Copyright/Profane question

That just kicks the question up a level. The name filter wasn't broken so it didn't need to be "fixed". This game hasn't had a "clone character" problem in ages. Or really, ever. Even at its worst, back near launch, there weren't that many and they got dimed out by other players quickly.

Which goes back to my original point...how many Thor clones have you guys seen running around lately? And of those, how many had names that wouldn't have been caught by a name filter?

http://kai.blackboxchaos.com/Art/stamps/Kaistamp.jpg http://kai.blackboxchaos.com/Art/stamps/Roxystamp.jpghttp://kai.blackboxchaos.com/Art/stamps/DAstamp.jpg http://kai.blackboxchaos.com/Art/stamps/Capestamp.jpg

If that's not a straight line, I don't know what is. Pardon me for hoping that angry players might try and keep a cool head; reading and understanding what's already been said in this thread (by the devs and others) would go a long way towards helping with that.

Helping how? I don't think understanding what has transpired is the problem. Several have posted articulate, well thought out, intelligent thoughts on the mishandling of this "patch" and MA in general. Most notably Venture, PW and Bleak Wanderer. I'm pretty sure most everyone is beyond the "give them a break, they are doing the best they can" phase. The word, to me, that best summarizes this last kick in the teeth to MA was used by PW...Soul-crushing. That pretty much sums up how I feel.

Had this been a critical emergency patch to fix some game breaking issue it would have been a different story. As it stands, many arcs in MA are crippled because of the addition of software that was totally unneeded in the first place. Additionally, as I've said from the beginning, when this issue was discovered the "patch" should have been IMMEDIATELY rolled back until it could have been implemented properly. That's not even accounting for the fact that it should have went through proper testing BEFORE it was implemented and the community should have been aware of it as well as the future attempted fixes. For many of us, I think this was the final nail in MA's coffin. As much as it hurts and we hate to admit it, one of the best features in the game is on it's deathbed and the family has given the OK to pull the cord. Soul-crushing.


WN

I'm glad that you value keeping a cool head. Please keep in mind that statements like this,

Don't tend to promote an environment of calm and aren't productive. This is because,

1. You're addressing someone who may already be upset with a short imperative - "breathe" - that sounds like a command. People don't respond well to commands, particularly if they've come to a thread in an already aggrieved state of mind.

2. You're potentially misrepresenting the person. It's tough to divine what their state of mind is, but I doubt you or I actually believe that the person is sitting at that keyboard hyperventilating - so they're likely to resent being depicted as an hysteric.

3. You're communicating to everyone who reads your post (and is trying to get a sense of the thread) that you believe there is a heightened state of anxiety in the thread - they'll tend to interpret that and post in kind.

Now, being an individual who values calm, I doubt you meant to do any of that - and that means that even worse than anything, you're misrepresenting yourself when you communicate in that sort of language.

---

All that said, I'll restate that I think there is sufficient cause to express concern to the developers here.

They've made a fairly grave error, where Mission Architect is concerned. While it's tough to know what's going on under the hood, it looks like they've tied the MA filters to the character naming filters (a bad idea) or added terms to the MA filters (a bad idea). If the former, then our problems may have arisen while they were working on the related character naming filters. If the latter, they're specifically targeting the MA system - which is even scarier.

Either way, recent events show a lack of empathy on the part of the devs to the needs of the Architect community and the playerbase at large.

It is intuitively obvious that it would be a smart business decision for them to promote a system whereby players generate quality content for them for free. Yet they don't seem to be placing an especially high priority on repairing this crucial element that makes CoX games unique in the MMO playing field - only players who come to the boards and find this thread to find out have any idea of what's going on - and that information has been delivered in a couple of terse, vague posts buried within the pages of this thread - and even those players who send in complaints are getting somewhat indifferent responses from the GMs. Those response consist largely of, "Change your arc", rather than, "Hold tight - this will be fixed soon."

Some players are reacting to the overall pattern of treatment of the Mission Architect system. PoliceWoman did a good job encapsulating this feeling.

