Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by EvilRyu

Let me just say this first. Thank you very much for fixing the Assassins Strike for Martial Arts stalkers. Now about granite, the looks of powersets are one of the biggest factors on whether I am going to play something or not. For instance prior to issue 16 I would never ever touch spines perioid. The banana look is what turned me off to the set. By changing it, I can possibly start rolling some spines toons. The look of stone armor specifically granite has been one of the reason I wont touch this set. So yes changing it will overall be a good thing. I think if you leave the option to have both skins more people will be happy.

Originally Posted by perwira

Not sure about red side, but blue side I recently acquired 3 LotG recipes for less than 70m each.

Originally Posted by Neg_rogue

"Limitless"? Seriously? If you've played one farm you've played them all. Sure, one might can change the mob type, spawn level/size, etc. but the overall goal of every single farm that exists is exactly the same: kill everything on the map. That's not "limitless" in the slightlest. In fact just the opposite.

Yeah, the same can be said of radio missions, I'm not denying that, but at least with radio missions you're in and out in about 10-15 minutes.



If you want to get super technical then yes, it's "new" in the sense that one day it didn't exist in the game and the next day it did, but in terms of offering innovative content, no. Sure, some people have made some arcs that they actually put some thought into, but on the whole MA isn't largely used for that purpose.

All MA truly did in terms of "new content" was turn something that was mostly a high level activity into something that's accessible to people of every level. That's it.



And yours isn't? You can't really call someone on something that you're also guilty of. That's called hypocrisy.

Originally Posted by Jack_Slade

Shadow Shard is largely forgotten for the same reason the sewers and troll network are. Most of the bAEbies have never even HEARD of either because there is no reason to go there. At all... ever.

Originally Posted by Eiko-chan

Actually, in the game, your achievement is always defeating Statesman, Recluse, Ms. Liberty, etc. You never kill them.

Except in the future that doesn't happen in the Patron arcs, in which case you do actually kill Statesman - which is something else altogether from the LRSF, with results you see in the arc.

I find the "blah blah, you're not special, nothing you do matters" attitude in MMO players rather tiresome, and helps explain to me why so many get burned out on the games. Imagination matters. It's important - and not just in games.

Originally Posted by magnus1

ding,ding,ding we have the right answer here!!!anything to bring people out of that dark theater(sees the little old man going back to rewind the same film playing back to back to back etc,etc,etc...)this will help this game to be what it truly is...

Originally Posted by Geek_Boy

Now, you're taking a mob that's already a pain for a lowbie to handle and making them worth less XP? What?

Originally Posted by Venture

According to who? You have a dev post to back that up?

How about the loading screen tip that says "use custom mobs sparingly"?

Or is this just more of your, if an arc is not canon it fails, nonsense?

Where did I say that?

Originally Posted by Venture

Meaning that all the work the devs did for AE and them moving it from issue 13 to 14 BECAUSE OF CUSTOM MOB DEVELOPMENT was a waste of time.

No, it means custom mobs are put into their proper context -- something to be used to enhance a standard faction, not replace one.

Originally Posted by Venture

So you're happy that a custom critter has to have at least 5 times as many powers as your average stock critter to give the same amount of XP?

Yes.

Moral: use standard mobs whenever possible.

Originally Posted by Necrotron

Trouble is, it was more fun arsing about in the powerhouse than playing the game.

Originally Posted by Calash

No, Clouded won the thread. Didn't you see the forum tag.

I actually like the definitions you quoted though the space between them is way to vast. I would be someplace between Casual Gamer and Hardcore Gamer yet I enjoy farming now and then.

Originally Posted by Ice Knight

Trying to use one or two definitions to define all of gamedum is generally a war between your head and the wall.

In the spirit of less concussions, lets enter some different definitions and ideas.


Casual Player - Someone who plays a few hours a week with little knowledge of anything going on. They play rarely and have little knowledge of the game.

Casual Gamer - Someone who does not get into numerical equations or rare drops. They just play to play. This player is experienced but does not care about drops, builds or numbers. The can play a few hours a week to full time.

Hardcore Player - Someone who plays often. You would believe they were either independently wealthy or unemployed. Every time you log in they are there.

Power Gamer - Someone who plays with the advanced understanding of game mechanics and a desire for upper tier rewards. This player does not have to play often but enough to acquire these rewards.

Gamer Overlord - Someone who plays to be the best. They use the best tools and have a unique understanding of how the game works. They can spout numbers on command and can diagnose most character problems in seconds based on sheer observation. This player plays often and could be confused with a hardcore player if you didn't see their long explainations and detailed critiques of others.

