Suggested Changes to the MA Interface
By
ArrowRose,
Posted on: 2010-05-22 05:13 in Mission Architect
I am adding this link to a post by Sister Twelve in another thread because it was very well thought out and has lots of good suggestions:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...3&postcount=74
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest
Quote:
Yes.|
Originally Posted by ArrowRose
- Provide separate tabs for Guest Authors, Dev Choice and HoF arcs and have the default tab that is displayed be for the other arcs. This will help provide more visibilty for non-honored arcs. (This is a suggestion I have seen in many previous posts)
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Quote:
| - Provide a warning and require a comment when a player rates an arc 1 star. I have several reasons for this. People have accidentally rated one of my arcs 1 star at least 3 times that I know of. Also many times 1 star ratings are grief ratings and I think by forcing a comment this may cut down on that. The damage a 1 star rating causes, to a quality arc is very hard to recover from. |
The original reason for allowing arcs to be rated without completing them has turned out to be invalid, as those arcs that were supposed to be so horrible and uncompletable that we'd be 1-starring them as a public service are just going to languish in unrated limbo forever, unlikely to ever be seen or played even if we can't 1-star them without finishing them.
So my suggestion: Require the completion of, if not the entire arc, a certain percentage of the arc, before it can be rated. This will effectively put an end to 1-star griefing, as well as people using friends or second accounts to 5-star their atrociously difficult arcs, but will still allow us to down-rate farms (most of which are specifically designed to be easily completed once you reach the ticket cap).
Quote:
| - Provide an option to display how many ratings of each type an arc received. This must already be available in order to compute the overall rating and I think it would be useful to authors and players alike. |
Other changes I would like to see, many of which have been suggested elsewhere:
-A publicly visible "favorites" list. You can choose to use this feature or not; if you choose not to use it your global will not be attached to other people's arcs in any way. If you do choose to use it, clicking an arc that you have added to your list will display your global, and clicking your global from there will display your list. You can add your own arcs to your "favorites" list, thereby allowing a little shameless self-promotion for authors who also play other people's arcs. This list could also have an option to show up for friends, global friends, and supergroup only.
-Searching for "my level" should not display arcs with a range of 1-54. They're pretty much all custom critter arcs that, going by the warnings on many of them, are totally inappropriate for lowbies.
-Allow us to EXCLUDE certain things in searches. Many players do not wish to fight AVs, I refuse to fight Extreme anything, but things like custom groups in general, enemy groups you don't want to fight (Longbow and Arachnos for example), tags that indicate an arc that does not interest you (for example, if you're a squishy, you might choose to avoid arcs tagged as "challenging"), would also be good candidates for exclusion. This would help players narrow down searches to things they would actually want to play.
-Some way of removing outdated and abandoned arcs from the search. I am in favor of simply hiding anything that hasn't been updated in X days, as that would be least punitive but still put onus on the author to actually care. Arcs that are invalidated by a patch should be immediately hidden until they are fixed.
-In keeping with that, albeit a minor thing: when a patch changes something that could have major consequences, it should simply invalidate all affected arcs, not replace the changed thing with some lame default that effectively breaks the arc. I am specifically thinking of all those Hydras with "invalidcritter" over their heads, but I believe arcs have had issues with removed maps and changed objects as well.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
On the subject of level range search:
1. Include a tolerance setting for "my level" search, which will widen the search. E.g. if I am at level 20 and my tolerance is set to +-5, then I searches would also hit arcs whose max level is in 15-19 range and whose min level is in 21-25 range.
2. Include a max level range setting. If I set it to 40, I would get a hit on a 10-50 arc, but would filter out a 1-54, or 5-54 arc.
Other features:
1. Include a last modified date in addition to creation date as viewable and sortable option.
2. Show, at least to author, the number of times an arc has been played/completed.
3. Make a distinction in arc view between pure custom mob groups, mixed custom/standard mob groups (max 50% custom mobs) and groups created just from standard mobs.
