Copyright/Profane question
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.
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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 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. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Yes, and your post is nothing but a bad impersonation of Baghdad Bob.
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If you don't get it at this point, it's because you don't want to get it.
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If I stub my toe I can say it hurts or I can say it's going to fall off and I'll never walk again; a stubbed toe does not equal abuse (very loaded term, denoting express intent to harm), dying, etc.
Fair point - never played it based on the negative word of mouth, so I withdraw that example. I still maintain the point however: if the devs were morons, slackers or idiots, the entire game would be terrible, not just one corner of it - their poor decision-making, lack of response/respect to players would be rife in every realm of the play space.
I still maintain the point however: if the devs were morons, slackers or idiots, the entire game would be terrible, not just one corner of it |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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.
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The problem is in its current state, it's a poorly-implemented, mouth-frothing-pitbull,
overly aggressive filter, which hinders AE rather than helps, and hurts both it,
and the appearance of competence of the people behind it. See also: Sega's phantasy
star online series, where a completely insane word filter that wouldn't even let you
say Shoes, and routinely filtered out its own locations and items, made them laughing
stocks for years. People still crack jokes about it, and the game's ten-eleven
years old.
In AE's case, whatever the intent of the filter, the result is undesirable. In many cases,
because of this poor implementation, you can't even use the game's own properties,
because they get filtered out. Things such as my gripe about Regent Korol have been
there almost since inception, but people are up in arms because it suddenly got much,
much worse. Just skim through the thread to see some of the absurd things being
filtered. Or better yet, fire up AE, and play around with making a test arc or two, and
see for yourself the dumb things that the filter decides it shouldn't let past.
A good, well-managed, carefully monitored and intelligently coded filter is a boon
to the game. The one we've got right this moment is a railroad spike shoved somewhere
family unfriendly.
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.
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[Productive] 1. To discuss the problems and advocate for solutions. ("The filter is busted. Please fix it.")
[Less Productive, but Relevant] 2. To discuss the situation and the nature of the situation. ("The future of AE is at stake!")
[Not Productive, Not Relevant] 3. To discuss people. ("The Devs are Willy Wonka and the game is a messed up chocolate factory - they're trying to weed us out until they have only one super dedicated player.")
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. |
The need is to be sufficiently aggressive as it relates to trademark infringement that other companies feel it would not be productive to sue them.
They already have a strong position to begin from -all of Marvel's trademark infringement counts in the 2005 case were thrown out by the court.
Further, the user agreement already forbids creation of infringing material and makes players responsible for compensating any third parties who file suit.
NCSoft has demonstrated a track record of deleting or renaming characters who have infringed the copyright.
So they're on pretty solid footing to begin with. The need for a filter is questionable at best.
However, I agree with you. A minimal filter would not be intrusive and would go far to demonstrate that NCSoft is serious about infringement. No - I should not be able to create an entity and name it "Professor Xavier" or "Batman".
That said, a filter is not the solution and should never be viewed as a solution.
The current situation seems to result from an attempt to make the filter (either the character naming filter or the MA filter) into an automated solution - this will never work.
First, the filter doesn't stop people who actually want to infringe. I can sit there and type in variants until I hit on one that works. Batman, B.a.t.ma.n, Chiropteraman, FlyingMammalMan, CapedKruzader... something is eventually going to work. Then I just set up the costume the way I want it, make him a martial arts technology scrapper, and have him fight a clown in green and purple.
Second, the filter is unnecessarily restrictive in terms of the damage it does to the creative process, given that it only impacts honest players to begin with. I should be able to use the words "Cyclops", "Beast", "White Queen" etc. to name units - because these words are common to the lexicon and could have plenty of meanings that don't reference some specific property.
The real solution to their problem is going to require monitoring by human beings. Period. A reporting system is the only way to catch those actual violations of the spirit of copyrighted properties that really matter. They can't rely on an automated system - so why use one that penalizes people who are legitimately trying to create content for the game?
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'. |
But they've turned a deaf ear to the MA community - probably for legitimate reasons. In order to succeed, we need to give them a profit-motivated reason to pay attention to MA again.
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. |
I don't think we're fighting for the success of the game - not enough players care about MA for it to make or break the game.
