Again, they need to Web 2.0 this up the backside. I'll say my three words again: Comments, related, and tags. On Amazon, I can browse through reviews, find out why someone gave it 5 stars. I will be shown items that other buyers liked. The search isn't limited to just the description and title, it works on metadata.
While I don't like the term Web 2.0 as a general rule, feeling it's a bit of pointless jargon, the ideas and concepts grouped under that umbrella are not only perfectly suited for the Architect, they're desperately needed.
As is, I don't use the search function. I talk on the Mission Architect global channel to find arcs that are worthwhile. As PRAF put it, this disadvantages a huge section of the playerbase, but it's the only way I have found to filter out the garbage.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Paragon Studios will rectify the search side of the Architect. They were simply more concerned with the messy area of getting the darn thing to work.
Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.
OK, search approach is a little... gah.
One thought - if we know five stars are routinely knee-jerked out, why not play the four stars? That score at least suggests some layer of thought was applied...
Let flaming commence...;-)
Atomic Boy Scout
(a) definition of a casual gamer - 3 years in game and first fifty still only on the horizon.
I've taken to playing the 3+ star arcs - I find a lot of them better than those that I've played that are rated higher.
Go figure.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
Darn. Thought I was being controversial.
Oh well.
Atomic Boy Scout
(a) definition of a casual gamer - 3 years in game and first fifty still only on the horizon.
Controversial? Whenever I do use the search, I look for 4 star arcs. Which is a pity as there are a lot of awesome arcs with 5 stars.
Paragon Studios will be datamining all of this, finding out how many 5 star arcs are farming missions and how many 3/4 star arcs are well-written stories. They hold all the cards, and they'll fix it. For now I'm quite happy to use community-managed recommendations through global channels.
Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.
I'd like to be able to search by the number of play-throughs as well as the number of stars.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Tie in the star rating system in with the comment system, so that you can only rate when you give a reason, eg:
select 5 stars > reason box pops up > type in and click ok to save the rating and review/reason or click to cancel and the rating won't be saved (ofc the number of plays would be something seperate).
then when someone searchs they can click on the rating to bring up the reasons, like in a drop down or pop up window.
Discuss 
Agreed - then rating has to be "approved" by the author or referred to the mods if it's just "ssdjskdjskdj". If said commentator is not "approved" by a number of authors, they get barred from using MA for a period of time.
Obviously those mods will also have to review authors to ensure they don't keep picking on little Timmy. But they're going to have their work cut out for them any way, so they might as well have this too.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
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I've taken to playing the 3+ star arcs - I find a lot of them better than those that I've played that are rated higher.
Go figure.
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Quite possible. 
Arc in "my farming mish" league is easily 5-starrable, (all you need is to make it indeed farmable.)
"Artistic" arc is usually judged by completely different standards though. 4 stars is something as good as average canon arc, and 5 stars is a masterpiece.
"Marmite effect" may play a role too, - something with 10 5-stars and 10 1-stars is controversal for some reason, but you may well happen to be on the 5-star side of the controversy. Yet it would be just a 3-stars arc.
or, shorter thread: As many were afraid, star ratings are useless. We need full-fledged public review infrastructure. Look at Amazon. Look at any book on mildly controversal topic. What you would believe most? Overall star rating, or breakdown, or reviews?
This is many good thoughts. Is it worth sticking this in the feedback or suggestions forum?
In the meantime, we're stuck with the current search "meh"chanism for the time being. Any other suggestions out there for how to jury-rig to find stuff that is interesting/non-agricultural?
Atomic Boy Scout
(a) definition of a casual gamer - 3 years in game and first fifty still only on the horizon.
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This is many good thoughts. Is it worth sticking this in the feedback or suggestions forum?
In the meantime, we're stuck with the current search "meh"chanism for the time being. Any other suggestions out there for how to jury-rig to find stuff that is interesting/non-agricultural?
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, you can search for words that probably aren't used in farming missions - words like "investigate", "recover" and "prevent" can be used in mission descriptions, and it's unlikely a farm mission will have much of a misison description at all.
You could also enter the names of enemy groups that don't appeal so much to farmers, like Coralax or Clockwork.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
City of Guides list, forum threads, word of mouth... City Of Guides doesn't have star ratings, only comments, which, IMO is wrong. When there would be more comments, features like "most useful positive and negative reviews" from Amazon would be very helpful.
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City of Guides list, forum threads, word of mouth... City Of Guides doesn't have star ratings, only comments, which, IMO is wrong. When there would be more comments, features like "most useful positive and negative reviews" from Amazon would be very helpful.
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Whilst I'm sure it's a worthy forum for the game, the bottom line is I'm not prepared to go search a different web site for good missions. Frankly I wouldn't search an official CoX NC/Paragon forum. I want it at my fingertips in the MA search function. Anything else is way below par and won't do it for me. Unless they can come up with something it's rendering the whole issue worthless.
