Compiled Dev Choice Awards for HC. (ongoing)

[TerroirNoir2]

1 hour ago, Jiro Ito said:

@TerroirNoir and @Zhym's continued support of the AE stories is so awesome to see, and much appreciated.  

I'll be getting to yours EVENTUALLY!

[Jiro Ito]

I wish I had more time to write, I'm still trying to finish my Christmas story from LAST year ugh

[TerroirNoir2]

Bumping this so folks can see what's out there. Yes, these are starred on the list in the AE console, but there's a bit more depth and so on here.  Have fun with them 🙂

[TerroirNoir2]

On 12/5/2022 at 6:14 PM, Jiro Ito said:

@TerroirNoir and @Zhym's continued support of the AE stories is so awesome to see, and much appreciated.  

I'd add @LordRassilon to that too.  Check out his SundAe/MondAE Twitch runs where he usually does at least one AE stream. He doesn't just stick to Dev Choices either!

 

Mollymauk76 - Twitch

Edited June 4, 2023 by TerroirNoir2

[TerroirNoir2]

Ok, I really think it's time that the Dev's Choice was reinstated properly.

[TerroirNoir2]

The original pinned post was unpinned and locked, which is why I'm posting here.

[cranebump]

Amen my friend

[Clave Dark 5]

On 10/16/2024 at 2:06 PM, TerroirNoir2 said:

Ok, I really think it's time that the Dev's Choice was reinstated properly.

I've come to the conclusion that they don't really care.  I mean, they just spent who knows how many rare volunteers' hours to create and refine the Fog farming level, I think it's pretty clear where their interests lie.

[TerroirNoir2]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I've come to the conclusion that they don't really care.  I mean, they just spent who knows how many rare volunteers' hours to create and refine the Fog farming level, I think it's pretty clear where their interests lie.

I wouldn't go that far myself, LOL!  But I'm assuming a small team of GMs/Devs to play and assess the nominations is pretty much what is needed. After all, the creation work is already done.  I don't know the inner mechanisms.

 

 

[TerroirNoir2]

Other than that, I may just start nominating things myself and tagging Devs/GMs in the post!

[Zhym]

I sort of like the idea of community "Dev/GM" awards.  I mean, if the GMs don't want to do it, what's stopping us?

 

[Jiro Ito]

I can get behind any idea to drive a little visibility and recognition towards authors, but really, there just isn't that much interest I don't think.  Maybe I am just salty because my Devs Choice arc only has 82 ratings, meanwhile a farm I created two years later on an alternate account that I don't publicize or bring others on at all still garnered 90 ratings.

 

It'd be cool if farms and stories were separated somehow, and then stories granted additional rewards like merits or aether; OR AE tickets earned by doing stories but not farms could be traded for merits, aether, recipes, etc.

[cranebump]

43 minutes ago, Jiro Ito said:

be cool if farms and stories were separated somehow, and then stories granted additional rewards like merits or aether; OR AE tickets earned by doing stories but not farms could be traded for merits, aether, recipes, etc.

It would be, wouldn't it? (sigh)

[cranebump]

On 10/17/2024 at 11:53 PM, Zhym said:

I sort of like the idea of community "Dev/GM" awards.  I mean, if the GMs don't want to do it, what's stopping us?

 

Nothing really, outside a plan and commitment to it.

[UltraAlt]

On 10/17/2024 at 11:53 PM, Zhym said:

I sort of like the idea of community "Dev/GM" awards.  I mean, if the GMs don't want to do it, what's stopping us?

 

 

@TerroirNoir2

On 10/22/2024 at 8:20 PM, Jiro Ito said:

Maybe I am just salty because my Devs Choice arc only has 82 ratings

 

"...Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame

Arcs are marked as "Developers' choice" through a process of nominations on the Homecoming forums which the HC developers review.

Arcs enter the Hall of Fame when a large number of players rate an arc favorably..." - https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect

 

I understand what we are going for here.

The Hall of Fame is for "a large number of players rate".

If I recall correctly this is some relatively insane number like 500 or 1000 ratings - and that is why this never worked. Farms would get into the Hall of Fame faster than any kind of "intended" content.

 

The Devs Choice was supposed to be for Devs - apparently - just randomly running AE missions (or so it seemed ... of course ... on Homecoming they appear to have been submitted for selection for a while there). 

