ArrowRose

When I created my first MA arc, I had no idea what a challenge it would be. I played so many arcs that were really bad that I assumed getting 5 star ratings would be easy. How wrong I was!

My original goal was to create a Hall of Fame Arc, but in today's MA environment that is unlikely, especially with my arc topic. So my current goal with this thread, is to get as many plays as possible for my arc from people who might actually like it and have fun.

In return for playing my arc, I will play yours.

My rules for the thread are as follows.

- My arc is about time travel, and while it is not really an origin story in the traditional sense, it is about you helping someone find her origin. So if you hate time travel or do not care for origin stories of any sort, please do not play my arc.

- This arc was at 5 stars before it was griefed by an unknown player who left no comment. I would like to regain that rating. I am most definately not requesting that you 5 star an arc that you don't feel deserves it, but I would prefer that if you don't feel it deserves 5 stars, that you not rate it and instead PM as to what you found lacking.

- In return for playing my arc and sending me a PM about what you liked or what you feel needs to change, I will play your arc. This is where the "do no harm" comes in. I will not rate your arc any lower than the current in-game rating. If I cannot rate it at least as high as the current rating, I will not rate it at all and I will PM you with the reason. If your goal is 5 stars, tell me and I will not rate your arc unless I feel it deserves 5 stars.

So in short:

- Play my arc: In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916 @Gypsy Rose and rate or not as specified above. Send me an in-game comment on the arc.

- After playing my arc, post your arc Name, ID and author here and specify if your goal is only 5 star ratings.

- I will play your arc and rate or at least comment as specified and post in this thread what I liked best about your arc. I will not post anything negative about your arc here, nor will I rate it below its current rating. Hence I will "do no harm".


My criteria for rating 5 stars for arcs submitted here is as follows:

- Your arc must either have some plot I can follow or be somewhat funny.
- There must be text that I can understand in the mission introduction, send-off, still busy and return success dialogs.
- Your contact must have a bio.
- I must be able to complete the arc on easy settings without extreme frustration. If I repeatedly die because your villains are so extreme or spend hours on a kill all or looking for a glowie I will only 5 star your arc if it is otherwise awesome.

If you have any questions about my arc or this thread, feel free to PM me.

Enjoy

Today I played "A Little Night Music".

I played on the easiest settings and was able to solo it without too much trouble, but I did need to use inspirations. For me it was slightly too hard for the easy settings. However I was playing on a level 35 with no fancy IOs.

That being said, I really enjoyed this arc. It had a nice story, but for me its strength was the customs, the mission titles and the text. It was so full of music references from Phantom to Caberet. There were tons of details that made me smile. In short, I loved the arc, and the reason I wish it was slightly easier is so I could fully enjoy all the great details.

My votes for Best Author:

2 points = @Sister Twelve

1 point = @Celestial Nemesis

I really enjoyed all the entries for best new arc and I gave them all 5 stars, but my votes for this category are:

Best New Arc

@Jail.Bird - The New Paragon Society Reborn #355351 - 2 points

@Lazarus - Breaking the Barrier (and Putting it Back Together Again) #347029 - 1 point

Thank you so much for taking the time to play my arc yet again and giving me such a detailed review.

Sadly my computer where all my custom files are has died, and in the past when I edited and republished an arc on my laptop, I had problems because the customs are not present.

Hopefully the computer or at least the data can be saved and I will fix the issues you pointed out then.

I am so happy that you liked it better

Gratz! Very well-deserved. I loved this arc.

I agree completely. There are definitely lots of people out there who are in AE to farm. Many times someone asks to join me and as soon as I tell them I am playing a story arc they loose interest.

I think it should work as a toggle where an arc would need to be designated as farm vs story. This should help farmers find farms and help people looking for story arcs find stories. The default search should not include farms.

Anything reported as a farm should be tagged as a farm and if the author feels that it is a story rather than a farm, they can report the mistag.

Batteries Included
ARC ID: 193760
Author: @Lazorman

Reason: This arc had a really nice story and was full of details and clues that made it lots of fun to play. The contact was interesting and there were lots of funny things mixed in that made me smile. A great way to start my day!

Thank you for agreeing to re-review my arc "In Pursuit of Liberty". I played your arc Talos Vice and posted my comments in your thread. I loved it!

I want to explain about my intent for this arc. I had several goals in mind when I created it:

The first, was to create a fun play experience by avoiding long walls of boring text, inserting some humor (or attempts at humor) throughout the arc and creating an arc that was very playable on easy settings.

The second was to create a small mystery that the player unravels as he or she plays. (This is why I did not have my contact spell out everything for you).

The third goal was to make the arc themed. This includes the red, white and blue coloring in the contact screens, the many people with Liberty in their names, the Followers and the fact that you the player are "pursuing" liberty on mutiple levels.

I have come to realize that I was very unfortunate in the choices I made for this arc. I was not aware that many players hate time travel. I was not aware of the great need many players have for arcs to be about them and how much "origin" stories are hated. Lastly, I was not aware of the need for any arcs that include "canon" characters to portray them in a way that perfectly matches the players perception of them. So my first arc, which I have poured my heart and soul into since June 2009 was "doomed" from the start.

I made many minor changes to the arc since you last reviewed it, but the most major change was to replace my contact Ms. Liberty with a custom Mendor, Helena Gail Wells. Her bio reads: "Mendor Helena Gail Wells is one of the newest Mendors of Ourobos. Like Mendor Lazurus, she has traveled through time so much that she has lost her sense of continuity and has been known to ramble."

