City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Is PLing Detrimental to the City of Heroes?

10100101

By 10100101,
Posted on: 2009-05-06 12:57 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

All this is well and good but I only have one question:

What do I do now to farm efficiently?

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
All this is well and good but I only have one question:

What do I do now to farm efficiently?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, we don't know because they won't say anything, and I'm *very* bored with the same old clickies and boss kills in the same old missions, so I'm not going to wait around for them to tell me.

 

Posted

They didn't remove all farming. As far as I know the all boss farm are still there and they are challenging. Farming will never go away it will just be slower than it has been the last month.

 

Posted

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They didn't remove all farming. As far as I know the all boss farm are still there and they are challenging. Farming will never go away it will just be slower than it has been the last month.

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I'm not playing anything resembling a farm or do anything resembling PLing until they finally clarify what is OK to do in this game, given that we can have toons locked out of nowhere. After the threat, they really have to clarify what is acceptable play. Of course, they will not do that, and so I am out. I only hope that a very large percentage of the farmers and PLers do the same, so that you good people may finally have some well deserved peace.

 

Posted

Foremost, I believe the oritinal reason that devs were "against" PLing is that the faster you get to 50, the less incentive you had to keep playing - and paying. After all, while this is a game to us, this is a business for them.

That said, however, in my opinion the devs have done such a great job of providing more and more powersets and content that many/most players (I'm assuming) have developed a feverish case of ALT-itis, just as I have.

For those that argue that MA-PLing takes away the teams they used to have access to, three points: 1) this is an assumption; since that same player could just as easily been someone who mostly soloed, so this has no effect on you; and 2) the player who is using MA-PLing could well be the same person who was PL-ing in PI; 3) this really does appear to be a "selfish" reason to care; basically you're saying is that they put your needs/feelings above their own. Not very realisitc, in my opinion.

Another argument againt PL-ing that doesn't work for me, is the often given excuse that a PL-toon doesn't know how his powers work was well as non-PLs and therefore endanger the group more.

While I know like it sounds like I'm defending PL-ing, the truth of the matter is that I don't engage it in that often. (I have from time to time taken really slow leveling toons like my emp defender into PL situations). But mostly I play solo-able toons, and if I get a request to team, I team - but otherwise am really shy about inviting others to join me. I enjoy large teams, but I'm always passing the star to someone else. I absolutely HATE asking people to join my team. (Don't ask me why. I don't have the time or budget right now for a therapist.)

It is FUNNY IN THE EXTREME that I actually have a level 50 fire/kin troller ... and while I love to play him on big Freak maps, I hardly EVER farm with him. Too shy to ask people to join my "farm." Too polite to ask people to "Fill" which just seems to me like using people. Too outraged by people who actually ask lowbies for payment to team with them.

BUt I digress from my real point about him - and my stable of some dozen other 50s I've earned each level for. The truth is I don't play my 50s as often as my lowbies - so when I do, I often have to totally get refamiliar with my powers.

So don't think that 50 that sucks was PL-ed. He may just be like me. (Some toons I find easier to play right - I have my 50 DB/WP set up for my two combo attacks ... but other toons (like my fire/kin) have so many powers that I "forget" to turn on his Fire Shield because its in the third tier of buttons. And I had to have another Fire/Kin tell me I was crazy and respec into Syphon Speed because when I was a young fire/kin I thought it was just for temp superspeed and didn't realize it sped up recharge of powers.

There are just so many assumptions that people make about this game that are wrong. (Many of course, are right.) But like all generalities, you never know about the specific person you're teaming with.

Untill MA, I could REALLY understane PL-ing throuigh the lowest levels. I HATED going through the same mission arcs or sewers. MA gives me a new way to get throough those levels with fresh content. (I think it was for that reason I went out of my way to may my one arc fully custom-crittered so that anyone could play it at any level - 1-50.)

I guess the only real gripe I have about PL-ing myself is the constant tells you get with the offers to join you. I have a small number of friends who sometimes ask me to join a TF ... and I usually respond Yes to someone who sends me a tell about inviting me to a mission, especially when they give me mob details. I often interrupt my tailor or MA sessions to see who's sending the tell, and respond. But the number of MA farm tells is incredible. At least before, I usually got the bulk of them when I was in PI.

Most things that others do in the game do not effect me -- but everything I do myself affects me. So I'm of the Live and Let Live school, myself.

Life is too short to worry about how someone else is playing a game. At least that's my 2 influence/merits/tickets worth!

 

Posted

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Go to warehouse click glowie

Go to cave destroy object

Go to cave kill everything including that one stuck in the wall so you can't target it.

Go to out door map kill everything and click glowies (Wow a real iconoclast here)

Yep new and innovative for sure.

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Sounds to me like you're bored with the entire game itself, given all missions official or MA based use similar objectives.

