Hugginator
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Posts
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Joined
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Have only read the OP. Yes the AE does need XP. Quit crying about your social gathering place and find another one.
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Try reading next time, I have never said take XP out of AE. -
Its marketing and product positioning only.
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I covered most if not all of your points in my long post on page 5, but its still basically more wishful thinking and rationalizing.
Again, I completely realize that farming will never go away, thats not the point. Nor does removing XP in any way shape or form from MA make sense, thats a ridiculous suggestion as well.
But MA will be nerfed, its just a matter of when, how and by how much.
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In essence, "farming is bad for the game" is little more than a myth perpetrated by people who are on the opposite end of the ideology specturm.
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It has far less perhaps zero to do with ideology than long term sustainability, the chosen business model demands that rewards/time be monitored/restricted, and anything that skews that ratio will be reigned in.
Sometimes with a bat.
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Except that the devs already are taking steps to reduce exploits. Mobs that give too much xp will be continue to be removed. And reported farms removed, IF the devs see them as farms.
Nothing other than that needs to be done, since REGULAR MA misisons currently give LESS xp than regular ones for one reason: NO MISSION BONUS. Notice I said REGULAR MA misisons.
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I don't disagree at all, definitely keep XP in MA, nerf the worst farms the rest will take care of itself. -
I covered most if not all of your points in my long post on page 5, but its still basically more wishful thinking and rationalizing.
Again, I completely realize that farming will never go away, thats not the point. Nor does removing XP in any way shape or form from MA make sense, thats a ridiculous suggestion as well.
But MA will be nerfed, its just a matter of when, how and by how much.
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In essence, "farming is bad for the game" is little more than a myth perpetrated by people who are on the opposite end of the ideology specturm.
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It has far less perhaps zero to do with ideology than long term sustainability, the chosen business model demands that rewards/time be monitored/restricted, and anything that skews that ratio will be reigned in.
Sometimes with a bat. -
Thank you for making my point for me, all of your content below is wishful thinking to the extreme, MA farming is going to get nerfed, continually, the sooner you get over it, the better.
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Farming has been discouraged basically since the game started, and has been systematically nerfed nearly every patch and or issue, any other opinion is wishful thinking.
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Yes. The devs have shook their heads and gone "tsk tsk tsk". Yet they haven't really nerfed FARMING.
What they HAVE nerfed are "exploits" of content that allowed players to skew the risk/reward ratio beyond what the devs consider "acceptable".
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Wrong, they have nerfed regular content and AT's over and over again, content that on average was an order of magnitude less reward/time then what MA allows people to do (with the notable exception of pre agro cap/aoe cap herding), they will nerf MA down to regular content levels then probably below.
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MA farming was specifically verboten basically from conception
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"This is not meant as" is not the same thing as "this is forbidden".
The entire game is not meant as a farming tool. Yet this is what people playing their L50 toons are, and have been, doing since the first people made L50.
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Rationalize it any way you like, both ways make the same fundamental sense to me, don't farm in MA. Do you somehow read it otherwise?
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In spite of the above, farmers are spoiled rotten on MA farms, they are fat with loot sunning themselves like gorged lions on the savannah, perhaps even feeling a bit entitled now based on your post above
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I think your POV is skewed here and there's a bit of emotional overinvestment involved. Your argument is simply "people are getting "better/more" rewards for doing something I dislike and won't do".
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I gave no opinion there about what I liked or otherwise, and there certainly is no envy, I have billions of inf, an amount an average player will never see. Lots of lvl 50's lots of purples and blah blah blah lots of other stuff. And I will disclose that by quick estimate probably less than 1% came from farming.
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Because in my opinion, if they enjoyed the game before, there is no reason they wouldn't enjoy the game after a series of MA nerfs to rewards.
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Your opinion is duly noted.
On the flip side, not everyone plays for the same, exact reasons you do.
YOU might not mind a nerf to rewards. Others who use the MA in an acceptable manner but still as something other than a PL'ing tool might.
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In this post at least I have given no reasons for playing any way at all, nor have I told you or anyone to play any particular way.
My point still stands though, if 'you' liked the game before the high rewards version of MA, I expect you will like the game after.
