Hall of Fame requirements need revisiting

I still believe the proper course of action is to try to grow the player base, promoting Mission Architect to be more popular, so that people can naturally achieve 1000 plays routinely. I do think this is a realistic goal -- if Dr. Aeon and his cronies and the player base both work towards it. I know for a fact that hundreds of people are playing Mission Architect, albeit on a casual basis where they really are only looking at the front page of the search interface. What we need is to get these people trying other arcs that aren't just on the front page. I feel like this can be done by:

* Improving the search tool and/or providing alternate search tools

>> A better search tool would be nice (but this isn't a magic bullet, witness how unpopular the new market interface is)

>> Player-provided search tools and word of mouth definitely help (this is one of the reasons I have started the "Alternate Contact Tree for Mission Architect" thread)

* Making it more fun and exciting to play Mission Architect story arcs

>> Writing better story arcs (we all need to do this)

>> Identifying the best story arcs for players to try out (Aeon's Dev Choices, Bubbawheat's Player Choice Awards and every single reviewer out there reviewing arcs helps with this; and it is a shame that every single one of these seems to be drying out)

>> Reasonable but non-exploitative rewards so casual players don't feel like MA is a waste of time (the current patch has hurt this badly; the ball's in the devs' court for solving this)

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Leaving that argument aside, however, I still think it would not be the correct choice to lower the current Hall of Fame standard from 1000 plays and 5 stars. It is self-evidently possible to achieve this standard -- after all, an arc just achieved Hall of Fame, which I believe spawned this entire discussion. So it is achievable, albeit very rare.

However, if the devs lowered the requirements for Hall of Fame, I believe every current Hall of Fame author would be completely justified in being furious at the devs for cheapening the value of their achievement. I know that if I had a 1000+ 5 star arc and suddenly you only needed 100 5 star votes to get Hall of Fame, I would be miffed. Just looking at how many people are annoyed that they lowered the "Epic Archetype Unlocked!" flag to level 20 (which is arguably ONLY A POSITIVE for players, but I still see people ***** about n00b nouveau kheldians) tells me that pretty much everyone would.

If we do want a lower standard, like 100 5 star votes or whatever, give it a different name, like "Popular", "Hot" or "Best of Mission Architect". I know they have the ability to do this - remember the "Master Builder" and similar badges that Mission Architect originally had? The requirements for "Master Builder" were "Have one of your arcs earn 100 votes with at least a 4 star average rating". They could perhaps change this from granting the player a badge (which infuriated the badging community), to adding some kind of "Best of Mission Architect" tag to the arc itself. Possibly reaching "Best of" status should be enough to grant the extra story arc slot, also; I think most authors who achieve a highly rated 100+ vote arc probably should be encouraged to write more arcs, anyway. But still leave the "Hall of Fame" tag at 1000 plays.

In other words, we should add a new honor without watering down the old one.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. A lot.

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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman I still believe the proper course of action is to try to grow the player base, promoting Mission Architect to be more popular, so that people can naturally achieve 1000 plays routinely. I do think this is a realistic goal

You seem to be the only one who thinks that 1000 is remotely realistic. It was hardly realistic even during the mad days when AE was brand spanking new!

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>> Writing better story arcs (we all need to do this)

That is pretty unhelpful PW. That's like telling someone having trouble moving something to just "grow stronger".

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>> Identifying the best story arcs for players to try out (Aeon's Dev Choices, Bubbawheat's Player Choice Awards and every single reviewer out there reviewing arcs helps with this; and it is a shame that every single one of these seems to be drying out)

Aeon's contests haven't generated that much good will, especially when it became apparent just what sort of audience you have to write for to even stand a chance. Also the Player's Choice have the problems of 1) they were being done too often and 2) the categories kept changing so many arcs were often getting excluded due to not being eligible all of the sudden.

As for the reviewers drying up, it doesn't help that the last few months have been very busy for a lot of people (final exams for those who are students, big work projects) but also few people are trying to step up and fill the void being left either.

