Cavatina

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By the same token, the ITF is retardedly easy with a dark tanker simply because of the powersets the mobs have.

Lethal? Lol Dark regen.

negative energy? lolno try again

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Uh... have you played a dark tanker on the ITF?

COF and OG are useless, base 10-20% defense disappears to negative #'s very quickly (no defense debuff resistance) and 70% S/L resist just doesn't stop the incoming damage when 19/20 swings are hitting you.

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Yes. I have. at level 49 no less (i was sked to a 50 :P )

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What secondary/team makeup? Were you the main tank? My dark/fire/pyre tanker's run dozens of ITF's and it's rather pronounced how vulnerable she is against a big pack of cims. (She solo's the wall just fine, but start throwing 3-4 bosses in one pack and ... yep.)

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Dark/Energy. and I admit the team was slightly heavy on defenders. Mostly bubblers and sonic resonances. Nonetheless, its not like I contributed nothing to the effort there. :P

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I'm at the point with AE that I'm pretty much convinced it's killing the game.

I won't stop using it since it doesn't negatively impact me on a personal level, but from a community standpoint it's pure poison.

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Here's another farmer that agrees wholeheartedly. I farm in AE still, but I refuse to do it with anyone that I do not know. Once I realized those newbies hit 50, rolled another and want more free PLs that put an immediate stop to my AE random PUG runs. What is annoying is the 'lowbie beggar's' sense of entitlement - as if it is my duty to level them. I had one offer to pay me to level them. I still didn't.

When AE is nothing but a pile of rubble, I will lament the fun that was had. In the meantime, I will not enable these lowbies to the fastroad to AE burnout.

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I say let em have at it. If they want to rush to 50 and then quit the game when they get there instead of trying something else out, theyre not really the sort of player I'd rather we retain.

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Best Rumored Proposed Fix I've heard to date: AE buildings will only run missions for levels appropriate for the zone the building in question is.

This actually doesn't sound bad. It wont do anything about farming and such, but it will reduce the amount of broadcast "clutter-spam" and move high-level farms out of the low-level zones.

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Yeah, that'd work great.

I'd love to tell my sgmates "sorry guys, but unless you're level 50 like me we cant team together for that arc you just wrote"

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you need also a team to run a 54 custom boss farm and they hit harder than Cimerorans I can tell you

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Depends entirely on the selected powersets the bosses have.

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By the same token, the ITF is retardedly easy with a dark tanker simply because of the powersets the mobs have.

Lethal? Lol Dark regen.

negative energy? lolno try again

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Uh... have you played a dark tanker on the ITF?

COF and OG are useless, base 10-20% defense disappears to negative #'s very quickly (no defense debuff resistance) and 70% S/L resist just doesn't stop the incoming damage when 19/20 swings are hitting you.

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Yes. I have. at level 49 no less (i was sked to a 50 :P )

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Stop being so goddamned "with us or against us" mentality about it .

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I love the delicious irony of this statement, as I've seen this person post just as hard-nose comments in defence of the AE/MA system.

Oh, and don't think I am commenting on one person (as I have nothing against this forum regular) - it's rare to find a 'live and let live' post where AE/MA is concerned.

One thing is clear (and I don't think can be argued) - this module has changed the game forever. It's an individual's choice to consider it healthy or unhealthy.

I consider the way players have used it to have had an extremely unhealthy effect on the game (on more than one level). However, that doesn't make me 'right' any more than anyone can say I am 'wrong' (even though knowing these forums someone will).

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I admit I can be hardline sometimes about my views, but at the same time, thats because I've tried less hardline talking it out, and usually all I get back out of it is regurgitated posts on how I'm wrong and theyre definitely right. After a bit you get fed up.

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Thinking people WOULDN'T do that is the fallacy.

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That's what I don't get either. Seems like they really thought and wanted it to be about players writing good stories with the AE. How they didn't realize it would be more about farming for quick XP boggles the mind.

