AE... should exceptional PLAYER content and/or difficult as in 801's give reward table ala 'signature story arcs'?

[shortguy on indom]

There are great player based generated arcs in AE whether they are farming, themed, difficult toon testers, etc.

Within the limited confines of the AE system, they have produced some great content.

Would be nice if the authors were recognized for their efforts in some way.

Folks that run this stuff, at least the best stuff maybe should be rewarded similarly...merits/aether/temp powers/ whatever.....

 

Lot's of time goes into creating one of these... maybe an 'AE arc of the week' om LFG or something?  Some way to recognize the effort is all.

 

Thoughts?

 

[lemming]

We could have something like Developer's Choice, or even a Hall of Fame!

[Snarky]

NO.  Because it would immediately start the “gaming” of parameters and creation of a new type of farm.  That is not even debatable.  I mean, you can debate it.  Or you can look at every single bit of electronic gaming ever done.  It WILL be farmed.  
 

I would like to see exceptional AE writers given leeway to write longer arcs that are available through regular contacts outside AE.  But no special rewards.  Standard missions, a story arc, the standard merit reward at the end.  More or less the same as all the old contacts. Except newer, fresher, and perhaps with more depth and ties to lore. 

Edited March 17, 2024 by Snarky

[Wicked Weather]

I would just like them to add farm as a tag to AE and then remove all farm mish unless you press that tag so I don't need to search threw 500 farms to find a mish someone made that's not dev choice 

[Greycat]

Aside from the "it will be abused," it'd likely need to have someone dedicated on the dev team to go *through* those arcs and make whatever changes would need to be made for it to have that "extra reward" - then lock it down so it's not suddenly changed afterward.

 

Besides, who decides what's exceptional enough content that should get rewarded like this? Even dev/player choice is, at its heart, a popularity contest. Who's gotten word out, who's been noticed, who hits a particularly vocal (and willing to rate) group - there's also content that can be quite good but requires outside context (such as ongoing RP in a SG.) A *lot* of work can go into those - and they'd never get any sort of recognition. (And yeah, I did these for a SG - large enough that some weeks I'd sometimes have three to run simultaneously to handle different aspects of a threat. Frequently. It turned into a second job. And while the SG generally liked them, they'd have made no real sense to anyone outside with all the references.)

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Besides, who decides what's exceptional enough content that should get rewarded like this? 

This. What's exceptional is subjective. Dev's choice DID give us a window into some quality work. But even that is subject to the tastes of the reviewer. One reviewer's masterpiece is another's yawnfest. I DO think the filter button is a good idea, especially since I'm regularly searching for SFMA arcs.

[shortguy on indom]

9 hours ago, lemming said:

We could have something like Developer's Choice, or even a Hall of Fame!

Not sure the Dev Choice even functions these days.  HoF does.

[shortguy on indom]

8 hours ago, Snarky said:

NO.  Because it would immediately start the “gaming” of parameters and creation of a new type of farm.  That is not even debatable.  I mean, you can debate it.  Or you can look at every single bit of electronic gaming ever done.  It WILL be farmed.

Hmm. 

You know that farming in AE is a thing right?

 

How would this differ from 'merit farming' itrials, GM's, Hard Mode content?

[shortguy on indom]

1 hour ago, cranebump said:

This. What's exceptional is subjective. Dev's choice DID give us a window into some quality work. But even that is subject to the tastes of the reviewer. One reviewer's masterpiece is another's yawnfest. I DO think the filter button is a good idea, especially since I'm regularly searching for SFMA arcs.

 

...but that is not really the point.  Statistics like how many players have played it during the month, etc.  I do not know exactly.  

The reward for AE arc writing could be as simple as a 'special title' like what is done for fashion contests.

 

With game updates, every so often we get 5 or so new arcs... if that suffices the masses then so be it.

Just looking at AE writing being more of a thing than it is, for little reward and small exposure.

 

[SeraphimKensai]

I enjoyed the arcs I've played of @cranebump , @Darmian, and @Ankylosaur. I also like the difficulty of @Linea's missions.

 

I've thought it would be a cool idea to have player-author review panel for awhile now that would vote on missions that get added to help draw attention to well written story arcs to help others see them. They could have representation from the HC mission writing team as well.

[Darmian]

21 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I enjoyed the arcs I've played of @cranebump , @Darmian, and @Ankylosaur. I also like the difficulty of @Linea's missions.

 

I've thought it would be a cool idea to have player-author review panel for awhile now that would vote on missions that get added to help draw attention to well written story arcs to help others see them. They could have representation from the HC mission writing team as well.

Thanks for playing our stuff @SeraphimKensai. I personally am slower than others, because I'm very particular about Lore stuff.  And even then that can be subjective to a player's POV. 

[Snarky]

56 minutes ago, shortguy on indom said:

Hmm. 

You know that farming in AE is a thing right?

 

How would this differ from 'merit farming' itrials, GM's, Hard Mode content?

It would not differ.  My whole point, which I evidently was not good at communicating, was that it would be farmed like everything else.  

[Jiro Ito]

1 hour ago, shortguy on indom said:

Not sure the Dev Choice even functions these days.  HoF does.

 

I believe the last round of Dev Choice arcs was awarded for the winter holiday arc contest, Christmas 2022.

 

1 hour ago, shortguy on indom said:

The reward for AE arc writing could be as simple as a 'special title' like what is done for fashion contests.

 

A Dev Choice award does come with a permanent special title.

 

 

I'm down for any love thrown in the AE direction!

[TerroirNoir2]

Oh yes, there's some excellent AEs in the game.  I should know, I've played a few of them!

