Star Rating = System Failure

Let me make the following suggestion, since I haven't seen it show up in this thread yet:

Include a "recent activity" date on the arc entry. This gets updated every time someone either starts the arc or edits it. Include "recent activity" as part of the basic sorting criteria.

This way arcs that aren't seeing any play or revision fall to the bottom of the list. Arcs that were started and abandoned, or junk arcs, should fall away and arcs that see activity should float to the top.

If you're an arc owner and you want to be sure your arcs stay in the "current" pile, be sure to have some activity on each arc every month.

Aside from that, I totally endorse the idea of moving DC and HoF arcs to separate areas on the display, and out of the default search screen. The default search screen should show a random dump of the month's active arcs.

I also endorse the idea of binary ratings for arcs. Either you vote for it (1), or you don't vote (0). Each vote for an arc is worth 5 tickets to the architect, and if you are allowed to vote more than once, the timer has a cooling period of one week (so no more than one vote a week).

EDIT: Oops, make that 25 tickets, not 5.

Our rating system might as well be binary anyway: every time I've done a census the 4-star section was larger than all the other sections combined.

When I was still doing this, I reached the point where if I couldn't 5 star an arc in-game, I'd post my thoughts and not rate it at all.

Intuitively, I believe WN has a valid point.

However, my own experience really doesn't support it. Until the last review, "The Long Road Back" was sitting at a 5 star average for three months with 5 plays. It did not drop to a 4 star average until the last review happened. That means that, by and large, the few who'd played it to that point were either merciful or honestly didn't think it sucked.

Mathematically, it's pretty easy at 5 plays to figure out how many 'points' I had. There were 5 plays. It had a 5 star average. A 2 star rating dropped it to a 4.

As I understand it, anything between a 4 and a 5 is a '5' according to the rankings. This means that I had either 21 or 22 points at that point. 21+2 = 23 or 3.83. 22+2 = 24. That's a straight 4. So there are a few ways to reach those point combinations. Most likely, I had a couple of 5's and 3 4's. Both AE guys rated it a 5, so it's pretty likely that everyone else rated it a 4. Either that or there were 3 5's, a 4 and a 3.

Either or. The game rating to that point was a '5' and the arc was still not being played at all, despite getting 2 5 star ratings from the Aentertainment Tonight reviewers. So what does that mean?

So that basically, to me, means that it actually doesn't much matter what the rating average of the arc is. The system itself is broken. There are presumably more than 340,000 missions now. The chances of any arc emerging from that large a pool, no matter how good or how bad, is diminishingly small.

Well, that and the devs pretty much decided they didn't want people using MA anymore. But that's another issue.

I just wanted to chime in that it's not the rating system that's broken, it's the MA search window. Aside from 5 stars being higher on the list than 4 stars and so on, I can't make any damn sense of how that thing sorts out arcs. Add to that the fact that invalid arcs aren't automatically removed from the search, and you've got the 4 star section (where pretty much any arc with any kind of decent amount of plays almost always ends up) filled with old farming missions.

Frankly, that's probably the biggest problem with the system as it works right now. It functions like a giant heap of things that you have to dig through to find what you want, instead of a store where you browse through products that are on display. Every arc that hasn't been taken down is up there forever, regardless of whether anyone has played it in months, or if it can even BE played. Implementing a system where arcs become "inactive" and no longer show up on the search window after say, a month without anyone playing, editing, or perhaps the author hitting a "refresh my arcs" button in the published stories tab would clear up the system immensely.

If no one is playing the arc, and the author doesn't care enough to hit a button every month to update their active status, then as far as I'm concerned no one will really miss the arc, and it should be cleared out of the search window so arcs that people are playing and arcs with authors with an interest in getting plays can be showcased properly.

Working in a web development business, I can say with complete honesty that it's what is obvious in the user interface that determines the ways people use a system. What is first seen is what's most important to the user. Right now? That's stars. (And the dev choice/guest icons) The yellow, shiny things that glow on top of that green list just jump out. Hide the stars under a drop down, all of a sudden you are saying that those are of secondary importance.This isn't enough, however, if the first page is determined by stars.What you put on the first page is ALWAYS the most important, most used. I really like the idea of starting with a 'random' page; this means there's always a chance your arc could get played, no matter the rating. It also puts more emphasis on people simply submitting arcs, rather than just getting the highest rating possible.

Let's take a step back. The devs, I can say with pretty fair certainty, wanted the AE arcs by players to work as 'filler' content, especially in the downtime between issues to counteract some of the boredom/inactivity that happens when the new stuff has been 'used up.' Some may say that this ain't so, that arcs are just meant for you and your friends; this ain't true. Not with the way they balanced the star rating system. And there's no way friends can give enough content to use in casual play. I can make a long arc for a week or two of my play time sessions, and it will be used up in an hour and a half. More people's arcs must be used to give the MA continuous use. Like it or not, the AE is failing to do this to a large degree, despite the many stories available. If the AE functionality fails, the onus to make new content is soley on the devs, despite the time spent to give players the chance to do so. The biggest problem with the AE is that it just doesn't deliver a good gameplay experience. Why? Junk. Yes, people are not always going to make dev's choice arcs, and yes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. But in that huge mass, there has to be some good ones. Hey, some may make arcs that the devs would never choose that players enjoy MORE than what the developers may pick. The only way the AE will work and get used is if it can give players a fun time. As such, it will have to lead them to this. The only way in place compare arcs are stars.