I do firmly believe if we don't stick to our guns here and show the devs this is important, then MA = bases by Issue 21.
Saying their posts are 'buried' is making it sound as if the devs actively went out of their way to hide them. |
Actually, ideally, the whole thing would be addressed on CoH frontpage or in the login messages. Yes, I know, advertising your failings is not good business - but communicating clearly with your player base is.
(it's already at eleven, far as I can tell, but I'm sure we could manage to kick it up a notch). |
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? [/B] |
Question: What motivates the devs?
Answer: Their bosses.
Question: What are their bosses looking at when they make a determination in terms of how to direct the developers' time?
Answer: Dollar signs.
Assertion:
The Developers will put Mission Architect on a back burner, as they did with bases, if they feel that they can get away with it. This is not because they are horrible human beings who want to tie your mother to the train tracks as they twirl their moustaches - it's because they are people with a limited number of hours in the day who need to justify their continued employment to their bosses.
Boss says, "What are you doing?"
Positron says, "Spending forty hours a week working on a part of the game nobody cares about."
Bad day for Positron.
Right now, the powers that be are directing the devs' attention to the Steampunk pack and the Incarnate system. Steampunk pack because it will yield an influx of money - this game is moving away from being a legitimate MMO and slowly sliding into the territory of being a paymium dress-up game. Incarnate system because it will (hopefully) draw new players in.
I can't blame the devs for any of this. I have to listen to my boss too. And I can't blame NCSoft for wanting to make money.
What we have to do is make it reasonable for Positron (or whoever) to tell the higher ups that Mission Architect ought to be a priority.
The way to do that is to give him a thread or thread(s) to point at and say, "Here, look at this. It's a good business decision to spend time on Mission Architect."
....To do that, we need to get the player base fired up about MA.
If we can't, then we're done here - aside from maybe a very minor fix or two once in a while along the way (when someone decides to invest 5% of his or her work week hammering out a little issue in between working on the next costume parts pack).
My debut arc: "Nothing to Worry About Nothing to Worry About [SFMA][HLMA][CFMA][HGMA] ID # 500325
My second arc: An Epic Tale: Clown Capers ID # 501562 Arc Forum Thread (Feedback/Reviews/Constructive Criticism Welcome)
About the bug...someone somewhere probably looked and said 'hey...we have two filters, wouldn't it save time by combining them?' The devs looked around and thought about this and went 'probably'. They did it, and tested it, and maybe even put in on test where little to no AE arcs reside/are regularly checked and then deployed it, regarding it as a backend organizational change, and not affecting the players so patch notes not needed. And it failed in the live environment. And we told them, and they are working to fix it.
About AE as a 'thing'.....as a coder for a consumer product, I can tell you its NOT always about money. A lot of times its a list of 1000 problems/improvements, which get ranked by how many people they affect/benefit. When datamining says Feature A has 500 users and Feature B has 6000 users....making 6000 users for Feature B happy is better for morale, better for revenue, and better for the users than potentially getting 500 more users for Feature A if you work on it. Would you like to work on Feature A? Yeah, of course, but when you don't have the manpower or time....you go for the most benefit you can for your time.
About the bug...someone somewhere probably looked and said 'hey...we have two filters, wouldn't it save time by combining them?' The devs looked around and thought about this and went 'probably'. They did it, and tested it, and maybe even put in on test where little to no AE arcs reside/are regularly checked and then deployed it, regarding it as a backend organizational change, and not affecting the players so patch notes not needed. And it failed in the live environment. And we told them, and they are working to fix it.
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One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Three of my arcs are no longer playable because of this issue. Sadly they are the three that I actually care about.
I started to attempt to fix one because I actually had a character in it which probably should have been renamed. I completely deleted the character from my arc and now I get Statesman flagged as copyright/profane.
This makes no sense to me at all. Should Statesman be flagged? If so I contend that he should not be available to use in building MA arcs. He should either be deleted or renamed by the devs.
I find it wrong that using a standard CoH character should be flagged. I do understand that developers may have other priorities but like others who have posted I feel that the filters should be removed until they can be fixed and tested.
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest
Here's a couple of ideas I've had proactive, possibly productive things we might do.
