Another_Fan

Seeing as come I15 I won't need to keep arcs up for ratings or badges. I will probably just unpublish and restart new ones from scratch.

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What they really should do is not just specify a limit, but code that into the game engine.

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You'd think they would have by now. But then their doing that presumes a lot of truth about what is actually an exploit and what isn't

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Why would they do that? Doing that would make them actually accountable, why would they want to be accountable when they don't need to be?

By leaving everything as nebulous as possible they can do as they please.

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BINGO !!!!!!!!!!!!

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So, how about this:

When you exit a mission, you are given a few options:

1- I disliked this mission.
2- I liked this mission; please award the user 15 tickets.
3- I recommend this mission; award the user 25 tickets and add it to my 'recommended' list.

Adding an arc to your recommended list requires you to click at least one check box indicating a reason for your recommendation, such as story or challenge quality. You can recommend one arc per hour.

You can only have 10 recommended arcs at once; if you recommend an 11th, you are prompted to drop a different arc out of your list (they keep the tickets). You can also simply revoke a recommendation for an arc.

A user viewing one of your arcs in the MA can click a button to view your list of recommendations, and a list of users that recommend the arc they are viewing.

They can also search for a list of arcs that have been recommended for a particular aspect.

Each arc shows a list of recommendations/plays. An MA tab can be configured to show arc in order of most to least recommendations (or the reverse).

Does this sound like a good proposal?

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Sounds very reasonable, don't expect it to get any traction. Its not going to move arcs into the hall of fame, or make it easier for people to get there.

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I love City of Heroes.

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/signed

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Ugh, another "Tell us where the line is" thread?


I'll just say the same thing I've said before in far fewer words.

They're not going to tell us.

Deal with it.

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LOL there really isn't a line. That's my guess why they won't say what it is or set a limit.

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It is rather telling. From that data, it seems that most players are inclined to rate favorably, but a core group is determined to downrate higher rated arcs. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.

I don't even look through rated arcs anymore -- I scroll through the arcs that have never been played or rated looking for something that piques my interest. I've found some really good arcs that way, but it's time-consuming. Though a little reading never hurt anyone.



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Really ? So if 60% of the arcs aren't 5* the system isn't working ?

Seems that data shows most of the stories are horribly overrated

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What a great question. I usual define per capita as instantaneous value and as a percentage of the currently online population.

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Well, I can't see how you can possibly say that per-capita PLing is not down significantly now. There are...

1) fewer people in the most populous zone MAs
2) fewer zone MAs in significant use (before the Comm Officer change, I couldn't find zones where they weren't in heavy use, except maybe Galaxy City)
3) less apparent PLees. I define an apparent PLee as a character with a security level significantly lower than the zone level, hanging out in the MA frequently zoning in and out of the digitizer beam.

One way we can conclude that the per-capita use of PL hasn't gone down is to assume that the per-capita amount of PL before was actually smaller because a smaller percentage of people were doing it before the dev's changes. However, I think there is significant anecdotal evidence to the contrary, because (if nothing else) of the sheer volume of broadcasts regarding it (usually Meow-related) in nearly all zones.

The remaining way is to have the same percentage of PLers in a smaller total MA participants. However, it's clear that things like Meow had such simple access (being, among other things, immediately in beginner zones) it greatly increased ease of use of PL by people who otherwise did not seek it out before (or after). Again, there is significant evidence of this, only some of which is anecdotal.[*] For 1.5 days after the Comm Officer change, popular MA zones echoed with the equivalent of "aw man!". This would not be the case if these players were willing to/able to/aware of PLing using other means, inside the MA or out.[*] Custom nobs in the MA were previously significantly easier to defeat in large numbers. This lowered the bar on what builds could effectively act as the PLer in such missions. Builds that were good PL builds before I14 still function fine, but there are fewer them than were able to PL in the MA.

Yes, PLing is going on still, in and out of the MA. Yes, the MA is still one of if not the premier place to get leveled to 50 as fast as you can. But it's simply disinginuous to suggest that it's going on at anything like the population density it was between the release of I14 and the combined change to Comm Officers and custom mobs.

