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QR:
The self righteousness of this thread goes over the top even for these boards.
The solution if you have "City of Farming Angst" is to realize the problem lies with you and get over it.
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QFT
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
well Cavatina you maybe onto something there.
Another thing could be taking out the TF function on it or get rid of the No Level Requirement. If the mission is lvl 40 then you should be around lvl 40 or sidekicked up ... either way would solve the problem of Farming (well slowing it down some) and the whole thing what Cavatina was talking about.
/em sigh
Just make the MA building it's own zone. Boom, no more broadcast spamming outside of the building.
Or just remove the ability to send a broadcast outside of the building. Same effect and probably easier to add.
Alright, let's look at the solutions here.
Remove AE from Atlas: No. Goes against the spirit of AE, which is to be able to go from 1-50 entirely in AE if you choose to, running stories and missions by other people. Besides, they'd just start their characters in Galaxy City otherwise, or would take taxibots to wherever the lowest building is.
Remove XP from AE: No. HELL no. AE is awesome and don't penalize those of us who are not exploit-farming just because of those who are.
Any Decision Whatsoever Other Than Closing Off The Loopholes That Allow Easy XP Farming: No. See above.
Close Off Loopholes That Allow Easy XP Farming: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, and this is what the devs will probably run with. Pull Rikti Comms out or reduce their XP. Force factions to include minions, bosses, and LTs. Whatever rules you gotta put in place to ensure some level of challenge, so that enemies can fight back and offer ordinary rewards.
I've got no objections to farming, in the sense of fighting dudes to grind out XP on them -- before MA I was running endless newspapers against easy guys like the Council, for instance. It's a way to get to your best powers, or to close the gaps between levels. But effortless XP, XP that relies on explots and gimmick custom factions and is custom designed to yield high reward for zero effort and zero risk, that's gotta go.
It's a game. Games have some measure of challenge. Otherwise the devs may as well add a "Instantly level to 50" button to make people happy who don't care about playing the actual game.
Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
Mission Architect Works: DIY Laser Moonbase (Dev Choice!), An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge (2009 MA Award Winner!) and many more! Plus Brand New Arcs for Issue 21!
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/em sigh
Just make the MA building it's own zone. Boom, no more broadcast spamming outside of the building.
Or just remove the ability to send a broadcast outside of the building. Same effect and probably easier to add.
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So...you don't think they'd just stand out front and spam?
Dec out.
(QR)
How about you DON'T force factions to have minions, lts, and bosses please. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for having limited factions, including but not limited to lack of file space.
I hang out at the AE in Kings Row, where there are about five people at any given time and all you see in broadcast is the occasional "lf AE team" or *gasp* "lf radio team." I am therefore completely unaffected by farm spam. Don't go wrecking MY legitimate enjoyment of the MA because YOU can't be bothered to get on a train.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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I've got to personally agree with the "Remove AE from Atlas" group, here.
I just started a new toon. I went to Atlas. And found it crowded as all heck. Calls for Farms blaring across Broadcast, when people weren't getting into arguments, or laughing at the poor sod asking if there were any Sewer Teams forming.
The traffic was so bad that I was rubberbanding so much it took me more than three minutes to move 200 feet.
And this is on Victory. Not one of the major populated servers.
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I was there, this afternoon (despite my asking my teammates not to do it there). For hours (approximately noon to three EDT). Yup, it was crowded. It was a bit laggy. But my experience was nowhere near as bad as you say yours was. Not that I'm saying you're lying, but that even my weak machine was doing fine. Maybe your machine is weaker than mine. Maybe it was a different time of day. Maybe your machine has an issue that mine doesn't.
I didn't see any more spam going on in Broadcast than I'd usually see for sewer teams. What I DID see was several people inside the building being complete jerks in local to everyone there (the usual trolly stuff..."Ur costumes all suck! U have stupid names!" etc), but I suppose if you get enough people in one spot, those are going to come out.
Atlas is convenient for this because of the presence of WW and portals from Ouroborous. I think this is why you'll have a VERY hard time convincing the Devs to move it. They want it visible. They want you to use it. Therefore, they're not going to put the tutorial in a "backwater" like Galaxy. And if they did, don't you think the next complaint would be about spam in KR? The farmers are always going to go to the lowest common area where there are people.
Dec out.
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/em sigh
Just make the MA building it's own zone. Boom, no more broadcast spamming outside of the building.
Or just remove the ability to send a broadcast outside of the building. Same effect and probably easier to add.
[/ QUOTE ]
So...you don't think they'd just stand out front and spam?
[/ QUOTE ]That would require moving around. They'd probably just spam the AE zone, it's easier.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Wouldn't get the results they want, though. They're motivated enough for that. 
I will admit it would probably cut down on SOME of it, though.