Farmer - Generally a farmer is a version of a Gamer Overlord that uses their "talents" to acquire drops/tickets/merits at an advanced rate. They have a very specific understanding of drop rates the market and rolling systems.

Power Leveler - Generally a Power Leveler can have qualities of a Gamer Overlord however has a specialized understanding of Game mechanics, attack types and the fastest possible route to making the best xp. They understand level gap concepts and bending the system to their wants and needs.

Uber Gamer Overlord - Someone who understands all the above concepts about the Gamer Overlord, Power Leveler and Farmer and can do any of these at will. These players generally have 20 plus 50's and multiple accounts. They have billions of Influence and Infamy invested in builds, the Market and on hand.



While the above definitions are far from perfect and could be modified I think this is more descriptive then just the one or two that have been floating around.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

The problem is people are trying to define behaviors, which is rather pointless. "Oh if you play X hours a week, you're hardcore...oh if you grind badges, you're hardcore...oh if you spam the forums, you're hardcore." That's about as useful as saying "oh if you run a mission 100 times you're a farmer".

A meaningful definition needs to define the wellspring of the behavior, not the streams it generates.

I define 'hardcore' as a frame of mind. A player that sets expansive goals and achieves them is 'hardcore' to me, regardless of how much or little they play or how they go about achieving those goals.

A player that goes with the flow, playing through the game and taking things as they come, not investing much special effort into ancillary stuff like phat lewt or accolades, is 'casual' to me.

And again, most people fall between the two poles.
KeepDistance (or whatever his name is now- mind4everburning?) earned a billion inf in a month, starting from 0 on a new character. That is HARDCORE.
I'm approaching a billion on the Goat right now, and he's been pecking away at it since I9. That's still 'hardcore', but it's an order of magnitude less hardcore than Keep's feat.

Originally Posted by Calash

The game balance has nothing to do with personal playstyle. Nether does loot gathered, or forum posts, or how often I check the boards, or the number of times I tag a post. It is also not up to the devs to define it, we have a definition already in place.

Like the word Farming people are twisting the meaning of the word Casual gaming to mean whatever they want in order to support there argument at the time.

The items you have do not define your playstyle.

Originally Posted by CyberDragon

OP you do realise that this warrants me to quote my grandfather by stating "Too little too damn late."

If the Devs were going ot have implimented the AE in it's own zone we would have had it by now.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

None of the above specifically except for the most extreme PLers. The early PLing in the AE was so off the charts that I think it got its own specific reaction, even though AE mechanics were the enabler for it.

Beyond that, I don't think the dev's motive for change was aligned against any one playstyle like that. I believe their motive was to remove anything that detracts from the AE as a place to create and play what I'll call "meaningful content". By "meaningful content" I mean arcs that are an earnest effort to create story-driven entertainment for other people.*

Farming a map chock full of the same mobs over and over, whether for inf, tickets, XP or even badges - all of that appears to be fall under an umbrella of playstyles that detract from that purity of the dev vision for the AE. The devs have taken steps to curb those kind of playstyles from the AE to an extent that they have not applied to other parts of the game. Not only that, but that there are some pretty strong indications that they don't intend to apply those curbs outside the AE, or at least not to the same extremes.

A great example is the change to the AE badges, which you can now practically get all for walking into the digitizing beam. They stated clearly that they didn't want people badge farming in the AE, so they removed any reason to. Meanwhile, other potential, non-AE badge tweaks don't appear to have anything like that scale of change in store. Another example would be the farmer-enabling I16 difficulty settings changes. The devs are clearly aware of how this will be used, going so far as to comment here on the boards how they knew that specific posters known for love of farming would love the change. That suggests they don't oppose farming directly - just farming in the AE.

I think that a lot of folks on the forums didn't recognize this intentional double standard. That's lead some of them to miss the mark in predicting just how far the devs would take some of the AE changes, because they made predictions based whether the devs would do certain things game-wide. But they aren't doing them game wide - the AE gets its own set of rules. Thus I believe the devs are willing to apply extremes to it that they actually won't apply to the rest of the game. Whether that's good or bad depends a lot on which kind of playstyles you like.

* I emphasize the notion that AE arcs are supposed to be "for other people" than just the authors. I don't buy into the frequent claim that the AE is supposed to exist primarily as a tool for authors. I find the people who claim that act as if the AE should exist for the authors, without regard for whether anyone else gets to appreciate their work. I don't accept that the devs would have invested nearly two issues of development on a tool that had such a one-way function. I believe they did intend it to be a creative tool, but primarily for content that would then be enjoyed by other players.