[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])
Quote:
/signed on all points|
Originally Posted by Sente_
On the subject of level range search:
1. Include a tolerance setting for "my level" search, which will widen the search. E.g. if I am at level 20 and my tolerance is set to +-5, then I searches would also hit arcs whose max level is in 15-19 range and whose min level is in 21-25 range. 2. Include a max level range setting. If I set it to 40, I would get a hit on a 10-50 arc, but would filter out a 1-54, or 5-54 arc. Other features: 1. Include a last modified date in addition to creation date as viewable and sortable option. 2. Show, at least to author, the number of times an arc has been played/completed. 3. Make a distinction in arc view between pure custom mob groups, mixed custom/standard mob groups (max 50% custom mobs) and groups created just from standard mobs. |
Something I'd like to see right here and now is to readjust the weights on the ratings. If we cannot go to something more sensible and less subjective like a simple Thumbs Up or Down, at least change the system so that giving an arc a 1-star doesn't wipe out the last several 5-stars that arc received. At the very least it'd make ratings griefing a lot less efficient and requiring the player to send a comment in order to give such a low rating would kill off a lot of that nonsense.
Right now giving anything less than a 5-star only further ruins the average of an arc and can even push a 5-star arc right out of that group and into the 4-star ghetto. It doesn't help either that so many people are treating this like an asian grading scale and that only "perfect" arcs can get 5-stars and are worth ever playing.
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I'm all up on that idea, but one reason I'll point out for the Asian grading curve there is the sheer number of arcs. If I want to sit down and play a few arcs a week say, there is no dearth of 5-star arcs, "so why would I even bother dipping my toe into the 4-star loser end of the pool?"|
Originally Posted by Lazarus
Right now giving anything less than a 5-star only further ruins the average of an arc and can even push a 5-star arc right out of that group and into the 4-star ghetto. It doesn't help either that so many people are treating this like an asian grading scale and that only "perfect" arcs can get 5-stars and are worth ever playing.
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I don't like it either, but that's the way things seem to be working to me.
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Also, I'm very up on the idea of seeing groups of custom foes listed differently from standard foes that have just been repurposed. I have a lowbie villain arc I took some standard foes for, changed their color and desription, and now people searching for an arc to play might think I was a fool and put ACTUAL custom foes in it - and skip it.
Yes, I put a note about what's really going on with them into the description for the arc, but at, what is it, 300 characters? that's an awfully precious resource to expend due to poor labeling.
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The problem is that most of the 5-star range is filled with bad arcs that have 2 ratings that the author managed to get from their buddies, and this places them hundreds of pages ahead of 4-star arcs that have hundreds of ratings (so obviously some people liked them) yet they are getting punished just based on an average that is being rounded up or down.|
Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
I'm all up on that idea, but one reason I'll point out for the Asian grading curve there is the sheer number of arcs. If I want to sit down and play a few arcs a week say, there is no dearth of 5-star arcs, "so why would I even bother dipping my toe into the 4-star loser end of the pool?"
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At least let us see the true average when we hover our mouse over it or something!
1. Mission arcs should be rated with simple like or don't like ratings instead of stars. Stars do not communicate the information that players wish to provide or acquire.
2. Arcs should be sorted, by default, with a sort order function that incorporates total plays, number of positive and negative votes, date the arc was created, and date the arc was last played. The numerical details are important but difficult to discuss - the important thing is that the goal should be to keep good, fresh arcs at the top of the default sort order.
3. Hall of Fame should be much easier to acquire, and should award an additional publish slot, but should not award a place at the top of the default sort order in perpetuity. It benefits authors, players, and the game as a whole that popular authors be able to publish additional arcs.
4. Something must be done about the interaction between DC/HoF edit locking and arc-breaking changes to MA. It serves no purpose that the game should compile a library of good arcs if those arcs are not playable and cannot be made playable without removing them from the library.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
Quote:
The date last updated is more important that the date last played; a recently updated arc will be less likely to be broken (by which I mean still technically playable but not functioning as the author intended), while treating arcs as "fresh" based on when they were played will only further punish arcs that aren't played as much, for whatever reason, and will only point people toward arcs that are already popular, namely farms.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
2. Arcs should be sorted, by default, with a sort order function that incorporates total plays, number of positive and negative votes, date the arc was created, and date the arc was last played. The numerical details are important but difficult to discuss - the important thing is that the goal should be to keep good, fresh arcs at the top of the default sort order.
