Goodbye, Mission Architect!

I guess we all tell ourselves there'll be more time. But that's just not the case.

I haven't been active that recently, but before I lost the chance, I wanted to thank you all...

(Right or wrong with the spelling, and *absolutely* in no particular order)

PoliceWoman (you'll never know how much I appreciated your cheerful, but brutally honest feedback - I always felt you took the suggestion I made to improve your arcs to heart; the fact you made it to HoF at least gets to be a minor proxy for me... I am so proud of the fact that I got virtually every arc that actually *mattered* to me on your list... that alone shows how much your opinion mattered to me.)

Wrong Number (I can't even begin to pretend what you've gone through. You've been an inspiration for me, both personally, and as an arc writer. You make me wish I'd had the time to fill those empty slots I'd bought years ago... and your arcs are among my favorites!)

FrederickSvanberg (You've got one of my favorate arcs ... who knew you could make me care so much about Ernesto Hess? It's been a pleasure.)

Zamuel (And you get the award for character design ... I don't think I've played an arc where I was wowed so much by the customs as yours... and you had some stiff competition from everybody on this list. And I've never found your "handyman" suggestions lacking, as I spied on them to see if I could find something to help my own arcs.)

Eva Destruction (What can I say? You were the first to review one of my arcs, and I've had so much respect for you since ... plus you've made the most consistent references to other games that I've loved - like it or not, when I return to Star Control from time to time, I will always think of you. And ... although it probably matters very little ... you've got a lock on what the Freakshow should be ... strange what we focus on, eh?)

Clive Dark 5 (I love your posts, I love your arcs, and I'm going to miss seeing your avatar. What more can I say? You've been a wonderful person to know.)

Lazarus (although I doubt you'll even see this, you wrote great stories, constructed great arcs, and created one of the most memorable villain groups I've even had the pleasure of beating the tar out of.)

Mr. Captain Man (Just so that you know ... your six mission, but it's really three missions per arc arc was always one of my favorites ... so *much* neat stuff. Consider your efforts a success.)

Venture (You practiced what you preached ... I might have thought you an exceptionally mean S.O.B. -- but I can't deny I found your arcs absolutely top notch.)

Laser Jesus (Your arcs are on the list of my favorites. I haven't seen you here in quite a while - and I expect you're long gone - but it doesn't change the fact that I got a whole lot of entertainment out of what you put on the M.A.)

Tubbius (What can I say - again with this, eh? You made one of the most memorable characters I interacted with in M.A. And for that I'm very grateful.)

GlaziusF (Guess what? When it was all said and done, you ended up being the one I read the most reviews for. And you never failed to demonstrate in them why I should be using your advice to improve my own arcs. Plus you had some very top notch arcs of your own.)

...

I'm sure as time goes by, I'll remember the egregious mistakes of those I've forgotten to remember here.

And it'll be a long, long time (read: NEVER) before I forget what NC Soft decided would be the best way to continue to make money. It's a shame, for them, that none of it will be coming from me.

Ever again.

Thanks for the kind words, buddy. Let's wait and see what the future holds. Either way, best wishes on wherever life puts you.

******* it, now I wanna play Star Control. But I lost the disk a long time ago. You're still the only person other than my husband to get that reference.

And now I have one more thing on my "to do before the lights go out" list: Finally get my AE baby to 50. She's been sitting at 47 while I grind Incarnate crap, but not much point in grinding anymore. Hopefully my arcs still work, cause now I'm getting all nostalgic and I want to play them. Hell, maybe I'll dredge up the old Mega Mech arc and republish it. Just because it was my first.

Sadly, my best arcs are still KIA due to the filter. Maybe I should knuckle under and try to fix them for the end.

Thanks to the whole MA community. Good times, bad times, it was all worth it.

Oh, hey, Eva.

Yeah, I'll be sad to see it go, guys. Was nice reading you even when I wasn't saying anything.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Fun fact: Back when we had rep, I got half of mine for arguing with Venture. And the other half for arguing with people who were arguing with Venture.

And Talen, it was Star Control 3. Which is generally considered crap, but I liked it, dammit. It's available on various abandonware sites, but without the voice files, and it's just not the same.

I will MA terribly. Although I never fully completed my own arc(Always telling myself there was more time), I felt this was the crowning jewel of COH.

I'ma miss all you guys too, it was a shame we got sort of ignored as a community within the game and (more or less) ended up falling apart. It was the AE people I got to know best in this game and the ones I'll miss the most - even Venture!

Thanks for all the awesome stuff. I think I spent 2 years of coh just playing AE arcs, or making them, or talking about them, or talking about making them. Now I won't get to update Project Dragon with new Tsoo. :/ And I won't get to make an AE version of the Cats musical. Ok, that's probably for the best...

Thanks again.

I'll see you around.

OH! And how could I forget Bubbawheat! Another player that I suspect is long gone ... but whose arcs I loved playing, and who I am eternally grateful for running the Player's Choice contests.

Who knew the last one was going to ... well, be the last one.

