in before tl;dr
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I know that. My point is that you do so much as even something vaguely related to farming and some of the forumites act like you just [censored] their children at gunpoint.
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Understood and agreed. While I generally don't "farm" myself, I have done it in a minor way when nearing a level, just to finish the level off. I don't really consider that farming, but some will.
Some would accuse my youngster of that, because sometimes she just like to explore and streetsweep along the way. I don't consider that farming either; she's not doing it for XP or gear, just for fun.
Ignore the overzealous forumites -- on both sides. 
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Farming is farming, whether you are doing it for XP, gear or "fun". Besides getting XP and gear is fun!
Both you and your kid are farmers. Welcome to the club!
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QFT You said it, and I hope more people see it. The funny thing about this RPer vs Farmer argument is that anyone playing the game, for any reason, agenda, or goal, is a "farmer". Rp'er's are just farming missions for a good story, how is that really any different than those farming it for something else?
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QFT You said it, and I hope more people see it. The funny thing about this RPer vs Farmer argument is that anyone playing the game, for any reason, agenda, or goal, is a "farmer". Rp'er's are just farming missions for a good story, how is that really any different than those farming it for something else?
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It's easy to be right if you can always redefine words to mean only what you want them to.
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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It's interesting to me that there is no anti-farming faction in this argument; there is only an anti-AE-farming faction. The most vocal of this faction have stipulated that they don't consider farming bad or inherently exploitative.
I'm hearing no arguments philosophically opposed to farming itself, or the effects that farming has on the game. I'm just hearing a lot of rules lawyering about what is and isn't an exploit, and arguments about whether or not it's ethical to use AE to farm.
Nobody has offered any insight as to why farming should be done through PI portal missions or the Television, but not through AE. And, just to shore up a possible dead-end discussion, "because the Devs said so," isn't an explanation why one is ok, but not the other. It's just an observation that the Devs have targeted only the AE farms, and not PI/TV farms.
Is it because of exploits like Comm Officers and mobs with no ranged attacks? Those exploits have been dealt with. So why the ticket cap, and why the threats of punishment for those who use AE to create farms? In other words, why is AE farming wrong, whilst PI/TV farming is ok?
Here's my theory: the most vocal opposition to AE farming is coming from powerlevelers who suddenly found it difficult to charge lowbies 5-15M per run on their farms, because better farms were free and available to everyone through AE.
My opinion is that either farming is ok, in which case non-exploitative AE farming is ok, or farming isn't ok, in which case the PI farms need to be very aggressively nerfed, and PI farmkins retroactively punished, too.
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very curious indeed....
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
Dec out.
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
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I worked for several ISPs. Users who abused our Terms of Service had their internet access shut off. No eviction proceedings, no nothing.
its just that people who make this arguement commit the logical fallacy of thinking "I pay my rent monthy. I pay CoH monthly. Therefore CoH is the same as paying Rent and the same rules apply". Seeing as they've already exhibited a lack of reading comprehension skills, critical thinking skills, common sense, and basic literacy, is it so surprising that they'd draw illogical conclusions as well?
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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Nope. Not surprising at all.
And can I ask something of you all?
People keep tossing the term "RP'er" in whever they mean "Anti-Farmer". They are NOT one and the same, so, please don't use them as one and the same. Thank you.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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Nobody has offered any insight as to why farming should be done through PI portal missions or the Television, but not through AE. And, just to shore up a possible dead-end discussion, "because the Devs said so," isn't an explanation why one is ok, but not the other. It's just an observation that the Devs have targeted only the AE farms, and not PI/TV farms.
Is it because of exploits like Comm Officers and mobs with no ranged attacks?
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It's because the MA puts unprecedented power in the hands of the players to create content. The intent is for players to create story based content and not farms (source: Original Post, Original Post.)
