Suggested way to help MA users differentiate between farm and story arcs

[GamerKate]

 

Currently there is no obvious way to differentiate the many arcs published in the MA between arcs meant for farming and arcs meant for story-based narrative fun.

 

I should say that I am a story-hound, and I don’t enjoy farming arcs, but I absolutely support players who want to make and play farming arcs in the MA.

 

On Live, there were tags people would put in their arc descriptions to aid searching for the type of arc they wanted: [sFMA] was used for story arcs for example. When searching you could search for [sFMA] and any arcs that had that in the description would show. This workaround was arrived at by the players in the MA forums. Some of the arcs now in the MA still have this.

 

At present, with many players not frequenting the forums, it would be great if there was an ingame way to inform players and creators alike that an arc is either a farm arc or a story-based one.

 

Here’s my suggestion to the devs: Add as a default entry in the field meant for the description of an arc something like this:

 

“Write your description of your arc here instead of this text. This is what players will see when they browse the published missions in the AE. If your arc is intended for farming, put ‘[FARM]’ in the description, and if it is a non-farm story-bases arc, include ‘[sTORY]’ in the description. That way, players can search for ‘FARM’ or ‘STORY’ and they’ll see the kind of arcs they want, and your arc will find the right audience!’

 

Both types of arc-writer will then have to read it and delete it all to write their own description, and both types will be aware of the tags (the devs could decide on different tags ofc, in case someone has “Ace Reporter Scoop Malloy needs help with a big story!” or “omg hero, here’s a humungously complicated intricate mystery unfolding on Old MacDonald’s farm!” etc lol).

 

Then we’d need some way to inform players who don’t create, but just play arcs,to search in that manner. Perhaps there is some suitable text field that could be tweaked for this.

 

This would allow farmers and story fans to find what they want, and avoid what they don’t want.

 

MCM