Lord Mayhem

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Possibly not, but so what? Players leave and players join every month. That doesn't mean the game has a problem with dwindling numbers, no matter how often Chicken Little says it does; and that doesn't mean that a trivial proportion of players leaving over some particular development will induce such a problem.

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Yeah I bet we'd all be surprised how much churn there is every month between new players joining and other players leaving.

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It's the fight of 100k+ players with many, many, many manhours of looking for exploits/freestuffz vs 50 devs + a few thousand manhours of testing by devs/beta-testers.

Sheer complexity of the system means that there will be a sweet spot somewhere which grants an unforeseen advantage that is considered an exploit, and sheer numbers of players means that someone will find it.

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And this is why it's impossible, as well as wasteful and annoying to the players, to deal with MA powerlevelling by hitting exploits one after another.

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I agree with all of the above-quoted, but I think the best way for the Devs to control the rate at which we level is to put a cap on it - make the cap high enough that only farmers and powerlevellers will ever hit it, but cap it nonetheless. Anyone getting near the cap is warned and anyone hitting the cap gets a penalty - maybe use the debt mechanic to give them a period of vastly reduced xp/inf that they have to work off (but that increases if they continue to work it off in a way that means they'd be hitting the cap if they didn't have the penalty).

This has the benefit that the Devs don't have to stomp all over individuals mobs/factions (RCOs, Prisoners) or maps (the ones they have removed), and keep monitoring them, which creates ongoing work for them and affects non-farmers/non-PLers as well - unlike ongoing sanctions it's automated so it requires very little upkeep (less man-hours wasted) apart from doubling the cap for double xp weekends. As an added bonus the playerbase can clearly be told exactly how much xp/inf over time is too much and thus we know where we stand.

With all the datamining they do the Devs must have an idea of how fast they want players to be able to level.

<ul type="square">[*]Shard-less single server - everyone plays on the same world server, but have multiple instances of each zone you can select from when zoning. Permanently open instances of every zone could be tagged "EU-English", "EU-French", "EU-German", "US East", "US West", "Rest of the World" etc. if desired, but you could move freely between those instances. There would always be a "PvP" tagged instance of every outdoor zone that allows open PvP, for those that prefer that. I'm not sure how character naming would be handled - maybe the CO way of appending your global name to your character name when sending /tells.
[*]Combine zones into larger and less zones. Port Oakes and Cap au Diable combined into a single island (with the central dividing mountain added as a playable area within it), perhaps with Mercy on same map. Atlas/Perez/Galaxy/Steel/Sirens combined into "Paragon City North", Skyway/KR/Faultline/Brickstown/Hollows combined into "Paragon City South", Peregrine/Talos/DA/FF/Eden/Hive combined into "Paragon City East", IP/Creys/RWZ/TV combined into "Paragon City West", wilderness north of Paragon is expanded and encompasses Croatoa and Boomtown.
[*]KotoR-style good/evil ratings for missions and in-game choices - here it might be Freedom Corp and Arachnos as the factions representing the extremes - and you can choose which side to improve your standing with. This would also mean opening up all zones to all characters and beginning as a neutral "super", who could walk down the hero or villain paths but also stay neutral as a freelance merc if they wished. Heroes can go to villain-orientated zones at their own risk, and vice-versa, so heroes in an Arachnos area get constantly ambushed by Arachnos and same for villains getting ambushed by PPD and Longbow in Paragon City.
[*]Merge the markets.
[*]Revamp all hazard zone areas RWZ-style with a TF and a raid plus 4 contact arcs.
[*]Revamp all of the pre-I3 blueside missions and TFs to have less hunts. Also make it so that only one contact offers each blueside arc, so that the mission text can be rewritten to give personality quirks to the contact (like with CoV have).
[*]More missions happening in the game world instead of in instances - NPCs in each zone that give out repeatable hunt missions, for those who wish to street-sweep. Bank robberies you can stop (or initiate) actually in the zones. If player villains start to rob a bank then they get flagged so that any hero can PvP against them to stop them.
[*]Power customisation.
[*]Proliferate all powersets to every archetype that can use that powerset (i.e. all melee archetypes would be able to choose from every melee set and every armour set, defenders/corruptors/blasters could pick any ranged set, etc.).
[*]Dev commitment to adding one new powerset every single issue.
[*]A Dev-adjustable cap on how much xp/inf you can earn per hour, to prevent abuses of the system without having to remove/change content that affects the entire playerbase.
[*]Better MA browser, with tagging system so you can tag your arcs "in-canon story", "non-canon story", "farm", "badge", "humour", etc.
[*]Expand base editor with new textures and room shapes/sizes, and let us use it to make custom tilesets and custom maps for the MA.
[*]More Dev-created tilesets, both new ones and variants on existing ones, and integrate these into old arcs.
[*]Show on MA maps where the "front", "middle" and "back" spawn spots are located, or (even better) let us pick from all spawn spots on a map exactly where we want each detail placed.
[*]Allow mayhem/safeguard mission contacts you've outlevelled to still offer you that mission, and auto-exemp you for it - either that or make them available through Ouroboros - so players who want the explore badges from them don't feel bound to have to do the mayhem/safeguard every 5 levels.
[*]Release Dev tools for making costume pieces to the public. Have forum voting on which player-made costume pieces are best and the Dev can add ten of the highest rated to the game every month.
[*]Add moonbases, dinosaurs (with lasers on their foreheads!), the undersea city of the Coralax (with a TF against Merulina), a huge airport zone with instanced missions around the world, an arctic zone with an evil supervillain's base there with booby traps, etc.
[*]Server upgrades and more optimisation, so the game runs better as time goes on like every other MMO out there, instead of worse.[/list]Just for starters, anyway