Dec out.
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so put yourself in hide from searches. then you won't get bombarded. i love how people scream about getting tells and yet we have all these features to help prevent this.
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So, if you don't like being bothered by farmers, the "solution" is to just:
Stop listening to broadcast
Stop looking for teams
Stop being visible to others
Stop going to zones with AE buildings
Stop posting your negative opinions
... what else? Stop playing on your regular server? Stop playing, period?
One of the reasons I've always been fond of this game is that I could at least pretend it wasn't like all the others. But with every update, the people who are trying to turn it into ProgressQuest have gotten more visible and more aggressive. It's very discouraging.
(I await the inevitable cries of "so leave.")
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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Wouldn't get the results they want, though.
[/ QUOTE ]Sure it would. All the people too lazy to run their own farm mish would be there; the same people who would actually join the farm anyway.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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...why should a majority of the players have their play constrained to make them do what a vocal minority on the forums want?
...why should a playstyle that apparently a TON of people are doing be curtailed or attacked just because a few malcontents want them to be forced to do something else?
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Those are interesting ways to describe the game developers.
By the way, it's not "you must do this", it's "you should not do that".
'I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: 'however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'
'I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.
'Don't be impertinent,' said the King, 'and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.
'A cat may look at a king,' said Alice.
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Force factions to include minions, bosses, and LTs. Whatever rules you gotta put in place to ensure some level of challenge, so that enemies can fight back and offer ordinary rewards.
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This is a horrifically bad suggestion. The devs have the entire reward vs risk thing covered. Expoitable things like vamp chambers, snake eggs, out of whack xp giving critters have been removed.
People need to understand MA at this point has no exploits and if it does "you" need to report them to the devs. Repeated crying about the non exploit level at which "the devs" have decided to have things like xp smoothing, patrol xp, xp in MA at this point in game is ridiculous.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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so put yourself in hide from searches. then you won't get bombarded. i love how people scream about getting tells and yet we have all these features to help prevent this.
[/ QUOTE ]
So, if you don't like being bothered by farmers, the "solution" is to just:
Stop listening to broadcast
Stop looking for teams
Stop being visible to others
Stop going to zones with AE buildings
Stop posting your negative opinions
... what else? Stop playing on your regular server? Stop playing, period?
One of the reasons I've always been fond of this game is that I could at least pretend it wasn't like all the others. But with every update, the people who are trying to turn it into ProgressQuest have gotten more visible and more aggressive. It's very discouraging.
(I await the inevitable cries of "so leave.")
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No. you could try..i dunno. being proactive about teaming and realize the ONLY zone on most servers with AE spam period is atlas park?
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
Okay, so anti-farmers characterize farmers as ruining the game, farmers characterize anti-farmers as trying to control others or control how other people play the game, apathetic people characterize anti-farmers as trying to police or control the farmers and tell them not to do that by treating them as stupid, lazy or self-absorbed.
So, anti-farmers want farmers to stop farming, farmers want anti-farmers to stop complaining about farming and apathetic people want anti-farmers to stop complaining about farming.
So, come on, happy apathetic people, do a little dance, get your boogie on! You've thrown your hat in with the people that threaten everything good about MA.
A Hundred-thousand ways to do the exact same thing (kill skuls) but lets raise a stink about way 904?
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So, come on, happy apathetic people, do a little dance, get your boogie on!
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Meh, can't be bothered.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~
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heres an idea. roll new toons in galaxy.
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Oh, I probably will, from now on. That's not going to help too much when I need to get my Cape and/or Aura missions. Or get told I need to speak to Azuria or Smythe. Or to head to the Vanguard building. Or to (if I ever actually can) get a Sewer Trial...
Atlas is always going to be central to a lot of the content of the game, for those of us inclined to play that. As such, it has always been busy, and will always be busy. But MA has stepped that up by an order of magnitude. Heaven forbid I actually start a Peacebringer, and be FORCED to go to Atlas for my content...
Who knows... maybe the traffic there will start lowering again in the future, but right now Atlas is a chore to try and force my way through.
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No. you could try..i dunno. being proactive about teaming and realize the ONLY zone on most servers with AE spam period is atlas park?
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Haven't been to Talos during peak hours, have you?
I'll admit, it's nowhere near as bad as Atlas has become (which is the designated place for 'level 1-50 in a day!' players) But I've regularly seen Farm Spam in Talos and Steel Canyon.
I know it's probably wishful thinking, to remove the AE buildings from those zones, but I'm afraid the onlyother solution would be to drastically cut back the rewards for MA missions - at which point it would be reduced to another feature of the game that no one really uses.
-This Space Intentionally Left Blank.-
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...why should a majority of the players have their play constrained to make them do what a vocal minority on the forums want?
