Why do people keep bringing up the same rejected arguement from 2-3 years ago when the game has moved well past the point of no return?
The point of no return IMHO was patrol xp and giving us the ability to turn off xp. There's no real going back from there mates.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
"The gun has been invented; it is therefore futile to implement any measures to keep people from shooting each other with them."
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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"The gun has been invented; it is therefore futile to implement any measures to keep people from shooting each other with them."
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/em facepalm
Let me see we had farming as environmental destruction
Now its murder.
What next Genocide ?
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How about something simple like a lvl limit per zone. Atlas is good till u hit lvl 6 then you move to Kings Row AE. This way it's not focused in one zone.
Of course then u need to be in certain zone to run a certain lvl mish in AE....prolly more chaos than it's worth in the long run..
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and eliminate sk'ing? one of the flagship technologies of the game? Just so you can try to force people to play with you?
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You seem to keep making this about me. I have no problems teaming. The suggestion was not to stop SKing, but to make it zone specific for the AE. But as I mentioned it would cause more problems than it's worth.
Not sure where exactly I said I had trouble finding a team....I remember saying that I get invites to join a team when I am not looking for one.
I did think about making it just hitting each other with rocks. It's still abusive behavior, but not necessarily lethal.
But let's try to strip that out. The argument seems to be that because a certain type of play cannot be entirely prevented, no efforts at all should be made to do so? Farming is being presented as a fait accompli, and that everyone should just give up and accept it. Laws cannot be 100% enforced; therefore, there should be no laws. Anything goes. Anarchy.
I suggest you look up the fallacy of the excluded middle. The devs' inability to do away with all exploits and forms of farming as soon as they arise does not consititute official endorsement or tolerance of same. And if one entirely rejects their authority to say whether it's right or not, because the cold practical fact is they can't stop it entirely, that doesn't mean we should just accept its presence either.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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How about something simple like a lvl limit per zone. Atlas is good till u hit lvl 6 then you move to Kings Row AE. This way it's not focused in one zone.
Of course then u need to be in certain zone to run a certain lvl mish in AE....prolly more chaos than it's worth in the long run..
[/ QUOTE ]
and eliminate sk'ing? one of the flagship technologies of the game? Just so you can try to force people to play with you?
[/ QUOTE ]
You seem to keep making this about me. I have no problems teaming. The suggestion was not to stop SKing, but to make it zone specific for the AE. But as I mentioned it would cause more problems than it's worth.
Not sure where exactly I said I had trouble finding a team....I remember saying that I get invites to join a team when I am not looking for one.
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if you made it zone specific, you couldnt sk. the sk'ee would not be able to get into the mission.
Oh yeah, you are the one that has adoring crowds wanting you to fill for them.
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
Hows the air up there in the clouds? Guns shooting tisk tisk... 
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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The argument seems to be that because a certain type of play cannot be entirely prevented, no efforts at all should be made to do so?
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No, the argument is that one not only *shouldn't* forbid playstyles, as a matter of fact one *can't*.
Fix any exploits, that's fine - and of course punish any rule breaking (when the rules in question are publicly known and well defined) - but don't think that it's a good idea to try to outlaw the impossible and forbid people for making choices to pursue options that yield effective rewards.
That's just silly.
For Great Justice!
You just presented a strawman argument, let me show you where.
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The argument seems to be that because a certain type of play cannot be entirely prevented, no efforts at all should be made to do so?
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Laws cannot be 100% enforced; therefore, there should be no laws. Anything goes. Anarchy.
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Play != Law, therefore your argument is void.
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The devs' inability to do away with all exploits and forms of farming
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The devs' will do away with all exploits, yes .... but they will not do away with all forms of farming. They are, more or less, exclusive from one another, unless someone is using an exploit while farming.
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One thing that's different about AE is that it the interior is above ground -- you can see outside. This is a neat feature, which I like a lot. From my experiments it doesn't seem like you can see inside from the outside: the windows are gray or reflective. This means that the interior is essentially the same as a store interior that is far below the surface.
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No, it just means the windows are grayed out or reflective. The easy way to tell? Team with someone. Click on their name. The green reticle is up in the building, not down below like it is if you go into a store. Seems to be set up very similarly to WW.
Dec out.
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I did think about making it just hitting each other with rocks. It's still abusive behavior, but not necessarily lethal.
