Prestige Farming and the 3 man SG

Been reading the 43 page post about farming today, and looked at one of my own posts when the AE system went live. Mostly I was just terrified about what the nonstop farming was going to do the market system, the already hurting dynamics of teaming, the essential process of leveling and missioning, what have you. I was really concerned about what this was going to do to the game, and refused to have any part of it.
Until.
One of my mates that hasn't logged into this game in about a year and a half made it back to play an AE arc that I designed based around the events involving a few of the more prominent VG's from the early days of CoV, and he loved it. LOVED it. Then, when he asked what was up with our base, and why it hadn't really been improved on, I told him since there were only the two of us left playing this game, it wasn't really going to get any better. He suggested disabling xp and actually USING this farming thing to gather prestige enough to make an operable base.
I resisted out of general dislike for the concept of farming and my usually naive perspective about how things should be done until he made a pretty good point. The VG base sytem was never intended for the casual player have access to or enjoy. The prestige system is so outlandishly expensive and the prices of base items so exhorbiant that it's pretty obvious it was only intended to be used by the megaconglomerate VG/SGs that have dozens and dozens of members. The AE changes that.
Since I started using the AE to mine for prestige, I've had more fun with this game than I've had in a long, long time. Having always hated the concept of farming, I never really gave it much stock as a valid way to enjoy this game.
I take it back.
Really. Completely.
I have so much fun with the AE now it's unreal. Brought some of my buddies back from other games to see what the AE would allow them to build, and they were blown away. The arcs are great fun, the farms are great fun, and the three of us finally have the ability to gather enough prestige to actually DO something with the base that's been sitting around for years.
Had no idea base building could be so addictive and so much fun. I could do that for months and nothing else on this game probably and love every minute of it. Old McDonald made it possible for me to enjoy a huge part of this game that was never really there for me before. Awesome. I'm not in a race to compete with anyone, and I'm never ever going to use the base raiding function obviously, the this has given us an enormous RP tool, a huge project to work on and enjoy, and something to get our former members interested enough to come back and have a look at.

So, prestige farming for the win, I take back every word that I said about how diabolical and evil the elements of the farming sub base were, and in retrospect, think this is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to the market system ever. Finally, as promised, the playing field is beginning to level, and EVERYONE has the opportunity to take advantage of things that only full time farmers and megaconglomerate SG/VGs once had total reign over.
I can't express enough how much this had reinvested me in this game.

Thanks, devs, for going through with it.

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Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!

very nice.

Same reason I farm. prestiges.

lets hope the farms dont get nerf'd.

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Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.

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lets hope the farms dont get nerf'd.

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Sorry but, as you're probably aware by now, they got out the torches and pitchforks today.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

Yeah, I know. It's back down to just being me again. Of all the ways to ruin yourself, even my dog knows you don't crap where you eat. This MA thing was the best thing to have happened to our population in years. Great.

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Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!

By the way, since Issue 14 launched, I have earned almost 400,000 prestige for my SG with no exploits, no comm officers, no farming. It wasn't all in AE, as I do several TFs every week, but a lot of it was. (To be perfectly clear, I did farm but it was for the virtual defeat badges so no influence or prestige were earned doing it.)

Thousands upon thousands of arcs with actual stories. I can't wait until we get the better search filtering they announced so that when I want to play silly arcs I can find them easier.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

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Yeah, I know. It's back down to just being me again. Of all the ways to ruin yourself, even my dog knows you don't crap where you eat. This MA thing was the best thing to have happened to our population in years. Great.

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OK, I am NOT advocating farming. I've tried it more than a few times so I'm no purist, but I'm not good at farming, find it mindlessly repetitious, and especially hate door sitting.

BUT ... that said ...

IF you were to create an arc that was your personal farm ... made it sound like trash (but not a farm) in the discription ... like "The minions of Hellions and the Skulls are fighting for turf in Perez Park again, but with no leaders around to direct them, they are just hurting themselves ... and the trees. The park commissioner wants you to kick them out in this defeat all mission. Length: Very Long"

And then you create a mission with whatever you want ... how can anyone tell. I've been advertising the hell out of my arc and can't get 100 players to try it, let alone 5 star it.

Can't u farm something on your own? This would help me out too because it interrupts me when I get all the "AE Farm?" tells in game. Kind of a "No Ask. No Tell. No Advertsed ... Farm."

Or maybe you could start a Fight Club global channel just for farmers, where you people who farm in PI could invite the people their alreasy farming with into the chat room?

