Cavatina

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However, though...why is there an expectation that casual teaming should yield so-and-so amount of loot for players? Highly-sought after stuff should require more effort.
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If you're so concerned about getting items as efficiently as possible, then start soloing.


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When I want drops, I DO solo. And I get drops. I have plenty of purpled out characters...although less so now that one purple can finance an entire mid-range IO build.

It's not about entitlement. I'm just saying this is an MMO, and MMOs are usually designed to encourage player interaction. Most of the game is set up to encourage teaming, so why is this the exception?

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Because if you don't cater to solo players sometimes too you lose the interest of a sizeable fanbase who sometimes enjoys not having to risk looking for teammates of questionable quality if their friends arent online?

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Outside of farming, the MA is definitely worse than normal missions.

For the loss of travel time, you also lose:
-salvage
-recipes
-end of mission xp bonus
-end of arc xp bonus
-unlocking of new contact
-some temp powers

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also no badge progress at all. And considering the AE badges require zero actual progress to obtain now..

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(QR)

Best part of this thread is the multiple comments saying "Or maybe you suck."

And not best in a good way.

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No kidding. Most of the people that seem to think this doesn't happen have never had an arc with more than 50 votes in the pre-I15 environment. It isn't as bad as it was (since a 0 star was absolutely devastating statistically, especially when you magically get 6 or 8 of them in a two minute period with no additions to your playthrough badge) since now there are so many 5 star arcs that that front page isn't as big a target as it used to be.

I'm sure it's still going on, but I'm not too worried about it. The number of ratings griefers was never that large, but the power they had was disproportionate to the power someone rating you 5 stars had.

People who don't rate anything 5 stars crack me up. Your tastes are just sooooo refined that there's nothing us mere plebians who are doing this for fun and with no change of any real rewards can come up with that will meet your high standards.

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I never said griefing never happens and pre=i15 I had over 600 votes.

I'm just saying its downright idiotic and arrogant to assume anyone who didnt like your arc and didnt explain why MUST be a griefer.

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To the OP, I'm the sort of player who might have 3-starred your arc, and I don't apologize for it.

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Oh I don't mind that, as long as you explain it. Doesn't help anyone a damn bit otherwise and I cannot fix what I don't know about. Even worse if it's a bug created by a patch that broke something earlier that day and you don't know until much later that you're getting downrated for something that is outside your control and didn't know about.

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You cant always fix what they dont like without compromising your arc anyhow.

Most of the complaints I get anymore are either "too easy" or "not enough edge"

(on an arc tagged kid friendly and easy , mind you.)

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I think you might see the XP lessened..

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Highly doubtful, it would be a reversal of the promoted XP parity with the regular game.
The MA would become the Arena equivalent, an inspire dispenser.

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There is no XP parity, MA XP (Farms ie 90%sh of the content run) > Reg XP. So either the nature of the encounters change (ie ALL X FARM) or the xp changes.

Now if regular missions provided "All X Farms" that anyone could access at any level, then there would be "parity".

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Uh. Hi. Radio Missions.

even weirder. Earlier I started an arc and got the pop up "you have completed the mission" and it let me in anyhow.

Not to mention. more exposure means more likelihood someone wont like your arc. before i15 my arc was 612 votes with 4 stars. most every vote i got was a 4 or 5 star.

come i15. i shot up to 5 star, lost about 11 votes from losing zeroes, and have since zoomed along to 643 or so. Have I gotten a few someone rated your arc or 3's? Yes. Do i think they were malicious? not really.

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Unfortunately, since the removal of the "x people have played your arcs" badges, you can't tell whether someone has played your arc and hated it or low-rated it without playing it.

I find it amusing that people are *still* dismissing vote griefing as "why don't you just admit your arc sucks?" Even some of the most discerning critics have flat out said they don't rate lower than 1, and when all the 0-star votes were removed....voila, a bunch of arcs jump up to 5 stars. Frankly, most players aren't that discerning.

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I'm not saying griefing doesnt exist. I'm saying theres no way to actually stop it from happening, and frankly, some arcs do suck or are mediocre at best.

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Guess they decided it's too easy to get and nerfed it.

I'm kidding.

I hope.

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Wouldnt suprise me.

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I totally aggree. In the very least kill the one in AP. Galaxy is often underpopulated and can use the traffic.

