Kiralyn

Except for the (grumble, grumble) annoyingly long cooldown between shots of the curing wand. :/

Something to note.... even the contacts who have a story arc will still offer "generic" missions. You need to do 2-3 missions to get the story arc going, but once it is, most contacts will offer one mission that will continue the story, and one random mission. And once you've finished the story arc, they'll still offer pairs of random missions as long as you're within their level range.

And that kind of gets back to my original post question of "what are you defining as 'farming'?"


I mean, from a certain point of view, *any* dedicated pushing for a specific goal could be called farming.

"I'm going to get my next level tonight. No distractions, bring on the consecutive scanner missions!" Is that farming? Is that turning a game into "work"?

What if I change it to "I'm going to get 20 merits tonight so I can gamble a recipe roll! That'll take these two story arcs in Ouro. Charge!" Is that different than the last case? Is it farming and/or "work"?

(Of course, there's always "I'm going to grind back and forth on the wall for three hours, hoping to get some purples to play the market with." Yeah, that one's farming. ....but for some goal-oriented or obsessive personalities, it might even be fun. /shrug)


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In the end, with most MMOs (and other free-roam games), if you don't have some goal to "work" toward (even things as simple as "I want to get to 30 to unlock auras" or "I've never played a PoolA/PoolB ArchetypeC, let's get one to 50 and see how it works" or complex as "I want to build a completely maxed-out purple Scrapper"), there's no reason to keep playing past a point. Once you've seen the story arcs and TFs..... well, you either pick something new to work towards, or you quit and go play something else.

And as long as you're having fun.... it's still a game.

You need to define what you mean by "farm". There's several things in CoX now that are labeled with that term, and they're all somewhat different.

And, at it's most basic, "farming" (or grinding) is a normal feature of any MMO (and many single player RPGs as well).

You see an IO recipe in WW, and you say "gee, I need 1mil more Inf for that. I'll go to the RWZ and beat up a bunch of Rikti for it!" That's farming.

You want to buy something expensive for your SG base, and go do paper missions in PI one after another to gain prestige.... you're farming.

You want some arcane salvage drops, so you go beat up lots of CoT. Farming.

You sign up 7 level 2 doorsitters and wander into a maxed-out boss AE mission, so that you can grind out lots of inf & tickets (and 20 levels for your doorstops). Farming. And powerleveling for the extra dudes.

But which one are you saying "why" about?

Try Bud Dry! (or not. Sounds nasty)

Ah, but the tweaked XP tables gives you options, while still encouraging minion/lt/boss custom groups.

If you want XP, make the full variety group.

But, if you're trying to make an intense challenge for yourself (as some of the people who create all-boss missions claim), then you still have that option..... you just have to content yourself with the fact that you're just doing it for the "Yeah, I can beat that!" rather than XP.


But at least you have that choice. Whereas with "make custom critter groups REQUIRE at least one minion, one Lieutenant, and one Boss type," you wouldn't.


Not a perfect solution, but it is a reasonably good balance between "let them make what they want" and "prevent them from boss farm PL'ing."

Actually, my lv5-10 characters make their starting chunks of inf (50-100k) by selling a few select pieces of salvage into the inflated market.

Not sure how prevalent it is, but as a mostly new player (coming up on my 3 month vet in a week or so), I haven't really bothered with DO/SO enhancements. I start sticking in generic IOs in the 10-20 range, then start switching to frankenslotting Set IOs at 20-25+. (Sticking with the less popular sets these days, as the prices for the better lv20-30 melee/range/defense sets have gotten into the 5-15mil range per recipe.)

As I recall, the random Merit rolls for rare salvage include lists like this...


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Personally, I don't have big issues with common salvage. If I don't have some that I need, and the market is overpriced at the moment, I just run a quick AE mission and blow all the tickets on random common rolls. Works fine.

(I try to avoid it, though. I don't like AE missions because they don't give that nice bonus of XP & Prestige at the end. Or Merits once the story arc is done.)

Heh.

(There's one case I could think of where "native PC" and Bootcamp would be a bit different..... graphics drivers. Apple doesn't seem to upgrade the Bootcamp drivers as often as ATI & nVidia's normal PC ones. Of course, I wouldn't think that'd be as big of an issue with an older game. Aren't most of the little driver updates to fix things with whatever's the Latest Cutting Edge thing?)

/shrug

Don't spend 220+ merits to bypass the game's random loot? The chance to get a non-random reward is a luxury. It costs significantly more.

Random drop loot system is a pretty central conceit of the game. Avoiding it is going to cost something.


So don't do it. Take your TF Merit Farming group, farm up 40-60 merits, and then all go to the vendor and grab 2 or 3 random rolls. Now trade around your group (trade your scrapper's ranged drop to a blaster for their melee drop, for example.)

Just a thought for another way to do it.

