Ticket Cap Real Numbers / Efficiency

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Focusing on efficient grinding/farming is simply going to bring more changes to the game, and not in the direction grinders/farmers want to see.

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The problem is "play for the content" completely ignores that, outside of custom enemies and a few splurges of text, which you quickly click off of, or never notice in the first place (especially if running on teams as other than the leader), there IS NO, and I repeat NO "new" content in MA. It's simply the same stuff as in the regular game with a slightly finer slicing and dicing of the parameters of the BigBad.

Note: This is NOT meant to take away from the authors of arcs in any way, shape or form. I've played through several absolutely brilliant arcs. But, at the end of it, it's still "find objective", "trounce objective", rinse, repeat.

The devs need to realize that some people play in a rewards-oriented manner and make adjustments to accomodate this style of play without unduly nerfing everything (making MA a useless waste of time) or unduly rewarding them (so that we have a revisitation of the rampant "meow" situation we had before the last patches).

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You say that like it's a bad thing that CoH has a different model (business or otherwise) than WoW...

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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You say that like it's a bad thing that CoH has a different model (business or otherwise) than WoW...

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Well that's arguable, but I was taking issue with you using general terms instead of speaking specifically about CoX.

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Last time I checked, Games were supposed to be a recreational activity. Playing a game "efficiently" tends to turn the activity to a monotonous grind which to me resembles a job on an assembly line.

Oddly enough, if a lot of people gravitate to the assembly line, the Devs respond by changing the game and making the parts the assembly line focused on even less appealing for casual players as a result of the Devs' effort to return the assembly line workers back to their normal level of productivity.

In other words, people who play MMO's efficiently tend to show the Devs what in the game should be modified so that the casual gamer can play the game without feeling inferior to those so-called Efficiency Experts.

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I don't know man. I wouldn't mind my grinding being more efficient so that I could get around to the fun bits. I'd love to know what setup the OP is using to get that many tickets that quickly, but I understand that if he posted it, it would probably quickly get out of hand. And we'd get nerfed even worse. Which is just sad.

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Actually, what I hope the Devs would realize is that we need more missions objectives both in the MA/AE and in the normal in-game content!

Catering to Efficient Expert gamers in CoH would probably mean that the Devs would need to force CoH to resemble other games out there, with their silly l00t grinds, replacing "gear" with "better" gear, and escalating the level-cap with more filler skills. Like someone on the forums already said, I forget who, CoH doesn't force you to replace Skill of "Ice-Sword" with an "Ice-Sword Rank II" and then a few levels after with "Ice Sword Rank III".

The reason those other games do the endless Ranking race is because people who gravitate to this Efficiency gameplay need the constant Ding and the Bigger Numbers, but essentially, this race means that the ceiling is always rising without providing any meaningful content anyway.

From what I've seen in CoH, the Devs chose to focus on providing an experience that is satisfying from Lv1 to Lv50 and encourage the player to cultivate a stable of different characters each with its rewarding strengths and challenges.

What I see in other games reminds me of a Donkey pulling a cart while a carrot is dangling in front of it. When I realize the Devs of those games consider me a Donkey, I quit playing those games.

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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Well that's arguable, but I was taking issue with you using general terms instead of speaking specifically about CoX.

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To speak specifically about CoX, I say that we need more mission goals, mission objectives, more ways to interact with the gameworld, more gameplay options that revolve around doing something more than just maximizing XP/INF-per-minute rates.

I say this because I think that had the Devs wished to encourage the population of Efficient Gamers in CoX, they would've just released the MA in I13 because instead of letting us design custom critters, and craft stories, the Efficient Gamer would've been just as happy, or happier even with user-crafted Rikti Comm Officer missions!

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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I don't know man. I wouldn't mind my grinding being more efficient so that I could get around to the fun bits....

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See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

Have you even considered all the changes CoX has experienced since its inception? Changes that have made leveling up faster (Rested XP for example), changes that have made our characters have way more options to get richer, sooner... You can't just focus on one nerf and judge the game by just that one standard. Overall, CoX now is a much more lenient and easier game than it used to be when I joined in.

