Turgenev

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I'm just curious... how many other people are using it this way?

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This is what I'm planning/building for my SG. I'm not saying any more however, because they haven't seen it yet.

Moloch/Rose:

I'm getting exactly this issue as well. Publish/Test are grayed out, but I can edit it fine, it shows now errors, and if I choose "Save and Test" it'll test fine.

Rose: Crap. That's EXACTLY what I'm seeing. Okay, that gives me a target to look for... AUGH, this is annoying. ;( Thanks, all, I'll go to that thread and comment directly.

Anyone seen this before? I was putting the final touches on my next Act, when suddenly the publish/test buttons were grayed out. It was at 99% of limit; I was able to 'save and test' and it would allow me to access, but I can't click the "test/publish" buttons from the mish window - and that's kind anecessry for publishing this. =/

Any thoughts?

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Hi

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*tosses Hatter a pack of chocolate smokes*

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Not only that but the offered prizes are pretty impressive too.

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It's a heck of a contest: Lots of quality entries, great prizes, lotta work for Projectionist there.

G'luck to all, and thanks again to Projectionist for hosting a contest for the authors. Cheers.

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Qr - If they remove badges from the system, should they remove those badges from people who have already earned them?

Eco

Edit: added 'qr'

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I'd say so, sure. Maybe "hide" the badges from display, so when it IS fixed or adjusted, people who had them don't necessarily "lose" anything. Although in the past, when they'd release a badge that they've been tracking telemetry for, the badge would just auto-win on re-release. I think the only badges in MA this would negatively affect are the ranking badges (Builder series, for instance, where your averages can get worse over time, as opposed to a "do 100 DC mission" badge which can only go up over time).

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my take on it: pretend like the devs had done the sensible thing and put out the MA without badges and then later decided exactly what uses of the MA should have badges rewarded.

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I'd agree on that.

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EDIT: Wait. You mean cram it all in one zone and have the buildings just be entrances to the zone? Uh, no. You think it's crowded NOW....

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That's not a bad thing. Cap the AE zone to 30 players or so, and a new zone will reinstance. Just keep going up the dial for the quietest rooms.

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I'm also seeing mindless farms with misspellings everywhere and billions of Rikti comm officers that have 5-star ratings by hundreds of people. That is most frustrating of all, and really makes me reconsider why I should even bother creating good, playable, story-driven missions.

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I hear you on that, 110%. All I can do is ask you this: Why are you writing your stories? For the act of telling the story, in the best way you know how? Or for the badges/ratings/tickets?

If the latter, make farms and hook up with the various voting cartels. You'll get that outta the way licketysplit.

If the former? Then not only do you have to MAKE the arc, but you have to SELL the arc. That's almost as much work, if not more: You'll have to pitch it to the common players, sell it on your server's global channels, talk with PERC for sideline advertising, write up an ad for the Scoop, create a thread in the Stories and Lore forum and bump it with real material, not just for the sake of bumping, review-and-get-reviewed in the various "exchange" threads out there, make a nice picture or movie for your arc, invite a redname to check it out...

It's a ton of work - my SGmates call it my second job now, and they're annoyed that they don't see me play anymore. It DOES pay off, but to put this in perspective: Since Issue 14 went live, I've played a total of four player arcs, in totality.

Four. Seriously.

The rest of the time has been working on my next story; collating responses from feedback and responding with more than just a blanket "thx"; pitching my arc when people ask, or offering invites to various SGs to run my arc for feedback; etc. I have a long list of arcs people would like me to do, and I'm doing it - slowly - but yeah, having the time to review and critique effectively is yet another "duty" we owe to any serious writer. I don't say obligation - we aren't - but if you're into Architect enough to where you want quality stories to come out, the best thing you can do is positively encourage others to do the same.

At the end of the day, Architect is easy to do. It's an endurance trial to do WELL.

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Let's also consider the level difference. . . we all know AE is being used to PL. Now if you could start power leveling at 1 instead of 35. . .that would be my guess personally.

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That's my rationale for it too. Which is a sad, but necessary decision.

Now, if the AE in Pocket D ONLY allowed "test" mode, basically nerfing cross-ethics teaming/PLing from 1-34 but leaving it open for 35-50 in RWZ, there might be some play with that. Not a great solution, but a possibility.

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Eh? There isn't anything stopping me from PLing at level one anyway, why would that be a concern for cross-factional teaming?

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Convenience and efficiency. Why bother with maintaining your farming teams in PI and GV, or AP and MI, when you can just centralize everything in Pocket D? Pocket D would turn into PI/GV/AP/MI all rolled into one.

Which would be nice, for regular teaming in all the other zones. Not so nice for people who wanted to go to Pocket D.

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I think that's where my disconnect comes from. Initially, it was to virally spread a tag to let people avoid the plethora of farms out there. It wasn't FOR "us". It wasn't for the people who come to the forums. It wasn't for the people who go to the Wiki. Those are both very small minorities of the game. It was for the general populace.

