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So, One Will Exist, and If So, What Will It Allow?

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Doc_Nova
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So, One Will Exist, and If So, What Will It Allow?

The very presence of this forum indicates that a player-designed mission creation tool will be in place, correct?

There are a lot of things to consider about a mission creation tool at the players' fingertips.

How much access would we have to the tools and materials available? Likewise, would other mission resources (voice overs, special animations, semi-unique objects, etc) be available?

Would maps be auto-filled, or could we place minion and primary villain locations?

Would maps come from a supply of pre-drawn maps, or would we have the power to draw our own, or both?

Would rewards be restricted to limit leveling in the "Danger Room" and, therefore, avoiding the dev-created content, or would rewards be open so players could level as they see fit, either with their own created content or that created by the dev team?

It was talked about in another thread, but what about alternative means of mission solution other than punches to the face (conversation, puzzle solving, item finding, etc.)?

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I was one who took advantage

I was one who took advantage of AE farming/powerleveling for a time, but interest faded after I found myself doing nothing else for months. Even so, if one wants to farm or powerlevel, I don't think they should be denied. It takes all kinds of players and playstyles to make Titan City. Any mission creator would need to have some way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Of course, this isn't my idea, but one long howled for on the old forums. In searching, how woud one actually distinguish player-created stories from player-created farms?

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tripthicket wrote:
tripthicket wrote:

I was one who took advantage of AE farming/powerleveling for a time, but interest faded after I found myself doing nothing else for months.

I did this, as well, and did occasionally find it useful when I wanted to avoid content I had played countless times. But this, as you stated later, created some gameplay and experience (not XP, but actual play experience) problems when players had no real clue how to play the character they had created outside of very specific circumstances.

tripthicket wrote:

Even so, if one wants to farm or powerlevel, I don't think they should be denied. It takes all kinds of players and playstyles to make Titan City.

I agree wholeheartedly. I would neither never want to tell another player how to play, nor would I ever permit another to tell me how I was going to play.

tripthicket wrote:

Any mission creator would need to have some way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Of course, this isn't my idea, but one long howled for on the old forums. In searching, how woud one actually distinguish player-created stories from player-created farms?

And here is the crux, isn't it?

If I play the game via "standard" content, learn to understand how to play my character, how the powers interact, how a Guardian meshes with an Operator, or how a Commander bolsters an Enforcer, then how am I supposed to know that when I team with someone who (beyond my ability to surmise by just looking at their avatar) has no such practical experience, but has instead gained all of their knowledge (and levels) battling repeated and gimped enemies to farm XP? Trial and error seems like a painful and frustrating exercise.

Perhaps, as both a reward and indicating tag, folks that gain levels via a "Danger Room" could gain a badge? I know this might cause problems with the badge hunters out there, but it would put an indicator that perhaps Mr. Stupendous gained 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, or whatever levels in the Danger Room. Then, with a glance, we could see that Mr. Stupendous, a level 12 Enforcer, gained 10 of those levels in the Danger Room. Granted, this does not tell me of the player's experience playing an Enforcer, but it, at least, warns me that it might not be that developed.

And yeah, this sort of "player tagging" isn't really ideal and doesn't mesh with my personality terribly well, but I also don't immediately see any other viable solution.

But that is also only one question out of the half-dozen or so that should be considered with a player-based mission creator.

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I started out using the

I started out using the Architect to make a story arch and then also ended up just using it to farm. And then they patched it and ended up receiving less rewards. But, if there is one. I would like to have full control of it. Actual, placing of the enemies and not just a pre determined selection. Place the patrols and their patrol path. The idle animation and such. Place the glowies where I wanted them and also not just pre determined. Pick and attached the room sections I want and not have a pre determined map. Be able to create full archs and such. So take the Architect, and The foundry from STO and combine and then improve and make the create a mission even better. And access to just about as many mission creating tools as possible. People can create some really godly stuff if you give them all the access they needed. Look at StarCraft 2 Universe. That's all made just using the games editor. So If there is a creator. I hope we get just loads and tons of control of it.

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a good level of detail in

a good level of detail in placing mobs would be nice. Several missions I tried to create in CoH fell flat because all I could do was place a group of mobs in a general vicinity, rather than a specific location.

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^basically all this and more.

^basically all this and more.

One thing I never got around to in CoX (and want to do so bad in CO if they ever release the foundry.. .-.) was using ideas for RP plots to make missions out of and let everyone, not just friends, take on Nightmare and his forces. If it's implemented here, I'd be spending any time NOT RPing or leveling in there perfecting my missions. Even longer if there was an option to voice NPCs in the created missions.. :D

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GFN wrote:
GFN wrote:

^basically all this and more.
One thing I never got around to in CoX (and want to do so bad in CO if they ever release the foundry.. .-.) was using ideas for RP plots to make missions out of and let everyone, not just friends, take on Nightmare and his forces. If it's implemented here, I'd be spending any time NOT RPing or leveling in there perfecting my missions. Even longer if there was an option to voice NPCs in the created missions.. :D

I seems to me that the Mission Creator, or whatever it comes to be called, might be the single most critical factor in the longevity of CoT after the initial release.

Creation of new basic content is important, but it's very time consuming for the developers. Ideally, particularly with a project like this where a lot of developer time is on volunteer basis, you want the professionals to be focused on the bones and muscles, as it were, of the game.

What's needed is, yes, a robust and powerful Mission Creator with bells and whistles and good scripting options. *AND* we need a way for what's created to be turned into "real" game content.

Perhaps it might be something as simple as saying that the developers have the option to copy anything created, edit it a bit and maybe buff it up with the more powerful tools and scripting available to them, and put it out somewhere in the main game.

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One thing that was kind of

One thing that was kind of sad though about the mission maker in CoH was that there were so many that some of those mishys may never get played or seen or have a chance to even get rated. I had some mishys up there that were just never seen. It's not really something that can be solved. Would just have to have a really good tag and search system so people could sort through the tons of mishys. I want a stamp so that I can stamp the ones that are my favy. Gonna call it the Justice Girl Eagle of Approval. xD!!!

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I say just embrace the

I say just embrace the farming rather than trying to prevent it. Allow creators to tag their missions as "Story" or "Farming" (along with some others, like "Testing"), and separate ratings by category (i.e., a "Story" mission could be rated primarily for its plot, while a "Farming" mission could be rated for its XP/time ratio) so they don't all get lumped together. Also allow voting as to whether it was actually placed in the right category (i.e., if someone makes a Story mission arc but accidentally or deliberately labels it a Farming mission, then if enough players vote that it be changed to Story, it would be).

