What keeps you away from AE arcs?
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2010-12-11 19:09 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Yes, this would be nice. It would also be nice to be able to hide anything that uses Extreme critters. Or pick tags to exclude, such as "challenging," if that's what you're most definitely not looking for.|
Originally Posted by Kelenar
Yeah. Options to hide missions that use custom enemies and/or AVs would be nice.
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A big part of the reason so many missions have orange warnings is that the warnings don't differentiate between enemies and friendlies. So let's say someone uses an MA trick to have an invisible ally show up, deliver some dialogue, and take off. The arc will have an "enemies with custom power selections" warning on it, even if you never fight a custom critter.
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 never realized that. That's pretty stupid.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
A big part of the reason so many missions have orange warnings is that the warnings don't differentiate between enemies and friendlies. So let's say someone uses an MA trick to have an invisible ally show up, deliver some dialogue, and take off. The arc will have an "enemies with custom power selections" warning on it, even if you never fight a custom critter.
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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
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I fail to see how letting people pick their spawn points could lead to any more exploits than are already possible with the current tools.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
I can see why they wouldn't want you to place every mob in an arc for exploit reasons, but allowing you to manually place 2-3 mobs and maybe 1-2 clickies would be nice for setting bosses or other key mobs in intelligent locations on the map.
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If you could create your own spawn points, then yes, I see how that could be exploited. It could also cause problems with enemies getting stuck in geometry, blinkies inside the geometry, stuff spawning under the map, etc. Most people I've talked to don't want to create their own spawn points though, we just want to be able to pick from the ones that already exist.
As for custom maps, I doubt we'd ever get anything remotely approaching the level of customization we can get with the base editor. Aside from making the file sizes HUGE, this would cause problems with geometry and exploits. What would be nice is to have access to the "building blocks" of existing maps, to allow for at least new layouts. It would also be nice to be able to use the base editor styles to reskin existing maps. Or to change the lighting, add/remove atmospheric details like fog, fires (damaging or non-damaging), alarms, spazzing civilians, etc. It would be simpler and not exploitable, but would still give existing maps a different feel.
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'm not sure. But then I wouldn't have guessed that you can make maps of boss-reward granting monkeys either. I don't have an exploiter's mindset but I trust in them to find ways to screw things up.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I fail to see how letting people pick their spawn points could lead to any more exploits than are already possible with the current tools.
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Okay, that's just retarded.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Yes, this would be nice. It would also be nice to be able to hide anything that uses Extreme critters. Or pick tags to exclude, such as "challenging," if that's what you're most definitely not looking for.
A big part of the reason so many missions have orange warnings is that the warnings don't differentiate between enemies and friendlies. So let's say someone uses an MA trick to have an invisible ally show up, deliver some dialogue, and take off. The arc will have an "enemies with custom power selections" warning on it, even if you never fight a custom critter. |
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"Challenging" is in the eye of the beholder, too. I made an arc that featured all custom enemies but it was expressly designed for lowbies. I took a half-dozen of my under-10 characters through it specifically to see if the arc was soloable by sub-optimal and low-damage toons and I had no problems at all. But two or three people told me it was way too hard. I can't imagine a character less capable of soloing than my level 6 Storm Defender who didn't use Vet powers, but that was the feedback I got. /shrug|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
When you rate an arc you have the option of selecting tags. Does this do anything? Maybe it would help if you had both author-selected tags and player-selected tags visible. That way, if players tag the arc "challenging" and the author did not, it's a pretty good bet that the arc is simply poorly designed and will kill you.
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That said, I think the more search options we have the better the system will be.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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It even reads the CONTACT as a custom critter if you use one of your NPCs as opposed to creating a 'person' specially for it. I used an extreme AV for a contact, then the orange warnings came along and it showed 'Archvillains, Extreme Archvillains' despite the mission having an ally boss inside it and nothing more.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
A big part of the reason so many missions have orange warnings is that the warnings don't differentiate between enemies and friendlies. So let's say someone uses an MA trick to have an invisible ally show up, deliver some dialogue, and take off. The arc will have an "enemies with custom power selections" warning on it, even if you never fight a custom critter.
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Which is another problem; the orange warnings list individual categories and always as a plural. So one custom NPC AV shows up Archvillains and Extreme Archvillains and having the custom boss ally flagged up 'Extreme Bosses' even as a friendly.
