Mokino

Most of the people complaining about AE are on Freedom and Virtue, where I agree it "seems" to be rampant.

However, you can find groups for most things still. It might take longer than it used to but the game's population has been slowly shrinking. AE caused an influx and many of those players simply don't know how CoH was designed to be played. They come from games like WoW where it;s all about becoming as powerful as possible as quickly as possible.

Games like them will easily burn themselves out and quit. AE Farming is honestly a self-correcting system.

And they won't ever pull the AE out of the game completely. That would kill CoX since it's one of the game's major selling points. The system definitely needs some changes and there are exploits to be fixed, but we cannot sacrifice creativity for the sake of removing the non-exploit farmers.

I'm also for taking the AE buildings out of Atlas, Galaxy and Mercy (and possibly cap, but that would cause a disparity between heroes and villains. Heck, maybe remove them from all sub level 15 zones.) Let the players experience some of the normal game at least before they decide to farm.

As long as the game exists there will be farmers and PLevelers. Every game has them and there's no real way to remove them without seriously harming things for normal players.

I'm pretty sure these spawning rules have affected regular missions as well.

For instance, I don't remember seeing a good 30-40 arachnos in the starting Soldiers mission, but they're there now and making it much more of a challenge than before.

-locking the AE to certain levels would create false advertising issues since the AE is advertised and intended to be an alternate levelling method from 1 to 50.
-auto-sk removal wouldn't be terrible but it won't stop farms completely. PLing existed long before the AE and will survive it no matter what happens.
-moving the buildings to only high level zones would be counter to the first point. However, I do support removal of the ones in Atlas, Galaxy and Mercy. Removing them from the starter zones would make a lot of players try the normal content before diving into AE and avoid the issue where some newer players see it as the entire game. And if they're determined to farm, they'd find a buddy to bring them to the higher zone buildings anyways.

Also from what I've seen this seems to mostly be a problem on Freedom and Virtue. Protector's Cap AE is pretty quiet yet a see a lot of players running dev content. The odd farm team does broadcast in Cap but it's nowhere near like on the busy servers.

Victory, on the other hand, does have a lot more activity in Atlas, but it also seems to be a mix of AE and sewer teams.

Lots of people are running dev content. They're just not flooding the broadcast channels about it.

[ QUOTE ]
Its on EVERY server.. not just Freedom...

[/ QUOTE ]

Freedom and Virtue are, honestly, much worse for it than the others (though they all have farming going on.)

Protector red side is surprisingly quiet on the farming front but if a mass exodus occured to it farms would start.

Transferring off the server will not solve it as all it will cause is an exodus to whichever server becomes the most active.

[ QUOTE ]
I have no problem finding teams to do anything I want to do redside or blueside on Infinity. I think this is a bit exaggerated.

[/ QUOTE ]

Freedom and Virtue are actually overpopulated servers. Most of the servers have a decent population at peak times without being overcrowded like those 2.

One thing the game needs to make a bit clearer is your initial contact.

I'd like the see a new level one contact added that essentially functions as an in game tutorial (better than the current ones.)

1. You get the normal contact popup for this person as soon as you arrive in the starting zone.
2. The first mission gives you a bit of inf and sends you to a shop where you're given a couple free TOs (if you skip the tutorial it's easy to miss the enchancement help) with a brief explanation and possibly a "dummy" fight.
3. After a small mission or 2, this contact introduces you to one of the normal contacts in the zone.
4. Once you reach the level for the next normal zone, the initial contact popups instructions about using the train/ferry/helicopter/etc. system and sends you to a contact in the next zone.
5. Possibly a group based mission (2 or 3 man team minimum) to teach players how to use the lft system (most of the new players don't know this even exists due to the broadcasts and it would help get rid of that annoyance.) The lft system seriously also needs an AE category added as well.

Not terribly hard to write, easy for vets to skip (they will only introduce contacts you can access other ways) and new players will learn the essentials. Heck, maybe even have a fairly easy mission at level 10 to introduce the sidekick system.

