Mission Architect Reform and Nearly Limitless Potential for Added Value

How active is the AE community?

* We have built websites – that are still active and in use - dedicated to playing and reviewing arcs, like @El Furioso’s City of Heroes Mission Review

* We have players regularly producing video reviews and playthroughs of AE content and posting them to Youtube – thereby creating free, crowdsourced marketing for CoX properties on other websites. See Bubbawheat’s “On your M-Arc” Thread and Youtube Account.

* We have players and groups working on innovative ways to continue to improve the Mission Architect gameplay experience. See @SupaFreak’s Operation: Integration thread.

* We have player groups actively creating and promoting events, in some cases scheduling events that rotate between various servers and in other cases sponsoring contests for the generation of quality content. See @BackFire’s
Ænvasion thread and The American Legion’s Monthly AE Author Contest.

* Players continue to play, review, and promote other players’ arcs. See ArrowRose’s Excellent Arcs thread and GlaziusF’s CoHMR Aggregator thread.

* Since the inception of Mission Architect, AE players have generated a tremendous volume of content:



(Thanks to Dragon_Surge for pointing the image out to me and Kotaku for the original infographic.)

Not to knock anyone else – but I challenge you to find another community in the CoH environment that generates as much free content, free advertising, discussion about the game, and interaction among the players as Mission Architect.

Problems and Solutions

So what’s the problem?

As great as it is, the current level of activity in AE is only a fraction of what it could be and is representative of the tenacity, dedication, and frankly, patience of this valuable group of creative players.
A quote from respected MA community member and Player’s Choice winner, @PW (PoliceWoman):

A quote from respected MA community member and Dev’s Choice winner, @Bubbawheat:

A great deal of the following will be a summary of what can be found in the following threads:

What keeps you away from AE arcs?
Hall of Fame Requirements Need Revisiting
Copyright/Profane Question
Bubbawheat's Mission Architect Issues List
Mission Architect Feature Suggestions


Looking (very-unscientifically) through the player responses to the first four pages of Bubbawheat’s thread:

What keeps you away from AE arcs?

I see the following (Complaint - Number of times it’s mentioned in pages 1 – 4)

Poorly written/poorly designed arcs – 20

Search function is difficult to use effectively – tough to sort wheat from chaff. 20

Too many farms/exploits/exploiters – 14

MA rewards are inferior (No shards, No threads, Lower XP, No Purples, etc.) – 14

Arc Rating System is Flawed – 11

Architect is a “game within a game” – 5

Developer content outcompetes MA content – 4

Patches/filters kill arcs – 4

Author interface is poorly designed - 4

Too many dead arcs – 3

Nothing is wrong! – 1

No incentive to write arcs – 1

The whole system is poorly implemented – 1

Of these 101 complaints, fully 68% could be fixed by changes to the arc search and review system – add reasonable incentives for properly reviewing arcs, and you could fix over 80% of player complaints.


Search and Review, Arc Recognition, and Ratings Systems Fixes

We need to fix the system we use to recognize architect achievement and make it easier for players to find good arcs.
I propose the following measures to help players sort good arcs from the ‘dross’:

I. Farm Flagging

90% Automatable – Minimal Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

When architects create an arc or when players rate an arc, there should be a radio button that they can click to indicate the arc is a farm. If a given arc accumulates over 50 unique “farm” votes, or if the mission architect flags the arc as a farm, the arc is flagged “farm”.

Farms should be hidden from the MA interface unless a player specifies they are searching for Farms by clicking a toggle in the search window. Farms should also not be eligible for "Hall of Fame" or "Player's Choice" awards.
Players who wish to farm could still search for farms simply by clicking an “include farms” radio button. If you really want to cater to the Farming community, you could create a “Farmer’s Choice” award available only to arcs flagged as “Farm”.

Letting Farmers search for Farms and hide story arcs would stop quality story-driven arcs from getting voted down just for not being farms.
Alternately, farms could just be deleted outright by the automated system.

Paragon Staff Post-Implementation Involvement: Enforcement:

Misusing Farm Flagging to grief legitimate non-farm arcs should be an offense like griefing or obscenity that is a bannable / MA privs revocation sort of offense.

II. Remove Arc Clutter (Thanks to Sister_Twelve for the core idea for this point):

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

The system should automatically delete or hide from searches any arcs that have 0 plays in the last 90 days.

The system should automatically delete or hide from searches any arcs that have an average rating of below 2.0 over a 90 day span.

The ‘Work in Progress’ distinction should be removed. If an arc is a “Work in Progress”, it should be local – not published. All ‘Work in Progress’ arcs should be hidden from the search at a minimum and possibly deleted.

The only arcs visible should be “Looking for Feedback” (which should be a tool authors can use to get opinions from friends/forum members and should be open to comments, but should have no star ratings attached) and “Final”.