Yeah lack of variety bores me as well. I haven't farmed at all in a long time, even though I appreciate efficiency in my playstyle (when I'm not too busy chatting). The few times I have farmed have been mainly from curiosity, or because I didn't realise it was a farm team until I was in it - then I've got bored of the same map and the same mobs after a couple of repetitions and have moved on to more interesting things.

Admittedly I'm trying not to do obsessive anymore in my MMOs, which is why I neither farm nor badge - in the past in other MMOs I've done the whole uberguild/dkp "treating MMOs like a second job" thing, I've done the PvP clans thing, and nowadays I just want to play the game casually, on my terms with no expectations/responsibilities, and just develop/level character combos that interest me, at the rate the game was designed for.

Though, as a wise TV theme tune once said, different strokes for different folks - if people like farming and want to do it exclusively then that's fine, as long as it's not to the extent that it hampers the playstyles of others - that goes for all playstyles tbh, including PvP (and is one reason why I only like open PvP in pure PvP games with no/few PvE elements).

But the recent farming epidemic certainly has affected the playstyles of others, making non-farming groups harder to find, making non-farming MA arcs harder to find, turning the market upside down, filling broadcast and global channels with spam and arguments, and creating community friction.

I make most of my inf through the markets, which in some circles might make me as hated as the farmers (not that I do anything particularly despisable - in fact everything I sell is listed way below the going rate to ensure stock moves fast), but for the sake of 30mins or so per day I make enough inf to get the builds I want, leaving me the rest of my playing time to do what I want to do - levelling my characters. It fits my playstyle better than farming would and takes far less time.

I wish I didn't need to spend so much time on the market, but I do like squeezing as much performance as I can afford out of my characters - that's where a lot of my fun comes from - so I do use IOs exclusively (actually I haven't bought a TO/DO/SO since I11). However, mainly due to cost, only one of my 13 L50s has purples slotted and then it's just the cheap sleep/confuse sets - otherwise I frankenslot cheap sets til L47 and only then go for full sets. Only now have I started building towards my first fully purpled 50, just for the heck of it - and with purples soaring in price what rubbish timing I have

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Not really sure farming is beneficial to the market in any way.

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Well farming outside of the MA will generate a lot more recipes/salvage than the farmers themselves consume (because they have no control over what drops), so it helps the market in that way. Hence why there is always a glut of recipes at L50. And farmers are limited by market slots just like marketeers - they want to move those slots fast, so they won't be setting ridiculously high prices on most of the stuff that drops that they don't need themselves. Casual/average players are just as capable of setting ridiculously high prices - moreso perhaps, as they are probably more patient to wait longer for a sale, and more desperate to make lots of inf for the few good drops they do get (farmers and marketeers make their profit by sheer quantity of sales, not by wider profit margins).