Tyger (50), Mutation-Controller Mind/FF - oldest Mind/FF on Union
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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What keeps me from AE is the almost complete inability to find any decent stories. For every one good story it seems there are about a hundred other dumb stories. All I ever see are stories like,
"this is a farm!!!1!1"
"lulz I maed a storyz"
"FIGHT DEEZ INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT GUYS ALL AT ONCE!"
...and so on. Other times I see stories that have potential, but are bogged down by terrible writing and spelling errors, or just not understanding the system. To me it seems like you can only find a good story once in a blue moon. Plus the search system is just borked, and I can never find anything good with it.
Arc ID: 348998 - Becoming a villain
Arc ID: 373341 - To Save a Hero
Got Inf?
Mmm...
AE I used sporadically, the value of AE if I am not teaming with SG mates to assist me level from level 2 to 14 (main travel power level), is to be able to do mission after mission with out the abusive travel the contact threads put you through, also many of the mission entrances are placed in areas very far (seems by design) and surrounded by very high level mobs when compared to you, thus ensuring many useless trips to the hospital, while trying to get to the mission entrance. AE by-passes this altogether.
With the advent of Oro, the low level badge needed threads can be selected, thus using AE as a low level "safe" training and level ground a good place.
Now lets look at AE at the mid-levels (14-32), the experience you get there is poor as a rule, too many mobs have been exp nurfed; there are no drops, and tickets' random rolls are usually trash. Also doing TFs are a much better source of experience, influence, drops and you get Merits!
AE at high levels (33-49), as the mid-levels, is effectively worthless, the only use I had for AE was the ability to make benchmark AE missions to train on my alts and decide how to better enhance them and subsequently play them.
AE at level 50, pretty much pointless with one exception. Often prices at WW for materials can be terribly stupidly high! I often acquire over-priced salvage by trading them for tickets. If I am strapped for influence, I look at the worst over-priced salvage offenders, go to AE, trade tickets for that kind of salvage, and then sell it for lots of influence!
What would make me use AE more?
Being able to buy white salvage with tickets would increase my use of AE.
Being able to select my recipe and acquire it with tickets would very definetely increase my use of AE. (The amount of tickets storable would have to be raised to allow for very much higher ticket prices to select recipes)
Hugs
Stormy
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Yeah, this is dumb, but there's a simple solution. Don't do it. Just save the NPC's costume, and recreate them as a "person." If you're not using the NPC elsewhere in the arc, there's no reason to give them any powers.
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Originally Posted by Tyger
It even reads the CONTACT as a custom critter if you use one of your NPCs as opposed to creating a 'person' specially for it. I used an extreme AV for a contact, then the orange warnings came along and it showed 'Archvillains, Extreme Archvillains' despite the mission having an ally boss inside it and nothing more.
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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
The main problem with AE arcs is that they are too uneven and you have no idea whether your character can do them easily or quickly. With dev-created content you know what you're getting nearly every time (because standard enemies are used and the devs have more quality control).
The other problem I have with many arcs is that they're just time-wasters. I think 99% of everyone who plays this game wants a balance of story and rewards. I don't want just one or the other. I want a steady stream of tickets and an interesting story. The devs more or less do that.
But a lot of serious arc writers don't give a damn about rewards and don't care if you waste 20 minutes running their arc and get nothing for it. Your arcs need to have a good, fast flow. This is a video game, and that's what players expect.
Authors who want people to run their arcs need to write arcs that people want to run. That means that you have to give rewards commensurate with the time spent running the arc. Which means avoiding mechanics that make you run around the map multiple times, presenting opponents that are excessively difficult with respect to the time taken to beat them, enemies that present huge stumbling blocks to certain ATs, and so on.
Missions with multiple chained objectives -- especially on big open maps -- are the worst offenders. One or two such objectives are okay, if you take care with the map and the positioning to give them a natural flow. But the AE system doesn't give authors enough control to do a good job on this. If the tools don't let you do a good job, you can't use the tools.
Also, I don't understand what constitutes "long" or "short" arcs. I kind of think it's the number of missions, but that's really not a good guide. One of my arcs used all the smallest maps -- the university basement one, a bank, a small warehouse -- yet it got autotagged "long" when I specifically designed it to be story-focused and short. Get in, experience the story, get out.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Or alternatively, the option to show missions that only use custom enemies. |
Originally Posted by Kelenar
Yeah. Options to hide missions that use custom enemies and/or AVs would be nice.