But stars are just data, let's get back to what people mean when they insert that data. 4 stars can mean "good," as can five stars. Nobody gives a one or two star rating for something they really like, though. As such, let's not say that it's a matter of five being five times as good as one, but that someone really liked something. So, if a mission has 1400 four star ratings, and 10 five star ratings, it's actually more likely to please someone than a mission with 12 five star ratings. So, if a player could search by popularity of content, the system would be better off serving the 1400 four star-rated arc before the less tested 22 five star rating content.

But this is still all using stars, it should also give a chance to the content that hasn't been given a chance to get rated. I mentioned I'd like the front page random: just to renig on that a bit, what if the top 2-3 slots were always from a pool of the most recently played/edited/published arcs? (replacing current dev's choice/ guest arcs) It could be randomly drawn from something using a broader time frame, like days, to avoid people just sitting by hitting edit/republish to hog the front page.

Somebody mentioned having a separate tab for dev's choice/guest content. That seems a great idea, perhaps adding hall of fame arcs to this. That way the tried content would be easily available for those wishing for it, but wouldn't crowd out the many other arcs. And let's be honest, these arcs don't move much, so having them separate, but well labeled would allow people make a stable go-to point when looking for missions.

Having the search feature open would also let people see that yes, they could specify their tastes, and find stuff in said flavors. Yeah, it's there, but I hate to say it: people DO NOT explore UI often. For many folks, any content under an 'expand' type option=hidden.

Seldom makes some good points. As for myself I don't really have much to add to this conversation that I haven't already repeated ad nauseam somewhere else.

That said, while this topic has been discussed to death it's still worth talking about, if only to tell the devs that yes, people still want AE to be fixed and haven't forgotten about it.

In addition to my firm belief that we should not give in game low ratings to people who submit their arcs to this forum for feedback, I am in complete agreement that the MA interface should be changed.

I think that a separate tab for the Dev's Choice, Guest Author and Hall of Fame arcs is a great idea. These arcs have already attained what many of us may be working for. It will still be easy to find them and it will give more exposure to other arcs.

I like the idea of random arcs showing initially on the first page, with some 4 and 5 star arcs, and some completely random arcs as well.

A way to identify griefers would also be great. Perhaps if a rating was more than 2 below the current in-game rating, the author could get an alert. So a 5 star arc that got a 1 or 2 rating could trigger an alert and a 4 star arc that got a 1 rating would do the same thing. At this point the author could choose to report a potential grief rating for investigation. A different implementation of this would be to not allow a vote that is more than 2 below the current in-game rating. This would prevent accidental 1 star votes on a 4 or 5 star arc and give griefers less impact. They could still 3 star a 5 star, but that would make it easier for a quality arc to recover. If the arc wasn't truly 5 star quality, over time 3 star and 4 star votes would lower it.

Finally, I think archiving stale arcs would be great. However, I consider the fact that an author refreshes an arc as a more important criteria for keeping it in the active search results than whether it was recently played. An arc from an author who no longer even plays the game could get a random play, and keeping that arc in the system instead of an arc from an author who cares enough about his or her arc to refresh it would be unfair.

Hopefully the devs will consider at least the new tab idea presented in this thread.

This is getting pretty far from the original topic, but regarding stale arcs, I'd suggest dividing published arcs into: Untested, Tested and Protected.

When an arc is first published, and each time it is re-published, it becomes Untested.

When an Untested arc is successfully played through (by anyone - usually the author, but could be someone else), it becomes Tested.

When a new CoH patch is released (or maybe just patches that directly affect MA), all Tested arcs are invalidated, reverting to Untested until someone plays through them.

When an arc becomes a Dev Choice or Hall of Fame, it becomes Protected (immune to change, can't be invalidated by a patch).

The default MA search should show only Tested and Protected arcs, but under "more" there should be an option to see Untested arcs, if desired. The "my published stories" search should always show all of your own arcs (even if Untested), though maybe a graphic showing which ones need testing would be helpful.

Advantages of this approach:
- Gradually filters out stale content.
- But you can still find the stale content if you really want to.
- Encourages MA authors to perform regression testing after a patch or a re-publish (note: it's a good idea for authors to do this anyway).
- Discourages MA authors from writing arcs that are too long/too hard/too tedious, since they have to play through it regularly.
- If I have a favorite arc by an author who quit the game, I can keep it from going stale by testing it myself.

Disadvantages:
- Won't filter out farms (except for stale ones no one is playing).
- Increases overhead required by an Author to maintain each story arc.
- Requires some development effort to implement.

It's all idle speculation unless someone volunteers to code it. But here's my 2inf in case anyone is reading it.

I agree, but the thing about the AE system in general is that there are so many people using it that arcs are bound to get lost in the sea of arcs, especially ones made around the launch of AE.

Newer arcs, and authors in particular, have less chance of being played because they will have either an 'unsatisfactory rating' or they won't have many play-throughs of the arc, resulting it getting lost in the better, more played and more polished arcs.

Heck, at least fix the AE Channel. Don't hide it away because it's dead. Well, at least it is EU side. You see about two, three people max talking on it at least once a month if your lucky. Most of the time it's only a quick question, no one bothers to advertise their arc on that channel anymore because no one's listening.