Can I cry now?

Well, it's criticism. If you create something and put it out there for others to view, I think you have to accept getting good or bad criticism, even from trolls.

This morning both of my arcs on page 4, a couple of the last story arcs listed reasonable high, received FOUR 1 star ratings each. This pushed one of them down to four stars for the first time since it was published.

Either a concerted griefing effort is being made to wipe all story arcs from the top of the list or it's becoming standard operating procedure to 1 star arc that don't grant farm level rewards. In either case, something needs to be done, because if things are left as they are I don't see MA surviving as anything other than a farming tool.


WN

It's starting to sound like widespread griefing to me now as well. Someone is trying really hard to get non-farm arcs on the bottom of the list, and they're succeeding.

I'm still going to run story arcs and rate them how I see fit, but I very rarely give out 1 stars. I think 3 stars was the lowest I've ever given, and that was because one mission in said arc just didn't work at all.

Personal opinion o' Tony is that the Mission Architect system could be one of the coolest things this game has to offer, but the mods would have to suck it up, grow a pair, and take a stance that, to date, has been yelled and screamed at ad nauseum by farmers. If the MA is ever going to be successful in the way in which they envisioned it, they are going to have to 1) remove farms and punish the people who create them, and 2) remove the reward incentive from people who use them. They're going to have to face the fact that a lot less people would use the MA system, but the trade-off is that the quality of the arcs and of the game experience there as a whole would be a lot higher.

At one time, I was optimistic when Matt posted his vaguely threatening messages about how characters that use farms and exploits would be nuked. I was absolutely giddy when I saw the s***storm that broke out when I heard that people's characters were actually being impacted. And then after a while... Nothing. It all just stopped. I don't know what happened, I suspect that marketing came along and told them, "No, you must not do this." Also, does anyone else remember when if you created a farm arc, not only would it be taken down, but that MA slot would actually be locked, preventing you from simply creating another arc in its place?

The simple fact is that there is a sizable contingent of people out there who honestly feel that there is nothing wrong with using whatever means is at their disposal--farms, exploits, whatever--to avoid having to work to advance in the game. If someone gave them a "make me 50!" button, they'd be fine with that. They'd press it repeatedly to see all the neat stuff 50s get to see, then after a few weeks at most, leave the game and move on to something else. Those same people, when confronted with the notion that "farming is bad," will die defending it without acknowledging how destructive the practice is or why it's in a game's best long-term interest to nix it as much as possible.

I've always contended that it's hard to do, but marketing needs to let these people go. Generally speaking, they're going to go anyway--their short attention spans dictate that after a couple or three months maximum, they're going to be bored with the game anyway, and there is a strong potential that when they get bored, they might start griefing people. Every player isn't sacred, and every $15 isn't worth chasing. They really need to focus on getting more high-quality customers who are likely to stick with the game--and pay them money--on a long-term basis.

So that leaves us where we are. Because farms are allowed, farms are created. Furthermore, arcs that aren't farms are a threat to the farmers--a threat that the MA system will be usable as something besides just a farm factory, thus the one-star griefing.

I haven't lost all hope, though. These developers have been known to take unpopular actions in the past when the long-term health of the game is at stake. They just have to understand that this is affecting people and an important game component in a very tangible way, making it virtually unusable for its intended purpose. They've all been quite busy working on I21/CoH:F stuff lately and they have an aggressive plan for new stuff coming out, which is probably why it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, but I am hopeful that they will eventually circle back around at some point and work on making the MA system something besides a farm factory again.

For the little its worth here's my take.

AE is the wild west. Law is scarce. Someday this territory may get some real government and even become a bit civilized, but that ain't today. The best you can do is carve out some territory with some like-minded folks and defend it yourselves.

That means pretty much ignoring the rating system. It means giving up on quality showing up on the front page and getting wide attention. Might happen, but it's not likely. Make arcs for the enjoyment of you and your circle/group/SG/fans/whatever, make a note when you trip over a good Architect, and maybe some of these little points of light will link together.

That's all you can do.

Well, except for 'and complain' and don't let me hinder that activity. it may not do all that much right now, but it really is better than doing nothing.