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I understand why the devs added the warnings about ambushes, AVs/EBs, and whatnot, but those terms can/do scare me off if I see too many of them, especially since I play arcs that are already difficult because I like custom critters. But if these terms are being as broadly applied as some here claim, then perhaps I should be a little more daring in trying those missions. It hadn't occured to me that something as simple as a helper might be what's triggering those warnings.
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Originally Posted by Ashcraft
Jetboy sums it up nicely. Switching from a star rating to a simple 'Cool' or 'Suck' value system would help alot as well, eliminating the 4-star wasteland that is AE now.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
AE is just too much of a pain in the butt for a player and an author. As you said, once you get to four stars (easy with the way people rate), your arc might as well be dead.
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So my questions: Why do 4-star arcs have the stigma of existing in a "4-star wasteland," or that they "might as well be dead?" Can almost any arc really achieve 4 stars, making the rating meaningless? Or is the feeling that 4-star arcs are failures more because the "goal" is to get to 5 stars due to how it was initial advertised that 5-star arcs would receive praise and accolades and potential in-game recognition? Or am I just misreading things completely?
d
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The default system displays all the five-star arcs in the system, then all the four-star arcs in the system. The perception, right or wrong, is that potential arc players will page through from the beginning and never get to Page 200 of the four-star arcs. Further, when AE was newer, potential players would often search for only five star arcs, meaning that four star arcs would never be played. So, in summation, it isn't so much that authors want to reach five stars as that they're afraid their arcs will never be seen if they slip down to four.|
Originally Posted by bjooks
So my questions: Why do 4-star arcs have the stigma of existing in a "4-star wasteland," or that they "might as well be dead?" Can almost any arc really achieve 4 stars, making the rating meaningless? Or is the feeling that 4-star arcs are failures more because the "goal" is to get to 5 stars due to how it was initial advertised that 5-star arcs would receive praise and accolades and potential in-game recognition? Or am I just misreading things completely?
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I know anecdotal experience is considered meaningless around here, but I can say that until the near-abandonment of AE by all but the cognoscienti over the past six months, my experience on all of my arcs exactly bore out the scenario I outlined above. For the first several weeks each arc was live, each was rated five stars, and each got several plays a week (sometimes several a day). As soon as the ratings fell to four stars, the arcs were either never played again or played only a few times a year.
The most amusing example was an arc that started off at five stars when AE first opened and got several plays a day, then suffered ratings griefing (zero-starring for simple orneriness was common back when zero-starring was possible), dropped to four stars, and didn't get played at all for several weeks. Once the rating system was tweaked, the arc's rating bounced back up to five stars, and it stayed there for six months, getting at least one play a week. Since it fell to four stars again, it's received only three plays, not counting my own.
So, in conclusion, the "four-star wasteland" is an issue of visibility. All that said, I don't think it's much of an issue these days, with the dramatically reduced traffic in AE.
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That kinda makes sense. It also makes sense why I'd never noticed this as I never published my one finished arc, and I play arcs not based on star ratings but based on search words and critter descriptions.|
Originally Posted by Olantern
The default system displays all the five-star arcs in the system, then all the four-star arcs in the system. The perception, right or wrong, is that potential arc players will page through from the beginning and never get to Page 200 of the four-star arcs.
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Thanks,
d
i think the biggest issues with AE right now is the search
the search feature in itself is almost pointless unless you use it to search for a specific arc or author, its almost more efficient to just use the "one random" button to find arcs
to expand on that, you should have the option to be able to pick out more than 1 random arc, maybe like 10 for a better selection
the rating system needs work, but i think a simple like/dislike system would prolly be better than the current one (and i think this topic has been covered enough)
i know im definitly the one who also prefers some story AND normal rewards, and i did the best i could to design my story arc to give out normal rewards and i tested it multiple times to make sure the rewards are giving out properly, but i know that a lot of authors tend to be more story driven than balancing for both
Why did I give up on AE?
Easy, I wrote 2 arcs that were repeatedly rated 5 stars.
A Princess of Mars
Heavy Metal - The most Freakshow ever seen
Then the anti 5 star brigade rated them into 3 star oblivion. I gave up and never went back. I intend to never return. When something is 5 starred you get play - when it is 3 starred you don't.
