Copyright/Profane question

Copying entire dialogue sections, or the whole book? Either way. . . whoa. :O

So I guess we wait for an ETA on all this. I trust they're working on it.

I have one question:

How freaking difficult is it to roll back to the MA that was actually functional? Clearly, the fixes they're trying to implement aren't working, so why don't they just go back to the version that was working? Now, I'm not much of a tech person, so I don't know how difficult it actually is to do a roll-back, but surely it would be more effective and less complicated than what they're doing now.

All I wanna do is make an arc without trying to "fix" Longbow and Arachnos (which, among several other things, are freaking ridiculous things to put in the filter)!

*inhale... exhale...* All right, I need a Xanax.

During the U-stream this morning, Doc Aeon said that they are working on getting this issue resolved and that is wasn't as easy as people assumed. From what he said is sounded as though it was more difficult that what they had expected. But at least they know about it and are working on it.

As for rolling MA back, you can't do that without rolling back the entire game. I personally don't think that not changing a word in my arc at least temporarily outweighs the entire player base and their potential loss of gleemail/inf/xp/rewards/etc.

I can fully understand if they have found it to be more difficult or that it is more difficult than we can comprehend. We're outside playing the fun-fun-shiney, they're stuck checking the code. It is always easier looking out than in.

In regards to my other issue with problems on support it would appear I am the proud father of TWO support accounts. Don't ask me how that happened, maybe I got drunk one night, or maybe underpants gnomes. Either way I figured it out and apologised for wasting everyone's time on the matter there.

All right... my post earlier was a tad heated. But that's what happened when you're frustrated as all hell. Like I said, I'm not a tech person, so I wouldn't really know how difficult things are. Still, something must have gone really fracking wrong for things to be screwed up this bad...

I am glad that they're working on the problem (or so they claim, *cough*), and I hope it's fixed soon.

That's it Alicia, be positive.

Then when it is all said and done and you all have to pay me homage when you use the word "The", you can truly blow your stack.

In light of folks messaging me saying "they'd really love to play my arcs but. . . ." I've gone through and fixed the copyright slips that the filter hit. To update:

"This Costume Contest Sponsored by Tubbius" was unpublished. There are simply too many fixes on too many custom characters for me to deal with at the moment, and that arc's weak story-wise anyway.

"Fox Hunt" was unpublished. While this arc showcases some fun villain dialogue from Tubbius Regalis, and folks have complimented me on The Fox, this was also arguably my weakest overall arc in terms of a cohesive story. That and I refuse to rename the pro-wrestling homage "The Paragon Bomb."

"Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City" was renamed "The Hammer and Sickle Cross." All references to "5th Column" were adjusted to "Fifth Column." Funnily enough, this is where the arc was before my last adjustment, when I learned that, in-game, the game references the "5th Column." So much for consistency!

"PENGUIN" was surprisingly unscathed in all of this, as was "PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top."

"PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge" saw the same changes to the "Fifth Column" that were in "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City."

"City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon" was renamed "City of Ho Ho Ho." All references to "Paragon" were eliminated throughout the arc.

I REALLY, REALLY hate feeling like I have to dance around this filter just so I can play my arcs and so that others can do the same, but I'm tired of having folks slam my work with negative ratings because of a filter that's out of my control. If I ever get the opportunity to return these arcs to their former states (and names!), I gladly will, but for now, I just wanted a fix, even if it's a frustrating fix to implement on my part.

Good luck to the developers who are working on this issue, thanks to the players who've been messaging me about my broken arcs, and wishes of good fortune and many plays to the rest of the MA Community!

I can't argue with NCSoft's customer service.

I filled out a survey after my last exchange with the GMs, mentioned the customer service was fine but the MA filter policy was absurd.

Got a response from a very friendly GM Roland.

Exchange below:

GM Roland: Hello,

I came across this issue while reviewing surveys. I apologize if our responses were misleading, but we do recognize that the word filters are not working as intended in the Mission Architect.

We have made some adjustments to our name filters recently and as an unintended side effect, the filter as applied to the Mission Architect has become overzealous. It is not our intention to block the use of our signature characters from use in the Mission Architect, only from use in character creation. There are other side effects that are currently causing players some issues while designing missions.

We are working on ways to lessen the impact of the filters in the Mission Architect, but we cannot completely remove it. The workarounds mentioned for you to use for now are only temporary if you want to be able to access your mission sooner. As soon as possible, we will have a more permanent solution to the issue.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
GM Roland

I didn't especially like Roland's assertion that "we cannot completely remove it", so I responded with some criticism.

