Am I the only one feeling unmotivated....

I'm still subscribing, and I'll be subscribing until they shut the game down, but my CoH-time these days is measurable in minutes per week. That's partly because the Incarnate stuff in Issue 19 wasn't really conducive to my style of play, byut mostly because i recently really got back into playing boardgames, so I've been playing Axis & Allies, Cosmic Encounter, Arkham Horror, Space Hulk and Android with my mates in my poker room rather than PC gaming. I hear that there's some sort of global 'lfg' queueing system or sth coming in I20, though, and if that makes it easier for me to find TFs at strange hours, then i'm well up for that.

I'll always love the MA, and from the ticket trickle I get when i log in, it seems that some of my arcs are still getting plays, so that's cool, but I can't see myself writing the huge mega-arc I'd planned for my next one.

I wish i could get back into the 'reviews', though - I used to love doing them.

Eco.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Seems that adding in newly created stuff to the AE system (such as the Kinetic Melee set for customs) always lags behind it's first introduction in the rest of the game. I think talk of the devs having abandoned AE is all a bit premature. So far. We'll see.

Look at how long it took to get Earth Assault added and even then it had to be altered since for some reason NPCs cannot use the stone hammer animations. Also it's had it's damage numbers widely off-balance since it was added to AE and they still have not addressed that either.

I've got a pretty loose relationship with canon so it doesn't bother me too much. Plus it seems like I'm a lot more interesting in Dark Astoria than the devs are, so I feel pretty safe about not having anything I've written being countered by official canon any time soon (PS: Devs, if you feel like hiring someone to write some story arcs for DA, I'll take the job!)

My issue is more lack of ideas (or rather, good ideas. Nobody is going to want to play my urban hip-hopera about the skulls vs. the hellions), and once I have an idea it's hard to get motivated to actually put in the effort knowing how few people are actually going to play it. I work pretty hard on my arcs, and my last arc, written over a year ago, is only at 99 plays despite showing up in the first 5 pages. If a 5 star arc written by a dev's choice author (which is about as visible as you can get in AE) can't get more than 100 plays in a year, then it's pretty indicative of how many people are still interested in AE for more than just farms.

To be honest I don't blame the devs for it. It's just an inherent issue with player generated content. Sturgeon's law is that 90% of everything is crap. The dev made content has a vetting process to prevent that 90% from ever reaching the player base, but AE has no such restriction (if it did, that would both be counter-intuitive and be a full time job for some poor *******), which makes it pretty hard to find things that are actually good, and after you've played your 4th or 5th absolutely painful arc, I wouldn't blame you if you just stopped trying. It's essentially fanfiction; there might be some really great authors out there, but most of them are writing stories about their favorite characters hooking up. Even though the devs can bribe authors and players with AE tickets (which despite what people think are actually quite good rewards - you can buy rare salvage worth hundreds of thousands of inf with just a couple hundred), it's still not worth it to slog through the garbage.

I think it'd be more effective if the rating window that comes up after finishing an arc showed you what other works the author has. Only show ones that are not marked "Work in Progress" though.

I have actually started writing a new arc. It's going to be a challenging arc for teams of Incarnates. I hope I can get it done before any canon content invalidates my take on the same story. Naturally I don't expect anyone to ever play this arc.

I'm trying to work on one with powerful enough enemies but again, wish the War Walkers were available to at least make it on par with what the regular game now makes available. Again, we are a bit limited with the mechanics/maps available in AE vs. those used in the current incarnate taskforces..

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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg I have actually started writing a new arc. It's going to be a challenging arc for teams of Incarnates. I hope I can get it done before any canon content invalidates my take on the same story. Naturally I don't expect anyone to ever play this arc.

One of the problems for AE is that it gives little incentive to be involved with it and it tends to make things difficult for those who are. Something's a little off when new Issues lead you to thinking "I wonder what broke" as opposed to looking forward to what was released. My concern is simply not knowing where to go from here. I'm too stubborn to give up on my own arcs and I do have a new one planned but it sucks to feel like my arcs don't stand a chance since I joined the game with I14 as opposed to being someone who participated in the I14 beta.

I finally broke down and bought the extra slots a couple of weeks ago and have a new arc I'm working on. I had my three filled and didn't want to take any of them down because I personally still play them even if no one else outside of my wife does. Everyone else I know has pretty much stopped playing AE. An advertisement for testers on my SG forum netted 1 guy.

That can be disappointing but in the end analysis I don't write arcs for other people. I write them for myself, usually to re-write canon when an arc doesn't end the way I want it to (take THAT Mr. Phipps!). So changes to canon stories don't bother me much.

Anyway, I'll keep using it for that and sometimes for roleplay purposes and hope they keep adding new enemies and maps like they have been the last few issues. It's a great tool and while the excitement for it has cooled I still use it on a fairly regular basis.

I happened to log on today and see that we have a new HoF arc. Some fire resist 1 mission farm. I hope someday I make something worthy of HoF like that great arc. Unmotivated, you better believe it.

WN

Of course, I have less to lose by this, being new, but here's a (rather crazy) proposal:

It's fairly clear that in-game rating and number of plays are not a very good measure of the quality of an arc in terms of story and gameplay.

So what if we ignore them, and just write for people who are interested enough in playing well-written arcs that they take the time to read reviews or look at the MA finder channel, instead of picking off the first page.

If we don't care about ratings and number of plays, then there's no reason not to publish and republish an arc (well, the arc number changes, but I tend to search by author or title anyway). That means we are no longer limited by number of slots: once we hit four or more slots, we can started cycling arcs on (say) a weekly basis (maybe keep the most recent arc up permanently, and cycle the other two). Slightly inconvenient for players, but it seems to work fine on Hulu.

This is what I'm going to do, anyway. It seems like if everyone did this, the authors would have more reason to continue writing (instead of just filling up their slots and waiting for them to get played), and the players (well, the ones who want story rather than rewards) would have more new arcs to look forward to.

I dunno.