Any mileage in this idea for farmers?

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OK, I am NOT advocating farming. I've tried it more than a few times so I'm no purist, but I'm not good at farming, find it mindlessly repetitious, and especially hate door sitting.

BUT ... that said ...

IF you were to create an arc that was your personal farm ... made it sound like trash (but not a farm) in the discription ... like "The minions of Hellions and the Skulls are fighting for turf in Perez Park again, but with no leaders around to direct them, they are just hurting themselves ... and the trees. The park commissioner wants you to kick them out in this defeat all mission. Length: Very Long"

And then you create a mission with whatever you want ... how can anyone tell. I've been advertising the hell out of my arc and can't get 100 players to try it, let alone 5 star it.

Can't u farm something on your own? This would help me out too because it interrupts me when I get all the "AE Farm?" tells in game. Kind of a "No Ask. No Tell. No Advertsed ... Farm."

Or maybe you could start a Fight Club global channel just for farmers, where you people who farm in PI could invite the people their alreasy farming with into the chat room?

Any mileage in this idea for farmers?

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Making my own little farm is exactly what I did. I made it exclusively to earn prestige for my SG and VG, and of course to make a little Inf on the side. I've been publishing it only when I want to run it, and as a result its rarely been run by anyone else. I haven't used it to PL anyone, though I have taken a few SG/VG members with to help with the prestige earning. The whole to-do about MA farming though has me a little concerned about my little farm. I'm hoping that I'm not adversely affected by any of this little [censored]storm going around now, because I've made more advances in prestige in the last two weeks than in the two months prior.

Just my two bits...

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lets hope the farms dont get nerf'd.

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Sorry but, as you're probably aware by now, they got out the torches and pitchforks today.

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And thats only for MA farming they said nothing about norm bm / tv farming

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maybe the AE missions should give out MORE Prestege and LESS XP.... that would change it from character PLing, into SG/VG PLing. This would help all players who would like for their solo/loner toons to have their own Private "fortress of solitude"/"batcave" that has all the fixins.

but i am sure that this would NOT make ALL players happy

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Farming is fine. Using exploits to gain a statisical advantage is not. You are safe.

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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.

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lets hope the farms dont get nerf'd.

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Sorry but, as you're probably aware by now, they got out the torches and pitchforks today.

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Let us all hope they don't bring the crosses and crucify us retroactively. It's one thing to say stop it or "insert punishment here." But I believe a majority of the pbase is guilty as charged and some more than others. But I am also in favor of new baddies, more task forces, new areas, new power sets, and new archetypes. Please also try to not rush issues, and have a little more foresight about potential loopholes that you potentially may create. It's one thing to address the issues and then set the expectations... and THEN roll out the punishing. Otherwise... you just gave some of us a tool to have fun with.

On the other hand, I see that it is bad to see total newB's go fro 1-50 in a matter of hours vs. them actually learning to play the game period. And in a sense that is bad for business. But some of us rather enjoy the game and the people we associate ourselves with, please do not be so quick and irrational , there are varying degrees and levels to any one angle.

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Farming is fine. Using exploits to gain a statisical advantage is not. You are safe.

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This is the point. Placing lots of MOBs into a large map and killing them is fine. Placing a ton of Com. Officers around a bomb so that one snilpe followed by an AOE attack kills 14 +4 opponwnts while awardng Lt. level rewards is not.

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Yes. Now I have to say here and I said it in another thread, the Devs need to watch how much they are complaining and screaming about farms because they have there own that they made it is called the sewers. But I gave my rant on that once and won't do it again.

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Wish I could stand playing blueside, it seems there are a lot more ways to earn prestige there.

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Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!

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People are already beginning to quit because of the "Punishments".

I had one of the Leaders in my SG Quit, and cancel both his accounts just last night.

The Farmer Exodus is going to make the PVP Exodus look like a weekend vacation.

Oh, one last thing...I rarely Farm, because I find it Boring. So I'm not Pro-Farming.

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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

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I had one of the Leaders in my SG Quit, and cancel both his accounts just last night.

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Hope you wound up with his stuff.

I feel confident ample opportunities will remain for earning prestige after the current controversy blows over.

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One man's terrorist is another man's freedom (or freem?) fighter; just as one man's exploit is another man's feature.

Just as a quick disclaimer, I skip posts in red text because it gives me a headache. The orange isn't much better on a blue background, but it takes longer to drive the spike into my brain, so I normally try to at least skim through those. So if I miss anything addressed in those posts, there's the reason.