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Power leveling and exploit maps are not the same thing. There was overlap but there were plenty of people going onto a comm officer map just to grab tickets.

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What they really should do is not just specify a limit, but code that into the game engine.

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You'd think they would have by now. But then their doing that presumes a lot of truth about what is actually an exploit and what isn't

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The concept is per capita vs total population.

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How are you defining "per-capita PLing?"

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What a great question. I usual define per capita as instantaneous value and as a percentage of the currently online population.

Even that is not all I would like due to the presence of multiboxers

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Guys, calm down, there's a very obvious and valid explanation for the lack of patch notes.

We know that the devs don't put exploit fixes in the patch notes, and they also decide what is and isn't considered an exploit (though we'll know it when we see it). Thus, it's easy to guess that i15 is comprised of NOTHING but exploit fixes! And by exploit fixes, I mean nerfs.

And now you know.

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You win the thread.

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You're contradicting yourself. The usage connot be down and the PLing where it was. A massive fraction of the initial use before the Meow change was PLing.

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The concept is per capita vs total population.

Edit

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I don't have to be anti-PL or even someone who doesn't farm/PL to disagree with what I see as your position on knowledge of what could get people in trouble with all this, just as I don't have to agree with the devs for even making it an issue.


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I have read the above three times now and I still have no idea what you are going on about.

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You said that people who have been in the game for 3 months would know what powerleveling is. (this absolutely does imply knowing it when they see it, or they wouldn't actually know what it is.)


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You are correct, What I wanted to say and what I wrote were two different things. Re Reading I see that is the case. My fault.

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The PLing would have gone down without the FUD. They removed the ease of access. Now you need better builds to farm with because the mobs aren't retardedly weak. (Note that I didn't mind, but I knew they were retardedly weak.) There are a metric boatload of lemmings in the playerbase who won't pursue something like this unless the barier to entry is very low. Now it's higher.


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If its higher its not much higher.

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No, I'm not wrong. The number of people involved is down massively. All you need to have to see that this absolutely and inarguably true is a working pair of eyes. You appear to constantly conflate how fast people you know are leveling with how fast the average playerbase is doing so. They are not the same thing.


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An assumption. I am not going on the people I know. I am operating off observed pug behavior. You go into an ae building and you get a tell for a team even on virtue more often than not its still an ae farm. Stories are being formed as often as ever.

Now the total number may be down, but that might just be because it isn't reactivation weekend or the start of the aniversary anymore. But the percentage use of MA is still there.

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If you think people are asking for AE teams at even 1/10the rate they used to be, across all zones, then you need to work on that "working pair of eyes" thing.


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See above. What you are saying is MA use is way down. I won't argue that. The why is another matter.

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No, I'm arguing with the Another_Fan that I've seen posting all over the forums going on about the matter of unstated rules being unfair and the dev's changes not stopping PLing. Yes, the unstated rules are unfair, but you have to be mentally deficient not to know what put you at risk. And the devs weren't out to stop PLing across the board.




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Lol I am at risk ? Not likely. If anything pointing it out in the forums places me at greater risk than my use of MA. The assumption that because I object to injustice renders me guilty of crimes is false.

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No, you're making the mistake of thinking that I (and maybe Ogon) are so foolish as to think we are good measuring sticks for the rest of the playerbase.

If I was the measuring stick on how fast people could level, we'd all have a lot more 50s next week.



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You show me someone who has been here more than three monts I will show you someone who has been on a farm and power leveled. They may not have cared for it may not be their thing but they know what it is and they know how to do it.

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So...

If someone has been in this game they know what powerleveling is when they see it then, eh?

And MA, where it was explicitly stated since the day it was announced was not intended to be for PL'ing and farming, you claim can't have this nebulous standard of "know it when you see it"?

Sorry, but you stumbled right into that contradiction. You can't claim that everyone knows what it is after 3 months, but that they somehow forget when they enter the MA building.

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Just because someone has done something it doesn't imply they know it when they see it, or that they know anything about it. Many people have ridden in automobiles but have no idea what the Otto Cycle is.

Your second mistake in that post is assuming everyone reads the boards and caught the formerly obscure post you refer to.