Farming certainly puts more purples on the market, but the farmers are the biggest consumers of purples so I wouldn't like to say that the market for purples is worse or better for casual players with so many farmers around - probably a bit of both - worse for the purples everyone uses (attack sets), but better for purples in things like control sets - sets the farmers themselves may not use as much (Fire/Kins, Fire/Psis, Spines/Fires, Spines/Darks and SS/WPs have little use for Sleep and Confuse sets, etc).

Certainly the farmers have more buying power in terms of how much inf they have (probably exceeded only by the most prolific of marketeers), so they can certainly pay more than most "average/casual" players - the prices of high-end IOs will always be dictated by what the farmers/marketeers are willing to pay.

Where farming does benefit the market is in the sheer amount of yellow/orange recipes it adds to the market in sets that the farmers don't typically use themselves, but want to offload quickly (to free up their market slots so they can go back to farming) if there's value in doing so.

And most visibly farming benefits the market in the amount of cheap salvage dumped on it - you can see that, because when lots of farmers moved over to MA the salvage surplus on the market started to dry up and prices rose accordingly. MA farming does not drop purples or the huge surplus of salvage and recipes that normal farming does, and it lets MA farmers pick what their drops are - sure, it's still random rolls in most cases, but farmers do have more control over where their drops come from - even from level ranges other than at L50.

I think a certain amount of farming is unavoidable and beneficial in many areas - and the Devs would do well to cater to every playstyle - so eradicating farming is overly extreme, unrealistic and likely impossible without removing the economy altogether. Like the OP I just want to see farming moved out of the MA and back into normal missions - it helps stocks of purples (even if they are overpriced, at least they're available in quantity), it helps keep salvage prices down (which makes it easier/faster for casual players to make up IOs when they level), and it will increase the proportion of story-based arcs in the MA to non-story ones, making it easier for players to use the MA as the Devs intended - to find fun and new stories to experience.

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I'm guessing:
a) when the nether regions reach subzero temperatures;

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Your nether regions?

You're already blue...

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US posts in response : 3384
EU posts in response : 468

We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.

I'm proud of us .

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There's less of us, though.

If we knew and could compare our subscriber numbers to the US ones then we may actually have more whining per person this side

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Those were amazing times. I can't believe how much fun that all was and that is one of the things that I shall truly miss about the game. Take care of yourself

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You too!

I'm still sorry I lost touch with so many people back when my global list got wiped repeatedly by the global bug, causing me to quit CoH in disgust. Though only for a year or so - I couldn't stay away - not with such a great community here, such fun gameplay and so much control over customising your character.

But yeah those were really fun times back in I6-7. Good memories.

All the best, mate. I look forward to seeing your endeavours on TV.

(Not targeted at anyone specific)

As far as perception goes I think you can probably turn around a quote Positron said in Pocket D on 5th Anniversary about if you feel a nerf is coming then it probably is.

I say, if you feel that you have abused the MA system enough that you may lose some progress or even your character, then you probably will. If you don't then you're lucky. You knew the farming was wrong when you were doing it, or you wouldn't be worried now, so you really have no recourse for complaint if you get punished.

I wasn't going to use either of those maps, but their instant removal with no warning or explanation has undermined all of my confidence in the MA system. That, together with post-publishing bloat meaning I have no chance to edit one of my arcs without totally gutting it now (it's 128% atm, but was at 138% last week, yet it published fine at 99.87%), is just making MA creation into a bit of a minefield for me.

I really have no enthusiasm to create my third arc anymore if it could all be wrecked by a Dev's whim - a shame, as it was the idea I was most enthused with, so I left it 'til last so I could do it justice once I knew the ins and outs of the MA.

To say MA was supposed to be such a marquee feature of the game the Devs are doing a terrible job of handling it. They should be adding to it, not gutting it by ripping content out without telling us.

