So why aren't you using AE?

1. Search is as much use as a rubber duck in the Sahara
2. The AE interface is horrid
3. It seems impossible to find the good stuff without trawling through mountains of turds to find the occasional gem
4. Because the AE is so fundamentally broken, it's not often played and therefore getting others to partake is next to impossible. Given there's a lot of "real" content out there, why bother spending an evening sifting through junk when you can actually be playing the game with friends
5. The tools are too limited: It's the same old same old. Actually telling a story is quite a challenge - getting to beat stuff up is fine but why not use the AE to do stuff you don't get in the regular game?
6. There's no maintenance. Broken stories that don't run and blatant farms aren't removed (or if they are, far too infrequently) and so add to the general clutter.
7. Because the AE has been mostly abandoned by the Devs it's become something of an anachronism - it solely exists for farmer and PLers to charge obscene amounts of Inf to get your new toon a few quick levels.
8. Issue 14: White Elephant

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

One could remark with some validity that the ONLY missions to be removed from the AE are in fact, profitable farms.

Every single other thing is left to languish.

Overall, a larger waste of developer resources could hardly be imagined.

Basically...Too much to do on my toons...and not ready to make arcs for them yet..and why im not using it? - back to too much to do on my toons :P

While, I will occasionally enter to try a mission created by a friend, as a rule I don't use AE because:

• The hacked-up reward system that punished legitimate users far more than it ever did the exploiters.
• The uncontrolled rating system which allowed for jerk-hacking of ratings, often forcing good, well-crafted missions down the list and into obscurity to make room for the next FOTM farm.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Before AE was released, my CoH-friend and I were excited about the description we had read, where you get to create your own missions and share them with other players. We began to plan stories that we wanted to tell; but, we didn't know how the system would work. It was a surprise to learn that AE is a holographic studio, like Star-Trek: The Next Generation's Holo-Deck.

Trying to fit a preconceived story into AE mechanics was frustrating. While the interface was relatively easy to use, it also seemed quite limiting (compared to other game's similar systems, such as Bioware's Aurora toolset). Almost invariably, I found the AE mechanics would not let me tell the story the way I wanted, resulting in unsatisfactory work-arounds.

Eventually, I adopted a different approach to developing a story for AE. Instead of first imagining a story and then becoming frustrated because I couldn't find the right maps and events for it, I looked for maps that I wanted to play on, villain groups that fit my desired level range, and events to fit the maps and foes. In this way, the maps, villains, and events inspired me to develop a story that strung them together.

At first, I created several story arcs just for my friends to play, featuring our custom characters as NPCs. Later, I created an arc that hopefully any CoH player can enjoy.

I've played many great story arcs created by other players, exhibiting wonderful storytelling skills and a lot of hard work. (I've also partially played many other story arcs--before quitting them--that were, well, not so good. I'll never get back those wasted minutes of my life... but, I digress.)

Yes, AE has negatives as pointed out by other posters. In particular, the copyright filter deserves to be called out. Did you know, if you choose "Black Scorpion" from the standard list of villains, the filter will flag your story as invalid--presumably because "Scorpion" is a copyrighted Marvel Comics character? Note that "Black Scorpion" is CoH intellectual property and provided in AE's interface as a standard pull-down menu option--that is, not a player-created custom character name. So, choosing a standard menu option will cause your story to be flagged as invalid. Clearly, the copyright filter is myopically misguided.

Even so, I am glad AE is part of CoH. Could it be better? Yeah. But, still, it's a really cool feature, one that I enjoy using periodically.
__________________

AE is one of my big disappointments with the game. I genuinely feel like the devs and reps haven't given it enough love. When it was created, I thought that the devs and reps would actively participate in trying to make a vibrant content creators community. I expected things like contests, publicity, decent exploit control, and so on. Instead, I feel like it's just kind of been left floating in the wind.

One thing that I was really hoping for was decent control over making farming arcs. The devs were explicitly clear when it was announced and released: Architect Entertainment is not a farming tool. Farms would be nuked, along with the MA slot they occupy so that after a creator got nuked three times, they essentially were locked out of creating AE missions. Exploits would be nuked too, and those who took advantage of them would be "punished"; that is, they would have their ill-gotten gains removed.

