Mission Architect , an opportunity lost
I'm programming-simple so I don't know how that would work any better than the tags it currently uses.
Sure would have been nice to be able to sort missions into a Difficulty that meant something. The ones I made were all relatively short (one was 3 small maps, I believe) yet they all got tagged with "Long." I suspect it looked at something like the amount of space you used rather than actual time it took to complete them or map size/number, because my favorite aspect was creating custom enemies for the missions. That maxes everything out right quick.
Mission Architect could've been amazing. I think it's too bad so much effort was wasted on PvP that could've been directed to something more useful and more in keeping with CoH's core ethos of player customization.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Only problem with AE's search function is the massive amount of farms out there, hogging all the space. I can find all sorts of arcs pretty easily with the advanced search features, it's just a pain to wade through farms is all.
That and the rating system needed a revamp. There's a reason Youtube abandoned the five-star rating system a long time ago. I really wish someone would've come along and replaced it with a "Like or Dislike" system instead.
On the last Twitch broadcast they said they were going to move to a "Like" system, where ratings 3-stars and up translated to a "Like" and everything else was going to the dustbin. It would be exactly like Facebook's rating system, apparently. I'm not sure it would have helped much, since farms tended to get high ratings already, but it was a step i nthe right direction.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Actually, that was among the stuff Aeon wanted to do with the AE but time wasn't going to be scheduled for it. It was pretty clear that the devs had written off doing anything further with improving AE.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
I think if you ever played in 1 of the 2 massive roleplay PVP events in UO then you would change your mind. The players in UO had two rebellion events where all the major characters were players. The players structured the fights so they were balanced. I was three different characters on the evil side which was fun.
Alright, but without the "powergamer" rating.
No sense in encouraging farms.
I'm not sure it would have helped much, since farms tended to get high ratings already, but it was a step i nthe right direction.
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Nice to know they were actually considering it, though. I would've loved to see that happen.
I wanted it to be a YES/NO rating system, but I was shot down. I also wanted players to be able to mark a mission as a farm mission. Just make it a legitimate category, that the un-interested people could filter out.
I wanted it to be a YES/NO rating system, but I was shot down. I also wanted players to be able to mark a mission as a farm mission. Just make it a legitimate category, that the un-interested people could filter out.
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It's a shame that these didn't make it in.
Also, First Post after a Former Red Name.
My arcs:
Title: Blitzkrieg
Arc ID: 3416
Title: Soldiers of Fortune
Arc ID: 4431
Title: The Rikti Accession
Arc ID: 278757
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
I wanted it to be a YES/NO rating system, but I was shot down. I also wanted players to be able to mark a mission as a farm mission. Just make it a legitimate category, that the un-interested people could filter out.
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Thats actually a smart idea. If farming takes place in the open you can regulate it and adjust it if there is too quick XP gain. If farming goes underground then the only limit is the worst bug people can find.
The farmer's customers are not really a problem. I talked to a farmer in Austin. Most of the clients got bored and left. He just kept recycling the same virtual property after Mr 1% abandoned it.
IMHO MA was a mistake on a massive level and shouldn't have been introduced to our game.
I said as such at the time it was introduced, and nothing I've seen has made me change my mind.
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
I'm programming-simple so I don't know how that would work any better than the tags it currently uses..
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In current data mining theory I follow there are 5 ways to organize data.
Sequential is organizing things in date and time order. This is only good if time and dates have meaning. There are so many any level mission in the MA the level sort is useless.
Location is organizing things by places. So you might want to see all missions using a specific map or group of maps. If you hate caverns then you search on all maps that are not in caverns
Alphabetical is only useful if you have one meaningful word or phrase. So if you wanted to play a mission that had The Statesman in it then an Alphabetical NPC sort is useful. Your target here is popular NPC groups and NPCs.
Category is grouping data by a shared trait or absent of the trait. So you may want to see all roleplay missions, all farming missions, or all missions without farming. This is the typical + or - filtering on searching
Continuum is sorting data by formulas or scores. We create a formula that represents something and apply it to the data. Lets say that a Laundry Gamer wants missions under 15 minutes, They want good xp. They want missions with no ambushes so they can go AFK while folding clothes. So we create a formula of All Missions under 15 minutes with no ambushes sorted by average XP at level 20 for killing all mobs. Now the Laundry Gamer can see missions that appeal to his/her demographics.
Formulas are tweaked over time. If someone's Vegan food ratings moves a steakhouse to the top then you look at the formula and fix it. Formulas can also indicate problem like everyone despising Devouring Earth Defeat All missions.
What I would had made different about AE:
From day one:
- No hospital in the building.
- Contacts would not be a replacement for a hologram, instead they would show up in one of various predetermined "lobbies" accross the city, at a random door entrance.
- You would not have to visit any particular building to create or start an AE arc, it would be a GUI element (entirely enforcing or making redundant my first point
)
- I would not have allowed for custom power selection. Characters would have had a pre-created set selection, one primary one secondary. The critter level decides how many of those powers would be used. (I still today feel power selection didn't add a required storytelling value to the AE author)
- I would have forced one offensive (summon/melee/ranged/assault) and one utility (armor/buff/control/manipulation) set per critter or two offensive sets.
- All melee sets get at least one ranged attack (this was added after AE launched)
After launch (because many things would have been impossible to foresee until launch came)
- I would have penalized enemy groups that did not contain a variety of damage types.
- Replace the star rating system with a "like" or "thumbs up" count.
- Ambushes give no XP.
- Rezzed enemies give no XP.
I think the devs made two big errors in the AE:
1) Added way too much customization flexibility to enemy power selection
2) Eliminated travel entirely by placing the contact, mission door and hospital all next to each other.