 

I think both of these mission markings were designed before the release of the AE system, which was immediately polluted by allowing farming missions. (Yes, Farming was considered an exploit and accounts were supposed to be banned for abusing the AE for farming - but the DEVs caved ... and we are where we are today .... story missions hidden while farms get Hall of Fame)

 

This kind of thing is handled in other "Communities" by Community Rep(s).

 

So I guess what would be lobbied for would be Community Reps that would run the selection of Devs Choice and then submit to the Devs to grant the Devs Choice icon.

-or-

See if 2 new mission icons can be added in the AE that the AE Community would select - 1) Community Choice and 2) Farming (if only one icon can be awarded - this would override any other icons - you could still tell how many times it has been played by the counter).  Both of these would be awarded/assigned by the Community Reps - I think it should be a council that does the voting.

Maybe a lead Community Rep(s) and Community Council members(?). Maybe full open voting on the current AE missions on the list for the month(?) that the Community Council has selected through a forum poll?

I would suggest a limit to the number of AE missions on the list for each month to be 4, so players can play one per week. Perhaps the Community Rep(s)/Council would set a day or days each week to run the AE mission for that week so that it could be run as a group. At the end of the month, do voting on those 4 missions. If here is more than one great stand out, one of them can roll over to the next month, but the next month would also include 3 fresh ones. The ones that didn't get selected and/or the one that may have roll-over to a 2nd month and isn't selected, then those missions are taken off the list for say 3 months so that other AE arcs get a chance for play/review.

 

Of course, any system can get corrupted. People will try to abuse/manipulate this just as much as anything else.

 

I've just hashed this out real quick. I have to meet up with some people ... err... characters ... in THE CITY.

 

 

 

Edited October 24 by UltraAlt
corrected some spelling errors and highlighted one more "Devs Choice"

[ZamuelNow]

On 10/17/2024 at 11:53 PM, Zhym said:

I sort of like the idea of community "Dev/GM" awards.  I mean, if the GMs don't want to do it, what's stopping us?

 

In my mind, there's two parts to this based on things I remember from before the shut down:

 

-There should be more contests run by players, even if just done annually.  A lot of attention gets brought to arcs when nominated for a contest, regardless of if the entry wins.  When I was crawling through the older posts of the forum, I think I saw one or two player run AE contests but it seems to have fallen off.

 

-There should be more players/groups running non farm content.  The thing that I found most disappointing when joining HC was that there didn't seem to be a version of the MA Superteam.  For those who weren't in it, it was an informal "supergroup" that rotated the servers it played and ran a mix of recommended and randomly searched arcs.  I don't know if the players who tended to lead them never joined HC or if they lost interest by the time the servers opened.  Server culture feels harder to gauge here than in the retail days but that's a discussion for another thread.  The overarching problem is that a lot of people who write arcs don't actively play the arcs of others.

[ZamuelNow]

On 10/17/2024 at 7:59 PM, Clave Dark 5 said:

I've come to the conclusion that they don't really care.  I mean, they just spent who knows how many rare volunteers' hours to create and refine the Fog farming level, I think it's pretty clear where their interests lie.

Intriguingly, I think they do care but there's a combination of it being subtle and that dev time isn't infinite.  Some of the developer insight about the under the hood work on the Labyrinth revealed that part of it's creation stemmed from trying to make more interesting mission structure.  There's been a lot of interesting under the hood changes to the game as a whole that will probably do a lot for the game when they get expanded.  What catches my attention the most is when AE stuff actually gets fixed.  Makes me wonder what we can do that would help them the most when it comes to bug fixes.

[Jiro Ito]

On 10/17/2024 at 6:16 PM, TerroirNoir2 said:

I wouldn't go that far myself, LOL!  But I'm assuming a small team of GMs/Devs to play and assess the nominations is pretty much what is needed. After all, the creation work is already done.  I don't know the inner mechanisms.

 

 

 

It looks like @GM Vayek, who used to run the Devs Choice stuff, has retired and not posted since 2022, and from what @Dacy said, the Community Rep role has been eliminated altogether.  I think we'd have to come up with something ourselves to recognize arcs, either some kind of judge's panel, or rotating contests.