Now because players have a great deal of power in creating missions, some feel the need to abuse that power to find ways to exploit it for powerleveling purposes. ( I do not say farming because powerleveling can be done through a number of different methods, farming being one),
Now the reality is if people farm the rest of the game, they are limited to the missions designed by the devs, so they presumably have the proper degree of risk/reward. But the problem with the MA isn't the Rikti Comm Officers, it's the ability to make missions LIKE the rikti comm officers... and the rikti dolls, and the melee boss farms... and whatever is the new trend. Because each time something like that happens, the devs have to try and play keep up with the MA and that leaves the rest of us in fear of what will happen to the MA if people continue to abuse it.
Case in point, several villain goups have been removed from the MA entirely because of exploiters (i.e Zig Prisoners). Those of us with arcs that used that group now have our missions invalidated by those changes.
In short, exploiters in the MA hurt EVERY user of the MA. We all get options removed, groups removed, maps removed, because of those exploiters. Farming in the rest of the game doesn't really impact us in nearly as a direct way as it does in the MA. If people abuse it enough, they may remove all rewards from the MA or remove the MA entirely and NONE of us want to see that.
So thats why we're much touchier about abuses in the MA as opposed to farming in the rest of the game. We don't want to see a great aspect of the game limited or removed because of some [censored] infantile jerkwads who can't play nice in the sandbox with the other kids.
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but you see, mobs being removed from MA is just lazyness and heavy handedness on the part of the Devs. Personally i think they are trying to invoke peer pressure on the farmers from the rest of the player base, hoping that all you non-farmers "Police us." I remember back when the family farm was all the rage. the devs didnt think it was cool. instead of completely removing the family as a group from the game, they simply just readjusted the rewards. So they devs haven't always been short sighted and heavy handed. the domineering approach is not necessary at all. they have shown in the past that they know how to handle things in a very consise manner, that benefits all members involved. This time around, they are just trying to prove a point. for instance, the roman healer guys. they completely jerked those without any thought. just take away the xp. that way you leave the surgeons, that what they are called, for flavor. As other mobs arise that dont fit into the formula, dont just jerk them out, adjust. they have shown in the past that they are very capable of this. i dont get all this heavy handed nonsense.....
If anyone cares at this point:
My mood is that I'm waiting for I15, which I hope will fix several issues with the current poor/incomplete implementation of MA, to wit:
A way to acquire more publication slots;
A better search engine;
A better player rating system.
I'm also hoping for continuing "tuning" of the system to work out bugs, add more maps and stock critters (and return those that had to be removed because they were bugged), and other quality-of-life improvements.
Many of the mission creators I've spoken with have reported a similar experience: they had a blast writing and sharing their missions, filling their three slots... and that's it. As far as they're concerned, the "mission creation" feature went greyed-out just when they were getting into it.
Imagine if we were only allowed to create three characters, total, across all servers. And if we wanted to try something else, we'd have to delete one and start over from level 1.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
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Hotels have specific laws pertaining to them. Private homes do not. Try again.
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
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
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I worked for several ISPs. Users who abused our Terms of Service had their internet access shut off. No eviction proceedings, no nothing.
its just that people who make this arguement commit the logical fallacy of thinking "I pay my rent monthy. I pay CoH monthly. Therefore CoH is the same as paying Rent and the same rules apply". Seeing as they've already exhibited a lack of reading comprehension skills, critical thinking skills, common sense, and basic literacy, is it so surprising that they'd draw illogical conclusions as well?
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And your EULA is the starting point for jury deliberations. Just like that sign outside the grocery store says they arent responsible for damage from carts. If liability was that easy to duck, lawyers would be out of a job. ask any lawyer what wierd stuff comes out of juries.
but it all really comes to the fact that the devs have control of the code, while we have control of our credit cards. Piss enough of us off and your credit card isnt enough to keep them gainfully employed. The devs seem to realize this, you do not.
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
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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Because I don't thrive on paying for abuse, and I ask for rules to actually be defined it hardly makes me a rules lawyer
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Now the reality is if people farm the rest of the game, they are limited to the missions designed by the devs, so they presumably have the proper degree of risk/reward. But the problem with the MA isn't the Rikti Comm Officers, it's the ability to make missions LIKE the rikti comm officers... and the rikti dolls, and the melee boss farms... and whatever is the new trend. Because each time something like that happens, the devs have to try and play keep up with the MA and that leaves the rest of us in fear of what will happen to the MA if people continue to abuse it.