Anyway, Prestige isn't that tough to generate, believe me. Without using Comm Officer farming, I managed to generate over 200K in Prestige for one SG, playing one character mostly solo, in the past month. It just is dependent on time played, just like everything else in this game. If you're playing enough to keep leveling up, you're playing enough to generate the Prestige.

My Dom has generated somewhere over 800K for the group she's in over the course of the past 5 months, mainly from running TFs. No exploits involved there, and very little farming.

The Prestige is still out there to be had, on both sides. Just need to actually do the work to gain it instead of expecting to gain from exploits, such as the Comm Officer farms. And for the record, I have no issue with farming. I'm primarily an RP'er but I recognize that farming has its uses, and I have no issue with people farming legitimate non-exploit content.

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Well personally I've done farming and I'm an avid RPer. I agree about the prestige bonanza in the AE. I absolutely loved it. I too have a little one player SG though I have a few friends who have alts in there. Yes I did PL one toon pretty far in MA, but not all the way to 50. But what i'm really going to miss is a certian boss farm my buddy did because of the insane prestige me and my friends were able to generate. We never did the comm officer exploit however. I suppose I at least got that out of it.

I don't have a problem with fixing exploits. I don't have a problem with farmers as long as their not selling their influence for real money. After all you can't get purples for instance out of the MA and truly I do think that a significant amount of the purple recipies out there comes from farmers (and no I have no data this is just a guess on my part ).

But yeah Op i feel the prestige withdrawl as well.

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Anyway, Prestige isn't that tough to generate, believe me. Without using Comm Officer farming, I managed to generate over 200K in Prestige for one SG, playing one character mostly solo, in the past month. It just is dependent on time played, just like everything else in this game. If you're playing enough to keep leveling up, you're playing enough to generate the Prestige.

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I used two of my AE arcs (Supa Dupa Cookie Caper and Supa Duplicity on @Johnstone and @Johnstone 2 respectively) and ran each one as a duo (BS/WP and an Emp/Sonic) once the other night. Took a little while, but about a normal night's worth of play (SDCC's on the Atta map) and I walked away with 100k prestige earned for my new solo SG. I suppose you could call them farms, but I don't think they really fit the description of exploitative farming that Posi put forth.

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@Johnstone & @Johnstone 2
ediblePoly.com
All my characters

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Just as a quick disclaimer, I skip posts in red text because it gives me a headache. The orange isn't much better on a blue background, but it takes longer to drive the spike into my brain, so I normally try to at least skim through those. So if I miss anything addressed in those posts, there's the reason.

Anyway, Prestige isn't that tough to generate, believe me. Without using Comm Officer farming, I managed to generate over 200K in Prestige for one SG, playing one character mostly solo, in the past month. It just is dependent on time played, just like everything else in this game. If you're playing enough to keep leveling up, you're playing enough to generate the Prestige.

My Dom has generated somewhere over 800K for the group she's in over the course of the past 5 months, mainly from running TFs. No exploits involved there, and very little farming.

The Prestige is still out there to be had, on both sides. Just need to actually do the work to gain it instead of expecting to gain from exploits, such as the Comm Officer farms. And for the record, I have no issue with farming. I'm primarily an RP'er but I recognize that farming has its uses, and I have no issue with people farming legitimate non-exploit content.

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Sorry about the orange text, mate. I'll stop using it, I guess.
As far as "just having to do the work" I have, believe me. I must be going about it wrong. I have a 48 dom that has never been out of vg mode, but has generated a little over 240k in the year he's existed. I play him a LOT. Since I didn't used to farm, and don't have limitless resources, I can usually only solo at +1. I'm sure it will all work itself out. thanks for the replies, but now that the MA doesn't work AT ALL, I find that my patience may actually just be gone. I've give four and a half years of effort here. Not asking for much. Ugh.

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Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!

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Yeah, I know. It's back down to just being me again. Of all the ways to ruin yourself, even my dog knows you don't crap where you eat. This MA thing was the best thing to have happened to our population in years. Great.

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From what I can gather:

*Before the MA system was put in you could get teams at any part of the day on any server(Even though I couldn't unless it was 6pm on a Saturday/Friday)
*During MA you couldn't get a "real" team anymore and everyone wanted to farm. Population on Virtue and Freedom were at their limits and I heard the other servers were extremely lively at all parts of the day.
*After MA, the same people who said they had no problems teaming beforehand claim to have problems getting teams. The teams they do get into are filled with "farm noobs".

