Folonius

Maybe the dev's want the large increase to the influence supply to help the economy?

>.>

<.<

Maybe they're Democrats . . .

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I always feel so ignored when I try to talk reasonable-like. =P

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I don't know why I put so much effort into it.

TLR version
Great idea on lowered inf rate on farming and allowing spawn size increase!
/signed

The little longer version:

Coldmed said
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day I can’t farm when I want ill quit this friggin game and go somewhere else and so will a TON of people


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Calm down there, she’s not talking about getting rid of farming all together, it’s a compromise. You’ll still be able to farm.

So on to topic, I’ll try to avoid the economic issue somewhat because I have different theories that you do regarding inf in the system.

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In Farming Mode you gain 0influence from enemies defeated


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I’m not completely ok with this. In farming mode, the influence should scale to as if you were running solo. Just because someone would rather fight larger groups because it’s more fun shouldn’t completely eliminate influence gain. That being said, I don’t even think about influence gain through missions anymore, so if it suddenly did drop to 0, I may not even notice. The bulk of my influence comes from drops sold on WW.

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In exchange for your 0 influence gain you get an extra 10% chance of a drop from opponents.


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This isn’t really necessary. The drops from soloing a 6 man mission are quite a bit. I leave a mission with my salvage and recipe slots almost filled. I wouldn’t mind the increase though.

Another problem I see is not allowing a 2 man or larger team to set a team size spawn larger than the number of people on the team. I think that this should also be added. It would allow a 4 person team who can steamroll groups to raise the level to a team size of 8 for added fun.

I agree with you on adding a farming tab in MA to weed out farming missions. I know there are some odd farming missions out there with only minions, or only lts, etc, and those are the ones that can be weeded out. Farming missions through MA could be made to contain better story content as well, i.e. A MA description with a suggested team setting size if soloing. There is a lot of potential with a system like this for farmers, RPers, and casual players alike.

The thing I really like about this idea, it will give Developers power over farmers. I try to leave percentages and drop rates up to them, as they try to adjust to what we do , and how much stuff we should have available total as a community of players. This in turn sets a rough price on what each person is willing to pay. Being able to adjust what a farmer can get would be a huge gain in power for them, which sometimes makes me wonder if they want to leave it the way it is since they haven’t addressed the issue yet.

I would like to see something like this added simply because missions are just too easy to solo with the addition of IO’s. Seriously, 3 minions, or 1 lt . . . If you played a rikti monkey that was fully IO’d out, you’d be able to breeze through any mission. That’s why I never solo with a 50 without first looking for fill, or play on teams when I am on my 50.

Speculating about what it would do to other players, it is possible that other players will solo more often, but it can’t be much worse than what MA has done. I look for people to join a team, and half the people logged in are working on an MA arc. Like every other change, it’s a fad and would wear off.

Would there be a mass outpouring of people quiting the game? I wouldn’t leave if this were implemented. I’d be estatic if they allowed more rewards based on a difficulty setting since I’ve wanted it for the last 2 years. I seriously doubt people would leave as long as the rewards equaled the risk of fighting larger groups.

The main problem would be where to set the drop percentages. Leaving drop percentages the same, or raising them will increase supply in Wentworth’s. Lowering them will leave them the same, and lowering them to much will worsen the supply. Influence should be scaled back for a farm setting, but not completely eliminated.

I say this with hesitancy, but xp should be scaled back as well with this change, and data mining should be done immediately afterwards and adjust the amount of xp gained over a community.

Finally, what if someone looks for fill, and tries to farm the old way? The new system needs to be linked to the potential of this happening, so however many people fill, it will have to have the same effect as if using a farm setting, otherwise this is all for naught. People quitting a team shouldn't have an effect on drop rates since the spawn engine spawns groups as you see them, and not all at once when entering a mission. The amount of change to add this will pretty much make this its own issue. Is this much work worth implementing since it really already exists using fill/padding? I think it is ... /signed

I'm up for any ideas on stopping spam email. I accidentally ignored spammered several people I know who sent me an email a few days ago.

I've gotten into the habbit of looking at my email, and just machine gunning the spam button.

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I would not be opposed to being able to set spawn sizes.

...in Test Mode.

After all, if I'm designing a mission, I'm constantly going into the AE, quitting out, breaking up my one-man Task Force, editing, trying again... makes it hard to test team-sized spawn rates. I want to be able to "ghost" through a mission and observe the spawn sizes and distributions.

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I could actually deal with something like that despite getting no rewards. Maybe allow drops, but the reward rate would be reduced by 100% for each difficulty level over one person. I could go for that.