But let's try to strip that out. The argument seems to be that because a certain type of play cannot be entirely prevented, no efforts at all should be made to do so? Farming is being presented as a fait accompli, and that everyone should just give up and accept it. Laws cannot be 100% enforced; therefore, there should be no laws. Anything goes. Anarchy.
I suggest you look up the fallacy of the excluded middle. The devs' inability to do away with all exploits and forms of farming as soon as they arise does not consititute official endorsement or tolerance of same. And if one entirely rejects their authority to say whether it's right or not, because the cold practical fact is they can't stop it entirely, that doesn't mean we should just accept its presence either.
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Once more, you seem to be confused between exploit and farm. Exploits are bad. They are to be found, reported, and removed. Farms are nothing more than finding the most effective path to your goal and repeating it over and over until your goal is reached.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that there is a rule against farming. There isn't. Farming is not encouraged or intended, but it is by no means outlawed. If you can prove me wrong, I will retract my statements and champion your cause. However, the fact remains that while some of the administrative staff is antifarm, including Posi...the official position of the game leaves the method viable as long as exploits are not being used.
If you don't think farming is accepted, look at merits. Without doing TF every day, especially redside, It would take you forever and a day to get the merits needed for one set of rare recipies, much less a build worth.
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How about something simple like a lvl limit per zone. Atlas is good till u hit lvl 6 then you move to Kings Row AE. This way it's not focused in one zone.
Of course then u need to be in certain zone to run a certain lvl mish in AE....prolly more chaos than it's worth in the long run..
[/ QUOTE ]
and eliminate sk'ing? one of the flagship technologies of the game? Just so you can try to force people to play with you?
[/ QUOTE ]
You seem to keep making this about me. I have no problems teaming. The suggestion was not to stop SKing, but to make it zone specific for the AE. But as I mentioned it would cause more problems than it's worth.
Not sure where exactly I said I had trouble finding a team....I remember saying that I get invites to join a team when I am not looking for one.
[/ QUOTE ]
if you made it zone specific, you couldnt sk. the sk'ee would not be able to get into the mission.
Oh yeah, you are the one that has adoring crowds wanting you to fill for them.
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I see posting a point of view or an idea is useless here. So I shall leave you to your world. However if you had read the other 500 farming threads on the forum, you would see that many people have a problem with the farm spamming when not looking for a team. Not just me.
It was not my intention to hijack this thread in a trolling war. My apologies to all. I only wanted to add my voice to the topic. I realize my first post was probably seen as self righteous, my mistake not how I meant it to sound.
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QFT, the lag in atlas is nothing compared to hami or RWZ
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I am painfully aware of this fact. As demonstrated by the Anniversary event, where I had to leave after 20 minutes of being able to only do two things reliably - Stand Around and Die.
Now... if I could only figure out how to FIX the problem...
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Welp, your first step would be to optimise your settings for performance instead of quality. If that is already the case, you would need better bandwidth, a faster motherboard, a more powerful video card, or some combination of the above.
When everyone in the zone/raid instance/server instance complains of the exact same symptoms with different client hardware, the problem is most likely NOT on the clients.
Granted, there will be some variation, but when the extreme issues move from the ends of the bell curve to smack in the middle, then "upgrade your computer" ceases to be a viable option. At that point it's simply server and network congestion, and no amout of money thrown at Alienware, Newegg, or <insert high-end computer vendor here> will help, much. Instead the people running the servers need to call THEIR vendors and say, "OK, we need to add X, Y, and Z, because we've so much going on we're dropping traffic to and from the clients."
Or, alternatively, balance things out, so that a large crowd engaged in one activity don't add to the lag and server load of another crowd doing another activity in the same instance. My idea was to make the AE complex similar to Ouroboros or Pocket D, its OWN ZONE, and that clicking on the building entrance would transport you there.
We would lose out on the 'cool view'... but I'd trade that for lag any day. Shoot, set the markets up this way too. That'll limit market lag to only those people at the market (if the zone is big enough you can set it up as several vendors spread out in a large area instead of just one), and the city zones won't hiccup at all. It also becomes easier to instance, so as you get more crowds, you start making Market 2, AE 2, etc etc.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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Here's a repost of my farming thoughts o.@
Subjective Feedback:
I think one of the main issues Ive found is that everyones got a knee jerk reaction to this. Farming has been happening regardless of this tool. Yes. It is easier now, but it will occur whether you wish it to or not. I agree with those that say its their money they should be able to play the way they want. I performed an experiment the other night and in one hour as a level 1 dominator I went from 1 to 18 in less then 45 minutes on one run.