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Yeah. because those of us who use Galaxy to avoid dealing with the morons who were in Atlas even before i14 certainly want to be the refugee camp of people even the Atlas Park idiots dont want around.

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and on a more amusing note. I challenge any of these "the MA doesnt need xp" types to turn off their exp in their options settings and then play AE missions all day. Oh. and any tickets or influence you get You are required to throw away and not use.

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I have spent upwards of six hours with my lvl 50 Brute randomly picking and playing AE missions. No XP, and negligible tickets. Since I almost never transfer cash between characters, that's about as close to 0 reward as you can get.

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if you honestly think the tickets from 6 hours of play are negligible, you either have some poorly designed arcs you're playing or you just fail miserably at markets

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The point of my post was to indicate that some of us are perfectly happy to explore content that gives no benefits.

I don't do the AE on lowbies usually, since it means I miss out on things like achievement badges and certain missions I particularly enjoy, like the Seer Marino Arc, or stuff in the Rikti War Zone or Cimerora.

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So, in other words. you enjoy progress. even if it only means badges you cannot get from the AE? Well, then I think you just failed your own logic on playing stuff without needing a reward for it.

After all. if you truly can enjoy the AE without any reward for it ever, why arent you skipping those arcs to enjoy "great storytelling?" Or better yet, lets strip out those badges from those arcs. Seer marino no longer gives any exp at all and no badges. Good to know you'd still be there to play it, right?

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So we agree there are all sorts of rewards in this game besides XP. As a result, removing XP from the AE, since it is only one of many reward, isn't really all that drastic a thing, is it?

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It is when you consider that xp reward is the one most people care about.

Maybe you enjoy sifting through hundreds of badly written, wall banger filled, mary sue laden, shark jumping arcs in the hopes of finding the next shakespeare or herman melville or Charles Dickens.

Me? if I dont have xp or tickets or badges (and to be frank, the only badges left in the AE I already have except for the ones that'd take me about 5 seconds even on a storyline driven arc tyo get), why the hell should I give a [censored] about sifting through the 99% of crap and piss on the AE to find the 1% that might be worth a read?

I do the AE because its Fun to be able to level my characters without having to suffer through various zones I hate, or having to play in pickup groups with absolute retards. Take away my ability to level there, and the only reason i have left to even walk in the AE building is to pick up my tickets my arc generates to spend on stuff I can sell at the market to generate flipping monies

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When i15 went live I only lost about 30 badges, because I stopped actively looking for more after seeing the badge-farm arcs that were being made. However, I thought that once i15 went live, I'd start to badge-hunt again.

Seeing my total badgecount drop by 30-odd in one swoop made me realise that badging can never be about the destination, because that elusive number of 'all' badges will never be fixed. Aiming to 'get em all' is utterly meaningless. The most anyone cam day is they've got em all so far, and knowing that yesterdays So Far can even be more than today's - and we've seen some serious negative badge progress with I15 - makes badging beyond the normal rate of progress even more risky

It's such a relief.

Eco

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Now if you'd just get over your whining and moaning about how unfair the market is.

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and on a more amusing note. I challenge any of these "the MA doesnt need xp" types to turn off their exp in their options settings and then play AE missions all day. Oh. and any tickets or influence you get You are required to throw away and not use.

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I have spent upwards of six hours with my lvl 50 Brute randomly picking and playing AE missions. No XP, and negligible tickets. Since I almost never transfer cash between characters, that's about as close to 0 reward as you can get.

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if you honestly think the tickets from 6 hours of play are negligible, you either have some poorly designed arcs you're playing or you just fail miserably at markets

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The point of my post was to indicate that some of us are perfectly happy to explore content that gives no benefits.

I don't do the AE on lowbies usually, since it means I miss out on things like achievement badges and certain missions I particularly enjoy, like the Seer Marino Arc, or stuff in the Rikti War Zone or Cimerora.

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So, in other words. you enjoy progress. even if it only means badges you cannot get from the AE? Well, then I think you just failed your own logic on playing stuff without needing a reward for it.

After all. if you truly can enjoy the AE without any reward for it ever, why arent you skipping those arcs to enjoy "great storytelling?" Or better yet, lets strip out those badges from those arcs. Seer marino no longer gives any exp at all and no badges. Good to know you'd still be there to play it, right?

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123 ratings at 5-stars last night, nicely sitting on the 3rd page.
126 ratings at 4-stars now this afternoon.