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This was a bad idea the first time it was posted.

This was a bad idea the last time it was posted.

This is still a bad idea.

It will continue to be a bad idea.

Farming throws off the market. It exploits a very small amount of content with low risk/high reward ratio. It annoys people who don't farm or dislike the idea of it when they get tells asking to farm or pad or bridge.

Farming is not suggested by the Devs. Farming is not a well liked practice and, for that reason, the Devs have consistently altered the way things are handled to -avoid- farming.

Asking the Devs to put something in the game solely for the purpose of farming when they have time and again shown that they don't condone the act is a waste of time. I'll be bookmarking this response to copy-paste to all further farming threads.

-Rachel-

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LOL Rachel .... read my response to your cut and paste on my thread.

Edit: oh yeah, /signed ... and 5 stared.

What I really find amusing is that many anti-farming people constantly repost exact same reasons why farming is EBIL even though they are strawman arguments, or they have been countered.

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This was a bad idea the first time it was posted


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Not bad, just not high priority at the time.

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This was a bad idea the last time it was posted
This is still a bad idea.
It will continue to be a bad idea.


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No it's not. With the introduction of so many more missions, people, not just farmers but a large population of people, want to adjust difficulty refecting size of groups, for solo play and group play.

When I farmed, I generally farmed radio missions. I'd pick a radio mission, something other than arachnos and rikti, invite 5 random people, spawn the map using stealth on my fire/kin, and then wipe the map clean, and complete the mission. Repeat as needed.

According to some definitions which people make up about farming, that is not farming. Call it what you want.

Now, I can accomplish the same thing with MA Arcs, which I do. I either publish my farm arc, run it, then unpublish when I'm done, or start someone elses arc, and do the same thing I did with radio missions.

With ticket drops, it really doesn't matter who's arc you run, all you need to do is invite fillers, and you'll end up with 6 times as many tickets as you would get if you were solo. If it wasn't meant to be, that should have been changed, so filling/padding is not an exploit. What's your Arc ID rachel? I'll farm your mission!

With over 2bil in IO's on my fire/kin, I can farm any group simply because of the speed of my recharge to flashfire, and cinders and you can relax over this because the dev's said they won't make things more difficult because of IO's. The only issue I have is spawning inside maps against groups that can see stealth, which is why I avoid certain groups on inside maps.

There are practical reason why to have this second dimension of difficulty for both casual mission/story arc content play, and for farming, which have all been listed in this thread, and all you can do is repeatly scream DOOOOOM over and over. That's a pretty weak argument seeing as CoH is still here, and this would address a QoL issue, not an actual change.

With MA now implemented, if a second dimension isn't added, I personally will want to challange myself on missions with larger spawns instead of 3 minions, or 1 lt and 1 minion. I honestly don't like to bother people to ask for fill, which is why I do it as politely as possible, and if they fill, and ask if they can stay, I will never tell them no. If they can find a mentor, they are welcome to stay.

I know there aren't many farmers out there like that, but if this ever gets implemented, you won't have to worry about those particular farmers anymore either.

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Farming throws off the market


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No it doesn't. Study economics, and come back with a new argument.

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It exploits a very small amount of content with low risk/high reward


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Small amount of content? I wouldn't call running radio missions a small amount of content, and I certainly wouldn't call all the new MA missions a small amount of content. I intend of running other peoples arc, filling every mission.

I find it ironic that I will be farming anti-farmers missions.

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It annoys people who don't farm or dislike the idea of it when they get tells asking to farm or pad or bridge.


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This has been covered nicly by people who like the idea. A second dimension of dificulty would eliminate this for you.

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reason, the Devs have consistently altered the way things are handled to -avoid- farming.


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There is no way to avoid people from filling and spawning a map, and the only thing I can think of would having the spawn engine despawn spawns when someone goes out of range. Don't know how much effort that would take, but doubt it will be done, because it can lead to many other problems. IE. boss fights when you go back the entire mob will be present again if a team wipes, defend objects would be messed up, etc.

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Asking the Devs to put something in the game solely for the purpose of farming ...


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And you are wrong again. This is not solely for the purpose of farming. In regards to farming, it does help reduce the amount of casual player spam asking for fill and padding, but it also allows people who play story arcs for content to up the difficulty. Part of the reason I farm is because if I want to do story content, I have to deal with 3 minions or 1 lt and a minion. That's why I look for fillers even when I'm playing story content while I'm solo.