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Winterlords
Wolves
Portals
Recluce's victory
Sorry no difference here except that in the past we weren't treated to a hissy fit by the lead developer. Of course as an upside we got info about going rogue early.
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Unless of course you agreed to a legal contract before any money changes hands that say they can boost you for pretty much any reason they see fit if they feel you are violating their rules. Which you did.
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In this particular case they are more than likely relying on the fact it would never be worth anyone's effort to litigate this
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
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Your mini bars have price lists ?
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I'm also hoping for continuing "tuning" of the system to work out bugs, add more maps and stock critters (and return those that had to be removed because they were bugged), and other quality-of-life improvements.
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LOL and I am hoping for the return of the COP, Base raids, the calvin scott task force. The devs have an idiosyncratic list of priorities, where they can disregard major portions of the game that are 99% there for new features that cause problems
My take (before I read anyone else's responses):
Farming: running content repeatedly for the Rewards (XP/Inf./Prestige/Drops/Etc.).
Farmer: one who Farms frequently or even exclusively.
Farm: any regular game content that Farmers run frequently, usually because it gives an unusually high level of Reward for the overall Effort involved in running it. It has not been created specifically for the purpose of being Farmed, and, while any content can be Farmed, only the content giving the highest Reward Levels is generally referred to as an actual Farm.
Farm Mission: any Mission Architect mission created to be Farmed. (I use this term to distinguish MArch Farms from regular content Farms. MArch Farms are actually designed to be Farmed. The regular content Farms are not designed with the intent of being Farmed.)
Farming hurts the game in some ways, and helps it in others. A certain amount of Farming won't hurt the game in the long run, but if it were allowed to increase beyond that level, it would drive non-Farmers away from the game, and make the game more Farm-oriented overall. The Devs feel that this would be bad for the game, and I agree with them.
If we were allowed to build Farm Missions in MArch, the overall level of Farming in the game would increase. Eventually, it would lead to the harm described above.
If they allow Farm Missions now, then later say "Okay, there's getting to be too much Farming, so we're going to remove all Farm Missions from the Mission Architect, and you're no longer allowed to build them", the resulting storm would make the one we just had look like a light drizzle.
Thus, "No building Farms in Mission Architect". If you want to Farm, use non-Farm MArch content, or use the regular in-game Farms already available.
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Yes but my perspective has a 1000 years of jurisprudence and cultural norms behind it.
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You really don't. This isn't a court of law or anything like it. This is you paying to "go over to someone else's house" to play with their toys. Their rules, whether you agree with them or not. Specifics are not given to avoid exactly the kind of "rules lawyering" you're thriving on.
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and you would be wrong. Just like letting some one spend the night at your house. Once money is exchanged, different rules apply. You must go through eviction proceedings before you can remove them, if you have accepted their money.
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I work in a hotel. You couldn't be more wrong.
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Hotels have specific laws pertaining to them. Private homes do not. Try again.
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Do video games?
I think the people in the AE buildings in Cap and Atlas understand what the limits are and have gone back to having fun.
There is something that you mentioned that seems a little off. What unusally high reward is being gained by those running the BM and TV farms? Can you give a "specific" example of a "current" farm that supports your statement of "unusally high rewards"?
It seems to me what you are referring too is "expliots" being farmed, not farms that are examples of exploits because there are none of those. If you know of any then you need to report them to the devs asap.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
In any MMO, the content with the highest rewards will be consistently replayed.
That's basic MMO law right there, stemming back from Everquest. You can't stop farming. You simply live with it. Without "farmers", there would be no in-game economy where you could BUY the things you wanted/needed. If you had to lace up your bootstraps and "hunt" (for lack of better word) down the items that you specifically required (you being 1 of X class/race combinations), you would be paying $15 a month for 28 years, since that's how long it'd likely take you to gear up and move along.
I'm a newb to CoV, but a vet of MMOs in general. I just recently discovered the MA, and I'm finding leveling my guy up through the teens while using the MA to get myself DOs - or whatever other random junk tickles my whimsy - to be a BLAST. I get to move at a pace that *I* want - not dictated artificially by whatever content the devs have created - and I get to experience new powers and be able to do new things at a rate that I find enjoyable.