Yay.
Had a long, elaborate reply to Tony's biggotry but the forum log out bug got rid of it all.
I'm not going to retype it all so here are the bullet points.
1: I love farming, I do it constantly - take a look at my join date and I think you will find that the assumption that farmers are more likely to quit after a short while is absurd.
2: Go play in AP for an hour and you will see that Farmers and the Farmees are far more likely to be the victims of harassment than harass others.
3: Sadly, judging from the tone of your post, it is fairly obvious that you, in fact are more likely to be harassing the Farmers and the Farmees simply because they don't play the way you want them to. Keep in mind that they aren't npcs that can be programmed to bow down to Lord Tony. They are people and deserve to be treated as such.

Perhaps we should just fight back. Here's the plan... we get together a full team (levels ATs, etc, don't matter). Go through the HOF targeting the farms, go in, click the glowie, and everyone on the team 1-Star the farm with the comment, "Where's the story?"

That should definitely ensure they don't see the HOF list for a while.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

It is pretty easy...

- If I find a good story I give 5 stars
- If I find a terrible story but great effort I give critcism and 3 stars

- If I find a terrible farm I give 1 star
- If I find a very good farm with nice custom looks on teh npc's I give 3 stars

Nothing more, nothing less... And I am willing to rate whole pages like this...

While it's likely that some farmers are griefing, I hav a feeling a number of these 1-stars are more due to people being dense (the Didn't Read portion of tl;dr) as opposed to pure malevolence. I'm also predicting a hint of laziness. While I don't expect it to go through since everything else is of greater priority in I21, I did present a proposal for things. The second half is the one I'm truly interested in.

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Issue 21: Convergence presents the devs with the proverbial second chance to make a second impression since many new players will be encountering Mission Architect for the first time without the preconceived notions of the current playerbase. For this to work, they need to be given a chance to experience it in a positive environment. As a bit of a disclaimer, I'm heavily on the story side of the "farms vs stories" argument. I feel the key is not to remove the farms specifically but rather to make them less upfront. If a player wants to be powerleveled then that's their decision. However, they need to actually make that on their own rather than accepting a team invite, hitting level 50, and wondering if that's all there is to the game. This breaks down into a two part suggestion.

The first is to remove the AE building from Atlas and Mercy while either removing the Architect Studio Manager, moving his unlock to level 10, or making him an unlockable contact. The reasoning for this is to mitigate farm centric broadcast spam from the starting zones of the game. Those who want to farm AE can still easily manage to travel to adjacent zones while new players get a smoother New Player Experience. Architect Studio Manager could be unlocked through obtaining the Thrill Seeker badge which in turn could be placed right in front of the downstairs elevator. Thus, those who want to learn about AE get the option naturally as they enter the AE building while those who don't will never have an extra contact clogging up the menu.

The second is both to start the search interface with the Search Options and More expanded/opened up while also making the front page blank rather than presenting specific options already. I'm not a artist but I present this mockup as an example:




The goal is to treat the AE search interface more like an actual search engine. By requiring a search, it causes an "out of sight, out of mind" scenario. Now...all the farms will still be in the system but you have to actually be looking for them. In a similar vein, this change should hopefully be something of a morale boost for story writers in its own way. No need to worry about being pushed off page 4 because there is no page 4 until a search is made. Thus, more emphasis can be made on keywords and descriptions as opposed to the admittedly arbitrary star system.

This will not solve all problems with the Mission Architect system but it should help put the system on better footing so that other changes, features, and improvements can be made.

not a bad idea, forcing poeple to search would definitly alleviate the 4 star dead zone and from 5 star farms from being the first thing they see

however i feel the devs did the right thing with i21 by disallowing ANY rewards for free players until they either buy the liscense or get a high enough paragon reward tier for it to be permanent

right now, no we cannot search by those descriptive tags such as "canon" "horror" "non-canon", ect

honestly never made sense to me why we couldnt as that is a heck of a lot better than the current search which is actually very vague

easy thing would be if you dont set any, it cant be searched that way which would make story arcs much easier to find actually since most story poeple set those