I'm in the beta for CO. It's not that great to be honest. Takes way too many cues from WoW.

As I said in the other threads, removing AE will kill the game. It's one of the game's biggest selling features. The devs won't be removing it or removing xp from it.

A lot of the issues with the AE were brought up during testing. The antifarmers on the forums haven't come up with a single idea that wasn't presented during testing and turned down by the devs.

[ QUOTE ]

And yeah, the Farmers are noisy and obvious .... so easy to find.


[/ QUOTE ]

So are the anti-farmers on the forums here when they seem to represent a minority of the community who wish to dictate how everyone else plays.

The problem with adding level caps to the AE buildings is that it would divide up the AE running teams (which are actually quite small on some servers, especially red side.) It would lead to some zones having absolutely dead AE buildings (AP would probably stay active and probably a 40-50 range building, but things would be dead in between.) Leading to player frustration with the system. Level caps/xp caps simply will not work without seriously harming all AE use.

I don't think AE can be "fixed" to the anti-farmers' satisfaction without leading to its eventual death and alienating a very large proportion of the game's community (something the devs will not risk.) They left the barn door open and it's way too late to close it now.

All they can do is keep patching the exploitive mobs/bugs and wait for the situation to resolve itself. Farming is slowing down and, while it will never die since it's been in the game in some form from the beginning, it will become less noticeable.

AE farming could only be killed by removing the AE entirely. All that will do is cause a lot of players attracted by it (for farming or otherwise) to leave and move the more diehard farmers into other zones in search of exploits. Farming will never dissappear no matter what you and your ilk believe, Alt.

Personally, I do find the odd farming mission fun and do it for the challenge (attempting to solo or 2 man them is interesting,) but I have mostly levelled using dev content (which, for the most part, is honestly pretty dull.)

Everything you suggest will kill AE entirely. They may as well pull it from the game and shut the servers down at that point.

I agree the award system (including xp) does need to be looked at but removing it entirely will kill the MA dead. Despite what you may believe, it won't become a place where people run 5 long mission arcs for the story alone (which is only really visible to the team leader.) No, it would die off and just become a waste of server space.

Very few people would touch the AE if it had no rewards whatsoever (and it wouldn't be touched by anyone below 50.) Pulling the rewards out of the MA completely is what will kill City.

Restricting AE access in any way goes against what the devs promised AE could be used for. It was designed as an alternative to levelling using dev content so locking it in any way would be changing one of its intended purposes.

Locking it to people with a level 50 would have left it dead. There'd be nowhere near the community online than there is now. A TF/SF to access it would be the same.

Now, restricting it to level 10 and up or similar would have been a good idea but too late now. Locking the AE in any way now will cause a lot of players to quit.

Yeah, reducing AE XP further is not the solution. It'll just result in a dead AE.

Hard caps simply will not work either. All they end up doing is annoying players.

[ QUOTE ]

When characters are getting to level 50 in a couple of hours, it's not through efficiency and skill.

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't happening and you know it. Stop with the exaggeration. Even if you farmed full time it still takes at least a week (at 8+ hours of gametime a day) to go from 1-50. I've experimented with it quite a bit.

The real issue, imo, is that the normal dev missions need a bit of a reward boost. Right now, player don't see them as worth doing mostly due to the travel time and low xp per mission. Bump the xp given by dev missions so it's a bit above the average AE (non-farm or non-exploit farm) and you'll see more activity in the rest of the game.

Leveling from 10-50 needs to be a bit faster. Maybe 10-20% Especially 10-14 and 40-50. The massive reduction in leveling speed you hit just after 40 is ridiculous.

Outside of farming, the MA is definitely worse than normal missions.

For the loss of travel time, you also lose:
-salvage
-recipes
-end of mission xp bonus
-end of arc xp bonus
-unlocking of new contact
-some temp powers

Rodion, the problem with that is that greater risk missions should provide greater rewards.

And 20 levels an hour hasn't existed since the comm officers were fixed, unless maybe from 1-20.