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Counting "last PLAYED" instead of "last RATED" would alleviate this somewhat, as you could move your own arc up the list by playing it yourself, but again it would still move farms up the list since you can play through them much faster than many legitimate arcs.
Quote:
| 4. Something must be done about the interaction between DC/HoF edit locking and arc-breaking changes to MA. It serves no purpose that the game should compile a library of good arcs if those arcs are not playable and cannot be made playable without removing them from the library. |
DC arcs can be edited, but it is a process, and I'm not sure what happens if the author doesn't have a free arc slot available. The thing is, some sort of safeguard needs to be put in place for these arcs, or DCs would have to be limited to "the trusted few," which is unfair to anyone who isn't "trusted," and could be exploited anyway.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
This is all correct. Date last updated is a more useful metric.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
The date last updated is more important that the date last played; a recently updated arc will be less likely to be broken (by which I mean still technically playable but not functioning as the author intended), while treating arcs as "fresh" based on when they were played will only further punish arcs that aren't played as much, for whatever reason, and will only point people toward arcs that are already popular, namely farms.
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Quote:
| HoF is edit locked? |
Quote:
| DC arcs can be edited, but it is a process, and I'm not sure what happens if the author doesn't have a free arc slot available. The thing is, some sort of safeguard needs to be put in place for these arcs, or DCs would have to be limited to "the trusted few," which is unfair to anyone who isn't "trusted," and could be exploited anyway. |
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
Today, I logged in to see the following feedback on my arc Suppression:
@Chromatique : Feedback on Architect Mission Suppression: It's "Extraordinaire." If you aren't sure how to spell a word, you should look it up.
This feedback came with a 1 or 2 star rating and knocked the arc from 5 stars to 4 stars overall.
This raises 2 issues:
1. The first is, even if a 1 star rating comes with a comment, which I still support requiring, it may not always be clear that it is a grief. Perhaps this person is traumatized by poor spelling?
2. It would be really great if the interface included a spell-checker. Despite the implication in the rather nasty comment, I generally copy all my text to Word and spell check it and I submit my arcs for multiple reviews, so there are very few spelling problems in my arcs. In this case, I added a clue which contained a typo. If we had a spell checker built in, this would have been caught. At my work we have to enter our performance write-ups into an online system. The text area is very basic. You can't even have bullet lists, but there is a button you can press that spell checks your text. Something like this would be a very useful addition to the MA interface.
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest
I've mentioned it before, but something that would improve the situation somewhat (perhaps as a stop-gap solution until a better one comes along) would be to sigma-clip the average. Without going into a lot of detail, it basically automatically removes ratings that are too "deviant" from the typical rating an arc has been getting (and yes, it does work the other way - if everybody playing it thinks it's cr*p, and is giving it 1 or 2 stars, and you get your buddy to give it 5, it would actually ignore the 5 star when computing the average).
Arrow Rose's experience here just illustrates the problem introduced by the non weighted average: It's very likely that about one rating in 25 will automatically be 1 star regardless of the quality of the arc because that's about the incidence of sociopathic personalities in the general population; a system that is set up to automatically ignore rare "deviant" ratings would at least be a step in the right direction.
EDIT: Oh, and one other thing I just thought of (apologies if it's already been suggested). Another way to give a 5 star rating equal weight to lower ratings is this:
As long as an arc has 1, 2, or 3 star ratings, then instead of going into the average, a 5 star rating simply "cancels" a 1, 2, or 3 star rating (obviously starting with 1 stars, and when there are no more of those left, 2 stars, etc.) - at least for purposes of calculating the average.
Example ('cause I like those): An arc has been played 10 times, and given these ratings.
