Regarding Recent Changes to Architect

But they don't check every arc; they check arcs that are reported. Nobody knows how that system works or how many arcs are reported in a given time period.

I know that they can restore an unpublished arc so they are probably all still on the server and just no longer showing up in searches, which means that they can still check an arc that was published briefly, violently exploited, and then unpublished.

I still think what we need is a great purge. Mark all arcs currently in the system and hide them from searches that don't specifically target their ID numbers or authors. Remove the mark when an arc is republished. This would push abandoned arcs under the rug while authors who care about their work won't be affected beyond a five minute republishing spree.

It seems clear to me that interest in MA is at a low point right now.

You can tell just by looking at this message board forum. This is the only thread on this forum that seems to be really active at this time.

My 5 star arc with 46 plays has gotten no plays in weeks. In fact the only plays any of my arcs have gotten in a very long time are from 2 in game friends and PW because I asked for a review.

At the moment I have no motivation to update any of my arcs because I don't have any idea what sort of fix is coming or even for sure when it will be implemented.

Where I work as a software developer, if there is ever a fix that breaks things it is backed out. I strongly feel that the recent fix should be backed out because it hurts the people who care about MA. Exploiters will always find ways to exploit and it seems the wrong people have been hurt by the fix.

I also strongly agree with a purge of arcs that have not been published/republished in say 90 days. Of course devs choice/HOF arcs would be excluded and perhaps even 5 star arcs with more than some fixed number of plays (if the number is high enough it would be easy to check if they are legit).

It is very sad to me that a tool with such great potential to add so much to the game is in the state that it is in now. I hope something is done soon.

The Great Purge would only clear out the dreck currently in the system. In order to keep the system clear they would need to do purges every few months, because if it was simply a system of "x days without an update or a play = hidden" then the outdated arcs would get plays, just to tick us off.

Yes, it sounds like a lot of effort to go to just to tick us and the devs off. I fully believe that some people are willing to go to any lengths to be jerkasses, feel free to prove me wrong.

The difficulty in creating a clear and unambiguous definition of "exploit" reminds me of the similar difficulty in creating a legal definition of "pornography" which led to the famous declaration of Justice Potter Stewart that "I know it when I see it".

Come to think of it, there are a number of other parallels between exploits and pornography.

Ok, since my first suggestion seems to be a math and coding nightmare can one of the math guru's tell me what the problem would be with simply placing a cap on the XP obtainable per mission?

The devs have been data mining for some time now and I suspect they have a good idea what kind of XP an average 8 player pug can produce by doing scanners for example. Given the fact a solo player can set their difficulty to be equal to a team of 8, why can't they just say no matter what you put in the mish the maximum amount of XP obtainable is "X"?

If you fill a map with enough enemies to go over that limit they produce nothing. Would you then be able to roll some things back into the MA that have been removed because they cannot produce accelerated rewards?

I am also all for a complete mission purge. Allow folks enough time, and send an email notice to folks that have been away, so they can unpublish their work. Then wipe the slate clean and insitute some form of Venture's system where once an arc is published it must be attended to by the author or played by the public during a certain period of time or it will be automatically removed from the listing.

This is pretty far afield from the original topic, but regarding "purging" old arcs, I think you could implement a much less drastic solution as follows:

* Create a new "freshness" classification for arcs. An arc can be "fresh" or "stale".
* A newly published arc is marked "stale".
* An arc is marked "fresh" if someone (including the author) plays through the arc from beginning to end.
* An arc is marked "stale" if the author republishes it. (But becomes "fresh" again if the author playtests it.)
* Every patch (or possibly only patches that affect MA) automatically marks all arcs "stale", except for honored arcs (guest author, dev choice, hall of fame). Honored arcs are permanently "fresh".
* Add a "freshness" search criteria allowing users to search for "fresh" "stale" or "don't care" on freshness.
* Set the default search to only search for "fresh" arcs.

Advantages:
* Automatically expires old arcs that are not maintained, without actually deleting them. (However, you can save a beloved arc whose author has vanished by playing through it on your own.)
* Encourages authors to playtest their own arcs after each republish and after each patch. (This is a good practice in general.)
* Low development effort (at least, I think so)
* If you vanish for a year and your arc goes stale, you can come back and it's still there, though it may need some sprucing up.


This doesn't address the exp issues, but would address the clutter issues. Not sure if cleaning up the arc clutter is even on dev radar at this point (I'm sure there's a lot of bigger fish to fry), but thought I'd put this forward just in case.

I'd hate to lose the plays and stars I already have on my arc(s), but if it means actually fixing the system and getting rid of all the ****, I'll deal.