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

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I'm debating putting that in my signature -- I think it rather thoroughly sums up why the Devs are against power leveling and farming.

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My two cents:

The Devs are loathe to tell us what the "Speed Limit" is for rewards for what I guess are very understandable reasons (haven't figured them all out, competition would use the info, setting the speed limit high enough for normal play but low enough to prevent abuse may not be possible).

Regardless, there is one. There is some speed which, if adopted by enough people, would NECESSITATE nerfs (or some sweeping restructure of the game, like an 'insta 50' mode or something).

I think they should decide on a Speed Limit, tell us what it is, and enforce it with hard code. Otherwise, guys like you are just going to find it anyway, just like the Real Numbers.

A question: if the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, and actually said 'garnering rewards faster than x/y is too fast', and if that Limit were somewhat smaller than what you can hit now, would you quit or just edge really close to the limit?

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Story Arcs I created:

Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!

Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!

Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!

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A question: if the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, and actually said 'garnering rewards faster than x/y is too fast', and if that Limit were somewhat smaller than what you can hit now, would you quit or just edge really close to the limit?

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I wouldn't change my behavior in any way.

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See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

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...I think it rather thoroughly sums up why the Devs are against power leveling and farming.

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Bravo.

In my opinion, MMO's are only fun if you play them with friends, or PuG and make friends, and this you can do from Lv1 to the level-cap.

Games that tell me "first level up some, and then we'll show you what fun really is", I eventually get disillusioned with and quit, because deep down inside, the fun is either in You (and your friends), or it isn't.

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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Actually, what I hope the Devs would realize is that we need more missions objectives both in the MA/AE and in the normal in-game content!

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Yes.

I was surprised that there's no kinds of mission with switches that need toggling for doors/bridges/traps and would help add to the teamwork aspect.

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A question: if the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, and actually said 'garnering rewards faster than x/y is too fast', and if that Limit were somewhat smaller than what you can hit now, would you quit or just edge really close to the limit?

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Unless the limit was generous, I would probably exceed it until they told me to stop. If they did, I would likely stop playing for a while, and then I would come back and ride the limit as close as possible.

It should be noted that I don't powerlevel. If the limit was generous enough to not matter to me, even though I almost certainly level much faster than average, I wouldn't care a ton personally. It would, however, probably drive some of my friends away, and I wouldn't like that.

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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

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The Devs are loathe to tell us what the "Speed Limit" is for rewards for what I guess are very understandable reasons (haven't figured them all out, competition would use the info, setting the speed limit high enough for normal play but low enough to prevent abuse may not be possible).

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I think that the Devs do not want to declare a Speed Limit because this number keeps changing according to what the games' population does.

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Regardless, there is one. There is some speed which, if adopted by enough people, would NECESSITATE nerfs (or some sweeping restructure of the game, like an 'insta 50' mode or something).

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Clearly there is such a limit, but this limit is in my understanding split between different gameplay mechanisms, i.e. there's a limit to how efficiently different game-activities promote your character.

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A question: if the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, and actually said 'garnering rewards faster than x/y is too fast', and if that Limit were somewhat smaller than what you can hit now, would you quit or just edge really close to the limit?

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If the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, I personally couldn't care less. I've already been through many debates with people who tried to rub in that they had Lv50 characters before I did, and showing off their purple-build this, and purple-build that... but for myself, the fun in this game has little to do with how successful my stats/numbers are and a lot more with how much fun the gameplay of my chosen AT/power-set combination brings me.

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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I don't know man. I wouldn't mind my grinding being more efficient so that I could get around to the fun bits....

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See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

Have you even considered all the changes CoX has experienced since its inception? Changes that have made leveling up faster (Rested XP for example), changes that have made our characters have way more options to get richer, sooner... You can't just focus on one nerf and judge the game by just that one standard. Overall, CoX now is a much more lenient and easier game than it used to be when I joined in.