Yes, but I bet most of those PLers are not high enough level for the SF/TF. Farming's being done mostly by lower levels and is affecting the low to mid content due to that.

Though Virtue and Freedom seem to have it the worst for farming. On Victory and Protector where I usually play there's a decent balance (heck, Protector red side has very little AE activity at all.)

I disagree with pain. The casting times are fast enough that you can easily keep the ninjas healthy if you're careful. World of pain and suppress pain are damn nice with them as well.

Dark would be my second choice. Not a fan of the heal ability personally, though.

Traps: as stated, ninjas are too mobile to benefit.

Poison: is pretty bad for mms in general.

Storm: lots of damage and helps you survive, but buffs are too player focused for the fast and agile ninjas.

The lack of healing/buffing for the ninjas will make things quite difficult. Ninjas are very, very frail.

You'll want to keep the ninjas close to you so they benefit from the PBaoe effects (Steamy mist, possibly hurricane.)

[ QUOTE ]
a)Minimum level 20 usage, so it isn't a direct "Farm/PL" methodology, instead players will have to use other means to reach 20 then they may gain access to AE.

[/ QUOTE ]
Runs contrary to the dev's stated vision about allowing the AE to be used for levelling between 1-50. Not going to happen.

[ QUOTE ]
b)Put a counter limit on all AE missions. No AE mission can be run by more than 7 groups in a 24hr period. This would reduce running content for "farming/PL"

[/ QUOTE ]
Publish, unpublish and you have a new arc number. Not going to work.

[ QUOTE ]
c)We already have precedent in the reward limitations for TFs, a similar idea could be used for AE. The same AE rerun in a 24hr time period would gain no tickets. If this is implimented then the rewards could be recalculated upwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

See above.

[ QUOTE ]
d) Cap the total number of AE missions/arc an account can run in 24hr period. This would dampen the spirits of the AE only crowd who don't explore the rest of the CoX landscape. The idea is to promote CoX gaming not farm/PL playing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Already covered. All this would do is tick off legitimate players in addition to the farmers.

[ QUOTE ]
e) Revamp the AE ticket reward structure to provide more specific AE rewards rather than entire gamechanging rewards. With PvP IOs now available, why not AE IOs? AE is supposed to be a total fabrication so allow players to have extra special AE powers, Super Taunt, Super Damage, Super Health, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, limiting AE rewards to the AE system would kill it (which I feel is your intention all along, as is the intention of many of the so-called anti-farmers.)

There's honestly no real way to prevent the AE from being used for farming. All the devs can do is track and patch out the worst exploits. Farmers will always find a way to do it and existed long before AE did (PI, anyone?) The AE just made it a lot more noticeable.

They used OpenGL because it was cross platform and quite popular at the time of development.

I get this error on an ATI card. Running windowed seems to have counteracted it.

That or give one with the aura and/or cape mission.

[ QUOTE ]
The biggest thing that I did noticed though was the infrequent invites I got for teams. It appears there might be a slight bias towards some MM sets out there. Not sure why really but it seems some people have had bad experiences with MM's and their pets. I would think that having a MM on a team would be a good thing to help everyone stay alive with their awesome barrage of pet power.

[/ QUOTE ]

It has little to do with power sets. MMs are disliked by a lot of players because they've had experiences with bad MMs that can't control their pets. MMs are really bad aggro pullers if they don't know what they're doing.

From my experience, though, my bots/storm gets into groups more often than my ninjas/pain. People seem to think ninjas are useless. They used to a long time ago but now can be one of the most potent pets damage wise.

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't see this. My ninja/poison had the most trouble pre-18. But then, that was back in issue 6 too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Things get a bit easier with Jounin (and smoke bomb if you're good with it,) but I still found them quite weak and dying a lot until at least the Oni was around for fire cages.

I see "n00b" thrown around a lot of the time where it isn't necessary, that's all.

If you want a flashy scrapper set, go with martial arts. Trust me on this one. Make sure to take willpower or regen as your secondary as they are the easiest starter sets.

Blasters are definitely the other good starting hero archetype. Don't go with controllers or defenders as your first character.