[Dacy]

3 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

It looks like @GM Vayek, who used to run the Devs Choice stuff, has retired and not posted since 2022, and from what @Dacy said, the Community Rep role has been eliminated altogether.  I think we'd have to come up with something ourselves to recognize arcs, either some kind of judge's panel, or rotating contests.

GM Vayek retired. If you want to come up with a panel, that would probably be the best idea. Here's how we work things now, because Easter Bunny and I still do a lot of "CR" type stuff, but without the title, and there is no reason anyone can't do the same for the things they love. The devs do have very limited time. The people who can best judge the arcs are the ones willing to play through them and evaluate not only how smoothly the arc runs and the mechanics, but how engaging and comprehensible the storyline is. I'm sure there are other things you'd want to consider, too; I know when I look for AE arcs to try, I like to do ones that are consistent in level, so that if I have a level 25 character, I know that all of the stories will be appropriate for that power level. I do not love bouncing between few powers to over my head in the same arc. I look for arcs that are designed with the level in mind, balanced so that I'm not going to get smashed into the carpet repeatedly, but tough enough to not be a walk in the park (and that's hard, the devs will tell you!) And I've gone off track, but basically, you decide your criteria for judging and who is best qualified to evaluate that criteria. Then it comes down to, who is WILLING to evaluate the criteria and who is someone people are willing to be evaluated by. Ideally, this would be someone fair minded who is not going to score things based on who wrote the arc, and ideally, you'd have several opinions to balance unintentional bias. I will warn you, just doing this part is really really hard. The number of people who will step forward and head something up like this are few. People who judge can't usually enter, so that can limit your prospects there, so the rotating idea is sound. It'd be excellent if the names of the authors could be changed while they are being judged, to reduce bias and blame, but idk if that is even possible. Anyway. Once you get your criteria and candidates for evaluation down, you can then set a date for the contest and contact either a lead GM or a Council member, and propose the plan. You'd request approval for this contest on this date with these prizes (designation of Dev Choice awards, or, rename them to People's Choice awards or Choice of the City awards or something). They'll respond with either a yes or a no, or they could ask for more information; but that would be an approach likely to give you the best results. The Council is not likely to take the time to do Dev Choice, they are very busy, but they also like community participation, and they are willing to, even want to, help, and they will give awards. The Council members I've had the most contact with re: player requests and interactions would be Arcanum, WIdower, and Conviction.

[Jiro Ito]

Thank you so much for the detailed response Dacy!

 

 

[ZamuelNow]

Thanks for the information, Dacy.

 

This does leave me with a question for people: Is this initiative primarily to get new Dev Choice missions or to bring more plays to story missions in AE?  These are overlapping but not actually the same goal.

[UltraAlt]

On 10/27/2024 at 1:22 PM, ZamuelNow said:

This does leave me with a question for people: Is this initiative primarily to get new Dev Choice missions or to bring more plays to story missions in AE?  These are overlapping but not actually the same goal.

 

For me, it would be for making Story Arcs easier to find in the AE. They are currently buried under farms.

 

Obviously, Farms get more plays than anything else. Obviously, Farms are played repeatedly by the same people. This gives them a chance to get Hall of Fame over time - as it is based on plays.

Story Arcs simply aren't played that much.

 

I think Farms are also going to tend to get 5 stars from pretty much everyone that plays them, so that puts many Farms in the 5 star list.

 

Devs Choice, hopefully, never picked farms for that level of "story" recognition. At least, I would hope that the Devs Choice were based on "story" and not on "farm-ability". 

 

All that being said, I have had at least one my arcs was called a "farm with a story" - probably because of two of the maps picked are large open areas. The enemies, however, were not the kind of enemies that one would but in a farm to make farming easy - which is the whole point of a farm.

 

I'm assuming those that make Farms would have no issue with their farm missions being marked with a Farm icon.

Based on my prior comment, I think that a player should have a right to have the Farm icon removed if its placed on an arc that they created as a Story Arc.

 

I also think that any arc granted Community Choice icon should not be a Farm and should clearly be a Story arc. And I do mean arc; I don't think that Community Choice should go to one or two mission Story arcs. I think it should be at least three missions long. 

 

To me, things that set story arcs apart from farming are the dialog, enemy choices, complexity in the arc, and obvious story progression through the arc - both in story and setting/maps.  