III. Revise the Ratings System

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

When an author clicks the “Final” button, this begins a period of time governed by an automatic counter (a week? Two weeks? A month?) during which that arc is “Under Judgment”.

The star system remains in place, but actually feeds into a behind-the-scenes “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” binary vote system.

1 or 2 stars = “Thumbs Down”. 3, 4, or 5 stars = “Thumbs Up”. This should fix some of the bias inherent to the “star ratings average” approach.
If, by the end of the judgment period, an arc has more “Thumbs Up” ratings than “Thumbs Down” ratings, that arc retains its Final status and (provided it isn’t flagged as a farm) becomes eligible for “Player’s Choice” and “Dev’s Choice”.

If, by the end of the judgement period, more people have rated the arc 1 or 2 stars than have rated it 3, 4, or 5 stars, then that arc is returned to its “Looking for Feedback” – still published (with all previous votes removed), but hidden from people who are searching specifically for “Final” arcs. Players can try again to submit the arc as “Final” at a later point in time (Two weeks? A month?).

This will automatically sort a great deal of the good arcs from the ‘dross’.

IV. Reward for accurately rating quality content

90% Automatable – Minimal Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

For a ratings system to work, you need players to play and rate arcs with the genuine intent of rating accurately. It makes sense that to do this, we need to incentivize playing and rating accurately (not just rating some random number of stars for the sake of pulling down incentives.)

Provide players with a reward if they give 4 or 5 stars during the “Under Judgement” period to an arc that goes on to become a Player’s Choice or Dev’s Choice arc (see below for details on Player’s Choice and Dev’s Choice). (An ‘Architect Rater’ merit, for example, that may be exchanged for a reward table roll. Or a number of tickets. Or a badge. Or some combination of the above.) This reward should be competitive with rewards achievable outside of the architect system. Meaning it should include the possibility of purples and incarnate salvage (shards and/or threads and/or components).

Personally, I favor a system like the Architect Ticket system, where the player can choose between either an IO reward table (including purples) or an Incarnate Component Reward table such as they would see after a Lambda or BAF (with sufficient participation). Players lower than fifty could be forced to go with the IO option, players 50+ could have the Incarnate options.
Because the frequency of arcs achieving player’s choice or Dev’s choice will be low, Architect Rater merits would be exceedingly rare, so this will not unbalance the system or draw an inordinate number of players away from trials. What it will do is incentivize players to go over to the RWZ AE in between trials and run a mission or two to get a shot at that occasional very rare incarnate reward roll.

The “Judgement System” period would encourage the playing of new arcs over older, more well established arcs – thus giving exposure to new content while simultaneously filtering out the junk.

Additionally, Consider increasing the value of the vote for players who consistently rate content accurately. For example, if I consistently rate content that ends up being removed from the system (1 or 2 stars on average during the judgment period) with 1 or 2 stars, or if I consistently rate content that is selected for Monthly Player’s Choice at 4 or 5 stars, then my vote should count for more or less, respectively.

[My vote] = 1 + (.025 * Number of 4-5 star Monthly Player’s choice rates + .025 * Number of 1 – 2 star ratings of arcs eventually purged from the system after 90 days).

Paragon Staff Post-Implementation Involvement: Enforcement:

Starting "5 star clubs" and "You rate me 5 I'll rate you 5" agreements should be a reportable offense just like griefing or obscenity - and should result in loss of MA privileges at a minimum.

IV. Develop a Recommendation System / Random Task Button

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

We also need to develop an automated recommendation engine that will recommend arcs to players, based either on their expressed interests, arcs they’ve played in the past, or on a set of under the hood metrics. The recommendations from this engine would replace the current front page of the search (which showcases guest arcs and dev’s choice arcs that already have thousands of plays) and would encourage players to play new content that interests them. It would not exclusively recommend arcs that already have high ratings or lots of plays – players can search for those on their own. Rather, it would recommend arcs that may have great content but which need more exposure to really take off. Or, it could recommend arcs that players whose votes are weighted heavily have approved of.

For example, it could recommend the most played arcs with under 300 total plays over the last 10 hours (or something similar).

Another idea, proposed by @SupaFreak, would be to create an incentivized "random task" button. Players may accept one random MA task every 20 hours, and a special reward could be tied to accepting that task. Doing so would then drop them into an arc with "Final" status. (See SupaFreak's post below for more detail.)

You could combine these two ideas by providing incentives for players who play recommended arcs.

I know this system can’t be especially hard to implement, as CoHMR has one – “Looking for a mission? How about…”. If a CoH fan site can do it, I have faith that the devs can.

More generally speaking, arc conclusion dialog reward tables could be varied to incentivize a diversity of behaviors without encouraging architects to create farm missions:

• Provide a reward table granting one rare IO enhancement or X threads or INF for every unique play-through of an arc during the “Under Judgement” period. Odds of getting a better reward could improve with increasing length or complexity of the arc, incentivizing players to seek out more intricate arcs and incentivizing architects to put more thought into their work.