Alot of the following is my opinion and a theory, take it as much!
This is somewhat frightening, but not doom. There may need to be something implemented and probably IS going to be. The reason they more then likely arent doing anything is that would skew their numbers. A launch that was delayed this long more then likely made shareholders or someone higher then Positron nervous and they wanted proof it was worth while. Solution? Reactivate all accounts. Full Exp and Inf for everything AE based. DO this for x amount of time. Datamine your numbers. Present. Then when its deemed alright, go in and fix the issues some have with it being a farm fest. This also frees up content to be created for a possible sequel game, a graphical upgrade, and pre-planning against the onslaught of CO and DCUO. You may lose some in the mix, but those are acceptable losses. Lets face it, were not important. The money is. Thats the way its always been whether anyone admits it or not, its about bottom line. I dont like it, but I accept that.
End Theory
Now onto the feedback! 
Something I recommend is that you implement a formula that could possibly punish for farming:
<ul type="square">[*]Use your data collectors to average out the high end levelers. Take the average amount of levels and put that as a cap you can safely attain PER 24 hours cycle. Any level after that runs a 10% risk of losing a level back to the safe cap. Each additional level then runs an additional 2% chance to roll back, capping at somewhere near 75%. This would encourage swapping and alting, one of the rather strong elements of the game. Roleplayers wouldnt have an issues levels arent what RP is about. PVPers wont have an issue since they dont really do much as it is :P Casuals wont be affected. Hardcores will know their numbers as any hardcore would. The only punishment? [u]Farmers.[u][*]Issues a three strike rule on farming maps, but by god make sure your maps your banning are farming maps. Make a support member actually play the thing, most of your support is canned responses from someone who is either too busy to deal with you or doesnt care about their job. (Keyword:Most)
[*][u]1st strike[u]: a warning and an open forum with the support member who flagged it on how you see it as not a farming map and they do. Compromise. [*][u]2nd strike[u]: Ban for [u]72 hours[u], datamine their time and see where their account logs in the most. Hit them THERE at their peak times. Or let them be unteamable, theres a code in there for that, you know it :P Im sure a three day cruise of Im street patrolling will let them think over their stance.[*][u]3rd strike[u]: A 6 month ban from the MA system, and all missions unpublished, remove badges remove any influence and exp obtained from such at no refund possible. Hit them in their superbase as well.[*]Datamine and obtained the names of anyone theyve teamed with on their farms and anyone whose not reported it via cross-referencing. Issue them a warning for not turning in the content. [*][u]Additional Suggesstion:[u] After so many exp runs in the MA, reduce the exp and inf and prestiage gained by a mathematical formula eventually starting to take away from your stockpiles of all. Make this number [u]High[u]. Have the system issue a warning before and after the threshold.[/list]
Extreme? Maybe, but it sounds like everyone wants this to stop NOW. Im not one of them but Im getting tired of watching people argue in broadcast like we used to argue in PVP zones. No I shouldnt have to turn off my broadcast :P Thats like the doctor saying well dont do that!. :P
Now your star / ratings system, thats a [u]whole new issue all together[u]. I understand that the idea of keeping the playerbase busy bickering with each other. Its a fine idea. BUT, you empower them too much, and its possible for it to either explode, or level out. Highwire act in my opinion. :P Again, an entire other issue! =)
Regards,
-C.A.
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No crossposting allowed. You posted this in the I14 feedback forum.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
Was it really necessary for you to repost (quote) the entire censored thing?
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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i would strongly support the GMs severely reducing the amount of exp/prestige/tickets on all BUT Developers choice AE arcs. City of Farmers, with no one playing the actual game, is sadly what we have become....
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that is the 1 sure way to gut the MA. There are not enough people willing to wade through your pitiful rp arcs. You are not the great author you think you are. I see the people that get their sg to rate their mission all 5 star and then get a couple of 1 stars and complain. Maybe your stuff really is crap.
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You can bet than the MA is gonna be gut of rewards before long. Getting 7000 Tickets ( aka 2 Gold Rolls aka 2 Pool C recipes ) in less than 15 minutes of farming is simply broken.
Rewards are not balanced with the rest of the game. Any reason why MA should be more rewarding over time than any Task Forces or contact story arcs?
And about the XPs. Exploits will get fixed obviously. You really think it is normal that if i blow NPC explosives that wipe all a spawn i get full reward? It simply alot of little things like that, devs were not aware of or could not fix right away. But they will.
