Mission Architect Reform and Nearly Limitless Potential for Added Value

That's a great idea.

I know other players have been put off the AE by the VR idea behind it (I'm on the fence myself - I don't mind it, but it seems it could have been handled in a better fashion), but I wonder how the doors set for each mish would work - would we end up with more 'enter a warehouse and end up in a tunnel' goofiness? They could code up some stuff to read what sort of map is set and then connect that to a proper door somewhere, but that sounds like it might be a lot of work. I'd love to see it happen though.

I rarely post, but I read the forums a lot, and I had to jump in here to agree wholeheartedly with the above sentiment. All of my friends and I tried out the MA when it arrived, but lost interest pretty quickly. None of us are RPers, but we play this game so we can play a superhero fighting crime in the city. It just seemed odd that with MA we were playing a superhero who was playing a video game of fighting crime.

The novelty of the MA wore off for all of us pretty quickly, and we went back to the non-MA missions. And unfortunately at that time, almost everyone was doing MA so the city seemed deserted, and many of my friends left the game to try other things.

The idea of trying to integrate the MA missions into our regular contacts list seems like a good one to me, although I'm not nearly smart enough to be able to throw out ideas on how to make it work.

However they do it I'd bet more people would play MA if the missions were integrated into the tip system and if they were out in the world. If they worry about having to many missions doors out in the world, then just designate one to five of the established mission doors, as possible for authors to flag as AE doors.

The one advantage to having everything in the same building is that alignment is irrelevant. Putting mission doors into the world (and into the world ONLY) would put villain players who aren't particularly concerned about immersion and are only interested in playing through a well-written story at a disadvantage, since there are simply fewer villainous arcs being published.

There are also tons of arcs in the system that don't take place in the game world at all, not even in another dimension accessible through Portal Corp. Arcs set in a virtual reality, or in space, or in the People's Sovereign Republic of Robonia, a Land I Didn't Make Up can't be placed in the game world. But for arcs that are set in the world, yes, an option to play them in the world would be awesome, if it was in addition to, not instead of being able to access them through the AE datastream.

And they could use the disappearing contact tech to avoid cluttering the world with player-created contacts. The contact doesn't appear until you start the arc. If you're using a canon contact then starting the arc switches them over from handing out their regular missions to handing out the arc's missions.
Simple, choose your door. Not only would it avoid the goofiness, it would also avoid excessive travel, such as to the *** end of IP, if the author chooses their doors well. It would also allow authors to choose doors in places that make sense for the story; for instance if you're stealing from the Family in St. Martial, it makes sense to use a door in the casino district. If I want to have the player enter a pawn shop, I will use the pawn shop door.

I'm not sure what you mean here. We have tons of mission doors out in the world.

Since I doubt that they want to go through and remove all the AE buildings from the game, I'd expect that it would be in addition to the AE, and not replacing it, as you describe.

That being said, were this the design phase for Issue 14, I'd have opposed the whole storyline behind Architect Entertainment entirely. But I'm not going to push for its removal now that people have written stories assuming its existence (myself included). I know I wouldn't get anywhere with a proposal like that, anyway.

Yes that was what I was thinking, too. The current "hologram" contacts could be scattered about the world (allowing MA authors to choose location as well as the contact itself), but hidden until an arc is taken. Or they could even have a phone-only one like some Praetorian contacts.

For some arcs it might, as long as "random" means "random office" or "random cave" not "I went into a run-down warehouse and ended up in a high-tech lab." It wouldn't work so well for any arc that takes place in a specified zone. If my contact tells me "I need you to assault Rikti forces in the War Zone" it makes no sense to walk in a door in Talos and suddenly end up on one of the outdoor RWZ maps.

Problems and Solutions

So what went wrong – and how do we fix it?

First, a great deal of the following is a synopsis of what can be found in the following threads:

Hall of Fame Requirements Need Revisiting

Copyright/Profane Question

Bubbawheat's Mission Architect Issues List


I see 5 areas of needed improvement in the Mission Architect system:


1. The content filter.

This is covered in depth here:

Copyright/Profane Question

The content filter has been identified by Aeon as a bug that is in the process of being fixed, so I won’t devote too much time describing the problem here here other than to emphasize that it is essential that it be fixed and proposing a few solutions.