• Provide a reward table granting 10 (-1*number of replays) threads for every replay of an existing arc within a 1 week time period.

• Provide a “notice-of-the-well” style special reward for playing certain categories of arcs on a rotating basis (like the Weekly TF, except for MA arcs). This suggestion is employed above as a means to incentivize the monthly “Player’s Choice” arc. This could just rotate automatically.

• Advertise these benefits and the monthly Player’s Choice arc (see below) aggressively.

The more players play and rate unique content, the more rewards they reap. It’s not tied to the number of baddies they kill, so this reduces the incentive for building farms. The more powerful the positive reinforcement, the more likely players are to participate.

V. Revise Dev’s Choice, Hall of Fame, and other means of Special Recognition

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

First, Dev’s choice:

If you’re not going to have the Devs actively participate in regularly choosing Dev’s choice arcs (once per month at minimum, rotating the developer who pics), then you need to scrap the Dev’s choice recognition. Let the players who earned a Dev’s choice keep their extra slot, but remove all references to Dev’s choice in the game. Having a system that is clearly no longer being utilized throws up a big red flag to players telling them that Architect Edition (and certain elements of the game in general) are being neglected. It’s a reminder of a broken promise. Either choose Dev’s choice predictably and reliably, or remove all mention of it henceforth.

Hall of Fame:

In order to vote, players must be required to play through the entire arc. It’s only fair, and will cut down on people 1-starring arcs out of frustration that they can’t find a glowie (not the designers’ fault) or that the arc doesn’t have some arbitrary component they were looking for so they quit playing.

The Hall of Fame limit needs to be changed – I propose (as an example) an absolute number of 100+ 4 OR 5 star ratings –AND- at least 500 total replays of any kind. This will recognize that content that players keep going back to enjoy again and again – the best of the best. It will also be far more achievable than the current HoF limits. The numbers are flexible – ideally, an arc should make it into the HoF every three to six months or so. That means if the game runs for 10 years, a total of 20 - 40 arcs will be in the all time HoF. Not an unamangeable number for a “Hall of Fame”. As the current HoF is, this system can be automated.

There needs to be a level of recognition under the Hall of Fame – a ‘Player’s Choice’ level (not to be confused with the Player’s Choice awards run by players on the boards).

Player's Choice Designation

This should be awarded once per month (120 total over a ten year span - .032% of the total number of arcs currently extant – but a chance to win every month for competitive architects.) The requirements for this award would be as follows:

I. For consideration in a given month (February, for example), that arc must have been granted persistent “Final” status during the month immediately preceding the month for which the award will be given (January, for example).

II. The winning arc will be that arc which accumulates the greatest number of total 4 or 5 star plays (including those from the judgment period) in the month of the contest.

III. On the first of each month, the winner for the previous month will be announced, will be showcased on the CoH website main page, will be mentioned in the GMOTD, and will be placed on the featured tab of AE.

IV. To integrate AE with more recent content, to grant a large influx of plays as a reward for winning Player’s Choice, and to incentivize playing in AE, playing through the previous month’s Player’s Choice Arc in AE should grant a one-time per month reward table that allows players to choose either a Notice of the Well, a Rare IO enhancement recipe, or a Rare Incarnate component as rewarded by the iTrials.

V. An arc that has been flagged as a farm (see "Farm Flagging" below) should not be eligible for consideration in Player's Choice or Hall of Fame.

VI. (Optional) Sufficiently high quality canon-related Player’s Choice arcs should be considered for integration into the main story of the game at Devs’ discretion. I listed this as optional because it would require Dev involvement in AE, which takes time and effort.

Other Issues

This issues aren’t what makes up 80% of the player complaints about the MA system – they are comparatively minor changes that would add to the long-term viability of the system.

Content Integration

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

PoliceWoman (@PW) had a great post on this, which touches on the complaints in Bubbawheat’s thread about how new content / dev content is outcompeting MA.

The new content in the game (i19, i20) needs to be integrated with the MA system for the MA system to stay alive.

This is an easy fix. I’ve already integrated my solution into the recommendations above.

Here are the two big problems I hear being complained about on CoH right now (that aren’t bases):

I. Mission Architect is Broken (see this post)
II. Incarnate Content is a Grind and is not conducive to Solo Players' Enjoyment

Kill two birds with one stone. Award threads and incarnate components for playing, rating, and participating in arcs. I’m talking reward tables of the sort found at the end of the BAF and Lambda trial, placed there in order to incentivize Architects to make great content and to incentivize players to highly rate good, story driven content.

See the contents of my post above to find more suggestions.

This would get both the mission architect monkey off of your back, and would also resolve players complaining about the two-trial grind found in the Incarnate system. Everyone is happy.