Instead, what we got was farmapalooza. If they nuked anything, I sure as heck didn't see it. People openly broadcasted that they were looking for AE farm teams. People openly posted threads here about great farms to run. Even advice on how to create the most productive farms. There was lip service played to trying to moderate the system, but it was useless. And then came the exploits, including some that allowed people to level up to 50 in a day or two. I heard vague rumors that some people got punished (even after Positron posted a message explicitly saying that people who ran the exploit farms WOULD have their gains taken away), but these exploits lasted for months. I'm pretty sure that eventually, they gave up on trying to modsmack people. They fixed the exploits, and a vocal part of the player base cried "OUTRAGE!!!" because of it. The whole experience was stupid. I honestly think that the devs went way too far in trying to please everyone.

And now that the AE system isn't as exploitable, people have left it. Which isn't a bad thing--I don't WANT these people using it!--but in the process, all of those idiot farm arcs are still out there and people are still creating more. Meanwhile, when was the last time we had any kind of publicity or love given to AE by the devs or reps? I might just be missing it because I don't scour the forums like some people do, but I haven't heard anyone at Paragon Studios so much as mention it in years. I don't even know if they're still giving out Devs Choice awards. They tried to do a "guest author" thing and we got, what, one or two people to make arcs?

When I asked them in person about the possibility of getting some user-generated content integrated into the canon of the game via things like contests, I was told, "There are legal issues with that." Well, I know that, but they're certainly not insurmountable! Numina was a result of a contest entry. The movie title on every theater marquee in the city was a result of a contest entry. Some of the in-game art were contest entries. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to, at worst if the ToS isn't enough, get a player to sign a form saying, "This is my original work and I give Paragon Studios/NCsoft full rights to it." So nothing in the AE will make it into the game's canon. I mean, the whole game is make believe and I'm fine with that. But having a make believe game within a make believe game?

I honestly thought--and still think--that the AE system is pure genius. I think that their implementation of it is pretty spiffy, warts and all. Unfortunately, I feel that they really dropped the ball on the follow-through and marketing of it. I think they expected it to kind of work on its own without much oversight or maintenance. I think they were naive in thinking that the farmers wouldn't do everything they could to wrest control of the system away from the storywriters and RPers.

I also think that it could work if they put some honest effort into trying to turn things around. Clear out all of the farm arcs. If you have to, hit the reset button and clear out all arcs, period, and start fresh. Enforce the "this is not a farming tool" policy. Get rid of the draconian text filter. It isn't so limited when naming characters or biographies, and that doesn't seem to cause many problems. There's a system in place for dealing with it already, the /petition system. Hold some contests. I'd love to see the MA system used for things like developing new contacts or even something as simple as developing newspaper/police radio missions. Participate in the MA community--writing arcs, playing and leaving comments for people, doling out dev choice awards, posting about them here, etc.

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, it's our fault the MA system sucks. While I think that the mods don't crack down on farming/exploit arcs like they should, it doesn't change the fact that it's the players that are creating them. It's the players that are five-starring them. It's the players that recruited the hell out of everyone when the system was released, ran the arcs just to powerlevel and collect tickets, and then whined and cried when the natural result--a new population of so-called "AE babies"--came about. I think the devs were naive, but I also think the players were too damn greedy for their own good. Looking at some of the posts here, I don't think that's changed, either. The reason not many people use AE any more is because it's been turned into a cesspool or crappy arcs, and a few people would love nothing more than to see it taken to an even lower level.

FWIW, relative to the OP, I've decided that even now, with all the crippling restrictions the devs have placed on AE, I would still create more content if they would put arc slots on sale.

I'm looking for a 50% off sale, and I'll buy when that occurs.

As for what I play in AE ... primarily my own arcs, because that's what I can easily find, and I'm satisfied with the quality.

Well said, Tony. I agree 100%.

I wouldn't mind seeing AE get shut down until it got a good cleansing. Or wipe the AE database clean and start anew, but with a watchful eye.

What Liquid and TonyV said.