In quick summation, the new (and probably accidental) filtering system is unnecessary (as we already have means of reporting violators and a basic filter such as had been in place for some time is perfectly serviceable), ineffective (because violation is not about words, but about ideas – which must be policed by people via a reporting system), and punitive (punishing legitimate architects capriciously by arbitrarily destroying content they’ve spent hours designing – leading to discouragement and disenchantment with the Architect system).

As an alternative to heavy content filtering, I propose:


A. Emphasis on the reporting system.

Players should receive an incentive for correctly reporting offending arcs – possibly an “Architect Guardian” badge and some sort of bonus. (Either a fixed number of tickets, for example, or a ticket multiplier of 1.05 for every X number of correctly reported arcs.) Care will need to be taken to prevent incentivizing the creation of violating arcs just to earn the reporting cookies – but coming up with creative solutions is what developers are paid to do.

Some system that relies on player reporting is essential, however. The reason is that there is simply too much content for developers to police, and as mentioned above, filters are wholly ineffective at policing content. You need human intelligence sorting out the good from the bad – and the only way to do that is to crowdsource it via your player base. Which means incentives for reporting.

Of course, you’ll still need an NCSoft employee looking at those arcs with the most reports and making the final determinations – but this is a system that allows you to manage your time most effectively and set thresholds.


B. Severe penalties for being correctly reported multiple times


Players who are reported three times for infringement content violations should either have their mission architect privileges revoked or should be banned altogether. While banning paying customers sounds like bad business, it’s important to keep in mind that these individuals will constitute a very small minority of the total players. Most folks value continued playtime over making infringing characters.

Further, banning players may be bad business, but getting sued is worse.


C. Severe penalties for griefing or exploiting via the reporting system


As discussed above, we need to avoid incentivizing the creation of violating content for the sake of accumulating the positive rewards for reporting.
One way to do this is to implement a system whereby players who accurately report (i.e., report content that is eventually removed for violation) have votes that count more the more accurate they are. Conversely, players who routinely report content that does not infringe have votes that count less.
So if I’m good at reporting violating content, every time I report someone it will count as 1.5 reports.

Conversely, if Joe Griefer likes reporting people just because he didn’t like the arc, his votes will count as 0.01 reports (eventually).

This allows players who are serious about helping to maintain the integrity of Architect Edition most effectively draw GM/Dev attention to the problems.
For the mathematically inclined, this might look like:

[My Reporting Power] = 1 + (.05*# of times I’ve reported content actually in violation) – (.10 * # of times I’ve reported counted found not to be in violation).


2. Incentives and rating systems. (Hall of Fame, etc.)

Players on MMOs are driven by two elements: Incentives and fun.
People have a deep biological drive to achieve rewards. This is why you can get away (for a while) with, for example, building an entire system of shinies and currencies based entirely around endlessly grinding on two levels that take less than an hour each to play through…. And people will do it ad nauseum.

However, for long term viability, you need a variety of experiences for players to participate in – and you need incentives tied to participating in those experiences.

One of the primary flaws in the handling of the Mission Architect system has been NCSoft’s failure to properly incentivize participation.
This failure has the been the product of a fear of exploitation of the system for farming purposes.

I propose the following solutions:

A. Make architects want to generate quality content.
Why do architects spend countless hours and their creative energies generating content at no charge? How can we make them want to do more of that?
If you go to this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=221800

You will find that they are motivated by two factors (listed in order of importance)

I. Recognition

II. In-game Rewards

Pages and pages have been written by architects seeking to improve the system whereby their efforts can be recognized. Nothing is more rewarding to an architect than to have players play through and express enjoyment of their content. (So this will tie into point B – making the players want to play and rate quality content.)

We need to fix the system we use to recognize what architect achievement.
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:

First, 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 200+ 4 OR 5 star ratings –AND- at least 1000 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). 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 published 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 4 or 5 star plays 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.