I jumped on CoV because I thought, "Man, I'm tired of fantasy, and I want to play a cool villain with super powers." I'm invested in the character and I want to see him grow stronger and stronger. Like I said, I'm an old MMO vet...I realize that MMOs really aren't the medium through which one enjoys storylines - for however good they are, they're still too disconnected and disjointed for me to actually follow and care - so I play to min/max, to discover powers, to formulate tactics, to work at killing faster and faster....all of that stuff is awesomecakes to me.
So, I recently discovered the MA, and unfortunately, my mind gravitated immediately towards figuring out how to use it to level faster. I created maps with 19 boss fights. Sue me. I enjoy ripping through them with my Brute. Each fight has its own permutations...I've gotten killed a few times...but when I'm done, I go and delete the mission I just ran, then create a brand new one and go rampage on some new enemies.
Am I creating deep storylines? Nah. I don't care to. Although most of my stories are, "Hey, these people hate marijuana, go kill them!" - just to throw something of myself into them. Speaking of which, the AE is excellent for those of us who like to take a few tokes, then go virtually destroy things.
Post-edit: Just wanted to add one more thing. I ALREADY made up all of the RPing that I was looking to do - I created my character, chose his powers, made his costume (which is awesome, btw, and has gotten several compliments), then wrote up his background. While I'm technically NOT an RPer, I've fleshed out this character in ways that are important to ME. It's sad that people are so fascist that they want to force me to play a game the way that THEY want instead of how *I* want. The draw of MMOs is the ability to fuel your OWN adventure, instead of playing a game-on-rails, which is what most single-player games offer. Basically, I play an MMO in the way that I'd play the game if no one else was around...it's a purely selfish act for which I pay $15.
I see nothing wrong with how you or anyone else is playing the game, aside from the RMT'ers. Cheers.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I was totally pissed at posi's original hissy fit. I was very vocal and had many of my posts deleted by mods for being extemely harsh. I canceled 3 accounts and kept 1 active.
I am stating these things because I want to make sure everyone knows where i stood on his response.
I was not totally satisfied with his follow up post but i did resub my sons account mainly because my son shouldn't suffer cause i got mad.
I play challenge misions consisting of all bosses with a fire/rad. sometimes we make them all elite bosses. the rewards for these missions are huge influence and tickets.(1 500 ticket cap allowed us to have shorter runs with more breaks inbetween.
We enjoy that challenge and we create a team that can steamroll that content when we work together. When setting up our runs if you listen on vent it sounds like we are setting up for a master of statesman or rsf going by our discussions of what we need.
We do not invite noobs to our missions/ we do not powerlevel people . We are selfish and sometimes have to run 2 maps at a time once one map reaches the mooch cap.(that is really fun cause we end up racing to finish the challenge before the other team can.
Since we have fun doing this we are not farming. and therefore have nothing to worry about except self rightoues anti farmers who enter our missions and try to get us yanked down.
since we have several players who run the challenge missions we are thinking of reporting our own map just to get it reviewed and flagged as untouchable.
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A certain amount of Farming won't hurt the game in the long run, but if it were allowed to increase beyond that level, it would drive non-Farmers away from the game, and make the game more Farm-oriented overall.
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What is your reasoning for this statement?
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It's interesting to me that there is no anti-farming faction in this argument; there is only an anti-AE-farming faction. The most vocal of this faction have stipulated that they don't consider farming bad or inherently exploitative.
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That's because most of the idiots spouting that view are probably still busy in Positron's followup topic screaming their heads off about mean farmers threatening their children or acting holier than thou about how amazing their arcs are that aren't getting plays because farmers are mean and prevent people from playing storyarcs.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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The Mission Architect is a new system, and it has a new rule, specifically for the Mission Architect: "Do not build Farms." You are smart enough and experienced enough to be able to follow that rule, if you want to.