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Its called not listening to your players. They do it a lot. or rather. they listen to a very small but vocal group and seem to largely ignore everyone elses opinions.

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It is if I can custom tailor them so that my toon has much less of a risk against them than I would normally against non-custom NPCs.

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because thats totally impossible in regular content by picking the right powersets and picking the right radio mission.

Sewers. Vahzilok are owie! Unless you bring a force fielder who has tons of toxic resist on his very first bubble power.

Or maybe Knives of artemis! who are a total joke for regen scrappers.

or hell. Carnies. Hi, I has dark armor.

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Having a mission full of lvl 54 Lt's and repeating it 1,000 times isnt an exploit. It's my freedom to creat my own story about a bunch of level 54 angry Lt's!

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Seriously. You're not fooling anyone. You're creating questionable content in the AE to get fast, easy XP with minimal risk.

If it's such a great story and a non-farming, non-exploit arc, post the arc ID and we can review it for you

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You realize he was being sarcastic, right?

or are you truly that deluded and dense and vitriol filled?

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As for how AE keeps players from experiencing regular content ...

It does. But those are possibly players that simply don't want to play this game and experience that content.

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Then why are those players playing this game?

What did they think was so cool about CoX that they decided to subscribe to it and then ....
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...don't want to play this game and experience that content...

[/ QUOTE ] ...that makes the game CoX?

Are you implying that they are playing the game only because they CAN EXPLOIT IT?

You may have a point there.

[satire]Hurrah! for all the new subscribers that are only here because they CAN EXPLOIT THE GAME![/satire]

I don't mind that Exploiters are paying to support the content that the rest of us play, I just don't want to see and hear from you any more. It seems that the DEVs aren't doing anything active about this so I am.

Easy enough. Ignore them in the forums. Ignore them in the game. One star their accounts using the Notes system. Go into Options and set your options to "show stars". Don't game with anyone with one star (as they are part of the problem).
Easily done.

Farmers are empty shells.

I'm glad to game with a bunch of cool people that enjoy this game because they are playing supers. You all make this game great.
See you in the City.

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No, they arent empty shells. They simply enjoy the gameplay mechanics and seeing how efficiently they can use those mechanics.

Its perfectly valid as aplaystyle just as much as any other. Stop being so goddamned "with us or against us" mentality about it .

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I wonder what would happen if this approach were tried instead...

Newspaper missions earn 15% more experience.
Contact Missions earn 25% more experience (and possibly better chance of drops).
SF/TF earn 40% more and still better odds of drops.

Leaving AE missions alone aside from fixing exploits. Low Risk environment just earns what it earns now.

In this way there is no nerfage, just added incentive to play content produced by the professionals (that and they have access to more advanced design tools than we do in the AE).

Would fit more into line with their Risk vs Reward ideals.

P.S.- Developer Choice AE would earn more experience and would be assigned a Risk vs Reward appropriate experience multiplier by the developers.

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This is actually already in effect in practice. Patrol XP does not count in AE missions, so you can actually level slightly faster doing regular missions, even if the only Patrol XP you have is from sitting overnight.

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trust me, don't try reasoning with them. They'll nerdrage and start pointing out that if you happen to go into a boss farm at -5 levels from the mobs than you get way more xp than you would in a regular radio mission.

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because you can repeat any mission in this game.

[/ QUOTE ] Untrue. You cannot complete the tutorial missions repeatedly.

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Only because it'd be pointless as they dont actually reward any xp.

Y'now. I just finished a mothership raid (with 5 teams of people there, no less) and zoned into Atlas on infinity. The first two broadcasts I saw?

"Lfm for perez street sweeping team" and "need one more for sewers"

Yeah. The AE sure killed pugs on Infinity during US primetime alright.

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Just pointing out that going from 1 to 28 in 30 minutes kinda falls under the "easy leveling" Positron was referring to.

