Does anyone use AE anymore?

Shubbie, I can't imagine that even you completely believe what you are saying. You are using the fact that "there is no set standard for how to judge stories" to justify judging stories in an obviously absurd way.

It should be clear even with a lack of firm standards that some criteria do not count as acceptable ways to judge arcs. One example would be judging an arc based on how cool you think the Author's name is. Another would be judging an arc based on game mechanics the author has no control over.

If you actually believed your own line, you would have to maintain that it would be acceptable to knock stars because your stalker couldn't use a shield.

Rating arcs based on things the author has no control over is rude and inappropriate AT BEST. Personally, I consider it just plain griefing and were I a dev, would consider it a punishable offense.

So just because people behave like idiots in the real world it's acceptable to do so in a game? I hate this expression but two wrongs don't make a right.

What I'm saying is that it is unrealistic to assume that the game will have any better chance to have people choose things they like or dislike based upon anything other than their own personal whim. That is the essence of "taste."

You cannot successfully argue taste. No matter how often you tell me that caviar is the food of the gods and reserved only for the most discerning of palates, I will still think it tastes bad.

Therefore, having HighTreason tell Shubbie not to rate based on rewards and going so far as to intimate that doing so is griefing was unreasonable and distasteful.

(Can you feel the irony?)

Allow me to give a relevant real-world example to illustrate my point.

In Colorado, about three years ago or so, they outlawed smoking in most indoor places. That included most bars and restaurants, but bars that had built their business specifically around smoking and made a significant amount of their money through the sale of tobacco (ie. cigar bars) were exempted.

Were I to have the opportunity to rate Colorado bars before this law went into effect, I would have taken away significant points for not allowing smoking. I don't really see the point of going to a bar if you can't smoke there. I realize a lot of people have a different opinion and that factor would either not effect or even raise their ratings for that bar. All that is perfectly well and good.

After the law went into effect, it would be stupid of me to take that into consideration in my ratings any more. It's not the bars' choice and therefore is not an appropriate factor to consider when rating them. The bars were already hurting from lack of business due to the law. The cigar bars were already taking the business of the people who hadn't just stopped using bars altogether. What would be the point of me going around kicking these bar owners while they were down by telling everybody that they suck for not allowing smoking? That would be idiotic.

What I did do is to stop patronizing those bars because I no longer enjoyed being there. When I did go out, I went to the "cigar bars" that were exempt even though I didn't enjoy them as much. I eventually even left the state (the whole country actually) for a place with more freedom afforded to its citizens. Those options are perfectly reasonable.

For those analogy impaired folks that I know lurk around these boards, let me spell it out for you: allowing smoking=giving good experience, bars=arcs, the ban=the exp nerf, the state/country = the game.

The same logic applies.

And what would happen if you conducted a survey of persons that frequent Colorado's bars? You would have people judging the bars based on all sorts of different criteria that are relevant to them, including whether the bar allowed smoking or not.

Is it stupid for a survey taker to rate that way? Perhaps. Would you have that survey taker punished for answering in a way you consider to be stupid? Don't they have the right to voice their opinion (in the survey) based on factors relevant to them?

Exactly, rewards are an important criteria for me, and yes the author does have control they can choose not to use custom mobs.

Now I do also blame the devs for not giving us the tools to filter out reduced reward missions.

Just for your information standard mobs give standard experience, so choosing to use custom mobs is the authors choice.

First, I want to make sure it's clear that I do not support the way the AE is right now at all. I think it's ridiculous that in the arc I just finished today, 2 of the 4 missions give almost NO rewards. Not just reduced rewards, but darn near nothing at all! The enemies I made are not stupidly easy either. They all have decent melee and ranged attacks as well as some of them having things like sleeps, holds, and slows. This situation is just plain dumb.

What is just as dumb, however, is punishing the victims with low ratings for their arcs. Sure, if I had used the standard enemies, it would give standard rewards. I also would not have been able to make that arc because none of the standard enemies fit the plot. Is Shubbie intending to stifle creativity? Because if he is not, then he is being dishonest with himself about what the results of his actions are.

In you survey analogy, Flea, I'll bet most of the people who answered that way based on that criteria did so because they had never really stopped to think about their answer. People generally don't take random surveys that seriously, just as I'm sure many players of CoH don't take rating arcs that seriously. People can and will make mistakes in judgement when they have not taken everything into consideration and judge on emotion rather than rational thought.

Shubbie, however, is an exception. Judging by the fact that he keeps coming back here and defending his actions, it would seem that he has fully thought them out and still seems to believe that his behavior is acceptable. Either that or he just likes arguing on Internet forums so purposely defends indefensible positions. This makes him either a zealot or a troll, both of whom are useless to argue with, so I won't bother.

Who rez'd this dinosaur of a thread?

At this point, yes people still use AE. Most of them are STILL farmers, the last nerf, custom critter, xp etc. hurt the RP community more, and still the farmers are the prevailing community. Farmers using custom critters were pretty much doing it wrong even in the begginings of the AE buzz.

Is this feature a failure for its intended purpose?

I would say yes, there are NOT a signifigant percentage of the RP community using it, is it a complete failure? No. Plain and simple, although I beleive it is a failure for its intended purpose, it is not without hope or fixing.


Is this feature an economic failure?

Quite simply, as it stands now, yes it is. Ouro receives more use then this does, simply becuase of its ability to allow people to get places relatively fast. Cimerora is incomplete, and is said to be in the works and up for expansion, and it receives large amounts more play then AE; which took up more time, and therefore money. Simply stated, it is, by most comparisons, a failure.