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it should be plainly obvious that players have no 'vote' in what the devs choose to do with the game
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Head back and re-read Posi's original "crackdown" post.
It was in response to talking to people who were both displeased and vociferous about it at the Anniversary event. Most of the people at that event were...TADA! FORUMITES.
While people here don't have a direct vote, they still have an influence on the devs. The squeaky wheel and the oil? And on some level, I'm sure you figure that if enough noise is made, they'll think that everyone needs oiling.
*SQUICK!*
Sorry. Just had a really horrific mental image there.
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Right out of the gate, the devs have a vested interest in game balance, specifically to the point, rewards/time. If that ratio is broke they will fix it. If all the MA nerfs were caused because Positron got some personal opinions from some vocal players, its still all his decision, no one water boarded him or anything to force him.
There is no doubt in my mind that if he had somehow been surrounded that day by pro-farmer players the end result would be the same, MA will be nerfed.
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That being said, I have no doubt at all, that step by step, AE farming EXPLOITS will be nerfed
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Fixed that for you.
Also, your assertion that MA farming (and by this I'm assuming you mean PL'ing in MA, since "farming" is a different concept) is "game-breaking"?
Would you care to say HOW?
Sure, if EVERYONE does it, I'm sure it would be. But that's just it. Nowhere even CLOSE to "everyone" does it.
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Every form of farming has been nerfed at some point in the game, its pure fantasy to believe that MA will somehow magically elude the nerf bat.
Regarding my 'bad for the game' opinion, yes indiscriminate PLing and gross farming are bad for the game short and long term.
My simplest answers:
Indiscriminate PL'ing is bad because it makes for ineffective players. And yes OBVIOUSLY bad players are bad players we have always had those, and will after as well, I am not talking about those people.
Farming is bad for a few reasons to varying degrees, PL'ing is generally tied up in it, inf inflation is a factor, it makes for poor players as well, has arguably caused more nerfs than PVP, and probably 10 other reasons that are just more fodder for fruitless argument.
gratuitously necro edited to add nerfs in the last sentence -
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As I've pointed out previously. XP in the MA is ALREADY lessened over traditional storyline content. No mission/arc completion bonuses.
Sure, not a HUGE chunk of XP, but you're already running for less.
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For average everyday 'normal' MA mission yes. But for the farm/exploit missions, the XP/time can be 5-10X or better. -
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Actually, in this case..I'm not too sure about that. *IF* what the AE whiners are saying is true, then that must place them in the minority of players in CoX. If they can't get parties to do "real" content because everyone is in AE, then that means the majority of players wouldn't want to nerf AE.
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The 'everyone is doing it, so it must be true' fallacy aside.
If we assume that 'everyone' knows that AE farms especially exploitative farms are not allowed, its more likely that the average player especially new ones in AE are engaging in human herding/crowd behaviour and not an actual considered choice.
There are many examples of this on every level, a few angles of the ~1999-present housing bubble are interesting, and there is lots of reading on the subject otherwise, but this Ted talk is one of my favorites:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/da...oral_code.html -
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And it is not me telling people to play like me, but rather me making a suggestion of how the Devs can cajole people into playing the game how they want people to play it (or at least how I presume they would want).
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Actually, you are telling people to play like you. After all, it is you (and many other anti-farmers) that put forth all of these farm curbing suggestions, not the other way around. In fact, almost all of the "AE fix" suggestions on the forums have been advocating for limiting farming or the outright elimination of it. I personally haven't ran across any threads where farmers are actually asking for a further proliferation of farmable content (I could be wrong of course). In anycase, I don't know about you but all of that to me looks exactly like a group of people trying to impose their will onto another group of people. Your suggestion may have been more mild and subtle in comparison to some of the other ones but it is still contributing towards that misguided goal none the less.
Back to your original suggestion. What difference would such a drastic reduction in rewards make you ask? All the difference in the world since if AE missions don't yield the best potential rewards, the farmers wouldn't have been farming it in the first place. To cut that reward in half and to also restrict access would most definately have the effect of turning a good portion of the farmers away from AE, if not the game entirely.
