How do you define a "new author"?

I'm still waiting for my "break".

Hundreds of plays was a good metric back when AE first came out, but now you kind of have to aim lower - short of being DC'd it's difficult to break the double digits at all, if you even get more than 10-20.

Case in point: Astoria in D Minor was published about a week or so after AE hit live, so EVERYONE was playing stuff and D Minor was able to get a couple hundred plays in the first couple months. The Beating Heart of Astoria followed it while AE was still pretty popular, and has a little over a hundred plays now.

My latest three arcs combined, however, don't even break 50 plays (Well, I really mean rates - but you can't actually see how many plays you have so that's all I have to go by), and the most recent of them is almost two months old. This is even after Astoria in D Minor got made Dev's Choice and thus you would expect a bit of spill over from people playing that one wanting to try my other arcs. I won't say the AE is dead, because I do still get a couple of tells every day or two from people running my arcs so people are still out there playing the AE, but it's not nearly as popular as it was when it was new.

Also as far as I can tell, managing the AE is Dr. Aeon's job entirely, so I'm pretty sure he does have the clout to actually do something like that - IF he thought it was a good idea. My guess is he wouldn't actually be willing to go through and clean up the database because A: You know people would complain about it and B: It would take a AWFUL lot of work.

A new ratings system could work, but it would probably take a while to implement, and just coming up with a better system itself is tricky (Sure it's easy to come up with ALTERNATIVE systems, but the key part is you have to make the argument that it's a BETTER system).

*Edit*

To respond to the actual topic, maybe the solution to all the argument is to make two categories instead of one - one for "New" author, and one for "Unknown" author. The former would only apply to authors whose first arc was posted in the last X months or something along those lines, and the latter would maybe have a limit on total number of plays on all of their arcs combined, or some other metric you could measure it by (And obviously anything previously honoured in some sense like DC, HoF, players choice, etc. would be disqualified).

To further clarify, the key reason why you might want to do both categories rather than just the latter (Since the intention seems like it was more the latter than the former) is that winning the categories implies different things - best "New" author makes you go "Hey, this is someone I should watch", while best "Unknown" author makes you go "Man he's got a bunch of great arcs I never played!"

I don't really know if I like the idea of "Best New Author" for a few reasons. First off we are honestly all new authors. Not a one of us has even a year experience. Secondly, as shown here, the term is so open to interpretation that no matter what parameters you end up setting there will be loopholes and people include/excluded that should not be. Maybe it is just too soon for "Best New Author".

Other idea's that might work:

Best Sequel

Best Use of a Cannon Character

Best Big Bad

Best Twist Ending


Another thing, and I have no idea if this is possible, how about arcs that win the PC awards get a PC Award symbol in MA that lasts for a month and gives them a place on page 1? Maybe give the annual ones the year and have a new set every year? If not a page bump, how about a search filter or tab for them?

WN

Simply being in the Best Twist category kind of ruins the twist, don't you think?

Also, considering how much drama was started over the "official" contest, can you imagine the kind of **** storm that would start if the player's choice winners got put in as a special search option?

It just seems to me that including arcs that win a forum contest in a similar category as dev's choice and hall of fame arcs is a surefire way of starting ridiculous amounts of drama.

Nominees list: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=196272

I think trying to determine any definition of what a "new" author might be is fraught with peril and doomed to failure. An alternative might be to have an entire different competition for new authors (who define themselves as such) with lesser rewards and kudos. If established authors enter these novice awards, sure they might win, but wouldn't their time be better spent entering the full awards. This is all of course in relation to the MA Player Awards and wouldn't help much outside that scope.

On the topic of Risk vs Reward in MA, Exp seems to be the be all and end all for most recent players I've tried to run through my arcs. On two attempts last week the team collapsed as players wanted to do something with more Exp. So, it does seem likely that if rewards were standardised with those outside MA then more players would play AE missions. I'm still in this for the story-telling (which I'm learning fast I've got lots of room for improvement in) and the creative aspect. Lots of players just want the phat loot.