This really doesn't help the perception of how people are seeing the AE, but most of my AE output and play in 2010 has been playing and designing content for SG play based on RP plotlines and storylines we want to be able to play through (vs. just standing around in the D or in the SG base talking about nothing in particular). I say this because while I'll admit that stand-alone AE content has been less popular (little wonder with GR being launched, new main story content, and several new powersets being put together) or at least less visibly used, people are using it and using it well.
I'd also like to point out that generally speaking if I'm going into the AE building, there's usually one to three people in there with me, several of which are designing and testing. People are using it, it's just a matter of finding the content.
You know, the next few times I see people in the AE, I going to just ask what they are playing/building. What does it hurt?
"...his madness keeps him sane.": My Profile on VirtueVerse
Can You WIN the Internet? MA Arc #85544
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Task Force Mutternacht #349522 <-- 1st AE Challenge
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Don't be surprised if 2 out of those 4 folks say "building a farm . . ."|
Originally Posted by twelfth
You know, the next few times I see people in the AE, I going to just ask what they are playing/building. What does it hurt? |
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I always try to to do this. What's interesting, if annoying, is that a lot of times they don't respond. Something I've been trying to do recently is casually ask people after a team starts disbanding from a TF or GM run. I've gotten a few maybes that might pan out.|
Originally Posted by twelfth
You know, the next few times I see people in the AE, I going to just ask what they are playing/building.
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Also, taking the perception thing into account, there's still a fair amount of broadcast invites for AE power leveling in the Atlas AE on Freedom...
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I can only speak for myself, but if Im building something in the AE, Im not responding to anything short of a tell. That screen is huge and blocks out everything.
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Originally Posted by Zamuel
I always try to to do this. What's interesting, if annoying, is that a lot of times they don't respond. Something I've been trying to do recently is casually ask people after a team starts disbanding from a TF or GM run. I've gotten a few maybes that might pan out.
Also, taking the perception thing into account, there's still a fair amount of broadcast invites for AE power leveling in the Atlas AE on Freedom... |
They just released an expansion. Why would they encourage players to skip all that new and unique content that they just worked on? give it a while and they'll give AE more attention when they add praetorian stuff to it.
you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you <3
The AE is hurt, but not dead.
When it came out, it was used to make boss grindfests and fun arcs. The boss grindfests got slammed; this impacted a few genuine story arcs, but they could be adapted rather easily.
Farmers fell off a bit, arcs seemed to keep going okay.
Custom creatures became the big farm, arcs continued. Custom creatures got slammed; this hurt man a real arc too.
Then custom creatures got xp rewards recalculated to meet their powers. Yay! 'ally' critters got slammed. Not yay. All missions with objectives besides 'defeat/collect X' Got hurt.
The issue is this: in the search for quelching farms, devs took broader and more damaging steps to all arcs that not only compromised the farms, but the arcs they wanted people to make.
I like making arcs. My fellow gameplayers like good arcs, but the game is about not just an adventure, but gaining the rewards along the way. Disagree with this as you may, if a player can do two things, both fun, and the first gives half the rewards of the second, they'll go for the rewards. The AE changes have left many arcs invalid/outdated, with inferior rewards for any time you invest in them.
If the devs fix it so that missions with ally critters aren't inferior anymore? I'm totally on board. but I won't say for the long hall...the development has made it clear that the efforts of the mission writers is secondary to farm damage control, and they won't spare the rod even if it might bruise the good apples too.
How to revive it? I can't make concrete predictions, but if the devs take steps to actually promote the good versions of the AE, the ones they want to see more of, that will help. ( This assumes they make sure these version give full rewards for their effort.) If they make sure that the ratings system is less abusable and that non-farm arcs aren't needlessly damage, that's good as well. An improved search Ui would not hurt either.
As is, the devs have scared off the farmers in many cases, (purposefully so) as well as many of the writers. The continual reduction to rewards for the time has scared off normal users. Put rewards back on the writer's stuff, you get writers and users back. For now? It's too hurt to use in a stable fashion. There's out dated junk, junk, good arcs that don't give a reward, good arcs that are outdated, and good arcs that give a fair rewards. Not many players have the constitution to go through a lot of that for the diamonds in the rough.
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You can actually minimize and resize that screen unless you're in the character editor portion. However, when I ask I always directly send tells which is why it strikes me as odd.|
Originally Posted by Haetron
I can only speak for myself, but if Im building something in the AE, Im not responding to anything short of a tell. That screen is huge and blocks out everything.
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Originally Posted by Seldom
Custom creatures became the big farm...
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| If the devs fix it so that missions with ally critters aren't inferior anymore? |
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| ...the development has made it clear that the efforts of the mission writers is secondary to farm damage control, and they won't spare the rod even if it might bruise the good apples too. |
MA isn't dead, it's just resting!
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Putting that fix in with GR is THE worst thing they could have done, aside from slapping in that half-**** patch in the first place with no testing after months of ally abuse. Seriously. It's like getting your hair fixed, then walking into the room with three or four swimsuit models and expecting anyone to notice your new improved hair.|
Originally Posted by Zamuel
You highlight something interesting without knowing it. They did get fixed...no one realizes it outside of some of us forum regulars.