...why should a playstyle that apparently a TON of people are doing be curtailed or attacked just because a few malcontents want them to be forced to do something else?
[/ QUOTE ]
Those are interesting ways to describe the game developers.
By the way, it's not "you must do this", it's "you should not do that".
[/ QUOTE ]
You are apparently conflating what you want from what the devs want - which is common for people in your position.
For Great Justice!
TO SUM UP:
Some people game for the XP and other rewards. The seek out the most favorable methods of gaining it that are still fun. These people are doing nothing wrong and should be permitted to continue - indeed, cannot be stopped from continuing.
However, some methods of gaining to XP may be considered by the devs to be too successful. When identified, the devs have the option of changing/nerfing such methods. Of course, we all hope that they do not throw the baby with the bathwater, that is, we wouldn't want to cut off our nose to spite our face and have them make a change to the game that winds up hurting a significant number of people's play in order to fix a possibly minor issue.
For example, everyone seems to be in agreement that they do not want the devs to reduce XP in AE to zero, as a prime example of hurting too many people in the pursuit of a smaller goal.
Now, there is a group of people, which I personally believe to be a vocal minority, that does wants to forbid people who play this game from playing the "wrong" way. These people think we "should" all be focused on the story and RP elements, and not on gaining rewards effectively.
There is no defense of such a position. One cannnot support a position of discrimination against players of CoX based on what they enjoy when they play the game or on what they pursue.
That is NOT to say that one cannot take and defend a position that the devs ought to address technique X which possibly gives way too much rewards - such as for example, perhaps comm officers. But it is a very different thing to try to bring to the devs attention pieces of the game that the devs might want to consider looking at for effort/reward balancing than to try to get one's fellow players "in trouble" for prioritizing the pursuit of effective rewards.
To put another way, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE "FARMING". (I define "farming" in this discussion as using in-game methods to pursue maximized reward rates.) No matter what anyone does, there will always be ways to play the game that are more effective at garnering rewards. And what is clearly obvious, there will always be a large group of people trying to figure that out and take advantage of it - perhaps even the majority. THIS IS NOT IMMORAL, THIS IS SIMPLY INTELLIGENT.
It's up to the devs to continually edit, update, and adjust the game to fix any problem they find with it, including places where they think the game is unbalanced. And it's perfectly fine for players to point out to the devs what they feel could qualify as that. But to pursue, harass, and vilify other *players* for simply having the good sense to game effectively using the tools the devs have placed in front of us all is not only entirely wrong, it is entirely naive.
Complain to the devs about things like comm officers, or broken maps, or any other game pieces. But if you don't like how I or anyone else plays a game that we pay for, that we are all playing AS DESIGNED (as none of us are hacking it) then come crying to these boards if you must, but know that if the devs have even the barest smidgen of rationality, they will ignore your calls for a witchhunt. And given the fact that they seem to be permitting farming in its core sense to continue unimpeded, it would appear that they are fully aware that that is how some people play. I suspect their concerns are ONLY about making sure the game is not unbalanced.
To recap, no matter what ANYONE does, it is impossible to balance the game perfectly, there will ALWAYS be choices to be made that yield different rates of reward. And many if not most will frequently choose the better rewarding play style.
One cannot change that without changing human nature and the fundamental truths of reason.
So perhaps we would all be best served by identifying ourselves as one of the following three types:
1) anti-exploit and concerned about bringing to the devs attention portions of the game which may not be balanced
(a rational approach)
2) having fun with the game as it is, and needing no change to it
(which is fine)
3) insanely pro-RP and with a personal vendetta against people who play the game in ways one doesn't approve of
(which is more than a little cuckoo)
Let's also all continue to keep in mind that any "fix" that breaks more than it fixes is not a fix, and in such a circumstance, the better choice is to refrain from applying ANY "fixes" until one can be crafted that does more good than harm.
Make sense everybody? I think ALL of us agree that the devs can and should continue to make the game better in whatever way the devs define "better" - and if that includes making sure that the reward rate stays within a certain range, that's the devs' choice to make.
The concomitant piece of that is, however, that any player is welcome to play the game anywhere within that range - even if it is consistently toward the good side of that range.
The second concomitant piece is that it is up to the devs to explicitly define that range - hopefully by adjusting the game itself so that it is not possible to achieve results outside of it, but at the VERY least, by giving enough specific guidance so that the players can obey the devs' rules. After all, no rational human being can expect a driver on a highway to obey a speed limit that is kept secret.
This sums up the state of things vis-a-vis effective gaming in CoX, often called farming. There is clearly nothing wrong with it. If someone has a problem with farming as an act, they are either 1) having a problem with an area of the CoX mechanics or programming that might possibly benefit from an alteration (in which case, make suggestions to the devs) or 2) have a problem with the fact that some people play the game differently from them (in which case, come to these forums and cry, I guess)
One final note: It is true that effective gaming can have secondary effects that may possibly not be desired - people have mentioned the possibility of deletrious and unwanted market effects, and of course, the spam issues.
