Dr. Aeon's Third Architect Challenge!

Greetings, Architects!

Dr. Aeon here! Remember me? The brilliant scientist in Cap au Diable? Much more brilliant than that “Praetor Berry” in Praetoria. I mean, really, who is going to put their trust in a guy named Berry? I know I wouldn’t, but that’s just me making an informed decision.

Anyway, to the point! I’m here today to issue my Third ARCHITECT CHALLENGE! It’s been a long time coming, so I hope you’re all ready for this one!

The challenge is to write and design an arc revolving around heroes falling from grace or villains redeeming themselves.

The sky is the limit on this one, folks! As you can tell, the focus here is on GOING ROGUE, so feel free to rogue it up (or vigilante it up) as much as you want! Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll give you all one of Dr. Aeon’s patented hints. The story doesn’t necessarily need to have the hero falling all the way to villainy and vice versa, and it could even be the story focusing around the player’s own shift of alignments, similar to the Going Rogue system!

Now, down to the details, and I am a man who prides himself on knowing the details on things (ever since the accident). The contest starts NOW. When you think your arc is gritty, heroic, or plain good enough, send an e-mail to AECommunityContest@ncsoft.com with the following in the subject line: @Global Name – Arc ID – Arc Name. The final day for submissions will be on October 20th, 2010. You can only submit your own arcs, I am a man who does not respond to shy people! Though, I wouldn’t really know if I do, since shy people don’t try to speak with me.

Winners will be announced no later than Wednesday, November 3, 2010.

The grand prize winner will receive a Dev Choice for their arc and a permanent yellow title.

Sound good to everyone? Eh? This is much better than anything those stupid scientists in Praetoria could come up with, I’ll tell you that much. Anyway, good luck to everyone entering the contest!

-Dr. Aeon

To view the Official Rules and Conditions please visit here

Excellent!

Question: If you have two arcs that link together, forming one cohesive ten mission story, is that legit, or should I quit?

No thanks.

Someone has to say it, but many of us in the AE community have gotten pretty sick of existing arcs that are highly-regarded and refined over many months getting ignored over a handful of arcs that were slapped together in a couple weeks. Many of us long ago used up all our arc slots as well and are not much willing to play "which of my children do I drown?" to make room for a new arc that MAY have a slightly higher chance at getting a DC than existing arcs that they have been maintaining and improving for months now.

We even had a Dev Choice nomination thread that was thrown out during the merging of the two MA forums, that had a lot of good suggestions in it with several arcs being nominated over and over. Dev Choice is all they can possibly hope for since Hall of Fame is statistically infeasible (it's been over a year and PoliceWoman's arc still has not gotten to 1000 plays.)

Also what about the finalists from the official Architect Awards last year? We were told back then that there was a good chance that the finalists could still win Dev Choice so far only one finalist arc has had that happen in the year since then.

Start paying some attention to the older arcs again, the active ones that still get regularly advertised and whose authors actually maintain them every time a patch does something to break them. How 'bout rewarding those faithful authors?

Go go Fearghas!

Hmm, sounds interesting.

I may lift my MA authoring boycott to take a stab at it.

Since I've been out of arc slots for months and can't enter, good luck to those that do.


WN

Eh, threw in one of my existing ones.

Edit: Or not, since the instructions here turned out to be incomplete. I resent the submission according to Ocho's instructions, if that helps.

Woo! Dr. Aeon still lives! Welcome back

What do you mean, "make a story arc"? Since when have we had the capacity to-

OH, wait, i forgot that AE can be used for more than just farming! In that case, i'll throw my hat in, too!

I find it strange that they have to write up full, formalized rules for a contest that has a reward worth $0. Seems better served as an informal, dev-lead community event.

Did the previous contests have that full legalese writeup?

Well I'm not going to enter since I can't honestly slap a "Final" tag on anything that I've only had a few weeks to work on and refine, but at least this will hopefully result in some Vigilante arcs that aren't blatant badge farms so I can get my badge.

Also, what Lazarus said. AE is supposed to be a venue for player-created content. So player-created now means "you're rewarded for writing what the devs want you to write?" Apparently so, since when was the last time we got a DC that wasn't a winner or runner-up from one of these contests?

AE?, oh yeah, i remeber those buildings, where players could make stories, stories that are no longer worth the supposed 'rewards'. add me to the no thanks list.
A bunch of empty buildings that once had potential, AE is now Aeons Eyesore.

Another competition Australians can't enter (but I suppose all our stories are about beer and crocodiles anyway).

Hot dang. I already wrote an arc like this, it was one of my last published ones before I filled my slots.

Time to polish it up nice, improve the mechanics, spellcheck, screenshot it up, and send it in! So nice when a contest matches what I've got available...

Wow. Who poured Haterade all over what was supposed to be a fun little contest?

Give Dr. A a break, at least he's trying to inject some fun and interest into the MA community. I look forward to seeing what people come up with and wish them all luck!

Sure why not I'll give it a try as well.

As per usual... Void in Puerto Rico*Sighs* Good luck to the rest of the participants though!

While I usually try to be a very positive person, I'm going to have to echo the words typed by Lazarus, Wrong Number, Eva Destruction and others.

Several players have produced very high quality arcs that they work hard to continue improving and maintaining when patches come out (and that they constantly hope might benefit from some of the new and shiny additions that's been made available for dev content to make them even better). The arcs are well-played (at least "well-played" as may be given the current less-than-active AE) and well-rated, and are on par - if not better than - a lot of dev created content, yet those arcs seem to have been placed on ignore.

Many of these authors may not have slots and/or time right now. I'm not necessarilly saying contests should be taken off the table. Heaven knows, any attention the AE system can get right now is attention it needs. But there's no reason that already accomplished arcs shouldn't be just as carefully considered for awards and recognition as arcs created solely for new contests.

In any case, thanks for "listening."

If dev choices were still getting handed out periodically, I think that a contest would go over better. I know GR was coming out, but with the size of the dev staff, it seemed like it would be possible to keep handing out dev choices monthly or even bi-monthly.

I actually had an idea for a story similar to this, so I might try it. Kind of hard to find time for AE around my own writing, though.

So--CAN you use an existing arc, or do you have to submit one that's brand new? I'm not seeing a straight answer on this off hand?

Dr. Aeon,

I have to agree with some of the other negative posters here. I understand that you're trying to improve and increase traffic to/in the AE, but I believe that the AE and its customers would be better served by your taking a number of other actions instead.

1) Running a script to delete the copious amount of plainly titled farm arcs.

2) Look through and fix the DC arcs that your previous patches have broken.

3) Lower the number of plays necessary to get into the Hall of Fame, and once there, have the arc remain locked in the HoF for a minimum amount of time so as to prevent griefers from bouncing it right back out.

4) STOP BREAKING ARCS every time you guys patch the AE to fix yet another one of the exploits that we warned you about in beta but you refused to listen to us and fix back then.

While I do have a free AE slot, I also will not be entering this contest. I am not interested in participating in this until the devs listen to us and start fixing the AE the way we've been asking you to since it first went live.

Take care doctor.

- Peregrine Falcon