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Other stupid things they've done is completely ignore issues that have been brought up over and over again by knowledgeable members of the community while apparently actually reading posts by Dev's Digest chasers who don't know where their shift key is (Aeon's comment on why we can't have finer control over spawn placement comes to mind....no response to all the people correcting him and clarifying what they really want), allow people to rate arcs without actually playing them in the first place, seemingly not realize that hardcore badgers want badges for stuff they didn't actually do, the sporadic at best awarding of Dev's Choice, Positron's "**** you" post that resulted in no noticeable action being taken and only served to make people paranoid about their joke arcs with animals on a farm, ignore multiple requests for simple additions (Lts and minions as "fight a boss" objectives, for example) while rushing to add the new shiny that is a cute gimmick at best and will result in mostly garbage arcs made solely to take advantage of the new shiny, leave Dev's Choices awarded during i14 closed beta on the first few pages, the farce that was last year's official AE awards, the most recent "dev interest" being contests that often require participants to unpublish what THEY wanted to write (and in some cases PAID to write) in favor of what somebody else wanted them to write, and the only Dev's Choices in that period being from said contests....shall I go on about how the devs have done absolutely nothing to dispel the common perception that AE is just a wasteland of outdated farms, broken arcs, and overpowered custom critters that give crap rewards?
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
Personally, I think the players are in a better position to promote the AE than the devs are. There's too much content in there (good, bad and ugly) for them to really sift through. Good arcs (fun, well written, challenging, etc) are simply overwhelmed by lesser made arcs (like mine 
) and farming stuff.
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The vast majority of the playerbase never listens to other players. Go look at the market forum if you don't believe me. I join teams, hear griping about how AE is all farms/crap rewards, mention that I just played an AE arc that was fun, interesting, and got me a few bars of XP and some really good stuff from my ticket rolls, and get griping about PLed AE babies as a response. I mention that I play a lot of AE (not farms) and no one in-game has yet asked me what arcs I would recommend that they try.|
Originally Posted by Psyte
Personally, I think the players are in a better position to promote the AE than the devs are. There's too much content in there (good, bad and ugly) for them to really sift through. Good arcs (fun, well written, challenging, etc) are simply overwhelmed by lesser made arcs (like mine
) and farming stuff. |
Then again, I also groan every time a teammate opens their paper or scanner and immediately suggest we go do something that's actually fun, so no wonder nobody listens to me. Must get uber XPz. Need every server full of 50s, or something.
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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This is/has been done countless times. Some notable examples:|
Originally Posted by Psyte
Personally, I think the players are in a better position to promote the AE than the devs are.
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1) MA Arc Finder Channel
2) Many player arc review threads
3) Player created websites like CoH Mission Review
4) Recommendation threads (PW's MA Contact and Gypsy Rose's Excellent Arcs are great examples)
5) MA Super Team
6) Numerous player sponsored MA contests and events
7) Player arc review shows on CoH internet radio channels
8) Player's Choice Awards
9) There used to be two "Recommend for DC threads (both now MIA)
10) All the Threads sticky'd here and on all the server forums
These are just a few off the top of my head, but plenty abound
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
AE brought me back to the game. I was finally able to develop my stories to cover the first 20 levels of content that I had done a bazillion times and wanted to avoid. problem is they limited number of stories so that was not really possible even if you purchase more slots.
I am not sure they don't do something like the XNA community reviews for Xbox. The community controls the content and reviews. You need something that lets the development of good ARC developers to occur without the bottle neck of the title developers themselves. And you need a way for the community to provide concise feedback to clearly label farms and other hazards.
Once you develop the approved ARC developers and the approved reviewers go to down with a simple reccomendation engine that everyone who looks will see the weekly rated arcs, top arcs, top authors, and the I feel lucky roll for try something new.
Reward these players who invest time in your game making it better and providing strong player engagement.
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He-LLO? Seriously, I even told Dr. Aeon that they need to make people aware of that fix.
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Originally Posted by Seldom
If the devs fix it so that missions with ally critters aren't inferior anymore? I'm totally on board. but I won't say for the long hall...the development has made it clear that the efforts of the mission writers is secondary to farm damage control, and they won't spare the rod even if it might bruise the good apples too.
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We're also generally pretty good about answering newcomers' questions and pointing them toward the resources WN mentioned. It still doesn't change the fact that these newcomers have to have some interest in AE to begin with. Threads mentioning AE in the general interest forums usually contain a few "this is how I find arcs, there's a lot of good stuff" posts followed by rants about farming or lack of XP.
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Originally Posted by Wrong_Number
This is/has been done countless times. Some notable examples:
1) MA Arc Finder Channel 2) Many player arc review threads 3) Player created websites like CoH Mission Review 4) Recommendation threads (PW's MA Contact and Gypsy Rose's Excellent Arcs are great examples) 5) MA Super Team 6) Numerous player sponsored MA contests and events 7) Player arc review shows on CoH internet radio channels 8) Player's Choice Awards 9) There used to be two "Recommend for DC threads (both now MIA) 10) All the Threads sticky'd here and on all the server forums These are just a few off the top of my head, but plenty abound |
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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People also come to AE with some rather unrealistic expectations left over from the initial farming craze or they just can't see the forest for the trees.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Threads mentioning AE in the general interest forums usually contain a few "this is how I find arcs, there's a lot of good stuff" posts followed by rants about farming or lack of XP.