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Whoa, back the truck up. I'm not judging the game by one nerf. I'm judging AE by two nerfs (tickets and mob difficulty in AE). AE, when it came out, was an excellent vehicle to making the standard content easier (I could buy SOs with tickets and save my inf for IOs on the market). It was also fairly easy and fun new content as well. However, it also suffered from a glut of basically duplicate farming missions. In attempting to fix the one problem, they've also made the fairly easy and fun new content extremely difficult. Effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm recently back from an extended (2 year or so) leave from the game. It is a lot of fun for me to try out new builds, different ways to try out new powers and of course, play through the content with friends, make new friends while playing through the content, etc. It is just plain easier to get to that fun stuff when the enhancements are easier to get so that I don't have to spend the majority of my available game time grinding for influence, merits or tickets.

A better, more community friendly, solution might have been just flagging all the boss farms after the first one as duplicates and deleting them. Sure some people would run it constantly, and people like myself might run it once a week or less. But as the OP points out, that's pretty much an inevitability based on efficiency. (Meaning that people will still farm, just farm something else).

I'm personally not a fan of farming for farming's sake. I think it is pretty boring to kill the same mob for hours on end. I think more thought could go into making the most efficient farming mission more fun and less utility. There's no reason an AE mission shouldn't be both fun and farmable at the same time, just like regular missions.

Even a rikti comm officer farm could be made more interesting by playing it up as some sort of annual rikti comm officer convention, with a lot of amusing npc chit-chat ("Can you believe how much they're charging for water?" "Hey are you going to that portal seminar?" "Wow, I can't believe security keeps letting heroes into this thing.") and maybe a "RiktiCommCon '09 ID Badge: All day access for all three days!" as souvenir.

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Actually, what I hope the Devs would realize is that we need more missions objectives both in the MA/AE and in the normal in-game content!

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Yes.

I was surprised that there's no kinds of mission with switches that need toggling for doors/bridges/traps and would help add to the teamwork aspect.

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See the Cavern of Trancendance mission in the Hollows.

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Story Arcs I created:

Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!

Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!

Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!

Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

Perhaps the Devs made a mistake when they let people believe that you can and "should" create a character and grow it solely in an AE center.

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I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!

Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati

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See the Cavern of Trancendance mission in the Hollows.

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Sounds good except for the part where I checked ParagonWiki and it said that this path is for a Magic origin contact and I'm a Natural

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Er... IIRC you get to the Cavern contact just by doing all the Hollows arcs, not based on your origin... doesn't matter if you're Natural and the contact is magic.

Your origin contact(s) only matter until about level 5 or you leave Atlas park.

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Currently: 50s (5), 40s (3), 30s (5)
Red and blue side, mostly Infinity, Virtue, and Freedom.

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A better, more community friendly, solution might have been just flagging all the boss farms after the first one as duplicates and deleting them.

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There are over 20,000 missions. Missions that are found to be farms were already being deleted or banned as quickly as they could find them (presumably). Apparently, these measures were not sufficient.

Morreover, they are already being accused of banning arcs that fit the pattern of abusive arcs but are not 'intended' as such, like challenge arcs.

Moreover, apparently one practice is to publish a farm mission then unpublish it when it is not being used to prevent it being banned (undoubtedly part of why we have over 100,000 arc IDs used for less than 50,000 arcs).

I'm not sure the Devs yet know how far they may have to go to get things to a place where both they and we are happy.

Some extreme and seemingly incompatible thoughts have been competing in my head:

1) Having an Instant 50 option at character creation (and perhaps for existing characters) would remove all point in 'racing' to 50. It is precedented by Guild Wars. Due to the MA. there is now infinite content for level 50 characters (missions are being published faster than you can run them). maybe the players that would get bored and quit if they had insta 50s are users that you would lose anyway.

2) Create a Speed Limit, code it in as a Diminishing Returns or hard cap on rewards being gained faster than a certain speed. Now people can farm to their hearts content if that is fun, and they don't break the game. You lose only people that feel they have to beat the system (or are used to speeds far above 'gamebreaking'), and casual players are unaffected.