Now, I can't help but see it as something promoting insularity. If you're not one of the "in the know", you're left out, thinking "WTF".

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That's my biggest problem with the tagging idea, honestly, because it leaves out a sizable majority of the playerbase. (This is a forum-built concept, so even if it were to spread to any of the various community pages it would still be a mystery to most players.)

I'm encouraged by the Dev's announcement for I15 however; taking the community's idea, and incorporating/streamlining it there, is the best of all worlds if done correctly. I look forward to seeing how it'll work in I15, to everyone's benefit.

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Let's also consider the level difference. . . we all know AE is being used to PL. Now if you could start power leveling at 1 instead of 35. . .that would be my guess personally.

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That's my rationale for it too. Which is a sad, but necessary decision.

Now, if the AE in Pocket D ONLY allowed "test" mode, basically nerfing cross-ethics teaming/PLing from 1-34 but leaving it open for 35-50 in RWZ, there might be some play with that. Not a great solution, but a possibility.

This is my biggest frustration with editing. I've had to redo my current arc twice because of sudden ballooning for no clear reason than I can see.

I'll try the search and destroy tactics mentioned above and see if it helps. I'm skating at 93% right now and I've got two more mishes I wanted to fill out before I release it into the wild...

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The system involved with HoF ranking definitely needs to be revised in some way. They probably ought to put a timer on when an arc makes it to the HoF so that regardless of voting it stays as a HoF arc for at least 24 hours or some such.

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Hmm. To build on this idea (which is a good one as-is):

Set up HoF as a perma-flag on an arc, so once achieved, it retains status on querying; but take the existing HoF up/down code and translate that to a "hot arc" status.

Result: Players who achieve the req's for HoF get it frozen, allowing them to publish a new arc without having to worry about gaining or losing arc availability status; but the HoF code as an indicator for "current popularity" gets rebranded to indicate a hot arc currently in play. One gives a perma-award, the other indicates raw popularity.

Thoughts?

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I suspect some of the Dev's Choice arc are authored by buddies of the developers, but that's just me.

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Just wanted to add personal experience on this one, because it keeps coming up. At least in my case, I know no Devs or rednames, either from regular teaming or from real life. As I understand it, I pretty much got lucky when I posted it originally on Test. I put it up late one night, and about six hours later I had a msg from pohsyb stating that it was DC'd. He caught wind of it earlier that morning, when he'd asked, "any good stories to recommend?"... and someone had mentioned mine.

There were about 40-50 arcs DC'd on test: Some for quality, some for inventiveness, some for testing. The second round of DC awarding came from Posi and Hero-1 about a week before I14 went live, which was about a day or so after I got the note from pohsyb. I didn't find out my arc made the cut 'til 2pm-ish on I14's release.

Just wanted to put this out here. I've had a bunch of arc feedback where users state "u r soo lucky u know a dev my arc is bettur then urs", and from a personal experience from what I usually expect as quality feedback avenues on my arc, I'm rather tired by it.

Welcome to the paying community, Ellen. Look me up in game if you need anything. /tell @Turgenev, Yo.

Thanks, Mister Wiggles thinks you're cute too. XD

I'm getting "The site is down for maintenance" when attempting to login normally, so don't panic overmuch right now: It's not just you.

I'll keep watch on this and check on your progress. Make sure that you're logging in with the email address/password you registered with your trial. If THAT is still failing, there's a "resend password" function that you can use to try to work around it.

Can't help much right now with the site being down. Ping me here if you have further questions, or just add to this thread, I'll watch either one.

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Update...

Left Hand: after the stitches were pulled today



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If you shoved a toothpaste tube in there, you could so totally pull of a Spider-Man career.

Nope, haven't found a suitable "restaurant" or dinner club-type map, but I sure wish they'd make one. The one you're suggesting is the closest one I've found thus far, and IMO it's not a fair match. Heck, even the Cage Fight map from Arena would be useful because at least it has tables and a bar, but again, too small, and not elegant in any way.

If I could wish it: 3 maps of restaurants, for small and medium sizes. Include a bar, ambient music, and maybe even a dance floor for one (for a more "clubby" atmosphere beyond what the rave map currently has).

Ah, been waiting for this. Grats on finishing it. Looking forward to playing it soon.

Heya Zub: I'm glad you dug it enough to play twice, the 2nd time with your daughter. Your experience is exactly what I was hoping for with how I built the arc, so it's nice to hear that it hit home.

The odd thing is, I'm kinda put off by the # of under-12s who've run my arc and enjoyed the storyline... I'm scared by how they'll react to the tone of Act II once I've finished testing it.

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Monah. Nao.

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Here ya go.

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Or you can make them as custom mobs.

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This is really your best bet. The closest suggestions would be Vahzilok or BP for general look, but they're still that faction. Make one from scratch and go nutz.