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technically all levelling in COH is easy. You have to make a serious effort or lack thereof to not hit 30 within a week or two of serious play.

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Ummm....Wooosh? lol
No way you can get to 1-28 in 30 mins of regular content.
AE on the other hand....

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Yes. via an exploit. We're not arguing about the speed of an exploit. but without an exploit even in AE you cant achieve that speed.

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Just pointing out that going from 1 to 28 in 30 minutes kinda falls under the "easy leveling" Positron was referring to.

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technically all levelling in COH is easy. You have to make a serious effort or lack thereof to not hit 30 within a week or two of serious play.

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Well, then get on the dev's [censored] to not ship out buggy tools with creative freedoms that can be easily abused and no way to stop people from abusing them?
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Had they simply added in a few key features like not allowing single-mob groups, we wouldn't have this problem quite as much.

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What do you think I was screaming at them in Open Beta? Here's a hint: "IT'S NOT READY YET!", and of course they listened!

By the way, single-mob groups aren't really the problem in my opinion. The real problem is that most MMOs' at least by contemporary design do not reward players based on how much effort/risk the player had to face when defeating enemies. That's the root cause why most exploits are even possible.

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Thats only because most other MMOs Big risk mobs tend to give superior loot, or be intended for groups only.

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Your argument seems to attack itself. Yes, people like levelling. But not everyone gets bored the second they hits cap. thats why most mmos have MOST of their timesinks at cap to keep you playing. CoH encourages alt-itis. Either way, capping a character doesnt mean burnout, else the devs would NEVER make it easier to level.

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I assume Devs' in MMOs' make it easier to level to lure new/casual subscribers to the playfield rather than make it easier for higher level characters to level faster.

Granted that with CoX altitis is encouraged, especially because of the gameplay mechanics that seem to be fun, simple to grasp, yet allow enough "what-if" customizations to ones' character so things are at least somewhat exciting.

However... the Devs' are *trying* to invigorate the story/content aspects of the game first with AE, and in the future with Going Rogue. If the Devs' were only counting on those subscribers that play CoX as a leveling game for its' *DING* factor, why then should they bother with content anyway?!

EDIT :: Don't get me wrong, I'm not against farming and I'm not against power-leveling, and I'm not against min/maxing. I am against lying and claiming that these activities have ZERO effect on others in the community who do not engage in them. AE simply expedites these scenarios where the Devs fix an AE-exploit that was datamined or reported, and the cure is worse than the disease as far as I'm concerned as a story-author because it directly affects what I can and cannot do with the tool itself.

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Well, then get on the dev's [censored] to not ship out buggy tools with creative freedoms that can be easily abused and no way to stop people from abusing them?

Had they simply added in a few key features like not allowing single-mob groups, we wouldnt have this problem quite as much.

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If i wanted a REAL story, I'd read a book.

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Yeah, but I don't care about you, I *want* a story in my games and if I can affect that story, even better!

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except you cant really affect the story in an mArc

Not to mention. While wanting a story is all and good, given the constraints on text we have, we wont ever be equalling great prose.

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Here's the trick to run taskforces and strikeforces:

1) Start the team yourself instead of waiting for others.

2) Do a Search Channels (with the name of your forums, or sort them by most members, etc...) and add yourself to them. I play on Virtue and I use Virtuebadges09; VU2009; Virtue TFs; Virtue LFG; Virtue's LRSF; 2 other channels pertaining to Architect; and 3 other channels that are private that I got invited (2 of about 20 members, and one of 200 members).

There's always team forming for SFs and TFs and Raids and whatnot if you use channels. That's why you dont see people gathering around the contacts very often. Teams are already made up, and the leader go see the contact, click it, and go away.

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Thats the thing though Pho. I've been saying this for week. so have others. They still complain, so the only logical explanation i have is that the people whining are the people who refuse to take the initiative and lead and want the game to simply service their laziness.

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The main difference being your toon had to leave the AE building to do those radio missions and had to find a team to run the ITF.