But, really, let the people who want to farm, farm. They'll find a way to do it anyway.

As for me, I made one story arc, based on MST3K episodes. If you ever played A Mystery of Science, that was mine. (I doubt you have. It didn't get very many plays, and even I don't think it was very good)

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Point the first: the mission

Point the first: the mission creator will be as close to the set of core developer tools for writing missions as it is possible to make it. Yes, there may be a handful of differences, but the intent is that they including only (A) things that are truly only relevant to devs, whatever those might be, and (B) things that may be experimental features we don't want to inflict on the players before they've been hammered on by folks who know where we sleep. :)

Point the second: farming is a topic of discussion, and certainly some debate, but it is primarily a question of finding elegant approaches that let people play the game they want to play, without it wreaking havoc in anyone else's game. Things such as the reward tables, whether placement is restricted in any manner, and other concerns all tie back to this. My personal view on it -- emphasizing *personal* here -- is that trying to prevent farming *in the sense of repeated playing* is a sucker's bet. You can't prevent it in the main world without wreaking tremendous havoc with teaming, so the best you will ever possibly accomplish is forcing folks to find the "main" missions that have the best payouts and farming them instead. We all know they existed, we all know a huge number of folks made extensive use of them.

Funny thing about it? There is no significant difference between farming and sweeping except what you're prioritizing. The behaviors are the same. Just people playing the game, and specifically the parts of the game that they find most rewarding -- whether that is leveling, gathering goodies, or seeing as much of the world and its stories as possible. The way to solve it isn't to stop people from farming, it is to make farming *not be a problem*. AE was out of whack because the rewards were completely out of whack with the rest of the game (initially too high across the board, then a mix of too high and too low).

Point the third: the problem with AE missions and sorting through them was (really, *is*, for any such system) the fact that Sturgeon's Law is in play, and it is easy to have the stuff that is of marginal quality flood out the better stuff. We're still hashing out things that would help with this (and ideally, help some other factors as well), but it is at least a recognized issue.


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It will be a lot of work but

It will be a lot of work but a well-done AE-type thing could be huge for the game. I would put it low on the priority list because of the resources involved to do it right but I loved the AE even with it's problems.

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

It will be a lot of work but a well-done AE-type thing could be huge for the game. I would put it low on the priority list because of the resources involved to do it right but I loved the AE even with it's problems.

I don't know. I mean, you're not wrong about 'the resources involved to do it right', but its such a massive content multiplier that it seems to me that it should be one of the highest priorities.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Point the first: the mission creator will be as close to the set of core developer tools for writing missions as it is possible to make it. Yes, there may be a handful of differences, but the intent is that they including only (A) things that are truly only relevant to devs, whatever those might be, and (B) things that may be experimental features we don't want to inflict on the players before they've been hammered on by folks who know where we sleep. :)
Point the second: farming is a topic of discussion, and certainly some debate, but it is primarily a question of finding elegant approaches that let people play the game they want to play, without it wreaking havoc in anyone else's game. Things such as the reward tables, whether placement is restricted in any manner, and other concerns all tie back to this. My personal view on it -- emphasizing *personal* here -- is that trying to prevent farming *in the sense of repeated playing* is a sucker's bet. You can't prevent it in the main world without wreaking tremendous havoc with teaming, so the best you will ever possibly accomplish is forcing folks to find the "main" missions that have the best payouts and farming them instead. We all know they existed, we all know a huge number of folks made extensive use of them.
Funny thing about it? There is no significant difference between farming and sweeping except what you're prioritizing. The behaviors are the same. Just people playing the game, and specifically the parts of the game that they find most rewarding -- whether that is leveling, gathering goodies, or seeing as much of the world and its stories as possible. The way to solve it isn't to stop people from farming, it is to make farming *not be a problem*. AE was out of whack because the rewards were completely out of whack with the rest of the game (initially too high across the board, then a mix of too high and too low).
Point the third: the problem with AE missions and sorting through them was (really, *is*, for any such system) the fact that Sturgeon's Law is in play, and it is easy to have the stuff that is of marginal quality flood out the better stuff. We're still hashing out things that would help with this (and ideally, help some other factors as well), but it is at least a recognized issue.

This is true. The only bone I had with COX AE was that there really not much to separate or categorize those missions that was aimed and built with purpose for farming, and those that the player put their creative heart into. The rating scheme didn't help much, because outside those few dev choices, most of player story arc based ones got low rating from farmers giving them one stars simply because it wasn't a farm, while farms got 5 star rating. Basically while there is no wish to stomp on either play style, there must be remembrance to not allow farmers to stomp out on the other play style either like what happened with AE in COX.

I'm not yet sure how one can separate real player created missions for arc and creativeness and those that is aimed simply to be farmed. Unless there is a category placed for it when the missions are created. Like there is literally a Farm category. And then there is the other category of normal player created arcs. That way those that are looking for farms, can easily find them and those that are not looking for farms can easily find the mish they are looking for.

The rating system, it was good and bad. Although in the end it caused lot of harm in AE because many for the actual regular time taken player created stuff got buried because farmers didn't like it, and farm missions basically flooded the first dozen pages with 5 stars because it simply was a farm. Maybe...I don't know. Maybe if farms and other mishes were separated it could be better, and make the sorting of missions not depended on ratings and have other ways to sort through missions whether it's type of mob, mission number, level, story length, or all and etc.

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I think I'd like to see a two

I think I'd like to see a two, or maybe three, tiered review system. We will need a player rating system, preferably one that allows some categorization so as to avoid the problems mentioned by jag40, above. We also need some sort of curated selection category. This might be done by a player group or committee with a bit of developer oversight. And finally, personal thought and suggestion here, we might have a way for the developers to take some of the created content/missions/stories and move them into the 'real' game.

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I agree that 'farming' in the

I agree that 'farming' in the sense of 'repeating over and over' is a behavior which is not something that we want to prevent as a matter of principle of being anti-repetition.

However, the reason why some AE missions were farmed repetitively was because the rewards were significantly better than other content. Now, that is a game balance and design issue which has nothing to do with being anti-repetition, but being anti-exploit.

