Geek_Boy

As someone who loves their tickets and knows the guy who made Footsteps (and knows he also loves his tickets), I think I'd rather keep getting tickets. Buying all my salvage for a while there without lifting a finger effort-wise was great. At least until I fell off the front page and have only been getting a few plays a day, anyway.

Footsteps was HoF in the first week this issue was out, then it lost it, then it got it back, then it lost it.

Like it or don't like it, the NPC's are funny to me and I'm not so obsessed with XP/minute that I can't just sit back and enjoy something for being fun (which should be obvious if you've played the arc in my sig). I get if you don't find it funny or whatever, but knocking it for the NPC's "stealing" your XP always baffles me.

For me, I rate based on fun or not fun, but whatever.

I think something needs to be done with the rating system since there are slews of people voting high-ranking arcs zeroes and ones in a misguided attempt to bump their own arcs. Here's a newsflash for those folks: if an arc has a high ranking, that isn't stealing anything from your arc. It isn't a zero sum gain here.

I was going to suggest minimalist's "One Million Eyes" and anything by Muu, but apparently those have already been brought up.

So how about @6x's LOST DOG, then. It is very silly, but it made me laugh and I've played through it probably 4 or 5 times now. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I love it.

Of course, if anyone wants to play the one in my sig, it also fits the criteria. I just wouldn't want to be accused of pimping my own arc is all.

So I'm working on a poster for my arc, which I talk about here and don't think I've ever posted in this forum, so I thought, "Eh, why not?"

So here is the piece I'm working on:

Pencils

Digital Inks

If you want more context as far as who this character is, you can always play my arc and of course give me 5 stars and feedback and whatever else you might like.

I'm going to try and get the colors done this weekend, though I'll admit that I'm still a total noob when it comes to doing much of anything on my computer. If anyone knows of any good tutorials to get me past some of the "no duh" moments, I'm all ears.

And of course, feedback on the actual art isn't such a bad thing either.

FYI, the main site these link to is still a work in progress for my wife's work since we're both part-time artists, which is why any work you might see on our home page will look very, very different from my stuff.

The Union organizer in my Strike! arc is from Local 151, a reference to an R.E.M. song.

Nobody will ever, ever, ever notice that.

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I'm just gonna go play my awesome arc with the prisoners group...DOH!

I'm gonna go level off the end of mission XP bonus! DOH!

I'm gonna go relive some of my fun times in Striga Island by fighting some Council vampires with those neat little spawning beds...DOH!

Well, at least I can enjoy the arc I made where you have to destroy snake eggs...DOH! DOH!

The Developers are against exploitative farming, so long as people are exploitative farming, the things they are exploiting are going to be taken away from us, not fixed, not made acceptable, taken away from us, and it continues for long enough, they will take XP in MA away from us and MA will be useless. DOH!

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Tell me what your post has to do with mine. Go ahead.

Farming and exploiting are completely and totally different, whether you think so or not.

Oh, and if you can't use Prisoners, make a custom group.

Those Council things are PITA's, so no I don't think I'd have an arc full of those. I'm tired of them before the mission they're in. Same with the snake eggs.

The lack of mission bonus XP has nothing to do with farming, since they stay in the same mission for a long, long time.

If you really wanna relive those fun times in Striga, there's a whole zone dedicated to reliving fun times. You might want to check it out.

Limiting access to certain things that create obvious exploits or might just be hard to code is completely and totally different from farming.

Oh, and last I looked the highest rated non-Dev Choice arc is actually my completely non-farming arc, so again the "OH NO ONLY FARMING ARCS EVER GET RATINGS" is completely bogus.

Though of course now people are probably going to one star me out of spite, but whatever.

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So, come on, happy apathetic people, do a little dance, get your boogie on! You've thrown your hat in with the people that threaten everything good about MA.

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Prove it.

Since they haven't "ruined" me making my own arcs that I enjoy, they haven't removed any of the arcs I've enjoyed playing, they haven't sucked away any of the XP, influence, or tickets I've gotten, and I'm barely aware of them, your point doesn't even make any sense.

For the folks complaining about PuGs, I don't have a lot of sympathy since the first year I spent playing CoX was spent trying to be sure I never had to be in one of those again. Every so often I accept that random invite thinking "Eh, why not?" and then I'm reminded in terrible, terrible ways. Ugly costumes, terrible bios, bad spelling, and general idiocy abound in the average PuG.

Personally, I'd rather solo.

I find that since enemy placement is so unpredictable, I don't like the results when I do anything other than leaving a mission "flat." In theory it sounds good, but it's hard enough to make sure your bad guy doesn't show up in the first room without moving spawns around, too.

