The solutions I've been pondering (mix and match to taste):
1. Force all custom groups used to spawn a group (ambush, normal mission group, boss henchmen, what have you) to implement at least one minion, one lieutenant, one boss. Groups used to spawn only a single critter do not have this restriction, but groups that spawn actual -spawns- do. To clarify: If I have Dalantia spawn from the Dawn Initiates group, I cannot use the Dawn Initiates group (which is only Elite Bosses and Bosses) to spawn the group around him, I must use the Circle of Dawn (which is a full enemy group, including minions, lts, and bosses) to actually spawn his entourage.
2. Give all custom MA critters some type of ranged attack. Or give all critters a -fly attack and immob/snare resist (A "glitch in the system") that they can use only when they go into "I'm being griefed" mode.
3. Dock rewards from non-minion custom critters with one or both powersets at Easy down one rank (Like Family/Prisoners) beginning at 30.
4. All normal game critters, when implemented into a custom critter group, return to normal experience/influence payouts by level and rank.
5. Revamp critter Dual Blades to include some of the combo effects that they're balanced around within the attacks instead of the combos.
I really would prefer the MA keep as much functionality as possible... but I'd rather minimize the damage and inconvenience some than tac-nuke it and ruin it for all. >_<
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
I mostly don't like heavy-handed restrictions on where people can and can't place mobs and which ones they can and can't place in MA. It limits potential for legitimate users.
2 (the first part) is probably the only one of the first three I could really get behind, but I don't think it would eliminate farming so much as help add back in some of the risk factor that makes AE farms preferable to contact arc farms. I wouldn't mind having a third power pool choice for creatures that contained powers similar to the melee EPPs. The difficulty slider could be retained for that, but even "Easy" would allow at least one ranged attack.
4 and 5 are perfectly reasonable -- I actually wasn't aware 4 was not already the case. 5 is a bit of a technical hurdle, however.
I'm absolutely behind declaring a faction an invalid enemy group for MA unless it has minions, lt's and bosses.
If it were up to me, I'd simply remove all rewards from any run of an MA mission after the first on a per character basis.
Why?
Because there's hundreds of pages of arcs, foremost. The odds of anyone ever "running out" of missions on the MA is slim to non-existent. Limiting rewards to one run per mission per character ensures that more of that content will get seen/played by others. (Not to mention helping out the authors, by increasing the odds that more than just a handful of missions will get played.)
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I have no problem with people standing in the MA and grinding missions all day long if that's what they want to do. What I have problems with is the specific act of "farming", which (to me) is running the same mission(s) over and over and over.
Of course, that still doesn't cover how to stop missions being built as farms, but it would be a step in the right direction, I would think.
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I'm absolutely behind declaring a faction an invalid enemy group for MA unless it has minions, lt's and bosses.
[/ QUOTE ]I'm not. Because if you want a specific boss/EB/AV to show up, you have to use its own group.
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Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler
Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?
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If it were up to me, I'd simply remove all rewards from any run of an MA mission after the first on a per character basis.
Why?
Because there's hundreds of pages of arcs, foremost. The odds of anyone ever "running out" of missions on the MA is slim to non-existent. Limiting rewards to one run per mission per character ensures that more of that content will get seen/played by others. (Not to mention helping out the authors, by increasing the odds that more than just a handful of missions will get played.)
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I have no problem with people standing in the MA and grinding missions all day long if that's what they want to do. What I have problems with is the specific act of "farming", which (to me) is running the same mission(s) over and over and over.
Of course, that still doesn't cover how to stop missions being built as farms, but it would be a step in the right direction, I would think.
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I like the idea, but couldn't the arc just be unpublished and republished then?
For the OP, I think INF/Prestige gain is the least of anyone's worries about the MA. It's the "1-50 in 8 hours or less!" farms that are the biggest issue.
What I actually think we'll see:
Temporary removal of Comm Officers and similar mobs, to be replaced with lower-yield mobs (in all rewards.)
Reduction of rewards for "common" custom mobs (minion-lt-boss perhaps.) Same reason.
Tweaking attack capabilites on those mobs.
Any sort of check ("Must have X missions," "Must have X type of goals," etc.) can be gamed. The adjustments will, most likely, be done to the mobs themselves.
