poorly performing / received ones afterwards.
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Sure, but people aren't wired that way -- just look how difficult it is for most people to throw away all the junk that take up room in their cupboards, or how hard it can be to delete a character to free a character slot for a new one.
A free slot entices, it's an opportunity, a chance, an invitation. If there's no free slot, and you have to remove something to make room, it's a lot harder to get started -- particularly if you haven't received much in the way of attention or feedback on your earlier stuff.
If we could post as many missions and arcs as we wanted there'd be even more of them to not get rated. Not to mention the number of broken, incomplete ("This is the first part of my arc-in-progress, please rate!") and trivial missions that would clog the system up.
Sure, I'd like to have more mission slots but I can see why there's a limit. We'll just have to manage the slots we do have and learn to be brutal about it.
Plus, we have to remember all those story arcs are going to be stored on Nor Cal's servers. They don't have unlimited storage space for these things, heh.
I just want them to hurry up and get it on test so we can PLAY! 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You can make as many missions and arcs as you like, its only uploading that is limited. If a mission is poorly recieved you can take it down and you still have it: to work on and improve. Then when it's better you could put it up again.
Basically, thier has to be a limit on how many missions you can upload. They each take up memory on th mission server. If you have 1000 people uploading 30 missions each, 30,000 missions is a lot of data to store, not to mention the download issues when people log on to the PCC server. You think crashes from the AH are bad?!
I really should do something about this signature.
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In fact they dropped it from these very forums (rating posters) because they were next to useless.
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Actually, they were removed because it's very easy to abuse them and various people were doing just that.
It should be interesting to see whether NCNC will do any statistical distribution tests on the ratings that do get given, or whetehr they will simply assume that it all works simply due to it being 'democratic.'
As for the probability of the rating system, or the content unlocking rewards being changed prior to release: at this stage not a whelk's chance in a supernova.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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So, even if everyone in your SG group gives you five stars on an Arc, you still have the other hundred thousand plus players to balance it out.
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Hooo boy, where to start.
I've published short stories on sites with rating systems, and none of them work. First of all, few people rate. Getting one vote for every 100 view is typical. On the sites where voting is rewarded or mandatory, most people just give the same rating to all stories. (Or they'll give whatever rating is closest to the story's current rating.)
Now, that's the issue of getting valid votes. The second issue is to get views. People use the rating system to select what to read (or which missions to run). This means that stories with a high rating will attract more votes, while stories with a low rating will get very few.
Thirdly, there's going to be a lot of missions, so any particular mission is going to have a practically neglible chance of getting votes from people who choose mission at random, or without regard to the rating.
Taken together, this means that a poor mission with 40 immediate supergroup votes of 5 stars is going to stay at 3+ forever -- it will, slowly, attract votes of 1 or 2, but with a block of 40 5s it's going to take a long time before its rating has sunk below 4. (It'll take 14 votes of straight ones to bring it down below 4 -- but in reality a mission, no matter how bad, won't attract nothing but 1s.)
A really good mission, without any votes from friends, who happen to get a couple of unlucky votes of 3 to begin with, will never climb to the top. It just won't attract enough views, and with that votes, to do so.
(And this doesn't even take into account people gaming the system by systematically giving low rates to storys that compete with their own or to people they don't like.)
"Wisdom of the crowd" rating systems doesn't work online, at least not on their own.
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I feel the need to requote this bit,
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Players are rewarded for playing, creating and rating Arcs.
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Emphasis mine.
Although I agree with you, rating systems rarely work without incentive to rate properly.
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In fact they dropped it from these very forums (rating posters) because they were next to useless.
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Actually, they were removed because it's very easy to abuse them and various people were doing just that.
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Personally I'd equate something being "easy to abuse" to something being next to useless. And my point still stands, I don't see any reason this proposed new system won't be as equally open to abuse and equally useless.
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You can make as many missions and arcs as you like, its only uploading that is limited. If a mission is poorly recieved you can take it down and you still have it: to work on and improve. Then when it's better you could put it up again.
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I'd say all your missions will be "uploaded", as in stored remotely. It'd be silly to store them on the local machine on an MMO (for the reason the fact it'd invite people to hack them in some form to see what they can do ).