Number of Slots

100% Automatable – No Paragon Staff Attention Required after Implementation

Wrong_Number mentioned in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=221800 that, owing to her 8 slots being full, her authoring career is over.
This is a bad thing because she’s won two player’s choice awards and an AE nomination for best story.

Other players (winners of Dev’s choice awards, Player’s choice awards), et cetera have expressed the same concern. Their slots fill up, and their authoring career is cut short.
Why would you want to punish the most prolific generators of free quality content in your game?

This is also an easy fix:

Award Architect Merits, 1 for every 10 five star ratings an architect gets on a given arc. Allow architect merits to be exchanged for slots. That way, when someone like WN makes an awesome arc, the game automatically devotes more resources to allowing her to showcase her talent and improve content.
You want more slots? Make better arcs.

To preserve your bottom line, earning slots in this way might only be possible after the first 8 purchasable slots have been bought.

I don’t see any reason to put a maximum on the number of potential slots earned this way. These players are adding value to the game at no cost to you – in fact, they’re paying you to add value to your game. These high-quality content authors should be rewarded whenever possible and to the greatest extent possible.

Patches Notes

Not automatable – Paragon staff attention essential.

Last, but not least, and of minor note relative to the rest, this thread http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=259226 contains quite a few players beating on the drum and saying a truth that needs to be heeded:

For Pete’s sake, when you change architect, let us know what you did in the patch notes so we may adjust and respond accordingly. A transparent dialog with the players will only improve the value of your game and make the community happier.

Conclusion

The player community of any MMO is its greatest resource. CoX has done a fantastic job cultivating a dedicated, helpful community. We're willing to provide you with content for free, we're willing to curate that content, and we're willing to tell you (in broad strokes) our ideas for how to get it all done.
All you need to do is give us the tools to help you.

In this case, that means unbridling the creativity of the Mission Architects, providing incentives for them to be creative, providing players incentives for playing the new content, and then getting out of the way.

If Mission Architect is handled right, it represents a nearly limitless source of added value that will allow developers to get off the content-generation treadmill all of the competitors are stuck on and focus at least some of their attention on important under the hood modifications, quality of life enhancements, and new gameplay features (archetypes, powers, power sets, etc.) that are critical to the long-term success of the game.

I anticipate that my fellow players and AE experts will add their questions, comments, and suggestions below.

Get The Word Out, Please

If you think this post is worth being seen by the Devs, considering tweeting the URL: http://tinyurl.com/3msepfr to @Positron_CoH and messaging the rednames here on the boards. Links (in red) below go to their message board profile pages, from which you may send them a message by clicking the dark grey "send message" button right under their name.
In the Shawshank redemption, Andy Dufrense needed to secure funding for the prison library. So he wrote one letter a week to his congressman for years until he finally wore his congressman down.

I’m not talking about spamming or griefing the devs here. That won’t help anyone – so please don’t do that.

I am talking about creating a steady drumbeat of voices letting them know that this is a priority to the player community. The May developers’ letter tells us they will work on older content if we communicate to them that it is important.

Please, PM each of the following Devs regularly – you decide the frequency - once a week at most, once a month at least - until someone posts in this thread to let us know this is being looked at:

Beastyle
Zwillinger
Dr. Aeon
Black Scorpion
Positron
Baronyx

Acknowledgements:

Wrong_Number, Policewoman, Bubbawheat, Eva Destruction, AIB, SupaFreak, Zamuel, FredrikZvanberg and many others were instrumental in helping me think through the issues related to this post.

Replace "delete" with "hide from regular searches" and I'd be better with it. Just because someone hasn't played it, doesn't mean it's not valid. And you should always be able to play it by searching for its ID number.

Thanks, Bubbawheat. I see your point. I've changed the text to read 'delete or hide from searches' to reflect the full range of options available.

Next, the System asks:
System then randomly chooses from weekly global candidates with Final status (Lesser rated arcs will receive higher chance of being chosen)

I've got an idea on how authors could be awarded... but that'll hafta wait til later edit.

PEACE!

The content filter has only been a minor problem up until a few weeks ago. I couldn't use "Gunslingers" in an arc title, which is somewhat /e headdesk worthy, but on the list of AE's problems, it's so far down there it barely registers. The tide of vitriol and rage is mostly, in my opinion, because this latest but is yet another straw on the proverbial pile, and it's taking way too long to be fixed for some people's tastes.

Emphatic NO. And again, NO. Mention "badge" and "incentive" in the same sentence and that changes to OH HELL NO. There should be no more badges tied to anything in the AE system. They will only be farmed. The devs tried to use badges to try to lure players into stuff they otherwise might not have wanted to do, and what happened? People who didn't want to do that stuff went out of their way to get their badges as fast as possible and never touched it again. NO BADGES.