(And yes, I've been considering just reposting my earliest arcs just for fun ... it kind of doesn't seem to matter any more that they're *crap*, it'd be fun to play through them one last time before the end...)

There are others I'm sure I've forgotten, but I'll try to update as they pop into my head. It's been a sucky day (for obvious reasons) so hopefully I can be forgiven for my 'appreciation' memory not being razor sharp right now.

It's been ages since I've posted here. I've still been playing, but time just hasn't been what it once was. Coulomb, you said everything I wanted to say, to everyone I wanted to say it to, so well, I'll just thank you. Everyone, I know Consequences of War and Casualties of War are probably pretty distant memories, but they're great memories, and proud for me. YOU are the reasons for those memories. Thank you, everyone. You are all the best.

I loved the mission architect too, it was a amazing creative tool, sure it was used for 'naughty' things as well but still. Those of us who were creative loved it. Also for a RP tool it was second to none, a truly deep sad shame this is being lost, it was part of what made coh what it was. The creative outlets we could make toons as we wanted and give them stories, hell even worlds with a bit of inventiveness in the AE so yes I know this seems a little random but thats my goodbye to MA. thank you all involved in making this it was a awesome outlet and made COH give life to our imaginations.

I find myself now regretting the reasons I didn't play all that actively the last year and a half or so. Frustration with MA was one of them. (I believe all of my arcs are now functional except for Lesbian Hellion Liberation, which I refuse to take down. Let it stand as a monument to what might have been.)

I still enjoyed this feature of the game immensely and got a great deal of pleasure making up arcs of my own and playing other folks's.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

I hope you all back up and save your MA files and find a way to share them

I'm pretty disappointed by all this. I was really proud of my arcs and the recognition they got, and it sucks that they're just going to disappear with everything else.

I've had the actual .mission files backed up on my machine since forever, but honestly they don't really mean that much without a system to run them. It's just a bunch of text and file references.

I strongly recommend to all of you to run your arcs and use /demorecord

IIRC, the servers don't need to be up for your client to run a demorecord file - that way you could always film it and share it via Youtube.

Big thanks to all the Architect community.

I think MA Arc Finder was the global chat channel I found most engaging and interesting to chat on, back in it's heyday.

Special thanks to Venture and PoliceWoman for reviews that both motivated me to improve my arcs, and gave them great exposure.

Of course, thanks to all the other reviewers who gave my two arcs the time to look over and critique.

I had bought more MA slots, and I have literally half-a-dozen half-finished arcs on my hard-drive. Real life kept me from following through on making those, and by the time I was able to get back to them, I was a bit down on the current state of the MA system. Of course, I now regret giving up so easily. The problem with setting aside a creative project because you'll have time for it later is: someday, you may not be able to do it anymore. And with CoH shutting down, that someday is now.

Thanks to all the wonderful writers and architects who entertained me with great arcs. I tried as many of the arcs on MA Arc Finder global chat as I could. And I tried to play every arc that had a thread in the MA section of the forums. So many good stories, too many to list.

I want to single out Chesire Cat. I played those Astoria arcs early on, and that was the point that I really thought that the players could do unique and interesting things with the MA system, taking CoH beyond what the Devs alone could (or would) do. That was the moment I said "this is gonna be cool." From that point on, I made sure to read every review I could, and really follow how the Mission Architect would unfold.

Sigh, I'm proud of at least one arc. Such a shame to think of it going off into the ether. And all the other arcs, of all the other great writers, also going away....

One of the worst parts of CoH shutting down.

I do regret Mission Architect not living up to its potential--though it obviously had great success in pointing the developers at the writing talents of Sean McCann. I didn't get into the Issue 14 closed beta until the VERY last wave, but I hungrily lapped up every single detail about it I could find in the meantime.

Then, it was released on live! I put a LOT of work into the arc in my signature during beta and published it as soon as I was able to log in. While it's not Shakespeare, I've always been proud of it, and it received pretty good reviews from the people who actually played it. (I also pretty shamelessly tried to get it into the Hall of Fame, back when there was a badge for it... but that's a horse of a different color.)

But the euphoria obviously didn't last long as farm missions cluttered up everything and there was so much negativity from virtually every one of the game's cliques--the devs didn't like the farming, got pissed and started punishing people; the farmers LOVED the farming but hated the heavy-handed punishments; story authors hated that the work they poured their hearts and souls into was disappearing into obscurity due to the sheer number of crap submissions that got in their way; people who wanted to do NON-MA stuff couldn't find teams; etc, etc.

So, like a lot of people, I gave up on the Mission Architect. I loved it for what it was--a way to put a piece of myself in the game for everyone else to see--but I hated it for how others saw it and for the strife it caused the community in general.



I really, truly wish that my arc were still playable. I'd like to run it again with some friends. Sadly, it is borked because I named one of the NPC bosses after my greatest in-game friend, Eric Nelson... and the filter dislikes the name "Lieutenant Nelson."

EDIT: WTF, I just checked, and my arc WORKS AGAIN!!! *_*

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!