What keeps you away from AE arcs?

I've made an AE arc.

I think one guy played through it (And I asked him to do it, just so I could get the badge!)

The problem I have is that when you try to find something between the mass of unrated arcs you have to plow through a whole load of open farms, poorly concealed farms and "tests of skill" trash before you find something decent.

I want to play arcs from people who have never been rated before, but I don't always feel like dealing with all that garbage you know?

Maybe they can add 2 categories or something. One with story arcs, and one with "tests of skill" and such maps.

My problem is basically one thing - it's just too much work to find an arc to play that's actually decent. It's just way easier to play dev content - sure, some of it is crap, too, but I can eventually learn which contacts are boring/annoying and avoid them. Obviously you can't do the same in the AE, and there is just such a ridiculous amount of pure crap clogging up the listings that I can't be arsed to wade through it all, especially since there's no real way to tell other than by loading it up (I mean, you can narrow it down some by carefully reading descriptions, but that doesn't help too much).

If there was a relatively easy way to sort the dreck from the actual stories, I would play it a lot more. I don't even need it to sort the good stories from the bad - I can decide that for myself. All I want is a way to find arcs where the author actually put in a bit of effort to make it a *story arc* - a way to avoid all the farms and pure junk.

Stuff like Policewoman's list is a great help, but I wish I didn't have to go outside the game to find things like that. For me it's the effort involved that's the annoyance - I *can* find decent arcs by using the forums and whatnot, but if I have to do that in the first place it makes it much more likely that I won't bother and just go off and do something else instead.

One thing I really wish could be added would be some way to get arc recommendations from people who have similar tastes. I.e. if I decide I like Policewoman's taste in arcs, something I could do where I could 'subscribe' to her arc ratings and the system would show me arcs that she rated high. Or maybe when I finish an arc, it could give a few random suggestions along the lines of 'other people who rated this arc 4 stars also rated these other arcs highly'. Just *anything* so that when I decide I want to play some AE, I don't have to sit down and wade through page after page of dreck (or else play one of the good arcs from the pool of arcs I've already played, which partly defeats the purpose of the AE for me).

a well made GUI would solve quite a few of MA's most glaring faults.

one simple change they could make that would IMHO improve things greatly is removing the star system and imposing a simple option to "like" an arc, like on Facebook.

If you like it, you get a vote. If you don't, you just move on to the next one. Goodbye, ratings griefing.

This was suggested and ignored in Beta, but is still an excellent idea.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with dev-created content.

Going in to AE and then hunting for good player-created content on top of that?

Sorry, that just isn't happening.

As for creating missions, I gave that up after I lost count of the number of times the devs screwed with what you can and cannot place into your arcs.

Devs: Look at this cool stuff we'll let you do!
Players: 'SPLOIT!
Devs: Goddammitsomuch, NERF!!
::::cooldown period::::
Devs: Look at this cool stuff we'll let you do!

Repeat ad infinitum. Thanks, but no thanks.

I want to like AE, but the awful searching and creating processes involved have pretty much turned me off of it.

I usually only play the dev choice AE arcs w/ my farmer.

Since there're no merits, I don't play it with my SF runner.

The rewards aren't that vital to me (as long as I'm getting SOME XP for my time, I'm happy). The problem is, every time I go into AE, I find myself flipping through page after page, looking desperately for something that's a) not a farm, b) is not a "you team up with my character" arc, c) is not loaded with spelling and grammatical errors, d) is not full of stupidly overpowered adversaries, and e) looks interesting and appropriate for the character I'm using -- both in terms of difficulty and in a RP sense. Needless to say, I tend to not find a lot. After wasting enough time doing this, I end up saying the hell with it and go do a newspaper mission or something.

I agree with what everyone's saying here (ratings meaningless, tons of utter garbage to try to wade through, and a really clunky interface). I have found one arc I really enjoy. One. ONE! I'm sure there are more. Somewhere. The tons of farms with 5 stars is a big reason I don't mess with AE.

My biggest beef is that I can't get a recipe at a level I'd use from reward rolls. If these were like Hero Merits, and I could use a slider bar not only to go down in level, but to go up 3 levels, I'd be doing AE a LOT more. Whenever I'm between arcs, or can't find anything my level to do. I'd even try to wade through all the garbage to find something non-hideous!

Recipes like Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Efficacy Adapter, all flow like water out of bronze reward rolls. And, coincidentally, these are the very recipes I'm looking for on all my 30-something toons. And these are the very recipes which are not for sale at the AH. You'd think this would be a big win, huh? But my 32 blaster isn't ever going to slot a 32 Thunderstrike. The only toons who are looking for an even-level IO are all 50, and they have no difficulty finding recipes of any sort.

Honestly, so many of us have trouble finding mid-level recipes, I think AE could be much more popular for its rewards if we could just shift that stupid slider bar 3 levels up.

Ok, everyone who avoids AE because you get tickets rather than random drops...you do realize that unless you're 50, tickets can be way more profitable than regular drops right? For one thing, the roll results are weighted, so you get fewer immobilize recipes and more recipes people might actually want to buy. For another, you can save them up and roll at the levels where stuff tends to sell for more. And if you roll in a lower level bracket, you can get desirable lower-level recipes. Where do you think all those Steadfasts and Regenerative Tissues come from?

Yes, the search sucks, the ratings system sucks, it's hard to find good stuff among the dreck, there are too many farms and outdated arcs, most people have no clue how to design custom critters but insist on filling missions with them anyway, people are still allowed to make custom critters with a level range of 1-54 which makes the "my level" search useless, the available tags are limited, the XP isn't as good as in regular missions, it's full of plot holes and spelling errors....but tickets are awesome.

What keeps me away from AE arcs is the new shiny right now, and the fact that I've played so many of them that finding something good that I haven't played is becoming harder and harder. I can't remember the last time I found a decent arc through the in-game search. I find most of what I play through the forums.

My main problem... is it isn't really part of the game.

It is like playing a game inside of a game. It doesn't feel like you are actually saving the world or anything else, it is just a bunch of content removed from the "real city" as much as the devs possibly could.

That, and finding decent content to play is hard. There is so much clutter...