Never mind that incentive isn't really necessary. Reporting a problematic arc is very very easy. We have plenty of conscientious players in this game, the trick is to get them using the system so those arcs will be found, because if they are found you can bet they will be reported.

And my last point: trademark infringement is way way down on the list of problems plaguing AE. I have played literally hundreds of arcs in the last two years, and scrolled past probably thousands that I wasn't interested in playing. I have run into a grand total of three arcs that I have felt the need to report for copyright infringement.

They already do. Or rather, did.

Yeah, I'm pretty much in agreement with this. Dev's Choice is far from a showcase of the "best of the best." Instead, it just ensures that a bunch of the devs' favorites from i14 closed Beta (all of which are horribly outdated and none of which can stand up to what players started to create once they figured out the system) and a few of Aeon's favorites (which, when you go through them with a critical eye...they all have a gimmick, don't they? And a lot of them are fluff. Well-written fluff with well-executed gimmicks in some cases, but it does go to show where Aeon's priorities lie, and only furthers the argument that no one dev should be exclusively picking dev's choices) get to hog the first few pages from now until the servers go down for the last time.

It will also eliminate 1-star griefing entirely.
"New shiny" arcs are often inferior to arcs that have sat around for a while and accumulated feedback.

Anything that lets the players choose which arcs will give out rewards will only result in more thinly veiled farms being made Hall of Fame/Player's Choice/whatever you want to call it. Reward incentives must be removed from the equation entirely. Tickets are enough, for anyone who knows what to do with them. Add anything more, and people will only farm more.

If you need more in-game rewards to create arcs you probably shouldn't be creating arcs.

But enough people have enough friends to get their crap arcs 5-starred. And everybody has the ability to create an "I 5-starred yours, now 5-star mine" bind.

Minimal rewards keep people (more or less) honest.

I think you keep missing the point here, with all your talk of rewards. Yes, some players are highly motivated by rewards. Some players are only motivated by rewards. THESE ARE NOT THE PLAYERS WE WANT IN AE. They will never use the AE for its intended purpose, because they don't care. They will only use it for maximum rewards.

Yes, it must be easy to find, play, and rate quality arcs, but anyone who doesn't already have a reason for doing so should just go back to farming iTrials, since that's ultimately what they really want to do.

TL;DR: Better rewards are not the solution to anything. Since most of your post focuses on improving rewards, I really have nothing more to respond to.

Absolutely agreed. That, and if this problem stands, it runs the risk of completely destroying any utility of AE - but since Aeon has already said a fix is being worked on, that does seem somewhat unlikely.

I agree badges must be used judiciously.

I think we need to figure out a way to tie badges to achievements you can't "do as quickly as possible and never touch again".

Here's what I'd like to do:

I'd like to tie badges and rewards to well crafted arcs and appropriate behavior. If you craft an arc that a lot of people genuinely enjoy, even if you "do it as quickly as possible and never touch it again" who cares - you made a great arc. Or if you achieve goals that move architect system toward what you and I are thinking about when we envision the ideal AE (for example, by honestly reporting legitimately infringing content), I'd like to see a reward tied to that.

The trick is how to provide positive incentives without playing into the hands of players who are "faking it" and gaming the system.

How do we get the system to recognize when players are doing what they ought to do, and when they are just forming a "five star rating club" so their account can get the "Made a Good Arc" badge?

That's the core problem undermining architect right now - finding a way to reward legitimate players and crafters without motivating farmers and speed-badgers.


NCSoft needs to demonstrate that they promote that sort of behavior, though - because they're trying to establish a record of seeking out and eliminating infringing content. I presented the "reward for reporting" as an alternative to the "absurdly restrictive filter" that could be something they could still hold up in court and say, "See? We are making a good faith effort to stop infringement."

Rather than treat every architect like a criminal, why not reward good players for doing the right thing? (If we can find a way to do it without having people exploit the reporting system to earn those carrots.)


(Emphasis mine)

How do you propose we do that without some means of positive reinforcement?

But way up on the list of liabilities worrying the people holding the purse strings over at NC Soft. We have to find a concrete way to alleviate their concerns if we are to get our AE back.


How do we bring back the ones who left?

How do we bring in new people to breathe additional life (and quality content) into the architect system? What do you recommend?


That's true, but I think for the sake of AE, it's important to encourage the generation of new content and of players playing new content.

A balance needs to be struck between encouraging playthroughs of well established content and encouraging playthroughs of new content.

Right now, the balance is weighted too heavily toward encouragement of playing established content - if I build a new arc and don't promote it, it's liable to sit there for months with no plays.

That's not a whine - I realize it's on me to promote it - but new Architects will feel more encouraged if they get more plays earlier on in their newly built arcs. And more architects building quality arcs is a good thing.


That's why I included the "farm button" provision. If I see an arc that's a farm, I farm button it and it gets deleted or hidden from the search - and is rendered ineligible for the Hall of Fame / Player's Choice consideration.