I do use AE occasionally...it's a nice change of pace from running the same old familiar arcs while leveling up. I would use it more if it were easier to find good arcs (and my threshold for "good" is not very high...basically "not broken and not a farm").

I made a couple of arcs (see sig), but in the end it just seemed like too much work for something that would just get buried under the sea of junk.

The number one reason why I avoid AE is because the rating system is unusable. A high-rated arc might be a well-written story, or it might be some powerleveler's ideal farm mission, or it might be a crappy slap-dash arc full of fart jokes that someone got all their SG friends to five-star. It's worse than useless, it's actively misleading.

The rating system is also the reason why I don't write AE arcs anymore. Whatever I write will be buried deep in the system and no one will ever find it, because I'm not willing to hawk it like a used car salesman on the forums and to my in-game friends. If you don't have a large support group of friends, or a personality like a carnival barker, the chance of your AE arc being noticed is near zero. So why bother.

The AE system is a neat idea, but it was poorly executed.

With developer content there's common knowledge floating about regarding what's in each TF/trial/etc., how long it is and roughly how hard it is. I know an ITF will take 40-50 minutes and I need a character who can hold aggro to handle the regenerating war walker in UG. No such thing with AE arcs. I can't plan my play time or strategy and I don't know if I'm walking into someone's 2-hour slogfest or if there will be a self rezzing, immune to -regen willpower AV in it.

AE arcs use the TF mechanic so I can't do 2 missions, take a break to ITF then come back to do the other 3. I have to switch characters or abandon it and try again which is annoying.

"It's all virtual reality" which detracts from the impact of the stories presented in it, however good.

I would actually be interested if AE were developed in the way TonyV suggested, but it sounds like a lot of resources and effort that I'd be happier if they put it into promoting trials and incarnate content. My suggestion is to drop the pretense of going after farmers and increase the XP in AE. At least then I would have a tool to powerlevel my characters when I'm rerolling them into new FotM powersets, which would increase my enjoyment of the game. AE currently does not contribute to my enjoyment of the game.

I was very active at first making arcs, but stopped after the enemies I made were invalidated time after time, as I had to rebalance their powers, run the arcs again to make sure the new powers were fun to fight, then find some rule had been made that reduced/nullified rewards and rebalance again to reward people for playing the arcs.

After revising my main arc well over a dozen times, I lost interest in the AE. Nobody played the arcs, and at any moment a new patch could break my stories. Making sure one or two stories remained functional and testing the changes is a chore. Making more? It's work, not fun, and work put into something that few will touch, much less enjoy.

The rewards for making an arc aren't there. The devs don't care if quality content is being anywhere near as much as they are concerned about damage control over someone abusing an exploit. This has been made abundantly clear by all the real arcs they break when they find a new loophole is being abused. If they choose between keeping player content and killing it along with and exploit, the choose to squash exploits every time. And to be honest, there's no almost nothing in it to reward an author. It's all stick, only a tiny carrot. (If that.)

Why don't I play it? The UI doesn't let me find a good story mission besides the few hall of fame/dev choice arcs amidst the slew of invalid old arcs that are broken, old farms, or new farms. When I do find an arc, it is more often than not highly uneven, with either boring/slow/easy gameplay or huge spikes of damage and tough foes. And in the end, the experience for going through all the ups and downs is less than that of a paper/radio mission. If I come here to level up my characters, and have a good time with friends or solo, the devs have far too many incentives for me to go almost anywhere but the AE. The worst dev content is far more reliably enjoyable and rewarding compared to the worst AE arcs.

In the end, it's a great system suffering from a UI that doesn't allow proper differentiation and parsing of its content,a dev team that seems to see AE content as much as a hotbed of potential exploits than anything else, and a system which has its rewards scaled back below much of what the game offers.

I think from the responses that AE could be revitalized with 2 changes

1. Wipe all existing arcs. This may require notifying players to save their old arcs. Or it could just be a wipe. Players who have their arcs saved could republish them. This would remove the backlog of old, broken arcs.

2. Have a setting for missions for type of mission, at least dividing between farming and story. I am thinking: story, experience, challenge, roleplaying. With roleplaying being personal/SG arcs that they do not intend for outside play. You can only set the arc to be one of these.