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Really? I don't seem to recall being able to gain 26 levels by running 5 missions before MA...

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Why do you care if they're doing it in an MA mission instead of just resetting some other mission 5 times?

My solution is to not care what others are doing. I haven't even done all of my fellow goons' arcs, much less run into any problems finding something compelling to play. Another made up problem from a bunch of cry babies.

I feel very much the same way. There's the possibility people have actually found a way to exploit, which the GM's don't like and that's fine. As far as run of the mill "I'm going to play this over and over" farming, I think some people just can't stand that someone doesn't play the game the way they do.

I don't farm, but if I decided to put together an 8 man team and run my still active Dreck mission (which I kept because at the time it was basically the only way to fight level 50 Freakshow and I love me some Freakshow - not because it was a popular mission) over and over again, I don't see any harm in it. Yes, if a person does this they'll have more money than me and whatnot, but I really don't care.

I log in. I have fun. The end. What other people are doing doesn't affect me unless they're being stupid in a public place, meaning I can make fun of them.

A queue would be great. I've had a few people rate my arcs and I honestly intended to write their names down to return the favor and then didn't think about it and changed characters before I got around to it, or I crashed, or I just plain forgot.

It's no big deal when it's someone I know because I'll get around to playing theirs anyway, but when it's a random person that came upon my arcs then it sucks to lose them forever.

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I'm curious if only one arc per global will be eligibal for Dev's Choice. I'm hoping this is the case, so that more people have a chance to achieve this badge. Instead of the same people over and over. Anyone know? I assume not, and that any arc you make will be eligible, just hoping that once your global has the badge the Dev's will move on to rewarded those that do not have it yet.

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The chances that one person will end up getting more than one Dev's Choice is ridiculously low, but if someone manages to write 12 or 15 arcs that are good enough to get in there, then more power to them.

Them getting a slot isn't taking one away from someone else. This isn't a zero sum game.

Here's a thread about my arc

Arc ID: 51728
Speeding Through Time
Heroic
Story-based, in-continuity (as closely as possible anyway)
Contains Elite Bosses and Allies
4 missions containing 5th Column, Ghosts, and Arachnos
Length: You could probably run this in half an hour if you're not out to defeat everything

A mysterious figure claiming to be a member of the Freedom Phalanx of the past comes to you for help. There's a threat from his time that is just too big for him to handle. This arc involves time travel and while I'll freely admit you're not going to earn a ton of XP or tickets on this one, I think you'll have a lot of fun.

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The tags aren't a bad idea, but how do you define your missions? I have an arc with an EB/AV in 4 of the 5 missions, but it's very story-based and not meant as a pro challenge (you always have an ally along to help). Is it tough if you go after that optional AV at the end? Absolutely, but that's for story-based reasons and you can skip him anyway.

That's why I'd like to see a dev system, too. Otherwise it's going to be like "[blah][blah][blah]oh crap i'm out of room for my arc's actual name"

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You have an EB/AV in four out of the five missions and you don't consider it a pro challenge?

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All but one are really easy to beat and you have an ally for every one of them.

The tags aren't a bad idea, but how do you define your missions? I have an arc with an EB/AV in 4 of the 5 missions, but it's very story-based and not meant as a pro challenge (you always have an ally along to help). Is it tough if you go after that optional AV at the end? Absolutely, but that's for story-based reasons and you can skip him anyway.

That's why I'd like to see a dev system, too. Otherwise it's going to be like "[blah][blah][blah]oh crap i'm out of room for my arc's actual name"

For the record, a Superstrength/Willpower with both set to extreme is just cruel.

Mine is optional, so he's only there if you want to fight him. But if you do, he will give you a hard time and then rez to finish you off.

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Please keep in mind that any Architect mission that is advertised as a farm mission will be removed. This is also the case if any of the dialog inside the mission indicates that it is intended to be a farm mission.


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This might be a fairly ironclad policy being enforced by a bot of some kind.

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What an incredibly stupid way to handle this.

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As for scaling based on difficulty, I'd agree, but I have gotten dinged for "unsoloable content" from people who either don't know or don't care about adjusting difficulty. I'm not sure if I should ignore that or drop the EBs to satisfy them.

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Personally, I would ignore them. I play through everything on my BS/Inv Scrapper because while he's still fun and my first 50, he is far from over-powered. I figure if I can kill something with him, then things like my Illusion/Rad Controller or my Necro/Dark MM or my DB/Stone Brute are not going to have any problems at all.

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So what it sounds like is that there are some valiant crusaders going around reporting everything that says "farm," causing it to be banned based on the number of complaints rather than the content of said complaints. So it's not the farmers, but the anti-farmers that are more than likely causing the problems for these legitimate arcs.