Did I not make that clear enough? *considers going back and editing...*

If my "farm button" is a bad idea, can you think of something better? I'm just trying to figure out some kind of solution, here.


How do we breathe life back into AE without rewarding players for playing?

More people using a feature = Life for that feature.

NCSoft is a great company that cares about their customers - but they don't see "quality storytelling experiences for their players" - they see $$. They will direct the devs' time based on those features being utilized by the largest number of players - which means we have to find a way to motivate people to use architect edition for its intended purpose.

That means incentivizing participation in the right way while not incentivizing going through the motions just to farm stuff.

Maybe. But I suspect there are some folks who are good authors out there but who are trapped on the iTrial hampster wheel - who could make seriously good quality stories with the proper motivation.

The way we avoid bringing in an influx of crappy storytellers is we only reward the telling of good stories. (Player's choice system + Farm button.)

This sort of behavior should be reportable and should be grounds for stripping of MA privs.

Can't think of any other solution off the top of my head.


My concern is that they also keep them out of AE.


Then how do we lure more players to AE, thereby directing the Devs' attention to the AE feature as something that deserves to be preserved and improved?


Again - I'm grateful for your input.

This "random task" idea is fantastic. This could be exactly what is needed to encourage players to play less-played material.

Ok....I don't generally judge people by their join date, but in this case it is relevant. It means that, unless this is a second account, you missed the ratings griefing and "5-star cartels" that directly resulted from badges being awarded for having other people positively rate your arc. Those badges were removed for a reason. They didn't incetivize creating quality content that people genuinely wanted to play, they incentivized convincing people to pretend they liked whatever crap you put up there. Did a few people actually make an effort to create something others would enjoy, listen to feedback, and make tweaks to try to actually earn those badges? Yes. Did other people make binds along the lines of "Great arc! 5 stars! Try out mine, ID #XXXXX, if you'd like to return the favor?" Hell yeah. Badgers want badges, and many of them don't care how they get them.

You can't. That's why those badges were removed.

Because "good players" don't need a reward for doing the right thing. If you tie a reward to it, you first need someone to do the wrong thing in order to reward someone for doing the right thing. There really aren't that many people creating copyright infringing arcs. What if I went through the system deliberately searching for them, and reported as many as I could find? Sucks to be the guy who wants his reward next week, I guess. But from the perspective of "we want this stuff reported so we can get rid of it," I did the devs a huge favor.

"We" can't. We've tried. If by "we" you mean "the devs," stop breaking things would be a good start. Put the fixes and changes in the patch notes would be another thing. Ongoing attention, even if it's something so minor as a dev's choice every few weeks, would be a third.

New architects would get more plays on new arcs if the system wasn't a bloated mess of farms, "tests," abandoned arcs and utter dross. If I'm looking for something to play, I can click "most recent" and "0 ratings" and start from the bottom and maybe, MAYBE around page 20 or so I'll find something that looks playable. Or I can come here and see that oh, Policewoman created a new arc, I'll try that one out. Or that Some Guy I've Never Heard Of created a new arc that he cares about enough try to stand out from the dross.

And as long as anyone with an active account can publish pretty much anything they want, that's not going to change. Farms are only the most controversial of the dross. There are a lot of arcs clogging up the search right now that are just simply crap.
If it's fun, they will come. There are arcs out there with plays in the double digits that give out downright crappy rewards. I've had over a hundred people tell me (indirectly, through ratings) they enjoyed having Malta and Arachnos thrown at them. Rewards aren't the be-all and end-all of gaming for some people.
The iTrials are already losing their shiny, and more and more people are getting off the hamster wheel. AE is awesome that way, you can work on your arc any time. If you play a few arcs and do some testing, you can work on them any where. Even while you're waiting for an iTrial.

First, we have to direct the Devs' attention to AE. The people who love the feature and want it to succeed can't bring the casual users over. They've tried.

I understand the dynamic you're trying to point out - my response is that it's that very dynamic that is AE's fatal flaw.

The first step is identifying the problem.

Now, either we come up with a way to fix it, or it's doomed to be neglected by the Devs.

The Devs absolutely have to implement the solution - but it would be nice if we could think up a functional suggestion for them. We've got a lot of brain power we can reach out to here, so it's worth considering.

You don't think a system for reporting the five star cartels would work at all? (Perhaps you can enlighten me as to the history of such attempts?


Yep - that's a problem. And (hopefully) those who infringe are so rare that any reward would be meaningless.

I can see your point there - perhaps rewards for reporting aren't sensible.


I mean the CoX community. Us plus the Devs.

The Devs respond to our needs, inasmuch as our needs dictate their profits.

Things are already broken - so we need to identify those things, recommend fixes, and ask loudly enough that it's made a priority. That was my goal with this thread -to do something productive with my time rather than complain.