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I personally dont' understand the point of farming. Making a mission to do over and over and OVER again to get the rewards, seems like a really REALLY dull use of time. Maybe paragon studios can come out with Virtual Paint Drying. I know the regular missions can become a grind and I take break from playing for a while when they do, but intentional making a mission for the purpose of boring yourself to tears seems masochistic IMHO. Then again, I have found i mostly ignore AE. It may make teaming a little harder, but it means the teams I do get will not be filled with people that I don't enjoy the play style of.

To each their own.

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You want a point to farming, check this out . . . Make an AE mission, outside, very large. I used City 02. Add as many protect object objectives as you can. Use a custom group which only has one minion. Add an ambush for every protect object, and run it with an 8 man team on invincible. I advise you make that minion as easy as possible to kill also.

I'm working on a mission like that, and intend on publishing it. Just not sure how to make it allowable without C/R infringement. Can't call the minions zerg, was thinking maybe Blergs? Got the idea from the forums

Edit: no wait, make those minions all masterminds ... hehe

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I really don't see how that gives farming a point.. in fact it seems to me to reinforce how pointless it is. I don't play that often, only a couple of hours a week. Why would I waste my time doing that?

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The term "Zerging" was coined when Starcraft was published, but the concept has been popular long before that. I used to always enjoy playing the zerg, and fighting against them. Play the terrans, make motor bikes and spider mines, and you can decimate a zerg rush, and it's just fun to watch. How I play every game has always been focused on that all the way back to pen and paper D&D when I was but a tike. Fighting insurmountable odds, and just barely winning.

Playing your mage or thief in D&D, wanting to get that one item, but having to go on a quest to get it, how is CoH any different? Everyone wants the shineys, and people will take the path of least resistance to get it.

Add those two together and you have farming.

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I personally dont' understand the point of farming. Making a mission to do over and over and OVER again to get the rewards, seems like a really REALLY dull use of time. Maybe paragon studios can come out with Virtual Paint Drying. I know the regular missions can become a grind and I take break from playing for a while when they do, but intentional making a mission for the purpose of boring yourself to tears seems masochistic IMHO. Then again, I have found i mostly ignore AE. It may make teaming a little harder, but it means the teams I do get will not be filled with people that I don't enjoy the play style of.

To each their own.

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You want a point to farming, check this out . . . Make an AE mission, outside, very large. I used City 02. Add as many protect object objectives as you can. Use a custom group which only has one minion. Add an ambush for every protect object, and run it with an 8 man team on invincible. I advise you make that minion as easy as possible to kill also.

I'm working on a mission like that, and intend on publishing it. Just not sure how to make it allowable without C/R infringement. Can't call the minions zerg, was thinking maybe Blergs? Got the idea from the forums

Edit: no wait, make those minions all masterminds ... hehe

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/UnSigned

When the game you enjoy farming in so much is finished because the only people left playing it are farmers, and the devs no longer have a reason to create new content because no one is playing it, what will you do? Find another game to farm into oblivion?

Please, stop asking for farming to be made easier for you. There is still a lot of us that like to play the new content as it is released.

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Your assuming that people will leave because of farming. Despite all the advances made to help people who decide to run a farm mission, your still here. Adding a feature that will help casual players, and will reduce the level of spam is all around good.

For the most part, it seems like this idea is split down the middle, so why not add it? It will reduce the level of spam, so people won't get padding and filling requests. In this case, since farming isn't harmful, what they don't know won't hurt them, so this would be throwing farming in a 'black box'.

This application also helps people who don't farm. Ever on a 4 or 5 man team that just steam rolls everything? This will let you up the difficulty as if you had an 8 man team, and make it more of a challange. Realistically, since I really only farm once or twice a week, this is would I would be using it for.

You could also use it to set a spawn size to a team of 5 if you have an 8 man team.

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but the Devs aren't trying to make Farming easier


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I disagree, they have just made it extremly easy with MA.

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Then why can you flag an MA arc for content if it's an obvious farming map and get it removed (at which point you can just go through the 5 minutes of effort to remake it, but still)? The effect of making farming incredibly easy with MA is simply a sad side effect of the devs giving us a large amount of control over additional content.

Think of it this way: the second amendment right to bear arms was made to allow people to defend themselves, but some people still use it to go out and murder/mug/etc.

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LOL you just compared farming to murder ...

Still, this is only a QoL suggestion. I have no problems spamming people with fill. I've been doing it for 2 and a half years .... why stop now?

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Which means no Purple drops for level 50 farmers.


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Obviously I don't farm all the time, only when I feel like it, and I still have my normal mission farm maps.

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The Devs didn't intend for the mission architect to be farmed. It was made so players could create missions for themselves and the community. Inferring upon their intent otherwise is foolhardy.


