AE, worst issue release since game began?
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2010-04-10 06:32 in Mission Architect
Quote:
DOOOOOOOOOM!!|
Originally Posted by Solo_One
we had a good run, after the gr surge dies down this game will be dead.
|
Response to that little non sequitur aside, I actually rather like AE. Or rather, I like the idea of it. The execution, like almost any other prototype, no matter how well thought out, sucked when implemented for the first time.
I don't mind the farms as long as they present a commensurate challenge. I openly point and laugh at anyone complaining about an exploit patch. But I also want better AE. Between the bugs and limitations, it has become nearly impossible to find a good arc - good by your definition - among the sea of worthless crud - again, by your definition.
There is no way to stand out. Farmers will want their lewt, and let them, but some of us are writing for the benefit of prestige, and no matter how much effort you put into an arc, the popularity and exposure of that arc will ultimately be a result of happenstance. For example, I have an arc that has over nine hundred ratings, and I can count negative comments on the fingers of one hand, but well over two thirds of those ratings are from teams I assembled and ran with myself. Word-of-mouth or being marked as a developer's choice is the only way of rising above the masses, and for both of these you need either abnormal amount of promotional effort, or spectacular luck.
But regardless, I have hopes. It's very easy to draw the parallels between AE and the City of Heroes as a whole. They both began promising, but clunky and flaw-ridden, and like the game itself, I have faith that one by one, those flaws will be hammered out and improved on.
I don't agree that "too much" time and effort has been put into AE. I would like to see more put into it, until it is made to actually work. Failing that, yes, I would like to see it pulled entirely than continue to exist in this broken, incomplete state. But I really really hope it doesn't come to that.
This feature had so much potential, and still does. It hurts to see so many players abusing it for quick rewards and the devs responding to every problem with a one-size-fits-all hammer that demolishes, bit by bit, what they and we created.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Quote:
There used to be an MMO which was really just some graphics slapped over a MUD, called Darklands. It looked a little like Ultima V, with 2D sprite graphics and a square grid. Pretty simple. One thing it had was a voting system for rulership of the different towns in the world and the rulers could make some laws. Worked out fine for a while. Then someone bought 15 accounts and got some friends each with 3 or 4. Most MMOs have pretty small populations. They voted themselves into office in every town. Made it "illegal" to roleplay in character. Sent violators off to jail, banished their characters from the game, etc.|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
This is actually a really good approach. Especially the part about authors. As of now, not many people have much incentive to make legit, fun story arcs. Taking myself as an example, I have tons of ideas for story arcs; but I have no incentive. I keep thinking I'm gonna go invest a few hours in making an arc...and then only 3 of my friends are gonna play it and give it 5 Stars cause they're my friends, and it'll be forgotten in 2 days. And me, and the majority of potential AE users are not the types to go and actively advertise their arcs. Give me and people like me an incentive to make proper stories in AE. Make the Developers' Choice system more active and visible. Put in more rewards for authors! Things like badges, cool temporary powers, tickets, and maybe even things like Reward Merits! Of course...this would all need to be looked at from an exploiters' point of view as well... |
You already see this same phenominon on the AE missions where anything that's not a farm gets voted off the top page of search results by people who have created farms.
If you create a system that gives a reward or a badge for a 5-starred mission, then what will happen is organized groups will repeatedly 5-star crap in order to get the reward. Then delete the crap and do it again and again and again to farm the reward.
Honestly, the easiest way to incentivise the proper use of AE is to remove all rewards whatsoever so the farms go back to regular missions and only the lolrpers use the AE. With no rewards and a tiny audience it will primarily be used for the purpose of storytelling using the same reward that is all poets have in the real world: Reputation among each other.
Now, that is the easiest way but not the best. Craigslist, Youtube etc work because of mass. There are enough users that the abusers tend to get drowned out. The abusers succeed enough for their own happiness, but the rest of us aren't harmed by less than 1% of the activity that they represent. In AE, it is clearly a significant %, though I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what.
In these circumstances the "best" (always a bit of a subjective term) way to handle it is usually manual moderation. There is no way to trust voting or user-generated flags to mark missions as farms, or cannon. the abusers have too many votes. But someone trackable has to go through and manually flag missions, this is a farm that is cannon, that is comedy, that is not cannon, etc. Someone else to monitor the flaggers to ensure that if an abuser gets a flagger on their side that flagger gets removed. Same thing as a mod for the forums or for the hotel reviews on Expedia/Orbitz, etc. Manual moderation by Dev-appointed staff.
Problem is the level of work is outrageous.
So what we need is a third solution. Votes are no good the abusers already have demonstrated reliably and over a decent period of time they have control over the votes in AE. Manual moderation is no good the Devs don't have time and certainly have more important jobs to do.
So we need a third solution. Until we have a third solution, no reward for popular missions should be given out or you are just making a rigged popularity contest only the abusers will win.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
So from reading this thread, it's the regulation of the AE that seems to be the problem. The Devs have created a monster that just gets nerf batted time and time again.
They themselves do not have the time to monitor every arc, but I bet amongst our gaming population we have enough people who have the integrity to "Review" a certain number of arcs for a few hours or so a week.
The exact system would be up to the Devs/Paragon studios etc...email interviews etc, then always renumeration/reward would come up, free play time, in game cossie bits etc could be on offer...after all they're gamers to. A who watches the watchers program to, someone double checking others work 1 or 2 times, all companies should review peoples work from time to time.
Anyway, just an idea at this stage, and nothing to argue about, just discuss and an idea that might be mooted in a brainstormong session.
I think the devs biggest mistake was making an easy-to-use interface. If the system had been complicated (think spreadsheets), that would have been a good enough barrier for entry that would have prevented a lot of potential exploiters from even trying in the first place. Yeah, then people would gripe and moan about it being too complicated, BUT, i think the honesty intelligent and creative members of the community would have been able to wrap their heads around it and produce exactly what they wanted. In addition, more complexity may have yielded more creative control, which would have resulted in better arcs.