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>> Reasonable but non-exploitative rewards so casual players don't feel like MA is a waste of time (the current patch has hurt this badly; the ball's in the devs' court for solving this)

And their lack of action on the matter only makes things worse with every week that goes by. It will be even worse when Going Rogue goes live and people are too busy playing with the new shinies to give a damn if the nerf has been fixed.

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Leaving that argument aside, however, I still think it would not be the correct choice to lower the current Hall of Fame standard from 1000 plays and 5 stars. It is self-evidently possible to achieve this standard -- after all, an arc just achieved Hall of Fame, which I believe spawned this entire discussion. So it is achievable, albeit very rare.

An arc that was not a farm finally made it after how many months? And how many of those other HoFs were not only made in the first 2 months of AE but got there mostly by ratings farming?

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However, if the devs lowered the requirements for Hall of Fame, I believe every current Hall of Fame author would be completely justified in being furious at the devs for cheapening the value of their achievement. I know that if I had a 1000+ 5 star arc and suddenly you only needed 100 5 star votes to get Hall of Fame, I would be miffed.

Screw 'em. Seriously. Most of the authors of those old HoFs, and many of the original DCs as well, never touched AE again after that. How many of them are ever active in these forums, or even play the game anymore? How many of them will care, or even NOTICE?

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If we do want a lower standard, like 100 5 star votes or whatever, give it a different name, like "Popular", "Hot" or "Best of Mission Architect". I know they have the ability to do this - remember the "Master Builder" and similar badges that Mission Architect originally had? The requirements for "Master Builder" were "Have one of your arcs earn 100 votes with at least a 4 star average rating". They could perhaps change this from granting the player a badge (which infuriated the badging community), to adding some kind of "Best of Mission Architect" tag to the arc itself. Possibly reaching "Best of" status should be enough to grant the extra story arc slot, also; I think most authors who achieve a highly rated 100+ vote arc probably should be encouraged to write more arcs, anyway.

Ok, not that bad of an idea.

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In other words, we should add a new honor without watering down the old one.

There was little honor to it to begin with. We all remember how some of those HoF's got there, especially the one where the author would just go around 5-starring as many arcs as possible every day with the same comment asking you to return the favor. It was pretty damn obvious when he'd 5-star all 3 of your arcs in under a minute and send that same message 3 times.

Flea got me thinking so I went all the way back starting from 6/29/09, which was the day I15 went live, through to 4/30/10 to see the actual number of arcs that have gotten over 100 plays.

The breakdown is by month published. (F) = Farms (all defunct btw) and (S) = Story.

2009
July---------- 24 (F) - 7 (S)
August------ 15 (F) - 0 (S)
September- 5 (F) -- 0 (S)
October----- 1 (F) -- 1 (S)
November-- 3 (F) -- 2 (S)
December--- 6 (F) --1 (S)

2010
January----- 7 (F) -- 0 (S)
February---- 4 (F) -- 1 (S)
March-------- 6 (F) -- 0 (S)
April---------- 0 (F) -- 0 (S)

Some Factoids

- During this time period approximately 27,600 arcs were published that still exist in the system.

- Excluding the defunct farms, out of 27,600 arcs 12 reached 100+ plays or .0004347% of the arcs published.

- Of the 12 arcs to reach 100+ plays during that time 10 are currently rated 4 stars and 2 are rated 5 stars.

- The arc with 4 stars with the highest number of plays currently has 265 plays.

- The arc with 5 stars with the highest number of plays currently has 165 plays.


WN

So, out of curiosity, has anyone thought to PM Dr. Aeon about this thread and/or its topic? I know he might be reading it, but it couldn't hurt if no one has yet.

