gemmaethanwhitaker said:
PCHeintz72, I believe you're confusing AA with BEA, BEA's chain view functions as you describe, but AA's (As of something like two years before it went down, and likely longer) included a full list of branches at the end of each episode, even those unused, I've got some MAFF's if you need proof.
Blinks...
Ehhh... I'm not confusing the two. Of them, the AA had/has much better navigation. But both could be fairly cumbersome.
What I'm referring to is how users utilized the utilities to view the stories. There were several, each with various downsides and upsides.
I personally preferring linking to the chain page showing all episodes associated with a episode chain, and reading them not in order posted, but in numerical order, thus reading all the plot threads in a chain at same time. I almost never actually clicked on those bottom links in each episode.
Some would instead go to a chain page, and read top to bottom, as that would be in order posted, not in order by episode number.
Some would go to a chain pages first episode, and read the rest by navigating the options at the bottom of each thread.
Some, would go to the last known episode of a chain, and go to the utilities and make a custom chain going back x number of episodes, then use the custom generated HTML to read the story, this skips all the other possibilities.
I've heard of a few, that only read eps by specific authors, to do tht, needed to go to author page and look for the relevent thread title , and read in chronological order.
There were other methods, most variations on the above.