Thelonious Monk
Ma = full of win for me its GREAT for levelling new characters in it.
Low level you can get enough tickets to fully deck your toons out for the next 10 levels. SO's cost 35 tickets and you get easily at least 100 per level, if you take that into account plus earned influence its impossible to run out of money!!
Plus the studio B is GREAT for costume contests!
And its a great way to test out your characters weaknesses/strengths to see what you think needs more fine tuning.
Competition arcs are already coming out to and they're good!!! (yes im making one thats got a "damz special wow!" factor)
The ratings? Yes the low rated ones i dont really look at the stars since its a false premesis. However the ones released a bit early have started to average out the correct "rating via quality" i feel (except for the dev choice ones which are POOR compared to some iv played already). As with a feature this big i think its down to the players to try and sort out which arcs are the ones more worthy via word of mouth/forum until the search function is MUCH more worthy!!!!
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
It's weird, half the fun is creating classy costumes with auras, capes the works. But then actually putting a story together with too much of this becomes unplayable due to lag, it's kinda like Wentworths full of stormies or something. Clawing your way out of Atlas MA is bad enough on Defiant....so glad I don't play on Union! And yes, I'm also bored of the MA, especially endless testing of random arcs when almost no changes seem to have been made...just publish already!
Defiant EUQuaver: Kinetics/Sonic Defender
Semiquaver: Sonic/Kinetics Corruptor
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I want it at my fingertips in the MA search function.
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Me too.But since I doubt we'll have it anytime soon, and since I'm not ready to abandon MA completely, well, external sites are the only way. 
Although GG's method is an interesying idea too.
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This is many good thoughts. Is it worth sticking this in the feedback or suggestions forum?
In the meantime, we're stuck with the current search "meh"chanism for the time being. Any other suggestions out there for how to jury-rig to find stuff that is interesting/non-agricultural?
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, you can search for words that probably aren't used in farming missions - words like "investigate", "recover" and "prevent" can be used in mission descriptions, and it's unlikely a farm mission will have much of a misison description at all.
You could also enter the names of enemy groups that don't appeal so much to farmers, like Coralax or Clockwork.
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This is what i do while playing my new alt atm.
By typing in the following keywords im able to find/play missions DESIGNED for my level (usually 5/6 pages only)
Hellions, outcasts, low level, skulls, trolls, new player, level 1 - 10
The level range is VERY important i feel to include, so far i think the best missions include their level ranges inside the actual description.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
Personally I look at various recommendations part of the time. For actual searches I tend to include 3,4,5 star + not rated and length from medium to very long.
If someone has made the effort to create a decent story chances are fairly good that there are at least 3 missions in it to develop the story properly.
On top of that I might add certain keywords, such as enemy groups in level range etc.
Compared to getting a regular team which might focus on newspaper/police band missions I find many MA missions a refreshing change, even if they are not top notch.
[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])
I just had a brilliant idea. This may have been suggested before but it's stupendous.
Rather than just showing a rating out of 5, show how many people rated things 5 star, how many 4 star, etc. Like Newegg.
Then we can judge for ourselves if it's a Marmite arc.
Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.
I must admit, I am actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. I had zero interest in it prior to launch, but I do quite like it....
but......
....the ratings system is exactly what most people foresaw. I will rate missions highly if either the baddies are well made and different, or the humour or story makes me smile or interested. I rate lowly if someone has just stuck a load of freaks or capos on a boat.
Yet, it seems lots of people are rating farming missions or friends missions highly, even the Devs choice one I tried pretty much sucked.
The other problem, is that unless you have tons of friends and an advertising campaign to rival Microsoft, your missions wont even get played as they get lost in the tide of endless stuff out there, as said b4, a lot of which is total dross.
It does need a way to filter out the rubbish and the ratings system is not it sadly.
Zhaan, Chakyra, Fiorina 161, Aeryn, Polly Nation, Dee Pression, Shazanne, Night Jester and too many more to mention.
Network Hell 47640
Valley of the Harpies 74519
Green and Pleasant Land 75966
Would agree that the search system is a bit limited.
But i will give them slack on that they got a mission editor to work on an current MMO (even if it is starting to show its age). And the probably were not expecting it to be such a success, even if it is a success in publishing rubbish.
They provided ability to preview and test work even allowed for you to invite a team to help you and provided the shiny badges to encourage you to do so. Yet still people publish broken stuff. With a "What do you mean its not balanced i can solo it on my pimped out lvl 50 scrapper which i spend 200 Mill Inf on IO's what do you mean you found it difficult with as a defender." Seems to be the attitude to publishing stuff at the moment.