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Sorry, but you stumbled right into that contradiction. You can't claim that everyone knows what it is after 3 months, but that they somehow forget when they enter the MA building

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Seeing as I did not make the claim, and your two qualifiers are just wrong would you care to re-edit the post into something coherent ?

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No, you're making the mistake of thinking that I (and maybe Ogon) are so foolish as to think we are good measuring sticks for the rest of the playerbase.

If I was the measuring stick on how fast people could level, we'd all have a lot more 50s next week.



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You show me someone who has been here more than three monts I will show you someone who has been on a farm and power leveled. They may not have cared for it may not be their thing but they know what it is and they know how to do it.


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And yet the continouss broadcast cries for PL teams in every zone have grown far, far less frequent. The lines of security level 10 and under characters standing outside the arc digitizer are essentialy gone. And I would bet you all the inf I have that this was really the change the devs meant to cause. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the devs actually intend to squash all PLing, even in the MA. They just intend to squash most of it.


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LOL you think I don't understand ? You don't think I didn't realize positron's missives were badly done attempts to create F.U.D. ? And if you think the powerleveling has gone down you are wrong there. The only thing that has happened is the rate of level rise has gone down and thats because the comm officers have been fixed.

When someone says AE team looking for more 9 times out of 10 they aren't out to enjoy a story.

You talk about my opinion on this matter being everywhere and then you go comment on it, but it seems you haven't read anything I have said. Instead you seem to be arguing with the Another_Fan that lives entirely in your head.

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I want to go back to the dance analogy. Exploiting broken mechanics is like slipping someone a rooficolda. Playing it off as maximizing your play time is like saying your were maximizing your dating efforts.

Positron was mad because you gave his digital daughter a roofiecolada and then told your friends how to get her to drink it and posted pictures on the internet.

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Seeing as posi was renting out his digital daughter for 15$ a month thats an interesting way of looking at it.

Its more like the players contacted positron in his felt hat, and platformed shoe glory, and had him hook them up. When it came time for Miss MA to deliver, it turned out " That ain't no woman! It's a man, man!"

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Next you'll be saying he made you play the game because he gave you a good deal.

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What I was saying that comparing using the MA to [censored] someones child is garbage.

I notice that you have contributed nothing to this conversation but ATTABOYS.

If you have something to contribute please do so. Or is it that you just object to knowing what the rules are ?

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It is an extension of the school of thought that brought us merits. Faster is badder. 1 merit for x min. This is the same thing applied to xp/leveling. And the devs will not consider they might be wrong. When they finally do, COX may just be too far gone.

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This indeed.

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Look, I think how the devs approached this whole thing was the pinnacle of stupidity, but your stance on it, posted far and wide across the boards here, is ludicrous in the opposite direction. Getting to 50 in under 20 hours is spectactular and impressive exactly because it's not something the general playerbase either knows how to do or wants to futz with learning how you do it. This is "easy" to do in the same sense that beating the STF and RSF is "easy" for the general playerbase.

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Uber inspires me to make a quick addendum to my stand-

The devs are entirely justified in imposing whatever limits they want on leveling speed & other reward structures in the game. it's their game, that's their job.

But players will try to find the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to earn rewards, and when they uncover stuff the devs don't like there are two reasonable paths to take:

- Patch the problem and move on.
This has been their solution priot to I14.

- Post clear guidelines, so players know where they stand. Then when the ban stick comes out and characters get axed everyone knows why.

The current situation (no guidelines + arbitrary, unexplained punishment) is ridiculous and unacceptable.

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Yes they are 100% justified in setting limits. If they aren't going to enforce them within the program, they better let people know before they are banned.

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less than 20 hours to 50 is nothing spectacular or even impressive.


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It is when it's roughly a factor of 10x faster than anything you've experienced before.


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You are making the same mistake Ogon is. You are both defining yourselves as the measuring stick, and then are shocked that other people have different rulers.

I know of entire SGs that will level their entire group up from 1 - 50 in that time. I know of one that just created a series of themed characters, clowns, african tribal, and archers were amongst it.

