Eva Destruction
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So again...if getting to level 50 in five hours is within the acceptable time/reward ratio, then why not sell insta-50 buttons?
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Quote:During a Ustream chat they mentioned that people using AE use up a lot of server resources. They also mentioned that you'd be allowed to buy as many arc slots as you wanted, and if they had to they would increase the server size. This implies that server space is being taken up by farms that are either outdated and unused and nobody bothered to take down, or are still being used and are functionally identical. So it might be a revenue stream, but it'll cost them as well. Whereas an instant-50 button or instant inf wouldn't.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Oh you don't think people buying an Architect License isn't going to be a revenue stream for them ?
**Note that I don't actually think they should be selling instant 50s, and they certainly shouldn't be selling inf. Inflation is bad enough already, due partly to people generating millions of pure inf in minutes. But it's functionally identical to allowing AE farming at the uber-level to continue.** -
Quote:So was Dreck, judging by the number of people who were running it, and who doesn't love beating up Freaks? So were the boss farms. Heck, back before the expanded difficulty settings, fighting all bosses was the only way some characters could get a decent challenge (although not so much the Malaise goon bosses. Those were a joke.) By your reasoning, the sheer number of people running the monkey farms would have made it legitimate entertainment.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Thats why I said some. Even so, you are still missing the fact for large numbers of people (Judging by the sheer number of farms, and amount of plays they get) that use AE, farms are legitimate entertainment. The "Story" community is just a different community not an inherently superior community.
The fact is, the fire farms throw the reward/time ratio way out of whack. If they really want people to be able to get from level 1-50 in a day, they might as well sell insta-50s on the Paragon Market, since it'll have the same effect, get rid of a lot of the broadcast spam, and make them some extra money. Might as well sell influence on the market too. -
Quote:Yeah, that argument doesn't hold any water anywhere. People who don't speak English as a first language make certain errors with the language, however, using text-speak and not capitalizing aren't among them. Those are reserved for people who theoretically speak English as a first language but don't actually care.Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Understand something for those who are arrogant jackholes - the writer may not speak English as a first, second or even third language, so the story may not be possible for them to even write.
Hahahahaha, can't assign blame to the devs. Read this forum more before making comments like this.Quote:Originally Posted by Another_Fan
LOL
They can't take it out on the Devs. Matter of fact for some that complain it might take personality death before they could even assign blame to the Devs.
I assign full blame to the devs, both for making it so easy to make and find farms and for making it so difficult to make and find anything but. However, in two years they have done nothing to make the first more difficult for any significant length of time while constantly making the second more difficult, and I'm pretty sure they have a bunch of us on ignore since it's easier than actually admitting they don't intend to do anything about the situation since there are new shinies to chase after. -
Just to be different, I played "Sinister Serenity - Energy/Smashing Farm" (500977)
The description is straightforward: "True Serenity." Not sure what that means, it could be a Zen thing or maybe author is a Firefly fan...The contact isn't any help there, her name is Doctor Z, she's wearing a techy/Valkyrie black and purple number and all she says is "Flame On." Wait a minute...I thought I wasn't going to be set on fire! I accept anyway, she wishes me "Good Luck." My mission objective is simply "Complete." Complete what? I zone into Recluse's throne room, to be told I need "1 Collection." The throne room is full of Energy Minions (green) Energy Lieutenants (blue) and Energy Bosses (red). They're all wearing Vanguard armor...maybe they're some special Vanguard strike force? Their descriptions aren't very descriptive, but since they're standing in Recluse's throne room guarding some computers ("Ambush 1" and "Ambush 2") I can only guess their purpose is top-secret. There is a safe also, which is very easy to crack; I guess that's why they needed all the guards. Clicking it immediately finishes the mission. All Doctor Z has to say about that is "Success." Huh. It wasn't very serene at all, and I never did find out what these oddly colored Energy Assault wielding Vanguard are doing in Recluse's throne room, or what's so important about these computers that they must send wave after wave of troops at anyone who damages them.
The best thing I can say about this arc is that there weren't any glaring spelling errors and the author knows where the shift key is. Also, it is somewhat original for featuring Energy Assault instead of Fire enemies. However, being original is only a plus if it's actually good, and you don't get bonus points for a basic knowledge of English, so I can't give this arc more than 1-star. -
Quote:And before anyone was targeted by members of the jackhole community, the OP had an arc 1-starred because "it was a terrible farm." So if people are going to judge story arcs on how farmable they are, it's only fair that we judge farms on their story.Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
Ya know, I know you all are frustrated, I've been ratings bombed twice myself for saying the wrong things in the forum. However, the fact is you were not attacked by FARMERS. You were attacked by some jackhole who, even if he is a part of the farming community, attacked you as a member of the jackhole community, therefore striking back at farmers is simply attacking innocent people.