I think your chosen arcs will be Published and made public, not uploaded. So the comments about data size aren't really relevant.
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In fact they dropped it from these very forums (rating posters) because they were next to useless.
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Actually, they were removed because it's very easy to abuse them and various people were doing just that.
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Personally I'd equate something being "easy to abuse" to something being next to useless. And my point still stands, I don't see any reason this proposed new system won't be as equally open to abuse and equally useless.
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Yeah, I was just being pedantic.
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You can make as many missions and arcs as you like, its only uploading that is limited. If a mission is poorly recieved you can take it down and you still have it: to work on and improve. Then when it's better you could put it up again.
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I'd say all your missions will be "uploaded", as in stored remotely. It'd be silly to store them on the local machine on an MMO (for the reason the fact it'd invite people to hack them in some form to see what they can do ).
I think your chosen arcs will be Published and made public, not uploaded. So the comments about data size aren't really relevant.
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No, there seems to be an implication that the Mission Server is a specific 'box' and that it will be global, like the auction system. Hence uploading. Of course, that could be implemented as a reference to the database on your local server, thus spreading the storage load across a number of boxes, but somehow I'm guessing not.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Everything the devs have said suggests that incomplete missions are stored locally.
I really should do something about this signature.
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In fact they dropped it from these very forums (rating posters) because they were next to useless.
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Actually, they were removed because it's very easy to abuse them and various people were doing just that.
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Personally I'd equate something being "easy to abuse" to something being next to useless. And my point still stands, I don't see any reason this proposed new system won't be as equally open to abuse and equally useless.
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Yeah, I was just being pedantic.
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You can make as many missions and arcs as you like, its only uploading that is limited. If a mission is poorly recieved you can take it down and you still have it: to work on and improve. Then when it's better you could put it up again.
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I'd say all your missions will be "uploaded", as in stored remotely. It'd be silly to store them on the local machine on an MMO (for the reason the fact it'd invite people to hack them in some form to see what they can do ).
I think your chosen arcs will be Published and made public, not uploaded. So the comments about data size aren't really relevant.
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No, there seems to be an implication that the Mission Server is a specific 'box' and that it will be global, like the auction system. Hence uploading. Of course, that could be implemented as a reference to the database on your local server, thus spreading the storage load across a number of boxes, but somehow I'm guessing not.
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I know that, what I'm saying though is that all your missions & arcs, even Works in Progress, will be stored remotely on these Mission Servers (so things is automatically uploaded when you finish editing), so the limit on the number of "submitted" stories and arcs is more to do with trying to force people to just publish their very best stuff and not down to considerations about storage capacity.
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Everything the devs have said suggests that incomplete missions are stored locally.
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That seems rather risky in terms of people opening them in their own text / hex editors and fiddling with them. Bit of a can of worms.
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Everything the devs have said suggests that incomplete missions are stored locally.
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That seems rather risky in terms of people opening them in their own text / hex editors and fiddling with them. Bit of a can of worms.
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Presumably that's only for the work-in-progress stuff that you haven't published yet. I'm guessing the published missions are stored centrally.
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Everything the devs have said suggests that incomplete missions are stored locally.
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That seems rather risky in terms of people opening them in their own text / hex editors and fiddling with them. Bit of a can of worms.
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I would imagine 'locally' means on your home server. I would certainly hope so.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Alowing players to hack thier missions would give them more freedom.
I really should do something about this signature.
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Alowing players to hack thier missions would give them more freedom.
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Easy enough to protect against. Just encode the files and use a seperate MD5 hash key on them, or use a digital signature.
Preventing savegame hacking isn't difficult...
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Alowing players to hack thier missions would give them more freedom.
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Easy enough to protect against. Just encode the files and use a seperate MD5 hash key on them, or use a digital signature.
Preventing savegame hacking isn't difficult...
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You massively underestimate the abilities of most hackers, FFM.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Hmm... This is a bit limiting...
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An Arc is anywhere from one to five missions.
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So I guess I'll have to do this!
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They can even create multiple arcs that build upon each other.
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Looking good though!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.