I'm sure the GM crew is swamped right now, so it's probably taking them a while to clear the ones that shouldn't have been banned in the first place.

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No, it is the farmers' fault. If there weren't so many actual farms around, the GM crew wouldn't be so swamped, and would be able to actually look at individual arcs to determine whether or not they are farms, instead of just blanket banning anything with "Farm" in the description. Especially since any farmer with half a brain will NOT advertise their mission as a farm.

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If people didn't care oh so much about how other people are playing the game, it would be no big deal and the GM's would have other things to look at. So no, I'm still leaving it in the anti-farmers' court because they've created a feeling that the community really cares about this sort of thing when most people really don't.

But the barometer they have is the forums, so when people whine and complain about them enough, there's a false sense of urgency created.

Now, I'm also partially just hoping that the GM staff is not so stupid as to just unpublish everything that says "farm," but maybe that shouldn't be discounted. It would be monumentally moronic and show a good probability that someone in charge of the GM's is effectively braindead for them to approach it that way.

Since I like to think that isn't possible, I'm still leaning towards mass-reporting by a small but vocal minority who also post constantly about this non-problem.

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Besides, what you call a "farming mission" I might describe as a "fun challenge." I like being swarmed by tons of bad guys and seeing if I can survive them.

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You don't need a whole Dreck map full of swarms of bad guys to see if you can survive it. Sorry. Legitimate "challenge" arcs look very different from farm missions.

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I don't "need" anything. It's a freaking video game, so "need" doesn't even enter into the equation. If I think that's fun, why do you care? If I spend two hours in a single mission killing every little spawn I can find because I'm having a good time, what does it matter? In that time you've probably done 4 arcs and gotten as many or more tickets than I have anyway.

For the record, I have no patience for farming and don't have a single character who has ever seen more than one purple recipe at a time. Most of my 50's have single digit millions of cash because I've funded alts with the rest of their money. I'm the furthest thing from a "farmer" in this game, but I seriously just don't care if it's what you want to do. Me? I'll go outside for a little while instead.

So what it sounds like is that there are some valiant crusaders going around reporting everything that says "farm," causing it to be banned based on the number of complaints rather than the content of said complaints. So it's not the farmers, but the anti-farmers that are more than likely causing the problems for these legitimate arcs.

I'm sure the GM crew is swamped right now, so it's probably taking them a while to clear the ones that shouldn't have been banned in the first place.

For me, the real way to "fix" these farming missions is to just not get your panties in a bunch and forget about them. Let people play the game the way they want to (within reason) and just don't play anything that looks like you won't enjoy it.

Then the devs won't feel the need to overreact to a mostly made up problem and you won't get an ulcer.

Besides, what you call a "farming mission" I might describe as a "fun challenge." I like being swarmed by tons of bad guys and seeing if I can survive them.

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A few days ago an arc suddenly jumped up to the hall of fame with 999+ votes and it had previously been under 100. The it disappeared. What was that about?

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The only HoF arc I know of personally got them all honestly. I know you can lose HoF status if your rating drops, but I haven't seen any arcs jump as far as the number of votes go in any unnatural way. Any screenshots or other proof?

I liked Muu's earlier thought that it should, at the least, go into a "former HoF" status or something. That way, if the arc is actually terrible and it was just a giant voting block or something it doesn't keep the status unfairly, but it also gets recognized for having at least 1000 5 star votes at one point.

I imagine this would also solve the "You have access to a fourth arc, you don't" status.

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It is not oppressive, anti-democratic, or elitist to suggest that opinions have relative value. The tricky part is the assignment of criteria to determine that value. If Yahoo Answers can come up with a formula to allow certain users to have greater or more influential input, it makes sense to me that something analogous could be developed for the MA system.

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Actually, it completely and totally is and I would rather look for a source like, say, the government of every country where people have the right to vote than a really terrible internet website for my guidance.

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I asked a question. You didn't answer it. How many HoF arcs are up right now? 1 in a week? Please, I've been playing this game long enough to know that THAT small of a number is microscopic. How quickly did we have a level capped hero at game launch? How 'bout a villain? How quickly did we get a level 50 VEAT? The only one of those that took longer than a week was the first, and that's only because nobody yet knew how to game the system. MArc gaming has been pretty obvious since the get-go.


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You can have a level 50 VEAT by sitting in the basement playing without sleeping until it happens whether you're good at the game or not.

Getting HoF actually requires the rest of the community to do something besides pad your missions and maybe, if they're a personal friend of yours, bring you some more donuts.

The two don't even come close to correlating.

A better comparison would be how long it took for people to reliably raid Hamidon (more than a week), defeat the Recluse Strike Force (more than a week) or other things that require something more than just playing a whole lot.