There are several things which I wish the CoH AE would have done, and I would like to see in CoT to prevent that:

1. A thorough vetting process for player-created missions to go through before those missions offer full rewards. This includes vetting from player with votes and submission to a panel for approval.

2. The vetting process from players that vote uses a reputation system. If a player votes an obvious exploit as a candidate for full rewards, their voting rep decreases and their votes are worth less.

3. A MARTy like cap for reward per time for AE missions. So that in case an exploit goes through (intentionally or unintentionally) it won't allow anyone to level up to 50 in an hour.

Just shootin' ideas...

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Those seem like excellent

Those seem like excellent targets, Zombie Man. I guess the only small thing I'd add, or at least want some thought on, is how to reward players for testing in the first place if missions do t initially grant normal rewards. But I'm sure something could be worked out.

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Tzu wrote:
Tzu wrote:

Those seem like excellent targets, Zombie Man. I guess the only small thing I'd add, or at least want some thought on, is how to reward players for testing in the first place if missions do t initially grant normal rewards. But I'm sure something could be worked out.

I would imagine some form of merit system, just not the same as AE tickets. More like:
"you finished a single instance mission arc at default difficulty, here is 1 merit"
"you finished a single instance mission arc at +1 difficulty, here is 2 merits"
"you finished a five instance missions arc at default difficulty, here is 5 merits"
...etc.

That way the tester is not wasting their time, but little chance for real abuse.

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I loved the MA in CoH. If we

I loved the MA in CoH. If we get that in CoT, I'll be a happy man. I also think that including the farmers by allowing them to flag their arcs as 'farms', coupled by some form of time-to-reward limits, would be better and easier than trying to police them.

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

I agree that 'farming' in the sense of 'repeating over and over' is a behavior which is not something that we want to prevent as a matter of principle of being anti-repetition.
However, the reason why some AE missions were farmed repetitively was because the rewards were significantly better than other content. Now, that is a game balance and design issue which has nothing to do with being anti-repetition, but being anti-exploit.
There are several things which I wish the CoH AE would have done, and I would like to see in CoT to prevent that:
1. A thorough vetting process for player-created missions to go through before those missions offer full rewards. This includes vetting from player with votes and submission to a panel for approval.
2. The vetting process from players that vote uses a reputation system. If a player votes an obvious exploit as a candidate for full rewards, their voting rep decreases and their votes are worth less.
3. A MARTy like cap for reward per time for AE missions. So that in case an exploit goes through (intentionally or unintentionally) it won't allow anyone to level up to 50 in an hour.
Just shootin' ideas...

Very sound ideas.

With my optimism and enthusiasm for what's been done to-date and what lies ahead, I'd gladly take the time to periodically test/walk-through a small set of CoT AE arc/mission each and every week. Create a set schedule among a set group of "panel members", assign each of us a small slate of arcs/missions, and we're on the hook for scoring/feedback. Include the "voting rep" mechanic if need be and put MARTy on the back end as an automated check as well, so as to prevent any collusions of exploits, for example.

To entice participation, maybe provide some reasonable in-game compensation for time spent testing, since testers won't be running actual game content, thus actually leveling/progressing their toons, and hanging out with SG and in-game buds. Nothing crazy...heck, some proportional "Patrol XP" or a "Paragon Points" bonus each month would probably do it.

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

1. A thorough vetting process for player-created missions to go through before those missions offer full rewards.

I have a gut feeling this was one thing that drove the CoH devs nuts as they probably didn't realize just how many missions were going to be uploaded and for how long - no way they had the time to catch all the farming themselves! I once counted that near the end, what with all the broken bits within the MA, people were still uploading something like a thousand arcs a month, long after MA's heyday.

Trying to make sure ever single mission gets vetted by acredited players -sounds- like a good idea, but it also sounds like the local DMV, the backlog could pile up to crazy lengths way quick, which would be a good way to kill interest really quickly.

Then again, that might weed out "those who don't really care" and keep the true-spirited arc builders around and waiting in line; think of it as a forced scarcity to thin out the herd I suppose?

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Some things that I'd like to

Some things that I'd like to see:

1) A multi-view rating system:
- as others have noted, the simple "5-star server-wide average" rating system is rather useless. Farmers 5-star their contnet and 1-star story-content that distracts them from farming. Story-driven folk do the opposite.

- What may be more valuable is what my FRIENDS think of content. If I'm a story-driven sort, I'll have friends that share my tastes. Their opinion would matter more than a stranger's.

2) There are bound to be people that become trusted reviewers- people that find good content, describe it, keyword it, and share it with others- this is the kind of stuff that can be encouraged to keep the game continually visible with fan-sites (or social media sites). Having the ability to copy a code and paste it into the game to immediately find said reviewed topic would be handy-- particularly if it gave feedback to reviewers on how many people used that code.

3) Reward restrictions are probably for the best. While I'm a believer in doing what you enjoy, regardless of the reward, many others feel cheated if they see others getting credit for accomplishment that are far less noteworthy than their own effort. Zombie man has some good examples, but we can start looking at many options here, from reduced reward rates for un-vetted missions to reduced rewards for foes that play into your strengths (a high-fire-resist tank gets less reward from foes that are primarily fire attack, as they pose less of a threat. A foe that's vulnerable to your elemental primary does the same.)

4) I'd go so far as to want to offer borderline "GM" powers to stories, but with obviously no xp reward. I found SWG's "storyteller" concept interesting and loved classic NWN... Think of all the players that once loved tabletop RPG GM'ing. Imagine if you could take your friends through a custom adventure like that- mixing pre-made scripts with the ability to jump into any character and personalize the experience. Obviously, the farming potential within those would be too great to give standard in-game rewards, but you could even allow player-GM's to have alternate rewards that they give out that are only relevent in the sessions that they host. Now, obviously, that's a pipe dream that would be a substantial development undertaking, but I'd still love to see it.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

Some things that I'd like to see:
1) A multi-view rating system:
- as others have noted, the simple "5-star server-wide average" rating system is rather useless. Farmers 5-star their contnet and 1-star story-content that distracts them from farming. Story-driven folk do the opposite.
- What may be more valuable is what my FRIENDS think of content. If I'm a story-driven sort, I'll have friends that share my tastes. Their opinion would matter more than a stranger's.

That got me thinking, I could see rating a mission based on four factors. I would rate each on a 1-10 scale, because I don't think a 5 point system has enough granularity. They are:

Story - The prose as presented though NPC dialog and mission text

Farm-ability - Lets just be honest and let the farmers mark their own missions. In the end everyone wins.