Architects also need more robust in-game rewards for crafting quality arcs. A modest income of tickets for plays is not an acceptable reward – these people are breaking their necks to produce quality content.

For every 10 five star ratings an architect receives, one Architect Merit should be granted (yes, another currency). Architect Merits should be able to be exchanged for extra slots, at a rate to be determined by the Devs. This will reward players who consistently make highly played, quality content with the ability to do more of the same.

Architect merits should also be able to be exchanged (in whatever quantity the devs think is appropriate) for a reward table allowing the user to select from rare IO recipes, a synthetic hami-o, a notice of the well, or an incarnate component as produced by the iTrials. The cost for these elements can be chosen by the devs – but the point is, this would represent a huge incentive to generate good content. It would also not detract extensively from the popularity of the iTrials – not everyone has the skill or ability to generate five star worthy AE content.

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. Allowing players to report other players for "five star clubs", and allowing them to report players who tag arcs with "five star club" notices - and revoking MA privs of "five star clubbers" - will limit the 5 star clubbing to those violators dedicated enough to coordinate via some off-site message board or system. There will always be exploitation and abuse - however, the system I propose will get players into the MA building, where currently there are none. I've got to believe that's better than letting this feature die.

B. Make players want to find, play, and accurately rate quality content – without promoting farms.

Players are driven by incentives. We need to provide encouragement to players to participate in the Mission Architect system. We need to give them a reason to seek out and accurately rate good stories – and we need to give them a reason to play architect arcs.

That means it must be easy to find, plate and rate quality arcs and there must be a reason for doing so.

The problem with motivating players to play in Architect, historically, has been the issue of farming. If Architect rewards are made superior to rewards elsewhere in the game, players will simply go to Architect to play farms, and will rate farms highly, and the storytelling aspect of Architect will die. Consequently, Architect rewards have been lowered to be less attractive than the rest of the game.

Predictably, this has led to emigration from Architect Edition toward the content outside of Architect, leaving AE devoid of players.

The solution is to tie rewards for players to participating in the architect system – not killing mobs in Architect levels.

I propose the following methods to upgrade the player experience and direct player attention to the Architect system:

I. Farm Flagging

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.
Alternately, farms could just be deleted outright by the automated system.

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):

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.
(Optional) The system should automatically delete or hide from searches arcs that are flagged ‘Farm’ (see above).

III. Reward for each play and rating

We can see the power of providing a reward table at the end of a mission. The BAF and Lambda trials are a testament to the power of such reward tables to drive player participation. Unfortunately, the current system of incarnate rewards is tied to only two trials – creating the sensation of an endless perpetual grind on the same two pieces of content.
Imagine tying the power of a story-end reward to the Architect Edition. Now, players are being driven by this powerful incentive to participate in unique stories – and there will never be a grind, because new content is being developed all the time.
Reward tables could be varied to incentivize a diversity of behaviors:

• Provide a reward table granting one uncommon or rare IO enhancement recipe or INF for the completion and rating of any arc that has less than 25 total plays so far.

• Provide a reward table granting one rare IO enhancement or 20 threads or INF for every play-through of an arc the player has never played through before. 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.

• Advertise these benefits and the monthly Player’s Choice arc aggressively.

• Provide badges for # of unique arcs played and # of arcs played that had less than 25 plays when the player played them.
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.

IV. Reward for accurately rating quality content

Provide players with a reward if they give 4 or 5 stars to an arc that goes on to become a Player’s Choice arc. (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.)

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 over 90 days) 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).

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.

We also need to develop an automated recommendation engine that will recommend arcs to players, based either on their expressed interests or on a set of under the hood metrics. The recommendations from this engine would replace the current from 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.)

3.Content Integration:

PoliceWoman had a great post on this.

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 – you can kill two birds with one stone. 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.

4.Number of slots.

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 an easy fix, and one I’ve already suggested above.

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.

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.


5. Patch Notes


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.

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.

Beastyle
Zwillinger
Dr. Aeon
Black Scorpion
Positron
Baronyx

Acknowledgements:

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

The "Work in Progress" flag was originally added to allow players to earn rewards while testing their unfinished arcs. Some players would never dream of publishing something they don't deem ready for public consumption *raises hand* but others obviously consider testing "a waste of time" considering all the Extreme/Extreme 1-54 custom critter arcs out there.