1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5. Current system, Average is 3.7, so the arc would display as 4 stars. And you'd need 16 more consecutive 5 star ratings to get the average up to 4.5, and a 5 star display average.
New system: 1*, 2*, 3*, 3*, 4, 4, 5*, 5*, 5*, 5* (* = ignored when calculating the average). So (obviously) the average is now 4.0 - the arc still displays as 4 stars, but you'd only need 2 additional 5 star ratings to bring the average to 4.5 and get the arc up to five stars.
Of course (and this has been said many times), if the MA interface encouraged people to play 3 and 4 star arcs as much as 5 star arcs, none of this would be necessary.
M.A. Arcs
Intended for high level play: The Primus Trilogy (Arc #s 10931, 283821, 283825), "Freakshow U" (Arc #189073), Purification (Arc #352381, Dev's Choice!
)Intended for low level play: "Learning the Ropes" (Arc #100304), "Cracking Skulls" (Arc #115935), "The Lazarus Project" (Arc #124906)
Perhaps a simple change would be to display "total number of stars earned by this arc" instead of "average number of stars", and also sort by this rating.
That would let you keep the 1 to 5 star rating system (i.e., requires few MMI changes), but even a 1 star rating moves your arc "forward" in total stars (making "1-star griefing" pointless).
If arc A has 200 plays averaging 4.2 stars and arc B has 2 plays averaging 5 stars, currently arc B appears earlier in the default search. Changing it to total stars would make arc A valued at 840 stars and arc B at 10 stars, putting arc A much earlier in the default search. I think this might be desirable behavior.
You could also recalibrate Hall of Fame to be 4000 total stars or something. (This might be still kinda high, dunno; this would instantly catapult all 4 star arcs with 999+ plays into HoF status though, so I don't think it's crazy high.)
On the down side, this suggestion would make the rating system more of a popularity contest than a quality contest. But I get the impression most people don't believe ratings are an accurate measure of quality anyway, considering how the current system is getting metagamed (with 1-star griefers and others only rating things 5-stars to compensate).
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Quote:
I think this idea is good with one exception. All arcs published before I15, a large number of which are long abandoned, would be listed before newer arcs. There are 1000's of them. The numbers are so crazy that there even is an arc rated 2 stars with over 100 plays. |
Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
Perhaps a simple change would be to display "total number of stars earned by this arc" instead of "average number of stars", and also sort by this rating.
That would let you keep the 1 to 5 star rating system (i.e., requires few MMI changes), but even a 1 star rating moves your arc "forward" in total stars (making "1-star griefing" pointless). If arc A has 200 plays averaging 4.2 stars and arc B has 2 plays averaging 5 stars, currently arc B appears earlier in the default search. Changing it to total stars would make arc A valued at 840 stars and arc B at 10 stars, putting arc A much earlier in the default search. I think this might be desirable behavior. |
Quote:
| You could also recalibrate Hall of Fame to be 4000 total stars or something. (This might be still kinda high, dunno; this would instantly catapult all 4 star arcs with 999+ plays into HoF status though, so I don't think it's crazy high.) |
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
i like the suggestion about cumulatively adding stars instead of averaging them.
and the possible way to overcome the pre i15 thing is you could make it so HoF is based on creation date (creation dates before X would be invalid for HoF)
or another possibility is to automatically exclude invalidated arcs from ever getting a HoF status, this would prolly automatically prevent most older unused arcs from getting HoF
Quote:
In this case it would be, but....|
Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
If arc A has 200 plays averaging 4.2 stars and arc B has 2 plays averaging 5 stars, currently arc B appears earlier in the default search. Changing it to total stars would make arc A valued at 840 stars and arc B at 10 stars, putting arc A much earlier in the default search. I think this might be desirable behavior.
