Compiled Dev Choice Awards for HC. (ongoing)

[cranebump]

25 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

But back to the idea of a list. The idea behind this is simple and clear and seems self-evident, really. However, I know from painful experience, this is unfortunately not something that would be simple to do, and will probably blow up in the face of anyone who tries it. 

 

@cranebump is standing right over there, Dacy.   I mean, sure, they've caught flack but...

Ha! I guess. I wouldn't consider any of it major. 

 

The one thing I wish everyone would embrace is the subjectivity of the whole thing. One person's masterpiece is another person's "wha-?" From the writing side of it, you say thanks for the kudos and take what's usable from the criticism. 

 

Speaking of, I need to go back and actually provide some useful criticism. My last review post wasn't too beneficial.

[Darmian]

23 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

This is a game based on comic books. Apparently, that fact has gone over the heads of what appears to be the "core" AE mission-crafting community.

Surely this is subjective.  And subjectively speaking I've created AEs that attempt to fit right into the canon of what's in game (specifically my Praetorian based ones), a short "What if..." style Cimerora mission, another Cimerora one that "fills a gap", and finally (so far in my paused career as an AE writer) an attempt to create a "Supers TV show long form set of arcs" that seek to inject some comic book chutzpah into various parts of the game world.

 

Others have outright Elseworlded AEs so far that I'm not even sure their arcs are set in COH/COV.  And that isn't actually a complaint! Some of those are amazing.

 

(I'm trailing @cranebump and @Ankylosaur in the productivity stakes though.  I console myself that I'm more fastidious than they are, but I mainly don't have the time right now)

 

The AE definitely has its limitations.  But apart from having to just learn how to use it, the biggest one isn't the AE itself.  It's players trying it out, not instantly getting what they want because...well, 10,000 hours to be an expert, you know?...and then abandoning it as a bad deal, or however they phrase it. If I had a way of removing every "I did this as a test" arc that is STILL sitting in the list since 2019 unplayed then I would.

 

Edited Tuesday at 09:24 PM by Darmian

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

Surely this is subjective. 

 

 

 

You miss my point. When people were cranking out work for comics and even sci-fi and mystery pulps, there were plenty of spelling errors and grammatical errors.

I fully understand that we are in a world that there are programs that will check spelling, grammar, and even tell you how you are supposed to word things. Those, however, are not in the game. And also, your creativity as a writer is stripped away and replaced by "how it is supposed to be done".

 

I think that this modern need for perfection has jaded people.

 

 

Though some writers of comics today are working to craft "literature", the goal of comics once was (and probably for the most part still is) simply an enjoyable experience to escape from the "mundane" world.

Perfection is not necessary to tell a fun story or provide an enjoyable experience.

 

I can understand how spelling errors, grammar, and punctuation trip some people up. They simply can't enjoy something that doesn't meet their standards.

That doesn't mean that other people can't.

I seriously have to wonder how many players that have been playing for a while even bother reading the mission text. If you are on a team, then only the mission holder is reading the text. The rest of the team is along for the ride and only seeing the NPC word bubbles in the missions.

Is anyone even bothering reading the mission text when they run a task force? Yeah, the few that report spelling and grammar errors in these forums (and maybe discord) but the rest of the player base? They really don't bother. They are having fun playing the game.

 

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

And subjectively speaking I've created AEs that attempt to fit right into the canon

 

The AE doesn't have to be about "canon" stories.

The AE is for players to be creative in creating adventures. City of Heroes is based on the superhero genre in general. Agreed that City of Heroes has its own superhero environment.

Trying to make something a "canon" story requires very rigid following of the existing narrative and that is not a requirement of a good story mission in the AE as far as I'm concerned.

 

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

Others have outright Elseworlded AEs so far that I'm not even sure their arcs are set in COH/COV. 

 

Yes.  But who are these "others" of which you speak?

The Community in general?

 

I've seen plenty of good pulp stories, superhero stories, etc.

The point is that those genres historically are rife with spelling and grammatical but that didn't take away from the enjoyment of most of those that read, purchased, and/or collected those products.