Losing all the 0-stars was a good first step, but it's not stopping these people.

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I agree. In fact it shouldnt be allowed for you to rate anything except 5 star. elsewise someone can grief me.

derp derp derp.

griefing will happen so long as theres a portion of humanity that enjoys revelling in schaudenfreude

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The way I understand it, purples (and all drops, actually) are given a specific drop rate per mob. A solo person with the map set for 8 should get approximately the same rewards as a full 8-person team running the map, only concentrated. The concentration wasn't what I meant to ask about, though.

When a mob is defeated, it gives a set amount of XP. On teams, bonus XP is then added, depending on team size. a team of 8 doesn't get nearly 8x the XP of someone soloing the whole map, but they do collectively get more than a single person would. I was proposing adding a similar scaling to drop rates. It would lessen the heavy incentive to solo for drops, because teams would be overall more efficient. It would also add a lot of incidental recipes and salvage to the game, and hopefully those would make their way onto the market.

I was including purples, but not just purples. All varieties of salvage and all recipes that drop from mobs would get the same scaling.

For the numbers... A team of 8 has a 250% XP modifier, which is then split up between all team members (keeping it simple- I know it's a lot more involved). What I'm thinking is that if they did something similar to drops, it would go a long way towards increasing supply, but the rare recipes would still be very rare. Salvage and Pool A recipes are where the biggest differences would be seen, with their already high drop rates.

And Lavitae, CoX still is NOT those "other games." If that playstyle appeals, then by all means, those "other games" already have the gameplay mechanics you're advocating. Just because someone else does it, doesn't make it a great idea.

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so in short "play my way, or else you're wrong and gtfo"

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You guys can keep arguing back and forth.

They can nerf all they want, it doesn't really affect me. I will still farm. I will still PL. I will still get my rewards at a more efficiently fast manner.

I play how I want to. I'm a PLer. I'm a Farmer. I find it fun.

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You silly goose. Havent you been listening to them? The only way to have fun in a game is to write the next Citizen Kane and expect it to get 1000+ votes with no exp attached to it while you sit around in radio Mission pugs all day and the AE lies silent. Any other method for playing the game is definitely not fun, and you just play the game to ruin other peoples fun.

*eyeroll*

and on a more amusing note. I challenge any of these "the MA doesnt need xp" types to turn off their exp in their options settings and then play AE missions all day. Oh. and any tickets or influence you get You are required to throw away and not use.

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If the Devs removed 50% xp from all AE missions that aren't Devs Choice or HoF, it would completely cut out the farming.

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And would relegate MA to the storyteller clique of a few dozen people (being generous here) AND NOBODY ELSE.

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And not even the good storytellers, at that. I bet you a hundred to one every last damn one of us who's actually got a highly acclaimed arc would stop giving a [censored].

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Keep in mind that although the primary purpose for the AE is creating stories, I'm very sure that this doesn't appeal to everyone and only to a specific niche of the playerbase who do enjoy creating their own content. Alot of us like to jump into the action of things and hence its why we pay our monthly sub. It's not the lack of creativity nor laziness that players don't try creating their own arcs, it's not something that we look forward to in the game.

And since it has been stated by the devs that the AE is an alternative way to get from lvl 1 to 50, you can more or less drop this suggestion.

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Also. Some of us who enjoy creating or seeing stories enjoy getting a level up every now and then while experiencing the stories. oddly enough. Liking levelups does NOT preclude you from wan ting to read textl

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Got on my level 7 dominator in mercy and /b'd for a team. Got invited by someone who seemed somewhat clueless. Said we were gonna do AE. She invited other people of varying lowbie levels. The highest was 15, everyone else was <10.

We go into the mish set and it's a totally normal mission, but the levels are off. Leader says she selected the wrong mission. Ok, all out, quit, reform, new mish.

Outdoor city map, level 51 LT farm... ugh I was ready to quit right then and there but I figured I would see how it went.

As I predicted we pulled about half the first spawn, barely survived them, and somehow aggroed the rest of them, who proceeded to kill us. I commented that we were too low to handle a level 51 all LT spawn and was promptly kicked from the team.

Honestly I planned on quitting it anyway, but out of curiosity I asked the leader why. "bcuz" I was bringing the team down and they could do it as long as they pulled.

My response was "Sure, you probably could clear that map, pulling 2-3 guys at a time, slogging through it slowly. Or we can do missions we are actually capable of handling, blow through them 5x as fast, and gain way more XP over time. But that's just my 42 months of experience playing this game talking."