Lastly, the developers are the ones who made this bed and now they have to sleep in it. The farmers are just making the best of it while the game tools are available to them. Should any changes come about that will drastically alter the farming landscape (which I very much doubt because farmers pay subscription too), it will be at the developers discretion. It is not the place of other players to tell the farmers that they're wrong and how things should be because the anti-farmers really can't claim that they know any better. It is that very reason which illustrates why MMOs should never be a subscriber based democracy and players should never be allowed to govern.
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Farming has been discouraged basically since the game started, and has been sytematically nerfed nearly every patch and or issue, any other opinion is wishful thinking.
MA farming was specifically verboten basically from conception, regardless of how fast or how well they have curbed it since.
In spite of the above, farmers are spoiled rotten on MA farms, they are fat with loot sunning themselves like gorged lions on the savannah, perhaps even feeling a bit entitled now based on your post above, but if the MA farming was nerfed into oblivion they can go right back to the 'good' old fashioned farms in PI or wherever in a heartbeat. Because in my opinion, if they enjoyed the game before, there is no reason they wouldn't enjoy the game after a series of MA nerfs to rewards.
Regarding your 'worries' about people "trying to impose their will" and your last paragraph, it should be plainly obvious that players have no 'vote' in what the devs choose to do with the game, all we can do is voice an opinion, and i'm pretty sure that the bulk of those never get read by a dev anyways, so anything I or anyone says here has about as much affect on you as me 'telling you' to jump in a lake.
That being said, I have no doubt at all, that step by step, AE farming will be nerfed, not only because of previous history though, in the simplest sense gross farming is bad for the long term future of the game, the devs know this, its an intrinsic element of the chosen business model.
Again, any other opinion regarding 'gross' farming is wishful thinking.
I shouldn't have to say this next part, but here we are, it again should be plainly obvious that I am not claiming that farming will be eradicated from the face of the earth, that would be wishful thinking on my part, I have attempted to characterize it as gross farming or perhaps outlier/exploit farming if you wish. There will always be farming in MMO's, heck I farm now and again for all kinds of reasons. But this MA farming is like perma WL double XP on steriods and its game breaking if it goes on too long. -
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And you have to have the Ageia drivers installed for it as well.
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Thats the key, the old version of the drivers not the Nvidia branded ones. -
Does not work with an Nvidia card for this game, you need an original Ageia PCI card, I don't even know if the PCIe card will work.
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Or maybe an inverse logarithmic sliding scale, lvl 1's get 0 XP and go up to something close to full XP as you approach lvl 50.
Tied to real level of course not any SK/LK. -
I recommend excluding your game folder from realtime AV or temporarily disabling your AV till the update is done.
In the meantime, when this has happened to me 2 or 3 times before its pretty easy to open the game folder and manually rename the files, usually there are 3 cohupdater.* files, rename the .exe to .prv and the .tmp to .exe and restart the update.
2 new patches today looks like. -
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PS. I am aware of Fulmen's service but I already cleaned him out lol
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Maybe Fulmens?
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Reading comprehension ftw!
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Worse, I didn't even read the body of the message just the subject line then a quick QR
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Kind chopping things here...
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And yeah, I'm all for UDP if it solves some rubberbanding issues. As long as the game works, I'm good.
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Silly houtex, the point is that UDP SOLVES rubberbanding and disconnects because its more flexible than TCP.
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o.0
I'm confused... did we just sorta agree?
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Shh stop that! People will think you agreed with me, maniac! -
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This thread makes me want to roll a Kinetics Defender, slot Speed Boost with three run speed enhancements, two range enhancements, and a recharge enhancement, and then just park myself in the Atlas Park AE building and randomly buff people all day.
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I did that for a weekend, it was evil but fun. I have also 6 slotted Nova for KB, that was pretty fun too for a few days. -
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BTW, 100 milliseconds rtt is what you have between East coast and West coast of USA. People connecting from Europe, NZ and Australia going to have much higher RTT, slowing TCP connection even more.
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There are more layers on top that as well, server side TCP maintains the connection table at the stack/OS level vs just streaming UDP controlled from the 'application'.
