Hyperstrike

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Farming is an exploit. Not working as intended.

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NO. Farming is not an exploit. Farming is simple repetition of content.

Farming of missions with enemies designed to give rewards in excess of what the devs feel is acceptable for their time/risk/reward metric is an exploit.

Please try to keep up.

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

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

LOLPVP anyone?

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The only reason to play the AE would be for it's actual purpose

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*Facepalm*

Which purpose? The devs have stated that MA has TWO purposes.

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Bottom line is this game has changed for the worse since AE.

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In your opinion.

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Don't waste your breath telling me otherwise.

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Nice to see you're looking for a conversation. You almost sounded like you just wanted a ranting diatribe there for a second...waitaminute...

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I've been here for over four years and I know.

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LOL!

The game has changed (yet again). Adapt or die. Wanting your precious "good old days" back is just whizzing in the wind.

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This game makes be sick right now.

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If it's such srs biz, then you should probably take a break or possibly quit (can I haz ur stuff?)



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People that farm all day everyday burn out.

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Yet you offer nothing in the way of proof that said hardcore, exploitative farmers would remain with the game were eliminated farming eliminated. This is part of why your house of cards is decidedly collapsed right now.

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If this game chases away it's true fan base for a bunch of noob farmers, they might make a killing right now, but will be dead a year from now.

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The only ones this is chasing away are intolerant idiots who simply can't stand that someone doesn't "play right". If that's the "true fan base", then GOOD RIDDANCE. The fact that there's a horde of AE farmers locked into a couple buildings on each server doesn't really hurt me. I can still run my regular mission content all day long. I can even put a team together at the drop of a hat. And I'm on a "low pop" server.

If this has become a massive chore for you, what are you, the one with all the "experience" doing wrong?

Wait! Expecting introspection! My bad!

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No one is talking about 'regular' non exploitive MA content, which is indeed less than the regular game, its the farms that give 2-10X or better the rewards/time than anything else in the game that needs the urgent fixing.

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Just

Plain

Clue

Free

The problem is, they're all part of the same system. Some of the more drastic measures being pushed as "A Good Thing" here, while reducing the impact of exploitative farms, would also completely gut the reward values in non-exploitative arcs as a side-effect.

Please try to keep up here.

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Its obviously not black and white, I have made no zero tolerance statements, and yes by any stretch of the imagination, "not intended" does mean "not allowed" when read in the original context.

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Keep telling yourself that.

I'm sure it's a great comfort.

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Influenced him to do what?

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Again, I'm not saying that this influence GENERATED any specific responses. I'm saying that it is an attempt at skewing specific responses.

Do a bit of research into social engineering here. It's not my job to educate you.

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The last time I tried to do AE missions in a PuG it was a PL farm and I wasn't informed of this ahead of time. When I politely bowed out I had two players send me tells which were vulgar in the extreme. An anecdote to be sure, but that crowd is part of the "new COX" you're so proud of.

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And you've encountered exactly ZERO jerkoffs in the five-ish years in the game you had PRIOR to i14?

Ticket rewards are very profitable because they're a FLEXIBLE currency. Reducing ticket output wouldn't change this in the slightest.

Again, no.

Players are already gimped by the fact that the missions don't reward mission-end/arc-end bonuses. There are no temp powers awarded on the various arcs, no toon-improving accolades achievable.

Cutting XP/Inf in half would get just about the same reception that zero XP/inf gets.

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These changes for example could potentially cause a mission that was soloable on character X to be impossible to solo,

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Call me when this actually happens.

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Exactly. So logically, if more and more people act in this fashion *SNIP!*

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This is much akin to the "If everyone jumped off a bridge" argument.

Is it POSSIBLE that everyone would jump off a bridge?

Sure!

HAS everyone jumped off a bridge?

NOPE!

Is it LIKELY that everyone going to jump off a bridge?

Survey says!

NOPE!

NOPE!

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I'm just against the min/maxing which leaves me with a boring combat-only mission.

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I don't look at min/maxing as farming. I look at it as an exploit of a broken rewards assignment. Fix the broken rewards assignment and you fix the exploit.

If people want to repeat content over and over and over (and over and ... well you get the picture) again, by Bob...LET THEM!

If someone wants to stuff a map chock-full of bosses/EBs/AVs and go to town, LET THEM. Just so long as the rewards for doing so are equivallent to fighting the same type of content in the rest of the game.

Okay, lemme clarify here.

I HAVE run some MA arcs. Some good. Some bad. The good ones, I enjoy and rated well.

The bad ones I didn't enjoy (but at least was rewarded for my suffering) and rated them poorly.

However, underlying it all is a desire to advance my character. And while I occasionally enjoy a good story, this achievement mentality, and the various goals I've set for my toons and myself are more important to me than simply enjoying a story for the story's sake.

And when I say "I'm not going to slog through your crap for no reward", I mean it.

And I'm not talking about YOU, necessarily in particular. There are THOUSANDS of arcs out there. Several are good, a lot are indifferent, and a huge number of them are Just Plain Awful.