[Lockely]

9 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

 

I believe the last round of Dev Choice arcs was awarded for the winter holiday arc contest, Christmas 2022.

 

 

There really should be like, a twice-yearly Dev Choice contest to both encourage great AE usage, and award people who put in the effort to make that system actually work.

[Rudra]

I don't know about others, but I just want people to at least try my arc. I have a followup arc that I've been sitting on because so far only 2 people have even done the one arc I published. (They both rated it 5s, and I appreciate that, but I was hoping for feedback as well. And only 2 having tried the arc in the time it's been sitting in AE isn't exactly encouraging for putting together the followup arc.)

[Clave Dark 5]

On 3/16/2024 at 9:20 PM, shortguy on indom said:

Folks that run this stuff, at least the best stuff maybe should be rewarded similarly...merits/aether/temp powers/ whatever.....

Don't we already have enough ways to be given stuff?  This is essentially a form of power creep, "reward creep" i suppose.

 

An aside: why did they stop giving Dev Choices, HoFs etc.?  I got lucky and got one during that last round for Christmas stories but yeah, that like 2022.  And let me tell you, those gold stars lead a lot of people to play them; I think my current only gold-starred arc broke 200 plays recently, while my other arcs haven't cracked double digits yet (iirc).

[Lockely]

Just now, Clave Dark 5 said:

Don't we already have enough ways to be given stuff?  This is essentially a form of power creep, "reward creep" i suppose.

 

An aside: why did they stop giving Dev Choices, HoFs etc.?  I got lucky and got one during that last round for Christmas stories but yeah, that like 2022.  And let me tell you, those gold stars lead a lot of people to play them; I think my current only gold-starred arc broke 200 plays recently, while my other arcs haven't cracked double digits yet (iirc).

 

Without the Gold Stars, the only people playing stories are those of us in the AE forum advertising and playing each others'. No one is searching SFMA because it's not a standardized or advertised thing in-game, and people aren't going to waste their time trying to find the diamond in the rough of 30000 identical farms and missions where even a basic grammar and spelling pass hasn't been done. People like @cranebump and @LordRassilon are true heroes for diving in and posting reviews/streams of the good stuff to bring more attention to it.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Don't we already have enough ways to be given stuff?  This is essentially a form of power creep, "reward creep" i suppose.

 

An aside: why did they stop giving Dev Choices, HoFs etc.?  I got lucky and got one during that last round for Christmas stories but yeah, that like 2022.  And let me tell you, those gold stars lead a lot of people to play them; I think my current only gold-starred arc broke 200 plays recently, while my other arcs haven't cracked double digits yet (iirc).

I can only guess.  The two roadblocks that would be easy to see are 1) time/organization commitment to do it 2) significant negative blowback from the last run at it.  

[Clave Dark 5]

Yeah, I'm guessing it was the first one.  Maybe the person who worked on that as a passion project left.

[CrusaderDroid]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

I don't know about others, but I just want people to at least try my arc. I have a followup arc that I've been sitting on because so far only 2 people have even done the one arc I published. (They both rated it 5s, and I appreciate that, but I was hoping for feedback as well. And only 2 having tried the arc in the time it's been sitting in AE isn't exactly encouraging for putting together the followup arc.)

I'll try and hunt this down and run it with my friends tonight, if that helps.

[CaptainMarvelous]

A problem we haven't really touched on yet either is how we decide who reviews these arcs for any sort of benefit or reward. Let's say we create a council of the "best" AE writers by vote. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't be biased. It also means AE story arcs will be created and changed less to tell stories that creators are passionate about and more so stories to appeal to this "council". If I know JohnSmith on the council really loves comedy stories and really hates serious gritty stuff, Id move more towards comedy to be recognized by him, regardless if I am good at comedy or not.

 

Which I think comes down to the core problem with putting a special sticker on AE missions: If we have someone CHOOSE who is the best, then there may be issues in how content is made and biases or nepotism.

 

HOWEVER, I do feel one thing we could do is give bigger rewards not to arcs that are already popular but give a small bonus for playing newer/less popular arcs. For example, if a random arc all of 3 people played getting pushed to the top as the weekly AE bonus? That'd make more people engage with it. And maybe it'd be good! Maybe it's bad! Either way, people will give feedback and criticism on it while boosting perhaps unknown creators!

[Darmian]

On 3/18/2024 at 2:03 AM, Rudra said:

I don't know about others, but I just want people to at least try my arc. I have a followup arc that I've been sitting on because so far only 2 people have even done the one arc I published. (They both rated it 5s, and I appreciate that, but I was hoping for feedback as well. And only 2 having tried the arc in the time it's been sitting in AE isn't exactly encouraging for putting together the followup arc.)

See, this is exactly why an SFMA and Farm tab option needs to be considered.

[Darmian]

Hmm, it involves work but..a sort of AE equivalent of a film festival?  The arcs will be whatever passion project the writer has and not dictated by a "council" with preconceptions? I need to think about this some more but if anyone has ideas on this post them here and maybe we can hash out a sort of version of community rep for the AE?

[CaptainMarvelous]

7 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Hmm, it involves work but..a sort of AE equivalent of a film festival?  The arcs will be whatever passion project the writer has and not dictated by a "council" with preconceptions? I need to think about this some more but if anyone has ideas on this post them here and maybe we can hash out a sort of version of community rep for the AE?

Sounds like something you could set up yourself and/or with some teamwork! Make it less a competition and maybe more of a monthly (?) celebration of AE story arcs featuring popular vets, up-and-coming architects, wild cards and more!