Not happy at all with this.

Awesomely difficult for everyone or just for non-melee archetypes? Giving control powersets to minions, and giving them an armour set with status protection so that they can't be controlled, is really going to hack off dominators/controllers/kheldians, certain defenders/corruptors, might annoy blasters/masterminds in certain cases, and probably won't be noticed by brutes/stalkers/scrappers/tankers/VEATs at all. You need to know your target audience because awesomely difficult for some archetype/powerset combinations might be insta-death every time for others, while being a walk in the park for another build.

Force-multiplier powersets on minions like Kinetics, and to a lesser extent Dark Miasma and Radiation Infection, are really going to hack off large teams because the more minions there are the more debuffs the alpha-takers get hit with, but soloers won't be affected so much.

Putting PBAE heals on minions will make the spawns tougher the larger they get - with potentially the whole spawn being fully healed every few seconds so you'd have to kill everything in 1-2 hits.

Players generally find lots of Caltrops, Glue Arrow or Quicksand patches annoying so you could make sure multiple minions have those to stack up, to slow players to a crawl. Quicksand is probably the worst as, unlike Caltrops, you can't fly out of it and it has a huge -def effect that really hits all Defence-based primaries hard. The -rchg on Glue is no fun either though when stacked up - a couple of glue patches and your attack chain can slow to one attack every 5-10 seconds. These patches would annoy melee characters more than ranged though.

But you need to understand how all the powersets you put into your custom faction might be used in concert with each other. One of my global friends made an arc with custom characters with Ice Armour, but also had some mobs that buffed them with /Cold buffs for even more +def - that made minions/lieuts very tough but also very annoying as fights were taking ages to finish as you just couldn't hit those buffed mobs until the streakbreaker forced a hit.

As for cheap and undefeatable, I'd avoid hard hitting melee sets like Super Strength and Energy Melee, especially if the mobs have the Rage/BuildUp powers as well - combined with autohit damage like Caltrops keeping players below full health, the one-shot code won't save players from instant death if they're hit for more than their maximum health (which is likely against SS or EM).

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Why the - something - can't they hire some proper PR folks that actually KNOW what they're doing.

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Finally we agree!

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I actually find it quite refreshing that the Devs in this game speak to the playerbase directly and don't have that overly-polished PR speak pouring out of their mouths... err typing fingers.

I've played dozens of MMOs and usually the Devs barely communicate with the playerbase and you just get the community manager and/or some PR flunkeys murmuring the usual empty platitudes and advertising soundbites that we've all heard so many times before - all hype, no substance. Or, more likely, you just hear nothing whatsoever apart from occasional announcements telling you what's being changed with no prior warning or discussion.

Having Devs like Castle and BaB actually discussing core systems with the playerbase, like they do on US forums, is virtually unheard of outside of small independent MMO studios with playerbases in the thousands, rather than tens/hundreds of thousands like a triple A rated MMO.

One of my published arcs has 5 missions with many objectives (required and not), but only uses two custom bosses and hasn't bloated at all from the 83%ish it was published at, despite several edits and republishes in response to feedback.

My first arc which uses a large custom faction (3 minions, 3 lieuts, 2 bosses, plus a custom AV in a separate faction) is only 3 missions long, was 99.87% in size when I last republished it (I remember the size as I had to trim it for ages before I got it to fit), but bloated to 137%ish soon after, and is now at 127%ish. I'm not going to touch it, because nothing needed fixing the last time I played it, feedback is all positive, and it is not my fault it has bloated - it's up to the Devs to fix the ridiculous problems caused by &amp;nbsp.

I have plans for a rather complex and epic arc of 5 missions with at least 8-10 custom mobs, but knowing the struggles I had with my first arc and the current problems with MA I just don't feel enthused about working on it, even though I've been signed off work ill at the moment and have the time on my hands.

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This is just ED all over again!

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No, because ED affected everyone. This will only affect the people looking for a fast shortcut to 50 - that's not everyone!

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So even if you removed every single badge from association with the Mission Architect, you're going to get horrible distortions of the voting pattern, because people are still going to have mixed motivations for voting as they will, and many of them are going to be downright dodgy reasons.