So TCP will tend to put a cap on the maximum number of supported concurrent connections, and it will not degrade in performance gracefully (for the purposes of an online game) as you approach that limit.
2nd Life for example (not a fast twitch scenario by any means) had a TCP queue problem they fixed by switching to UDP, the problem was rooted in the servers TCP send queue filling up, but I forget exactly why. -
On a few levels, I agree with the you, I have no idea what the fix is but its pretty clear to me that the MA has broken the game.
It took months for things to get back to normal after all the WL babies, I have no idea how long it will be to get the basic level of competence back up to normal after this fiasco if ever.
Cue the regular collection of people with their 'bad players are bad players' obviousness.
Yes there will always be bad players, some with 60 month vet badges, no one is saying otherwise, and we will still have those after this all hopefully gets sorted out.
But no one is talking about those people, what the OP here and that other recent thread are pointing out is all of the potentially GOOD/great/fantastic/dedicated/fun players who 'skipped' the game running around like a nice fellow I met yesterday with his 0 vet badge/tons of AE badges/lvl50 FF-NRG Defender with none of the 3 buffs, trying to be a blaster in IP.
I couldn't convince him to join my 24 respec I was starting he was too busy blasting the nearby Family mobs. -
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Faster games where timing and accuracy are important use UDP.
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Timing and accuracy seemed to be more important in Age of Conan (which was in the OP's list of games that are TCP only) than this game.
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I think Age of Conan is probably more of a perfect example of when NOT to use TCP. TCP is easier to implement for an MMO or anything really, its was probably done to speed up the release, and it appears they have had serious lag/latency issues since day 1. -
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In regards to the question being for the Devs, they *never* post in here. Ever. I have never seen even one Dev answer to these posts.
And yeah, I'm all for UDP if it solves some rubberbanding issues. As long as the game works, I'm good.
/Yep, another calling out from houtex, Devs. C'mon Castle, Babs, Posi, whoever... do it!
//I *Triple* Dog Dare ya!
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Silly houtex, the point is that UDP SOLVES rubberbanding and disconnects because its more flexible than TCP.
And I don't think there ever was a switch 'away' from TCP in the first place. -
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PPS: The Ports were taken from the NCsoft Knowledgebase, HERE.
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Oh I know but I seriously don't remember those ever changing in 5 years and I have been helping people with firewall/router settings since 2004.
(tech note not necessarily for you: don't open any ports on a NAT Router for this game, its a waste of time, the port information is only for an actual active firewall.) -
I disagree, its certainly not an FPS by any stretch but it has elements of fast action power choices and positioning/player movement.
It is a Superhero game you know, not a slogging through the mud Chivalry and Sorcery thing!
Does it require UDP? I dunno for sure, my opinion is that its probably better to err on the side of UDP. -
It has far less to do with the endpoint connection speed and latency than the fundamentals of TCPIP. Sure on a slower connection the average 5% packet loss on the NA internet turns out to be a pain in the butt eating up the precious bandwidth, but on high speed its unimportant, the important part is the time to retransmit and the queue waiting, that is a fixed value independent of connection rate and the fundamental problem with TCP and faster games.
edit You read the links
Faster games where timing and accuracy are important use UDP.
Slower simpler games use TCP.
We have to assume that the Devs feel the game is fast enough for UDP and on top of that I don't believe that the game was ever TCP only, I'm not aware of the ports and protocols being changed ever in the 5 years I have been playing. -
UDP packets being completely discardable is a good feature when the bulk of the packets are time sensitive.
Very few live/faster twitch action games use TCP, slower simpler click games do.
The quick summary is that if you get a lost packet or transmit too fast the TCP retrans or throttling can be excruciatingly long in game time (exponential backoff etc) and the entire receive queue sits there doing nothing till the lost packet is retransmitted and by that time its generally way out of date and useless.
Its generally more efficient to build a simple reliability layer where required on top of UDP for faster games.
Some reading:
http://gafferongames.com/networking-...rs/udp-vs-tcp/
http://simula.no/research/networks/p...imula_pdf_file -
The point is to exclude the game folder from realtime virus scanning so you don't have to wait for many 50-100MB Pigg files be scanned as the updates are patched.