 

On 10/27/2024 at 4:37 AM, Dacy said:

you decide your criteria for judging and who is best qualified to evaluate that criteria. Then it comes down to, who is WILLING to evaluate the criteria and who is someone people are willing to be evaluated by. Ideally, this would be someone fair minded who is not going to score things based on who wrote the arc, and ideally, you'd have several opinions to balance unintentional bias. I will warn you, just doing this part is really really hard. The number of people who will step forward and head something up like this are few. People who judge can't usually enter, so that can limit your prospects there, so the rotating idea is sound.

 

This is all sound.

The people that would want to promote this are the most likely to want to have their arcs played.

I keep my mask on, but I wouldn't feel fair to judge my own arcs if it was going to grant a reward. That being said, I would like other people to find my story arc in hopes that they would enjoy them and they are lost in a sea of stuff so no one is likely to find them if they are just browsing for a mission to play in the AE terminal.

 

So maybe the route to go is to figure out when people could play together consistently (day of the week and say a 2 hours time - most weeks - kind of like Tanker Tuesdays). Once the group can gather, then people that want to participate can generate a list of missions to play; tack new missions added to the list on to the end but mix it up so that one creator's arcs aren't being run back to back. The group can use /LFG to fill if they have room/want. (As far as I know, players can still join AE arcs at any time - unlike task forces, etc.) If the team doesn't finish an arc in one week, it rolls over to the next week.

 

Does this sound like something that will make a step toward achieve the goal of Story missions being played in the AE?

[Dacy]

Now, I'm not usually in this topic area, but I have to say, I've always thought AE was a brilliant add to the game, and it's been disappointing that it's not caught on more.

 

As someone who is -not- deep into AE, but who has gotten into some stories sometimes, here is my perspective, fwiw.

 

I typically play with a friend, and we duo about everything. I've asked before, do you want to go play some stories on AE, because my friend is big on story; I thought it would be a natural fit. But no, because of "balance issues"; the custom critters can be super nasty. That surprised me, because as a team, we routinely tackle things we should not, at a high difficulty. We duo'd the ITF with a scrapper and defender at 1 star. I won't say that was oh wow, how did they ever do that, but clearly it is also not the easy route. But super nasty critters in AE can come swooping in and you have no way to gauge their difficulty before you're in the thick of it, and unless you're really in tune with what powers and powersets  and combinations are going to cause the most havoc to the most teams as a AE writer, you can easily cause problems for people trying to play it without realizing it. And from the outside, reading the description, you get the standard warning of "this arc may contain" blah blah blah dangerous things, but you can't really tell HOW dangerous.

 

We did create a duo just to do AE arcs, tho. I got to look through to find them. Looking for stories is just *hard*. Sure, you have the Dev Choice, but those are pretty limited in number, and if you're trying to go for staying just in AE, it's hard to go that route. We wanted:

• Stories that were consistent with our level throughout the arc
• Stories that were in line with our alignment (we were blue, and a great many of the stories I saw were red or at best, vigilante)
• Arcs that we could approach with the difficulty set to what we'd normally set our team at for whatever level, and be able to handle it with a bit of a stretch, that's the sweet spot.
• and of course, a good story.

If I could have gone farther into what would be nice, it would be following a story through quite a few levels. Levels appropriate for your character. Yes, your character adjusts to the level of the mission, but we all know that a low level being bumped up to say, 45 or 50, is still a low level in many ways, and is going to get creamed. Yet many many missions aimed their level at the highest levels. Many others jumped around; we eliminated those from consideration. We ended up taking the duo out for a while and doing TFs, because it was just really difficult to find missions with a good story for blue side that were consistent with their levels through the arc. Now, starting out. there are a few low level arcs, but finding them after that and being able to progress a character through AE while being true to your character's level proved to be too much of a challenge. We wanted to spend the time in the missions, NOT searching through an uncooperative and ultimately uninformative UI.

 

Either there were not enough missions written for lower level characters that were consistent, not being a low level for the first story and then jumping up to a higher level for the next, for example, or it was too difficult to find such stories. I would like more categories or tags, or something, to help people who aren't super familiar with the UI, find  stories they will want to play. First, yes, let's separate farms from the stories. And I know there's a way to separate out things by alignment and so forth, and we are not likely to get work done on the UI, but as I see it, the biggest problem is there are just way too many stories, and it doesn't seem as tho any of them ever get weeded OUT. There's no way to see multiple arcs that are connected. There's no way to see which arcs or missions are written with the story as the priority.

