QuiJon

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A strange thought occurred to me as I was laying in bed last night:

What if them letting everyone do this AE thing strictly to 50 is part of a larger idea?

What IF by playing in the ae you log in hours to their data mining software? and what IF they use that data to flag your CHARACTERS, not account, for certain things.

What if by allowing you to do this they are simply allowing you to dig yourself into a hole? What if by going from one to fifty strictly there's a consequence? Lets say a team was unhappy about how their masterpiece of an issue was turned into a laughable version of their "vision", then lets say instead of doing the standard UBER nerfing of it, they let you do it. Letting their modules mine whose doing WHAT, and how often.

They then use this data to flag specific characters in all your accounts to be rewarded different. No examples, just general thoughts..

Wouldn't THAT be a plan instead of getting huffy about things publicly and rather directly smacking people around for disrupting your vision? Wouldn't you want to do THAT instead of repeating the tantrum your predecessor made over a similar controversial change?

In short, what if by letting them do all this "farming" they're merely letting them hang themselves by a future diminished return with no explanation, or an explanation in game by[u]Aeon[u] and [u]Crey[u]? They're plugged into the system, data mining you, making things harder for you to get around, get drops, Inf, whatever.

Am I off base here, I'm not thinking "The devs are out to get us!" I'm thinking, in this age of maturity we're in, instead of punching someone, you poison them slowly watching them o.o;

Or am I just thinking too much?

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First i think your giving the devs to much credit. They fricken knew how the thing would be used before it hit live, hell it was being used that way on test.

Secondly at this point i think you should take some sleeping pills so that you stop "thinking" while trying to get to sleep, cause this is pretty fricken paranoid. And if you actaully knew me, you know me saying something is paranoid is a pretty bad thing.

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QuiJon wrote:

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Im sorry but why the ef is it anyone elses problem to make sure you have an easy go of it?

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He's not saying it is. Unfortunately, with so many people working the market, the hyperinflation has made difficult for casual players, who would rather play, get the items that they could (previous to the AE) get rather easily.

Yes, you can make money on the market. But you can't deny that the AE phenomenon has inflated the market pretty dramatically.

Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.

--NT

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Or someone made a mistake and bid way more then they wanted to. I once bid 70 million for a 7 million cost recipie, it was won before i even had a chance to see what i had done.

Point being it is absolutely no more difficult to slot out a toon with standard SOs now then before the Invention system was put into the game. Now it might be slightly more costly to slot IOs or craft them yes. But again look at the options. Tickets are easy to come by and common salavage is cheap to buy, so are common recipies in the AE. Nothing requires you to use the markets to get these. Use the terminals in the univresity, use the tickets to buy your recipies and salvage etc. The point IMO is that by the time you reach level 50, if you started slotting what you could afford of IOs at level 32, you have still spent way less then you would to keep the SOs up to date from 32-50.

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Which is why I'm not playing at the moment, and haven't been for the past month. I still love the game, it's the players I can't stand to be around for more than five minutes.


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I probably havent been on more then 5 teams since issue 14 launched. And those would have been supergroup teams. I play mostly alone because im on the west coast and play late at night. Even solo, even not farming, i was earning enough tickets playing peoples arcs to make a few hundred million just recycling the drops into the market at the current market value.

Im sorry but why the ef is it anyone elses problem to make sure you have an easy go of it? And dont give me its a game of heroes crap, its a game. The game has an economy. Players are using it. If you choose not to then fine, but you can make decent money spending like 30 minutes a week in feeding common IOs into the system 5-10 minutes a play night. Its really not that hard. Set up some low ball bids for salvage, pick a good selling recipie that always sells memorize the recipie and then just crank out the enhancments. You store them up and just drop some in to the market when you get a chance. Right now with a memorized recipie i can easily profit 300-350 thousand off selling one accuracy, def, res IO pretty much at will. I usally will only do it for weekends right now to get the player bids, so i load up my 16 sell slots on a firday and just go pick up like 3-4 million on sunday.

But OMG spending 10 minutes to help yourself..... god if that is to much work, i weep for your partner in life. And as far as quitting, maybe you should. Not to be mean spirited but seriously i dont know of a MMO that doesnt requires to actually put time in to earn what they want.

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Let me reiterate this:

...they're soloing or running lower difficulty, Item A never drops for them...



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I dont know of anyone farming that is doing it on the lower difficulty. The entire point would be the maximize XP, Infulence, and drops(Tickets). You earn higher amounts of all these running things at higher difficulty, fighting stronger enemies.

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When the AE is the easiest source for A) money and/or B) saleable goods, and when large teams on 'farmable' maps pull in the most of both, then the people who prefer NOT to run the same map with the same mob over and over get edged out... they make less inf, their drops are random and a lot fewer and further in between.