For that matter, you're probably bored with MMORPGs in general, given other games also have Go Here Kill These Guys, or Kill X Of These Guys, or Go Here Click This Thing.

New hobby, maybe?

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What an interesting take. My other big hobby is Golf.

Which is knock ball into hole and repeat 8 or 17 times. Followed by have drinks at clubhouse.

What I do in city heroes is see how rapidly and how extremely I can do things. Posi in 1:20 that is interesting, Clockwork vahzilock and the COT are trying to blow up the damn wasn't interesting in the first place.

The market could be interesting to me but its not a very good implementation. There are just too many things missing. While flipping and such is too much a case of ripping off people that got lucky and don't know what they had or what its value is. For some its quite the big deal.

What I am winding around to is that "Story telling" is not the major part of the game for many if not most of the people playing. Oddly enough this echoes eerily of my arguments with market people that couldn't grasp that the market was not the alpha and the omega of the game.

 

Posted

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They didn't remove all farming. As far as I know the all boss farm are still there and they are challenging. Farming will never go away it will just be slower than it has been the last month.

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I'm not playing anything resembling a farm or do anything resembling PLing until they finally clarify what is OK to do in this game, given that we can have toons locked out of nowhere. After the threat, they really have to clarify what is acceptable play. Of course, they will not do that, and so I am out. I only hope that a very large percentage of the farmers and PLers do the same, so that you good people may finally have some well deserved peace.

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I will be honest and say that I am just killing time waiting on CO to come out. I have been playing for 3 years and the game is starting to get old. I tried WoW but got bored with it once I hit 80. I do love this game but there just isn't enough new stuff to keep me much longer.

Also, I do farm but I don't farm all the time.

 

Posted

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All this is well and good but I only have one question:

What do I do now to farm efficiently?

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Freaks/Demons/Battlemaiden whatever they ares/romans

Positron
Synapse
Lgtf
ITF


If you want a forum game take a shot everytime positron says something horribly tactless in a post.

 

Posted

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Sounds to me like you're bored with the entire game itself

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I am actually am bored with the game. Have been since they changed PvP in I13. I stay and play just because I like some people here and this is my way of hanging out with them. Most of my ingame time was spend PL'n my alts and friends so we could mess around and run TFs. The content in this game has long since lost its flavor.

So yes PL'n is detrimental to the game. If I cant do it to skip crap I am tired of doing, I wont play.

 

Posted

I'll repeat what I said in the other thread:

Firstly, some history. I believe I just received my 36 month badge, so I've been around for awhile, but not as long as many. In that time, I've leveled two characters to 50. It took me forever to do so. I have numerous characters in their 20s and 30s. Now, onto the good stuff.

Who really cares that much about farming? I tend to play in cycles. My fiance and I will play a lot for a few months, then get bored, then the accounts will languish for a few months. The first time I logged in and played an AE farm I was hooked. My fiance and I have been playing quite a bit, more than what we usually play.

For us, this was a chance to see genuinely new content. This content being new powersets and powers that we've never used before. I used these "farms" to take numerous characters from one to mid-20s very quickly, and one of my favorite characters from low 30s to low 40s. To us, this is new content, and it kept us playing. I was able to experiment with a ~20ish Warshade for the first time. I was able to take a DM/SD scrapper to mid 20s (my first shield alt, btw). I was able to take a spines/DA scrapper into the mid 20s (my first experience with a spines scrapper over 10 and DA over low teens). It only took me a couple of hours to see that he was going to be an endurance hog. So last night I rolled a spines/fire only to see that people were broadcasting messages about the nerf. That's when I came here.

What is wrong with what I did? For the first time in a long time, I got to use genuinely new content (for me anyway). And on the way, I got lucky with a roll and got a LotG: global recharge. I've only ever had this IO once before, and it came after spending about 40 million received by, guess what, "farming." Most of my tickets I spent on SOs, which are far more affordable via this means than the traditional "missions for influence" means. I was actually feeling good about my new alts.

Yes, "farming" is boring. And I keep quoting "farm" because I do not really know what it means. Every newspaper, story arc, or TF mission I've ever been on was about going from spawn to spawn as fast as possible and killing as fast as possible. This is exactly what I was doing on the farms. Only instead of being in a cave or cavern where I couldn't see, move, or find anything (often resulting in the PuG splitting and dying), these farms are in the open where it's easy for the team to see each other, gather the enemies, and distribute maximum punishment.

In fact, in many ways they made me feel more heroic. To be honest, I don't really have anything that really sticks out about my 1-50 experience with my controller and scrapper. I just have this clouded blur of a memory where I killed the same things over and over. The only really recent "heroic" memory I have occurred recently, on a "farm" with my wp/fire tank. I gathered a couple of spawns when we must have been ambushed by one or two more. My screen was covered with red mobs and my team quickly wiped, except for me. I popped a couple of purples, RttC spiked off the chart, and I stood toe-to-toe. I did this long enough that the rest of my team rezzed and got back into battle. For that short time, it wasn't just a grind, it was monumental. It brought a big smile to my face.

