I'd recommend playing a 4 or 5 star arc w/plenty of votes, before diving into a 5 star one w/less ratings.
That's my only advice, not going to debate the MA as i'm pretty disheartened w/it atm, and want my opinion to form wholly before any sort of rant :P
I tended to find 4 star arcs w/higher numbers (30-50) to be worlds better than 5 star arcs w/10 votes, for example
What Xemulas said. Also, SFMA is not an indicative of quality.
Though if I may be so bold, 2 of my arcs (Mercytown and Might Makes Right) are SFMA, and the latter arc is <30 votes last time I checked. Both have also been run through pretty finely for typos and bugs too.
A Penny For Your Thoughts #348691 <- Dev's Choice'd by Dr. Aeon!
Submit your MA arc for review & my arcs thread
bbzzzt acronym overload.
SFMA wassat?
Story Focused Mission Arc
Edit: and I hope you didn't/don't consider my arc a lemon 
I also used the SFMA tag for one of my arcs (love spurned 1934). But it is not a sign of quality. It is a sign for the intention of the arc.
In this case the author tries to make a Story Focused Mission Arc. If he succeeds or not is is another thing. There is no guarantee that you will like arcs, even ones with a lot of votes.
Ps. If you can reach the author, please help him/her with feedback. Just now, I am fixing some typos that despite some excellent proofreading seem to have slipped in. It takes time to make an arc almost error free and without obvious flaws. Time and a lot of help.
What everyone said, - try ones with more ratings and not necessarily 5 stars. Also, look at he IDs, - the lower the better. Why? Because playtesting an arc to "no bugs ever" standard currently takes LOTS of time. Especially for something that we were assured wouldn't be needed in the first place. I won't recommend MY arc, 
but seriously, it literally took 2 weeks (a couple of hours each day) to test 2 missions (ok, next time it would be easier, but still...) No wonders arcs are buggy, - peeople either trust builtin validator too much, or don't have time. Low ID means an arc was in beta. Which means it has been around longer, which hopefully means author had time to both make a decent story and throughly test it.
A good example of this would be arc id: 1444
Although it doesn't currently include the code SFMA, I may well include it as that is exactly what it is. Low arc id and lots of time and effort on many (well, a small number) peoples' parts to iron out all the bugs and spelling mistaikes.
This is in no way a shameless plug.
People who read this kind of thread would also enjoy playing the twisted tongue id: 1444
*cough*
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what?
I'd pretty much ignore SFMA and any other tags ingame unless you want a pseudorandom pick and don't care about the quality. As soon as a tag starts to be used it'll be used by people who don't really care about the content but care about getting more players to play their arcs for the shinies...
My advice at the moment would be to use the City Of Guides missions as a reasonable list to play... I've been working my way through these and there's some good arcs - and you can at least see what others have made of them so far.
I'd guess any review thread/site would give you this - but CoG seems the largest/best I've seen so far.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Although what you said applies to external sites too, - the more popular it gets, the worse its SNR. Although, on CoG there are actual reviews, which really mitigates the problem.
So far, most of the arcs I play come from those people who have advertised them on this forum. Biggest benefit is that I can help people to improve their arcs.
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Although what you said applies to external sites too, - the more popular it gets, the worse its SNR. Although, on CoG there are actual reviews, which really mitigates the problem.
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Yes and Yes.
The reviews/comments part is a big factor in seperating the wheat from the chaff - although the simple fact that slightly more effort is needed to post your arc on a 3rd party site also cuts out a few people who would abuse the ingame tags.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Working on minimising the effort required. 
SFMA - Sweet Farming Mission Arc
You can't please everybody all the time. I've had some feedback on an arc I published, some were giving useful advice, another said it was great while another said it was a pile of garbage. Overall, the MA has been a bit of a letdown for me. I can't be bothered with all the aggravation via tells (who's stupid idea was that???) and I've unpublished all three. I'm going back to normal missions...when I can be bothered to come back on again, got better things to do at the moment.