 

Have anyone considered creating a directory of sorts?  A competition can pick out great stories, yes, but also create problems in the community; there are also people who really do not want to compete, and they can be some of the better writers, even. And even if a story does not win, that does not mean that the story isn't good. What about a directory where you can set up the UI how you'd like it? Our base directory was created with that in mind, so we could find a base whether we were looking for bases by a particular person, or in a particular theme, or we just knew something about the base, like, "it was a castle, really big, and dark" and then we could use those key words to find bases that had those characteristics.  You could set up one for AE story arcs where you could look for connected stories, story arcs by topic as well as alignment, and stories written at a particular level and which are consistent at that level across the arc. Or whatever you come up with, you are more expert at this. But, having had some experience with usability, I would ask people who are NOT experts to evaluate what you're doing as you go, so you know that people not so familiar can find what they want. Regardless, I think that it's likely that such a directory would be hugely pared down from the mess that is the AE computer, now; plus, you'd get the story authors who are most interested in listing their works. Once we can FIND them, more people might run the stories and rate them. An icon might help with sorting out the current directory, sure; but you'd have to get the Council to do that, and I would not place bets on that happening soon, if at all.

 

I know I would use such a resource! I mean, how do you find books you like? You go to the subject area you are interested in. Help me find an arc that's consistently written for a fairly narrow security level, where I can find things for my preferred alignment, that isn't going to be maxed with unexpected difficulty, and bonus if I can see that it has other arcs that connect to it, and I will give it a go if I'm looking for something new to do. I will bet that there are a lot of players who are intimidated by the thought of trying to sift through that interface to find a story worth playing. Instead, players rely on word of mouth or players they know.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 10/26/2024 at 10:17 AM, ZamuelNow said:

Intriguingly, I think they do care but there's a combination of it being subtle and that dev time isn't infinite.  Some of the developer insight about the under the hood work on the Labyrinth revealed that part of it's creation stemmed from trying to make more interesting mission structure.  There's been a lot of interesting under the hood changes to the game as a whole that will probably do a lot for the game when they get expanded.  What catches my attention the most is when AE stuff actually gets fixed.  Makes me wonder what we can do that would help them the most when it comes to bug fixes.

Somewhere in the past, maybe near the beginning of the year?  Late last? Further back?  I ended up being able to directly address a dev her eon the forums to highlight to still-ongoing problem with how everyone on a map speaks their "unaware" line when you zone in; they said they'd look into it...  That's about all I have to offer right now.  I do certainly hope for more...

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, Dacy said:

But super nasty critters in AE can come swooping in and you have no way to gauge their difficulty before you're in the thick of it, and unless you're really in tune with what powers and powersets  and combinations are going to cause the most havoc to the most teams as a AE writer, you can easily cause problems for people trying to play it without realizing it.

 

Sounds like running into any new group of enemies in the game in general.

If you don't know the "gimmick" of a enemy group, they will always have the upper hand.

 

As a long time creator for the AE, making a story arc with enemies that are intentional easy ... isn't really a Story Arc ... it is a Farm.

 

Can you create enemies that are impossible to defeat by certain combinations or number of characters?

Sure. You can put Giant Monsters into AE arcs.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

And from the outside, reading the description, you get the standard warning of "this arc may contain" blah blah blah dangerous things, but you can't really tell HOW dangerous.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

We did create a duo just to do AE arcs, tho. I got to look through to find them. Looking for stories is just *hard*. Sure, you have the Dev Choice, but those are pretty limited in number, and if you're trying to go for staying just in AE, it's hard to go that route. We wanted:

• Stories that were consistent with our level throughout the arc
• Stories that were in line with our alignment (we were blue, and a great many of the stories I saw were red or at best, vigilante)
• Arcs that we could approach with the difficulty set to what we'd normally set our team at for whatever level, and be able to handle it with a bit of a stretch, that's the sweet spot.
• and of course, a good story.

 

I used try to make AE missions for different level ranges that were consistent throughout the arc.

With around half of the players at this point only playing level 50's  (or in the process of power-leveling to level 50), most players don't want to play any AE content that is going to gimp them from using their level 50 powers.