I guess I just don't understand why people want to stop the powerleveling. I'm telling you right now, the mob content is not enough to keep people in this game. The reason I always played in cycles was because I always got quickly bored. I did not think that going to rikti spawn after rikti spawn was particularly fun (but no worse than any other mission I play), but it allowed me to quickly access new content that I've never seen or used. It allowed me to take a new character to a level where they start to come into their own, and skip those levels where you feel helpless and are always sucking wind. I didn't hurt anyone in the process, and I genuinely enjoyed myself. It was certainly enough to keep the money from my two accounts every month.

Now, the spines/fire I just rolled will likely languish at low levels for awhile. I really really hate the 1-20 game. The other alts I powerleveled (assuming they aren't taken from me) will continue to "farm," only now it will be mission arcs, newspaper missions, or any other mission where I hop from spawn to spawn killing as quick as possible (that's all of them). Maybe I'll do that arc in Faultline where I can kill the 3 AVs over and over. I can't tell you how many levels I've gotten from that one in the past.

And to those who are happy the "farmers" are about to be punished, so what? I have several characters that I would say were powerleveled. Not to 50, but I would certainly say that I received more than 50 levels in aggregate from my different alts running AE farms. I did this not because I was forced to but because I liked the results. It was entertaining enough for me to play CoH instead of any other game. I'm not emotionally attached to these characters. If the devs want to "punish" me by deleting them or removing my access from them, I won't take it personally and I won't cry. I'm not a prisoner, this is just entertainment. If the devs want to remove my access to their entertainment, I'll just remove their access to my money. It's not that hard and there are plenty of good games out there (and more on the way). I was playing Empire:Total War a lot before running the AE farms, and I'll likely just go back to that for awhile. Eventually, if it's no longer worth the money I'll just cancel the account. No tears here.

 

Posted

Only to the forum health.

 

Posted

Power Leveling and its effects on a game really differ from game to game. City of Heroes being 5 years into its life span and setting competition is on the horizon, quick leveling will bring players back and keep them here. With the ability to level a character to any benchmark allows players to access the game content dynamically. This is important as it can breathe new life into forgotten old Arcs. Anyone who believes I am incorrect I can site two sources.

Dark Age of Camelot the one feature player heralded as the reason they stayed with the game was /level command. This allowed players who had hit the level cap to create a new character of higher level allowing them to jump into the middle of mid to higher level content and RvR combat without weeks of grinding.

Everquest has just announced that they are releasing a new server ruleset which automatically set all new character to level 50/51.

Both features were added at the request of the players. Being able to to access the content they want, when they want is important for a game not actively releasing full content expansions.

 

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Oh honestly! What do you think the Mission Architect was built for? As if the Mission Architect provides no mission, story, or new enemy content from 1 to 49?!

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Everything I read indicated "user-created content", but the gray areas need to be better defined so that my idea of fun content doesn't conflict with how the devs want the game to be played.

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And are you just gonna solo content at 50? Because if your just a Power Leveled character with no player experience behind that character I would not want you on any team I am on! There is a vast chasm between a P.L.ed Player and a Player who has taken their lumps and put in the time behind a Character which can become very apparent, very quickly on a Team setting.


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And if the person behind the powerleveled character actually has experience and knows what they're doing? Then what?

Perhaps I should have included that I have two accounts and have been playing since July of 2008, mostly late at night after a majority of the population goes to bed due to my work schedule. I admit, it's not a long time compared to some people sporting 3, 4 and 5 years worth of vet badges, but I've been playing long enough to understand the game and how to play it. I shouldn't need to justify my ability to play this game to you or anyone.

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Instant Gratification is not the norm, nor should it be.

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I think you missed the part where I said I didn't want everything now. I think we should agree to disagree.

 

Posted

This game would not be here for 5 years if the powerleveling was not here as well. The devs recognized leveling in this game was a grind for no reason. They introduced xp smoothing then patrol xp to deal with the known problem, all while not touching BM and Demon farming.

Now MA that allows you to level even faster "without" the need to use "any" exploits whatsoever.

The past three weeks people appeared to be having more fun than ever. So no I don't think it is determintal to the game, without it I would not be here and many others would not as well.

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

 

Posted

for all of those that argued that a PLer hinders others because their either farming and reducing them player pool for teams, or because they dont know how to lpay they're level 50 properly...

really?

What about the players that log in for hours and RP in a corner in Atlas without ever firing off a power, doest that take away from the game??

and besides if you're PLing you still have to play a character. Who says that because you reach 50 faster you cant play?

Why?
You think this is the first and only toon the person has?

comon...please

if you say the Devs dont want it fine, but dont tell me it takes away from others cause i'mm say the same for ppl who sit around PLing taking up spots on the server.