The best (and most successful way) ive had of finding the good arcs so far is just by asking on the MA channel. Its the best channel i've joined so far in this game, every information you see on it is genuine and most of the time the arcs that are mentioned on it are REALLY good.
If it wasnt for that channel i wouldnt have found Igor's arc with that movement sound device thingy, seriously its the new FREEEEEEEEM!!!!!
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Low ID means an arc was in beta. Which means it has been around longer, which hopefully means author had time to both make a decent story and throughly test it.
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Not sure I agree with your logic. By now, people have had plenty of time to playtest their arcs, whether they were in beta or not. In fact, the higher an arc number is, the more time it's potentially had to be tested, surely?
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Low ID means an arc was in beta. Which means it has been around longer, which hopefully means author had time to both make a decent story and throughly test it.
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Not sure I agree with your logic. By now, people have had plenty of time to playtest their arcs, whether they were in beta or not. In fact, the higher an arc number is, the more time it's potentially had to be tested, surely?
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Wrong.
The system lowers from 1000 to up. The first arc created would be 1000. The next one was 1001 then 1002 etc.So the lower the ARC ID, the longer people have had time to get the kinks out. Because the best testing is happening by people playing your arc and after that telling you what is wrong with it.
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The system lowers from 1000 to up. The first arc created would be 1000. The next one was 1001 then 1002 etc.
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Thanks for explaining how that works.
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So the lower the ARC ID, the longer people have had time to get the kinks out. Because the best testing is happening by people playing your arc and after that telling you what is wrong with it.
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For some reason I was under the impression that when you republished your arc after editing it, the number reset. Obviously, if that's not true, there's a case for the low numbers having had more playtesting.
I'm still not 100% sure I agree with the idea that arcs created in the beta are more likely to be better than arcs created in the game itself, though - that seems a little tough on people who weren't in the beta.
Just because an arc was made in beta doesn't mean it's likely to be better than newer ones - just look at the Dev Choice arcs.
Actually I think they started arc ids from 1001.
As an aside, I'm guessing that this wasn't to 'reserve' numbers 1-999 for any special use, but was to help when searching for arcs by id. As the search looks for substring searching for arc id '1' would bring back any arc containg '1', insisting that arcids are 4 characters or longer minimises the substring problem.
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For some reason I was under the impression that when you republished your arc after editing it, the number reset. Obviously, if that's not true, there's a case for the low numbers having had more playtesting.
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No. People still get confused by this...
See here.
Republishing preserves the arc id and any ratings.
Unpublishing and then publishing again gets a new arc id and restarts with no ratings.
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I'm still not 100% sure I agree with the idea that arcs created in the beta are more likely to be better than arcs created in the game itself, though - that seems a little tough on people who weren't in the beta.
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Arcs originally published in beta could be better as they've had more time for feedback and edits but this only counts if:
* The author gives a damn;
* The arc has been played and feedback given;
* The arc was published with errors/improvements yet to make.
i.e. arcs from beta will only really be better if continual improvement can be made along the lifetime of the arc - which isn't the case.
Some authors would have published any old tat quickly just to bag a low arc id, and haven't been bothered to return and improve the arc.
Some arcs haven't really been played much - or if they have, then feedback may not have been given (or received, thinking of the EU/US comment bug here..) Without feedback what improvements is the author to make?
Arcs may have been published pretty much as good as they ever could be... Even feedback may not be acted upon, as you can't please everybody all the time, so a comment that you think is important may be dismissed as irrelevant to mass-appeal by the author. The arc may have been tested to Hull and back before publishing.
Some of the beta arcs had well over a month of development/testing before I14 went live - and getting testing/feedback was, IMO, easier then (a more focused group in closed-beta and email comments made US/EU commenting work). So some arcs made during beta should have been polished by the time they went live...
But it is true that arcs going live today that weren't even started until I14 was live could have had nearly a month of testing/feedback/improvements...
Low arc id/Beta arcs counts for zilch now.