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Look, I think how the devs approached this whole thing was the pinnacle of stupidity, but your stance on it, posted far and wide across the boards here, is ludicrous in the opposite direction. Getting to 50 in under 20 hours is spectactular and impressive exactly because it's not something the general playerbase either knows how to do or wants to futz with learning how you do it. This is "easy" to do in the same sense that beating the STF and RSF is "easy" for the general playerbase

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1st I haven't taken a stance on powerleveling. I have taken a stand that devs need to either have guidelines for what they want done or they need to drop the B.S.

2nd What a few people know everyone winds up knowing and usually pretty quickly.

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It's obvious that not everyone finds access to PLing easy, because we saw how many people did it with the MA, and yet when easy MA PLing went away the volume of PLing clearly took a dive alongside it. If PLing was as accessable as you seem to claim, everyone would still be doing it.


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MA pling has not gone away. Not by a very long shot. It is still the preferred method, the auto exemp feature cuts out the need to find mentors.

There isn't a day I go into the game that I don't see people PLing in MA.

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I got all my original numbers farming a regular mission. Does anyone know if Dev Choice or Hall of Fame missions give out the same rewards?

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Yes they do. If you want a nice farmable devs choice. The first mission of Johnny Sonatta on invincible is very good. Lots of well grouped bosses.

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Just have to point out.... as you noted with your 50's none of them even came close to the leveling speed you proposed in your example.

So based on your experience with the game, if you were leveling this theoretical character and you reached Level 40 in 6 hours or something, wouldn't you, looking at what the range of normal leveling speeds you have had previously think that it was odd you were able to do it at less than 1/10th of your previous fastest?

I mean, I believe that Tribal wants a challange. But his experience with game and his knowledge of its mechanics makes it hard to believe that the leveling speed of the characters is question wasn't well outside the range of his normal experience.

I just don't see how someone can level eight 50's and have the quickest one come in at 175 hours, and then would even have to wonder if leveling to 50 in 12 hours was abnormal. I could see it if you said, 50 in 100 hours, but a 50 in 12 hours would seem to fall so far outside what could be considered normal through previous experience and just plain common sense, that it is hard to believe that someone would think, "oh I guess they just decided to make leveling completely trivial in this patch."

While they have made it easier to level, the idea that the intent of MA was to make it even easier by a factor of 10 just doesn't ring true. Especially since the "we don't want people farming it" was already out there before release. Add it up and the case for "I didn't know that was too fast" seems kind of weak.

IMO.

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less than 20 hours to 50 is nothing spectacular or even impressive.

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I want to go back to the dance analogy. Exploiting broken mechanics is like slipping someone a rooficolda. Playing it off as maximizing your play time is like saying your were maximizing your dating efforts.

Positron was mad because you gave his digital daughter a roofiecolada and then told your friends how to get her to drink it and posted pictures on the internet.

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Seeing as posi was renting out his digital daughter for 15$ a month thats an interesting way of looking at it.

Its more like the players contacted positron in his felt hat, and platformed shoe glory, and had him hook them up. When it came time for Miss MA to deliver, it turned out " That ain't no woman! It's a man, man!"

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I heard that Posi isn't happy that a blaster can soft cap ranged defense. (This may or may not be true, it's forum hearsay.) But as long as that remains expensive/difficult/uncommon, he has bigger fish to fry. There will always be hyper-optimized teams out there doing tasks in one tenth the time of average teams. The key is not that that exists, but what percentage of the total it is.


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Lets hope he never gets around to it. Because it would kill the game and he would just dig in his heals while people tried to tell him he was wrong.

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YouGiveCCIGiveInf Man, level 1 and fresh off his 6,342nd account being banned for spamming, wouldn't be able to create such a blaster.



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Walks to peregrine island.

Starts spamming LFF.

If he knows anyone in the game.

/t @random_pwr_lvlr, hook me up bro

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Let's not fool ourselves here, it's not about rules or ethics. It's about people leveling too fast in a MMO that, like many other games in the same genre, bases its business model on a certain number of hours needed to reach max level.


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Yes and if that is actually the case, they need to state that and implement code in the game to make it impossible to "Level to Fast" and be done with it. The whole business about moral compasses and you know it when you see it has been little more than insults.

What truly kills me is banning people so they don't burnout.