 

2 hours ago, Darmian said:

I console myself that I'm more fastidious than they are, but I mainly don't have the time right now

 

And most people don't have the time to produce stories for the AE if they are just going to get ripped apart in these forums because someone wants to overly criticize their creation and dissect it with a fine-toothed comb. They are creating adventures to be played and to be enjoyed.

 

And again. If the wish to be able to bestow the DEV's Choice on only the most perfectly crafted mission (who gets to decide what perfectly crafted means?) that does nothing to promote the AE mission writing community. All it does is create Elitism. An elitist group that feel that they are on some higher level that entitles them to harshly criticise people that are just trying to have fun writing missions quickly because they want to play in that environment.

 

I have a friend of mine that just shreds the overwriting in AE missions.

From my point of view, don't take the star then and you don't have to read it. Let's play it an see if it is fun to play.

 

2 hours ago, Darmian said:

Surely this is subjective.

 

And, yes. All criticism is subjective. You can be objective as you want, but in the end it is always affected by the subjective viewpoint of the observer.

 

Take Thor Ragnarok or Deadpool (in general). Apparently, many people love that stuff. I think they both contain humor that is crass and annoying to me. However, the market is there for it. It is what that demographic of the market wants.

 

I'm not saying that AE arcs are getting belittled because of the sense of humor. I'm saying that the creators of AE content that trying to promote their works because they want to share something that they created that they think is fun are being driven away by those that feel that they are superior ... not only superior, but need to be given a reward because they are better than everyone else and everyone should respect that they are superior.

 

If the DEVs aren't selecting the AE mission, It isn't really the DEV's Choice.

If the AE community wants to promote the use of the AE, they have to accept that not all players have the time to put an extensive amount of time into creating missions the way that perfectionist do.

 

2 hours ago, Darmian said:

The AE definitely has its limitations.  But apart from having to just learn how to use it, the biggest one isn't the AE itself.  It's players trying it out, not instantly getting what they want because...well, 10,000 hours to be an expert, you know?...and then abandoning it as a bad deal, or however they phrase it. If I had a way of removing every "I did this as a test" arc that is STILL sitting in the list since 2019 unplayed then I would.

 

Those missions are in the probably because, even though it was really still in testing, they may have thought they had to publish it before they could test it.

 

I think you are the first person that has mentioned arbitrarily going through and removing missions from the AE that you don't think should belong in the AE listings.

 

I think we all know that the AE is used for farming more than anything else.

Does anyone really care about the spelling and grammar if the farm is yielding them the rewards that they seek? No.

 

If a mission is fun to play, how much difference does it make to the average player if mission arc is cranked out for the environment, enemies, and story frame work versus a subjectively "perfect" work? I have the feeling - for the average player - none at all.

 

And I also think that most players that are going to the AE to look for a story mission (rather than farming) are looking for something different and fun to play.

I'm never searching for a story mission labelled as "canon" when I use the AE.

[Darmian]

6 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

When people were cranking out work for comics and even sci-fi and mystery pulps, there were plenty of spelling errors and grammatical errors.

Yeah absolutely true.  However IRL I'm an editor, and if you knew how many of these early publishers didn't bother to hire someone like me because that's a waste of money then...no, you wouldn't be surprised because the evidence is still there to see.  If the stories were good then you got away with it. If they weren't it wouldn't matter how many editors you had.  I'm convoluting things here, but in general I think I'm agreeing with you. In general.

 

However, I completely disagree with the elitism take.  So I ask: why wouldn't you (not you personally, @UltraAlt, the generic "you"), want to get better at what you do?  To make sure that your mistakes aren't repeated?  I'd like my second arc to be better than my first, my tenth to be better than the ninth, and so on. If someone tries the AE and likes it, gets beyond a "test" mission then the learning process tends to kick in and that learning process drives improvement.  And I'm very much NOT speaking here about others reviewing what I've written and telling me I screwed up or whatever. Or telling me I've done well and resting on imaginary laurels. I'm speaking about me wanting to be better at a thing I really enjoy doing.