I did this for several reasons, but it was your last review that ultimately caused me to do so. I really wanted Ms. Liberty to be the contact because of the arc's theme, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not make her true to many of my arc's players canon perception. Also, it was hard to refute your logic as to why given that Ms. Liberty was a relative, she did not do more.

Since my arc is about time travel, I decided a mendor made sense. I chose a custom mendor because I did not want to again fall into the trap of being unsuccessful in portraying an existing canon character. For now, I recolored an existing Mendor because I do not have space to make a new one. When we get space, I will replace her with a custom look as well.
I chose her name as a tribute to H. G. Wells. I wanted her to be a bit vague and I felt that making her a Mendor allowed that to make sense.

The other main change I made to the arc since you last played it, was that I attempted to convey that the arc is really meant to be about you the player, and what you do to help a hero achieve her destiny, as opposed to a traditional origin story.

There are a few minor things that you did not like in your earlier reviews that I did not change because other people had specifically commented that they liked them. These were my "attempts" at humor. For example, I kept "Hurry you don't have much time", when you were going back to the past. I also kept the swords in a coffin, both because I felt it matched the dark mood of the map and because some people commented that they enjoyed the interact bar text.

I carefully considered all the feedback that was given to me by you and the other board reviewers, and most of it is incorporated in the current version of this arc.
I hope that you like it better. I really appreciate your willingness to look at in again.

Thanks

I really loved this arc. I have no heroes who are level 12-20, but I found a level 11 scrapper Sandy Beach, who I created for a beach themed SG that never quite got off the ground.

She was a perfect hero to play this arc and the difficulty level was fine even though she was not level 12 yet.

Below are some notes I made while I played.

Mission 1:
Contact: I loved that the contact interaction was a in a different format!
I enjoyed the still busy dialog.

Loved the troll in the bright pink shirt.

I am not sure if I missed it somehow, but I did not see any text when I lost Croquette or when I went back and got him.

Mission 2:
Contact dialog: The postage stamp comment made me smile

Loved that you recolored the villains to fit the theme.
Kitty was a nice touch – actually sad truth behind her bio
Libby too

The comment about the Statesman doll actually made me laugh.

Mission 3:

Entry pop-up made me smile.
Good level of play.

Overall impression:
For me this was another one of your arcs that was near perfection. The arc was so themed and so full of little details. I love the small bits of humor that are sprinkled throughout it! In my book this is up there with Teen Phalanx. I enjoyed it that much!

I loved this arc. It was very well written and easy to solo. I especially love the Grinch-like last mission and the souvenir. The arc really touched me without going over the top. Great job!

Gratz! I love time travel and I really love this arc. Seeing this made my day

In addition to my firm belief that we should not give in game low ratings to people who submit their arcs to this forum for feedback, I am in complete agreement that the MA interface should be changed.

I think that a separate tab for the Dev's Choice, Guest Author and Hall of Fame arcs is a great idea. These arcs have already attained what many of us may be working for. It will still be easy to find them and it will give more exposure to other arcs.

I like the idea of random arcs showing initially on the first page, with some 4 and 5 star arcs, and some completely random arcs as well.

A way to identify griefers would also be great. Perhaps if a rating was more than 2 below the current in-game rating, the author could get an alert. So a 5 star arc that got a 1 or 2 rating could trigger an alert and a 4 star arc that got a 1 rating would do the same thing. At this point the author could choose to report a potential grief rating for investigation. A different implementation of this would be to not allow a vote that is more than 2 below the current in-game rating. This would prevent accidental 1 star votes on a 4 or 5 star arc and give griefers less impact. They could still 3 star a 5 star, but that would make it easier for a quality arc to recover. If the arc wasn't truly 5 star quality, over time 3 star and 4 star votes would lower it.

Finally, I think archiving stale arcs would be great. However, I consider the fact that an author refreshes an arc as a more important criteria for keeping it in the active search results than whether it was recently played. An arc from an author who no longer even plays the game could get a random play, and keeping that arc in the system instead of an arc from an author who cares enough about his or her arc to refresh it would be unfair.

Hopefully the devs will consider at least the new tab idea presented in this thread.

To be sure to be fair I will nominate @Jail.Bird's arc The New Paragon Society Reborn (arc id 355351), for "Best New Arc".

I will nominate @Sister Twelve author of The Long Road Back (arc id 340454), for "Best Unknown Author". At this time this author has 2 arcs with a total of 10 plays.

I'd like to nominate @Jail.Bird, author of The New Paragon Society Reborn (arc id 355351), for "Best Unknown Author". At this time he has 2 arcs with a total of 19 plays.

This arc was a great follow-up to the Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society (by another author). It was a lot of fun to play, well-written and I loved the customs.

As an aside, I wanted to comment that I spent a bit of time attempting to find a great new author by looking at recent arcs with 4 and 5 stars and found nothing. It finally dawned on me that people who post on this forum care about MA and were likely to write quality arcs. I looked at many posters here who I knew had not won anything to disqualify them, but most of them had too many arcs or too many plays.

I found this arc and really enjoyed it and so I chose to support a valued member of this community with my nomination for "Best Unknown Author".

Best character was another hard choice. My votes are:

1st – The Firecracker Kid - well developed and funny
2nd- WADDLE - So loveable - the one and only ally the friend I played with didn't want to ditch
3rd – Cobalt Stinger - an interesting contact who helped me enjoy an arc I really loved

An honorable mention goes to McGrimm. I loved his bio!