At least Fred and PW are actually playing the arcs in question before low-rating them, unlike the guy who apparently somehow managed to play 30 arcs, many of them five missions long, in one night. -
Quote:That's a really good idea. So good, in fact, that people suggested it be implemented right at AE release, since this exact same thing was happening, as well as 5-star cartels. Posi's response was that it was to allow us to 1-star arcs that were so bad we couldn't finish them. We all kinda laughed at that.Originally Posted by Valorin
Maybe the answer is to not allow the ratings to count unless the arc has been played in full and completed- that would make it much more tedious for the drive-bys. Comments allowed (so if somebody gets stuck on your ultra hard final boss, you can hear about it and adjust it or drink their tears, as you see fit
) but no rating.
No they do not, although they will award tickets to the author if two weeks (I think) have passed since you last rated.Quote:I am assuming that multiple ratings from the same account don't count, correct?
It ain't new.Quote:Originally Posted by Crysys
New business model. Ratings Farms. I love it. -
Fire does more damage. Unless of course you're fire armor. If it was standardized farmers would just give their customs another attack to bring them up to 100%, and everybody else would have reduced rewards for their fire attack customs or would have to make them much more dangerous for everyone who isn't using fire armor.
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Quote:No, it's not a fundamental flaw in the ratings system, which classifies a 4-star arc as "excellent," it's a fundamental flaw in the sorting system.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I can understand the issue with drive-by one-stars, but to say that the system is flawed because its difficult to retain a perfect score is sort of missing the point of a ratings system. The system isn't "weighted" towards lower scores; it takes just as few 5-stars to undo a ton of 1-stars as it does 1-stars to undo a ton of 5-stars.
The problem is that "someone" is anyone with five seconds to spare, and so there are no standards at all.Quote:Someone has to decide by what standard we pick the 5% that will get the most attention. The other 95% are simply out of luck unless they can advocate attention by some means, and every time one of them succeeds someone else will in a relative sense fall. -
Quote:If you write NOT A FARM then farmers will be more likely to find it, as it will come up when someone searches "farm."Originally Posted by Please_Eddie
As has probably been said in this thread, this is why I am very reluctant to return to AE. Best you can do is write NOT A FARM as many times as you can stand to, but I doubt farmers read very much of the descriptions anyway.
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Quote:4 1-star ratings on 30 arcs in one night mean only that doing this is far too easy, and the underlying system that makes it so easy needs to be changed. Do you honestly believe someone actually went through and played all 30 of those arcs to determine that they are crappy farms? Because I don't. Someone went around 1-starring arcs they had not played just to tick off the authors because the system is far too vulnerable to this kind of ******baggery. Taking action against four jerkwads isn't going to accomplish anything in the long run. Changing the system will.Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
A 1-star rating means nothing. 4 1-star ratings, on every one of an authors arcs in one night, that coincide with the same number of 1-star ratings on the arcs of other authors who coincidentally happen to be rather vocal posters in the MA section of the forums is something else again. If CS does nothing about that then we don't need to bring it to the attention of any devs to be justified in calling them out.
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Quote:Because a single petition will accomplish nothing. A 1-star rating in and of itself means nothing, and CS will probably just ignore it. Directing the appropriate rednames to threads like this would bring to their attention that a problem does--hey a penny! I don't expect anything to be done about it anyway, just like Crey and Black Scorpion are still on the "profanity" list, but at least this way--oh look that dog has a puffy tail! Then when nothing is done at least we'll be justified in calling out the utter apathy demonstrated by the dev team towards--oooo, bouncy ball!Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
Why wouldn't you file a normal griefing complaint in game? Include the information of how many other arcs were simultaneously hit.
While I expect nothing from it, filing it doesn't cost anyone anything, either. -
Quote:You're too nice and don't rant enough. Rant more and the 1-stars will come.Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
I can only confirm receiving 3 low rated plays on each arc, and they occurred Tuesday, not last night (Wednesday). I am jealous of that fourth play that most of you have received. Why? What did I do to deserve only 3 plays? Soooo unfair! I want that 4th play!
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Quote:Teach a man to fish and you can come back tomorrow and take his fish.Originally Posted by Garielle
Woah! Woah! Woah! What do you mean GIVE them the Daemon Program? SELL it to them!! Remember, give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. TEACH a man to fish and ruin a completely good business opportunity.