Nonetheless, Roland's response does tell me they are working on it, and it does let me know NCSoft cares enough about its customers to answer their concerns (even when there are probably quite a few of us complaining about this.)

Bleak_Wanderer: GM Roland,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to send me a message. I want to be clear (and I tried to be in my survey) that I have no problem whatsoever with the quality of the GM responses - to the contrary, the customer service team has done an exemplary job (as evidenced by the exchange we're having right now).

My beef is most likely with the developers.

If the Architect filter was in place in some capacity before this latest change, it was probably fine - because I never noticed it.

The concern that we mission architects have is this:

The filter is unnecessary, ineffective, and punitive only to those who wish to accurately design quality content for the game.

Unnecessary:

The game already has a reporting system which players may use to police MA content. I know for a fact that players can and do use this system to report copyright infringement. If you want to promote the use of such a system, then provide incentives for accurate reporting. Care would need to be taken to reward accurate reporting without rewarding the generation of objectionable content for the sake of reporting it - but it can be done. (I'll refer you to the 'Whistle Status' section of Newgrounds http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/faq/ for a system that seems to work. Click the URL and search 'Whistle' if you're interested.)

I think NCSoft could make a fairly strong case in court by demonstrating they reward players who report such content and ban infringers from creating more content.

Ineffective:

An automated filter is always going to fail at catching people intent on violating the spirit of the copyright policy. If I am a violator (which I am not), and if I want to make a story about Batman (which I don't, but for argument's sake), then I'm going to make a story about Batman. I'll build a costume that looks like Batman, and I'll keep trying name variations until I get one close enough that circumvents the filter, yet everyone knows the copyrighted character I'm referencing, and then I'll copy a storyline right out of a comic book (which you can't stop with any filter).

The copyright filter won't stop me copying the comic book story or making an arc about a Martial Arts/Technology scrapper who dresses in a black bat costume and fights an evil clown in a purple and green suit.

To stop that, you need players who report violators. See my previous point, above.


Punitive:

As discussed, copyright violators are almost untouched by the filter. Completely unaffected.

Conversely, if I'm trying to make a chess arc and I can't use "White Queen", that's a problem because it damages the integrity of the story I'm trying to build. There's not really another way to have a "white queen" chess piece character without using a name that sounds awkward - but because there is a copyrighted character with that name, I can't build a chess arc.

That's just one example of an infinite number of potential issues - issues neither you nor I can predict because we can't consider all the possible legitimate uses of language.

If I spend two hours crafting an arc, and then find out that the key signature character of that arc (the final villain, for example) can't have the fantastic name I thought up for him because it's a character name in some obscure comic somewhere (like the obscure Marvel villain, Positron, for example).... then my entire arc might be scrapped - all that time and effort wasted.

One or two demoralizing experiences like that, and I'm not going to be interested in risking it again - so I'm not going to generate quality content for your game.

---

NCSoft is throwing the baby out with the bath water here.

If you can forward my thoughts up the chain or along to the devs, I'd be grateful.

Please don't feel any need or obligation to respond to this message any further - your customer service obligation is fulfilled, and you have other people who need help. I could rant about this until the end of time.

I'm going to post this to the board as well, both as an example of the good customer service you guys are providing and to underscore my point as to why this filter is a terrible idea.

Thanks.

Nice write up and explanation as to the pointlessness of filtering MA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bleak_Wanderer ... If I spend two hours crafting an arc, and then find out that the key signature character of that arc (the final villain, for example) can't have the fantastic name I thought up for him because it's a character name in some obscure comic somewhere (like the obscure Marvel villain, Positron, for example).... then my entire arc might be scrapped - all that time and effort wasted.

Now imagine you have over 50 hours of work on an arc, it's so well received that it's rated 5 stars since the day it was published with over 300 plays, it's praised in several reviews, is publicly recommended for a dev's choice over a dozen times and wins the 2010 Player's Choice Award for "Best Heroic Arc". You one day find out it's suddenly unplayable because it used the word "Paragon" in it's title and in the name of the group the arc is about. Also the main villains, the 5th Column, a dev made villain group's name can't be used. Then imagine that this continues to go on for weeks (at least so far) with the arc sitting there unplayable and loosing out on the normal in flux of plays it gets on reactivation weekends. Frustrating does not begin to describe it.


WN

Wow. . . :O

I'm sorry to hear that, Wrong Number. That's, in a word, rough.