Currently, the discussion of this problem remains 'buried' in the AE forum only (at least as far as I can see). Perhaps we need to present and explain the problem to the wider forum audience in general, as a freindly word of warning to anyone trying to play an MA arc. Someone could put up a thread on City Life about it, detailing what we know and are facing. Might be helpful to ask anyone to NOT downgrade an arc based on a problem the author (Tubbius, for instance) has no control over.
Take our fight in-game. Groups who organize here to play AE arcs might dedicate some time to 'picketing' the AE buildings to inform the general populace about the issue; I'd not advise spamming, but constant calling out in local could work. This would probably get through to some of the farmers as well. We may not like how they use the MA, but they do play it, may not have a clue as to what's going on and we need every one we could get on our side.
Why not start a 'list of the fallen' here on the boards? Everyone can add their arcs to the list to help other players get an idea of the scope of the number of arcs affected. For extra fun, we each walk into the AE building once a day, try to play one of the affected arcs and then send a petition in on it. Nothing like a flood of mail to help maintain pressure.
Next - come up with more proactive, productive ideas! Don't like any of mine because they came from me? You're all a bunch of intelligent, creative people, get on it and maybe you can come up with better.
If it's any consolation, it's impossible to play, and thus rate, an arc that's currently affected by this, so nobody should be getting any downvotes because of it.
I do like the idea of creating a list of affected arcs, just so that if someone is trying to run one and it refuses to work, they can check here to see if it's because of the filter (and thus not bother to inform the author; they already know).
Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today. Arc ID: 337333 - Signal:Noise, where is everybody? Arc ID: 341194
@The Cheshire Cat - Isn't it enough to know I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
12 second horror stories - a writing experiment.
If it's any consolation, it's impossible to play, and thus rate, an arc that's currently affected by this, so nobody should be getting any downvotes because of it.
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But the fact a broken arc can be played is proven right there. In addition to that, I know that two of my arcs are affected but can still be played, as I've done so and heard the same another player ("I played your arc and saw such and such.").
One of these arcs plays fine except a few foes (with actual flag-inducing names, didn't even think about 'WickerWork Splinter' when I assigned that one) are replaced with a "Corrupted Critter", a renamed Hydra with a bio reading something like "Critter failed to load and melted into a mass of goo," which is sort of cute, but. The other arc plays fine and nothing's changed but when I went in to do a small cosmetic edit on a glowie placement was told I couldn't save it because of a name problem. I haven't had time to closely examine the arc to find out which name it didn't like though.
"The Hammer and Sickle Cross" (351727, formerly "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City") usually receives four and five star ratings, as it did yesterday from two separate players. During the last few weeks, it received at least one lower value rating (pretty sure there were a 1 and a 3?) with no memorable comments. While this might have been a fluke, as there's always going to be someone who doesn't like what they see, I'd suggest that this filter issue likely affected the player's experience. The arc title itself was bugged (visible on quitting the arc as "Invalidstringreplacement" or some such), and two NPCs who appeared in the first three missions were bugged. Toxin was supposed to be a scrawny white and red character with a big red skull on his chest , while Tovarisch was supposed to be a guy wearing a burgundy trench coat and slacks with yellow shades and a bandana. I know that Toxin was being loaded up as some kind of generic Council robot or something.
Thus, while the arc was perfectly PLAYABLE, it was not perfectly ENJOYABLE for the player or for me as the author.
These errors have been adjusted, and the arc is back to its usual mix of 4 and 5 star rates.
ON THE OTHER HAND, "PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge" (302196) was briefly rendered inoperable, apparently, as a friend who was playing through the PENGUIN Trilogy had to skip the second portion and play only "PENGUIN" and "PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top." Again, this has been fixed, but apparently, the arcs are randomly playable or NOT if they are bugged.
I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177
If it's any consolation, it's impossible to play, and thus rate, an arc that's currently affected by this, so nobody should be getting any downvotes because of it..
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WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
I take a breather, come back, and find this situation. it;s very depressing. I don't think I'll bother checking any of my arcs.
The MA used to be awesome. I hope they fix it.
The steampunk booster is the first one I'm not buying. Can't be bothered. CoH has gone a bit 'meh' for me. It seems to be turning into WoW. Weird.
Eco.