 

29 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

The AE doesn't have to be about "canon" stories.

Yeah, my sentence ran on a bit longer than my reference to canon style stories though.

 

You've got some valid points.  You've got a few I disagree with, as you know. But you've highlighted something here that needs looking at.  We're no longer speaking of Dev Choices but of ways to make Story Arcs visible. There's (currently) 14,267 listed arcs in the AE.  I hate to think how many are farms.

 

41 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

I think you are the first person that has mentioned arbitrarily going through and removing missions from the AE that you don't think should belong in the AE listings.

 

Well, there's roughly 300 arcs in the AE as of right now with "Test" with no plays, the earliest dating to 2020. I'm not suggesting penalizing players.  If you've got a single mission"Test run v6" unplayed for 4+ years then deleting it and returning that AE slot to a player isn't unreasonable I think. If others think it is then fair enough.

 

50 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

I'm never searching for a story mission labelled as "canon" when I use the AE.

And I prefer to look for them because I love the comic book universe of COH/COV.  But different strokes for different folks. 

[Clave Dark 5]

9 hours ago, cranebump said:

Ha! I guess. I wouldn't consider any of it major. 

 

The one thing I wish everyone would embrace is the subjectivity of the whole thing. One person's masterpiece is another person's "wha-?" From the writing side of it, you say thanks for the kudos and take what's usable from the criticism. 

 

Speaking of, I need to go back and actually provide some useful criticism. My last review post wasn't too beneficial.

And that's how you do it.  "I played this story, liked this, not that, and think this needs work but ultimately enjoyed it/didn't like it."  Then we read it and make our own judgements.  And people like you putting together these lists is very helpful considering the mess of AE's list and the apparent Dev apathy to award more Dev Choices.

Edited Wednesday at 01:51 AM by Clave Dark 5

[cranebump]

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.

Edited Wednesday at 02:00 AM by cranebump

[cranebump]

12 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

the mess of AE's list and the apparent Dev apathy to award more Dev Choices.

 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.

[Clave Dark 5]

27 minutes ago, cranebump said:

They’re a small group of busy volunteers, so I don’t begrudge them having a life outside the game.

Oh, I agree their time is limited... yet look at what they dedicated those precious few hours to: a farming arena, as if a game that allows AFK Farming needed more farming options ha ha!  It's like taking the possible sweeping epic of a great DnD campaign and turning it into a side-scroller.  It's pretty clear where their interest lies and it is not in the AE story telling.

[UltraAlt]

7 hours ago, Darmian said:

I'm convoluting things here, but in general I think I'm agreeing with you. In general.

 

Thank you.

 

7 hours ago, Darmian said:

So I ask: why wouldn't you (not you personally, @UltraAlt, the generic "you"), want to get better at what you do?  To make sure that your mistakes aren't repeated?  I'd like my second arc to be better than my first, my tenth to be better than the ninth, and so on. If someone tries the AE and likes it, gets beyond a "test" mission then the learning process tends to kick in and that learning process drives improvement.  And I'm very much NOT speaking here about others reviewing what I've written and telling me I screwed up or whatever. Or telling me I've done well and resting on imaginary laurels. I'm speaking about me wanting to be better at a thing I really enjoy doing.

 

Improvement takes time.

I think you understand that.

 

Discouraging people doesn't foster further development/improvement.

Mentoring them does.

 

But this thread started as a listing DEV's Choice awards - which were no longer being handed out to "I really think it's time that the Dev's Choice was reinstated properly."

And, quickly, turned to "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....It'd be cool if farms and stories were separated somehow..."

 

I don't care about the DEV's Choice and who has been selected by the DEV's because it was entered into a contest.

I care about people here showing their creativity on whatever level they are able to do so and see the interesting things that they are able to create with the AE.

So I can get behind recognizing authors (in general) and having a way to more easily denote which AE arcs are farms and which are stories to the casual user so that they don't have to go to the wiki to try to figure out a way to search for non-farms.