No response...

Newbs these days...

Maybe I should just set up a lawn chair at the front porch of the AE building and shake my cane at everyone who walks by and try to rope them into stories about "the good old days..."

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The good old days when newbs were just as retarded just with less options for looking retarded?

Idiots have always been idiots. AE didnt change anything.

Grats!

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Its the staggered series of different rewards that draws you in, I reckon. Badge progress, recipe drops, salvage drops, coupled with the small psychological buzzes like beating the mission boss or taking on multiple groups at once.

I first became aware of this pattern playing Diablo II - you were always ten minutes from the next levelup or the next waypoint or felt like something really cool might drop. That complicated pattern of rewards is much more enticing than one big drop very infrequently, and used to keep me up till the small hours.

In CoH these days its similar - each character I have will have a number of goals of different types - badges, IO sets, level up to get a cool power or finish a set, some marketeering goal maybe so they can afford a particular item. Just enough complexity so you can sometimes level up or get a badge by surprise because your mind was on another goal.

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Absolutely hear you on the Diablo II style incremental rewards enticement. I believe some research was even done suggesting the small, repeated, release of endorphins made it even more addictive than it would seem on the surface.

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Uh...theres been tons of studies done on that. Its called Classical and operant conditioning. Sort of basic psychology concepts. Also why slot machines are so ridiculously addictive to the right sort of person.

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Cavatina said:
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Its darkly ironic that the same people who hate farmers and marketeers are the same people who want cheap purples.


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I don't like being on farm teams. I don't like being lied to by people filling farm teams. (It's happened.) I don't like playing with PL'd incompetents (or any incompetents, really.) So I guess I'm an anti-farmer.

I don't care how expensive purples get. Perhaps your generalizations need qualifiers?

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I dont like that stuff either. but not all farmers do that. Thats as much a generalization as what I said. I mean. I farm occasionally, i admit it. But if I do, then if anyone pulls that sorta [censored] I drop team immediately. I'd do the same if any other sort of team decided to be unethical about their playstyle.

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If the Devs were happy with the level of rarity before MA, that can only mean they are too rare now. I don't think "Ultra Rare" was meant to mean "no amount of rarity is too much".

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Then the devs should address that? Oh wait. they did in the opposite direction by villainizing farming, the single largest source of purples.

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The devs came down hard on AE farmers, but the AE doesn't generate purples (except for Devs choice, which weren't farmed), so their ham-fisted anti-farm measures had nothing to do with the purple supply either way.

The devs have taken no action in years with regard to non-AE farming, which IS a source of purples. The last anti-farm moves I can recall was putting Dreck on a timer and reducing Family XP, and both of those were a long time ago.

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Yes, i know that. But at the same time even coming down on AE farmers gave the anti-farming crowd all sorts of fuel for their vitriolic hatred of farming.

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Go for it.
As far as I'm concerned, the fewer people that have Purples the better. Oh, and what "Purple Problem" are we speaking of? I know of no such problem. Do recall their status of "ultra-rare" as in more rare than even rare things.

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I see that explanation thrown out a lot anytime someone complains about the price of purples.

Can we get a solid definition of what "ultra rare" means? Was it the amount before MA or after? Because that's two different levels of rarity.

If the Devs were happy with the level of rarity before MA, that can only mean they are too rare now. I don't think "Ultra Rare" was meant to mean "no amount of rarity is too much".

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Then the devs should address that? Oh wait. they did in the opposite direction by villainizing farming, the single largest source of purples.

Its darkly ironic that the same people who hate farmers and marketeers are the same people who want cheap purples.

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To be blunt and to the point, MA would've been a colossal failure and a tremendous waste of time and resources if it had been released with no rewards for player-generated content.

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As far as I'm concerned, AE is currently a tremendous waste of time and resources because of the two goals it has, it accomplishes one in a very sub-par way (story-telling) and the other goal (of being a tool to grow a character from Lv1 to Lv50) is exciting on paper, but is clearly not an improvement over the other in-game tools previously used by players to grow characters, unless of course you consider the exploits it allows you to use, in which case you're already considering things the Devs are quite in disagreement with.

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Destroying the xp wont change that, buddy. Most people are [censored], uncreative writers. No amount of limits on xp is going to suddenly make them shakespeare.