I agree, these arcs should not appear on the default search. Removing them from the search would also remove all arcs that were published in the initial post-release frenzy and never touched again, since everything was flagged "Work in Progress" by default when the flag was introduced and the author had to manually change the flag.

Incarnate shards already drop in Dev's Choice arcs when set to "normal rewards."

The search tool flags completed arcs by account, which isn't ideal if you have a lot of 50s. Also, some kind of reset would be needed, to not unduly punish people who have already completed a large number of Dev's Choice arcs.

I don't see this as a downside. Approving someone else's content is still easier and less time-consuming than creating your own.

One reason for people publishing to test is that when the AE was first released there were no testing tools. No invis mode, no invincible mode, no insta-defeat target, no insta-complete mission and no cycling through. Players had to test missions the long way. The only thing test mode did was prevent debt, however this comes at the expense of earning zero XP, inf, inspirations or tickets.

So players had the choice of play testing the long way with no XP and no debt, or the long way with XP and possible debt. Players who took less pride in their work and didn't want to feel their time wasted (i.e. no XP) naturally published first to do their testing.

Proper test tools takes away much of that incentive by giving a much shorter test path, but I'm sure there are those that would still publish first anyway (assuming they actually test).

The search should really default to "Looking for Feedback" and "Final" status, as you don't want it showing off stuff that's probably incomplete.

I think the "Work in Progress" tag was introduced at the same time as all the new testing tools....still, you do have to actually play through to test difficulty, preferably with multiple characters, which is the one thing I suspect a lot of people don't bother with, judging by all the poorly designed custom groups out there.

I agree that you need to test your arcs with a large variety of characters to make sure they're viable.

To be fair, however, there are many dev-created groups that mop the floor with some ATs and powersets. My shield tanker can have serious problems with large spawns of Nemesis and Devouring Earth, but my Fire tanker doesn't bat an eyelash. That same Fire tanker gets creamed by Carnies, but my /Electric brute doesn't. Stalkers often have problems with Rikti because of the drones, and squishies have problems with them because of all the mezzes. Melee characters despise Knives of Artemis, but blasters, corruptors and defenders can often melt them like butter.

The other thing is that many players just don't understand how best to counter the powers that custom characters have. They're often not even sure what killed them. It takes a long time to figure out the standard enemy groups and the best tactics against them; custom groups open up a whole new can of worms.

So, just because a particular character type has a difficult time against an enemy group doesn't necessarily mean it's poorly designed. That's something that's lost on many players who complain about the groups in AE arcs, forgetting that they have the same kinds of problems when they face Malta or Longbow.

But they at least know what they're in for when they do dev missions. They know what to expect, what difficulty level to set, etc. With AE it's a total crapshoot, even with well-designed arcs and groups. While some players run missions just for the story, the vast majority care about rewards at least as much.

If it turns out that running one mission takes two or three times longer to complete than another one, because of the inherent weaknesses and strengths of your character, it doesn't necessarily mean that that the arc or the group is bad. But you will perceive that arc as bad because it wasted so much of your time for so little (comparative) reward.

That inherent variability and consequent unpredictability is the core of the problem with AE arcs in a reward-conscious game-playing population.

I think I have sufficient knowledge of game mechanics to tell the difference between "an enemy my character is weak against" and "a poorly designed enemy." When everything has Dark Blast/Dark Miasma/Dark Melee/Dark something, if you're not softcapped it'll floor your to-hit. When everything has electric powers, if you're not soft-capped or Electric Armor you will have no endurance. When everything has a to-hit and damage buff, the alpha strike can obliterate squishies. Enemies with a load of resistance or damage debuff powers will be tedious no matter what you're playing. And so on and so forth. There's a difference between that and "this psi-heavy group is problematic for my Invul" or "this energy damage heavy group is problematic for my Dark Armor."

Try "Psychophage" (#283197). It works, despite its numerous references to external works.