Difficulty - Obviously, certain factions or power combinations are going to range between cake-walk and kryptonite to any given player, but this should give you an idea on the baseline difficulty.

Quality - How well is it put together overall. Is it a good story, but full of spelling errors? Is the glowie to end the mission placed somewhere nonsensical? How did the map design help or hinder the mission? That is what this would indicate.

Something else I would like is the ability to mark a mission as private or public. I had a personal ticket farm I would run. Although I do appreciate the people who played and ranked it (mostly 5 stars) and I put the bonus tickets to good use, I would have rather not had it in the listing detracting from other peoples arcs. I know I could have de-listed and re-listed it, but that got annoying.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

chase wrote:
Some things that I'd like to see:
1) A multi-view rating system:
- as others have noted, the simple "5-star server-wide average" rating system is rather useless. Farmers 5-star their contnet and 1-star story-content that distracts them from farming. Story-driven folk do the opposite.
- What may be more valuable is what my FRIENDS think of content. If I'm a story-driven sort, I'll have friends that share my tastes. Their opinion would matter more than a stranger's.

That got me thinking, I could see rating a mission based on four factors. I would rate each on a 1-10 scale, because I don't think a 5 point system has enough granularity. They are:
Story - The prose as presented though NPC dialog and mission text
Farm-ability - Lets just be honest and let the farmers mark their own missions. In the end everyone wins.
Difficulty - Obviously, certain factions or power combinations are going to range between cake-walk and kryptonite to any given player, but this should give you an idea on the baseline difficulty.
Quality - How well is it put together overall. Is it a good story, but full of spelling errors? Is the glowie to end the mission placed somewhere nonsensical? How did the map design help or hinder the mission? That is what this would indicate.
Something else I would like is the ability to mark a mission as private or public. I had a personal ticket farm I would run. Although I do appreciate the people who played and ranked it (mostly 5 stars) and I put the bonus tickets to good use, I would have rather not had it in the listing detracting from other peoples arcs. I know I could have de-listed and re-listed it, but that got annoying.

but is someone you don't know, who has tastes in stories that are dramatically different than your own, rate "story" the same way you would.... or would your friends' tastes be more simiar to your own?

I've never seen a service-wide rating system in any site that was worth a damn thing. Those that let me see reviews of specific people that I trust and acknowledge, though, I trust.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

but is someone you don't know, who has tastes in stories that are dramatically different than your own, rate "story" the same way you would.... or would your friends' tastes be more simiar to your own?
I've never seen a service-wide rating system in any site that was worth a damn thing. Those that let me see reviews of specific people that I trust and acknowledge, though, I trust.

No reason you can't have both. Some people aren't going to want to read reviews, from friend or anyone else. Others like yourself want that trusted review. The reviews can tell you quite a bit about a mission, but they aren't going to help with sorting a list.

I think the main thing is having more than just a 5-star rating and some keywords are needed to make the system better for everyone.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

chase wrote:
but is someone you don't know, who has tastes in stories that are dramatically different than your own, rate "story" the same way you would.... or would your friends' tastes be more simiar to your own?
I've never seen a service-wide rating system in any site that was worth a damn thing. Those that let me see reviews of specific people that I trust and acknowledge, though, I trust.

No reason you can't have both. Some people aren't going to want to read reviews, from friend or anyone else. Others like yourself want that trusted review. The reviews can tell you quite a bit about a mission, but they aren't going to help with sorting a list.
I think the main thing is having more than just a 5-star rating and some keywords are needed to make the system better for everyone.

Sorry for the confusion- I'm not saying "write a review", I'm saying, "give me a 5-star rating that isn't the average of every friggin schmoe on the server- let it only only includes people in my friends/trusted list." (make it an option,even. "rate by friends" or "universal rating" or even "rate by extended frields (friends of friends))"

My tastes on what makes a good story may differ significantly from yours- much like my tastes in good food would rate many 5-star elite restaurants near the bottom. I'd trust my social network's reccomendations for a good food joint (well, except for rian frostdrake- that boy eats some bizzarre stuff) before a restaurant review site full of strangers' ratngs

service-wide 5-star (or 10-star) ratings are useless- whether in a game, a forum, or a product site. Its manipulated, distorted and will become largely useless in short order. Limiting the rating to just the people you know means and you eliminate the 1-star bandit's impact, let people find what they like based on the tastes they share with their friends, even if they have niche tastes, and reduce the impact in how differnet niches value things dfferently.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

syntaxerror37 wrote:
chase wrote:
but is someone you don't know, who has tastes in stories that are dramatically different than your own, rate "story" the same way you would.... or would your friends' tastes be more simiar to your own?
I've never seen a service-wide rating system in any site that was worth a damn thing. Those that let me see reviews of specific people that I trust and acknowledge, though, I trust.

No reason you can't have both. Some people aren't going to want to read reviews, from friend or anyone else. Others like yourself want that trusted review. The reviews can tell you quite a bit about a mission, but they aren't going to help with sorting a list.
I think the main thing is having more than just a 5-star rating and some keywords are needed to make the system better for everyone.

Sorry for the confusion- I'm not saying "write a review", I'm saying, "give me a 5-star rating that isn't the average of every friggin schmoe on the server- let it only only includes people in my friends/trusted list." (make it an option,even. "rate by friends" or "universal rating" or even "rate by extended frields (friends of friends))"
My tastes on what makes a good story may differ significantly from yours- much like my tastes in good food would rate many 5-star elite restaurants near the bottom. I'd trust my social network's reccomendations for a good food joint (well, except for rian frostdrake- that boy eats some bizzarre stuff) before a restaurant review site full of strangers' ratngs
service-wide 5-star (or 10-star) ratings are useless- whether in a game, a forum, or a product site. Its manipulated, distorted and will become largely useless in short order. Limiting the rating to just the people you know means and you eliminate the 1-star bandit's impact, let people find what they like based on the tastes they share with their friends, even if they have niche tastes, and reduce the impact in how differnet niches value things dfferently.

That is interesting and true and something I havent really thought about as far as rating system goes.

