A final, maybe stickieable, word on farming?
By
300_below,
Posted on: 2009-04-27 06:21 in Mission Architect
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My Superteam Fire/Rad Troller is stuck just shy of 40 because the team itself went poof. Without it, she's wiiiiiimpy
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Respec that is easily one of the most powerful combos in the game.
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Actually, since this game takes place "in the present" and theoretically COULD crossover with a lot of modern life, you can be 'immersed' and still discuss out of game stuff.
So I'd not think current events discussions to be immersion-breaking - your character is paying attention to the news.
It's when the fourth wall is broken that immersion breaks, nay, shatters. Especially if it's repetitive.
Thus my request to stop SPAMMING.
Requesting a team once isn't spamming.
Macro'ing the request and hammering the key over and over and over is. I'm sure you've been irritated by someone's "RP" macros before... every attack had a corresponding "shout" or "emote" or whatnot. Probably told them to [censored] after the first couple of minutes (I would have!). The spam is the same thing for me and a lot of other people.
I can understand the drudgery of leveling up lots of different characters. Shoot, some of mine barely make it out of the teens, mainly because they were concept characters, level pacts, or other "spur of the moment" things that depended on other people. My Superteam Fire/Rad Troller is stuck just shy of 40 because the team itself went poof. Without it, she's wiiiiiimpy... and begs for an alternate build. Others I fully intent to take to 50 because I like to play them a lot, they're good endgame builds, they MIGHT make decent PvP builds if I'd ever learn about any of that... et cetera.
It still doesn't mean I want to coach noobs through a Ship Raid, or worry about pick-up mechanics during an ITF. These things can swing on a dime, and require smart players, not fancy builds.
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I know people who have been playing for 3+ years on the same characters and cant play worth a damn. They have no idea how to perform their role on a team. I have actually have team members ask if this was a pl'd toon. Nope, just someone without a clue. That person you are trying to teach..may just not want to know.
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
As I've said many times, never attribute to malice (or "cheating", in these cases) what can easily be attributed to stupidity. 
Dec out.
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As I've said many times, never attribute to malice (or "cheating", in these cases) what can easily be attributed to stupidity.
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Stop it, I'm falling in love with you!
Well, "in like" at least.
For Great Justice!
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Go farm if you want, but don't harass me by sending me a tell to join you or to ask me to fill.
As far as I'm concerned, tells from farmers asking me to fill are SPAM. And they will be reported as such from now on.
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I'll fill anyone's mish - 10,000,000 INF up front, and they have 2 minutes to spawn. I'll even cut them a deal. I'll pad twice for 16,000,000, that's a 4,000,000 savings, but you have to act now!
I actually find fill requests to be totally, totally obnoxious, but the offer stands.
Perhaps a better response - "Yeah, filling is good, but howsbout I just come in mish and leech instead, you cool with that?"
Back in my plvling days - and I was killing more warwolves than ANYONE ELSE on Virtue for months - I invited leechers. It spawned more lts, which gave everyone more xp. Quid Pro Quo, farmers, quid pro quo.
Ignore and Ignore as Spammer
I am a farmer and I still use these regularly, especially those who deem it necessary to RP with their group or friends across public, zone wide channels. I did the same thing to lowbies who repeatedly spammed lff messages as well as those who who spammed Lib TV LF paying lowbie, 15m/run. I do not use my ignores lightly, I usually even send a tell or two asking for the behavior to be taken to tells or private channel. 95 percent of the time there is little problem and ignore isn't needed, 5 percent of the time i get @#!% you #@#$ I'll do what I want. Wallah, welcome to ignore land.
I don't have an issue with people "testing the limits" of the system.
I *do* have a problem when those people get indignant when you suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Devs didn't intend for people to level from 1 to 50 in less than a day and, perhaps, techniques which allow such levelling are destined to be nerfed.
They're like those people who put money in Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes and then get pissed off when the US government negotiates with Switzerland to get their account information handed over.
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Go farm if you want, but don't harass me by sending me a tell to join you or to ask me to fill.
As far as I'm concerned, tells from farmers asking me to fill are SPAM. And they will be reported as such from now on.
