Do you feel like AE stories are better now?

I've found myself rating more five star arcs in the past two weeks than I did in the first two months of player arcs. I know there are several reasons for this, at least where myself is concerned.

1. In the realm of so many reviewers leaving good feedback on what people like seeing, architects are getting better at putting things in that we want and keeping things out that we don't want. And use all that feedback to rewrite, and improve their arcs to something much better than the first drafts when this all started.

2. Architects have gotten used to all of the tools available, and know many more ways to use them smartly and effectively.

3. As a player, I've learned to weed through the arcs better, play arcs from architects I've liked in the past, or play arcs that have already gotten good reviews from other sources.

How do you feel like your experience has changed from when the Mission Architect was first introduced?

I think at the beginning, everyone was making missions to test out the new shiny features. Now a lot of people have moved back to just playing the game instead of creating MA missions, barring farm missions of course.

Also, now that there's not a ton of badges that require people to play your arcs, getting publicity isn't something that's incredibly important to people unless they're actively trying to make a good arc and get feedback on it. And even if someone is trying to get hall of fame, the only bonus from getting it is another arc slot, so only people who like writing stories care.

I will say, I have definitely seen a LOT less build up/rage and such. Far less missions filled to the brim with extreme AVs and such too.

So, to summarize, the only people actively making story missions nowadays are people who care about stories and making fun missions, and those people are usually trying to get better at doing so.

Partly it's what Bubba said: If an author whose work I have enjoyed it the past has published a new arc, I will probably play it before something that comes up in a random search. The random search feature itself has improved, as I can now avoid the Extreme/Extreme AV...or avoid AVs totally if my character isn't suited to fighting them. Many arcs that people just published and never touched again are invalid now, leaving us with arcs that have had at least some attention paid to them. The "all my friends voted for me" 5-star arcs have been downrated through either honest ratings or griefers, possibly driving a certain kind of author away from MA.

We have some more options now to tell stories the way we want to. Every custom critter you replace with a recolored standard mob gives you room for a few flavor objectives, or a bit of dialogue that makes the story better. Every recolored standard mob you can add to your custom group can give them more variety, make them more interesting to fight, or make them better balanced. We can have consistent level ranges without resorting to tricks. Empty maps, fade-in blinkies, and chained blinkies are nice too.

Oh and let's not forget that if an author is also an MA player (and from what I have seen many of them are) they have probably encountered many many of the things on the "what not to do" list and now know exactly why you shouldn't do it.

I think it's a combination of the improved search tools allowing us to avoid the bad arcs more easily and a lot of the authors who were making bad arcs have moved on.

Definitively! You just need to play most of the Dev's Choice arc which almost exclusively come from closed beta when people were just learning the tools available and compare them to any of the "hot" arc" discussed here. Also, the 1000's of "make an arc with my favorite character set to extreme to try this new MA stuff out" have stopped. I just wish there was a way to clear out the 10,000 of thousands of these test type arcs.


WN

I don't know about all of you but my arcs have always been good. Yep. Not like I went back and made sweeping changes after publishing no matter how "done" I thought they were at the time.

AE stories?

What AE stories?

It's filled with farm missions. I can't see any stories!

I can't say that I've found ANY of the AE stuff to be much fun. New or old, none of the "stories" I've come across have interested me. The Devs Choice arcs I've played have let me down big time. Maybe it's because a lot of the ones I've played are non-canon, or maybe they aren't my "cup of tea".

Either way, the only reason I even bother with AE anymore is if I need some salvage. I gather up enough tickets to buy what I need and move back to the "good old" regular content for my fun.

I've actually done more Ouroboros stuff since the AE came out than I have since it was introduced back in what, i11? I thought that the AE would be really great, and while it is fun at times, I guess it's just not for me.

Now if only they'd announce a "Don't have to see other people's 'creative' power colors" setting as well.

I tend to think that arcs have gotten better. In fact, the majority of the arcs that are listed as having 4.0 ratings or better in the Rotten CoHmatoes Project thread are almost all better than the majority of the Dev's Choice arcs. That isn't meant as a slam on most of the Dev Choices, but as a commentary on how people have learned to use the tools and how some of those tools have improved. Heck, even most of the arcs listed in that thread have been improved considerably as a result of feedback.

While it's very true that the powers-that-be could still stand a wake up call on improvements, and that there are quite a few limitations still to be overcome, many of the arcs that are rated consistently with 4's and 5's (and in many cases 3's) in this forum are better than much of the developer created material.

So, yes, I think they're getting better.

Went through this fifteen years ago with the release of a program called Forgotten Realms - Unlimited Adventures. That was a game creator from SSI, patterned after the old "Gold Box" AD&D based games like "Pool of Radiance" and "Curse of the Azure Bonds", and that were played using essentially the same engine.

Those games varied in quality, but every one of them was a long, fairly tedious, maguffin driven dungeon crawl filled with random combats for the sake of combat. When the first designs were made, they tended to resemble the officially released commercial games.

Eventually, the creator base tightened them up considerably, with faster paced storytelling and far less routine combat. The best of the fan-made games were both briefer and faster paced than the style of the original games.

There does seem to be a tendency towards brevity and faster pace fairly clearly expressed as a preference of the player base that's interested in stories. Flavor text is important. Identical events should not repeat much.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

Yeah, I can say it does get tiring to see all the farm arcs in MA. You guys should totally play my story arc instead (located in my sig), it's meant to be fun, rather than profitable (not that it isn't profitable, I mean, it gives out a decent number of tickets, it's not like you don't get anthing for playing and stuff, it's just not designed to be ultra-profitable)! I'd compare it to something like Bionic Commando (NES), where the story isn't so much what drives it as the content itself (did that even make sense?).

Go play it, I don't even have one playthrough yet (after three days!)! I'm reduced to just plugging myself in every thread that's even tangentially related to the theme of my arc, that's how bad it is. Maybe it's the farmers scaring everyone away from AE that are killing my arc. Yeah, that makes my post relevant, I guess.