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- No end-of-mission XP bonus: You probably have better XP/time anyway because you don't have to travel to the next mission, don't have to run back across the map from the hospital, or have to travel across the zone (if not to the next zone) to get inspirations.
- No Salvage/Recipe Drops: Unless you're someone with incredible luck, most of the drops you get are utter garbage anyway. With tickets you can do random rolls for recipes/salvage or even buy the exact uncommon/rare salvage that you need.
Want money? A rare salvage item is only 560 tickets and you can check the market ahead of time to see what is in the greatest demand. Better than having your salvage clogged up with dozens of vendor trash commons that hardly any recipes use. Plus screw paying 100,000 inf for salvage that I can just buy for 80 tickets (uncommon) or do a few random rolls for 8 tickets each (common).
As for tickets, there is a problem in that people hear about the 1500 tickets/map cap and don't understand that a) that is for the largest maps (smaller maps have lower caps) and b) no mission outside of a farm on x8 is going to give you 1500 tickets in a single mission anyway. I can get 1500 tickets running "The Portal Bandits" on x3 and that is for all 5 missions. I think that's still pretty damn good considering that it's a challenge arc rather than a farm.
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Bolded for emphasis.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Positron's "**** you" post that resulted in no noticeable action being taken and only served to make people paranoid about their joke arcs with animals on a farm
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| rushing to add the new shiny that is a cute gimmick at best |
They should hold a contest to make some cool solo friendly arcs. The winners can get added to the random radio/paper missions pool, for a few monthes or something. Then they can keep doing that. That'll be awesome I;m so sick of kill all Circle/Tsoo in caves I get from the paper.
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It's been suggested before and it would be great if they made some of better arcs into player content, but please no more contests like the previous ones. One thing to consider is that many of the better authors have run out of slots to make new arcs. Why not start by checking out the top rated arcs? Most have there for many, many months at least|
Originally Posted by Dz131
They should hold a contest to make some cool solo friendly arcs. The winners can get added to the random radio/paper missions pool, for a few monthes or something. Then they can keep doing that. That'll be awesome I;m so sick of kill all Circle/Tsoo in caves I get from the paper.
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The "Annual" Official Dev contest run one was poorly implemented and promoted. The runners up were totally ignored despite being selected by the Devs as some of the best content in MA at that time.
The Dr. Aeon contests did bring us some good arcs, but the biggest problem with them was that one person picked the winners and the runners up. Any contest with one judge will reflect that person's personal tastes. This became very clear in the last contest where a runner up arc was selected that had several technical flaws when there were many others that were more original, better written and far technically superior.
Since both the "Make Recommendations for DC" threads were removed with no arcs being DC'd that were recommended there, I think it's pretty clear that the Devs have given up on MA.
Jail.Bird
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Eh, most normal women look better than super models but I'm pretty sure you mean the general public instead of me and my weirdness. |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Putting that fix in with GR is THE worst thing they could have done, aside from slapping in that half-**** patch in the first place with no testing after months of ally abuse. Seriously. It's like getting your hair fixed, then walking into the room with three or four swimsuit models and expecting anyone to notice your new improved hair.
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Still, it would have been nice for Aeon to bump the other thread, quickly go over the fix in an upbeat attitude, then throw out a playful comment about Television. Patch Notes are good and all but it's a wall of text that the general public won't read through. However, there are people who scour Dev Digest for individual posts, myself included.
In some ways, Praetoria is one of the best things to come out of Mission Architect. It has our virtues: chatty NPCs whose chatter actually explains missions to all players, and the liberal use of mission popup texts that actually explain the significance of what you just did. It also has our flaws: too difficult mobs, and the overuse of ambushes: features that play a lot better at level 50 than at level 12.
But yes, the actual Mission Architect is pretty quiet right now. I haven't looked much at it since the expac came out, that much is sure. This will change, though.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
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Well yeah, that's what I meant, since some of us still do AE stuff, despite the new shiny being there. Incidentally, the supermodels are the shallow, stereotypical kind, and they soon run out of interesting things to say. The girlfriend is the non-jealous kind, and when you get bored of the supermodels she'll still be there with an "I told you so" and a great arc you've never gotten around to playing.
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Originally Posted by Zamuel
Eh, most normal women look better than super models but I'm pretty sure you mean the general public instead of me and my weirdness.
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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
<QR> Actually, I've been meaning to get back into the MA to re-write my original arc using some of the new tech, but between playing my Praetorian and RL stuff (work, school, etc.) I haven't had the time :/
I agree that allowing players to find good story arcs is one of our biggest problems. Consequently, I have compiled a list of story arcs that I think are "well put together and fun", which you can find here.
I hope that helps!
@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!"