MA Feedback... recieved?

The one mission I have put up has had several ratings but I have recieved only one piece of feedback.

Now, this may just be the case that only one person bothered to put feedback but, in conversation with someone I discovered that they hadn't recieved the feedback I left for them which leads me to question whether or not feedback is being delivered.

The one bit of feedback I recieved was from someone who was on the EU servers and submitted it at a time that I happened to be online.

Is there a way to test whether feedback is being correctly delivered;
a) when a person is offline
b) from 'across the pond'

Or does anyone know if there is an issue for sure and my arc is just not worthy of comment (which wouldn't explain why the feedback I sent wasn't recieved though...)


My apologies if this has been brought up somewhere before.

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Is there a way to test whether feedback is being correctly delivered;
a) when a person is offline
b) from 'across the pond'

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On test this was working for both cases though i suppose i can check to make sure for live too.

Re ratings: Out of say 12 arcs iv rated so far iv given roughly 6/7 comments. Those comments came from me when i was playing solo which is no coincidence.

I'm also not confident that all feedback is being sent or recieved properly.

35 plays on my arc, and I have only recieved feedback from other EU players while I was online. I have not recieved any offline feedback at all, and I have not recieved any feedback from Americans.

It is of course possible that people just haven't been commenting on my arc, and that's fair enough, but it feels suspicious to me. Unfortunately I won't be able to test unless my US account is activated on a free weekend or something.

I didn't receive a single comment. Even from one who in fact did had send a comment and told me about it as he tested my arc on my request.

I was on Union and he on Defiant.

I miss comments by e-mail. It worked for me, plus I had a semi-permenant record of what was said rather than something that could have been missed in the heat of battle.

Interesting.

On test I had a decent amount of feedback - probably about 20 comments from about 60 ratings and who knows how many players. But on live I've had something like 6 to 8 comments from over 160 ratings and over 250 players...

I just thought that the population of test was obviously a lot better at giving feedback than the population of live!

Having said that: I did think that the number of comments I received on test fell off dramatically when it went to global tells rather than emails... Maybe tells have always been dodgy, but if some tests get delivered ok we don't question it further...

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[Re ratings: Out of say 12 arcs iv rated so far iv given roughly 6/7 comments. Those comments came from me when i was playing solo which is no coincidence.

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Yes, I would guess that people wouldn't write a comment unless they were solo or part of a team that specifically sets out to give feedback.

I have been mostly solo and have tried to comment on every arc that I have played; I just hope that my time writing these comments hasn't been completely wasted.

Comments by e-mail was IMO FAR superior to tells. It worked perfectly.

The only way they could have improved on it would be to reuse the "complaints" system so it could be used for comments. Instead they backslid to using global tells. The only bad choice devs made during beta, IMO.

My personal experience, no offline comments, and only comments from people who played it while I happened to be offline.

However, of those that did get through, one of them offered some fantastic constructive criticism (and the odd typo), and it has since undergone a decent amount of change.

I've yet to receive any offline feedback either, though...

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Instead they backslid to using global tells.

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I did think it was an odd choice. End up being awfully sheepish sending comments, as hearing the 'beep' or a tell sent off, when what you've written is highly critical, could lead to a discussion you don't want to have *right there and then*...

E-mails are a bit more discreet, IMO...

It happened because some people wanted to post arcs under their global names, not character names. Since global names do not have e-mail accounts, it because impossible to send e-mail after that and they had to switch to tells.

I do not think this was a good idea. They crippled the feedback function in order to make a VERY minor QOL change.

Yet the complaints system shows that they had a system working that effectively attaches comments to the published arc itself. I'm pretty darn sure that this could have been modified to a general feedback system.

Yup, IMO that's the best possible thing they could do at this point. Second best would be moving back to player names and e-mails.

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Yet the complaints system shows that they had a system working that effectively attaches comments to the published arc itself. I'm pretty darn sure that this could have been modified to a general feedback system.

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Aye, having never strayed onto test while this was in Beta, I honestly presumed that something like that would be the eventual outcome. Tells just seems so sloppy to me...

I personally expect the best source of feedback will turn out to be a third party site allowing much better categorisation, ratings, author comments and reviews and comments (possibly covering both private/public and 2-way exchange between author and commentator).

The ingame communications aren't geared up to comment/review cycles and especially not between the US and EU. And the MA v1.0 browser is, IMO, far below the standard I expected. It's months since I made it clear here that I believed the success of the MA to be directly tied to the ability to search available arcs for content that will appeal to you.

I was working on some ideas but RL circumstances got in the way, and so now I'm keeping an eye on City Of Guides MA listing/reviews. It's basic just now, and doesn't yet appear to have search functionality, but at least it allows good length comments/reviews.

As things stand, I agree with you JD. For depth of response, and possibility of taking on constructive feedback, 3rd party is the way to go.

Problem is, the MA UI is the system most of the playerbase will use, and it's also crippled under the weight of its own search system (how 5 star rated arcs w/1 vote are before 4 star arcs of many many more votes), and how Dev Choice arcs seem to be only 5 stars, meaning badge hunters are pretty hampered at trying for it, not only by their own community, the players, but also the UI itself...

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and how Dev Choice arcs seem to be only 5 stars, meaning badge hunters are pretty hampered at trying for it, not only by their own community, the players, but also the UI itself...

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Theoretically: Devs Choice has nothing to do with stars at all. It awarded when a dev likes an arc.

Practically: Time being a constraint, the devs might use star ratings to help decide which arcs to look at.

But the devs aren't neccesarily looking at only 5 star arcs nor are they restricted to using the MA interface to find them... They can access the database.

There's nothing to stop them using bespoke queries to find arcs that may be promising - e.g. find me any arcs that have had 50 4+ votes in the past 2 days...

IIRC the devs have stated that they want devs choice to be an alternate way to find good arcs. The poor, trusting devs still think that the HoF will work and so they don't need to give devs choice to arcs that are doing well with player ratings.

I think it's more likely that they'll do the odd bespoke query or just browse a few arcs that haven't been played by many but stand out with a quirky name or info. This'll be their shortlist for the day/week and if any strike them as really good then they'll dev choice it. I think that because it's what I'd do if I was in their position.

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I think that because it's what I'd do if I was in their position.

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In that case I hope there's a JD Sr(or Jr...depending on which age suffix is the least offensive :P) somewhere, pulling some strings

Any way, I'm still in a state of total shock that there's no Favourite tab or bookmark function. Is this the year 2009? And noone thought about implementing such a thing?

For MA2.0 there's a lot to be done with the "find mission/arc interface". You can't even limit the search to peoples global name, so if you wanna find my arcs you can't just do a search for @sing star. Imagine how annoying it was trying to find a mission made by @Dev, when the search shows anything with the three letters DEV in it. Didn't anyone think about checking what modern database search funtions look like? Where they totally blinded by what you could actually do inside the architect, so they totally forgot about the need to be able to actually FIND what you're looking for?

Oh, yeah great, we got the ID numbers. That's great!

Now, after such a moan, I guess I need to say something positive, huh? Well, besides that, the bugs and really stupid badges, I'm really enjoying the experience as long as I stay away from the main road of arcs! There's some really crazy stuff out there!

I feel sorry for the poor sod who after 2 days got over 999 rates. Can you imagine if only 10% gave comments? The horror of logging in to that many tells!

Don't think he got any... I'm beginning to think you only get feedback tells if you are online.

I suspect that more people will comment under test conditions because that's what they are there for, and are thus slightly more diligent

but once under live conditions most people will just give it a rating and not bother with actually providing constructive feedback

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

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but once under live conditions most people will just give it a rating and not bother with actually providing constructive feedback

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Pfft. I'll always offer constructive feedback. We complain at the devs when things aren't to our liking, just view other players as practice!

Some of the Dev choices are...dodge.
I thought they were choosing arcs that were polished and such, with good plot, good balance (or not so long as it fitted) and suchnot.
Played a few Dev choice missions that were...horrible, frankly.

OT, wouldnt it be easier to make in-game emails go to a @Handle account, rather than character? So, You would have @Handle, with every character under it.
Thus, sent an email to Character 1.
Character 2 logs on, has an email in the @Handle Inbox, under Character 1.

More flexible?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

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Don't think he got any... I'm beginning to think you only get feedback tells if you are online.

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I've certainly had a few (before the maintenance) waiting for me when I log in. They were all from EU players - though that may be coincidental given that I'm on the EU boards and that may be how the found the arcs.