Alot of times even among friends, rating is bit too easy to manipulate. Should rating be among friends? Then everything will be 5 star (10 star) rated or better rating simply because they have mroe friends or more popularity? Then again stranger based, while potentially can be used to get an unbiased by relationship review, too many times more often than not, some one may give a one star rating to someone for making on spelling error but give 5 star rating to a friend even though it's full of spelling errors. And these variables are even before considering that even people's personal rating view varies from time of day, what they think is 1 or 5 stars material, and their mood. Even among friends. One spelling mistake may warrent a 1 star rating to one, while spelling mistakes are not even an issue and give it 5 star.

In this COX community though I notice that spelling and grammar is usually used more as a weapon against people than an actual "pet peeve". Seen many posts with many spelling mistakes and not a single pointing out of that mistakes when they agree with the point. But when they find it disagreeable, then all of a sudden one mistake and it's "Oh you need to check your spelling I dont get what you are saying. You make too many spelling mistakes." Thus it make it hard to take ratings about spelling seriously or even with any weight within this community. For example.

Even if rating is given out by a committee or slected players is moot if the group is basically have the same view of what is good material and what isnt or a group of friends. I.e. They all think Sci fi is terrific so thye rate sci fi based stories 5 star and anything not sci fi bores them and rate it 1 star.

I think either way, people will monkey around with the rating system for better or worse regardless of how it's implemented.

That is why searching online for stuff or movies, I may read reviews and ratings but either way have to judge for myself and see it personally. Many times things rated low, I thought was very good and things rated good I thought was utter boring waste of film. But the rating system can be useful when used correctly or be absolutely useless and toothless when abused. Not sure how to fix that issue. May be more of a social people issue than actual technical issue.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

syntaxerror37 wrote:
chase wrote:
but is someone you don't know, who has tastes in stories that are dramatically different than your own, rate "story" the same way you would.... or would your friends' tastes be more simiar to your own?
I've never seen a service-wide rating system in any site that was worth a damn thing. Those that let me see reviews of specific people that I trust and acknowledge, though, I trust.

No reason you can't have both. Some people aren't going to want to read reviews, from friend or anyone else. Others like yourself want that trusted review. The reviews can tell you quite a bit about a mission, but they aren't going to help with sorting a list.
I think the main thing is having more than just a 5-star rating and some keywords are needed to make the system better for everyone.

Sorry for the confusion- I'm not saying "write a review", I'm saying, "give me a 5-star rating that isn't the average of every friggin schmoe on the server- let it only only includes people in my friends/trusted list." (make it an option,even. "rate by friends" or "universal rating" or even "rate by extended frields (friends of friends))"
My tastes on what makes a good story may differ significantly from yours- much like my tastes in good food would rate many 5-star elite restaurants near the bottom. I'd trust my social network's reccomendations for a good food joint (well, except for rian frostdrake- that boy eats some bizzarre stuff) before a restaurant review site full of strangers' ratngs
service-wide 5-star (or 10-star) ratings are useless- whether in a game, a forum, or a product site. Its manipulated, distorted and will become largely useless in short order. Limiting the rating to just the people you know means and you eliminate the 1-star bandit's impact, let people find what they like based on the tastes they share with their friends, even if they have niche tastes, and reduce the impact in how differnet niches value things dfferently.

Much like Netflix has the 'Our estimated rating for this movie, based on your previous ratings' setup. I'd like that kind of a rating option for arcs.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

Sorry for the confusion- I'm not saying "write a review", I'm saying, "give me a 5-star rating that isn't the average of every friggin schmoe on the server- let it only only includes people in my friends/trusted list." (make it an option,even. "rate by friends" or "universal rating" or even "rate by extended frields (friends of friends))"

I still think I'm not really arguing with you. Yes, there are going to be one-star greifing (or just crazy) bandits. And I see nothing wrong with the option for friends and family high-scoring arcs when searching for an arc. Hell, I'd probably use it.

What I am talking about is the interface for ranking it. whether you agree with my tastes on what's a good story or not, I should be able to rank that separately from the difficulty. And for people that aren't using the friends and family filter, just searching though everything, it would help eliminate the chaff to help find what they are looking for. If I'm looking for a farm, I'm probably going to skip arcs with less than a 6 rating, if I want a good story, I'm going to look for the ones with the highest. I don't feel that service wide rating are completely useless, they are guides. Is a guide tailored to your tastes better? of course, but that does not make it useless.

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You know what I think might

You know what I think might be worthwhile? Add a "farm" tag, that, if set, increases... say, inf/XP per kill, by 1%. That should be small enough that people like me will happily just not care about it, but large enough that it'll make sure anyone who's actually trying to farm will absolutely want to tag their mission as a farm... which will, in turn, let me ignore that mission.

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The rating system was a bit

The rating system was a bit biased as when u had either many friends or an active sg ghey could bump up the rating; but if not; evrn if ur s stuff was good; it languished

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DeathSentry wrote:
DeathSentry wrote:

The rating system was a bit biased as when u had either many friends or an active sg ghey could bump up the rating; but if not; evrn if ur s stuff was good; it languished

For my own part, I am not super-duper concerned about the rating system, since that seems less structural (and therefore easier to adjust in alpha and beta). I would say just go to any music site that uses a decent system for recommending stuff based on what you and others have rated in the past (like last.fm or whatever) and use those as a guide. The more you rate missions accurately according to your personal tastes, the better the recommendations you get from the system will be, etc. IOW, I don't need to worry about what you like, since your ratings will mostly be used to recommend stuff to people who happen to have the same tastes as you do (which may or may not turn out to include me). The thing I have always enjoyed about last.fm (once I had it trained up properly, which took awhile) is that it is a neverending source of songs and bands I have never heard before, but which I do tend to like. They may not be able to get enough folks using and rating the mission designer to get that kind of preference history together, though.

I'd also support rating on a couple of parameters, as some mentioned above (challenge, story, etc), since I want different things at different times.

The part I will be more immediately worried about will be seeing if they can pull off all the things they have considered, like having some system to review submitted arcs to see of they can be adopted as official missions, and that sort of thing. Depending on how that all develops, details of how we want to rate stuff will probably change.

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I liked the MA but I hated

I liked the MA but I hated farms, but even more than that I hated how the MA took players out of the game.
When I first joined back in Issue 8, it was common to see heroes flying/jumping/speeding all over the place...
But once MA took off, zones became ghost towns. I think one way to discourage "living" in the MA/MC is to have decreasing rates of rewards. Like you get full rewards the first 3 times, but each time thereafter it's 15% less or so.
So the MC becomes more like a daily (threads in DA e.g.) than a full-time lifestyle.