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Farming is not prohibited in this game, and a normal game function, and you were just foolhardy.

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I suppose you're 'right' in that you'll just flag yourself and all people with similar builds for instant nerfing when, solo, you wipe 8-man spawn maps consistently. But is that really something you -want- to be right about?


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I have two particular farmers who are extremely good at it. One I won't mention because it is an easy nerf to fix, but the other is a Fire/Kin troller, and nerfing one of them is very very hard simply because of the arsenol at ones disposal.

With IO's in the picture, I doubt there will be very many serious nerfs anymore.

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And what servers do you play on primarily?


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Virtue atm. I RP when I'm not farming

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Zergling Swarm:
1) Create a custom enemy group that only contains one minion type. The minion can be anything, it really doesn't matter.
2) Set the mission map to something large and outdoor. City 02 works well, particularly with its spawn points.
3) Max out the number of "Protect" objectives. It doesn't matter if they're required or not, since custom critters suck at killing protect objectives. This is about swarming the player, not causing instafail
4) Make sure to max out the spawns around the objectives

I know for a fact that City 02, when given the max number of protect objectives, will often spawn multiple objectives on top of one another. I've seen up to 5 at the same X,Y,Z location (there may be others, but Cuty 02 is the only one I've tried). This means all 5 spawns surrounding the objective will be at the same spot. where it gets really juicy is that Protect Object objectives all have an ambush attached to them. With 1-5 objectives spawned at the same spot, while fighting 1-5 spawns worth of minions, you'll get 1-5 ambushes all spawning at the same time, for 2-10 spawns worth of enemies aggroed on you.

Bonus points for setting the difficulty to Tenacious or Unyielding (larger spawns) and for bringing an 8-man team. On a *THREE* person team, I've had enemies disappearing because the game had reached its entity draw limit (>100 entities on screen)

Bonus bonus points for bringing a Thugs MM; Arsonist's Fire Bomb doesn't have a target cap.

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That's awsome ... all we need is an outdoor map that has the look of an alien landscape.

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but the Devs aren't trying to make Farming easier


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I disagree, they have just made it extremly easy with MA.

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It's not part of the numbers they use and it skews power scales and datamining


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not sure what you mean by power scales, but as for data mining, taking large spawns and killing them is how they data mine, so it won't mess anything up.

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So asking them to let you set spawn sizes


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I can already set spawn sizes. What I want is a way to do it without having to make a macro key which sends a tell to everyone in the /search list.

Arc Name: A Day at the Farm
Arc ID: 52701
Morality: Heroic
Mission one: Defeat all, rescue, collection 34-50 ambush Custom Group - Medium sized map
Mision two: Collection Crey 34-50 Small Size Map
Mission three: Collection, rescue Medium Size Map Crey 34-50
Mission four: Small map boss fight and a rescue 34-50
Description: A farm has been over ran by mutated animals! Help Mr. McDonald clean up his farm, and then try and find out who caused it. The last fight contains an AV/EB depending on how large the team is.

I had alot of fun creating it, and designing the outfits. Thanks everyone, if you left any, for the helpful feedback. Hope whoever plays it enjoys it.

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Of course, if you get that mission pulled again, you may lose your MA priviledges entirely...

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Good point, I'll unpublish it after I'm done running it.

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I love the idea. Unfortunately it will never happen. I hope you are ready for the amount of negative responses your about to get too

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*puts on battle gear*

I am! I've suggested this in the past

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Find which arc they're doing and report it for content?

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This, too.

I've seen several vanish. I mean, c'mon, when the lead dev says flat out "It's not for badging, it's not for farming," and there are blatant ticket farms (and badge farms for MA badges) in the freaking title of the mission?

I found a few, jotted them down - several were gone within two days. Whether they were pulled by the author or kicked out by CS, I don't know. I'd expect to see some churn there.

In any case - I've yet to be stuck on a farm team, or even invited to one, on any character. Quiet server, quiet zone, I'm good.

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Mine was taken down last night. I republished it, and ran it again.

There's no point in trying to control a person play style, because I certainly will not bend.

I at least made mine amusing, and made a custom group of mutated animals which consist of cows and chickens

The addition of MA is great! It now allows the farming toon to create a map that can be ran over and over again, and not worrying if it gets completed or not.

Not only that, but it's not subject to normal TF rules in that you can't invite people once it's started, so it allows me to look for padding/filling at the start of every mission, which brings me to my suggestion . . .

With the addition of the new issue, it seems right to bring this up again, and makes even more sense than before to delve into the spawn system, and allow a second dimension of difficulty rating.

