Am I the only one feeling unmotivated....

....to create new arcs, knowing that any day now any existing canon you incorporate could be contradicted by some head-asplodingly lame new canon?

I ask this because the one arc I really want to write involves the Shadow Shard. But now, with the Echoes in Ramiel's arc and the Well-granted Lore pets sharing the Shadow Shard reflection aura....well you can see why I fear for my beloved Shadow Shard. I despise the Well of the Furies storyline and don't want to waste my time writing anything to do with it. At the same time, I'm writing for this game, so I want to set my stories firmly in the game world. I've already had the "canon-related" tag on one arc pretty much invalidated by the devs' recent treatment of Malta. The one I was working on would be even worse.

Of course if you like to write outside of the game world it's totally irrelevant. Lucky you.

This on top of the fact that very few people are likely to play it just leaves me completely unmotivated. Although I did get a play and a very nice comment on one of my arcs today, that was a pleasant surprise and a strong reminder to go back and do those tweaks I've been putting off.

I'm not bothered by changing canon. I am unmotivated by lack of plays, and I can't justify to myself to pay for another slot to make something that maybe 30 people will play (approx number of plays on my most recent arc published in Sept.) Honestly, if I didn't have a Dev's Choice arc that still surprisingly nets me a fair amount of tickets (250 a week more or less) and the occasional positive comment I would have probably dropped the AE a while ago.

It has been nice to see a few new (or old) faces here in the forums, and I have had a few pleasant surprises - a couple random plays on my Matchstick Women arc, including one who played it based on reading the in-game bio of one my Burnt Matchstick tanker on Pinnacle.

I haven't written anything new in well over a year. The last arc I was working on was an arc about the Praetorians stealing Castle's spreadsheet and attempting to use it to nerf the heroes of Primal Earth.

About 6 days into the project, Going Rogue was announced.

I scrapped it and haven't touched the authoring tools since.

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Having filled all my slots a LONG time ago, I haven't bothered creating anything. Considering that the AE has all but been abandoned, may as well give us unlimited slots to publish, it's not like it'll make a difference.

Paying to whitewash the fence that's sitting on the back under the bushes is not something that particularly attracts me, and I really don't want to take down arcs that have a few plays, considering how hard it is to get the plays in the first place!

I have pretty much zero chance of ever getting any more than the 8 arc slots I already have nor do I have any new stories that I consider worth the time to retire an existing arc for so I haven't written anything new in a year.

I don't care much for incarnates either, except for occasional TFs with old friends I'm finding little reason to keep my account active these days.

Oh hey, Lazarus is still alive!

I actually do care about the end-game a lot, that is why I have been doing /headdesk quite a bit in the last two days.

Now....raise your hand if you're not surprised about the complete and utter lack of AE improvements or additions in the i20 overview.

Actually, I've been creating arcs (7 of 8 slots filled) but have been posting them to youtube. I found that its hard to get them played but I get a little below a 900 views on some of my stories so find it gets more activity there than in the game.

But to your point Eva, you read my mind! I was actually posting to see if anyone had heared anything about AE content in i20. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the incarnate stuff, really putting my 50s to work now, but if anything, AE is a part of the game I really LOVE.

So yeah, its very disappointing that no mention is made at all. To me, it still is such a unique system compared to other competitor games (DCUO, CO, etc); but it would be great if they added more mechanics you could exploit and allow your allies to be met all in the same place, etc.

So far I think the only thing in official content that's butted up against my arcs is the use of the name "Ramiel". I considered changing "The Christmas We Get" but decided against it. Anyone looking can see the arc's original publication date, so it's not my problem the devs used the name, it's theirs. ;p

Of course, "Chains of Blood" is still total Joss bait.

In any case my slots are filled and I doubt I'd buy more even if I could.

I prefer to play lore-based arcs, so I'd rather my own were in that category. I expect, though, that lore will change. It is inevitable when you have a world being used by different writers. For that matter, even in books, when a series is written by the same writer, things get changed over time and inconsistencies appear.

The lack of plays never bothered me, either, given that it became obvious in the first week that the only way to get plays was to be able to heavily advertise your own arcs, and that's not something I can do. Its more lack of play by the devs, resulting in no more Dev Choice arcs that does bother me.

The ratings system is mainly what unmotivates me. That began early when it became apparent how easy it is to grief an arc into oblivion. My arc was originally published in AE's heyday (though it was accidently unpublished and has since not gained anywhere near the number of plays it once had) and the sequel was plotted soon after. Every time I try to work on it, though, I can't even manage to finish an entire mission before I start feeling like I'm wasting my time. So, in well over a year, I've managed only the first draft of 2 missions out of the 5 it will have, if I ever finish it.