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Quote:
| On the down side, this suggestion would make the rating system more of a popularity contest than a quality contest. But I get the impression most people don't believe ratings are an accurate measure of quality anyway, considering how the current system is getting metagamed (with 1-star griefers and others only rating things 5-stars to compensate). |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Good suggestions, but should this be in Suggestions and Ideas, rather than here?
to 
TO THE END!Villains are those who dedicate their lives to causing mayhem. Villians are people from the planet Villia!
Quote:
All that I can saw about that one is: What a [censored]!|
Originally Posted by ArrowRose
Today, I logged in to see the following feedback on my arc Suppression:
@Chromatique : Feedback on Architect Mission Suppression: It's "Extraordinaire." If you aren't sure how to spell a word, you should look it up. This feedback came with a 1 or 2 star rating and knocked the arc from 5 stars to 4 stars overall. |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
On the down side, this suggestion would make the rating system more of a popularity contest than a quality contest.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer
Good suggestions, but should this be in Suggestions and Ideas, rather than here?
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Allow me to elaborate on this, since a fair amount of the conversation is nibbling at the symptoms of the star system.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
1. Mission arcs should be rated with simple like or don't like ratings instead of stars. Stars do not communicate the information that players wish to provide or acquire.
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First, stars are bad because they don't ask a clear question. There is no reference as to what qualifies an arc for a given star rating. Players are invited to make these qualifications up for themselves. Is an arc that you enjoyed and would play again, but wasn't perfect, a five star arc or a four star arc? Is an arc that you didn't regret playing but won't play again a four star or a three star? Is an arc you personally didn't enjoy as a matter of taste but can't find technical fault with a three star or a two star? Players are left to come up with a personal (and wildly variable) mapping from their nuanced opinion to a number between 1 and 5. This would actually be useful information if players were tracking how a specific fellow player's tastes matched theirs; over time they would learn what to expect from an arc which that specific player gave a given rating. But that is not how the information is being used. Instead, it is being aggregated into a simple average. That's bad.
And the reason it's bad is because that simple average is then being used to create a sort ordering, with no other information involved. And that opens up the potential to, whether intentionally or not, grossly overweight an outlier rating. It's been mentioned numerous times before that it requires 7 five star ratings for each 1 star rating to keep an arc above the critical 4.5 average threshold. That 1 star could be an honest opinion, or it could be a griefer. It actually doesn't matter in the same way that it doesn't matter whether a mine is detonated accidentally or maliciously: the problem is that the mine was there to detonate in the first place.
For a case study on how star systems have fared elsewhere, see the link in my sig. Once users figure out that the stars, and the way they are used to sort items, amount in effect to one "like" and four strengths of "dislike", they skip the ambiguous middle options and go straight to the ones that push the item most strongly in the direction they prefer. At that point, you basically have a dysfunctional like/dislike rating system anyway, and you may as well just make the change, make explicit what was implicit, and start aggregating the results and ordering items in a sane fashion.
Here's one sane ordering algorithm. I didn't come up with it; smarter people did, and used it to make a lot of money while I posted on video game forums. It's alive and well in the field right now. The numbers can stand some tweaking, but the core of the algorithm is that items rise in the list by being new and well received, and fall by being old or poorly received. It's crucial to note that the rating value is a sum that increases linearly with positive ratings, not an average that increases asymptotically and can be drastically reduced with disproportionately few ratings (and vice versa, although that's less of an issue in this case).
TL;DR: Stars are ambiguous and mathematically bad.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
Quote:
One approach would be to give the stars a weight based on time also. E.g. stars given in the last 3 months gives full value, starts from 3-6 months have a slightly lower weight for each star etc.|
Originally Posted by Wrong_Number
I think this idea is good with one exception. All arcs published before I15, a large number of which are long abandoned, would be listed before newer arcs. There are 1000's of them. The numbers are so crazy that there even is an arc rated 2 stars with over 100 plays.
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That kind of data might not have been tracked though; i.e. at what time was each rating given.
Or perhaps include a thumbs up/down rating in addition to the star sum, or perhaps just an optional thums up - "I would recommend this arc". People could give thumbs up if they liked it and then set as many or few stars as they wanted.
