cranebump

Well, first off, here are some reviews. As far as favorites, there are a lot. If you troll the AE board, you'll likely find them mentioned somewhere. As far as authors go, the most mentioned/honored are @Ankylosaur and @Darmian (I can personally vouch for the quality of their work). I like @Clave Dark 5's stuff a lot (which I'd term ecletic).:-) @Jiro Ito does excellent work all around. There's plenty more great stories, many of which carry the Dev's Choice seal from back in the day. And plenty more excellent stories flying way under the radar (unfortunately).

Money.

When I think of this guy, this saying comes to mind: there’s a G at the end of every douchebaG. 🙂

I find this conversation uplifting, yet, a downer.

To Dream of Nothing [ID: ] by @Zaphir This L20-29 heroic arc has you helping out Mel Gibs-, I mean Detective Martins on a missing scientist case (because in the world of superheroing, only scientists count!). Kidding there, of course. Tracklash, my obligatory “Sure, I’ll try a regen scrapper [omg...what have I done?]" is all too happy to help (esp. Since Crane has sidelined him at L46 for, like, a gillion days). We dive in to discover: BAD GUYS ARE INVOLVED! Who knew? (We did. We most certainly did. It’s like it was planned that way).:-) But, yes - bad guys. Who? I’ll give you one clue: FREEEEEEEM! Yup. THOSE guys. Oh, we ‘ve got some Family involvement here. But mainly, it’s everyone’s favorite fascists, embroiled in a complex little story that is well-paced, with great clues, nice details, a great deal of mandatory “Council-ing,” Nicti, a professor in over his head, an enigmatic something known as "the Voice," and... And that’s all I’ll say on story, because you should check this one out without me spoilering anything (else).:-) Overall: I really enjoyed this one. A great blend of story/design using familiar baddies, some strong NPCs, and excellent foreshadowing. A purplish Seal of Approval emitting an unavoidable gravitational pull (not that I’m hinting at anything there…noooooooo…):-) PLAY IF: your thing is a detailed story. There’s plenty here, and it’s very well-crafted. Worth your time! Stay frosty everyone (like, for real if you’re in this vortex thing), Crane P.S. There are semicolons in character dialogue. People don’t speak in semicolons. They just don’t. And everyone knows semicolons suck. Or rather, I know that, and… Okay, so my nonexistent staff is telling me this is a personal thing, and that I’m proselytizing. They’re also saying it’s annoying, overbearing, nitpicking, and…OKAY! I GET IT! Stepping aside right...NOW!:-) Design Deets (for those interested)

I can relate. Got into it (in PMs) with mods from The Big Purple over them giving me a warning while giving a succession of passes to a longtime poster/troll. They decided to slap a short term ban on me. I wrote back that they could go fuck themselves and my time there was done. I'd probably do things a bit differently today.:-)

Even though I've had my douchey moments (including a recent one), I don't think anything discussed on the forums is so all-encompassing that it can adequately (or even marginally) serve as a litmus test for how to be be "true to the self." It's just a f'in video game, after all. Whether we like it or not, the truth is it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I could have the cure for cancer, but if I presented it to the world by being a colossal jerk, no one's gonna give a shit. I don't know what Snarky wrote, but receiving a warning is small taters. Not every discussion is - or should be - about who wins the argument. I mean, geez -- a dustup over KB? There has to be a taller hill to die on.

Yeah, that would be a commitment.:-) Best I've done is watch the video later in the day.

Logging in in a few. I'll be running Whipsmart:-)

A Light Within the Darkness (ID: 843) by @Steel Dancer This L25-37 arc from 2019 has you working with the Midnighters to secure some of their valuables (the main worry being possible theft by the Circle of Thorns). You agree to help and, of course, run into CoT right off the bat. However, your in-mish contact tells you that most of the raid damage doesn’t appear to be done by the Thorns. Your own initial investigations back this up, so…shenanigans! By an as yet unrevealed somebody/something! Involving a scary, mystical (stolen) tome! Actually “council bot” Montague (see below) is much more composed than that, but this is our basic setup. With your only real lead being the Thorny crew, you naturally pay them a visit. Here, you discover the 3rd party involved in the theft, which, in a nice little twist, leads you back to…Well, you’ll just have to see.:-) VERDICT: A clean, clear, well-constructed arc, made with care and attention to detail. Strikes a nice balance between "stuff" and story. Antagonists are well-drawn. Customs are nicely done. Great map choices (esp for the finale). Overall, I give it a solid, raddy-green Seal of Approval (I ran this with my Atomic blaster):-). PLAY IF: You want a solidly constructed, well-balanced mish. It's listed as story-heavy, but it didn't feel that way. The arc moves along very nicely. FYI: Arc ID 844:An Exchange of Words is a companion piece to this one. A few items of note: The contact model isn’t Montague, but rather the default council bot model the system uses, indicating the need for some updating. Also: There's no text on interact with some glowies in M1, nor do any clues drop from them. This only occurs in M1, and is the only noticeable error I found in the whole arc. There IS a timer on one of the mishes, but the map isn’t huge. I had plenty of time leftover (though I DID beeline to the objectives).

I script with the soloist in mind, and usually an experienced one at that. I'm thinking new players have enough other things to do before they decide to delve into player-made content. I'm not sure what can be done to truly raise the profile any more than it is, other than seeing some player-made content becoming in-game content. I'd say the chances of that happening or pretty small, at best. The return of Dev's Choice would certainly help matters, however.

I imagine this has been said by someone already, but one very obvious aspect of why more people don't attempt to create (or get discouraged from creating) story arcs is the wonkiness of Architect feature itself. Unless you're doing something very, very basic, it takes a WHOLE LOT of time to produce a decent, workable mission, much less an entire arc. You can spend forever just editing/testing/editing/testing and still not have it work 100% the way you want it. Then, if you do decide you've got something decent, and you publicize it, you could STILL have the very first person go through it, and that spawn you set up that always appeared on the first floor is suddenly appearing somewhere else, making you look like you don't know what you're doing. It's tough enough you're exposing yourself to various opinions about quality content. Add in the prospect that the production system itself can also work against you, we shouldn't be surprised when we don't see many people truly diving into the shallow pool.

As a player. I’ll play just about anything. As an author, I tend toward noir.

Nature of the beast these days. They’re a small group of busy volunteers, so I don’t begrudge them having a life outside the game. And I do think a Devs Choice equivalent produced by players is too problematic to implement. I mean, we can’t even discuss ways to grant recognition to more authors without arousing suspicions of elitism during a discussion of hypotheticals. @Dacy’s right. You can have good intentions and things can still go shitty. The question is whether (and how long) anyone wants to put up with it.

Didn’t really want to wade into this, considering my week in the forums, but: I think if anyone understands how easy it is to miss typos, it’s the people who’ve worked with the AE the most. It’s a somewhat unavoidable and forgivable “offense.” Beyond that, no one’s saying there’s a single “standard of excellence.” This started with a benign question asking what people would look for if they were Dev’s Choice judges. More than one person mentioned proper composition skills as a component (not a litmus test for the entire effort, but a part, at least). How we leaped from that to “there’s an elitist cadre driving people away from scripting!” boggles the mind, but, here we are. My advice to anyone who wants to promote SFMA AE stories is to publicize them. Create your own forum to raise the profile according to whatever guidelines or standards you want to follow. That will have a much greater impact than vague insinuations against what is obviously either an imaginary, or very poorly organized, cabal of so-called gatekeepers.