I am NOT going to take the time to try and sift through that many dog turds in hopes of finding a diamond if I'm not being rewarded in other ways.

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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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Again, you mistake me for a PL'er or a farmer. Nice try, but the fact is I'm not. As I said, I have barely used MA. So, with i15, I lost a grand total of 6 badges. Most of them the low "kill X" or "do X" badges.

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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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Wow. Way to miss a point. FYI, MA rewards are ALREADY below regular content. It's simply that the rewards system is more flexible than the myriad random drops.

And it's merits that are factored on reward/time. Not exp/prestige/inf/tickets.

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Do you somehow read it otherwise?

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Again, if the devs had meant for the MA to be a solely story-telling mechanism, there would be NO rewards. PERIOD.

And, unlike you, I have a strong enough command of the language to understand "not intended" is not the same as "not allowed".

And, unlike you, I don't see this as a black and white issue. I agree that, beyond a certain threshold, farming and power levelling are detrimental to the game.

And, unlike you, my threshold isn't set to "zero tolerance" and all the idiocies that sort of policy engenders.

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I gave no opinion there about what I liked or otherwise

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No. But you gave an opinion.

And the fact that you have X, Y, or Z is meaningless in lieu of what I said. I said someone is getting "more/better rewards". I didn't say they were getting purples or tons of inf. Simply that they were accumulating them faster than you because of something you refuse to do.

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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.

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Again, I didn't say anyone FORCED him to. The word used was "influence".

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Why should I have to in the first place?

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That's just it. You don't HAVE to. Nobody's FORCING you to.

Yet, if you want a solution to your problem, one was presented to you.

On the flip side, you're offering "solutions" to a non-existent problem.

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So yes, I'd rather see a ghost-town with a few honest story-telling efforts at first, and perhaps have the Devs restore rewards to MA story-arcs once the Devs have figured out how to balance the nightmare.

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In other words, you'd like another Cathedral of Pain?

Pardon me (and many others) for expecting some utility out of the addition to the game BESIDES just people attempting to tell stories.

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No Rewards for AE content is how things SHOULD have started, not how they should end.

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No, because then most of the serious exploits would not be found due to the fact that the population (and I use the term loosely) actually USING MA would have made the PVP community seem positively ubiquitous.

To steal your phrase "To be blunt and to the point" nobody wants to slog through your crap for no rewards.

Okay, NO. You do NOT need "only a stone tank".

Pretty much any decently survivable melee character that is able to grab and pull aggro on Recluse can "tank" the STF.

Heck, on my MOSTF run, I wasn't even "main tank". I was off scranking. Our "main" was a fire tanker with massive buffs and a decent build. Heck, even as off-tank, my S/L defense was sitting between 70 and 90% most of the time.

Whoever's told you that there's no point in Inv/SS tanking STF is clueless.

Now the caveat, it REALLY depends on how he's built. If you're talking SOs or Generic IOs, yeah. You may be in a position where your defense numbers against Recluse solo (and unbuffed) aren't sufficient to keep him from doing a "You're food, I'm a Ginsu knife" routine on you. Even a Stoner will have this problem if they're not built properly for defense.

Also, as Inv/ your defense numbers jump around dramatically even in crowds. So you could be getting nailed during a time when your defense number yo-yos downward, leaving you vulnerable.

If you're hell-bent on tanking LR, you may want to invest a bit of time on Mid's, acquire yourself some defense-boosting IO sets, and burn a respec (my "capped" build is about two IOs short at the moment). But, if I run on a team similar to my MOSTF run, I'd feel fairly confident in belch-blasting LR with a defender in my pocket.

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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.

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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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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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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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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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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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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.

You're looking at it from the point of a content consumer. You want to be able to say "cool storyline".

Some people don't care. They're achievers. They want to flip out and kill stuff (and be rewarded for it!), over and over and over (and over and over and...well you get the idea).

Granted, doing such is monotonous after a while and not conducive to keeping them as long-term active players.

Here's a bit of news. Not every player can be kept.

Stripping XP from MA (which already rewards players with LESS XP per-mission than equivallent normal content) simply destroys the utility of system for those who use it as an alternate levelling (NOT POWER-LEVELLING) tool.

Again, if I'm going to use the MA, I sure as hell am not going to slog through someone else's pretentious aspirations of "art" and not be rewarded for it.

If you're going to remove XP, go all the way and simply remove MA from the game and stamp FAIL on it. Because that's exactly what it has become at that point.

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How about a happy medium? Cut XP by 1/2 in the AE. Also, Make it so that one needs to be of a Zone's level or lower to use a given AE. That way 50s would go to PI and still be able to PL people, and lvl 1s could use the AE in Atlas to play actual content.

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No. This forces high level players out of low level zones and gimps their ability to team with low level players (be the purpose nefarious or otherwise). We then have level 1 characters going swimming in PI again and the one in Atlas, which is supposed to introduce people to this stuff, sits empty.

Sorry, but to a new player, that looks terrible.