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Quote:This actually brings up a good point...who do we complain to anyway, since the dev in charge of AE doesn't answer PMs from what I've heard.Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
This is obviously griefing, and the fact that the devs don't bother enforcing rules against griefing in the MA is the problem, not farmers. (that is, if any of those affected have reported it as griefing). The jackhole who did this may be a farmer, but every group has its jackholes.
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Quote:One person put in the effort, at some point. Everybody else just copied them. Please, point me to one of the "better" farms out there and I guarantee you most of the regulars here can figure out exactly how to copy it in fifteen minutes or less. Add in another fifteen minutes to look over the S/L sets and find the ones that give full XP while doing the least damage, without def debuffs.Originally Posted by Giant2005
They might not be of any use to you but that doesn't mean they are crap and deserving of being rated as such. Surely you can respect the amount of time, effort and clever thinking put into the better farms out there.
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Quote:I don't have a Fire Armor Brute, so all farms are crap to me.Originally Posted by Giant2005
I one star most farms because they are crap and I hope you would do the same. If I come across an excellent farm, I give them 5 stars and I hope you would do the same also.
It isn't fun anymore for a lot of people, what with the profanity filter and the editor lag. Add in the prospect of banging your head against the wall to actually get anybody to play the damn thing (and yes, it is part of the fun to have somebody play your arc, tell you what they liked and what they didn't like, and go back to the drawing board to improve. It makes for a better arc in the long run. Having a better arc is fun. Ratings are really just a means to that end, in that a 5-star rating can sometimes get somebody to play the damn thing.) and are your really surprised if people just don't want to do it anymore?Quote:Originally Posted by lionheart_fr
So "why should I bother to put forth the effort"? Because it's fun. If it's not fun, there's no point in doing it, regardless of the number of plays/stars it receives.
Edit: I just checked, and both of my arcs have received four more "plays" with no tickets. Oh yeah, that's just coincidence, people really think our arcs suck, and ratings griefing doesn't happen. -
Quote:This is, again, a very specific style of play. You're just not going to hit it with a PuG.Originally Posted by BackFire
And as for farm characters needing to be high level & /fire only, see TopDoc's thread on the claws/electric brute that can run at lvl 1 (albeit, with +1/x8 & a lot of insps). While the arc is very specialized it just shows that there's many different ways to accomplish the same goals in AE. I still hold out hope that we can find/create arcs that are both story-rich and tangibly rewarding.
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Quote:Yep, and they'd only be playable by tricked-out Fire Armor Brutes with a tray full of purples. Everybody else need not apply. (Ok, they'd be technically playable by anyone, depending on difficulty settings, but in order to get anywhere near farming-level rewards you'd have to be playing a Fire Armor Brute with the difficulty settings cranked up.) As such, I think fire ambush farm level rewards are way outside the scope of any reward experiment that doesn't assume everybody is playing a Fire Armor Brute.Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
My post was written pre-coffee-takes-effect, so I probably wasn't very clear, but what you describe was my point: nothing currently farms like an AE farm set up right. I guess we'll have to start writing all of our stories to include rezzing fire-weak foes to get any plays.
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Quote:Farming level rewards are actually well beyond the expected reward level for the game in general. That is why people run these farms. There is no other way to get rewards that fast, in or out of AE. If there was, they'd probably be running outside AE; have you looked at purple prices lately?Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
I don't know how I missed the fact that you guys ran my arc earlier in this thread... Anyways, I think WN's right there and that for real "good rewards" (i.e., 'farming' level of rewards) you do have to face down custom foes, not stock (such as I used in my arc) - and these foes should be weak and easy to mow down by design.
They do fire damage. Full stop. That is because Fire Armor Brutes can kill ridiculously stupidly fast. Against a constant onslaught of enemies, there probably isn't anything that kills faster. If you want farming level rewards, you have to have a farming team, or at least a farming character to kill everything while you doorsit.Quote:From what I know of farms they tend to be tailored to the team's (or leader's) strengths and away from their weaknesses, while being vulnerable themselves to their strengths; they often seem to include a rezz ability to make them a double-XP opportunity. This mild form of cheating allows for a greater dropped-foes-per-second ratio. No standard mobs are going to be able to compete against that... which is kind of what I was expecting you guys might run into with my arc. Still, interesting experiment.