[/ QUOTE ] Thats not much of a difference. all I have to do to start an ITF is walk into cimerora. stand by Imperious, and type in and ask Infinity badge Seeker channel whether anyone wants to run an ITF.

Same with a pug. Not my fault you want to force people out of the AE so you might have a slightly better chance of not having to take the initiative and make your own damned team.

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I'd really like to know how you create custom bosses who dont deal damage.

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I didn't say they don't deal damage. Of course some will hit harder than others will. The main difference being the players are custom designing the bosses to be as easy as possible. Low risk for high reward.

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And? Its just as easy to bring the right tanker or defender powerset to a radio mish or a TF to make the entire mission impossible to fail.

Like my example of a dark tank in the ITF. They have decent lethal resistance, dark regen to make up the gap, and insane levels of Neg Energy resist that make Rommy and the nictus into jokes.

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The developers want it to be possible to go 1-50 within AE.

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AFAIK, no developer has ever posted "We want our players to level from 1 to 50 in AE only and never experience everything else the game has to offer".

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Theyve never posted saying "omg you shouldnt level 1-50 in AE and shortchange those poor pitiful people begging for a pug in steel canyon of teams theyre too lazy to form themselves", either, but thats what you guys keep thinking is the "right" way to use the AE

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Yeah. that'll work. except for the part where nobody will play non-DC arcs ever again.

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Ah see, that is where you and I would disagree.

You can always get an SG mate to play and score your arc. I also intentionally left the nomination process open a bit. Perhaps after 5-10 people have rated your arc a dev (or player committee) could look at it. Perhaps offer badges for playing and rating unqualified arcs.

You'd also still get tickets for playing in unqualified arcs. Perhaps a bonus to them as an incentive?

There could be several creative ways to get your story out there and get players to try it. Certainly, this is a good trade for dealing with broken exploits.

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No. It isnt. at best you're using bribery or begging friends to do you a favor in the hopes of recognition.

The AE is a gameplay tool. not a magical way for you to write the worlds greatest poem. If you deplete the gameplay value, all you have left is grinding through possibly hours of nothing to read a paragraph of story text.

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you need also a team to run a 54 custom boss farm and they hit harder than Cimerorans I can tell you

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Depends entirely on the selected powersets the bosses have.

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By the same token, the ITF is retardedly easy with a dark tanker simply because of the powersets the mobs have.

Lethal? Lol Dark regen.

negative energy? lolno try again

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I understand that the MA is meant for players to use this as a tool for writing thier own arcs and not as an exploit.

My idea is in two parts:

1) Only Developer's Choice and special authors' missions should offer XP (other missions could still offer badges and tickets).

2) Developers offer a more loose qualification for "Developer's Choice": Something like Dev Choice: Accepted and Dev Choice: Exceptional. There would have to be some nomination process allowing for streamlining what missions could be promoted by the Devs. Alternatively, perhaps a committee of players could be appointed to oversee this type of process - allowing for further player interaction in the game!

This way creative, non-exploitive type missions could still be given an acceptable rating (giving XP) while farming (or other exploitive) missions would simply never be qualified.

You can still powerplay through missions. But then again, you could always have done that. So players would still have the intended use of the MA, still have XP from appropriate missions while undoing a bit of the exploitive behavior.

Bonus Idea: 3) One might also look into the SK/LK system as well. This has been a heavily exploited feature in the MA. Perhaps keep this feature in un-qualified MA arcs, but have more of the standard SK/LK-ing system for Accepted and Exceptional arcs.

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Yeah. that'll work. except for the part where nobody will play non-DC arcs ever again.

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Do we need yet another one of these type of threads? Really?

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Read it for the children.


every time some one makes one of these threads a corruptor gets his wings.....And then the huge flyswatter smacks them down,

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so thats at least 3 new corruptors wings today as the AE forum is flooded with topics on this again. -_-