I thoroughly enjoyed the game went farming was active. I got teams for Tasks/Trials by just sitting around in Cap and advertising. Did all 3 Respec trials and LSRF. Now? ... Lucky to put a team of 8 together for anything involving AE since people are afraid to get banned if they even go into an AE mission.

Like you, all my friends came back for AE after I told them how much fun it was. Now... playing by myself again :\

Sigh... can't wait for Champions Online...

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So go back to doing the regular content? Personally, I continue to do AE stuff both solo and with teams. The only problem I've experienced involving AE is the massive crowding at the AE building in Atlas Park (which I avoid).

I never had any problem in getting on non-farm teams and I'm not seeing any problems after the 'AE freak-out'.

I'm not denying your experience, but I'm pointing out that some people haven't seen any issues. And, personally, I believe the majority of players have not had and are not having problems.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

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Sorry about the orange text, mate. I'll stop using it, I guess.


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Thank you. Thank you. A thousand times, thank you, sir.

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As far as "just having to do the work" I have, believe me. I must be going about it wrong. I have a 48 dom that has never been out of vg mode, but has generated a little over 240k in the year he's existed. I play him a LOT. Since I didn't used to farm, and don't have limitless resources, I can usually only solo at +1. I'm sure it will all work itself out. thanks for the replies, but now that the MA doesn't work AT ALL, I find that my patience may actually just be gone. I've give four and a half years of effort here. Not asking for much. Ugh.

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My dom is possibly my most powerful toon and certainly my favorite redside "hero" toon, so YMMV here. I started a new VG yesterday with my 50 Dom. Just since yesterday I rolled up just over 52K in Prestige with her. I was running mishes solo against regular Rikti in AE (not Comm Officer farms, so I was seeing everything they had), set for Ruthless (level 4, same as Unyielding for you blue-side only types). Don't know how much actual play time that was, but I'd have to hazard a guess at somewhere around 4 or 5 hours total time spent in mishes since starting "The Shadows of Paragon" group yesterday.

It's possible to gain Prestige, Moloch. I'd suggest you find an enemy that you're best suited for and concentrate on mishes that feature them, whether AE or otherwise. I only chose Rikti because they're my starting point for every toon I have, going back to when I soloed my first scrapper from 40-50 via mishes in RWZ right after it was redone from RCS.

Good luck with your group, Moloch!

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You're probably right, mate. I just like fighting the huge varieties of baddies I guess. My personal favorite is the Freaks and Arachnos, just because I thematically enjoy them. Of course, as a Mind/Energy dom, I'm either a complete moron or utterly without a clue since I can't seem to solo with the effortless ease I see referred to on this board so much.

I'm not quitting, I'm never quitting. I think I've already established that. But I really wish it didn't feel like a job so much lately. Maybe it's just me, but the AE being in the condition it's in, and the kind of teams I'[ve been finding lately aren't making it easy to enjoy the game anymore. I'll keep plugging away, I guess, and see what happens.



lol just realized my brother left his account logged in and I posted under his name.
My bad.

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My dom is a fire/psy and she's perma-dom. I'm a concept builder and made her before I ever knew that was "teh uber farmer" for red side or anything. I just wanted to make a Phoenix homage.

I'm also an RP'er and I break several of the "cardinal rules" of making fire control toons in her build, such as not having Hot Feet and I don't use my imps much in teams unless we're going to be stationary or we're overrun with an ambush, which is rare. She's also not a Superspeedster, using Hover to move everywhere in mishes, and Flies everywhere else. And as a patron I took Black Scorpion for Scorpion Shield instead of the usual "must have" of Ghost Widow to get Soul Drain or Dark Obliteration.

I usually use her to take point in ITF, LGTF, Rikti mishes, Freaks mishes, Arachnos, or anything else really. I just pick Rikti because I know they suit her abilities well and fighting in RWZ allows me to team with blue side friends if they're around.

Getting back on topic, you can run up vast amounts of Prestige if you put a little effort into it with any toon. I've used my bots/FF Mastermind to run up a bunch in various mishes. I just passed the 800K mark with my main brute for his VG. When I pulled my elec/elec blaster out of his last SG, he had run up over 400K I think. Same goes for the Mace/WP tank and storm/elec defender I had there as well. They're all concept toons as well.

Once you get to higher levels, Prestige comes easy. Just might need to stick with it a couple hours a week. It will add up in a big way. Again, good luck with your SG!

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