3) Let people buy purples and levels with real money.

Any of these would kill farming, if that's what you really want to do.

I don't think the Devs really want to kill farming per se. They just don't want people to feel they need to farm to advance at a good speed (whatever that is).

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Story Arcs I created:

Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!

Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!

Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!

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Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

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I'm not saying they did say that. But generally I found MA content to be a fresh alternative to the same level 1-20 content in Atlas and the Hollows that I've traditionally had to run through with every character. Nor am I saying that MA content should be any easier or more rewarding, but it wasn't to begin with if you weren't playing a farming mission.

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Perhaps the Devs made a mistake when they let people believe that you can and "should" create a character and grow it solely in an AE center.

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They made a mistake in attempting to make farming missions worthless for farming by making ALL MA missions put out rewards that are worth less than the equivalent non-MA missions. They could have taken a number of other approaches. They could have used reporting to weed out inappropriately content-devoid farming missions. They could have made the rating system more specific by rating on more criteria than an overall star-rating (content, level-balance, length, etc) and allowed users to search by specific ratings to weed out farms. They could have limited the amount of bosses that appear in a mission without any minions, lts, elite bosses or arch villains/heroes.

It just smacks of laziness to broadly change the system the way they did. It won't stop farming, but it did discourage my use of the system until I've exhausted the other new content that I have yet to explore in the core game.

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3) Let people buy purples and levels with real money.


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This just might kill multiple birds with one stone. People who want to speed-level get that option while COX makes a little money and those annoying "inf for cash" guys will get shut out by legitimate means.

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After reading all your psots, LordXenite, I see the same theme through out your messages. ME ME ME ... I I I ... I've never seen someone so focussed on their own view point. The key to any discussion is looking at it from other people's perspective.

See guys, I play the game to play the game.

I care not for getting to Lv50,

I care not for purpling a build because I know that eventually those goals are within my reach if I persevere.

were *I* Positron, I'd take away the ability to use tickets to buy rewards other than the unlockable MA/AE content, and instead give only XP/INF and Merits from MA/AE content, and with reduced rates so that MA/AE content is still played by people who want to experience it for the content and not because it grants better rewards than the normal in-game content.

I say this because I think that had the Devs wished to encourage the population of Efficient Gamers in CoX, they would've just released the MA in I13 because instead of letting us design custom critters, and craft stories, the Efficient Gamer would've been just as happy, or happier even with user-crafted Rikti Comm Officer missions!

See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

In my opinion, MMO's are only fun if you play them with friends, or PuG and make friends, and this you can do from Lv1 to the level-cap.

Games that tell me "first level up some, and then we'll show you what fun really is", I eventually get disillusioned with and quit, because deep down inside, the fun is either in You (and your friends), or it isn't.

If the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, I personally couldn't care less. I've already been through many debates with people who tried to rub in that they had Lv50 characters before I did, and showing off their purple-build this, and purple-build that... but for myself, the fun in this game has little to do with how successful my stats/numbers are and a lot more with how much fun the gameplay of my chosen AT/power-set combination brings me.

Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

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Catering to Efficient Expert gamers in CoH

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I didn't say "cater to". I simply feel that they should understand that there ARE this type of gamer there, and take this into account.

And NO, it wouldn't be WoW with constant deprecation of "the old hotness" with "the new hotness".

There's already, currently, a point when a toon caps out (L50, full purples, IO'ed to hell and back, all the accolades, etc). And I'm not saying they should make it EASIER to hit that cap-out point. Merely that they not try to nerf someone who's busting hump playing to maximize rewards and get their toons closer to that sort of "ideal".

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Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

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Never mind that the devs SPECIFICALLY stated that you would be able to level a toon from 1 to 50 inside MA without hitting external content.

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Perhaps the Devs made a mistake when they let people believe that you can and "should" create a character and grow it solely in an AE center.

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They didn't "let people believe". They flat out SAID it was an option.

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