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Again i falsehood. When i do farm, i am doing so only with my two accounts, i do not invite others, i do not make a full team. I pick a mission, and load it up and i put my two characters into it. I can do this over and over on one mission, i can pick a new mission every time it doesnt really matter. And i earn on a level 50 from a real farm maybe 2-2.5 million for a run its its a good one, and probably 1500 tickets max.

But ultimately im doing this solo or on a team of 2. I dont think thats all that hard for most players to accomplish, and if i did run it solo, sure that might go down slightly, however still not so dramaticly that it wouldnt be benefical.

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The choice is "Farm" or "Get Lucky at the Drop Lottery". And lately the lottery odds have been trash.


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I will admit the drop lottery sucks. However if not mistaken the mission drop system still follows the idea that certian recipies are only availible during TF/SF or by spending merits for rolls i guess now. There are things that will never drop during a standard mission. Tickets being that the idea is your running a TF/SF style mission but wont get any random drops reward you by allowing a solo player to be able to take that random chance roll MORE often then a primary solo player would earn merits for that roll.

And again your thinking that the only way to do it is by farming is just wrong. I will earn tickets on any mission i do. I can run one over and over, or i can and often do pick a new mission every time. I dont have to farm. So now please your poor solo player is running say radio missions in PI, he gets different missions over and over again, some kill all, some flashies, etc. Or he could go into the MA pick up missions from the computer and run those same type of missions but be earning tickets in faster quanity to take random rolls that will probably benefit him with better returns to either use or sell. I personally say neither one of those would be farming, but your still going to be earning tickets that allow you to more easily choose if you want to try for better recipies or weaker ones and get more of them. The open mission system just drops whatever it feels like.

Yes again you blame the MA, well we had inventions before the MA, where do you think the recipies in the black market came from then? From farmers maybe? Basicly those that kill the most stuff in either system will earn the most drops when all is said and done. The MA hasnt changed that in teh slightest.

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But, oh yeah, you don't have to use the Invention system or the Market, the AE is optional, you can level up and build a powerful character 'normally'... let's not all forget that...
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Sarcasm or not you can. I have about 3 of my 19 level 50s that have any invention sets in them at all. Now one is a perma dom, so its increasingly obvious how often she pops domination. But the other 2 maybe have 3-4 sets in them tops. All my other toons are basicly slotted with common IOs. Though i have gotten comments on the perma dom, i have never once had a player notice on any other character that i seemed stronger or weaker then i should be. Its COMPLETELY optional if a player wants to do it or not. And before you even say ya but even common IOs are expensive, through regular play, buying SOs all the way up, my level 50s usally hit 50 with about 30+ million inf/infl on them. That is more then enough at level 50 to deck out any toon with common IOs.

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Just to make a point about the Golf/Baseball analogy; the problem as I see it with the current situation (though less now that the Mito-farms have been nixed) is that the 'pay' for playing 'Baseball' is much, much greater than the 'pay' for playing 'Golf'. This has a multipul effect of concentrating the playerbase in 'Baseball' (making it harder (to a degree) for Golfers to find other Golfers), encoraging people who dont like 'Baseball' to play it (because they do like to get payed), and making the poeple who love 'Golf', and simply will not play 'Baseball' to feel that they are getting the short end of the stick.

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Exactly.

And, here's the market impact.

Yes, more 'stuff' is being dropped. However, availability of Item A is not what determines Item A's price.

The DEMAND for Item A is what determines price, and with people raking in inf from their farm of choice, they can easily afford to pay a lot more for Item A than the folks who find farming boring.

This means that people SELLING their Item A's will set the price higher, knowing full well some schmuck who "wants it NAO" will pay that price. This nudges the aggregate price point for Item A upwards. Another person gets an Item A, decides to sell it cos they can 'make a mint selling these things' and they price it even HIGHER... and again, it's snapped up by someone swimming in inf and short on patience.

Meanwhile, back at the non-farm (would that be a ranch? I have no idea)... those people who are also wanting an Item A, but aren't raking in the inf because they're not farming, begin to lament that they can't afford an Item A because the price is ridiculously overinflated AND because they're soloing or running lower difficulty, Item A never drops for them... nor do they see a lot of tickets with which to buy an Item A from the AE vendor (if it's even available.)

It's not a supply/demand economy, it's a Gold Rush economy, and if you're not one of the people bringing in gold by the bucketload, you're priced out.

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You do realize you dont have to farm to get those drops right?

I mean seriously everyone is acting like they have no choice but to farm to earn the money to buy someone elses drops. Why not earn the drop for yourself? Or something better that you can then sell, and NO it doesnt require farming to do it.

Keep in mind the MA does provide you the ability to choose from many different missions and arcs. And all those will earn you tickets, which is what the farmers are using to get their random drops that you are complaining you cant afford to buy from them. So run MA missions, you dont have to farm the same one over and over, but what is the difference between a kill all from a radio in PI and a kill all from the MA?