The current challange rating goes from 1 to 5, increasing the levels of the spawns. Add another bar that goes from 1 to 8 which basically will set the size of the spawns. 1 will be equal to a spawn size of a 1 man team, 2 will be equal to a spawn size of a 2 man team, etc . . . up to 8.

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I know what you're saying, but I'm thinking they have a good reason to put it the way it is. And I will reiterate:

"I think it's fine as is, and any work to "improve" by allowing some powers is unneeded."

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I understand what you mean. A clean sweep was easier and why chance messing it up.

My answer: Because it's just annoying. "QoL"

Alternatively they could move the tutorial contact closer to the door. That would be enough for me and would allow me to ignore the room in general, which is what I plan to do.



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I like the power suppression the way it is as well, but moving the contact next to the door is a good idea.

yes, please put one in pocket D and in the SG base.

/signed

Someone should make a channel for Virtue Costume Contests.

Not sure if this should go in costume suggestion, or here. It's a suggestion for a new skin for a mace. Please give either a frying pan or a pot as a new skin for maces.

Bump. Is there a guide that incorporates IO's into the build?

Notes on Play-Style and Slotting

Many people have their own type of play style, and how they envision their character will work once they make them, and I must say when I rolled up my first Fire/Kin and leveled him to 50, he far exceeded my expectations. He was a good, well rounded character, and could fill any roll. I was determined to make him as good as he could be, and spent over 1.5 billion searching for that perfect build. Once I found a build that worked for me, he could no longer fill any roll, he was every roll.

You can play a Fire/Kin with IO’s and set bonuses or without set bonuses and still be effective. I started out at level 50 the same as everyone else, common level 50 IO’s. I wouldn’t recommend anything less than IO’s however, as SO’s are a thing of the past. If you are going for an inexpensive build, I recommend level 50 IO’s. With the 40+ bonus IO’s give you, you can conserve slots for powers as well by only 2 slotting them for each bonus you want. If you have hot feet, and want only damage and accuracy, 4 slot it and put in 2 level 50 accuracy IO’s and 2 level 50 damage IO’s. A third accuracy or a third damage IO would only raise the bonus to that stat minimally, and placing your slot elsewhere would offer more of a bonus to another power. Once you have as many optimal slots placed, then you can think about adding that extra slot for a third IO. Also keep in mind, missing with transfusion or transference sucks. Always have a back up plan if you miss with either one of these. I carried a lot of greens and blues into fights.

If you are going to slot your Fire/Kin to be optimal, I strongly suggest using Mid's Hero Designer, as it will give you your total stats. Pick up as many +hp accolades as you can as well. Accolades combined with +hp set bonuses can get you very close to controller cap. I suggest you make your build for maximum recharge and obtain perma haste. You’ll be able to get to around 180% recharge and grab as much accuracy set bonuses as you can. Purple sets will help with accuracy as well. Use Mids and experiment, and keep an open mind as you play around with the different powers. Some ideas that seem crazy might actually work because of a Fire/Kin’s survivability. My Fire/Kin is able to tank in some maps. With an emp on the team, I’m able to tank anything.

Once you have your Fire/Kin where you want him, play him to get the feel of his limitations. Don’t worry if you die, you will figure out what he can and can’t do. Once you get the hang of how the character works, you’ll be an asset to any team. I believe that making a Fire/Kin that can take damage, and stand next to the tank while he does his work is the best way to go. You can Fulcrum Shift next to the tank, and let the tank do all the dirty work. Always keep looking around while you are on a team, especially in tight spawn locations but stay next to the tank when you aren’t needed elsewhere. People often draw agro from close by groups, and as a fire/kin, you’ll be in a position to prevent team wipes. For example, once you’ve used Fulcrum Shift on the tank, Flash Fire another spawn, Jump into a third agroed spawn and use cinders, and fire cages a fourth spawn and hop into the middle of the 4th spawn, and use transfusion and transference to stay alive while you can use fire cages, your epic damage power, hot feet, and imps to DPS them down. You’ll effectively be able to handle four spawns at the same time! Keep in mind; you may be dropped by the fourth spawn depending on how many bosses are in the group. I usually like to have one boss present in groups I’m attacking while on teams, as it gives me a reliable target to use transference and transfusion on. Also be aware of groups that mez attack. You may not want to take on a fourth group if you don’t have a break free to use prior to attacking that last group.

This concludes my first play guide on Fire/Kin, and will likely modify this as I gain more experience in playing the different epic masteries. Feel free to critique the guide, as it will help with possible changes to the guide in the future