Stating that something is a failure is nothing really. It is a state which is easily changes and is constantly adapting to the time. Something can go from failure to success in the drop of a hat. Getting insulted over the truth of something being a failure is pretty stupid.

PvP is most likely one of the largest failures in this game, and, shoot me, its my favorite part. The devs have, prolly put more time into pvp zones, rules and revamps etc, then any other currently existing minority, and only to see the pvp community shrink in response to their changes.

How I rate arcs is meaningless, the amount of arcs I do play are pretty insignificant, and they fact I take off stars for poor rewards is also meaningless. Unless you also believe other players do the same thing. Reward is a meaningful motivator for many players.

But lets forget about that for the moment.

Yes the ratings system is just one other thing thats broken. The search is broken. THe reward system both punnishes writers and lavishes rewards on farmers.

Im not saying AE is bad, it just needs work, and the devs seem to be showing no interest in it.

Yep, I use it. It's a godsend for me to shoot videos with. Not to mention finding some cool arcs to play in the meantime.

When Aeon Corp decides to upgrade and release Mission Architect 2.0, I expect good things from it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

From the get go, most of AE was so overwhelmed by poor writing, farms and assorted cruft that it was hard to find great content. Star griefing was rampant too, and then the nerf and bans afterwards just turned me off of AE.

I rarely touch AE now, but this contest really demonstrated what AE can do, from what I've seen. Too bad the rewards have to be given out by another player but a whole buncha loot and a well written story are good reasons to play anyhow.

FWIW, there are still prizes to won so if anyone is gonna look at that arc, now is the time.

I dont think AE is bad at all either.
I am just annoyed that such a great feature is so effectively crippled.
Of course people will want to use custom critters in their arcs, and I do believe a lot of people want to face well-done custom critters and non-standard mission twists. And I dont mind if custom critters give somewhat less XP, but its some giving zero because you removed a tier 2 passive power (and maybe added tier 8 that does the same but better), cutting XP down to 25% if you want a spawn to consist of e.g. only bosses because it is the elite of your enemy group while you can have pretty much all bosses with difficulty settings, penalizing you for having no bosses in another group though you can just turn them off solo anyway, and basically trying to prevent everything that doesnt work like your basic paper mission that breaks this wonderful feature imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aura_Familia However, I think it's perfectly fine to knock a star off for using custom critters that give 0 rewards, if you care about rewards. Using them is a choice the author makes.

If they did it on purpose. But it might have been accidentally, unknowingly, done before they gave no rewards, or for plot or balancing reasons inevitable.

I consider viable enemies giving zero rewards a bug.
It is a collateral damage of what was hopefully only meant as a temporary quick-fix for some farming issue. Less rewards is fine, but zero for something that puts up a fight is wrong. (Especially when you can e.g. build melee-only critters that DO give XP but cant fight back at a flyer.) One can claim writers should test all their arcs over and over, and that they should plaster them with warnings that a critter gives no rewards, but I generally believe one shouldnt give an author a bad rating because of a bug.

Blame the Devs.

They designed the feedback system with neither guidance to the reviewers, nor proper rating categories and to blame players for the way they rate stories (Excluding Griefing) is ridiculous. When given a scale of 1-5 to rate something on and NO information as to what or how it needs to be rated why is anyone surprised that people will rate things differently.

When rating a persons looks on a scale of 1-5 most people will be rated a 3, with some at 2 or 4 and a very rare individual at 1 or 5. This is normal human behavior. Unfortunately if even a single player uses this system for rating stories it quickly puts adequate stories into the black hole. However this is in no way the raters fault as this is a perfectly valid and common method for people to rate looks, movies, books and even games. I tend to agree since moving the curve so most stuff ranks out as a 5 reduces the value of my opinion and winds up ranking the great with the average and spreads the below average across 80% of the spectrum. (In reality I just don’t bother ranking anything less then an honest 5 stars so as not to discourage the artists.)

If anything it can logically be argued that the average story should only get a 2 and above average 3-5 so as to more easily distinguish between the top stories. After all there are 100,000+ stories so why do I care about the average ones. Give me the top 5% of the stories and that is still enough to last for 1000+ hours of gaming. Why play anything that isn’t in the top 5%?

Likewise if you ask most people what they think of X they will base it upon what THEY think and feel. Not what they think OTHERS think and feel. If I ask a smoker to rank restaurants in Lake Tahoe then I shouldn’t be surprised if she gives those that ban smoking a lower grade. Even if the city banned smoking, she is still likely to compare them based upon her experiences before the smoking ban or when going to neighboring cities that allow smoking.

The restaurant may not like the fact that a lower review was given and the non smoker may find the review to be less then helpful. However many smokers will find the review to be spot on, and will look for restaurants elsewhere, or stay home and eat. Thus the review is accurate and valid.

And if you think that a sign out front will make the smoker enjoy the restaurant more, it won’t. All it will do is keep some smokers away. However those who still come in because something on the menu sounded good, will still rank it lower then the restaurant in Reno that allows smoking.

Blame the Devs for having a single star system with NO DIRECTIONS, as opposed to a questionnaire with NO STARS, or at the very least directions. Blame the devs for changing the system and forcing the artist to choose between their creative ideals and their desire to get a good ranking, But blaming a reviewer for giving an HONEST opinion is idiotic and just as important will accomplish NOTHING since the reviewer is unlikely to enjoy your story more after you chew them out.

HP Lovecat