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Sure, but they'll be personal reasons and not quite as led by arc IDs being published on a global channel that lots of people use. People have different tastes and you have to let them vote according to their tastes - that's how you find out what's popular - not by people being told what to rate as part of some cartel.

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Come on, how many players really would want 50,000 test kills, when you get no experience or tickets in those missions at all, but just badges?

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Not me but then I'm not a badger - I dislike having to badge-hunt for Accolade powers I want or to unlock base items I want when imho there are much more fun ways to unlock content (TFs/SFs for example, or doing a quest line). Sure, I've been sucked into obsessively hunting shineys in other MMOs over the years (collections in EQ2 for example, farming full sets of gear for alts in EQ1 just for looks, etc), but it's not where my main gameplay interests lie.

But I do agree there are too many things in this game now that promote obsessive farming behaviour, whether its unrealistic badge targets, base unlockables, costume unlockables (Carnie mallet...), or even just hunting purples or the inf to buy purples. In many ways the Devs at NCNC/Paragon have made a rod for their own backs in changing the nature of this game from the fun casual MMO Cryptic made into a more loot-driven and achievement-driven MMO.

Personally I just want the story of the game to move forward in meaningful ways with new Dev-created story content, more powersets &amp; powerset proliferation (to give me more characters I want to level in future), more costume pieces to increase customisation options, and less new features if they're going to destroy server stability or the core teaming dynamics.

I feel this game is evolving away from its strongest features and the reasons I originally liked it. I'm glad to see the Devs cracking down on a playstyle I see as destructive and boring and hope it will lead to a realisation of their own part in this fiasco, so hopefully they will move back to the core gameplay values that this MMO always stood for - i.e. the main reason a lot of us came here instead of going to WoW, EQ2, WAR, AoC, L2, or whatever.

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Your the silly one, why on earth would people choose to level their toons to 50 over 400+ Hours when they can do it within 24 - 36.

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Because they enjoy the journey?

Because there's not much to do when you hit maximum level anyway?

Because the journey, the gradual exploration of different powerset synergies on different archetypes and the added replay value that brings when compared to other MMOs, is one of the main things this game has going for it?

Because trivialising/shortening that will render the game pointless to a lot of people?

Because if you can get every powerset/archetype combination you'll ever want to play to level 50 inside a month or two then there will be little reason to stay subscribed, and you'd have to look for a new MMO which you may not enjoy as much?

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That's a quote from something I personally said on Badgehunters... and I'll repeat the follow on comments from that you for some reason decided not to quote here for everyone; that is that most of the high rated arcs were either experience farms or, in the case of some of the others, were being voted for based upon popularity of the author (their SGs were voting for them en-masse) or just because it appealed to the lowest common denominator.

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I honestly can't recall who said it at the time and I don't recall reading the follow-up (I was playing my dom yesterday so I was likely rather busy at the time). I didn't think it was you as I tend to take more notice of what my global-friends say, but I've heard similar justification over the past two days on that channel from others.

It just struck me as a weak justification - yeah we know those people over there are wrecking this system, so we'll jump in and do it too, because it doesn't really matter and doing it to get badges faster is obviously not as bad as doing it to get xp/inf faster. That's a herd mentality, it's lame, and always leads to bad outcomes for others. I didn't expect you to weigh in on the pro- side of that particular argument, even if herds (and farms I guess) are rather appropriate to your bovine side

Yeah I know that there will still be tons of dross in the MA, even in lieu of changes to cut down the ratings-rigging by farmers, badgers and other rating cartels - because 90% of everything is rubbish - but honestly you can't say badging cartels were helping matters. When MMOs degenerate it's a slow process and the fault always lies on both sides, but it's rarely due to one single event - everything counts.

Honestly it's the same logic as with farming. There has been farming since I first started playing in I5 - I9 made it more visible but still a minority activity - then I14 really made it explode into being mainstream play. It's a matter of how many people are condoning something that pushes it towards a tipping point of affecting the majority of the playerbase - then that activity or playstyle gains mainstream acceptance. That's when it's too late to put the lid back on the box.