Alrighty, I've been doing some thinking and I have come up with what I consider to be a workable plan that might address many of the problems that we have all identified. There have been quite a few threads floating around the forums in the past few days asking a variety of questions about MA. A lot of this will address what I consider to be the concerns of the average player, not the AE expert community. It has become more and more obvious that those of us who devote a lot of time and energy to AE are not numerous enough to sustain a healthy player population for the feature. Wrong Number's statistics support this assertion.

Here are the most common complaints that I've seen from players:

1.) "I could not find a good arc to play" - this is BY FAR the most common complaint I've seen regarding MA and probably the single greatest contributing factor to the loss in popularity of the feature in recent months.

2.) "The arc was not what I thought it was" - this comes from players on both sides of the story/leveling divide. Most of the time, they will simply exit the mission and select another, although some have indicated a propensity to rate an arc down if there are elements in it that they do not like. Some will downrate for the presence of custom enemies, some will downrate for reduced rewards, others for other technical elements, others for too much story, others for too little story, etc.

3.) "Rewards are not good" - common, probably a little less common after I17, but still common enough because of the ally hotfix and other exploit fixes in the past.

4.) "DC/HoF arcs are broken" - This leads to the perception that either the devs are not careful in their selection process or that the material players are capable of producing simply is not that good. Having played through numerous arcs by a wide variety of authors, I can attest that this is not true, but my word or even all of the words of those who populate this section of the forum is not enough if that perception becomes widespread and entrenched.

Okay, so dealing only with these 4 items, let's identify the underlying problems and look at what is possible and come up with a possible plan.

1.) Arc Clutter
2.) Unfriendly Interface
3.) Player Disinterest/Distaste for the Feature
4.) Outdated Arc Honoring Process

Can these things be addressed in meaningful ways? I believe they can. Some of this will be a repeat of prior suggestions by me and other players, some of it might be relatively new. I think each step in the proposed process will be necessary to address one of the above identified problems.

Proposal:

Step I: Remove the Arc Clutter. There are literally thousands of arcs that are abandoned, unfinished, broken beyond repair, or otherwise not in use in the system at the moment. This is a repeat of a suggestion that I think was initially proposed by Fred, but it might have been someone else. This is how I would implement it.

a.) Make an announcement in the forums that in 30 days, all arcs that have not been either played or edited by the author for 90 days prior to the date of the purge will be unpublished by the system.
b.) Two weeks prior to the date of the purge, make an in-game announcement regarding the purge repeat the in-game announcement 1 week prior to the purge as well.
c.) On the date of the purge, unpublish all arcs that have neither been played nor edited for a period of 90 days.
d.) Repeat the purge once every six months using the same criteria.

Step II: Address the following weaknesses to the MA interface.

a.) Create a distinct tab for 'story' arcs and a distinct tab for 'leveling' arcs. We cannot increase player participation in the feature without acknowledging that different players want different things from the feature than others do. There already exists the function for the player to associate his arcs with certain keywords. It should be possible to give the player the ability to label his arc as a 'story' arc or a 'leveling' arc.

b.) Create a third tab called 'friends.' These arcs would be published, but unlike other published arcs, if a player labels an arc a 'friends' arc, it is only visible to players on any of the player's 'friends' lists. A lot of players have indicated that they create arcs solely as rp tools for their group or as challenge arcs for the group or even as nothing more than leveling tools for their group. This would have the advantage of both reducing the overal arc clutter for the wider community AND making arcs written by supergroup members easier to find.

c.) Create separate tabs for current HoF and DC arcs. If the current stars system is maintained, this will ensure that the HoF and DC arcs do not dominate the first three pages of the interface, but still make them easy to find.

Additionally, I believe that in the event of a patch that renders a HoF or DC arc unplayable for whatever reason, the arc's creator should have the ability to put the arc into a hibernation state until he/she has the time and opportunity to fix it. The arc will still be listed among the Honored arcs, but will not be playable until the creator takes it out of hibernation state.

D.) Create a tab called 'Proposed Hall of Fame Arcs' under both 'story' arcs and 'leveling' arcs. The necessity for this tab will become clear once I reach the next section.