Uh oh. I better not suggest my new arc where the Well of the Furies sits down and reads the Malta Group's public blog, thereby earning them all the Notice of the Well, granting them superpowers (and, since they're now all incarnates, nicely explaining away why they can be level 54 instead of level 50 in Tin Mage), and prompting them to set up a base in the Shadow Shard where they learn that Rularuu is really just the Shard's version of Nemesis, so the entire Shadow Shard is really just a Nemesis Plot.*

Okay, but in all seriousness, while I'm not bothered by the Well of the Furies storyline, if I were, I know I would actually be *more* motivated to write AE stuff that deliberately contradicted canon just to take the endgame story in the direction I would have preferred to see it go. And, frankly, I think you're a good author, and if you did that, I'd play the arcs just to see where you would have taken the story if you'd been in charge.

That *does* go against your assertion that you want your stories to fit the established canon, but it doesn't make them completely non-canon - it just makes them an extension of (or based on) an earlier version of the game canon.

But it really boils down to what I see as the real value of AE: if you don't like the storylines in-game, it lets you play the stories you want to play. If other players also enjoy them, that's a nice bonus. I strongly suspect you've got very different motivations, but, hey, that's my 2 cents.




*Important Disclaimer: No such arc exists, and I have no intention of actually writing it.

Have to admit, I felt the same way. And my initial arcs, I was still learning and eager to get something out so my later arcs were better (5 vs. 4 stars) but at most, I think I got 10 plays on my later ones once the fanfare of AE initially died down. I also felt like yeah, you had to advertise and so I would spam the channels for awhile and then, went so far as to include well-known marvel and dc characters to see if i could get people to play. It worked, and looked like a Dev played it, said they liked the story but gave it 4 stars because of copyright.

They were absolutely right in that I shouldn't have included those characters and then I realized I was getting too desperate to get them played and I stalled for awhile. But once I saw other videos on youtube, I downloaded XFire, worked with Windows Media, and now just publish there exclusively (even just draft arcs that are never published in AE).

Unfortunately, the challenge there is that you try to whip up more action-oriented arcs as the text is too small to read (can make out some in 1080p but then Youtube hangs periodically at such high resolution) so I add text in on youtube itself that either duplicates or augments the text from the original mission. But again, you run out of "tricks" after awhile for arcs that are pure action vs. dialogue and story.. so i've shown the arachnos flier, malta zeus titan, rikti EBs, etc along with the new locations... but again, after awhile, that's not enough to keep their interest, so unless some new mechanics come out of i20, I doubt I'll be making much either.

As my brother said (not a CoX player, but rather, uses Xbox and PS3), they all look the same after awhile which, without really having a story-based arc, is true. You can only show a blaster but so many times (though I've tried to use all of the combination available in AE) in different costumes.

The system has SO MUCH POTENTIAL, its a shame they don't do more with it.

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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini I prefer to play lore-based arcs, so I'd rather my own were in that category. I expect, though, that lore will change. It is inevitable when you have a world being used by different writers. For that matter, even in books, when a series is written by the same writer, things get changed over time and inconsistencies appear. The lack of plays never bothered me, either, given that it became obvious in the first week that the only way to get plays was to be able to heavily advertise your own arcs, and that's not something I can do. Its more lack of play by the devs, resulting in no more Dev Choice arcs that does bother me. The ratings system is mainly what unmotivates me. That began early when it became apparent how easy it is to grief an arc into oblivion. My arc was originally published in AE's heyday (though it was accidently unpublished and has since not gained anywhere near the number of plays it once had) and the sequel was plotted soon after. Every time I try to work on it, though, I can't even manage to finish an entire mission before I start feeling like I'm wasting my time. So, in well over a year, I've managed only the first draft of 2 missions out of the 5 it will have, if I ever finish it.

I'm a bit unmotivated to create new arcs too, but for a different reason....most of my free time on CoH has been absorbed by doing the Weekly Strike Target repeatedly. I am a sucker for TFs, and the Weekly Strike Target has probably tripled the number of TFs and SFs that occur on my server every day. Also I am technically out of story arc slots, though I don't view that as being as big an obstacle as others do. I am a little tempted to write something new up for the Irish/Roman-themed AE contest, but haven't come up with a good enough story concept to justify it yet.

I'm not really that concerned about the "game lore" issues posed by the incarnate system or other recent developments. I read through the story presented by Mender Ramiel's story arc, but found it to be a little silly, so I don't regard it as canon (see: Denial).

I did make some minor adjustments to the flavor text in A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight TF in response to Going Rogue, though a purist would probably still argue that my arc is incompatible with the Praetorian canon.