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(Me, I've got a bunch of alts, which I play solo. I get my merits from story arcs and ouro. I then make 20 merit random rolls and spread the rewards around however is appropriate - give the melee stuff to the melees, the ranged stuff to the ranged, and the frickin' expensive stuff to the market. Thereby giving me 100's of millions of inf to use buying vast amounts of mid-range IOs to trick out *all* my heroes. Win-win. )


So, no.... I don't think the merit system needs much adjustment. And I certainly don't think that non-arc (either story or TF/SF) missions need merits.

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Also, remember - the prices listed in WW are the prices *paid*, not the prices asked. If you see 500mil.... that's because someone was willing to pay it. Don't blame the marketeers for seeing how far the silly and desperate will go. If the stuff didn't sell, they'd set their prices lower.

Unfortunately, along with the cap increases, there has to be a gear reset in that game. With so much potential raid advancement in that game, the difference between someone who's just playing the game up through 60-70/80, and someone who spent a year getting better and better raid gear is so high.... that it'd be impossible to balance the new world content in an expansion. Either it'd be impossible for people without raid gear (meaning that no new players would ever be able to level up in the game), or it'd be 110% utterly meaningless for the raiders until they hit the new cap.
And even then, if the new cap's raids were balanced against people with gear from the old raids, no new players would be able to join in.

One of the drawbacks of a system of advancement that's mostly gear based. :/

(As I mentioned, I never did the raid game in WoW. I just got my characters to max level, and then played around with finishing world quests, working on crafting skills, etc. And then making new alts.)


CoX is mostly free of stuff like that. Although the enhancement system (with SOs, Hamis, IOs, IO sets, Purples, PvP's, etc) has gotten complex enough that increasing the level cap would cause a number of problems, I'd imagine. (Although I suppose someone fully purpled out could still find some challenge while leveling to a new cap, via the I16 difficulty settings.)

I suppose so. (Someday, I'll eventually figure out how to inspect someone, *and* actually do it. )

You still have to admit that begging inf from someone lower level than them..... is kinda weird. (Unless, of course, it's a lv4 Wentworths alt named UltraMoneyBags, wearing a tux/tophat/monocle. )

Hi, Mac user here, been playing for a few months.

Answer? Nope, no problem here. Fan-produced programs will always be more prevalent on the platform with more users, just because there's a much larger user base to generate the one or two guys who 1) are motivated, and 2) are skilled enough to make them.

Just the way it is.

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Of course, I'm used to this stuff from decades of dealing with shareware, fanfic, and other similar fan made stuff. I don't complain to the fanfic writer that there hasn't been an update to My Favorite Story #13.... because I'm not a writer. He/she is doing it because they like to/want to/feel like it. They have little to no obligation to me to produce free content on my schedule; it's their hobby, not their job.

Or.... hey, Scorched Earth - '90s shareware artillery game - would have been awesome on the Mac, instead of just watching my dorm-mates play it on their PC - but, well, the author was a PC programmer. And there wasn't a Mac programmer who would/could port it. Them's the breaks.


I can't program, so while I can say "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if there were a Mac version of X/Y/Z?", I don't really have the standing to say "Dammit, why don't they get off their butts and make a Mac version of X/Y/X!"


...just my $0.02

Reminds me of my favorite response in WoW. "Sure, but all my spare cash is on mobs in <level appropriate zone>. Go get it!"



Yeah. My first week playing, I overheard someone offering charity handouts under the Atlas statue. I wandered by to observe (and decide if I was desperate enough to look silly standing in a queue in front of the hovering angel), when some random passerby handed me 2mil. That funded a good number of enhancements and inventions for my first few alts.

(And I've since learned that 2mil isn't actually all that much. Need to keep an eye out for that charity thing again, so that I can pass on the 2mil to some other lowbie nearby....)

Now what I'm trying to figure out is how I get so much less influential...... building inventions in a private room in the back of my base. Either 1) no one can see or know, so it shouldn't change my influence with the public at all, or 2) they should be impressed by my Incredible Invention Skills™ and give me more influence!



...well, or like the Professor says, it doesn't really make sense. /chuckle

You know, just adding filler NPCs would be awesome. Like, instead of adding "desk chair".... add a chair with someone in it. Actually have a receptionist in your entry room. Medical personnel in your medbay. Technicians sitting at the control panels in the control room.

Of course, anything other than basically static NPCs with pre-set outfits would be fantastically complicated. /sigh

/e dream

I don't recall the exact name for the system, but sometime ago they added a diminishing returns feature to enhancement bonuses. Once you hit around 90%, you get less and less actual effect from additional bonus.

(Also, watch your actual Set Bonuses. Apparently there's also a system where you can only get 5 of any specific bonus... like "+7.5% Recharge". Adding a sixth copy of that bonus won't do anything.)

....which will happily install the game on either platform.

Ironic.

(I eventually got over my Cardboard Crack™ habit.... but the many boxes of cards on the back shelf are testament to how much I blew on that game.)

Yeah, there seemed to be a bit of confusion between unlockable Costume Pieces (invention recipe wings/boots; ITF roman costume; veteran reward costumes; etc) and unlockable Costume Slots (quests at 20/30/40 or turning in Halloween salvage).