[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])
I just thought of something else that could help filter out the dreck:
There are currently 400 pages of arcs flagged "Looking for Feedback" or "Final." There are 2819 pages of arcs flagged "Work in Progress." My suggestion would be to have the search default to show only arcs flagged "Looking for Feedback" or "Final" instead of "All," the way it defaults to only showing arcs with a Locale flag of "English."
The results would be twofold: since arcs published before the Status flags were introduced defaulted to "Work in Progress," you wouldn't see any arcs that were published in the initial flurry of AE activity and haven't been touched since. Also, since the stated purpose of the Work in Progress flag was to allow people to test their arcs and still gain rewards, arcs that the author deems fit for public consumption shouldn't be using that flag.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Given the complexity and information-heaviness of the posts in this thread, it's going to take me awhile to get through it. I'm stopping for a second to point out something that I've seen several times, by way of a quote from Eva Destruction (who's opinion I'm almost always in lock step with):
"I refuse to fight Extreme anything..."
THIS is something I'd like to see changed. The auto-labeler they use is horribly inaccurate. Both my arcs have auto-generated Extreme labels peppered through the orange section like candy, but the truth is, only the scalable EB and AV (1 in each arc) can be extreme, and that's dependent on the player's difficulty settings.
If I'm not mistaken, Eva, you've run both of my arcs -- maybe not recently -- but I thought you had. If so, it was just by the grace of some supreme being, because anyone that refuses to run Extreme arcs wouldn't touch it.
In short, fine tune the auto-rater or come up with another system.
The SOLUS Foundation - a Liberty and Pinnacle SG
"The Consequences of War" - Arcs # 227331 and 241496
Quote:
"Extreme" in that case refers only to custom critters using the "Extreme" power settings. In your case, that would be the allies. The system doesn't distinguish (another flaw); if there is a critter inside with its powers set to "Extreme," you get the warning.|
Originally Posted by Dalghryn
THIS is something I'd like to see changed. The auto-labeler they use is horribly inaccurate. Both my arcs have auto-generated Extreme labels peppered through the orange section like candy, but the truth is, only the scalable EB and AV (1 in each arc) can be extreme, and that's dependent on the player's difficulty settings.
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Your AV is a dev-created critter, and those generate no warnings. You could make a custom group out of Ring Mistresses, Rularuu eyeballs, Longbow Nullifiers and Sappers and get no warnings.
If you want to remove those warnings, hand-pick the powers for your allies. It's kinda cheating, but the warning makes your arc look harder than it is, when you are really using the setting to make allies more survivable (at least I was). Then it will say "Enemies with custom power selections" just like half of all the other arcs out there.
(And I played your arc after reading a review, my first attempt was a long time ago back in the days when higher-level enemies didn't scale down properly and +7 Hro'Dotz hurt me lots...the point is I read a review and knew I'd be fighting Rikti, so I assumed the warnings referred to allies.)
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
I am starting this thread to help create a consolidated list of changes that people would like to see made to the MA interface.
I ask that people use this thread only to post interface changes they would like to see or to post in support of a change already posted here. There have been many great suggestions posted in other threads, but these threads are so cluttered with debates, some great suggestions may be lost.
My hope is to provide the MA developers with a consolidated player wish list focusing only on changes to the interface.
I will start with three improvements I would love to see:
- Provide separate tabs for Guest Authors, Dev Choice and HoF arcs and have the default tab that is displayed be for the other arcs. This will help provide more visibilty for non-honored arcs. (This is a suggestion I have seen in many previous posts)
- Provide a warning and require a comment when a player rates an arc 1 star. I have several reasons for this. People have accidentally rated one of my arcs 1 star at least 3 times that I know of. Also many times 1 star ratings are grief ratings and I think by forcing a comment this may cut down on that. The damage a 1 star rating causes, to a quality arc is very hard to recover from.
- Provide an option to display how many ratings of each type an arc received. This must already be available in order to compute the overall rating and I think it would be useful to authors and players alike.
Please add to this list with changes you would like to see and keep it positive.
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest