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Many have said the same thing over and over for the past year. One can hope that the Devs will finally do something about this issue if they really want AE to pick up again.
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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
I think they need to take drastic measures and make culling arcs their first priority. When, more often than not, hitting the random button 10 times results in 10 old farm arcs, it tends to put off people who are new to AE looking for something to play.
They need to put every arc, except for HoF and DC, into limbo. Retain their rating and plays but remain effectively unpublished until the author republishes them. It will mean some good arcs whose authors are gone will be lost, but, right now AE is infected with a cancer and some of the healthy tissue has to go with the bad. This seems the least time intensive solution for the devs to my mind. I doubt, unless circumstances create another farming rush, that future arc culling would be necessary once the damage from AE's launch is dealt with. Afterwards they can start looking at HoF requirements and making the search engine better. |
I had a random thought I might as well toss into the mix here.
Remember how they've said that every new issue will have more material for the Alpha Slots/post 50 game? If they could find some reasonable way to tie just one issue's content into channeling some plays towards the MA (no idea how though), that could help a great deal. People already complain that customs are too hard; Alpha Slot/50th level toons shouldn't sweat over them as much.
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Softcapped melee characters shouldn't sweat over Malta either, but I don't see most of them going out of their way to fight Malta. Most people will take the path of least resistance and farm Council Empire until their eyes bleed and complain about how much farming they need to do or farm tips on -1/x1 and complain about the price of purples.|
Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
People already complain that customs are too hard; Alpha Slot/50th level toons shouldn't sweat over them as much.
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Besides, the Alpha slot preview we got was a small performance boost. Yes, it's going to help my Fire/Storm Corruptor's end problems. No, it's not going to help my Blaster survive a mob of Extreme/Extreme Dark Miasma/Dark Blast critters.
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 couldn't agree more, but it as you point out, it won't stop people complaining about Malta (or customs) being "too hard". 
Still, if they could come up with some way to make playing a few arcs with your Alpha-slotter-in-progress ("You need some training, $name, go play 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 mission long arcs" or whatever), that would overcome some of the "too hard" (plus if it's necessary for Alpha slots, what can they do?), get people in the door and get at least a few of them to see that MA is worth playing.
Just a random thought I had.
As someone who published their first arc yesterday I can see a few things I would like to see.
1) environmental damage, I would like destroying certain objects, like explosives to actually do damage.
2) I really dislike the way the story arcs "join" together. Its probably not possible, but instead of leaving the mission, going back into AE for the next part I would rather be "teleported" to the front door of the next mission, or like some linked stories now have a blank city to run through to get to the next arc (like a train mission or bank job)
3) along the same front, being able to go from an outdoor map to an indoor map (again, like a bank job)
4) better control of the placement of objects...
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Due to exploiters this has been removed. |
Originally Posted by nytflyr
I would like destroying certain objects, like explosives to actually do damage.
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The only way your arc gets this ability is by receiving a DC.
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They can make short arcs with no enemies and a single blinky to farm the requirements with. Just like they did for the badges.|
Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
Still, if they could come up with some way to make playing a few arcs with your Alpha-slotter-in-progress ("You need some training, $name, go play 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 mission long arcs" or whatever), that would overcome some of the "too hard" (plus if it's necessary for Alpha slots, what can they do?), get people in the door and get at least a few of them to see that MA is worth playing.
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Forcing people into AE isn't the answer. It won't work. Trying to get people who are only interested in rushing to 50, or purpling out their characters, or badging, or farming into AE will work about as well as trying to entice PvEers into PvP did. They don't care.
What we need to target is the mass of players who like to experience new content, or who like to try all sorts of things, or who are relatively new to the game and not yet set in their playstyle. We also need to bring back the players who thought AE was awesome when it was implemented but who soured on the experience and haven't been back.
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
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I don't have any perfect suggestion for how the dev's could incorporate it into the Incarnate system, I just made the suggestion it could be to help reinvigorate it. I wasn't meaning to get into detailed methods here, but that could be easily avoided by asking them to run dev-choiced arcs, and asking them to run missions that are, per my example, one mission long, two, three and so on. |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
They can make short arcs with no enemies and a single blinky to farm the requirements with. Just like they did for the badges.
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But please don't take that as " Clave's perfect-world example", I'm mainly just tossing out the idea here incorporating the AE into part of that system could do so, by exposing the new players, showing the soured that there is worthy content in it and so on.
As a new player to the game 6 weeks now and a big chunk of that time spent in the AE building. Here's my perspective.
Just from what I've seen all the things mentioned are important. Weeding out old arcs, bugs where you have to rewrite entire stories because escort/betrayal/randomness of spawns etc... All of these things are important.
To me it seems the Devs have abandoned MA because they were working on GR and the expansion. To just show how little MA was on there mind there isn't even an AE building anywhere in GR.
Maybe they feel like we authors are just such a minority it doesn't matter- I don't know.
As an outsider just coming in what seems like the most glaring problem is lack of reason to do MA. The ticket system, badges, and all those things are great- but something is lacking. There needs to be a very nice reward or something for finishing 100 different players ARC's or something along those lines.
It needs an infusion of blood and some dev love without a doubt. I've released 2 ARC's and have a total of 4 ratings. And 2 of those I know were Wrong Number because she's super cool and supports new authors.
Sucks to not have anybody play your stuff- I think everybody feels that. Which brings me full circle as to WHY people would play MA verses regular missions. Because they need a motivating factor! Put a decent carrot on a stick in MA then watch it come back to life.
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The easiest way of weeding out old arcs is (if they have the ability to track such a thing) when was the last time the arc was accessed and when was it created... |
Originally Posted by Ramification TM
Just from what I've seen all the things mentioned are important. Weeding out old arcs, bugs where you have to rewrite entire stories because escort/betrayal/randomness of spawns etc... All of these things are important.
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anything over a year old that hasn't been accessed in 6 months should be unpublished (not deleted). If the author cared, he can easily republish it. reupping the rotation
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A tagging system that is not known to everyone and not standardized is a useless tagging system.|
Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
You know, using the tagging system and adding "i18" or "i17" to the description of your arc would make it easier to search out the new stuff.
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It either comes with the game, like those predefined categories you can choose 3 of, or is little good. (author didn't know, player doesn't know, author used different system, used an outdated version of the system, was too lazy, ran out of description space, used different brackets, used different spelling, ... )
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Originally Posted by Zaphir
- (less drastic) Switch arcs to 'work in progress' unless the author flips the aforementioned switch. Don't show work in progress arcs by default, but show them when someone is specifically searching for arc id, author name, or has 'show work in progress arcs' checked.
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As for the better search...
Having more than one category to rate an arc in is still my favorite idea for that.
Like, have ratings for Great Story, Cool Enemies, Lots of Action, e.g.
You could then search for an arc that has high rating in the category(/ies) that you care for, and find what you would not have found when people give them a bad total score for being bad in some other category.
One of the great things with City of Heroes is that it makes teaming up with others a quite painless effort - it is easy to start a team and do some missions. Quick travel times, everyone get something out of the missions even if it is not their own, generally no need for specific roles to be filled or a certain amount of team members.
A hurdle with AE is that teaming is a bit more cumbersome than normal missions since they derive from the task/strike force mechanic, but there is not really a compelling reason from a user perspective that it should be that way.
If AE mission handlign were a bit more like regular missions it would be easier for teams to mix AE and non-AE missions, perhaps switch between different missions etc. Even allow people to jump in through any AE to a team mission.
Make it more convenient and easier to play and mix with other play activities and I think more people will be inclined to play AE missions.
[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 think they need to take drastic measures and make culling arcs their first priority. When, more often than not, hitting the random button 10 times results in 10 old farm arcs, it tends to put off people who are new to AE looking for something to play.
They need to put every arc, except for HoF and DC, into limbo. Retain their rating and plays but remain effectively unpublished until the author republishes them. It will mean some good arcs whose authors are gone will be lost, but, right now AE is infected with a cancer and some of the healthy tissue has to go with the bad. This seems the least time intensive solution for the devs to my mind.
I doubt, unless circumstances create another farming rush, that future arc culling would be necessary once the damage from AE's launch is dealt with.
Afterwards they can start looking at HoF requirements and making the search engine better.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.