Then find out what you want, what level ranges it drops in, and find the best level range to request it in for the best odds and roll away like the rest of us. Granted im a SG of 1, but in my base i have 3 storage tables that are all about 2/3 full mostly from just random rolls of peices i am holding until i have the sets or most of what i want to slot them or i might need someday for some toon or whatever. I figure it cost me what 100 prestige a month to have a table thats like 15 minutes of work a month to pay my rent and be my own supply for most of what i want.

Its alot easier to decide to pay 15-20 million for one peice of a set, when you know you already have 4-5 other peices that you didnt spend money on at all.

Now i will admit that running a farm over and over the same mission is boring. But ultimately a farm is invoking the same mechanic as any other mission, get flashies, kill all, rescue schmuck etc. What i think is funny is that people complain they get a mission in the MA that is an obvious farm, yet will go run the dreck mission and complain that the MA is all farms. Well even if you run it only once dreck was a mission to farm for sure at one time. So pick one mission MAs and run them once, earn some tickets, roll the dice see what happens. With the MA its possible for even a solo player to earn enough tickets to take a good random roll within like and hour. Its like the old days of the katie tfs and you get a random recipie instead of merits. But now you dont even need a team if you dont want one.

I swear people are complaining just on the principle of "its a farm mission" well wake up before the MA the farm missions were those you were running out in the real city zones. If farming is broken for MA it will be so again.

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Hmm... what if AE would only give patrol xp, but no real xp?
Yes, you couldn't level to 50 anymore in AE alone, but that's something most people seem to dislike anyway. And it would kill PLing while still giving a reward that's worth xp.

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No it wouldnt kill powerleveling it would kill powerleveling in the AE. PLing is going no where, its always been here it always will be. Your reg date is 04' so where the heck were you when you couldnt even use broadcast in PI because of all the level 2s hanging with Ghost Falcon looking for wolf teams, looking for box missions etc etc?

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You misunderstand the point.

The amazing amounts of MONEY people are making playing power golf is driving up the cost of sporting goods across the board... apparently because a good Louisville Slugger makes a great 3-wood and people are using baseball hats as sunshades.


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I think you missed the point. You are in no way required to spend your money on the black market or wentworths to purchase ANYTHING!

You can get lower cost IOs by earning and buying recipies and salvage. And none of the sets are a requirement for playing the game.

More supply tends to drive down prices, not raise them. People are not earning gobs of money by runningmissions. They earn a fair amount, but the money comes from selling the earned recipies for ticket redemtion.

Something like a LotG +rech has always been a 100 million dollar purchase since day one. Some will spend this much, many wont. But with more on the market, and people wanting to sell the ones they earn, maybe now ill list one for 90 million to try and be lower requesting which means i sell faster.

However if you choose to not spend the money that is your choice. Infact i used to choose not to. I rarely got a chance to run TFs to have any chance to earn the good rare drops, and rarely got purple drops from running standard missions. However with the MA i have lucked into quite a few good recipies and have such used those drops and sold the ones i didnt want and decked out a few toons just for kicks. However i was really never lacking for not having the sets in my toons. So IMO the MA farming has increased supply of pretty much everything but purples, and has allowed people like myself to finance the decked out toons that you complain you cant afford. And its not from earning money its from earning drops.

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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.

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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?

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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.

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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.

The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.

Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.

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The cost of things on the markets has relatively not changed dramaticly, and infact i think though purples might have gone up, almost everything else is probably lower due to earning more random drops from tickets then merits or missions allowed for.

As to your baseball/golf comparison. No it shouldnt prevent you from playing baseball if you want to. However what your saying then is that what if more people just like golf, and they dont have alot of time to play 2 sports and you can no longer find 18 people that want to play baseball to feild 2 teams to have a game because so many are playing golf.

So at that point should people be discouraged from playing golf, or even forbid to help support those that want to play baseball? If your having trouble finding teams its because more people are wanting to do other things. Afterall Golf is more casual paced, you can play it with just a couple of your friends with no PUG general screaming what to do or when to do it as if the game is rocket science.

If people want to play baseball more power to them, however the general impression right now is that they feel that people shouldnt be allowed to play golf so they can field a team.

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Though i think the teleporter would be pushing it, i think looking at some zones and maybe putting in a zone teleporter might not be a bad idea.

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Look at it this way: the MA system already allows you to just jump into mission after mission with no travel, and return from the hospital with no travel, selecting any mission you want. Even if you gave everybody perma-Mission TP (which would make perfect sense in-Lore even) regular missions would still be less convenient since you have the whole rigmarole with contacts, hunts, fedexes and the like. Mission TP, even if it is pushing it, would only push it back closer to balance.

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But if the problem everyone [censored] about is that there is no one in the zones, this doesnt solve that issue. You still will have most everyone popping from contact to mission door and be inside a instance.

What i would kinda like to see is a bonus to patrol xp for stopping crime/or committing crime when out on the streets in the city zones. So i get my mission and if i stop some muggings and such on the way i earn more patrol xp which is a bonus to my xp earning.

I honestly think most of this is great ideas. Though i think the teleporter would be pushing it, i think looking at some zones and maybe putting in a zone teleporter might not be a bad idea.(like something that can split Indy Port into 3 different zones that take you to a localized pad and you choose a souther, Terra Volta gate, or northern spawn point to reappear at.)

But here is also my suggestion, first, increase the rewards. No matter how easy you make it if another system gives better returns, then it will be used. We have seen this for 5 years worth of upper leveling farmming missions even before MA.

Then i would say let all contacts offer some type of repeatable mission, i know radios already do this, but still, if i want a hunt mission i might as well be able to get one. And offering the cell phones right away is great, or maybe after the first mission you complete.

I would also say let contacts offer you ALL their arcs from the start, unless their is a story progression that is needed to follow. With Oroborus its pretty stupid to make me work 3 arcs from a contact to get the one mission i wanted in the last arc to get a badge from to begin with. But also this allows me to say "oh i hate that arc, its all malta" or whatever and avoid it without having to skip the rest of the contact.

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When I take three level 50 MM's on a SF, and not a single one can control their pets, I have a problem with that. When I try to help out a lowbie and teach them a few things, and the next thing I get is a tell asking you to help them level in AE, I have a problem with that.

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The scene: my level 47 Bane is trying to beat down Agent Crimson when I see the following:

n00b: wanna help me and my buddy run some missions?

me: [immediately suspicious, i wait till Crimson runs off like a little girl and pull up /search. Sure enough this is a level 18. I'm almost surprised, I was expecting him to be a level 2]. What you need help with?

n00b: Me and my buddy want to level really fast. Can you do it for us?

me: [Crimson is back. Gah, what an annoying mission, I am dropping this thing.] Dude, you're a level 18 and I'm 47.

n00b: Please help us level!

me: [in between dodging this annoying [censored] of an EB] Best thing I can suggest is that you form a team of people near your level and you guys run some missions. You'll level fast like that.

n00b: Are you saying you're not gonna help us level? We wanna level really fast, we need to.

me: No, I am not. Sorry. Fighting an EB just now.

n00b: what's an EB?

And at that point I quit responding. I should have told him what an EB is, but I was busy and it wouldn't have mattered anyways. He wasn't interested in learning, he wanted a free ride. Should have told him, "Go run a few actual missions and you will find out what an EB is in fairly short order. Have fun!"

If many of these n00bs ran into Blechly The Council Vampyre I think they'd probably have a heart attack and then quit the game.

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And this differs from the tells i would get from lowbies asking for team spots with my 40+ characters exactly how?

I am not saying that there are not going to be iratating PLing requests, there always have been and will continue to be. Its the idea that the MA/AE is responsible for it all that IMO is false.

If i put on 30 pounds in a month because a local fast food place is selling free chillicheese fries with any chillicheese dog puchase and i eat nothing else 3 meals a day for a month, its not the fries fault i got fat. They existed before the sale, and nothing made me subsist on them alone for 30 days.

PLing has always existed, PLing requests have always existed. To use that evidence that the MA is breaking the game because of PLing is blaming the game for the abuse of a particular mechanic.

Plently of people would see the deal on the chillicheese fries and take moderate advantage of it and not gain 30 pounds. Its not the the sales fault if a few [censored] hats abuse the sale and get fat. Just as its not MAs fault that a few [censored] hats think they will go from 0-50 in a day with your help.

Everyone acts like it ruins the game when people reach high level and dont know what they are doing. I find it funnier then all hell to get a team with a couple ignorant fools and watch them die over and over not understanding why spamming their AOE immbl on full mobs is a stupid thing to do. Seriously, and when they start acting like they dont understand what is happening its all i can do to stay upright in my chair i laugh so hard. And frankly even more fun is to get a brute or tanker out, and get into a mission you can work up a nice big mob and then drop your taunt aura and stop attacking and watch them all die over and over. Then when you figure they are about debt maxed, tell them you have to log off and thank them for the team.

The MA creating stupid players is IMO one of the best forms of entertainment this game offers.

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Cut the XP in half for everything and soon people will find that farming regular missions works out better.

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You know how often i see this comment and i cant help but as WTF is the point then? Look this really becomes a arguement about farming v not farming IMO. And what your basicly saying is make farmming a normal mission better then an AE mission.

I can just as easily, and have many times, run a level 2 to portal corp (infact its even easier now with SG teleporters) to get PLed in a farm as i can run a block to get to an AE building. Now you ask how this impacts though new players? Easy when running farms in the normal world, i have to pad a team up to get good spawns. So what do i do? I search for lowbies and ask them to join in for acouple minutes. Or even make a team and pad it with lower levels. Point being that i take 4-5 players off the grid to maintain a real world farm, when i need no one but my 2 accounts to maintain a AE farm that i am happy with my personal progress from.

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All of these will cause people to quit, will result in doom threads, etc. There are other solutions that are even worse. But really the devs have to get off the fence and decide what they want AE to be.

If they don't want it to be a farming tool, then they need to stop screwing around and fix the system. OR just let people farm and accept that their game experience will be a laughingstock.


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Or they could do what they actaully should do that wont cause any adverse effects, and boost the rewards from standard missions to compensate for the AE effectivness.

1-rework all content to limit the city running that it requires. Keep missions in the zones of the contacts so that you are not running here and there to just talk to a contact and run back.

2-increase the drop rates of purple rewards

3-increase xp and influence by about 10-15 percent acrossed the board on everything. Increase the mission and arc bonuses based on a scale like the AE uses for ticket rewards where its higher for a more complete mission run.

4-give merits for all mission completion and a bonus for milestone completion like an arc, or completing a safeguard/mayhem mission. Increase merit rewards for TF/SF

The funny thing to me is that for a while, it seems the devs took the attitude that they didnt want the game to be about grinding. (which i know it was to and extent) The lack of desire to increase the level cap IMO reflects this attitude. This IMO made COX more about leveling, and then making an alt, which i love dont get me wrong. I would much rather spend time making a character i like, hit 50 do some content and start an alt then hit 50 and 6 months later after getting him all decked out have to hit 60 then 70 etc.

However it feels like lately the concept is moving away from this alt attitude. Inventions is requiring more money to "finish" a character. And the nerf to merits etc, was clearly an attempt to limit the ability to earn the completion of your character.

Now here is the thing that tears at me. I like to play. When i have a character i think is fun, i love this game. However i have started characters i lose intrest in. Now i could delete those toons and start over, but frankly after 5 years im getting pressed to find new combos that are fun. So ya im getting a bit burned out.

However the AE system is buying me time during waiting for going rogue. Alot of those characters that had not logged in for 300 days and were sitting in the mid 30s are not getting time. Yes it might be farming them to 50, but im earning money, tickets for recipies for other toons, prestige for my sg/vgs of which i am the only member in each....

Im most doing this solo. I am not taking players out of the game for other people to team with. And if i couldnt do this, its likely right now i would be watching movies, or playing a console game rather then logging infor extended play sessions to COX right now.

So why do i like the MA? Well frankly again, i get better rewards, and notjust from leveling. I love the ticket system, i can get rewards from the ticket system that i could never get from merits, i simply just dont get on during the opprotune times to get on TFs, and i dont see the point in running 4-5 arcs to earn one random roll which always seemed to never give me what i needed anyway.

So the MA has ENHANCED my playing experience. My ability to play and slot my characters. I can understand this might not be true for everyone, but the only real solution i personally can see working is to make the MA buildings there own zones. A co-op zone area for both heroes and villians, which removes i guess atleast the tells from atlas etc of "looking for AE teams" which then makes a new player wonder what the AE is.

However i think keeping in mind that new players have forever been subjected to invites to express their way through low levels, i really dont think this is a solution. Last few characters i made before MA i had gotten invites to sewer teams within 5 minutes of hitting atlas. Mid level players still hung out in paragrine looking for farms before the AE.

Now if they want me to join in the party, why not give me rewards for doing it. Whats the problem, i level a little faster? So what. I earn more Influence/infamy? Again so what, it supports the economy in game. I earn more drops? So what again supports the BM/WW and other players to have more choices on the markets.

The real problem is the MA offers rewards that are IMO truely equal to what the game should offer at a rate that seems rewarding and fun and not so grindy. The way to keep customers and keep players happy and wanting to play is not to nerf those rewards, its to make sure that no matter what route a player takes, be in AE 1-50, city play or a combination, that the rewards keep a player intrested in playing. Making city content equal the reward and convience of the MA is maybe not easier, but it would be much more welcome by the player community IMO.

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Heh all this level 1-50 PLing must be happening heroside.

Sitting in the Cap Au AE currently and everybody is asking for level 20+ or 35+

seems like if you haven't atleast played normal content for a while that farm teams wont invite you on.

Atleast that's what I'm seeing anyway...

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Most of the time if i run a farm its for me and my second account. I will sometimes invite a friend or SG member if they want to join, but i really never take on unknown players. Simply i used to back when i needed to to buff a mission, but what i always ended upwith were tells like "hey remember me from the other night, you killing more nemesis and got room?"

So one thing i do like on AE, is that i dont have to take players off the availible screen if all i want is quick gains for myself.

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I'm not saying nerf AE rewards into the ground, but I AM saying recognize that normal content is at a disadvantage right now. The normal content provided a fair leveling experience. AE is the new thing. Nerf it, so that it provides a reasonable leveling experience.



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What i am saying is you leave AE expereinces alone. Most of the time those missions ARE harder then a normal Dev created mission, the higher rewards IMO are warrented.

However i see your point, which is why i think that normal mission content is what should be bumped up. See what i am thinking is what DOESNT the AE offer? It doesnt offer random drops, it doesnt offer merits from story arcs etc.

So why not look at adding more of those rewards to standard mission runs and arcs rather then taking down what the AE does offer. How about every mayhem mission you earn and run gives you 5 merits. (for the mission holder only, maybe 1 for non-mission holders) Thats usally 5 missions to earn the mayhem/safeguard, and one mission to complete it why would giving merits for completing that cycle be a bad thing?

Why not increase the drop rate of purple drops, and allow them to be earned when exempting down. Now you have given a reason for my level 50 to run some TFs or SFs and exempt down. Go back to having a random drop from TFs, and SFs, in addition to the merit rewards. Give me a merit boost if a truely complete all the missions from a contact not using the time portal to do it. If i am playing my toons and finish all the missions from say Maria Jenkins give me 10 merits, not just for finishing her arc.

These are nothing rewards in the long run, but think that is might be worth. Now players have a choice, level quickly with your rewards basicly being xp and influ, or level slower but by 50 think how many merits you could have earned, how many purples you might get with your 50s on exempt, or how many rare or expensive recipies you can now afford because you earned the merits on the trek to level, rather then getting there and now needing to find the money in other ways.

If the Devs actually gave the players a choice in the matter, then you would truely see what would keep players playing v. what becomes a short subscription because all someone did was PL to 50 and quit.

And the thing is the extra rewards cost them nothing. How many players would be happy to know that they might actually earn a 250 merit recipie in good time, or get a couple extra purple random drops? COX has never been about grinding. And i think its a mistake to keep looking at it as grinding out levels, grinding out drops, grinding out money, grinding out whatever. And many of the mechanics they have put in the game are just that, grinds. You dont need inventions sure, however now that they are in the game they hope our anal retentive nature will require us to spend the time cleaning up our characters slotting with them before we decide we are quitting.

Seriously if purples alone dropped like 3-4 times more often then they do, that would still be rare, but see how many people start playing mission to earn drops that might have spent all night earning tickets in the MA instead. It takes alot of ticket redemtion to equal out one armogedon drop on the black market.

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And Dom's are squish, so keep your range. May players just have to be up in the thick of it, but squishes have ranged attacks for a reason and that distance is defense. Melee attacks are more powerful than most ranged attacks versus a squishy so stay out of melee range. I fight at the full length of my range if at all possible, and that includes falling back if an enemy is trying to close with my character.



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Perfect example of why i would NEVER offer blanket advice on playing a dom, and especially unsolicited. Everything you just said here i find to be complete B.S.

I am pretty much in the thick of it with my doms, I wont say 100 percent of the time, but i am rarely at the limits to my ranged attacks, im probably normally not at the limits of my level 38 ranged attacks.

And this is my point, i guess you developed one style of play, i developed another. Neither is wrong, just wrong for the other. Both ways will get the job done, i just find mine more fun. However if i was teaming with you i would not tell you why your doing things wrong. Just as if i was teaming with a newb, i am more then willing to answer his or her questions, but otherwise their on their own as far as im concerned. Cause if i say "get your [censored] i melee range and drop a quicksand and earthquake" he doesnt learn why that would be a safe thing to do he just does it. When he finally sees other do it, he goes and looks at the powers and notices the -def, the -tohit etc and then understands why he can do it.

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If he wants to get IOs for his toons they are beyond his reach so what does he do? He either goes to a website and buys influence which exaserbates the AE problem or he gets on an AE farm himself and farms.

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Or he uses the AE tickets he earns to buy the recipies and salvage he needs to make his IOs(which both are pretty cheap ticket wise to begin with) and then slots his own toon using the universities. Sells anything random that drops he doesnt need to boost his money, and buys anything else he needs.

Or maybe even he saves up 3700 tickets buys a level 35-39 gold drop gets a miracle +recovery and sells it for 100million and never worries about money again.

See thing is you dont know. And frankly IMO market prices have gotten better since the AE because more people are taking random rolls and putting up for sale the things they dont want or need. So really only Purple rec to me are the really really really bad ones anymore.

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Cause when no one plays the game itself there are less rare recipe drops, and prices go up. Supply and demand.

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I have exactly 4 purple rare sets spread acrossed 18 level 50 characters (also playing since the begining mostly). NOTHING in this game requires a player to have to have a rare drop, NOTHING! Its fun sure. But you know how i got the money for those rare sets?

In the first couple week of the MA it seemed that almost everytime i redeamed tickets i would get either a LOTG +recharge or miracle +rec IO. It was weird cause frankly i have NEVER gotten one of either of those naturally in all my play time previously. So after a couple weeks i had like about 900 million from selling a few of those (kept about 2-3 of the LOTGs) So i finally decided whatever like there is anything else to do with the money and spent it on the purples i have been wanting.

So in order for me to get what i wanted i probably put 12-14 highly sought after and kinda rare drops into the blackmarket. So I fail to see how the markets will dry up. On top of that probably put some 30 less rare drops into the markets as well.

Just because the purples are expensive doesnt mean the economy is broken. You want to complain about the cost of purples then complain to the devs about their rarity, the AE is not really effecting that one way or another.

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Its the attitude of some people, always trying to say that theirs is the only truth, and that their vision of the game is sacred and cant be stained by the AE. People that "decide" that they "know" whats best for everyone.

Thats what makes me sick.

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I see people expressing an opinion, but I haven't seen anyone state that their beliefs represent objective truth.

Perhaps the sickness came from what you had for dinner?

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But the fact remains is that whether you agree or not, this is a real problem for the long term health of the game.

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So is that an objective opinion or objectve truth, cause i thought fact ment it was a truth?

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This thread makes me feel sick.

Come on... stop trying to decide what people should do. Do you pay for their accounts?

And stop bickering around because other people are having fun in a way you dont want.

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A patient tells his doctor, "It hurts when I move my arm like this." So the doctor says, "Don't move your arm like that."

If the thread makes you sick, then don't read it. But the fact remains is that whether you agree or not, this is a real problem for the long term health of the game. AE distorts the experience of the game. This isn't about nerfing farming. Hell, I don't care if people farm TV missions or portal missions until their eyes bleed. I don't even care if vets like you farm AE until your eyes bleed.

But newbies need to learn what the game has to offer before they choose that path. Right now, AE is the draw du jour so new folks don't even know what's out there.

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Look i think its safe to say that alot of the "new" people coming to the game at this point are really new. In so much that they have friends playing, maybe played several years ago or whatever.

However farming and power leveling are not a unique experience to just COX. Pretty much every MMO has had it in some form or another. And anyone trying this MMO that has played any other and taken part in farming and PLing, are goign to be smart enough to come to the forums and find out whats what.

There is creativity i agree with maintaining and some things i do think should have been nerfed. Comm officers etc. But i think as it is, the AE offers rewards that are equal to the rewards in the normal game. The difference is what i can create. If i create a map that spawns LTs and Bosses in equal numbers to minions, why should that be nerfed. Risk v reward says that fighting spawns of Lts. is more dangerous then fighting spawns of minions.

The real thing comes to the public perception. Farming is taking center stage in the debate, when sometimes is really a question of challenge level. I do farm, i am not going to lie. But i have also used the MA to find missions that are just plain difficult, that make me think, and really push my characters to the limits. Unfortunately to achieve this many times that again are farming missions. But frankly if i could set the normal difficulty slider on the 5th setting and run a mission set for 2 player 100 times and never die unless i just simply am sleeping at the keyboard, but set the difficulty slider on 2 and run a MA farm and die every couple runs, obviously one is more difficult and i SHOULD be getting higher rewards for doing that mission.

So if people want to solve this delemia, why not do it from a positive light. Like say reward those that are running story arcs. Say if you run a arc with 3 missions, each mission has to have atleast 1 different enemy group, 2 different objectives in each mission and no duplication of objectives, so you will have to have atleast one kill all mission, one blinky w/boss, etc. And give like 3-5 merits for completing the arc. So essentially give those that are using the MA for its intended purpose a better reward, then if people still want to farm they are doing so for less a reward. However i dont think changing XP or influ or presitge is the answer, its giving something more for using it as intended.

Cause frankly nerf xp and you see a big new feature gather dust like PVP does now. No one, even the newbs will want to run missions if they think that the MA hampers their characters development. Then all the story tellers will be complaining that they made a super duper arc a month ago and have no plays on it.

Also keep in mind that some time back when radio and paper missions were introduced many complained no one wanted to run arcs anymore. Why run all over paragon to do an arc if you can do radios in the same zone? And what happens but merits get introduced and suddenly people want to run arcs again, oroborus gets even more popular because there is now a bigger reward to be earned then simply 1 single bonus for a 5 mission story arc completion.

The devs need to find a reason to make players want to come out of the farms, many will always take the path of least resistance, the question becomes how watered down do we want the standard game to become to achieve the goal of playing as intended?

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More and more I'm finding low level Doms, even those who have been playing COH as a whole longer than I, who have no clue how Domination works. When I explain it, they get it, but not until then. What all would people here suggest as ways to get other Dom players to better understand how the AT works?

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How about you just let them figure stuff out on their own?

Until i played a brute, i never understood that your fury bar raises from being attacked as well. I just didnt care enough to find out i wasnt playing brutes.

If they are truely new to dominators im sure they are giving them a try due to the word that dominators got damage buffs. Let them figure it out on their own. Yes if someone has questions about how a power works or whatever i would say answer it, but this idea that for some reason we have to be holding the hand of all the new dom players is getting irksome.

No one held our hands, no one held my hand 5 years ago, its trial and error. And how i choose to play my dom isnt the only way to play it. When i choose to click domination isnt the only time it should be done. Its when i do it. And if they want to ask me why ill tell them, but im not going to go around spreading the gospel of domination to other players. I have always found the weakest players are those that do what they do only because they have been told to do it that way.

The strongest players are the ones that gain that experience on their own, through their own playing and experiences.

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MMOs are about balance and even if you take farming out of the equation, AE is not balanced.

-Regular missions have contacts you have to earn/find, then continually travel to until you get their cell. AE puts the contact right next to you.

-Regular missions have doors that can be on the other end of the zone or even in another zone entirely. AE always has the door right next to you.

-If you want to go to the hospital in a regular mission it could put you hundreds of yards away from the mission door, the AE hospital always puts you right next to the mission door.

-Random missions give you random salvage and recipe drops. AE tickets allow you to more selectively choose your drops.

-If you're having to buy enhancements with influence you will have to find a vendor selling your Origin, then you'll have to wade through the sometimes oddly named inventory list (curse you Magic Origin). If you use AE tickets you travel a few feet to a single person who offers not only every type of regular enhancement, they even have a nifty menu that lets you select the type of enhancement you're looking for.

These are just a few of the examples of how convenient AE is compared to regular content. Why does AE not have ANY downfalls to balance all of its amazing features that dwarf the regular content?

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Well said. I really think the answer is just lower (not necessarily drastically) AE rewards. People who play for story and aren't focused on leveling won't care, but the farms go bye bye.

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And all the farmers go back to using missions in PI or Granville like they did before the AE missions, so whats the difference.

I hate to say it but frankly im getting tired of the MA getting blamed for the state of the game. Its funny that in one thread everyone seems to think that the new games like DCUO or CO are going to kill the game due to how long this one has been out and how tired of the game people are getting. But then in another the MA is the death nail of the game because its making no one want to play.

Fact is farmers have always farmed, players and story lines have always attracted the other crowd. I have, i will admit been spending alot of time in the MA. But why? Well simply before the MA i was getting pretty board. I have played for 5 years, i have seen everything and done everything over and over. The MA gave me the opprotunity to quickly finish off leveling some Alts I had mostly lost intrest in playing for whatever reason. Essentially its wasting my time until Going Rogue is released and i get some new content that i havent played through before.

Everything goes through cycles. But overall if people are spending their 15 a month, and choose to spend that time in the MA, i dont see why that needs to be "fixed". What exactly does the MA offer me that a normal farming mission doesnt? Frankly it allows me to actually have a higher threat level when i am running both my accounts then i otherwise would have. Having 2 characters in a mission that only spawns Lt. and Bosses, and has like 20 ambushes is much more challenging the running the TV missions even on highest difficulty. So yes even though i am farming and possibly getting slightly higher rewards then from another mission, i am doing it with also a higher threat then i would doing it on a 2 man team in any other way. So frankly i DONT have to take into my missions people to pad it, or to get a good SK like i would in a normal mission. So honestly the MA IMO leaves more open players. I ignore tells all the time to take on players i dont know because now i dont need them. I would probably take 2-3 more players into a normal mission taking them out of the pool for story teammers to play with doing it the old way.

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I doubt that just pulling it out of Atlas will do it; the lowbies will simply move to other lowbie zones.

At least in Steel a level 1 is going to encounter problems getting around unless they have a pal with tp. It's that risk vs. reward thing: with AE in the lowbie zones, they have big rewards with NO risk.

I say let's make them work for it a bit, like when they had to hike that level 2 all the way to PI. Let's give lowbies incentive to stay in Atlas and learn how to play a bit. They in no way, shape or form NEED to have an accessible AE building - in fact that is way too much temptation for them to withstand.

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Agreed, if we used to take new characters to PI to get a PL going to steel canyon or skyway wouldnt matter. Heck I can remember running level 2s to portal corp in PI with no teleport help and no sg bases and pocket D portals etc. Simply put people that want the PL are going to get to where they need to be to get it, unless you level restrict every zone and you simply just die at the gate when you attempt to enter a level not your equal.