I don't doubt that it's been tried before - but I think this is our last shot, if it's not too late already.

The key to drawing their Devs' attention is making the Mission Architect a viable option for a large section of the playerbase again. We're talking 40% or more playing MA when they log on.

That's a tall order.

I'm trying to figure out how to get that done.

The Devs have pretty strong motivation to implement a working MA system if we can convince them of it - limitless free content is a pretty sweet deal from their point of view.

We just have to come up with workable solutions to the issues that don't require gobs of time and money.


Frankly, I'm beginning to doubt they have the manpower.

Any solution we come up with needs to be self-sustaining once it's implemented. Otherwise, it can be screwed up by neglect - and we're right back to bases.

And I've tried to suggest a solution by having arcs unplayed for 90 days be hidden or deleted and arcs with 2 stars or less and a certain number of votes be hidden or deleted.

Yep. That's another core problem with the system.

Solutions?


Double digits isn't a lot.

No, but sadly, they are for most people. Some kind of shiny to work toward is what keeps people coming back to the trough, playing the content for endless hours. Look at the iTrials for an example.

Combine the grind-motivating rewards from an iTrial with the endless novely of MA and you have a recipe for success. We just have to figure out how to solve the problems and then sell those solutions to the Devs.



Yeah, as long as you've got a sharp ear. I really wish the ENTER dialog would layer ON TOP of the character creation window. Ah well.



That's why we have to convince the Devs to bring the casual users over, utilizing the methods I've suggested.

I can't think of a better alternative - and a fatalistic attitude strips me of any power to change the situation, so I'm not ready to go there yet.

Agreed. That's why I've written an open letter to the Devs in the first post of this thread and listed potential solutions to the problems the community has identified.

No, it wouldn't work.

The history basically goes like this: When AE was first introduced, there were badges for achieving Hall of Fame, and badges for getting X number of plays. Members of a certain popular badge site which shall remain nameless decided to help each other get these badges. There was a tag they added to their arc descriptions, so they'd know which arcs they should be 5-starring. Some even went above and beyond, sending copy/paste "I 5-starred yours, please 5-star mine" messages to other authors. I speak from personal experience here; my husband and I got the exact same "feedback" on our arcs, from a well-known badge hunter.

Then the badges were removed. Problem solved.

Again, your new-guyness is showing. It's been done. Over and over again. Suggestions have been made. They've all been ignored by anyone who could actually do anything about it. Now, I understand where you're coming from, because I was once coming from the same place; maybe if I hit this wall with my head hard enough, it might break. But after having been at it for two years, and having made nary a crack, most of us have a splitting headache and are pretty much ready to say "you know what? We ain't breaking down this wall."

These are not the same people. Frankly, I don't want the people who love grinding some trial with a tissue paper-thin premise that they didn't even bother to read because oh look new shiny playing my arcs. They're not my target audience, and with the "I don't care about the story, I don't read it anyway" attitude a lot of them have I doubt they're any serious author's target audience. Now of course the "I want rewards" and the "I like the story" playstyles aren't mutually exclusive, as I was once wont to point out in obnoxiously colored capital letters, but you know what? I have a Scrapper I have leveled to 35 using exclusively AE. Said Scrapper has 500 million inf, as well as some rather expensive IOs slotted. All from bronze rolls. I hit the inf cap for the first time by running AE story arcs, and rolling the tickets. AE arcs give rewards. Maybe not the super shiny brand new reward du jour, but what does really, except for two trials with a tissue paper-thin premise?

I can't speak for everyone here, but what's my target audience, as far as the "casual player" goes? For one, the guy who's sick of all things Praetorian. Or the guy who is two bars from level 45, and doesn't want to open up another contact. Or the guy who hits level 30 for the 30th time and realizes he's done all the level 30-35 arcs 30 times and wants to play something new. Or the guy who wants something fun to do when he gets the day off work and none of his friends are online. Or the guy who is disappointed with the direction the dev-created arcs are taking and wants an alternative. These hypothetical guys, they're awesome, because they're not obsessed with getting the new shinies first, or being the most uber on their server, they just want to do something fun, and make some character progress while they're at it. These are they guys we need to "convert," and you do that by making it fun. As for the "I don't care what I do as long as I get the best rewards" guys? They. Want. Farms.

Alright.. I promise.. promise I'm not trying to make you grind your teeth on purpose. And I continue to appreciate your time.

Got a couple of questions though.

That seems like it would make it quite easy to report those players for five-star-clubbing, since you can see the tag right their on their arc descriptions.

Now, I suppose all they'd have to do is move the five star club to an off-site message board and post the arc names there...

Imagine if you could just report those messages or those players, the same way you can if someone is being obscene. And then those people would lose their MA privileges.