I think we can expect a new search system if the MA continues to be successful. If it goes the way of the Arena where people turned up for the firs few weeks to get badges and exploit the bugs then the search will eventually filter out dross.
But of course if people want to use it and stop because of the search system it will become another white elephant like the Arena's.
Sturgeons Law - "90% of everything is [censored]"
Agree 100% A lot of the arcs I tried so far I've abandoned as soon as I talked with the contact. And a lot of (most) of theese are rated 5 stars and have no story at all. And often badly made custom mobs. I have managed to play a few good ones though.And all the while people play trough all this Dravel. My own published story arch hasn't even been played yet. An arc I spent two days writing and re writing and that has at least a semi complex story. The arc I'm working on now I'll probably spend weeks finnishing because I wan't it to be perfect.
I think that letting players mark their arcs as story arcs and letting people search for it would help. Also I think one of the reasons people publish drivel is that you don't actually get experience when play testing so they prefer to bublish broken things and get experience while testing. This is especially troue for thoose like myself who still don't have any higher lvl toons.So I think that letting you get experience when play testing(you are still fighting the same mobs as you would when published) would solve some of the issue, You don't even need to get full exp maby 50% when play testing just so that after playing the same mission trough about 10 times to get it perfect you'll left with the feeling of despair that you'll never reach 50.
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City of Guides list, forum threads, word of mouth... City Of Guides doesn't have star ratings, only comments, which, IMO is wrong. When there would be more comments, features like "most useful positive and negative reviews" from Amazon would be very helpful.
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Whilst I'm sure it's a worthy forum for the game, the bottom line is I'm not prepared to go search a different web site for good missions. Frankly I wouldn't search an official CoX NC/Paragon forum. I want it at my fingertips in the MA search function. Anything else is way below par and won't do it for me. Unless they can come up with something it's rendering the whole issue worthless.
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The bonus of the external sites is that you can have a hand in the development of them, remember we are in the EU. We take up space not much more.
One quick one about the city of guides site. It does have ratings, but these are part of the comments. I always think it better to know why someone voted a rating rather than what they voted. It tells you so much more about the arc than 5 stars. Of course let me know if you think differently
As for which arcs to play. Do what I do, sort the arcs by date added. You get a whole slew of arcs that no one has played. Then jump in and have a go. I found some brilliant arcs that had 0 stars and not been on long. The 5 stars, developers choice and hall of fame mean nothing to me. I know I won't get up there as the 2 arcs I did were, well rubbish frankly, but a bit of a laugh. I intend to polish them and republish them at some point, but this make me realise that the rewards and the stars are just a back patting exercise.
Me and my short attention span huh?
I'm done with wading through the dross to find the odd good arc on the MA.
I've mad a couple of arcs and published one but having done it once there's little gratification in making another arc. But so many arcs are just cowpats on the face of the green fields of City of.
Half of them don't offer a decent description or raison d'etre for poorly described, thought out and implemented "custom" groups or characters and given that almost every arc has been awarded 5 stars it's a generic fail for the marking system. The search system's unusable and thus there's no impetus for anyone to produce a good arc other than the fact they can say "I done it now."
I am thinking there are two problems here:
a) too much content
b) a completely useless search system
c) a completely useless search system (yes that's only 2 reasons but the 2nd reason's so good it's worth repeating)
d) a lack of creativity.
Of my complaints, I'm fully aware that d) is likely to be most controversial and I have a response: Do NOT publish an arc you built to try stuff out if it's not worth publishing. There's a raft of stuff out there that has been created just to test concepts and try stuff out. But then somebody publishes it and it becomes part of the meaningless dirge that is MA today.
But it gets worse:
Person A publishes their concept, then tells their mate who then (for no clear reason other than it's their mate) rates the arc 5 Stars. This means it gets thrown into the massive collection of gunk and it becomes impossible to discriminate the good from the bad.
I'm aware that I might be taking an "holier than thou" approach, but come on people if you're going to go to the effort of writing an arc, creating custom characters and then publishing it, make sure it's worthwhle.
That, of course, is a dream too far. In a democracy such as the MA where the rules are few and far between, there's no quality regulator and so we are doomed to a succession of dogpiles and precious few ways to sift the wheat from chaff.
Devs: Sort the search out pronto otherwise you've created the biggest White Elephant MMO in history
Player: Try and disciminate. Ask yourself "Would I really enjoy playing this arc?" and "is it worth publishing?" If you can honestly answer yes, then go for it, but don't expect fulsome praise unless you've created something unique and exciting.
Oh and for the record? Yeah I published an ok arc, but whilst conceptually it's not bad it's flawed in both execution suffered translation from the test server so has clunks. I've never claimed otherwise but until the Search system gets better I won't be using it much.
Thelonious Monk