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I'll fill anyone's mish - 10,000,000 INF up front, and they have 2 minutes to spawn. I'll even cut them a deal. I'll pad twice for 16,000,000, that's a 4,000,000 savings, but you have to act now!
I actually find fill requests to be totally, totally obnoxious, but the offer stands.
Perhaps a better response - "Yeah, filling is good, but howsbout I just come in mish and leech instead, you cool with that?"
Back in my plvling days - and I was killing more warwolves than ANYONE ELSE on Virtue for months - I invited leechers. It spawned more lts, which gave everyone more xp. Quid Pro Quo, farmers, quid pro quo.
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Sorry mate,
I only let SGmates and occasionally Coalition members leech from me...but then I'm not farming for exp, when I want fills. When I want fills it is for inf/ prestige/ tickets/ enhancements/ recipies, which defeats the point of you being inside the zone while I'm killing. Maybe if you turn over all loot recieved from drops and ticket rolls as well as infamy I will let you suck the exp up all you want.
But then we are back to paying for farms aren't we? Something I thought most of us were glad to be rid of.
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I don't have an issue with people "testing the limits" of the system.
I *do* have a problem when those people get indignant when you suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Devs didn't intend for people to level from 1 to 50 in less than a day and, perhaps, techniques which allow such levelling are destined to be nerfed.
They're like those people who put money in Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes and then get pissed off when the US government negotiates with Switzerland to get their account information handed over.
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And I still say that until the law is changed to close the loophole with said negotiations, then there is nothing to be done. If there was a law that stated anyone who owned an American car had to pay 60 percent fewer taxes, would you take advantage of it, or would you continue to pay higher taxes and not claim the deduction because it isn't fair to someone who owns a nondomestic automobile. Would you go buy some 500 dollar clunker to sit in your front yard so you would qualify? I know I would.
If I am given a rule, that is my limit. I don't exceed said limit. But until the rule is changed to get rid of the behavior I use, I will continue to do it. The police may not like my use of firearms, but since I live outside of the city limits, on private property, there isn't much they can do about it. On they day they expand the city limits to incorperate my house and I come under that set of ordinances, my hobbies will change....or atleast the location of my firing range will.
The problem is there is no set rule about farming. There is a rule against exploits, and we all agree they should be removed once identified and verified. No matter where you set the bar, people like me will ride that line as hard and as fast as humanly possible.
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Sorry mate,
I only let SGmates and occasionally Coalition members leech from me...but then I'm not farming for exp, when I want fills. When I want fills it is for inf/ prestige/ tickets/ enhancements/ recipies, which defeats the point of you being inside the zone while I'm killing.
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You get it, but you don't. They want something for nothing. I'm just proposing I get the same thing. You want stuff, I want stuff. We're all here for the stuff. Farmers think asking for pads is OK. It's just as OK as me asking to leech in the mish.
asking for pads or leeching never hurts, but don't be upset when someone says no. I am a farmer and the only time I pad someone else is when i'm at the BM or respecing or something where I know I'll be stationary.
However, there is a large difference between 3 minutes to spawn a map and a hours worth of free exp doorsitting.
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Perhaps a better response - "Yeah, filling is good, but howsbout I just come in mish and leech instead, you cool with that?".
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I think that's a pretty good response, however:
This proves my earlier point - the goal of CoX isn't to stop farming, it's to make the game more enjoyable for *everyone*.
Well you know what would make the game more enjoyable for those of us who get asked to fill? The devs giving the team leader the option to spawn a map *as if* his team was bigger.
This does have a downside - every choice does, but does anyone really think that stopping the ebil farmers from running an 8 person mission with 2 people is worth putting up with the spam? And I know for a fact, NOT having that option is NOT stopping farmers from doing it anyways.
It's like the other suggestion that the farm missions in AE just be segregated to their own tab, its pure win-win.
It's unfortunate that so many people who are complaining about the negative impacts farms have had on them don't simply embrace creating ways to enable farming in a controlled manner that impacts non-farmers the least.
For Great Justice!
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It's unfortunate that so many people who are complaining about the negative impacts farms have had on them don't simply embrace creating ways to enable farming in a controlled manner that impacts non-farmers the least.