I could see a properly functioning reporting system reducing the population of badgers to,

1. People who are dedicated enough to work out some sort of off-site message board.

2. Groups that only coordinate amongst themselves, as it would be too risky to go ask random players for help due to the reporting function.

The question I have is, would this reduce the number of badgers/5-star clubbers to a small enough population size to be inconsequential. (The same reason the "merits for reporting" might not work - not enough violators to worry about.)


So you don't think that if everyone who reads this thread sends a message to every redname I listed and tells them to look at this because it's an important issue that it will matter?

Why would the rednames conspire to neglect a feature so aggressively? At some point, it becomes more work to ignore than it is to just implement a few fixes.

Especially when, once those fixes are implemented, the system remains hands-off (or becomes more hands-off than it already was).


That's my point. These people, no matter how mindless and grind-ey they are... they watch movies. Some of them read comic books. They consume stories elsewhere - I think we can convert them.

If architect worked the way it ought to work, more people would participate.

I know sites that work using premises similar to those I've described. They have their flaws - their five star mafias and their popular players - people who get voted 5 stars just because of their name, rather than the quality of the content.

But you know what? Thousands and thousands of people use that system daily. They play the content. They rate the content. They consume the stories. They communicate.

I'm not trying to create a system that is free of problems - any system will have flaws.

I'm trying to encourage the devs to return MA to being something fun for the majority of players - something worth maintaining and adding features to.

Right now, it's something broken, neglected, and largely unplayed. That thread Venture directed me to was essentially all the people whose opinions I've come to respect the most while lurking expressing the desire to abandon MA.

Something needs to change.

I'm not saying my proposed solutions are ideal. I'm saying they're better than where we are now.

Farm flagging will allow those people who want farms to go pursue their farms, and it will remove those farms from eligibility for consideration on Player's Choice and HoF.

Incentives will motivate some players and some architects who otherwise wouldn't to participate in the system - and among those, there will be good players and good architects who will discover or re-discover the system.

You and I may disagree on the solutions - but I think we have similar goals.

And I don't think it can hurt to scream at the rednames one last time.

The only other alternative is to give up - which I see some of you have, as you're planning to let your subscriptions lapse.

All I'm asking is that you spend the final few weeks or months giving them hell.


And we don't know how many of these guys are out there until we can get them into the MA building.

Thanks, Bubbawheat! Added a link to the post up top.

Personally, as long as the story and action are fun... I don't pay attention to rewards much. 85% or better XP (make sure you have it scaled to level range of arc people!) without exceeding 100% by too much is all I really need to not get too frustrated.

I know that "one" next power really isn't worth the reward for 10% boost sometimes...

See my Guides and Tutorials

Bleak, while I appreciate your trying "one last time," I need to echo Memphis comments. As an aside his comments are the reasons I've been actively playing other games currently. And it's one of the first times in my 6+ year history that I've ever done that.

EDIT: As an aside I DO agree with you that we DO need more people playing the AE before NCSOFT (note, not he devs) takes it seriously enough to give the devs more money to fix it.

I DISAGREE with Eva that people seeing 2-5 patch notes a week about bug fixes or new features or a new Dev's Choice arc will get folks to play the AE more to anything significant. Double digit plays is NOT significant in this era of our NCSOFT-booster packing loving overlords.

There need to be better incentives to get the right people and good authors using the AE again.

Ofcourse it's the chicken and the egg problem that exists with PVP and bases also. Not enough people use it so not enough resources are given to improve those features. And since not enough improvements are made to those features (not enough resources devoted to them) not enough people use them! If you can solve that I'll give you a cookie.

How about trying to concentrate on a manageable list of (seemingly) minimal effort fixes that require a one time investment of effort and would yield tremendous improvements in the quality of the system, thereby attracting more players?

Such a list would be largely automatable solutions that once implemented would increase incentives for both players and mission architects and would be sustainable in the long term with minimal maintenance over what is already being done.

Ideally, that thread would include links to a list of rednames who could be contacted and encouraged to read it in the hopes that a few of them might pick it up as a side project one month, bang out a few of those fixes, and see if it revitalizes the system.

In a perfect world, those who believed in the utility of those suggestions would participate in creating a groundswell of encouragement directing NCSoft (and by extension, the devs) to attend to the requested fixes in a timely fashion.


....That's the best solution I've been able to think of. Frankly, given the current level of success (not a whisper from the devs and a lot of understandable skepticism from a jaded AE community), I don't think it deserves a cookie...

...but I'm open to hearing a better solution.

What I'm not ready to do quite yet is throw my hands up and go run another iTrial.

I imagine they choose this route because they're afraid if they're not paying attention to all the balls (just the AE ball, or whatever else thing they're currently gnawing on) then people who aren't so into that AE ball would feel slighted. So instead they sort of slight us all on everything. Except for those who want end-game content, which they've said they're going to keep pumping out every issue. :/