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If you have a most played

If you have a most played today, this week, most played this month, most played this year.
'Played' being actually completed stories and arcs, this should give a rotation that are physically being played the most by users.

Perhaps even which players and archetypes are using specific missions the most could be useful information to have public.

Plus if you have the farming genre, storyline genre and any other genres that may be applicable to creations, you can end up with something akin to a store page with different charts that operate on real time statistics.

For farm genre even how many minutes a mission has been played, or how many times a mission has been reset could be useful statistics.

You could even have an alternative user voting system [star ratings], if you valued the end users opinions over the actual numbers being played. If there are more options to see which missions score better, as in alternative ranking systems, it gives people a choice they may trust more over another.

Some may value opinions over statistics. Some may value stories over farming. They all deserve attention. Bottom line, the more data available to make decisions from, the more informed the end user is.

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A basic favorites/bookmarks

A basic favorites/bookmarks system would be nice, both so that people can easily find the missions they like and so that others can see which missions are (apparently) popular.

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As a long time Dungeon Master

As a long time Dungeon Master and avid story writer I absolutely loved the possiblities the AE gave to storytelling people like me.
As stated above repeatedly, I also think a rating and sorting system which is robust is a very important thing to have.

Regarding farming:
While I have to admit I absolutely HATE farming, if there's people who love it I would handle farming missions like this:
When browsing, farming missions will not appear in any searches unless you specifically search for them. This will prevent
story type missions from getting drowned out of the browser window but enable farmers to find their missions.
Farming missions should not give any better rewards than playing the normal game. Nor would I like to see "LFG AE 1-50 farm"
on normal LFG channels.

Be able to recommend AE story arcs to other players:
There used to be so many great and enjoyable story arcs on the AE, but a few malicious 1 star reviews made sure they would
disappear in the obscurity of like 10000+ mission chains listed. Arcs which are frequently worked on should get a higher place
on the list to reward creators for improving their quality making negative reviews deteriorate over time if changes are made
frequently.

Also it would be nice to be able to filter by creator and/or SG of the creator, not just the global.

Also, if story arcs are banned for alleged copyright issues it should indicate what exactly is offensive.
For example I revised an arc and it refused to be submitted. Suddenly it was blocked and I had to search through ALL my texts
which were extensive and try out every name. It turned out the problem was "Black Scorpion" which contains
"Scorpion" which is a Marvel character. Yay for wasting countless hours.

Also being able to put new arcs on a "please review" list would be nice. A lot of people enjoy to critique new stuff. Since they
help to improve mission quality, a little reward would be nice (finishing an arc and writing a short review).

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I'd like to see a combination

I'd like to see a combination of several of the above ideas. Some buttons that allow you to tag and search specific types, and some graduated rating scale that tells me the quality and/or type of content. If I were to design the review box for what was important to me, it might look something like this:

"Title of Mission"

Synopsis........... (1000 characters?)

Number of Plays/Reviews: 00001

Hero [ ] Villain [ ] Neutral [ ]

Length 10 - 20 min. [ ] 20 - 30 min. [ ] 30+ min. [ ]

Story [ ] Farm [ ] Exercise [ ] (I've added Exercise as a type of mission that's kind of a "build-tester", distinct from the other two.)
Success * * * O O (how well the author achieved their stated goal)

Solo [ ] Team [ ]
Success * O O O O

Lore-based [ ] Outside Lore [ ]
Success * * * O O
________________________________________

Challenge * * O O O

Writing * O O O O (quality of story, dialog)

Originality * * * O O

Reward/XP * * O O O

Overall * * O O O (this could be set by reviewer as an "intangibles" indicator, or just a calculated average of all the other scores)

Where basically the top section is filled out by the author when it is submitted - [ ]'s are radio buttons. *'s and O's are star ratings set afterward by those who've played it. I can think of more categories, but too much detail becomes a chore. Obviously, some categories would weigh more or less depending on what "type" of mission, story vs. lore for instance. This would allow me to search for the kind of missions I like, and give me sense of how well it accomplishes what I'm looking for.

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To be honest, apart from the

To be honest, apart from the separation of farms and arcs, I didn't mind the AE in CoH. The ability to narrow things down, such at placing glowies, NPCs, hostages, etc. more accurately i also find useful. But, i really only want a few more things to add in the CoT mission creator:
>: Completely open power selection for NPCs: It makes much sense to give PCs borders such as archetypes/classes, power sets, and pools to work with. But, NPCs should be wide open. In CoH the NPC creator simply made limited PCs, they didn't have pool powers or ancillary powers, or even all the travel powers. Mission-created NPCs should be able to have any combination of powers. In-game NPCs had many combinations such as the typical soldier (5th column, Consul, Axis America, PPD, etc.) had assault rifle, martial arts, swords/knives, and more. I always hated not being able to come close to the in-game NPCs.
This could hinder the story arc of course. Having a minion with all zombies, fire demons, robots, and ninjas making each 3-5 minion mob turn into 30-55 would be insanely overpowered. Giving an archvillain literally every single power would be impossible to defeat. Flipside of this, if NPCs are too easy, even for lower-level geared arcs, the arc will be no challenge. This means the mission creator has to balance the powers and strength given to the NPCs. An arc too easy or hard won't be rated well (by the hopefully well-designed rating system) but still allow very diverse enemies and bosses to fight or be sided with.
All that said, I would like to have the challenge of fighting an AV with fire damage, control, melee, armour, demon summoning and zombies.
>: A god/debug mode for the creator to test: I vaguely remember AE coming with a lame version of this. There was invisibility, intangibility, and invincibility, maybe a warp-to-glowie, but it'd be ideal to take this even further so that non-solo-based characters could still test their own missions without needed the muscle of a tank or scrapper to actually complete the mission. A kill command could also be useful for the AV above.
>: the ability to customize NPC-summonable minions: NPCs in Arachnos, clockwork, and other NPC groups could summon their own quite unique pets in battle. My intuition and lack of knowledge about programming feel like this couldn't be super hard or resource-intensive to implement. A tag on an NPC that makes them possible not summoned in normal mobs, and be able to script a power that has few custom aspects like recharge or number of minions to summon. This would bring created NPCs even closer to (presumed) in-game ones.
>: Level-discriminating NPC groups: Large villain groups like PPD, Arachnos, 5th Column, Counsil, even smaller ones like The Family have NPCs that level-discriminate. Arachnos uses weak Wolf Spiders at lower levels, but when you get above 45, Bane Spiders are the foot soldier. The ability to create an NPC group with groups that could be level discriminating would be even closer to the in-game.