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This is the part I have the difficulty with. I have yet to see the conduct, eula or devs say exactly that "Don't build farms" since the release of i14. All I see is anti-farmers saying "devs/rules said don't build farms" based off how they interpret what the devs said. I mean, in the entire 200ish page post about farming, there was ONE dev comment, and it was about a gold watering can. Maybe I missed it somewhere in the 2000 pages of posts but I've yet to see it. The closest thing I could find in posi's post specifically banning farms is to not put farm terms in your description because you might be inappropriately banned (most likely by the zealous RPers that have a bug up their butt about farming and report-ban an arc - at least that's how I interpret it).
They do say don't exploit the system to provided unintended statistical advantages and posi stated they adjust things based on the reward/risk ratio. Fine, that is perfectly acceptable, comm officers were stupidly underpowered for the reward they gave, particularly the lvl 42 ones because they had some hydra bonus attached to them which obviously shouldn't have been there when you weren't fighting the hydra (normal comm officers gave far less rewards compared to the 42-42 ones). Honestly though, my fix would have been to make it so all comm officers automatically summoned portals the second they got agroed, whether or not they were held/stunned/slept/etc. The heavy handed fix they have implemented now completely sets comm officers in the wrong direction imho because now they are worth almost nothing and are capable of causing far more havoc than the average minion if not quickly locked down.
I would say the same with the hover blasting of rangeless melee custom critters, obviously an unbalanced risk/reward (the devs actually had this problem before, warwolves didn't always have rocks to throw on those warwolf only mishs). That too was something that clearly needed to be fixed.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
When MA came out, the story telling aspect was, quite honestly, meaningless to me. For me, MA meant I had the ability to finally make challenging missions that were actually difficult to complete. That's not to say I didn't put a story in my arcs, but its purely secondary in nature. Before MA, my typical play-night usually consisted of doing a quick speed run of ITF, LGTF and STF in under 2 hours then either sitting in the base and chatting while working mids/browsing the internet or focusing on quickly leveling my newest theory-crafted toon with my SG (I rarely group with PuGs because I find the level of skill/character advancement in the common PuGs frustratingly slow and not fun).
Generally, that's what I do in this game for fun, I open up mid's and design myself a new toon based around a theory of operation and then make it and see if it performs as expected. My playstyle purely revolves around creating a toon, gathering the IO sets for it, and testing it. MA is just another portion of CoH that I can theory-craft in order to make missions as punishingly hard as possible and then building a team to do them. I honestly have no interest in playing Soandso's mission arc about the background story of their catgirl. Likewise, I don't care about Soandso2's mission arc that has a great story but is still just a bunch of Council click missions (or whatever group/standard goal). Now, if someone makes a challenging arc with lots of variety and a great story, that's fine, that's fun, but honestly, it'd be just as much fun for me if the intro said "placeholder" and it was a fun mish.
MA also provided me with another option to play, one I didn't have before, the ability to make a quick mission that I found fun and challenging AND netted a decent return on rewards. I didn't do much meowing, because I found it to be horribly boring, I'd much rather farm Elite Paragon Protectors (or even Lord Recluse's if my buddy's bubbler is available). MA also allowed me to craft the mission in such a way that I wouldn't have to bug people for fill requests in order to provide myself with a challenge (because I personally find them irritating so I don't subject others to fill requests), namely by filling a mission with just lewys and bosses. I thought MA was awesome for this because it gives me something to do at 2 in the morning when no I know is online and also allows me to advance my toons at what I feel to be a reasonable rate without having to bug others with fill requests.
Of course, now, the threads such as these fill me with a fear that if I go and make outdoor arcs filled with lewys or bosses that some righteous rper on a personal mission to ban the game of all farmers is going to see my mish, hop in, see the lack of a story, see the lewy spawns and rush off to cry to the devs (via the report button). Resulting in the loss of my slot. I honestly don't see how filling my mish so there are no minions constitutes abuse, but I've seen posts on the boards of players that insist that it is. Lewys and bosses give higher rewards for a reason, they're higher risk (and honestly minions provide NO risk which is why I exclude them, they're wastes of my time). I'm not circumventing Posi's risk/reward critereon, I'm manually increasing my risk to increase my rewards. By filling the mish with lewys/bosses I actually provide myself with a challenge that sometimes even manages to kill me, to me that's fun, something with a chance of failure but also a chance for great reward.