Players have a great deal of time and energy invested in the MA system - Wrong_Number has done a good job detailing why these new developments are a huge problem for the generators of arguably some of the best content in the game.

I'm particularly concerned by GM Roland's somewhat dogmatic assertion that they "can't remove the filter" without adding further detail. Is this a technical limitation, a legal limitation, or a practical limitation? What is being prioritized here and why? (I think the answer to that question is actually, "The steampunk pack. And I can't really fault them, since it will generate revenue. But still, I think they need to be reminded that MA is still important.)

Anyhow, I think there are some productive ideas and criticisms rolling out of this thread - and I don't see the value in trying to mute those criticisms when it's known that around here, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

To sum up, I don't think it's time for people to panic and start dropping their accounts by any means - but I do think a few pointed questions and a little cage rattling is warranted at this point.

Bleak,

This has been ongoing for over a year. Just read back through this board and you will see a full on effort to get many facets of MA attention. Besides the countless threads of suggestions and detail analysis with solutions for how to fix the various problems there are repeated efforts to promote MA. Examples include the MA Super Team, Arrowrose's Excellent Arcs thread, PW's Contact Tree, the numerous excellent review threads, Contests, the annual Player's Choice Awards (which btw has STILL not even been stickyed) to name just a few. These have clearly been completely ignored.

Case and point: during the video chat I asked about us getting more arc slots, something that has been loudly requested for at least a year. The answer (and you can go back and watch this yourself) was along the lines of "Hmm...interesting idea, we will look into it". In other words, it was the first they had heard of it! Want another? Someone asked about more DC's and HoF. The answer was that they are "in the process of banking some so they can be released over time in a steady fashion". Sounds good except for the fact that the last non-contest DC was given in January of 2010 and none have been given from the three different (they restart it every six months or so) "Make a Recommendation for DC".

The frustration has been building for a very long time and it's not due to lack of people caring or trying to improve MA.

WN

Yes, I have read, and I understand what is being said by the devs. I understand it as "Here's a post to shut you up, we might get around to you eventually. Or not. Whatever." I think it's telling that the first few posts in this thread were from a guy whose job it is to make sure we play nice on the forums, not from someone who is actually involved in fixing things.

Arguably?

Probably the next trial so we have something else to grind, lag in, crash out of. Or maybe the totally unnecessary super-sekrit participation system. Or another gimmicky arc with all the depth of a puddle for a level range that is already oversaturated with content.

I'm not going to waste any more of my bandwidth on those live chats, after that first one where they acknowledged the existence of the forum's most prolific spammer and actually chose "will we be able to make Incarnate trials in AE" as their AE question to answer.

I'm sorry....I laughed at this. Seriously, I almost spit coffee all over my keyboard. This might mark the first time in my life that I have ever been told I'm not loud enough.

Except the LotR character is named Aragorn. That aside, words contained in other words shouldn't be filtered at all. What's next, we can't say "assassin"?

Actually, like Longbow, I believe "Paragon" is another erroneous entry in the copyright/profane filter. Other people have already brought it up.


Without visual clues, written word can take on a host of meanings. I often find that people impart their own attitude onto what others have written. I didn't find Clave's comment to be condescending or inflammatory at all.

Heck "Lighten up, Francis..." would probably have caused the entire thread to self-ignite if that were the case.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

I must have missed it - a) who's the forum's most prolific spammer, b) they actually asked that?! and c) what was the answer?

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
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!)

I've seen it happen with my own two eyes. So, yes.

I'm not trying to recommend or enforce and environment where we have to walk around on eggshells, though.

a) calling people out is against forum rules

b) yes.

c) I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count. Half the people posting in this thread could have given the same answer. When the answer is immediately obvious to active members of the community, it just goes to show that the devs may very well be communicating with the wrong people. No, I don't mean the people who don't use AE because of its problems, real or perceived; I mean the people who "would use AE if I could do blank and blank and blank," with "blank" being some pie-in-the-sky request like using the base editor to create custom maps or replicating heavily scripted encounters such as the ones in trials. They'll never use AE, even if by some miracle of game development they got all those things, and even if they did use AE, I don't particularly want them to.

a) /facepalm Gotcha.

b) Oy.

c) Then to really bolster everyone's spirits, I give you this excerpt from Massively's latest interview with the rednames:

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
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!)

