Can I cry now?

Here's an idea....kill the rating system. We used to have one here on the forums waaaaaay back when and they killed it because of the drama it caused. Seems we have another candidate here as well.

Maybe the answer is to not allow the ratings to count unless the arc has been played in full and completed- that would make it much more tedious for the drive-bys. Comments allowed (so if somebody gets stuck on your ultra hard final boss, you can hear about it and adjust it or drink their tears, as you see fit ) but no rating.

The other option would be to go to a more complex rating system that is not as easily "gamed" by somebody trying to deliberately rate-bomb it?

As far as farming vs. story arcs- I agree the primary purpose of MA has been to make your own stories- and the focus should be there. However, I do use the farming arcs for a couple of purposes. One, mid-level salvage is pretty rare and even some of the common mid-level salvage can get pretty pricey. So, I fire up a "farm" arc and spend my tickets on mid-level salvage (using it to craft if I need it, or dump it on the market to drive prices down and get me cash if I don't). So, there would be some not-so-desireable effects of removing the ticket farms, IMO. I would expect (at least for the short term) that rare salvage prices would increase fairly dramatically and mid-level salvage would increase as well, possibly putting newer players out of the market for stuff alltogether.

Anyways, tonight I'll try to play a few of the rate-bombed arcs, hopefully I can help make a dent in restoring some of the damage and have some fun doing so! I remember Fear and Loathing on Striga as one of my favorite AE arcs and a few others I picked up around here, sad to see somebody bashing hard work that turned out well. I am assuming that multiple ratings from the same account don't count, correct?

Not meaning to be insulting but coming from past experience I don't believe you.

All of my arcs whose threads I updated recently got 2-3 plays each. One of these was a five-star rating, as I suddenly had 25 tickets to redeem. The other...zilch. At least their ratings didn't change.

I read this entire thread.
Some things that came to mind:

Players want farms:
This isn't debatable. As you've all already pointed out, the entire problem with the mission architect is that it gave people what they wanted. It trivialized the content of the game to such a degree that an entire generation of AE babies and WoW immigrants were cutting a swath of stupid through the game, making it nearly unplayable.

The current developers game model DEMANDS farming:

With the brainlessly thrown together Incarnate system, players are required to farm the same pathetic content over and over and over and over and over to get their cookie. By forcing players to farm the same dull TFs eternally, they kind of lose any moral high ground they had to decry farming to start with. 'You can only farm what we demand you farm' is not a message you want to send when you're pretending to care about what happens in the AE.

The AE allows veterans to circumvent the tired, exhausted, passe content that has plagued the game since launch with little or no alteration or attention:

That pretty much says it all. I don't really know many people playing this game anymore, as I refuse to participate in the Incarnate system past the Alpha slot. Since my only alternative is to slog through the same boring crap I've been suffering with since forever ago to get a toon to a playable level or to use the AE to get a character to a level where they are fun enough to play, I'll pretty much always choose the latter. I don't SEE groups anymore when I play this game, mostly because my schedule forces me to play when everyone is asleep. Thus, the AE is perfect for my needs. I DO see a TON of people in the AE, in groups or solo, farming to their heart's content and not bothering anyone. With just a few alterations, the AE could accomodate both types of players, as was mentioned above, the usage of a farm classification tab system and a separation of rating systems for both types would correct a lot of these problems permanently.

The Farmers are not to blame for no one playing your arcs. The developers are:

Here's why; The Farmers use the AE for leveling, ticket gathering, salvage, etc. But at least they use it. A LOT. Every day. Sometimes all day. And there are a LOT of them. Instead of recognizing this as the asset to their monthly intake that it is, the developers knee jerk, moronic reaction was to nerf the living hell out of the AE, making it useful, ironically, only to farmers, who will always, always find a way. Seriously. It's been years. Every time the developers devalue the AE and break more of it's essential mechanics, the Farmers have found a way to make it work for them. Instead of this bizarre 'us vs them' mentality, another course should have been plotted that capitalizes on this playstyle and bends it to the game's long term benefit. I can come up with about four different ideas that would probably work in that regard off the top of my head. It's not really all that difficult. A change in the rewards system that still allows players to benefit from performing the written missions of your own designs would be a good start. And not a terribly difficult one to accomplish.

Make a ******* decision already:

The development team really has only two courses of action they can take on this issue in the long run, because eventually that's what it's going to come down to. As is the case with redside, the developer line seems to be 'ignore it until it threatens the life of the game' or 'get around to it when we can find someone that can be bothered'. With that kind of mentality, nerfs and hard feelings is pretty much all any of us can look forwards to with the AE.

Either undo all the boneheaded knee jerk ultranerfing that made the AE utterly useless to the dedicated writers and creators that accepted the task of doing the developers job for them and supplementing the content they refuse to update or enhance in a timely manner, or close the damned doors on the AE forever. Eventually, that's the decision they're going to have to make with it, as the Farmers will always, always find a way to bend the AE to their goal, and the devs will continue to break it in an effort to stop them until it reaches a point where there really isn't anything else that can be done with it.

The end of AE will probably be a little more complex than that, but at it's core, that's pretty much what the decision boils down to. These are, of course, only my thoughts after seven years of watching the ball get dropped again and again and again with no one accepting responsibility and no one correcting any of the issues that invalidated an entire HALF OF THE DAMED GAME, so of course, grain of salt.

Just my thoughts, feel free to flame.

Basic problem:

You will always get more rewards punching lots of dudes quickly than you will reading clues.

I don't think that can be changed, but as long as it's true, AE farms will be more rewarding (mechanically) than AE story arcs, and therefore, either AE farms will be more rewarding than regular play, or AE story arcs will be less rewarding than regular play, or both.

I don't actually think that's intrinsically bad -- the problem is that the farms and story arcs are competing for attention.

I am currently starting to lean towards "devs should just separate the categories in some way, and make it easier for people to find the content they want".

Could give XP for AE Clues.

The game doesn't need a PL machine/loot generator. There's no benefit to anything that lets people blow the leveling curve to smithereens.