EDIT: I finished playing an AE arc, and thought i might as well have a look. I went into the Edit screen for The Audition Parts 1-3 since it wouldn't let me Play it, and as soon as i clicked on mission 1, CoH crashed with a 'fatal error' popup window.
Pff.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
I take a breather, come back, and find this situation. it;s very depressing. I don't think I'll bother checking any of my arcs.
The MA used to be awesome. I hope they fix it. The steampunk booster is the first one I'm not buying. Can't be bothered. CoH has gone a bit 'meh' for me. It seems to be turning into WoW. Weird. Eco. EDIT: I finished playing an AE arc, and thought i might as well have a look. I went into the Edit screen for The Audition Parts 1-3 since it wouldn't let me Play it, and as soon as i clicked on mission 1, CoH crashed with a 'fatal error' popup window. Pff. |
1) Nice to see you again
2) Before you slam the door on the way out, please send a petition and/or PM a couple of devs and tell them why you're slamming that door.
3) The AE arc club recently played Storming Citadel and it apparently worked fine..., not that that's enough to keep you, I know.
If it's any consolation, it's impossible to play, and thus rate, an arc that's currently affected by this, so nobody should be getting any downvotes because of it.
I do like the idea of creating a list of affected arcs, just so that if someone is trying to run one and it refuses to work, they can check here to see if it's because of the filter (and thus not bother to inform the author; they already know). |
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
The Vigilante - 395861
Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest
Three things:
1) Nice to see you again 2) Before you slam the door on the way out, please send a petition and/or PM a couple of devs and tell them why you're slamming that door. 3) The AE arc club recently played Storming Citadel and it apparently worked fine..., not that that's enough to keep you, I know. |
AS for slamming the door on my way out...I never thought I'd be so ambivalent about CoH as i am at present. The Incarnates stuff was intruiging, but it seems to involve lots of high-level endgame raiding, which isn't my thing really. I'd be quite happy to stay fooling around in the AE, but this copyright filter thing is ludicrous. It feels like my tastes aren't being catered for in the game. So what's the point of paying for it every month?
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
AS for slamming the door on my way out...I never thought I'd be so ambivalent about CoH as i am at present. The Incarnates stuff was intruiging, but it seems to involve lots of high-level endgame raiding, which isn't my thing really. I'd be quite happy to stay fooling around in the AE, but this copyright filter thing is ludicrous. It feels like my tastes aren't being catered for in the game. So what's the point of paying for it every month?
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WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
Hey everyone,
This mornings patch will have correctly updated the profanity filter for Mission Architect. Some examples of words that were not previously working that are now working are:
Spider, Paragon, Lord Recluse, Magnetic, Longbow, Guardian, Bride, Acrobatics, flame, Castle, Manticore, Sister Psyche, Statesman
Were aware that there are still some other issues with the profanity filter. Please post any other issues that youre having with it and we will look into addressing them as well. Thanks!
Follow me on my blog or on twitter:
Dr. Aeon's Blog
Dr. Aeon's Twitter
Thanks for the update!
"Freakshow" "Black Scorpion" and "5th Column" are still invalid.
Thanks for your attention to this problem. I tried testing it some just now, here are some problems I still ran into:
Couldn't use "Dr. Vahzilok" (temporarily using "Doctor Vahzilok" which it allows)
Couldn't use "5th Column" (temporarily using "Fifth Column" which it allows)
Couldn't use "Black Scorpion" (temporarily using "Lord Sasori" instead)
Confirmed OK to use: Manticore, Spider, Statesman, Paragon Police
With some workarounds (as noted above) I was able to get all of my story arcs working again.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
How are you guys finding these? I'm not seeing any orange warnings on either of my arcs (which are both still broken by the way), just a string of "Field Name contains profane or copyright text" when I try to test them.
The editor is still extremely laggy also, so no way am I going through 50+ objectives with that lag to try to find what words might be problematic. Fix the editor lag and I'll consider it. Until then, I stand by my previous position that the filter can go suck on a railroad spike.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
MA Arc: School Spirit #89349
Original member of the Dream Team Aeon, Virtue division
"A base here or there is a small price to pay for good mad science."--Arbiter Daos
Edit: The "FTP cousin" is miles away from terrible.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"