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH AE???? For that matter, what the hell does it have to do with content?

Money. Mouth. And so on and so forth. Six months is more than enough time to add a few critters, like high-level DE, Super Stunners, IDF, etc etc. Over a year without a DC that didn't suggest Aeon views the AE as his own private playground. When each update is notable for the lack of any AE support, and what changes are made don't even merit a freaking patch note (such as the fix to the back/middle blinky bug that had been around for so long authors were treating it as a feature) I tend to take a "I'll believe it when I see it" view.

It says to me that they view the AE as "content on demand". They think the fact that you can stand in one building all day long and play missions is a major feature of the system (and they've said that from the beginning). Which I think is kind of sad; I think it's a massive drawback, because it makes AE missions not feel "real", and it makes farming even easier. Yet, for some reason, they say "They're just not interested in supporting it as a tool for farming." It was born as a much better farming tool than story creation tool, due to many of the design decisions, and forcing all missions to the exact same location is one of them.

The first thing they could do to increase the story-telling emphasis and decrease the farming emphasis would be to demolish the AE buildings and move the missions out into the "real world".

Ok - apologies to all I may have offended then. But that section I've bolded there... is the AE really dying, being abused, ignored, etc.? I'm hearing such words and accusations being tossed around a lot and that's what I find unproductive.

A name filter for the AE (and the game in general) is pretty much a sound business move because one simply cannot not argue with copyright/trademark law, unless you enjoy expending a LOT of money on legal battles. Your legal advice team is like your cyber security team, paid to be paranoid for you and to point out potential legal pit-falls; if insufficiently paranoid, or you don't listen to them, you end up in a situation like Sony, up a creek without a paddle. Even the simplest thrown-out-of-court-on-the-first-day case costs you a mint. More mint to lawyers=less mint for your pocket.

I don't see any lack of empathy, my experience with reporting bugs in my arcs has been pretty good and the devs have already responded to this thread twice and addressed this topic on their livetream (apparently, didn't see it myself). And, sadly, I don't see the MA community as being 'the player base at large'.

I didn't find those posts to be vague or terse but informative and to the point; one's opinion is formed by one's mindset - if you think the sky is falling, those grey clouds look pretty ominous. If you don't think the sky is falling, then they're really nothing to worry about as they will roll by. Saying their posts are 'buried' is making it sound as if the devs actively went out of their way to hide them. We have no reason to think that this problem won't be fixed as soon as they can determine what's causing it, bug-fixing cannot by its nature follow an ETA. If they said 'hold tight' and then work and work and work to fix the bug and it takes a month, everyone here would be... well, somehow angrier than they already are (it's already at eleven, far as I can tell, but I'm sure we could manage to kick it up a notch).

I feel the problem with this thread is that some people are making baseless claims of persecution with hyperbole, myself. I'm not saying there is NO cause for concern (but not 'alarm' though), but this thread is really over the top and "[doesn't] tend to promote an environment of calm and [isn't] productive." It all seems to be mostly boiling down to second-guessing the devs on their jobs, characterizing them as:

1) wacky-Don-Martin-face-making morons who're just randomly pushing buttons to hear their computer go BWEEP BOOP and accidentally breaking things.

2) slackers who're lounging around their desks shooting nerfball hoops while ignoring the big red button on their desk labeled "fix the MA"

3) mustache-twirling evil-doers who persecute the player-base while kicking puppies (who knew Weston Phipps was autobiographical?!)

The devs are just normal people you know? Capable of some good, some bad decisions. The real thing kicker here though is I think in the long run they make more good than bad choices - if it was the other way round, then the entire game would be terrible, like our F2P cousin, not just some single corner of it. This game rocks and will continue to.