To some extent, in an MMO, one can not be completely free of the negative effects of being in a game with a massive population. However, the secondary effects are themselves entirely covered by what I have written: if the devs see a problem, they are encouraged to alter the game to fix it, so long as that alteration does more good than harm, of course. For example, perhaps they might rebalance the various drops, or have a special broadcast channel created for broadcasting for teams, etc.
This is a good thing - we want the devs attending to any real issues and also increasing our quality of life in the game. But never think for a moment that there is any possible way to address these secondary issues by forbidding players from pursuing effective reward rates - that not only will not happen, it quite simply can not.
As long as there are choices to be made, there will be people working together to make those choices as effectively as the system permits. That will ALWAYS happen.
It's up to the devs to decide what t hose range of choices should be.
It's up to NO ONE to decide what ways to play the game are acceptable, except for each individual player.
QED.
For Great Justice!
After writing and posting the above reply, I realized that it might be better suited to being it's own thread, (as it's not about the OPs idea specifically), the thread is here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13388041
Thanks.
For Great Justice!
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However, some methods of gaining to XP may be considered by the devs to be too successful. When identified, the devs have the option of changing/nerfing such methods.
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Just to make sure it's clear, they also have the option of banning the person building it or advertising it in any way from using the MA system at all, and stated such in the Release notes.
Dec out.
I stll read most of these arguements as
DEVS...Make them play like I want them to play.
I used to be a task force runner. I would run TF back to back to back, loaded for 4, collecting merits. I was one of the guys who would pull the average run time down, decreasing the merit values because I wanted to maximize my merits/hr not kill all that crap if it wasn't needed. Even then I was limited by a limited number of TF available. Now I have the AE. I can run missions for tickets for the same rewards I would have gotten from a TF...only now I can assist my SGmates level while I do it as well as rake in the prestige. SGmate is level 1...no problem....sg mate has some screwy build he is experimenting with, NP, SGmate screwed up and needs to respec bad...np. It is no problem because these missions everyone rants agains doesn't require a SEAL team to go in. I dont' have to worry about a PERFECT group to go in and fight the freedom phalanx. I don't have to worry about finding mentors for lowbies, I don't have to worry about lackies falling behind in a speed run to be eaten by ambushes. All these things are now available to me, and all for the same rewards I used to run with only 3 or 4 other people. 3 or 4 other people because those are the guys who I trusted to be able to do these speed runs and were available to do so on a regular basis. Now I just ask if anyone from my SG wants to tag along. This is my playstyle.
So...If my activities never see a pug, never hit a broadcast, am I still so bad? I stay out of Mercy and Cap. I don't enjoy that lag either. Why can't you join SG's that meet your intrest? Or create one?
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I've got to personally agree with the "Remove AE from Atlas" group, here.
I just started a new toon. I went to Atlas. And found it crowded as all heck. Calls for Farms blaring across Broadcast, when people weren't getting into arguments, or laughing at the poor sod asking if there were any Sewer Teams forming.
The traffic was so bad that I was rubberbanding so much it took me more than three minutes to move 200 feet.
And this is on Victory. Not one of the major populated servers.
Atlas is simply too central too the game. Characters from all levels were always heading back to Atlas for one reason or another. With the AE showcase there... I'm getting bogged way down.
I don't care about the farmers. I don't do it myself, but hey, to each his (or her) own. But when the farmers are so prevelant that I can barely move my character?! That's a problem. And the only solution I can see to this is to shut down AE in the normaly heavy-traffic zones.
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heres an idea. roll new toons in galaxy.
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I always have rolled my new toons in Galaxy as its easier to traverse, since it doesn't have all the pits and under/overpasses.
Then again there is another idea as well. Roll a toon on a server not named Freedom.
<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
http://wendy-mags.mybrute.com/
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ok really that is a dumb idea doesn't get rid of Farming at all ... people wont be in atlas or talos cause of the farming being else were this isn't a solution to the problem at all.
Your worried that you can't do the costume contests or talking in Atlas. Well one solution you can do is get rid of xp in AE all together. No Farming no Problems. Now with no xp your looking at people on doing AE for the couple reason NCsoft wanted too.
1. Badges - collectors will go there to get them
2. Tickets - Recipes and enhancements
3. Creativity - the reason AE was meant to be
See 3 very good reasons why people will still use AE without xp.
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and no. if there was no exp, I feel the vast majority of players would see little point in going to the AE just to see new content if they could not gain levels doing it. if anything, it'd just become a ticket farming hub for 50's who don't need to farm for exp.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!