"Why isn't anyone in here?"
"They all snuck into a high level zone just so they could team properly."

Also, not everyone is in it JUST for "the content". Some people are here to kick virtual butts...and they dislike writing utensils and paper.

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I also would not object if XP was stripped from AE. I think it'd remove a lot of the rate-griefing as well.

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?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Wait...

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Would you please explain the logic behind this? How would XP removal strip ratings griefing?

OTHER than by turning the MA into a ghost town?

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.

No fair Niv! I've been on the road all *BLEEP* day!

Releasing this behind my back?

DIRTY POOL!



Come heeer leetle downloads!
Come to daddy!

Partially because co-op play is still semi-broken in the game due to restrictions on transferring things like inspirations from one side to another.

Only Villain on a co-op team: Dude! I croaked! Someone got a wakey?

Defender: Yeah, I have 20 of them.

Villain: Pass me one dude!

Defender: Can't, the rest of us are all heroes. Go hit the hospital.

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So the fact that all the content, zones, TF/SF, temp powers, contacts, story arcs, and lore built up over the last 5 years being totally ignored because folks go from 1-50 in the Atlas AE and don't even know how to play thier charcters is ok, and in fact the correct way for this game to be played? ok. sorry I guess I was wrong.

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Glad you finally saw the light.

And I'm only partially joking.

Temp powers, story arcs, and the lot, ARE all optional. They CAN be ignored.

I hit my first 50 mainly by STREET SWEEPING! Why? Because I didn't have a good grasp of the game at first. And was soloing a ton.

And if someone doesn't care to figure out how to play their character in the "optimal" manner, as long as they're having fun and not hurting anyone (even if they're not particularly useful or pleasant teammates), rock on!

Them that pays, says. It's that simple. I don't expect anything of fellow players other than a teensy modicum of courtesy. I have no rightto inflict other expectations upon them.

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Hi all,

I've read through the posts so far and IMHO I think one easy answer is for the devs to either;

a. Create a new non-AE server (label is AE-free zone) where everyone that wants the AE gone can go and play to their hearts content with absolutely no AE spam...

Or, a better option...

b. Take one of the existing low population servers, and completely remove the AE bldgs from that one server (label it AE-free zone), offer the entire population of the game one free server transfer per existing toon to whichever server they would like and then the problem is solved...

Just my $0.02 but this seems like an easy fix to me…

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No.

Let me repeat this for emphasis.

[u] NO! [u]

It's NOT an easy fix. Then they're essentially maintaining two codebases (DUMB with 50 foot tall glowing neon letters).

Moreover, are YOU going to volunteer YOUR server to be the one converted? And how are the rest of the server's denizens going to take this news?

Repeat after me.

YOU

CANNOT

FORCE

OTHERS

TO

PLAY

YOUR

WAY.


If this simple fact is just too horrendous to face? Okay. Thanks! BYE! Don't let the account cancellation hit you in the keister on the way out!

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Anyway, MA is a great tool and I think they might make some changes (XP reduction etc)

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You already seen an XP reduction over normal content. No mission-end/arc-end bonuses.

Penalizing it much more than that would do serious damage to the utility of the MA system.

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If they'd just get out of Atlas and Cap Diable

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The thing is, at least hero-side, the zone in question is the showcase for the game. That they would rip it out of Atlas conjures enough doubt from me to achieve critical mass, collapse into a doubt black hole, and begin sucking in all doubt in the immediate interstellar vicinity.

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So WHAT exactly will fix it if not changing something about AE itself?

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Most of the proposed "fixes" simply break AE worse.

That's like saying "Your leg is broken, lemme break your other one for symmetry".

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Nerf AE xp to one half normal rate.

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You ALREADY don't get mission completion bonuses. Further gimping of XP earnings simply because "It's AE", would make the system useless to people looking to level (NOT POWER LEVEL) using AE as the devs intended. And again, I'm not slogging through someone else's pretentious aspirations of artistry when I could be advancing my character normally (or even faster) on regular content.

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Require one level 50 character to access AE.

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This ship has sailed already. Moreover, you have people here who've been playing for YEARS and don't have an L50 yet due to chronic altitis. You're proposing they simply can't use a major system in the game simply because they don't play the way you do? AE is a significantly more interactive portion of the game than HEATS/VEATS.

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Move MA buildings out of any zone with a level lower than Steel Canyon/Skyway City.

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Makes it difficult/dangerous to use as a levelling tool (as the devs promised), and you simply get a repeat of the PI farming situation. Also, this doesn't SOLVE the problem. It merely moves it out of sight.

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Require a minimum level of 25 to access AE.

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What part of "the MA is supposed to be an alternate way to level your character" was unclear? What was given to us was NOT "an alternate way to level your character from 25 up".

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Increase salvage/recipe drops in the main game vs playing AE.

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You're ALREADY seeing more drops in the regular game than you do in AE due to ticket caps. Tickets are just more flexible than fait-accompli, defined salvage drops in the main game.

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Provide other benefits to playing Dev created content vs player created content. (Merits, etc)

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Already been done.