These next two are a stretch but would be really cool:
>: Giant Monster creation: I don't know what the height limit of PCs will be (8 feet seemed like a good end point, but 9 or ten could be nice, I recognize that doors all have to be able to fit through... or smashable :) ), but the ability to make a Bat'zul-sized Archmonster or a hamildon-like static (or dynamic) NPC would be an incredible touch to the mission creator.
>: Custom Maps: This one could be a serious stretch, but the ability to customize a story arc's map even a little (beyond specific placement) make the player really feel like the arc is theirs, not a sandbox creation. Even further would be integrated glowies for shield-based bosses or portals that summon NPCs would be amazing.

Ok this go longer than i thought, but those are my two cents regarding the mission architect. Last thing i'd love to see as part of the wish for specificity for placement would be the classic three-form (or more) boss. I love the classic capcom game Megaman, the final boss, Sigma, always had at least one form after he was defeated. This is a great element for an epic AV (or hero) final battle.
Ok, that's actually the last of my cents, I'm exited for CoT beyond belief and hope many of these feature do make it to launch or the early issues :)


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I was thinking about some

I was thinking about some sillier things that might be possible in CoT, although those tend to run into the problem that they would not be thematic. Then it occurred to me that, with a particular emphasis (i.e. Architect Entertainment) these could still be included. The one caveat to their use is that they do not appear outside of the mission architect system. Thus a cartoon based power set, which might be nothing more than an existing, re-skinned set, could exist. Perhaps there will be an 'Igor' group with Frankenstein lieutenants and mad scientist bosses.

When I thought about these groups not being available outside the mission architect, Star Trek crossed my mind. They've had holograms take control of the ship and escape and do nearly everything short of taking over the world. So, an (regular?) event which has elements from the architect set loose upon an unsuspecting city could be a thing.

All of which gave rise to another thought*: would it be possible to use the mission architect to play test new content? I'm curious to know if that could be a viable replacement for a test server.

* Don't let all that thinking fool you. I'm not as smart as it may imply.

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First, I am encouraged by the

First, I am encouraged by the stated goal that the editor will be as close to that available to the devs as possible. Putting a large focus on quality tools will pay dividends when it comes to speed of content creation for the development team, and producing something polished enough to be client facing and full featured from the start is going to help keep the emphasis on good tool production. This is a good idea.

Second, in terms of the flavor associated with the mission creator, I would personally like to see it flavored as alternate realities/alternate futures or presents with various probabilities of existing. I feel like that would make it feel more real than doing virtual reality missions, but at the same time gives a good in game reason for why nonsensical/poorly written/obvious farm missions exist the way they do. It would also let you set missions out in the actual game world, which could help prevent the everyone-cloistered-in-the-AE effect and could be good from a story perspective, where you can put the doors to your created missions at locations that make sense. I would also like to see a mechanism where by exceptionally good content is, with the creator's approval, recognized by the dev team and brought into the game as a cannon mission, as I feel like that could be a good way to increase in game content.

An alternate timeline explanation for the mission architect would actually play really well into the suggestion to use it to beta new content; stuff that is *going* to happen soon could be released into the MA system as a *possible future*, which could then be refined by playtesting into what actually gets released to the real game (the actual present). I like it.

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I wonder if the mission

I wonder if the mission creator will allow me to create mission paths for my storylines I create.

For instance.. there's a Hurricane.. ok.. well if you're a hero I'm gonna hit you with hella escort/citizen saving missions. If you're less than heroic I'm gonna want you to loot some stores to steal some essentials for person to survive (looting or surviving? lol). Both will be purpose driven. Also like what's written in the Kickstarter I want to have alternate paths for failing a mission at certain stages. I doubt I get to choose a boss fight so if you don't loot enough for "the family" you get jumped in facing wave after wave of NPC gangsters. If you save people you'll probably face those same gangsters, LOL but that's story design.

I just want to have alternative paths if they're going to be avail to devs.

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Artorios Rex wrote:
Artorios Rex wrote:

I liked the MA but I hated farms, but even more than that I hated how the MA took players out of the game.
When I first joined back in Issue 8, it was common to see heroes flying/jumping/speeding all over the place...
But once MA took off, zones became ghost towns. I think one way to discourage "living" in the MA/MC is to have decreasing rates of rewards. Like you get full rewards the first 3 times, but each time thereafter it's 15% less or so.
So the MC becomes more like a daily (threads in DA e.g.) than a full-time lifestyle.

Another option is to have the player-created missions use mission doors out in the world, maybe restricted to level-appropriate areas, or in neghborhoods in which you'd normally encounter the enemies inside.

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Rigel wrote:
Rigel wrote:

Artorios Rex wrote:
I liked the MA but I hated farms, but even more than that I hated how the MA took players out of the game.
When I first joined back in Issue 8, it was common to see heroes flying/jumping/speeding all over the place...
But once MA took off, zones became ghost towns. I think one way to discourage "living" in the MA/MC is to have decreasing rates of rewards. Like you get full rewards the first 3 times, but each time thereafter it's 15% less or so.
So the MC becomes more like a daily (threads in DA e.g.) than a full-time lifestyle.

Another option is to have the player-created missions use mission doors out in the world, maybe restricted to level-appropriate areas, or in neghborhoods in which you'd normally encounter the enemies inside.

Hey, that's what we said!

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I like the idea of

I like the idea of philosophically accepting and condoning farming in a way that it can be policed. Prohabition didn't work--legalize and regulate it.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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Empyrean wrote:
Empyrean wrote:

I like the idea of philosophically accepting and condoning farming in a way that it can be policed. Prohabition didn't work--legalize and regulate it.

Pretty much our thought. We can put in other ways to discourage farming without prohibiting it. (eg: can only get mission completion XP once a day per mission)

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Cinnder
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Clever!

Clever!

Spurn all ye kindle.

Gangrel
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Empyrean wrote:
I like the idea of philosophically accepting and condoning farming in a way that it can be policed. Prohabition didn't work--legalize and regulate it.

Pretty much our thought. We can put in other ways to discourage farming without prohibiting it. (eg: can only get mission completion XP once a day per mission)

This works if you backload the XP so that the player is *rewarded* for completing it and killing the mobs inside rewarded as much. Hell, you could set it up so that you only get XP *once* the mission is completed (queue grinding of teeth).