Is my lewy/boss mish a farm? I guess technically it is, but Castle's post about rerunning the freak-lympics because you think its fun isn't farming but rerunning it for rewards is farming. What if I'm running the mission for both? Is it farming, not farming or some kind of Shroedinger's cat farming? Where its not one or the other but both? That's why these zealous anti-farmer posts really tick me off. The worry me that what is fun for me, might be considered a farm by another, resulting in reportings, banning and then me having to deal with CSRs to get it fixed.
I understand the RPers complaint that meow farm mishs fill up the MA and block out their story mishs that they enjoy. Of course, I could say story focused arcs that provide uninteresting missions (no matter how well crafted the story is) block out the kinds of missions that I enjoy. The pendulum swings both ways, and while I usually side against farmers when it comes to most prior dev nerfs (family, demons, etc), in this case I feel its the RPers that are in the wrong because they're the ones being totally intolerant of other people's playstyles for little reason other than they're different in what they find fun. Of course, out of courtesy for the RPers, my short lewy/boss mish gets unpublished when I'm done with it for that night because I have no interest in badges outside of accolades and couldn't care less about the X players played or stars awarded badges.
I've also heard the argument "well you could go play other peoples missions, there are good ones out there." To me, that's just nonsense. I'm not denying there are good missions out there, but for every mission that I would consider good, there far more bad ones. My career frequently results in 10-12 hour days in which I often spend doing an awful lot of reading, particularly patents and white papers and also writing reports. The last thing I want to do when I get home after filtering through 300 different patents is go through a list of 20,000 missions to try and find 1 good one to play that night when instead I can just instantly create one the I want to play. Of course, the tags help with the filtering, but with no one daring to use RBMA out fear of the righteous RPer bans, the tags don't help me (much like patent abstracts).
My job also prevents me from logging on until rather late at night (usually after midnight), at which point Guardian has about 8 people online, and 5 of them are afk severely limiting my options on what I can do that night. I could move servers, but after 4.5 years on Guardian I really have no desire to do so. MA breathed new life into the game for me because suddenly I was actually able to instantly play missions I wanted to play and didn't result in the mindnumbing challenge-free boredom of the standard 2-3 minion, 1 lewy spawn or relying on fills to up the difficulty. It also allows me to stay out of caves, which I really dislike and do NOT find fun (I never understood how a city with so many danged caves in the bedrock could have so many skyscrapers). And in actuality, most of the standard radio/cim/FBZ/RWZ missions net better overall rewards per unit time than MA missions because of the lack of salvage and purple drops, especially now with the 1500 cap. I mean, technically, if you want to do 'optimal' farming MA isn't the way to go. I play my MA lewy/boss missions because I enjoy soling herds of lewys/bosses over herds of minions/lewys (much like I enjoy fighting herds of bosses/EBs/AVs when on a team over the standard minion/lewy/boss spawns) and MA allows me to do just that and improves my gaming experience. Which is the true goal of the devs, to improve the overall player gaming experience, not craft a game that focuses on having fun in only one kind of way. The MA system has the potential to cater to both rewards focused and rp focused players through its incredible flexibility.
When MA was first discussed the rewards focused portion of the community had practically no interest in it while the RPers did. By adding the rewards and making the system flexible enough to allow players to individually set the level or risk they felt comfortable with so as to improve their netted rewards, it made the MA appealing to both factions (of course the poor PvPers are still left in the cold, all 3 of them that are left). With this recent slew of anti-farm rhetoric, the reward based players have shied away from MA out of fear of retribution. This hostile playstyle vs playstyle mentality serves to only make these people feel excluded and ignored which harms the game (see: PvP). The MMO graveyard is full of MMOs that suffered the fate of having a dev team that tried to force players to play in a manner that they felt was fun based on their vision, but was ultimately not all that fun for the player (as many of us from the states days remember).
Edit: minor clarification and spelling fix