That happened with farming in I14 because it was so easy - and yes it's partly the Dev's fault for making it so easy, but the playerbase has to share a large portion of the blame as well - most knew it was wrong, you can see that from comments on here and in-game.

Sure, the badging cartels are probably not having a major affect at the moment, but they are contributing to making the ratings system broken. Far more importantly just having that message up on SBH, one of the most popularly used global channels in the EU game, is suggesting that all the mods of that channel condone rating-fixing schemes. There are players who look up to mods, veterans and particularly vocal community members and things like this just encourage the rot to set in. Word spreads and soon it becomes the accepted norm.

Honestly I don't care about getting to the top of any vote - I just want to be able to find Dev-quality in-canon arcs in the MA more easily, and hopefully have my arcs counted among that group so that I can give back some enjoyment to others who appreciate story over rewards/badges, in the same way I would hopefully get enjoyment from their arcs... if I could find them.

Sad to hear you're leaving.

I fondly recall levelling my first CoV character, my fire/fire brute Lord Mayhem, with both you and Miss M (or Mr and Miss Wrathful as you were back then) back in I6.

Do you remember that epic Ice Mistral SF we did, with Zoser (Fire.Fly) from this forum, not long after we all hit the L40 level cap back then? In the final room there were so many CoT we couldn't count them all, but we just waded in towards the AV, crystals exploding all around us, until eventually it was just Miss Wrathful left on her feet, the rest of us all face-planted around her, feeding insps to her as she took on the AV alone. Fun times. These screenshots were taken just after our eventual successful attempt

I wish you great success in all that you do. Take care and I hope your pilot makes it to air, as it sounds exactly my kind of show.

Some of the shortage in availability of L50 recipes and high level salvage is certainly due to farmers moving to MA rather than in-world farming, so they aren't supplying the market with as much surplus salvage they want rid of quickly, and less recipes too (as MA random rolls let them pick the level range of their drops, so they're not confined to L50 recipes).

Of course the recipe shortage is hitting redside hardest - where availability was already a problem that was made worse by I13 - but doesn't seem to be hitting blueside at all (from my limited experience there).

Purples, HOs and common/uncommon salvage seems to be shooting up in price both sides, obviously because none of them drop in MA directly. For uncommon salvage there is less of a looted surplus around, as with tickets you can directly buy just what you need - so supply is dying, but demand is still there as some people would still rather save up tickets to use on recipes rather than salvage.

Ironically the market schemes I cooked up post-I13 to be able to afford the higher prices on redside (to be able to keep making the nice builds I'd grown used to pre-I13) are working even better now post-I14 - I'm making inf faster than ever before, but the stock just isn't there to spend it on a lot of the time. More inf, but the buying power of that inf is much less. Blueside the schemes don't work so well but are less needed anyway, as availability with a larger population is much less prone to shortages, traffic is higher (so time spent waiting for what you want is shorter) and prices are lower.

I've certainly been getting worse lag - both graphically and on the netgraph - in the last few months, but especially badly this last week. Every other MMO I've ever played has run more smoothly as time went on (new expansion content or graphics upgrades aside - but they're always optional) - not so here - this game runs immeasurably worse for me as time goes on.

Turning graphics options to their lowest settings has zero effect on the graphics lag for me too, compared to the highest settings (which is something that actually does have an effect during Rikti Mothership Raids). My PC is a couple of year's old and far from cutting edge, but a long way from being below average for running a 5 year old game, and it still runs other titles well.

I suspect MA buildings are acting like WW/BM in concentrating players there and forcing you to load all of their costumes at once when you get in range, because I certainly notice bad lag near MA buildings. And even though MA is hosted on its own servers I think it is certainly having some effect on the performance of the game servers.

My ISP sucks, but they've always sucked, and I'm not seeing such noticeable network lag in other MMOs I've trialled recently. Besides when I suffer power activation lag or chat lag or rubber-band lag while moving or players/NPCs warping around, often I see other people complaining of the same - often my friend has it too and he's in a different country with a different ISP.

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Awesome.

I like it.

And anyone who disagrees... go read the EULA. NC can do this.

