Encouraging higher visibility for AE story arcs and supporting AE story arc authors.

[Darmian]

Ok, the title may need to be changed.  Any suggestions happily accepted!

 

This thread is spun off of a discussion that started here about Dev Choice awards and developed into debate about the various criteria we look at to decide (subjectively) if a story arc is "good" or not.  All such comments are me phrasing things while currently at work and again may be revised when I get a chance to think more on how to put this.

 

We had some discussion on good, enjoyable, fun, all of that. Plenty of agreement and plenty of disagreement! We can explore that further hopefully. As well as that we hit the wall of how to make story arcs more visible to those who playing the AE.  

 

Further suggestions welcome!

Edited January 10 by Darmian

[ZamuelNow]

I'd say public team requests for story based teaming.  I state public since we know there are SGs that run AE together.  Biggest difficulty is people not wanting to lead teams.  The lesser difficulty might be figuring out shard culture since different shards may require different approaches.

[Police Woman]

Most of the AE story arcs I've played are heavy on mission briefing text, clues and linked objectives, all of which are pretty hard to follow when on a team, so story focused mission architect has seemed more like a solo activity to me.  

 

I'm not afraid to start teams, but the only (non-MA) story arcs I really go out of my way to start a team for are Tina McIntyre, Maria Jenkins and Flux's story arcs (because everyone loves beating up Praetorian arch villains, and everyone loves beating up Frostfire).

 

 

So for solo SFMA content, I mostly post here on this forum to promote it.  It's not a great way to reach new people though, because a player reading this forum is presumably already interested in Mission Architect.

 

For team based SFMA content, not sure?  What makes a good SFMA story arc for a team?  I love doing the Frostfire mission on a big team, but it's closer to a farm (hordes of mobs to kill, lots of exp and levels) than a story (barely any text to read; I guess we have a cut scene where Frostfire tells you he's not just a regular villain, he's actually very Complicated?).

 

Edited January 10 by Police Woman

[Darmian]

Good points @Police Woman. Breaking things into Team Play and Solo. 

[cranebump]

5 hours ago, Police Woman said:

Most of the AE story arcs I've played are heavy on mission briefing text, clues and linked objectives, all of which are pretty hard to follow when on a team, so story focused mission architect has seemed more like a solo activity to me. 

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.

Edited January 11 by cranebump

[Clave Dark 5]

6 hours ago, Police Woman said:

Most of the AE story arcs I've played are heavy on mission briefing text, clues and linked objectives, all of which are pretty hard to follow when on a team, so story focused mission architect has seemed more like a solo activity to me.   [etc.]

Agreed.  I've mentioned this here already, but over the holiday there was this one guy I kept running into asking for players to come along on his AE arc, "not a farm!" and he recruited heavily.  The arc I think was just one mission, the winter Croatoa map, with some standard enemies renamed to Christmas references, such as a Council werewolf renamed "Max" after the Grinch's dog.  That was it.  I think I checked the story and it was basically as short and thin a story as a Radio's text, "Whoa, a Christmas invasion, and they've stolen the P.L.O.T. device!" or whatever.

 

No clues, no linked objectives requiring you to run back and forth or to scour the map for, no fear of custom foes.  And he was getting takers, I joined hsi team like four times just for something different to do.

 

I was planning to maybe start a series of such "AE Radios" and see if I couldn't get teams like he did, but learning about the XP drop to anything AE, it seems a bit unlikely to take off.  But hey, if he could get people to join, maybe???

[Darmian]

Well this is a great start and long may it continue!

 

 

 

[ZamuelNow]

Been reading the posts here and...I have thoughts.  I'll ponder them some more after tomorrow's MASS because it connects to some of my thoughts on...not sure if 'the Homecoming meta' is the right term.  Especially since it's perception of mindset, as opposed to the actual meta.  But I guess a preview for whenever I post those thoughts is, the Abandoned Sewer Trial and the oil spill in Oil Spill...

[Clave Dark 5]

Looking forward to seeing that.

[ZamuelNow]

So...I think it was pointed out to me as opposed to my discovering it on my own.  Go to the sinking oil tanker, fly up, and look down.  Had a bit of a 'wow' seeing the Eye of Horus in the oil spill.  The instance for the Eden trial and the sheer expanse of the Shadow Shard were awe inspiring.  And then, the Abandoned Sewer Trial.  I was a nutcase who ran pug Abandon Sewer Trials pre shutdown.  There were both failures and successes that were memorable.  One of those that stuck with me was a tell I received after a completion: A woman who usually only got to play with her grandkids thanked me since that was her first time on one and she enjoyed the experience.