BTW - Is Shakespeare's work considered great because it was written well when first published or because it's had hundreds of years of tinkering to improve it? Does Umberto Eco write terrible works that no-one appreciates because his works haven't been around as long as Shakespeare's? 
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
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Just because an arc was made in beta doesn't mean it's likely to be better than newer ones - just look at the Dev Choice arcs.
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It's a bad idea to look at Dev's Choices.
I think that the devs wanted some dev's choices, partly to test that the dev's choice system worked and partly to get a few dev's choices in the system when it went live... The devs didn't know how well the MA would take off/be received and getting some DCs there was probably seen as an important part of showing what could be done and what you could aim for (regards recognition)...
Also, the DCs were chosen pretty early. I think the devs were impressed at the inventiveness of people trying out the MA. But the early inventiveness wasn't always quite as inventive as it could be as the authors were still learning the MA system. So the arcs chosen aren't really pushing any limits...
But the chosen arcs are better than 'pick map, fill with faction X, add kill all and glowy' which is maybe what the devs were expecting many people to come up with...
Also consider that a dev's choice arc is locked and no editing can be done by the author - so these arcs have been locked in the state that they were in even if the author sees flaws or improvements that they would like to make.
BTW On a similar note - in beta the HoF requirements were dropped to a low point to try getting some HoF arcs for testing. So it doesn't really mean anything if an arc boasts that it was a HoF in beta... sure it was - but we were testing.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
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Arcs originally published in beta could be better as they've had more time for feedback and edits but this only counts if:
* The author gives a damn;
* The arc has been played and feedback given;
* The arc was published with errors/improvements yet to make.
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And, perhaps most importantly if
* The arc actually is polishable at all.
Every arc can be made better, true, but not every arc can be made good.
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Arcs originally published in beta could be better as they've had more time for feedback and edits but this only counts if:
* The author gives a damn;
* The arc has been played and feedback given;
* The arc was published with errors/improvements yet to make.
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And, perhaps most importantly if
* The arc actually is polishable at all.
Every arc can be made better, true, but not every arc can be made good.
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I think my work reflects this.
I give a damm, it has been played, even reviewed and that helped me to improve the arcs, it has been proofreaded to get the errors out.
But despite that, my arcs will never ever be HoF. I aim for an enjoyable arc and that is the best the ones I have written so far can reach. My tweaking now, is to make sure that even the most critical person will consider the current average ratings I have to be on the spot.
"BTW - Is Shakespeare's work considered great because it was written well when first published or because it's had hundreds of years of tinkering to improve it?"
Wait, what? I know there've been some slight tweaks notably converting archaic to modern English, depending which version you read but there haven't been *that* many changes since the early folios.
Something like the OED or any other non-fiction book that *does* get updated a lot might've been a better example :P
Cancelled in Three - MA ID #34608. Please play and comment! Top 10 placing in Projectionist's MA contest!
Wading through the piles of farm/broken arcs, I've been searching through the arcs marked SFMA hoping to get some nice, well written arcs.
In reality, what I've found is that seven out of the seven I've played with 8 - 9 playthroughs at 5 stars are just shoddy with a total lack of testing/refining - lots of typos, plain wrongly labelled objectives, random maps that don't accomodate the number of objectives and thus simply don't work and have to be restarted till a map that can accomodate is randomly picked, Extreme/Extreme MM/Kin or Ill/Mind mobs for the hell of it, etc. Have stayed away so far from the ones with 30+ playthroughs as I'm trying to be nice and play the ones that haven't been seen as much.
Most of the SFMA tags are Long / Very Long so it's pretty time consuming playing through lemons. Creative story telling from the user base is what MA should be about, not the gratuitous farming that's taking place and I hoped this tag would be the way of cutting through the majority of farm/test arcs. I can take bad story telling but I'm disheartened by just plain broken arcs with no testing.
So, the question is, have I just been desperately unlucky and picked the 7 lemons where someone's got half a dozen of their mates to 5 star it or is that the findings of anyone else that's using the SFMA tag? And if I am unlucky, any recommendations of some decent arcs in the category?
TIA