The 'friends,' 'HoF' and 'Dc' tabs will be self contained. The 'story' and 'leveling' tabs will contain all of the subheadings currently in the interface, along with the new 'Proposed HoF'subheading. This should result in players being able to more easily find the type of arc they are interested in playing without having to wade through a lot of arcs that do not fit what they are seeking. Players primarily interested in story will find the arcs labeled story arcs. Players primarily seeking leveling arcs and farms, (not exploitative ones), will be able to identify them quickly and neither side will have to deal with feeling like the interface is cluttered with a bunch of arcs they don't want to play.

Step III: Address the outdated system used by players to honor other players' arcs.

Personally, I think the Developer's Choice system is fine as it stands. However, I would like to see more developers involved in it, but if Dr. Aeon will be the only developer doing it, that is fine too. However, in the planning stages, as others have noted, it was believed that Developers Choice arcs would be outnumbered by Hall of Fame arcs and this has not happened, mainly because it was assumed at the outset that each individual arc would receive more plays.

While I believe that it is likely that arcs will start receiving more plays organically if Steps I and II are implemented, I do not think 1000 plays with a 5-star average is a plausible expectation. Unlike others, I do not think that removing the star system entirely is a good idea, because I think the small ticket reward being tied to the star system as a method for players to give arcs they like a small reward is a good idea.

However, I do not think that getting into the HoF should be intrinsically tied to a star average.

The reason for this is simple. According to your internal scale, you may think an arc is outstanding - 5 stars, but still not think it's worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Consider this for example: You may think that, say, Donovan McNabb is an outstanding quarterback and deserves to be rewarded as an outstanding quarterback. However, acknowledging that he is an outstanding quarterback, you might feel using whatever criteria that he is not worthy of being in the pro football hall of fame.

The same principle applies here.

Use stars to allow players to reward other players for the experience they just had through bonus tickets. And if the player really believes that the arc he just played is worthy of the Hall of Fame, then he/she can take an extra step and nominate it for the Hall of fame.

After 50 such nominations, the arc will begin to appear in the 'Proposed Hall of Fame Arcs' tab under the master heading by which it is labeled, either 'story' or 'leveling.'

At that point, it must receive another 200 votes to achieve HoF status.

What would this accomplish? Well, it would give the player population easy accessibility to the quality arcs through the proposed Hall of Fame tab because at least 50 players will have had to have nominated it. It also removes the tendency to either 1 star or 5 star an arc, leading to more organic averages. This should appeal to posters like Venture, who believe that the current star system is broken because of the tendency of players to over-reward due to the inherent power that low reviews have over high reviews. Divorcing the HoF process from the star system has a number of inherent advantages.

In closing, I believe that AE is one of the greatest tools for both storytelling and leveling ever introduced into an MMO. It has the potential to give us as players a greater sense of ownership than any development team has ever allowed its player base to have. However, it is at a transitional point right now and is in real danger of completely fading from the collective interest of the player because of its implementation. I believe that these suggestions would go far in revitalizing interest and giving players the ability to do what they currently cannot - find the arcs they would want to play when they want to play them, feel like the work they put into creating an arc is worth the effort they expended, and not feel as though what they are doing is a waste of time.

At any rate, that would be my plan. I am certain there are weaknesses in it, but fixing anything starts with a first step.

Edit: Just thought of something.

It is pretty unlikely that every single player who has currently 5-starred an arc will take the time to go back and replay the arc to nominate it for the Hall of Fame, so to address that likelihood and to ensure that the players who currently have a lot of plays and a 5 star average are treated fairly, I would 'grandfather' arcs with 5 star averages into the new system by treating their current number of 5 star ratings as Hall of Fame nominations.

I believe that, at the moment, because of the way the system is described, giving an arc 5 stars accomplishes virtually the same thing as nominating it for the Hall of Fame.

Obviously, for quite a few arcs, this would result in Hall of Fame status immediately, but I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing.