[ QUOTE ]
With the success of MA, will the devs still have the same (or any) incentive to create new story content? Will future issues instead support MA (the game within a game), with everything else being put on the proverbial back burner?
[/ QUOTE ]
One would hope so, if for no other reason than to prove they're better at it than "us". 
[ QUOTE ]
Aside: if your characters spend all their time playing MArcs, does that mean they've withdrawn from their 'reality' into a world of fantasy and daydream?
[/ QUOTE ]
Meta-text FTW! 
Dec out.
[ QUOTE ]
The reason people care if others farm is because:
fear
fear
fear
fear
[/ QUOTE ]
Not meaning to chop the context out of your post, Kits, and I'm not saying anything about you personally, but this is the problem, really. Helluva way to spend one's time, I think.
Dec out.
Im pretty excited about my arc. I did a AV fight club theme. I've got all the Signature AV's in the whole CoX, set for nuetral. There spread out among 5 very easy open maps. with glowie in front of map, so its near exit/entrance. But you can fight none or 1 or even all, don't matter. just click glowie to complete. Its a fight club theme so u pick who u fight. main heroes and villians on 3rd map. Hope name and theme are to ur liking. if u dont like AVs or EBs then please dont play. I truely think if you read dialog and the lay out you'll like. almost forgot, gone wild is because there is babes in bikinis. every thing is set 2 easy except AV them self. i know solo i didnt get AV, unless i set 2 threat lvl to 5. then all main AVs became EB's.....So if u get EB's and want AVs just raise difficulty a bit....hope it's enjoyed
AVs Gone Wild
102332
"that it exposed I13 type of broadcast spam we had in Peregrine to the new comers in Atlas Park."
And another feature of the PI farming culture introduced to other zones: "Need a couple of fillers, please."
Again, congrats on bringing the very worst of the farming culture to every freaking zone, Miller. Was it worth the short-term bounce in subs you'll get for the long-term destruction of the game as a whole???
You should cut your losses now and trash the MA. It's already having a deliterious effect on the community.
[ QUOTE ]
"that it exposed I13 type of broadcast spam we had in Peregrine to the new comers in Atlas Park."
And another feature of the PI farming culture introduced to other zones: "Need a couple of fillers, please."
Again, congrats on bringing the very worst of the farming culture to every freaking zone, Miller. Was it worth the short-term bounce in subs you'll get for the long-term destruction of the game as a whole???
You should cut your losses now and trash the MA. It's already having a deliterious effect on the community.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hehehe,
If you will read up-thread, 90% of the current playerbase are farmers. It's true! Some dolt said it in the Forums!
So....Installing the OP's original Safeguards, you alienate 90% of the Playerbase for playing the game the way they want to play it. These same peeps pay the same price to play this game as you do, and deserve to play it the way they want.
I too have become bored with the Game Content, and Run "Paper Missions": just to unlock contacts. (COV)
I Farm casually, when I feel like it. The thing about Farming is that it gets so incredibly boring after the 2nd run of the Mish, so I usually don't hang in with Farm teams long.
Back to the OP's request for us to voice our Gripes about the MA;
Why is it that no matter the Difficulty, Lvl Range, etc... Only one or two enemies appear in regular spawns?
Why are we not seeing the multiple Spawns in the same close area that we see in the Game Missions, even Papers?
Will we ever be able to Put Spawns where we want them to create the "Close Spawned Mobs" mentioned above?
As it stands now, you have to overload an MA Mish with details just to make it a decent spawning Mish, from a Story-Content point of view. It forces me to use Details I would not have had in a Mish just to give folks something to fight in route to the Details I wanted in the first place.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a Farmer, though I sometimes Farm a little. I have NOT created a MA Farm Arc. I usually Solo, and play Small Teams. Sometimes I wind up on Full 8 Teams but I get less enjoyment out of these.
What gives any other paying customer/player the right to dictate how I should enjoy this game? When I pay the exact same amount of money to play as you?
If this fictitious 90% number was accurate, I wouldn't be pissing off the Farmers. If 90% of the Playerbase leaves, you wont have a CoX to play. It will all be history.
Black-Strike: lvl 50 AR/Dark Corruptor
Brutally Beautiful: lvl 50 BA/Inv Brute
Seared Earth: lvl 50 EC/EA Dominator
Yashi Onuku: lvl 50 Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker
Death-Widow: lvl 50 Night Widow
MA is I predict a worse enemy to COH/COV then the rikti. if your into PLing you love it if your into story content forget it, I have played MA since it came out and I'm bored with it already. I play for story content but 99% of the supposed story arcs are set up for PLing. Now we don't have the pling only in PI and grandville but all over the place. Forget about getting together a team for running missions or pretty much anything else. which is one of the reasons I switched servers. no teams all pling . i predict that MA will be the death of COH/COV ( which i hope it isn't, as i have played since 2004) i just hope the craze dies away and we ca get back to playing normal games again....
[ QUOTE ]
MA is I predict a worse enemy to COH/COV then the rikti. if your into PLing you love it if your into story content forget it, I have played MA since it came out and I'm bored with it already. I play for story content but 99% of the supposed story arcs are set up for PLing.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yet, here we go again with 'The high 90% numbers' speak.
Have you genuinely TRIED to look up storyarcs, or did you play three bad ones and decide they were ALL bad? I give you that there are bad missions, and there are missions that are designed for farming, but, who cares? The 'Official' content was far and few between, and, lets face it, alot of the storyarcs weren't real keepers. You run this stuff for over 4 years, you get sick of it REAL quick.
[ QUOTE ]
Now we don't have the pling only in PI and grandville but all over the place. Forget about getting together a team for running missions or pretty much anything else. which is one of the reasons I switched servers. no teams all pling . i predict that MA will be the death of COH/COV ( which i hope it isn't, as i have played since 2004) i just hope the craze dies away and we ca get back to playing normal games again....
[/ QUOTE ]
What is your definition of 'Normal'?
People have been running around saying the sky is falling since Issue 5 brought into existance that PVP silliness. I, for one, hate PVP, but if that's what gets your freak on, don't let me stop you. You've paid for your account, just like I have. Personally, I see Issue 14 as a breath of fresh air. I am enjoying (and, at times, exasperated) by the storylines people are coming up with. I don't play the missions that are geared for farming; if I see them, and they have no story or rational, they get one-starred. Simple as that. Speaking as a former comic book writer, and present-day comic/gaming nerd, there are some exceptional pieces of work out there that deserve at least a once-over. My personal favorite up to date is a story called 'Fragments' by Blue Chernobyl (Sorry, I'm horrible at this ID # stuff, I really only remember letters) I see enough numbers at work.
Also, I can be self-serving and plug my own storyarc, 'The Memory Tree'. Not impossible, not a farmer, nothing epic; I just wanted to tell a story using some characters I created a very long time ago.
'Didn't anyone proofread this $#!tty game before they released it!?' -James, The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewing 'Double Dragon III'
"if your into PLing you love it if your into story content forget it, I have played MA since it came out and I'm bored with it already. I play for story content but 99% of the supposed story arcs are set up for PLing. Now we don't have the pling only in PI and grandville but all over the place. Forget about getting together a team for running missions or pretty much anything else. which is one of the reasons "
I suspect most people who defend the MA on the grounds of the "new content" it delivers, are nothing more than people who want to be PL'ed through the whole game. They simply can't be honest about this, or the devs would know how really badly they screwed the pooch with this one.
I used to hate getting to level 41 and having to go to PI to get missions, because virtually all the teams there were farming teams, and the bloodsuckers who ran them insisted on payment. Now this behavior has spread to virtually every zone, and all Miller can say about it is how the MA has "wildly exceeded their expectations" (or some such nonsense).
Well, if City of Heroes/Villains has now become City of PL'ers/Farmers, they better add 2 new costume sets to the tailor: overalls and diapers, because that's what the entire player base is becoming: a bunch of babies who want farmers to play the game for them. It's disgusting, really.
[ QUOTE ]
"that it exposed I13 type of broadcast spam we had in Peregrine to the new comers in Atlas Park."
And another feature of the PI farming culture introduced to other zones: "Need a couple of fillers, please."
Again, congrats on bringing the very worst of the farming culture to every freaking zone, Miller. Was it worth the short-term bounce in subs you'll get for the long-term destruction of the game as a whole???
You should cut your losses now and trash the MA. It's already having a deliterious effect on the community.
[/ QUOTE ]
I can't wait until your account time is up. You quit, why do you keep coming back to complain?
Dec out.
"I can't wait until your account time is up. You quit, why do you keep coming back to complain?"
Ah, er, I don't know. Because I can? (D'uh!)
Can't handle opposing points of view? Don't read them.
Oh, and add this to the list of PI spam brought to the masses, only now with a new twist:
"Lowbie lf AE farm", seen in every zone from Atlas Park to PI, inclusive.
Yeah, got a real winner with the MA there.
It doesn't annoy me because you have an opposing point of view, it annoys me because most of your "reasoning" is inane, beginning with the fact that you consider Freedom to be the whole game. The MA didn't do what you say it did to the game, it did it to Freedom server, which already had these problems to begin with. All it did was move it around a little. Your bitter overreaction made you quit the game, nothing else.
Dec out.
[ QUOTE ]
* that it's harder to find teams of your level as MA teams are locked into a TF mode. It diminishes the free flowing teams experience we had before with new members joining the team as we progressed through missions. It was much easier for casual players like me to join friends. Now I have to wait endless minutes for them to finish their arc while I have perfectly capable characters able to help them.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's amazing how many people think this is true. There needs to be more information put out there that you CAN invite new people to MA Teams. Maybe in an update pop-up or something. I'm sure there are lots of people who believe this and are not even voicing this belief so no one has a chance to tell them they're wrong
lets see, im a lazy slob who doesnt like doing my job, but what can i do about it? hum... lets let everyone else do my job, i'll give them my tools and let them do my job, but i'll get paid like i was doing it.cool!. but the content is ehh! it doesnt matter i'm still getting paid for nothing! hehe! but the rest of the people that can see thru this? they'll be flamed while the rest of the sheep pat me on the back and tell me how brilliant i am. perfect! the devs version of I14!! let the sheep start the fires!
Ha! Yeah, right. Giving us this tool was far far more work than them writing their own content. This was not the act of a lazy dev team. Your comments, however, are the product of lazy reasoning. 
Dec out.
bah!bah! the beginning! yes one month of work so i dont have to for 6 months is lazy! my reasoning is sound and is exactly whats happening wish you could open your eyes and see the truth
"It doesn't annoy me because you have an opposing point of view..."
Apparently it does, given your history of personally attacking virtually every poster with a POV that doesn't agree with yours. You must take great pleasure in being the Fanboy's "thread cop."
"...your "reasoning" is inane, beginning with the fact that you consider Freedom to be the whole game."
Not that it's any of your business, but I have toons on Champion as well. Champion is virtually a "ghost server" except for the times when an event or new issue comes out, which is why - before the MA - Freedom was the best bet you had - population-wise - of finding a team virtually any time day or night. So Freedom is - by nature of its overwhelming player population - if not the "whole game", a major part of it. That noted, I see the same issues happening on Champion that I see happening on Freedom now, only less so because the population is so much smaller to begin with.
And it didn't "move it around a little." It moved it around a whole lot, something you wouldn't know if you spend most of your time designing missions or playing in MA, because you can't read chat with mission creator open, and you don't get broadcast in AE missions! Come out in the zones once in a while and actually see what's happened to them, and stop sipping the devs' Kool Aid.
"Your bitter overreaction made you quit the game, nothing else."
Your snide and laughable characterizations aside, I quit the game because MA has taken the social aspect out of the game and turned every zone into PI, with all its attendant spam. That may make scintillating gameplay for you, but I see no further point in paying for 2 subs to play a willfully crippled game.
Enjoy your AE farms while they last.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So where do these "90%" numbers come from?
[/ QUOTE ]
Like most statistics of that kind, they're being pulled from people's sphincters. It's hyperbole, nothing more.
[/ QUOTE ]
Precisely. Thank you.
[ QUOTE ]
lets see, im a lazy slob who doesnt like doing my job, etc...
[/ QUOTE ]
Pretty narrow-minded viewpoint you have there. Ever written anything about your character in your character's description? Ever checked out the description of another player's character? If so, then had you considered that they're simply giving the players similar ways to expand their creativity, on an immensely larger scale? Think about it. Now players can make up their own lore, and conceive ways to have their characters' pasts relived. And that's only one such example on how the Architect can be used.
Of course, if your answer to those earlier questions was no? Then... whatever floats your boat, I guess.
[ QUOTE ]
...because you can't read chat with mission creator open...
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, you can. There's a minimize button on the top-right corner of the Architect window, and once minimized you can shape it as you choose.
[ QUOTE ]
"It doesn't annoy me because you have an opposing point of view..."
Apparently it does, given your history of personally attacking virtually every poster with a POV that doesn't agree with yours. You must take great pleasure in being the Fanboy's "thread cop."
[/ QUOTE ]
I'll cop to being snotty at times. I shouldn't, but it comes out. Other than that you're offering a gross exaggeration.
[ QUOTE ]
"...your "reasoning" is inane, beginning with the fact that you consider Freedom to be the whole game."
Not that it's any of your business, but I have toons on Champion as well. Champion is virtually a "ghost server" except for the times when an event or new issue comes out, which is why - before the MA - Freedom was the best bet you had - population-wise - of finding a team virtually any time day or night. So Freedom is - by nature of its overwhelming player population - if not the "whole game", a major part of it. That noted, I see the same issues happening on Champion that I see happening on Freedom now, only less so because the population is so much smaller to begin with.
[/ QUOTE ]
And yet, we have people from Freedom also calling your issues a gross exaggeration.
[ QUOTE ]
And it didn't "move it around a little." It moved it around a whole lot,
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, maybe I'll give you "a whole lot". That's a perspective thing. Point is this is primarily a Freedom problem, just as it always was.
[ QUOTE ]
something you wouldn't know if you spend most of your time designing missions or playing in MA, because you can't read chat with mission creator open, and you don't get broadcast in AE missions! Come out in the zones once in a while and actually see what's happened to them, and stop sipping the devs' Kool Aid.
[/ QUOTE ]
**rolls eyes** Yes, that's it. I'm so buried in the MA creator where I can't see chat (you can, you know, but you wouldn't know that) or I'm in an MA mission (which applies to any mission and is pretty irrelevant). Victory's broadcast is quiet. Hardly anything at all ever in anything outside of Atlas and even Atlas isn't full of farmer spam. It's not really the chosen form of communication on Victory, which again illustrates that this is primarily a Freedom problem.
[ QUOTE ]
"Your bitter overreaction made you quit the game, nothing else."
Your snide and laughable characterizations aside, I quit the game because MA has taken the social aspect out of the game and turned every zone into PI, with all its attendant spam. That may make scintillating gameplay for you, but I see no further point in paying for 2 subs to play a willfully crippled game.
[/ QUOTE ]
Heh, you quit less than a week into a new issue. You have no more idea how things will be after the shiny wears off than anyone else. Instead you chose to petulantly stomp out the door because things weren't exactly how you wanted them to be. Have fun, that's your call. YOU decided it, the game didn't.
[ QUOTE ]
Enjoy your AE farms while they last.
[/ QUOTE ]
Wouldn't touch 'em, thanks. Farming is boring.
Dec out.
[ QUOTE ]
bah!bah! the beginning! yes one month of work so i dont have to for 6 months is lazy! my reasoning is sound and is exactly whats happening wish you could open your eyes and see the truth
[/ QUOTE ]
If anything, they have far more work than they've bargained for. There's a huge mess of bugs that came out of Test right along with i14. In fact, just yesterday morning, I noticed the ally/pet AIs were even -more- screwed up than usual.
"Actually, you can."
Not with it maximized, however, which is the way it opens until you "customize" it.
But thanks for the clarification.
[ QUOTE ]
But thanks for the clarification.
[/ QUOTE ]
You're welcome. Glad I could help you with that.
[ QUOTE ]
I suspect most people who defend the MA on the grounds of the "new content" it delivers, are nothing more than people who want to be PL'ed through the whole game. They simply can't be honest about this, or the devs would know how really badly they screwed the pooch with this one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Or, perhaps, like the wife and I, they have been here for too many years and are bored to tears with:
1) The same Dev created content to just keep running over and over again, when they've already run it over and over again.
2) The slow-trickle (at best) that Dev created storyline and mission updates have become.
3) Have actually taken the time to search, and found many good storyarcs in the MA. Matter of fact, I've also gotten to know many of the authors and made many new Global friends as a result.
The problem is, the Farming base is the most vocal base in the game when it comes to MA. However, being the most vocal does not mean being the largest.
As far as MA being all Farm and PL missions . . . the wife and I have already played over 500 MA arcs (we keep a list, along with what star rating we gave the I.D., so we know what to recommend and not recommend to friends), and have somehow seemed to avoid farm missions.
Matter of fact, the lowest star we have awarded yet is a 3, and that usually happens when people love NPCs that spam web-grenade.
[ QUOTE ]
I suspect most people who defend the MA on the grounds of the "new content" it delivers, are nothing more than people who want to be PL'ed through the whole game. They simply can't be honest about this, or the devs would know how really badly they screwed the pooch with this one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, *I* suspect that most of the people complaining about this sort of thing are making unsupported generalizations based on their own limited perspective, but hey, it's not like either one of us has hard data to back up our suspicions Like you, I can only speak for myself. I have no *intention* of being PLed, that defeats the whole point of playing the game; in fact, I've turned off exp several times on various characters so I could experience more of a plot that was interesting.
Personally, I love the MA as a revolutionary feature that allows us to NOT HAVE TO REPEAT CONTENT. Seriously, the primary flaw of most MMORPGs is that you have to kill (ok, arrest) the same limited set of monsters over and over, repeat the same plots, fight on the same maps. I've only been playing for a bit over a year, and haven't experienced all the content once yet; but I've already started to notice that some parts are getting pretty repetitive.
[ QUOTE ]
I used to hate getting to level 41 and having to go to PI to get missions, because virtually all the teams there were farming teams, and the bloodsuckers who ran them insisted on payment. Now this behavior has spread to virtually every zone, and all Miller can say about it is how the MA has "wildly exceeded their expectations" (or some such nonsense).
[/ QUOTE ]
This baffles me, because it doesn't sound like anything I've experienced either before or after the MA. It also makes no rational sense. Paying someone to skip the game... that's like buying concert tickets, and then when you show up, paying some shady guy you met in the parking lot to go in and listen to the show for you, while you sit bored in the lobby counting ceiling tiles.
When I think of the early 40s blueside, I'm thinking the really neat Portal Corp. missions, the 40+ set of RWZ missions, some Cimerora missions if I hadn't played those out in the late 30s, hopefully a few ship raids. None of those have gone away, and all you have to do is talk to your contacts; no need to pay anyone. But, *in addition* to all that, if you're on your 27th toon or just want something different, you can go into the MA and play something completely original, with new foes that challenge you to think more carefully about tactics, with interesting storylines that you've never seen before, or just something lighthearted and silly because you've had a bad day and don't feel up to saving (or ruling) the world.
From an objective standpoint, you're clearly wrong that this has "spread to virtually every zone", as anyone can easily check. I spent quite a bit of time in CoH this weekend, including several hours in PI between fine-tuning my missions (and yes, I run the MA in windowed mode so I can still talk to people) and some street-hunts for Tina Macintyre. I'd estimate the total number of broadcast messages on any subject at less than a dozen an hour, and most of those were people looking for teams for MA content. I also spent noticeable amounts of time in the RWZ, Steel and Talos, and lesser amounts of time in a wide variety of zones across three different servers. *None* of the zones I were in, (and almost all of these were zones with an AE building) had any sort of serious problem, and I can't recall anyone demanding or soliciting payment for anything at any point.
Miuramir, Windchime, Sariel the Golden, Scarlet Antinomist...
Casino Extortion #4031: Neutral, Council+Custom [SFMA/MLMA/SLMA/FHMA/CFMA]
Bad Candy #87938: Neutral, Custom [SFMA/MLMA/SLMA/FHMA/HFMA]
CoH Helper * HijackThis
[ QUOTE ]
So where do these "90%" numbers come from?
[/ QUOTE ]
Like most statistics of that kind, they're being pulled from people's sphincters. It's hyperbole, nothing more.
Dec out.
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