I also noticed that Mender Ramiel had stolen the name of Venture's protagonist, which reminded me of how Venture recommended I change the name of my villainous contact in Axis and Allies, Schadenfreude, after the Kahn/Barracuda TFs were released. I see that Venture has come to the same conclusion I did ("I had the name first, so I'm keeping it, dammit!") which I shamefully confess fills me with a sense of ... schadenfreude.

I agree with most of the sentiments already expressed here, but I'll add that lately I've been distracted with playing tips missions.

I used up all 8 of my arc slots some time ago, and have already started unpublishing and re-using them.

We can't get more than 8 arc slots, can we?

Other reasons for a slowdown in production are that my arcs are rarely played, especially lately, and my usual playtesters were absent from the game for over 6 months (playing a different MMO), so my writing stalled out over that period.

For the most part, the only people who play my arcs are the playtesters and myself, despite the comments I get from the occasional random player who says "Wow! Great arc! So much better than the other AE stuff I've been finding!" So insert the usual rant about the search tool, etc.

AE has been a disappointment as a system, but I'm glad to have even this rudimentary toolkit.

If I'd been hired as a dev back in 2005, this game would be so different ...

I haven't been motivated for over a year now. Part of it is that the 'canon' missions now outstrip what we can do in MA -- I can do without cutscenes, but I really, really would like to see in-mission, menu-based NPC conversations. Plus, as luck would have it, most of my ideas that actually seemed to be going places needed maps that were not, and never will be I guess, available in MA.

I also tend to go through phases of hating everything I've written and staying far away from MA. Other times, I'll write but never finish because I can't make the arc go anywhere thematically. I have a lot of fragmentary arcs sitting around.

And in addition, I find the mechanics of the 'official' missions/TFs/trials to be a lot of fun. From what little I've seen of the Incarnate trial preview, it looks like I'll enjoy it a lot. And I've come up with a lot of character concepts I enjoy playing and making interesting builds for. So that's been an acceptable distraction.

Canon conflicts I don't mind so much. I find that the recent content... hasn't been the best written stuff the game has to offer, but plenty of things are left rather ambiguous and open to interpretation. The Well of the Furies is really not very well-defined, if you think about it, and I think there's plenty of room for personal interpretations that make the whole concept more palatable.

I really only ran into one minor canon conflict, and it was easily resolved by altering a few lines of dialog. In fact, I was rather delighted that the devs had finally decided to focus on a character who was rife with potential, yet criminally ignored for over 5 years.

The break from MA has probably been good for me -- it's given me time to think about a couple of arcs that I've been thinking about for a while now. They're both thematically connected, and funnily enough, one actually is intended to flesh out the Well of the Furies some more. I think they're both the better for my having had some distance from the MA in order to flesh out ideas.

The only question is finding the time to write it while kitting out all the characters I care about with the new Incarnate shinies.

I agree with some of the latter comments surrounding the current and planned TFs; quite frankly, without them making some of these same mechanics available in AE, its hard now to compete with the regular missions. Last night I played the Lambda event in Beta, and I guess while I can't say much, it is quite epic, a feeling I was trying to convey in my Apocalypse Initiative and Praetorian Conflict arcs.

The fact that even in the APEX arc, you have the perennial favorite of giant robots (think Marvel Sentinels circa 90's cartoon) who arrive at one point, as if they've just landed from flying and its hard to compete unless, for example, you make the War Walkers available in AE. I checked this morning on new maps/characters in Beta and again, I guess I can't really say anything but I was underwhelmed by what I've seen, very.

I'll continue to write arcs if nothing else, for the creative outlet and as another poster stated, you can put a personal spin on it. I also still enjoy coming up with new, hopefully unique groups (Terran Space Marines, Waikahns) with unique power combinations and backstories that unfortunately, will get highlighted in Youtube vs. in-game.

But as another poster commented, it is pretty clear that like with SG bases, PVP, etc; AE served a purpose at one point striking a bold measure for unique innovation when the game was stagnating but in retrospect, seems that it only just bought the devs time to really work on the end-game/incarnates. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of those who LOVES the end game attention, but I don't think they need to be mutually exclusive, you can still fix up other parts of the game (like AE) while still doing incarnates.

My Praetorian Conflict arc focuses on Cole's attempted invasion into other parts of Paragon City while also trying to pursuade other factions to join him; so while I try to develop epic fights, and use Malta/Vanguard bots, they are nothing compared to the War Walkers and other characters brought out in the new beta. I must admit that I got excited with the ability to include the Praetorian Clockwork as their particle beams and different emanation points and color really help add more variation to an arc (and I hoped it would lead to our own toons potentially being able to have the same powers), unless AE keeps up with the in-game innovations, it will become a relic.