 

It would be good to be able to search the AE for a level range, but I don't remember being able to do that.

 

If you want "Blue" story arcs, all of mine are "heroic". Debately, some might be considered vigilante by some, but they are intended to be at the core heroic arcs.

In fact, most of the Story arcs that I have picked to play from the AE are "heroic" story arcs. That can't be said for some of the story arcs that a fellow player has picked to play when I was on an AE team.

Of course, they are buried alive under a sea of Farms, haven't had enough plays to be "Hall of Fame", and haven't been picked to be "Devs Choice". And that is what most of this thread started to be about - other creators are in the same position.

 

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

We wanted to spend the time in the missions, NOT searching through an uncooperative and ultimately uninformative UI.

 

Er, what?

 

So you don't want a Story? You just want a fight? ... but an easy one?

 

Seems like you are looking for Farms and not Story arcs, but I might not be following you.

 

Yes, it is very hard to find "good" story arcs in the AE ... and that seems to be what this thread is about - finding some way to make actual Story Arcs more visible to the community by denoting them in easier ways in the interface.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

I would like more categories or tags, or something, to help people who aren't super familiar with the UI, find  stories they will want to play.

 

Not everyone is going to know to go to https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect_Tags and look up "tags" to use for the search feature in the AE.

Not every AE creator is going to add "tags" to their Story Arcs.

The whole player-based "tag" system was created almost immediately to try to differentiate story arcs from farms, but the "tags" system is not intuitive and the Mission Architect (itself) never really references the use of "tags".

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

Either there were not enough missions written for lower level characters that were consistent, not being a low level for the first story and then jumping up to a higher level for the next, for example, or it was too difficult to find such stories.

 

It is generally less likely for players to play low level AE missions.

If you feel that there need to be more "leveling" missions in the AE, then you seem to know the kind of missions that you should create to fill in the gaps.

Please create missions to fill in those gaps.

 

Like base builders, the AE creators are creating missions that they think are enjoyable to play.

Some are character or supergroup-centric. I have written one of those myself (but tried to leave it open so that the character is playing it is the focus even if it was created as a mission arc for a specific character). This is not my favorite mode, but some players really like recruiting players to run arc to show how great their character is (Devs have been known to do this as well).

Most strive to make arcs that they believer are fun to play.

Some are intentionally trying to make the missions challenging because they don't find the game in general challenging enough.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

Have anyone considered creating a directory of sorts?

 

There is already one built into the AE, but, yeah, I know it doesn't work as intended.

Farms were not intended.

 

I know what you are going for. I know what you did with the base listings.

I was against it.

I gave up on the base building community as it seemed to very elitist.

 

I can certainly hope that the those that want to promote the AE can avoid that, but I have already seen who some of the AE creator community treats players that try to promote their missions in the forums.

Others have said that it has dissuaded them from creating more content.

I can't say I'm super motivated to "correct" missions that were broken in the move from before the Sunset to Homecoming's changes or flesh-out arcs that I have the basic framework laid out on already.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

But, having had some experience with usability, I would ask people who are NOT experts to evaluate what you're doing as you go, so you know that people not so familiar can find what they want.

 

Apparently, the discussion is limited to a few.

If the few can't even organize to play AE missions together, shooting for some star in the sky is only a pipe dream.

I think that the "Tanker Tuesday" model is the first mode to try at this point. If that gets going consistently, them maybe the AE creator community can gain some traction and DEV attention.

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

know I would use such a resource! I mean, how do you find books you like? You go to the subject area you are interested in. Help me find an arc that's consistently written for a fairly narrow security level, where I can find things for my preferred alignment, that isn't going to be maxed with unexpected difficulty, and bonus if I can see that it has other arcs that connect to it, and I will give it a go if I'm looking for something new to do. I will bet that there are a lot of players who are intimidated by the thought of trying to sift through that interface to find a story worth playing. Instead, players rely on word of mouth or players they know.

 

yes.

Use the https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect_Tags

If you find a creator you like, then you can search by their name.

 

And, yes, I think everyone that has been involved in this thread knows:

 

4 hours ago, Dacy said:

I will bet that there are a lot of players who are intimidated by the thought of trying to sift through that interface to find a story worth playing.

 

Doesn't it seem to be the point of this thread to somehow mark missions in the AE that are "good" story arcs so that they can be easily found by players?