LordVance

The knockback which is very often poorly controlled doesn't help any

About a week ago I got my first ever 50! It's Lord Vance my Fire/Kinetics controller. Man was it a long road for me, 15 month vet reward (I played the game at launch, but had long periods where I wasn't subscribed). I made him back in the day when you could six slot hasten for recharges and slot the heck out of your control powers for recharges as well. I never made him to be an "OMG FARMER!, I made him because my friends wanted speed boost and I wanted to be a controller that could do a little bit of damage if I had to solo (thinking at the times that imps would be 90% of my damage).

Anyhow - I don't much care for him anymore, but hes finally 50! My Spines/Dark scrapper is quick on his tail at 48, hoping to grind it out to 50 tonight.

Controller: Fire/Kin - Lord Vance
Scrapper: Spines/Dark - Fluffy Spikes (50 tonight hopefully)

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At its current state to me the MA is to easy to be abused , i think they actually should increase the ticket rewards and just remove exp all togehter from theese arc's , as it is right now no new player will learn anything about the citys history background or major heros and villains.

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What they may need to do is actually hand out some brief account bans on people who keep posting up missions that get flagged for exploits, and prevent anyone from posting arcs until they have the 3rd veteran badge.

You may not be able to stop people from exploiting the system, but you can stop them from continuing to exploit the system.

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I currently farm, I started because I have my 15 month vet reward and didn't have a level 50. I had a 45 fire/kin that I had played on and off again for a significant amount of playtime that I really wanted to finish so I could try the khelds (I absolutely love my WS). I'll keep farming until the devs state that they are going to punish people who do it, or it gets nerfed - mostly because I enjoy it and I'm taking this oppertunity to get a few characters up that I havn't had the patience to before (a spines scrapper for instance - too few attacks at the low levels. I havn't tried to make one since radio mishes got added though - I bet I could get through the rough spots with that).

Now that my girlfriend's fire/kin is about finished were going to take turns getting toons we want to about 32-35, high enough where it's really fun for us (before i14 35 was "done" for our toons).

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All that said, this is the solution that would work best in my opinion. Even an earning cap wouldn't get in the way because we would just rotate our lowbies out for the x hours we wanted to play that evening.

I can only farm because I hover with my fire/kin, I'm not a great player - I don't have a single IO set bonuses... I just never could enjoy farming before - I died too much. Removing the all boss, all melee, all smashing lethal farms would remove AE farming in general for me and I'm sure I'm not alone there.

I won't quit though - I realize its going to get nerfed soon probably, I just don't want to "miss my oppertunity" to get a few key combos that I want (illusion/rad - ice/fire tank - arch/mm blaster - spines/dark scrapper... that's my short list of people I want 26+).

1) Revise the system to limit the time spent on the MA each day so as to avoid day-long farming and powerleveling, and to promote usage of story-driven content. (This fixes three of the above negatives)

2) Revise the actual creative system to avoid inappropriate or offensive content from being created.

3) Cause the MA to boot any inactive players, or those that go AFK during missions.

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1) No - this prevents people who are already 50, have experienced the main game, and want to sift through the incredible amount of player made content from being able to do so. Don't limit the time a significant group of the playerbase can enjoy the game in a feeble attempt to stop AE-farming.

2) Blacklisting everything possibly offensive is impossible. There will always be a way around filters; if offensive content becomes a problem start to place actual account-based penalties on it. Post offensive content once? One day suspension, continue to do so and the penalty scales upward until eventual account closure.

3) Then boot players who go AFK from normal missions. Oh, wait - this is City of Heroes. By far the largest reason I and many others play this game is because it doesn't take 8 people to complete an 8 man mission for the vast majority of situations (i.e., every situation I play in).

Laundry done? Go afk. Tacos last night? Go afk. Someone at the door? Go afk... This game is one of the only MMO's that really allows you to AFK or even leave the team at any time without feeling bad, because you aren't hurting your team. Hell, if someone wants to take a shower when I'm playing (be it a farm or legitimate missions) I always tell them to just doorsit for the next mission and if they aren't back by the time were ready to do another one I'll boot them to make room.
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X% of the playerbase already XP farmed like this, now a significantly larger percentage is doing so. They didn't add anything, they only made what was already going on accessible to a larger group of the population. I don't know, but it seems to me like there is more activity on the servers since i14 than I've seen in a while.

AE is a friend. This is a game without any true endgame, if two people playing the game different ways level at two very different paces - what does it matter? Hitting 50 isn't a requirement to enjoy the game. There have always been huge divides in the time it took people to level depending on how they play (solo doesn't come close to small teams which don't come close to large teams).

People got sick of running around doing the same arcs over and over. Step one, add the radio missions to the game - bam, no more contact hunting. Easier to just friggen play-the-game. Step two, add MA - bam, no more running at all but we can still experience a wide array of content. Woot!

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All-boss All-melee All-smashing/lethal missions are a problem. They are entirely too easy for the rewards that they give (hell, hover = immortality) - fix that, don't remove the AE or put ridiculous limitations on the AE itself. Fix the exploitable content.

How much do you think the first build would cost blue side?

I'd say it's definitely common; arc's that I don't enjoy I tend to just bail on. But again, 5 stars shouldn't mean "Good" - it should mean "Exceptionally Excellent!" Equate it to hotels or restaurants, getting five stars is a huge deal - not getting five stars doesn't mean you did something terribly wrong, or people hate your arc - it just means that at least a few people don't think your arc is perfect.

I'm really conservative with my ratings for the most part; I don't give out many five stars. I do give out feedback when there is a specific reason that I didn't give the person a better rating (like one arc where for some random reason there was a level 15 boss spawning in a level 8 mission - that boss didn't scale down to the appropriate level, and the mission didn't auto-SK us up. It was the last map in the arc, and I really enjoyed the arc up until that point - so I absolutely gave feedback on the problem).

Most of the time when I hand out a sub-5 rating though it isn't for a specific reason. You don't always know the missing ingredient, but you know you didn't absolutely 100% friggen love the bowl of soup you just ate.

The mentality that an arc deserves either five stars if it's good, or one star if it's not good (or zero for complete jerkoffs) doesn't help any.

Five stars should be the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the cat's pajamas(?). Four stars, in a world where ratings were fair and accurate, is still quite good.

I like the whole "everyone auto-sk'ed" thing as well. Like the O.P. says, it's up to the team leader not to invite the level 7's. It's still very, very cool to be able to have all your friends 22-50 play together without worry as to whether or not there are enough SK's to go around.

Yea, a 7 can't contribute - but a team of 22+'s can tackle a huge majority of the content in MA so far.

1472 - Hearts on Fire, played through the first half of that arc earlier on an 8 man leveling team (started at 4, got to about 8.5) on Vicious difficulty villain side. I liked that the enemy groups were varied up a bit.

Loved it, thought the mission lengths worked very well (we tended to want to go level by the end of the mission) and the balance was fine (go go not many special mobs!). We started to run into trouble about 1/2 way through, but only because we had perpetual AFKers and one champ who got his first AoE and decided to pull 2 groups at a time pretty consistently. Not your arcs fault at all, just a bad time.

Once my girlfriend gets home we plan on getting a new team and starting it over to give it the full go.

I agree with the "comment at any time, but only rate if arc completed" idea, hell - even just "only rate if at least the first mission is completed" would do wonders.

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Maybe a jewelry heist where we have to break the glass cases.

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That would be truly awesome :-)

I also happen to agree on the 'crazy NPCs' in the bank missions. They are cool, short, and fun; but the NPC's make them a true annoyance with most characters.