My review of "A Princess of Mars".
Arcs (and authors) like this are part of the problem, not the solution.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Why did I give up on AE?
Easy, I wrote 2 arcs that were repeatedly rated 5 stars. A Princess of Mars Heavy Metal - The most Freakshow ever seen Then the anti 5 star brigade rated them into 3 star oblivion. I gave up and never went back. I intend to never return. When something is 5 starred you get play - when it is 3 starred you don't. |
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Originally Posted by Venture
My review of "A Princess of Mars".
Arcs (and authors) like this are part of the problem, not the solution. |
Slight threadjack - apparently a few folks participating in this discussion decided to try my latest arc ("Kill or Cure") and gave it feedback (not surprising, everyone gave almost identical feedback on the same mission). I fully agree on the feedback and intend to make the suggested changes. Still, I'm glad the folks who played it LIKED it (4 and 5 star ratings), I appreciate the /tells and the PMs with suggestions, and just wanted to say thanks!
/threadjack
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
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THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
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Actually, the default system displays ALL the 5-star arcs, followed by ALL the UNPLAYED arcs, then 1-star arcs and 4-star arcs show up AT THE END OF THE LIST!
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Originally Posted by Olantern
The default system displays all the five-star arcs in the system, then all the four-star arcs in the system.
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Yeah, "long" and "short" are meaningless. I'm not sure what they're based on. File size? Number of objectives? All these flags are good for is filtering out the farms. It would be far more useful just to sort arcs by number of missions.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
Also, I don't understand what constitutes "long" or "short" arcs. I kind of think it's the number of missions, but that's really not a good guide. One of my arcs used all the smallest maps -- the university basement one, a bank, a small warehouse -- yet it got autotagged "long" when I specifically designed it to be story-focused and short. Get in, experience the story, get out.
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Originally Posted by Emberly
Although I disagree with a lot of Venture's reviews, this one was bang on. Sometimes arcs get rated down not by a mysterious cabal of secretive cryptoauthors, but by people thinking it is in fact a one-star arc.
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By the same token, you can just as easily 5-star your friend's uncompletable Extreme/Extreme everything arc, or 5-star an arc because it contained references to your favorite anime. Your 5-star rating is meaningless to anyone who doesn't like anime.
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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Which is why I'm in favor of the 'like' system of ratings.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
But we can't know, because you can rate an arc without playing it, and most people who think an arc sucks don't have the stones to step out of the safe zone of anonymous star ratings and actually say so. Of course, since the author of the arc you just tore apart can easily 1-star your arc as revenge, I can't entirely blame them. Even if they do stand behind their low rating and send a comment, nobody but the author will ever see it, or see why they rated the way they did. If I do a search for "Malta" and find an arc that somebody 1-starred because they hate Malta....their opinion of the arc is irrelevant to me, but I don't know that.
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Taking it a step further, I'd like to see an Amazon-style system of user reviews appended to the arc, identified by global handle. I'm usually able to get an accurate sense of whether or not I'll like a book by reading what other people enjoyed or didn't enjoy about a title.
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And one of the better aspects of the Amazon system: you get to rate whether a review was "helpful." The system then orders future book reviews with the most helpful to you closer to the top (I'm told they also use it to "weigh" the ratings you see so the people you trust MOST to give a good review factor in on the review more than people you don't). |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Which is why I'm in favor of the 'like' system of ratings.
Taking it a step further, I'd like to see an Amazon-style system of user reviews appended to the arc, identified by global handle. I'm usually able to get an accurate sense of whether or not I'll like a book by reading what other people enjoyed or didn't enjoy about a title. |
Put that into AE and you could have a self sorting system within a few weeks. Good reviewers that share your interest will be liked enough to "float" the stuff you'd find good and "sink" the crap. (unfortunately, I think they patented it along with one-click shopping)
I can see why they wouldn't want you to place every mob in an arc for exploit reasons, but allowing you to manually place 2-3 mobs and maybe 1-2 clickies would be nice for setting bosses or other key mobs in intelligent locations on the map.
Using the base editor would be amazing although they're stingy enough with their tiny memory slots as it is without the bloat a custom built map would add. I'm all for seeing it happen though, just not optimistic that it'd ever be on the table.