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^ This.

I like it too. It's partially restored my faith in the Devs.

I wonder if the mission-rating cartel on Sal's badgehunters channel will be in trouble - any channel mods might want to wrap that up asap. It certainly left a bad taste in my mouth seeing it justified as (and I paraphrase) "well the farmers have already wrecked the rating system, so it doesn't really matter that we're doing this to farm the badges". With those badges gone there'll be no need for it, and with other rating cartels and farming being hit hard as well (hopefully), MA ratings can go back to being about the quality of the story in the arc and how fun the gameplay is, instead of being about badges/farming or popularity contests.

Happy birthday - and many more!

I agree with Dr_Mechano's post - Pandora's Box is definitely open and the Devs can't put the lid back on. Ultimately I think the Devs just need to man up and stick in an xp-per-time cap that only exploitative farmers/PLers would hit. Then they wouldn't even need to start implementing widespread nerfs to Prisoners or Rikti Comm Officers that affect the whole playerbase - they could directly control how fast they want players to be able to level by adjusting the cap (i.e. they could double it for double-xp weekends).

I love IOs and the MA, but what I hate is the massive effects I9 and I14 have had on general playstyles and the community - effects which the Devs should have foreseen and mitigated. Both have good points (I9's build diversity and added progression, I14's creativity and exponential content increase), but significant bad points too (I9 adding loot-greed and time-sinks re crafting and managing extra inventories and market slots, I14's pro-farming effects but also further impacting recipe availability on the market on top of what I13's merits did).

I find it sad that I14 has undermined the widespread TF teaming that I13 promoted and that both I13 &amp; I14 have made it harder to quickly buy the IOs you want when you level (I still tend to get things at the prices I want to pay, but it takes overnight/weekly bids now). The pro- and anti-farming squabbles both in-game and on the forum have been discouraging too. Not to mention that all this is happening at the worst possible time; just before CoH's first direct competitor is released. Very sad.

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Oh and don't go thinking I'm not equal opportunity on this, whoever thought you should be having to grind your way through so many Elite Bosses complete with entourage for the Billy Heck story arc in Port Oakes should be punched in the neck.

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A bit extreme. Tbh those low level EBs in CoV are hardly much tougher than bosses with extra health points - imho Dr Vahzilok and Frostfire in CoH are tougher solo than any of the sub-20 CoV EBs. Admittedly I'm biased - I like EBs (even with my dominators), I like a challenge and I hate Rikti comm officer farms.

Though I would like to see mission difficulty be easier to tweak and more customisable - I even made a suggestion about it, back in the dim and distant past. Then those who want an easier ride can get it, but those who want a challenge can as well, and tweak it on a per-character or changing mood basis.

Happy Birthday ML - and many more!

The first thing I do on newly created characters is to /hide from searches to avoid farming requests - made 3 new characters this week, 2 had farming tells before I could hide, one of them before the tutorial zone finished loading. They're everywhere now, even if you are hidden - on /broadcast, on global channels, and I had to stop using Cap AE building to work on my arcs...

The new players coming from Steam don't stand a chance (that's if the forum drama didn't put them off ) - the farmers scoop up the newbies and turn them into farmers before they can form their own lowbie teams. Farming seems to be becoming the mainstream playstyle at cost to the TF/SF and normal grouping teams - it reminds me of that line in Braveheart: "if we can't get them out, we'll breed them out".

I love the creativity of MA, but it's being used to wreck the game. Now even the badgers are joining the farmers in wrecking the MA's (admittedly flawed) rating system - publishing lists of the arcIDs of their badge-farm missions for badgers to give 5 star ratings to (regardless of whether it's deserved), further skewing searches. Cheers for that guys.

I wish the MA had no badges, maybe no inf, and a cap on the amount of xp/tickets each character (or perhaps account) could earn in there per hour/day.

The pace of change in general gameplay habits this last few weeks has been astonishing. The Devs need to step in, and soon, before the damage is irreparable to the long term health of this game. I never thought we'd see another Issue that changed the game, positively and negatively, as much as I9 did but I14 has managed it, and in time I fear the negatives will outweigh the positives.