Again, here's hoping they can fix all this easily enough from here on.

Just resubscribed to find my arc unplayable! Can't express how unhappy I am.

It was only when I went to edit it and find out why it wasn't working I realised that because my custom character is from a custom group called "Paragon Police" it wont play. How dumb is that?

So reluctantly I changed it to simply "Detective" but it still wont allow me to play as something in the field name is forbidden - but it does not tell me what it is or where the field name is. How am I meant to figure it out?

Writing and creating stories is the best thing CoH offers to me, no other game does anything like it. I can't tell you how annoyed and upset I am to find this. Even more so when I look at the date of the original post, which was 3 weeks ago.

What I found last night, Peacemoon, is that I had to go in and edit not only the custom character info by itself but I also had to go in and edit the individual information field by field in the arc itself. After I did all that, it finally took. Check each individual line of text you typed in and adjust from there.

The problem is that I thought canon stories were supported?! How can they be if the mentioning of Paragon, Vahzilok and who knows what else is invalidating them? I could go through the arc and try my best to correct it, but I have no idea where to start. Its very long and contains a lot of canon stuff. If I attempt to republish at it fails, then all the changes I've attempted are lost.

As for some constructive advice for anyone reading, what I've done is made a copy of the arc under a different save, and tinkered with deleting all the missions bar 1 and then if that wont publish I know that there is a problem with that mission and can keep adjusting it till its fixed. Repeat for all 5.

Something else I hope will help people. "Paragon Police" was not an offense after more testing I have done.

The problem with my arc is 2 of the minor bosses were called "Agent Johnson" and "Special Agent Johnson", however no orange warning flag appear until I actually clicked into those boss's individual settings. Once I had clicked in to that boss, the orange copyright flag appeared with "Infringement: Agenet J" or something like that. So I changed them to Agent Roberts and it has since worked perfectly.

If you are having problems and it isn't telling you why, click through each individual detail and it might highlight something in the process. Hope that helps someone!

Came in, checked whats going on on this issue and I'm almost speechless.

@Bleak Well written comments.
@Wrong Number ... Ouch

Have a weird one myself. Arc is still playable though, but when I try to fix a little spelling error I get the error that it contains profane or copyright text.
...
Its only called "Trouble in the Music Buisness" (and have been so since the start of Mission Architect)
So I'm doing a little head scratch here, what is possibly profane or copyrighted there?

Arete...

If you open your arc, go field by field. Eventually one will light up that "Error" icon and tell you that something stupid has been flagged.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I feel the greatest tragedy of Paragon Studios' handling of Mission Architect, is how thoroughly they have destroyed player goodwill towards this feature.

Mission Architect should be a crown jewel for City of Heroes. Player-created content -- a unique feature that none of the competition can come close to offering. Granted that probably 90% of this player generated content may not be up to standards, there is still PLENTY of good content created by players that is well worth playing -- easily as much content as in the whole rest of the game put together.

When the feature was launched, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of players who loved the feature: creating arcs, playing through them, reviewing them, telling their friends, and so on.

Today, there are only a very few die-hards remaining in the "MA community" (if it can be called that). These people once loved MA, spent hundreds of hours playing arcs or working on them, and were ambassadors for the feature, trying to get more people involved in playing and authoring and using the wonderful tools that were given to us. Now these same people are mostly reduced to bitterly hurling angry invective at the devs for their thoughtless destruction of hundreds of hours of player effort. How can people who loved something so much, be turned so totally against it?

My feeling is that this is not because the people who once sang the praises of Mission Architect are somehow horrible and awful people who post horrible and awful words. I really believe this is the direct result of months of neglect and abuse on the part of Paragon Studios. I don't mean this particular bug, though it is horrific and soul-crushing. I refer to a pattern of neglect that has mostly left the Mission Architect feature to rot, with occasional changes that actually make things worse.

I really, really like Mission Architect, and have personally invested countless hours in trying to make good story arcs, helping other people make good story arcs, and compiling lists of good story arcs so people can easily find something fun to play. But even I am having a difficult time recommending that anyone try to use Mission Architect any more.

I feel kind of sad about that.

I think you pretty much summed up how I feel about this right now. I've been spending less and less time in the AE building and I've arguably been one of its strongest supporters for the longest amount of time. It's even been harder and harder for me to get motivated to film for my next AE trailer. It's a great arc, I'm excited to try and cut together a grindhouse style trailer, but I just find it harder to go into the AE building unless I'm crafting something.