The reason AE is hard to use as a story tool is that it's flooded with PL missions. It may had been possible to prevent this by restricting these two items. They also would not have seen themselves forced to hire Arcanaville to weight critter xp rewards
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
I suspect that AE was something that the devs saw as being the ultimate utility in the game for players to explore their creative talents.
Unfortunately the reality was/is that AE is a power leveler's paradise - and still is.
AE was a massive mistake and I rank it as one of a handful of nails in the coffin of this game.
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
IMHO what COH has going for it is half of a succesful mission creation system. The problem with the MA is the same problem with most search engines. The basic search gets you a lot of junk you don't want. |
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
TBH, I think the MA was the beginning of the end for me. So much potential, but good stories got burried underneath all teh farms, exploiters resulted in endless nerfing of the system, and the buddy-system badging (I gave you 5 stars, now give me 5 stars... or else) was atrocious until Positron was forced to gut most of it to keep the system from becoming a badge farm.
The gaming and exploitation of the entire system, as opposed to using it to reward players for telling enthralling stories or just to have a good time (which is why I'm on the fence for farming (whack-a-mole) missions) really put a dent in my admiration for the CoH community, adding to my cynicism and putting my CoH attitude on a downward spiral.
OTOH, I think that other developers learned from a lot of the MA's mistakes. It looks like Neverwinter's Foundry will be a lot more robust, for example.
After launch (because many things would have been impossible to foresee until launch came)
I think the devs made two big errors in the AE: 1) Added way too much customization flexibility to enemy power selection |
Pohsyb had the best suggestion. If the devs embraced farming and regulated it, it wouldn't have gotten so far out of hand, without making everyone else suffer as a result.
I suspect that AE was something that the devs saw as being the ultimate utility in the game for players to explore their creative talents.
Unfortunately the reality was/is that AE is a power leveler's paradise - and still is. AE was a massive mistake and I rank it as one of a handful of nails in the coffin of this game. |
So much potential, but good stories got burried underneath all teh farms, exploiters resulted in endless nerfing of the system, and the buddy-system badging
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Anyway, I tried to work within the MA system. I wrote a few arcs that (in my incredibly biased opinion) were pretty good. Certainly not all-star material, but better than average. The one I most tried to promote gently (i.e., try not to be obnoxious) across the various forums and signatures and channels available to me ended up with around 105 plays. About 100 of those came while it was still rated five-star and would appear on the second page of search results.
However, as soon as I accumulated a few four-star reviews (i.e., still very good but with a few things the player felt could be improved), it fell into the abyss. The visible rating was still five, but I guess internally it was sorted into the 4.5 bin, or something. Either way, after that it was buried under farms and I basically gave up writing arcs for any audience bigger than myself. I still had some fun with it, though. MA was a genuinely great and innovative feature. Anything of its kind that essentially gives the player an entire functional game engine within which to work automatically has vast potential.
They just made a small number of very big mistakes with it.
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
The Mission Architect is great. It's a shame it wasn't more popular, so that it would have received more attention and improvements.
I didn't bother with the search function very often, I'd usually play arcs people listed on the forums, because that usually meant they put some time and effort into them. I'd also occasionally play some brand new arcs, just to surprise the creator.
I don't think farms are what killed interest in the MA. I think MMO players just don't like to be surprised. They want to know what they're up against, exactly what an enemy can do, and whether the challenge vs. reward ratio is to their liking. For many players, the excitment of brand new enemies to face isn't worth the possibility of defeat (and to be fair, a lot of the custom enemies were very tough.)
And no, MA was just as much a nail in the coffin as demon farms, pre-ED herding, DFB farming, and Magisterium farms. As in it actually didn't hurt the game much at all. I don't see how it could have killed the game at all, tbh, considering regular content was still being released and people still regularly ran it. But go ahead and use it as your scapegoat if it makes you feel better. |
I feel fine about it to be honest, but there's no doubt in my mind that AE was one of the things that really damaged this game - far more than Demon farms etc ever could.
Perhaps 'nail in the coffin' was a tad over dramatic, but AE really did the game no favours whatsoever.
Just don't get me started on Incarnate trials, or the removal of Statesman from the game
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
The mission creation system was borked from the outset. None of the stories are canon, so it's rather hard to take them seriously in the game universe. Plus there's the nagging realization that you're playing a training exercise or simulation rather than an actual mission in the actual world. Plus it was highly limited - how many really decent stories can be fleshed out over five missions.
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Basically for some I pretended that we were traveling to an alternate Earth, ignoring the backstory of the AE building. Eventually I created a character named Avatari (avatar + Atari) who existed only in the virtual world of the AE missions.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
IMHO what COH has going for it is half of a succesful mission creation system. The problem with the MA is the same problem with most search engines. The basic search gets you a lot of junk you don't want.
According to theory there are five different ways to search on data. You can search by time (avg completion time for adventure). You can search on locations (include or exclude the map used). Alphabetic Order would be useful for something like Creator ID. Category is already used in the sort engine. This leaves one last type of data sort.
IMHO what they should have done is to create "scores" based on the type of player. Powergamer score for an adventure would be average XP per minute played. The Threat Level would be number of Mobs needed to clear , number of AVs, and average damage per mob per minute. The roleplay score would be the rating from players who have their RP flag turned on. There would be a statistical score for each player type.
Knowing which missions match up well to playing styles is very similar to targetted advertising. Once you know what people like you can create more of it. If everyone knows which mission has the highest powergamer score then the professional farmer isn't worth a whole lot. The laundry gamer might only want missions under 20 minutes so they don't mess up laundry with your 113 minute mission roleplaying an infected stealing a cheesburger.
Before you dismiss the scores idea remember that the scoring algorithms for Internet Search engines are currently worth $$$$ to their companies. What do you think a decent scoring algrithm for online games would be worth?