 

I feel like that would be helpful to the community in general. It would possibly increase the number of players playing non-farm arcs and, possibly, the number of creative players creating arcs.

Will all of them be great? No.

Will they all deserve a 5? No.

It would be very hard for me to rate something that I played in the AE as a 1 unless it is completely unfinished, a disaster to play, and would fall into the category of ..

 

11 hours ago, Darmian said:

"I did this as a test" arc

 

Honestly, I might not even rate that as a 1 depending on the way it played.

 

I can't see rating anything that looks like a player put effort into less than a 3.

Regardless of any shortcomings, if I enjoy a mission, I don't rate it less than 4.

 

Trashing other people's works doesn't improve your own.

Acknowledging that someone has put in effort to make something that is enjoyable for them that they want to share in hopes that other people find it enjoyable as well seems to be the proper goal in this environment. None of us are being paid. We are doing this for fun. People are going to be able to create and refine on different levels.

 

7 hours ago, Darmian said:

However, I completely disagree with the elitism take.

 

That is what only focusing only the stories of DEV's Choice and a group that wants to gain DEV's Choice status even if the DEVs are no longer hosting the DEV's Choice awards is.

 

It has a complete disregard for any author outside of those who create arcs that would "win" a DEV's Choice award.

 

8 hours ago, Darmian said:

But you've highlighted something here that needs looking at.  We're no longer speaking of Dev Choices but of ways to make Story Arcs visible. 

 

👍

 

8 hours ago, Darmian said:

Well, there's roughly 300 arcs in the AE as of right now with "Test" with no plays, the earliest dating to 2020. I'm not suggesting penalizing players.  If you've got a single mission"Test run v6" unplayed for 4+ years then deleting it and returning that AE slot to a player isn't unreasonable I think. If others think it is then fair enough.

 

It isn't that I don't see where you are coming from on this. I do.

But are those "test" arcs hiding story arc as much as ....

 

8 hours ago, Darmian said:

There's (currently) 14,267 listed arcs in the AE.  I hate to think how many are farms.

 

And pretty obviously you are indicating they are marked as "test" so that pretty much makes them stand out for what they are.

 

9 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Those missions are in the probably because, even though it was really still in testing, they may have thought they had to publish it before they could test it.

 

I really can't see any other reason for a unplayed mission to be be marked as test.

Someone was trying to use the AE system, but really didn't understand how it works.

 

8 hours ago, Darmian said:

But different strokes for different folks. 

 

Exactly.

 

9 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Take Thor Ragnarok or Deadpool (in general). Apparently, many people love that stuff. I think they both contain humor that is crass and annoying to me. However, the market is there for it. It is what that demographic of the market wants.

 

As they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure".

 

[cranebump]

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.   

[Darmian]

For the sake of @TerroirNoir2's sanity(!) we need a second thread on this.  This is the Dev Choice thread.  And despite the hiatus (most likely due to the limited time/resources of the Dev/GM team) I think that the award will return at some point.  So with that said, any discussions of publicising ALL Story AEs should probably not be here in future.

 

 

[UltraAlt]

Certainly.

Why not?

Let's let this thread die until it is revisited by @TerroirNoir if the DEV's ever start having DEV's Choice awards again.

Let it drift to the bottom of the subforum.

 

That is the best way to hide the discussion that has been going on.

 

 

[Darmian]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

That is the best way to hide the discussion that has been going on.

No no.  I literally don't mean that.  Let's open a new thread, include a link to this as a reference for previous discussion and start afresh.

 

I've now opened this new thread here.

 

In the meantime I return this thread to Dev Choices.

Edited Friday at 02:40 PM by Darmian

[Icono04]

On 1/7/2025 at 12:02 AM, Police Woman said:

• The story should make me care about what happens, or make me feel some kind of way (whether happy, sad, amused, or horrified)

This is the only thing that really matters in an AE arc (or for that matter in any book, game, movie or any other work of fiction) for me. I very much agree with @Police Woman's list of 5 criteria, but for me, the other 4 are really the means for getting to the end goal - with the end goal being the 3rd bullet point as quoted above.