 

Experiences.  Mission Architect, for all its jank, is tailor made for us to give other players experiences.  And an experience is something that'll stick with most players regardless of the xp.  In that way, I'd say Clave's story about the "not a farm!" Christmas mission recruitment make perfect sense.  Most people like to team, hate being team leader, and are willing to do something new if not aggressively hard.  I think there's even breathing room for some minor complexity if the players get a heads up.  A team with a good vibe will go through a lot.

 

Solo vs Team play seems like a good mindset.  Some things that are just good mission design will apply to both but as several of us saw Sunday, things can flow a fair bit different in a group despite playing the arc before.  Missions with a forward flow, clear nav bar objectives, and good start/end mission popups sound like good starts but what ideas does everyone else have?  Also, I think we need good ideas of what to say in LFG or General to recruit people for a story based AE arc.

 

Homecoming might have a meta with a sizable gravitational pull but we may be able shift it in some situations with just a little MASS...

[Ankylosaur]

@LordRassilon has a weekly AE run on Twitch if you can be up at like 3 AM EST 🙂

[Clave Dark 5]

3 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

what ideas does everyone else have?

• That Christmas Arc Guy I talked about above was doing one thing right in not even addressing that any AE story is only half the usual XP, ha ha.  He got players to join sure, but they dropped a bit faster than say people on a PI radio team do; it was my perception that those joining were less-than-skilled or more exactly less experienced players.  More experienced players wouldn't just be doing something for fun, right?
• Leading a team thru a radio-type mission is fairly easy enough (just be sure it's not 4/8 if over half the team are under 20th level, say), but I do understand the aversion to wearing the star.
• What with the "meta" of HC being "line goes" mere number-acquisition (the idea that people do AFK farming still just floors me), plus little to no help from the Devs, we are clearly fighting an uphill battle.  Maybe we need to start running contests like the costume contests, "let's go play this AE story and one player on my team will will millions of numbers from me!"

 

First thought.  I may have more later. 

[ZamuelNow]

Out of curiosity, what server was the Christmas arc being run?

[Darmian]

18 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

olo vs Team play seems like a good mindset.  Some things that are just good mission design will apply to both but as several of us saw Sunday, things can flow a fair bit different in a group despite playing the arc before.  Missions with a forward flow, clear nav bar objectives, and good start/end mission popups sound like good starts but what ideas does everyone else have?  Also, I think we need good ideas of what to say in LFG or General to recruit people for a story based AE arc.

As I mentioned Sunday and somewhere else, I started using the exit mission clue to duplicate the debrief that the leader gets so that all the team can read it.  It's not perfect because you can easily lose it on the last mission if you are not being aware of what you're clicking, plus sometimes you NEED that last clue for stuff!

 

But that's one hacky workaround I'm using for some team play AEs.

 

[cranebump]

17 hours ago, Ankylosaur said:

@LordRassilon has a weekly AE run on Twitch if you can be up at like 3 AM EST 🙂

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

[Police Woman]

My current idea is that, because people like joining AE farms ... make something that looks like a farm, but sneak an actual story into it.  It would basically be a Trojan horse story arc.  It would need visually interesting custom characters, lots of stuff to kill for xp, have few or no clues, all story information revealed in NPC dialog that everyone can see.  Not sure if this would work, but I'm thinking about trying it.

Edited Wednesday at 09:39 AM by Police Woman

[Clave Dark 5]

On 1/14/2025 at 12:26 PM, Darmian said:

But that's one hacky workaround I'm using for some team play AEs.

That's not hacky, unless you meant it in a sort of metaphorical "sneaky way around existing problems" way.  That's a decent trick, I'll have to keep that in mind.

 

On 1/14/2025 at 10:58 AM, ZamuelNow said:

Out of curiosity, what server was the Christmas arc being run?

Excel.  The population size would probably help you get more players, sure.

[UltraAlt]

On 1/14/2025 at 2:26 PM, Darmian said:

As I mentioned Sunday and somewhere else, I started using the exit mission clue to duplicate the debrief that the leader gets so that all the team can read it.  It's not perfect because you can easily lose it on the last mission if you are not being aware of what you're clicking, plus sometimes you NEED that last clue for stuff!

 

But that's one hacky workaround I'm using for some team play AEs.

 

When I run on an AE team on missions run by a friend of mine, they always cut-and-paste all of the contact dialog into team chat so everyone on the team can read it (if they want to). So usually I do that back for them as a favor if i'm the one that pulled the arc.