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
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i would strongly support the GMs severely reducing the amount of exp/prestige/tickets on all BUT Developers choice AE arcs. City of Farmers, with no one playing the actual game, is sadly what we have become....
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that is the 1 sure way to gut the MA. There are not enough people willing to wade through your pitiful rp arcs. You are not the great author you think you are. I see the people that get their sg to rate their mission all 5 star and then get a couple of 1 stars and complain. Maybe your stuff really is crap.
[/ QUOTE ]
You can bet than the MA is gonna be gut of rewards before long. Getting 7000 Tickets ( aka 2 Gold Rolls aka 2 Pool C recipes ) in less than 15 minutes of farming is simply broken.
Rewards are not balanced with the rest of the game. Any reason why MA should be more rewarding over time than any Task Forces or contact story arcs?
And about the XPs. Exploits will get fixed obviously. You really think it is normal that if i blow NPC explosives that wipe all a spawn i get full reward? It simply alot of little things like that, devs were not aware of or could not fix right away. But they will.
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If you get 2000 xp for a kill in real content and only 1000 in MA, yes this will make MA a ghost town. Then we get the spam of people begging you to run their mission. Tickets may be adjusted, that is much smaller than a reduction in xp for MA content.
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
[ QUOTE ]
I did think about making it just hitting each other with rocks. It's still abusive behavior, but not necessarily lethal.
But let's try to strip that out. The argument seems to be that because a certain type of play cannot be entirely prevented, no efforts at all should be made to do so? Farming is being presented as a fait accompli, and that everyone should just give up and accept it. Laws cannot be 100% enforced; therefore, there should be no laws. Anything goes. Anarchy.
I suggest you look up the fallacy of the excluded middle. The devs' inability to do away with all exploits and forms of farming as soon as they arise does not consititute official endorsement or tolerance of same. And if one entirely rejects their authority to say whether it's right or not, because the cold practical fact is they can't stop it entirely, that doesn't mean we should just accept its presence either.
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What you have done is taken something that you dislike and made it an offense against society. Then you have tacked false arguments to further the point.
Farming does not eqaul abusive behavior. If you dont like broadcasts about farms you can ignore them. Or, you can choose not to go where the farmers aren't.
As to the devs doing away with farming don't hold your breath. Seeing as we now have task forces with attached farms, and the most popular farms have been around for a very long time, I don't think their purposes for those statements are what yours are.
I sort of like this idea but take it one step further and remove the AE building in Galaxy City as well. Any BRAND new player coming from Outbreak has the option to go to either there or Atlas Park. By taking out both of those building it means someone that just opened an account won't see a ton of Farming spam until the reach level 5 or 6 and head off to Kings Row. Of course any vet player that has simply created a new character will kow about the change and if they can make it from the train station to the AE building shame on them .. NOT that difficult to avoid the Skulls that roam the streets there. And let's be realistic here if someone wants to get from level 1 or 2 to level 5 fast .. they can always hit the sewers and be in KR in no time and heck if it's a good team you can arrive there as high as 8, 9 or even 10. Farm boys relax I'm sure after 1 or 2 MEOWS you will have exceeded your Ticket cap and be close to 20 level even if you fo have to wait until level 5 to start.
I also agree that removing the AE building in Steel isn't a necessity. As stated the building fits in nicely there admist the other skyscrappers and doesn't seem to be creating any excess lag.
As for Talos I definately agree. That has always been one of the worst lag areas in game, for me at least, so pulling down that building can onlt help the problem a bit.
Of coourse you do realize the chances any of this will happen are slim and even if it does I wouldn't expect it uickly. First of all the Tutorial is located in one spot.. Atlas Park. I found that a little strange simply because why should I have to take my 50 level all the way back from PI to Atlas to run a tutorial on how the AE building and Mission Archetect work when there is an AE building in PI? Seems like they could have easily added that to all buildings and if anyone wanted to know how the same contact was in almost every zone... well he's a hologram. The entire facility is based on the idea that you are entering a holographic world to battle whatever enemies the writers dream up for fun so why couldn't, why wouldn't, the creators design a holograph to instruct the potential customers. It sure beats paying someone to do the job. LOL
�We�re always the good guys. In D&D, we�re lawful good. In City of Heroes we�re the heroes. In Grand Theft Auto we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat.� � Leonard
�Those women are prostitutes? You said they were raising money for stem cell research!� � Sheldon
I'm always amazed how, every time anyone complains about anything, the most common response is "S-T-F-U ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEM, NEWB!"