So, we've seen quite a few "remove rewards from MA!" suggestions, and now there's even a "remove MA!" suggestion. Here are some of the ideas I've seen or come up with which strike me as somewhat more reasonable, and some arguments for or against them:
<ul type="square">[*]Flatly reduce experience and influence gain in AE arcs for all non-DC (or HoF?) arcs by a percentage. Since there is no QC process, an adequately datamined percentage would serve to ensure that new arcs don't exceed statistical norms.
I don't actually think this idea would accomplish quite what it intends. It punishes arcs which aren't attempting to maximize rewards, and merely encourages people who are trying to game the system to squeeze out every last drop. It's a reasonable idea, but not one of my favorites.
[*]Reduce rewards on all new (2 weeks or less?) arcs by a flat percentage. Arcs which are obviously exploit-minded should be removed by then, allowing the legitimate ones to recover their full rewards. OR reduce rewards on an arc until it achieves a certain number of ratings (20? 50?) -- sort of a mini-HoF status.
These similar ideas are better than the first one, but each has a flaw. The first is that many arcs are hardly examined -- give the arc no interesting keywords, and if nobody happens to review it while it's still brand-new, odds are it'll never get looked at. Still, this sort of arc would only be feasible for the author's own use or that of a few friends.
For the second, it's kind of the same problem, even if a little turned-around. Offering 1 mil to newbies for joining, then quitting an arc and rating it and leaving a comment with their name (so you know they actually were the ones doing the rating) is already a tactic used to generate some rating values. For a lucrative enough arc, this might be profitable enough to be worthwhile.
Still, both of these suggestions seem like overall improvements on the existing system... I just don't find them quite ideal.
[*]Eliminate influence (and prestige?) gain from AE arcs. They don't make any sense thematically, given that the arcs are 'virtual simulations,' and the lack of either would significantly reduce incentives to farm an arc for any purpose other than levelling or generating salvage (via tickets).
I'm kinda torn on this one. I don't like it, but I think it would work, and the presence of architect tickets means that characters would still be able to acquire the SOs they need to level 1-50 in AE content only (which was a stated design goal). I think it's too draconian for the issue at hand, but even the idea of simply reducing inf and prestige seems somehow out of place to me. So it's on the list, and I acknowledge that reducing inf (and prestige?) would probably make an impact on AE farming, but with reservations on my part.
[*]Provide diminishing returns per arc per account (per timeframe? with cut-ins or cut-offs?).
There are a few varieties of this suggestion floating around, and it's the one I suspect is most likely to be ultimately implemented. Basically the key concept is that all rewards in AE arcs will be a little bit like merits from TFs/SFs/Trials -- do the arc too much, and you get less from it. It's probably the most mild of the potential changes, but consequently does the least to discourage farming; creating three five-mission arcs that are reward-saturated by don't cross quite into the line of statistical exploit is perfectly feasible for any individual, and will likely occur on a slow-enough rotation to compensate for most diminishing rewards timers. If the diminishing rewards are permanent (running the arc 10 times reduces its total rewards by X percent for all future runs), rather than on a timer, you create more problems but not more solutions. For instance, are the runs tracked by account or by character? Most AE tracking is done on an account basis, it seems, and I've certainly run the Praetorian arcs (not to mention the sewers, hah!) dozens of times over all of my characters. Should AE content be less enduring? Yet even with such a drawback, unpublishing, altering, and republishing farming missions seems like an easy way to avoid the penalty. Too much loss for no gain.[/list]
Of all the above, #2 is my favorite, while I think a variation on #3 would be the most effective. I think there's probably a combination of #2, #3, and #4 that would be the best overall solution -- the goal being minimizing the exploit-like use of AE content while providing little or no change to users engaging in intended behavior.
I'm sure some people have generated reasonable suggestions (for values of 'reasonable' I agree with -- anything that reads like "nuke it from orbit" would need an awful lot of statistical work done to convince me it was truly the best course of action) I've missed. Feel free to link me to or repost them here in the discussion!
Oh, and, hey, just a tip to anyone inclined to opine that AE is "working as intended" -- it's doubtful that that's the case. I think a lot of the more extreme suggestions are largely reactionary to the new content dominating player attention, but the sad truth of the matter is that AE does currently enable relatively trivial rewards maximization to time and risk minimization... and there's probably no way to adjust this (without gutting the system for more legitimate users) by simply adjusting spawn rules and the like.