I also don't think lowbie ticket earnings are indicative of anything other than that lowbies kill slowly. If you got a team of mid- to high-level characters together, picked a level 50 arc and cranked up the difficulty, I bet you'd be getting way more than 55 tickets per minute, barring any low-rewarding enemies (Family, Hydra) or customs with excessive resistances or debuffs. -
Quote:Yeah and those people, while some of them were rather vocal about their high standards--actually one of them was rather vocal about his high standards, but everybody seemed to set him up as the only person whose opinion mattered even while they argued with and lobbed personal insults at him, giving said person way more perceived importance than he would have had if people had just accepted his criticism, listened to or ignored it and moved on--only had 24 hours in a day, and none of them spent all of those 24 hours playing AE just to crap on everybody else's lovingly written "fight my main the Extreme/Extreme AV and my Electric Blast-wielding minions" arc.Originally Posted by Demonic_Gerbil
I'm sure the lack of enthusiasm among the player base for AE missions has nothing to do with the impossibly high standards some people set for AE missions early on, where actual story arcs were getting 2- and 3-starred for not being awesomely written enough, causing them to not get any plays (heck even 4-starring an arc was/is a death sentence in general) and thus not creating a positive feedback cycle where someone would want to continue sinking time into continually improving old and creating new AE mission content.
Besides, I didn't see a rule on the AE building anywhere that stated that if you play an AE arc you must also write one. Also, nowhere is it stated that if you write an arc you will be good at it. Nor is it stated that other players will like the same stuff you do. Nor is it stated that the other people who may or may not like the same stuff you do, and who play your arc which may or may not be good, will be able or willing to offer constructive feedback on what they liked or did not like about your arc and how you can improve it. Nor is it stated that they are in any way obligated to do so.
Besides, I'm suspect a lot of the people who wanted everybody to 5-star their arc and heap it with glowing praise while offering constructive suggestions for how to improve weren't really doing much of the same for other people. -
Quote:Except for the Archvillain-class desk in that one mission from Vince Dubrovski.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Also, the class shown by a critter in a player's GUI can be overridden by the devs, so that it can read "Object" or whatever. As far as I know, there is no "object" class: I believe most are usually a subtype of minion.
Did you know....when CoV was first released that Archvillain-class desk had to be defeated to complete the mission. This took a very long time if you were solo.
Also, the portal in the "Defeat Infernal" mission from Maria Jenkins didn't scale down when AVs first started scaling down to EBs for soloists. It was bugged to not spew demons at the time, but still took a very long time to defeat if you were solo. -
Quote:Right, like we were supposed to wait for the official CoT preview before ranting about it?Originally Posted by MTS
What I think is funny is that people are interpreting one out of focus screenshot from a teaser slide show as representing the ENTIRE range of options available for a costume set.
I'd wait for the official preview before spending all my energy writing long rants about it.
The quality of the image is irrelevant. It's good enough that we can get the gist of it. Whether this represents the entire range of options is irrelevant as well, unless marketing is a bunch of idiots who felt that cute furry mini-dress better represents a female barbarian to the majority of the gamer population than the chainmail bikini they'll be revealing later. And if this furry mini-dress is actually not representative of the majority of the female options in the set, there is still cause for complaint as this preview is pushing an image of the game's "ideal" for female characters that is at odds with what many of the players want for their female characters. I will complain about marketing using T&A to promote the game just as much as I complain about the art and costume departments offering only sexified costume pieces for female characters, since it's indicative of the same mindset, and the first will inevitably lead to the second. -
Quote:Yes, and that is why you get the "so and so has contacted you" message when a new contact becomes available, that adds the new contact to your list so you can choose to run to them when you're interested in what they have to offer, and not to run to them if you'd rather continue doing what you're doing.Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Always count on Venture to find the grey cloud in the silver lining.
Just because YOU know what to do doesn't mean the next person will. They do still hope that new people continue to start playing the game. If they didn't, they'd take all that stuff out. -
Quote:They said "style" on the same page as a picture of someone wearing socks with sandals. Ugly sandals too.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Heh, if you want a fleeting laugh, check out these hiking heels
Yep, that's it. Cute. Pretty. I do not always want pretty and I almost never want cute.Quote:Originally Posted by _eeek_
There is nothing wrong with a cute, frivolous female costume. Neither male or female barbarian costume is remotely offensive to me. What is dreary is that there are no alternatives, not for either gender. There is nothing light-hearted for the male, and nothing that says "I will kick your ***" for the female. I don't know anyone who is interested in unisex looks (I'm not, certainly), or knee-jerk political correctness, but this costume set, like some of the others, feels to me (subjective feedback) just the way I felt talking with that man. Men are the heroes. Women support the men being heroes (and look darn cute doing it).
It makes perfect sense for Skulls and Hellions. They're wannabe tough guys. They'd totally be making fun of each other for getting beaten up by a girl....even if said girl can bench press a truck.Quote:I have not found this attitude anywhere else in the game, unless it's making fun of that mindset (like Skulls and Skull girlfriends).