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These are usually the same people who cheer the fact that market prices on the nonpurple recipies have dropped down to the point anyone can build tricked out builds....but it happens because people are putting huge amounts of supply out from the farms.
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Well you know what would make the game more enjoyable for those of us who get asked to fill? The devs giving the team leader the option to spawn a map *as if* his team was bigger.
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The devs have had ample opportunity to implement adding a "players 8" a la diablo II type of command, and this is what we thought we were getting when mission difficulty was added to test. They specifically avoided this as best they could instead.
Clearly, the devs want to reward party size to promote teaming, and they added team xp multipliers and team oriented ATs and power sets to this end. So the correct thing to do would be to fix padding. That is, base spawn size on team members in the mission, and have spawns dynamically match team size. Of course, with every correct solution, the tech probably doesn't exist to accomplish this, and as an overall priority, it's probably low enough that it will never see a fix.
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Well you know what would make the game more enjoyable for those of us who get asked to fill? The devs giving the team leader the option to spawn a map *as if* his team was bigger.
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The devs have had ample opportunity to implement adding a "players 8" a la diablo II type of command, and this is what we thought we were getting when mission difficulty was added to test. They specifically avoided this as best they could instead.
Clearly, the devs want to reward party size to promote teaming, and they added team xp multipliers and team oriented ATs and power sets to this end. So the correct thing to do would be to fix padding. That is, base spawn size on team members in the mission, and have spawns dynamically match team size. Of course, with every correct solution, the tech probably doesn't exist to accomplish this, and as an overall priority, it's probably low enough that it will never see a fix.
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It's non fixable by tech I think. Consider, you start a mission, get 7 more people to pad the mission, and run around the mission causing all the spawn points to spawn. The 7 people leave the team. Now what you are suggesting is some kind of tech that would depopulate and unspawn baddies? I don't think that is possible/feasible.
It's a simpler solution to either leave things they way they are - and to also accept the numerous requests for padding as a necessary "evil" or to permit people to pad their own missions without disturbing others.
Which should we choose?
For Great Justice!
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The problem is there is no set rule about farming. There is a rule against exploits, and we all agree they should be removed once identified and verified. No matter where you set the bar, people like me will ride that line as hard and as fast as humanly possible.
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Technically, there is one actual rule about farming: customer support (GMs) are allowed to remove missions believed to be farming missions from the architect system. So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
One other point about rules. Our office's internet feed currently operates under a soft-cap. We pay for a specific level of bandwidth, but the circuit isn't capped to that level: we can use more temporarily. There is no specific set rule on how much we can exceed that level by, or for how long. And we burst over it all the time. But so long as our bursts aren't "excessive" we aren't required to purchase higher levels of bandwidth.
If I were to tell our provider "look, you tell me what my limit is, and I will ride that level right up to the limit: don't give me any of this 'reasonable' crap" they'd be happy to oblige by setting a hard cap for me and me alone.
I sometimes feel the same should be done in this case: everyone that explicitly asks for a hard cap defined by the devs should get one applied to them and them alone. Everyone else that can deal with reasonable judgement-defined limits should operate under those instead. It would seem to me this explicitly falls under the general principle of givng players what they want, within the limits of the game design. The people that want hard limits get them. The people that are ok with soft limits gets those instead.
That certainly satisfies every game-balance design rule I can think of.
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I sometimes feel the same should be done in this case: everyone that explicitly asks for a hard cap defined by the devs should get one applied to them and them alone. Everyone else that can deal with reasonable judgement-defined limits should operate under those instead. It would seem to me this explicitly falls under the general principle of givng players what they want, within the limits of the game design. The people that want hard limits get them. The people that are ok with soft limits gets those instead.
That certainly satisfies every game-balance design rule I can think of.
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I actually agree with that. Except I can guarantee those who get the hard cap will interpret it as being "punished" for asking/challenging the GM's and we'd be right back where we started. I never assume people will be reasonable, 10-years of customer service work has taught me quite the opposite.