Regardless of how politely the person placing the complaint frames their issue, or how well-defended their argument, a horde of people (who are usually in favor of whatever is complained about) marginalizes everything with "if you don't like it leave" or "ignore it and shut up" or some other non-response that ignores the issues being brought up.
Yes, "there has been farming always", but before I14 institutionalized the farming in a dev-supported manner, it was something that was a whole hell of a lot easier to ignore. And it didn't have anywhere near the impact on teaming to do things other than farming. Yes, the problems were there before, but all I14 did was aggravate them.
And let's get one thing straight right now. Despite what the Farmheads keep saying here and in the other forum threads, the City of Farming issue is a problem. It is harming the game experience (that is, the *FUN*) for a lot of players. And when a player isn't having fun, he'll take his $15 a month (or in my case, $60 a month... my kids all have their own accounts too) somewhere else. If that happens often enough, the devs might regret giving sanction to farming through I14.
Regarding the non-play issue. I'm another person who spent several hours putting together a mission with an actual storyline, only to see it NEVER GET PLAYED because its been forced to the bottom of the list after all the farking farms. That's frustrating, and frustrating = NOT FUN. More reason for me to not renew my subscription to CoH. And I'm not the only one.
To all you hairballs who say "move to a different server", I've got 36 alts on my primary server. I've been playing on that server since I started the game. Why the hell should I walk just because you jerks are ruining the server for me now?
Yeah, its a personal problem. Its just a game. But you know what? If we were sitting across a table "just playing a game" and you guys acted in the idiotic manner the farmers act, I'd toss your [censored] out of my house. Because "just a game" isn't a reason to piss all over other people.
Just my three drachmas. Your mileage obviously varies.
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No crossposting allowed. You posted this in the I14 feedback forum.
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I shared my veiws in there yes. o.0 I'm unfamiliar with cross posting, what does that refer to?
-C.A.
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I'm always amazed how, every time anyone complains about anything, the most common response is "S-T-F-U ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEM, NEWB!"
Regardless of how politely the person placing the complaint frames their issue, or how well-defended their argument, a horde of people (who are usually in favor of whatever is complained about) marginalizes everything with "if you don't like it leave" or "ignore it and shut up" or some other non-response that ignores the issues being brought up.
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And it leaves me stunned that people refuse to acknowledge the smart, concise arguments in favor of the system as-is, instead spending effort to portray everyone on the other side of the issue as a drooling, insensitive moron.
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Yeah, its a personal problem. Its just a game. But you know what? If we were sitting across a table "just playing a game" and you guys acted in the idiotic manner the farmers act, I'd toss your [censored] out of my house. Because "just a game" isn't a reason to piss all over other people.
Just my three drachmas. Your mileage obviously varies.
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A couple of things render your emotional observations invalid, in terms of debate:
1. This is not *your* house, so you have no inherent right to dictate terms the game are played by. When the devs say "no more farming, period", then you'll have a leg to stand on, and we'll have to see what happens to the subscriber base when they're told they can't pursue an activity they like.
2. I've still not seen anyone post any arguments that hold water in favor of banning farming. It all seems to boil down to "I don't like it", "I can't get a team" or "Broadcast is filled with spam".
I won't repeat my refutations from previous threads here, but this stuff is beyond tired. I've cancelled both my accounts, frankly because I have no desire to play in City of Whiners anymore.
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Regarding the non-play issue. I'm another person who spent several hours putting together a mission with an actual storyline, only to see it NEVER GET PLAYED because its been forced to the bottom of the list after all the farking farms. That's frustrating, and frustrating = NOT FUN. More reason for me to not renew my subscription to CoH. And I'm not the only one.
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LOL its another no one is playing my story poster.
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Extreme? Maybe, but it sounds like everyone wants this to stop NOW. Im not one of them but Im getting tired of watching people argue in broadcast like we used to argue in PVP zones. No I shouldnt have to turn off my broadcast :P Thats like the doctor saying well dont do that!. :P
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Incorrect - a vocal minority wants this to stop, but (as is clear when you are actually in the game, reading broadcasts and search for AE missions) there is probably a majority of players what ARE farming, to some extent.
This is a clear example of either throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or worse, attempting to punish playstyle preference.
/unsigned.
My reason are here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13388041
For Great Justice!