What keeps you away from AE arcs?

I'm not surprised that you think that.

However, I think you are outnumbered by those who think the most recent story arcs (perhaps fewer in regard to the Alpha arc), think the arcs over the past few issues have been outstanding.

The 2nd clone arc is certainly the saddest one in the game

Unless it's Baby New Year.

Just to complicate matters further, a lot of people feel that much of the stuff written by "the professionals" back in 2003 and 2004 is awful, at least by the standards of 2010 (soon to be 2011).

Frankly, the reason why I hardly ever play an AE arc is because there are so many that are just plain crap.

My typical run-down of player-made content runs a gamut of the following...

Fight ME!

Okay. So, now I'm fighting the player's main character. Of course, the player thinks very highly of their character, so they ramp him up to Arch Villain status.

The player would only be able to hit this hard or resist this much if they chewed on Tier 2 Inspirations like they were Pez. However, when we face off against their NPC version, they simply MUST be the hardest challenge we the players would ever face.

-Which brings up a problem I have with the Critter Creator. Why do our NPCs have to be broken-down versions of the PCs? In some cases they're "broken up," because you can slam more powers into a Minion than the average minion would ever have (easily making them as tough as bosses). In fact, throw a full powerset in and it's more powers than even an Arch Villain would have.
--And all of their attacks are doing ramped-up damage! Give an enemy a full attack chain and they will be able to unleash a nearly-never-ending volley of attacks, and you WILL get hit (painfully).

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of having to fight Mary Sues.

Behold My Challenge!

This goes back to my issue of being able to cram too much into a custom enemy.

There are some skilled manipulators of the Architect engine out there. Sadly, they decided to turn their efforts toward punishing players of their arcs. You'll be moving along through the missions, fighting your average enemy spawns, having a perfectly fine time, and suddenly get hit by a horde of minions who have a full complement of fire powers. Imagine, if you will, getting hit by three Rains of Fire at once, now couple that with three Blazes and three fireballs, all with higher damage than they should have because NPCs have it automatically programmed to hit harder because they get fewer attacks than PCs.

The disturbing thing is the arc creator tested this and ENJOYED how it turned out. Such malevolently sadistic construction does not lend itself to repetitive play.

Here's how I think the story should be!

I've run into few of these.

Thankfully.

Still, each one I've run across has turned out to be the same thing. The author pokes fun at what the Developers have created for the playerbase and tries to desperately convince you that Sister Psyche should be having a lesbian relationship with Swan or Penelope Yin or some other hideous mash-up (sometimes thrusting their own Mary Sue into the unlikely pairing).

Poorly Written Adventure, GO!

Just... The title says it all.

If you want people to enjoy your arc, have the text make sense. Grammar isn't hard!

FARM! FARM! FARM!

Yay. Exploiting the AE. Whee. I'm just gonna keep wailing on these weak enemies that are giving gratuitous rewards.

It's simply AWESOME getting everything for nearly nothing. Hell, with missions like these, why don't the devs just put the Inf, salvage, recipes and other drops on a timer and my character can just sit in the door of a mission all day long, reaping the undeserved rewards of doing bubkis. Hell, we can make that the pool power that replaces Fitness.

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Frankly, I think it's sad that the AE falls to the wayside unless somebody's exploiting it. Then we get to watch the patchwork fly as the developers scramble to fix the issue of players lazily hamming on the same mission over and over again so they can get their characters to level 50 more rapidly and dump rare salvage and recipes on the market.

This is why we can't have nice things.

The developers have to spend effort that could have been devoted to making something nice to fixing and exploit instead because players decide they would rather take the quick and easy path to greatness.

And they wonder why the developers forced the "Slow" option on the player in the Incarnate arc... Though, honestly, it would have been funny to watch people complaining that they suddenly couldn't play their characters anymore "because the Well said I can't!"

I'm sorry... The whole issue is a complex web of ridiculous behavior.

What would really make me happy is the ability to truly make Custom NPCs. Why can't we use the Minigun power the Crey Enforcers and Council Force soldiers use? Why can't we make alternate versions of Paragon Protectors (instead of "approximating" a Custom NPC to look close to the real thing)? If I want Full Auto on a character, why do I have to use the Corrupter/Defender/Blaster version?

Did you all know that if you give the NPC Blaster powers, it's still able to fire off the Tier 1 and 2 powers when Mezzed? Corrupter-powered characters will Scourge you when below 50% health (bye-bye Tankers and Brutes) and there's really no safe ground in regards to Control powers. Controller powers will hit you with double damage when locked in and NPCs with Dominator powers will eventually pop Domination and wreck your world.

I'm glad the Tanker Resistance Debuff for their Tier 1 attacks hasn't seemed to make it into the AE (but I could be mistaken).

As long as Custom NPCs are always just ramshackle PCs, AE will continue to irk me.

Gah, finally found the thread mentioned by wife (D_R/Samuraiko).

To respond to the thread itself - why don't I play it more? Chaff... metric kilotons of it. Why don't I use it? Partly personal, and partly functional. Once upon a time, there were several maps in the system that I badly wanted to use in several arcs. They were determined to be "broken", removed from the system, and never returned. Bad taste in the mouth syndrome, and quite certainly my issue to "deal" with. Functionally, better tools needed, both regarding the interface itself, and with regard to what game mechanics are available to the system itself. For example, I'd like to be able to design custom GMs, but there's no option to scale an opponent that large.

Getting a bit tired, so I'm unlikely to be thinking through the ramifications effectively, but in response to the folks that would like to see the vast bulk of garbage-arcs culled from the system...

I'm wondering if it would be possible/useful/fair to ditch arcs that haven't been PLAYED within the passage of a certain amount of time. Granted, this doesn't get rid of any active farms, but it does at least clear anything that has "dropped off the radar", and if it's the work of an active AE author, can be republished, since it's still presumably saved locally. Yes, they lose their ratings... but we all seem to know what the rating system itself is worth.

After that, implement a similar system for regularly culling arcs that aren't played for increasing amounts of time. For example:

Delete if not played within 3 days.
Then, delete if not played within 7 days.
Then, 14 days.
Then, 30 days.
60 days
90 days
180 days, rechecking thereafter every 180 days

Thoughts? Pros and cons? The solution seems fairly simple to me... which almost certainly means that it's far too late this evening for me to be posting in a completely intelligent fashion.

edit - Yes, definitely getting tired; thinking too much about this. Regarding being able to identify farms: A meter showing how many plays a given arc has received in the past 7 days. Ten? Either a) not a farm, or b) a bad farm. 62,947? Ummm... is this really as simple as it seems to me, at the moment?

Replying to various points, despite myself...really ought to just stop reading.