How would this prevent street sweeping as a farming method though? Are the mobs in missions going to have a higher base value compared to their "outside world" equivalents (if you are going for the CoX route of instancing most of the content in the game)?

Because I seem to remember that CoX did that at one point.

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1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
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4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Doctor Tyche
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See, we're not against

See, we're not against farming. Hell, I used to run a supergroup called the Street Sweepers. Take a guess what we did. The difference is over exploits. Running the same mission over and over again leads to an encouragement of farming missions. So, a slight discouragement from taking mission runs. Not a big hammer, just a slight tweak which discourages it. Keeping the XP the same in a mission or on the street helps there as well.

Ultimately, what we want are people playing the game. If you truly want to go and run "Assault on Ser Morgan's Flagship" 8 times in a row, have at it.

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Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider

Gangrel
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

See, we're not against farming. Hell, I used to run a supergroup called the Street Sweepers. Take a guess what we did. The difference is over exploits. Running the same mission over and over again leads to an encouragement of farming missions. So, a slight discouragement from taking mission runs. Not a big hammer, just a slight tweak which discourages it. Keeping the XP the same in a mission or on the street helps there as well.
Ultimately, what we want are people playing the game. If you truly want to go and run "Assault on Ser Morgan's Flagship" 8 times in a row, have at it.

Now this raises the question: Is the mission reward going to be what the levelling curve is based off, or is it going to be mob kills are the main bulk of it? Or are you going to try to split them evenly.

The reason as to why I ask is because in the early days of the games life, I ran FrostFire a lot.

During one session, I must have helped out 10-15 different teams on it. And this was when the mission reward was still "good enough" at that point in time. Sure, I didn't level in all of the runs, but it was a nice piece of fun content.

Now on the flip side, during my last push to 50 on my first character, I got into a team who had the dreck mission. And we did the thing that was common at that point in time. Do most of it, exit mission, restart. Which is why the CoX developers then made it a timed mission from when you picked it up.

It also didn't help in that because of the group scaling as well the larger teams made this more profitable (and the rezzing freakshow still gave XP at that point in time). So all in all, it was no surprise that (for my circle of friends at least) that doing something that the developers gave us the tools to do, to see something like this happening.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Comicsluvr
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

See, we're not against farming. Hell, I used to run a supergroup called the Street Sweepers. Take a guess what we did. The difference is over exploits. Running the same mission over and over again leads to an encouragement of farming missions. So, a slight discouragement from taking mission runs. Not a big hammer, just a slight tweak which discourages it. Keeping the XP the same in a mission or on the street helps there as well.
Ultimately, what we want are people playing the game. If you truly want to go and run "Assault on Ser Morgan's Flagship" 8 times in a row, have at it.

I wholeheartedly agree. I support the whole concept of 'play how I want to play.' If a player and his buddies want to do the same map over and over...ok. However doing so should give them no more benefits than just playing the game. Players who do one mission or map because they REALLY like it will do so even if it's not the most efficient way to gain rewards because it's fun for them. People just looking for the rewards will soon figure out that there are better ways to do things and try something else.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

Bubbawheat
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Things I would like to see in

Things I would like to see in the Mission Creator interface:

A simple "like/dislike" or even just a "like" rating system. The 5 stars just plain doesn't work, and an arc should only be able to be rated if it is completed, though it can always be reported.
A tiered system of rewards - the more you use the system, the more rewards you are able to get

Using CoX as an example - you would get AE tickets at a certain rate that is unchanged via AE rewards. But XP/money rewards start out throttled. You can purchase increased XP/money rewards with tickets, you can purchase increased mission arc file size with tickets, etc.

Let's say rewards start out at 25% of normal, and by playing through 3-5 arcs and rating them you can buy 50% of normal rewards, up to something like 20ish arcs to have enough tickets to buy full rewards. Maybe even include the option to prioritize money or XP rewards.

You should also be able to see what arcs your friends have "liked" or bookmarked, even if it's limited to a certain number of recent arcs.

I agree that there should be some form of filterable tag, especially if farming isn't going to be strictly policed, to filter out farms/combat arcs vs. story arcs.

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I couldn't agree more!!

I couldn't agree more!! Sometimes in AE, it was hard to put your toons exactly where you wanted them. One thing, in the release on the test system before CoX died, the ambushes and patrols worked very well...finally!! Just wish it could have lasted longer..anyway I agree with your comments..would really help make awesome stories

CoH addict for 8+ years...and counting

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Wow.... A lot to read here,

Wow.... A lot to read here, all of it speculative.

I really like the idea of clearly labeling missions. I also like the idea of letting those who run the missions vote on the accuracy of the label. So we might have labels like:

XP Farm for Fire
XP Farm for Ice
XP Farm for Dark
XP Farm for Psychic

So forth and so on.

And additionally:

Canon-based story
Non-canon story
Canon-based story + Unique enemies
Non-canon story + Standard enemies
Satire
Experimental
Strong Adult Content
Good Family Fun

So forth and so on.

At the end would be an optional survey the system automatically included that asked:

1. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 is completely wrong, 5 is perfect), how accurately was the mission arc labeled?
2. If you answered less than 3, how do you think the story should have been labeled?
3. Please rate the story (1 to 5 stars, 1 is awful, 5 is excellent)
4. Would you like to leave a tip for the mission author? (0-500 game currency)
5. Please write a short review clearly stating what you liked and didn't like about the mission arc. (space for up to 1000 words/5000 characters)

And then if survey question 1 is rated 3 or below more than a certain number of times (10, maybe?), the entire story arc is flagged for GM team review.

The labels should be drop-down boxes, perhaps two of them, one for Story/Farm options and one for Canon/Non-canon options. Naturally the same drop-down box object could be used both when the author is creating the mission arc and on the survey form.

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Cinnder
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Greyhawk wrote:
Greyhawk wrote:

At the end would be an optional survey the system automatically included that asked:
1. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 is completely wrong, 5 is perfect), how accurately was the mission arc labeled?
2. If you answered less than 3, how do you think the story should have been labeled?

I like that idea! It's one thing to get players' opinions on the quality of an arc, but I think it would be useful to everyone to gather feedback like this on categorisation as well.

Spurn all ye kindle.

syntaxerror37
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I prefer a 1-10 scale for

I prefer a 1-10 scale for better granularity, but I do like the idea of comenting on the accuracy of the label

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