My level 50 Dominators:
Madame Mindbender 50 Mind/Energy
Fly Agaric 50 Plant/Thorn
Nate Nitro 50 Fire/Psi
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So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
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That's No Rule. That is a complete and total disregard for any existing standard of ethics or values. Under that, any crime, sin, or violation is justified as being "OK", no matter how ugly, abhorrent, disrespectful, or cruel, as long as no one of any consequence finds out about it.
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It's a simpler solution to either leave things they way they are - and to also accept the numerous requests for padding as a necessary "evil" or to permit people to pad their own missions without disturbing others.
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People can already pad their missions without disturbing others. It's called having an SG or friends. They choose to disturb others because they're lazy, and OK about leeching in that way.
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Technically, there is one actual rule about farming: customer support (GMs) are allowed to remove missions believed to be farming missions from the architect system. So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
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How about this: People blind-ask me to pad. This violates ToS, and I report them. They get suspended a few times, and eventually learn to be more discrete, i.e. leave me alone. People learn to pad their missions without spamming 
. Win/win.
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The problem is there is no set rule about farming. There is a rule against exploits, and we all agree they should be removed once identified and verified. No matter where you set the bar, people like me will ride that line as hard and as fast as humanly possible.
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Technically, there is one actual rule about farming: customer support (GMs) are allowed to remove missions believed to be farming missions from the architect system. So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
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Also, technically, the "farming" that is removed is likely to be farming as defined as exploitative. After all *every* mission can be a farming mission for the right group.
Always remember that what we call colloquially "farming" is probably not the same thing as used in a more rigid and rule-breaking sense. Imean people "farm" task forces, and they haven't gone nuclear over that.
For Great Justice!
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It's a simpler solution to either leave things they way they are - and to also accept the numerous requests for padding as a necessary "evil" or to permit people to pad their own missions without disturbing others.
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People can already pad their missions without disturbing others. It's called having an SG or friends. They choose to disturb others because they're lazy, and OK about leeching in that way.
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So anyone who isn't part of an SG or doesn't have 7 friends in the game is automatically a lazy person. That sounds a little crazy to me.
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Technically, there is one actual rule about farming: customer support (GMs) are allowed to remove missions believed to be farming missions from the architect system. So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
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How about this: People blind-ask me to pad. This violates ToS, and I report them. They get suspended a few times, and eventually learn to be more discrete, i.e. leave me alone. People learn to pad their missions without spamming . Win/win.
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How about this: you quote what specific part of the ToS is violated by people blind-asking you to pad.
Not saying there isn't one - if there truly is one, I want to know - show me!
For Great Justice!
That's old style Freedom PI farming and that is not what is going on now. Now so many COX players are voluntarily joining 8 man fighting farms in AE. Nobody is sending people requests to pad in AE because there is no need too.
The bottom line is aside from exploits(vamp chambers) and outliers(rikti comm officers) there is nothing wrong with any AE missions. Adding throwing knifes or shurikens to critters is called placation. It certainly does nothing to stop regular or hover farming and was never intended to do so in the first place.
Exploits and outliers getting removed is good and is far as things are going to go.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.
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That's No Rule. That is a complete and total disregard for any existing standard of ethics or values. Under that, any crime, sin, or violation is justified as being "OK", no matter how ugly, abhorrent, disrespectful, or cruel, as long as no one of any consequence finds out about it.
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I agree that characterizing it as such describes an unethical situation. However, that is the only rule that exists if one specifically frames the question as one of absolute rules.
I'm not one of those people, so I don't have the ethical issue you describe. The real rule is farming as the devs have defined farming (which I'm not going to repeat for the gazillionth time) is something the devs actively discourage and take steps they feel appropriate to curtail. However, not everyone seems willing or able to accept that rule, concur it meets the definition of a rule, contend its a reasonably enforceable rule, concede its the clear communicated dev rule, agree with the general consequences of enacting such a rule, or even construct the conceptual scaffolding necessary to understand the rule on its face.
I don't have any of those specific problems either, so I don't have a need to pursue unachievable clarification.
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never mind nothing to see here edited because of a misread on above post lol
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Thus my request to stop SPAMMING
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Ignore and Ignore as spammer features work really realy well.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.