MA is so dead that I have 51 plays on my arc so far.
Golly, I didn't realize.
/sarcasmoff
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I actually saw a lot of people in the Galaxy City building last night on Infinity, which is unusual even for the pre-Posi-post world. So I don't know if I'd let a sample size of one dictate your opinion.
[/ QUOTE ]
That seems to be exactly what you just did or attempted to do.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm, so it is.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, not to pick a nit here, bu showing there is a contradiction to a generalization is not necessarily subscribing to the opposite point of view.
Norp: "There's a Glarb over there, looks pretty Narb. Looks like Glars are Narb. I don't like Narb things, so I won't try any more Glarbs."
Gorp: "Well... there's a Glarb right over there that isn't Narb... maybe if you try another Glarb, it won't be Narb?"
Norp: "FLARGLEFARB!"
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I actually saw a lot of people in the Galaxy City building last night on Infinity, which is unusual even for the pre-Posi-post world. So I don't know if I'd let a sample size of one dictate your opinion.
[/ QUOTE ]
That seems to be exactly what you just did or attempted to do.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm, so it is.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, not to pick a nit here, bu showing there is a contradiction to a generalization is not necessarily subscribing to the opposite point of view.
Norp: "There's a Glarb over there, looks pretty Narb. Looks like Glars are Narb. I don't like Narb things, so I won't try any more Glarbs."
Gorp: "Well... there's a Glarb right over there that isn't Narb... maybe if you try another Glarb, it won't be Narb?"
Norp: "FLARGLEFARB!"
[/ QUOTE ]
indeed.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
[ QUOTE ]
Norp: "There's a Glarb over there, looks pretty Narb. Looks like Glars are Narb. I don't like Narb things, so I won't try any more Glarbs."
Gorp: "Well... there's a Glarb right over there that isn't Narb... maybe if you try another Glarb, it won't be Narb?"
Norp: "FLARGLEFARB!"
[/ QUOTE ]
Awesome.
Infatum on Virtueverse
[ QUOTE ]
Slices Cheese
[/ QUOTE ]
Care for some W(h)ine with that Cheese Sir? :P
The AE in Cap au Diable on Virtue looks as full as ever.
<QR to OP>
Nice work making a completely redundant thread on this matter 
You win teh interwebz!
Prediction:
[ QUOTE ]
Please discuss this topic in the appropriate thread:
FOLLOW UP: Abusing Mission Architect
or
The Official Farming Thread
Thanks,
--------------------
-Mod8-
[/ QUOTE ]
I think the gripe about having broken missions clogging the search results is valid.
My own mission is broken, and will remain listed but unplayable until I have a chance to to do a significant rewrite (as it used not just one but both of the maps that got yanked last patch). I'd prefer to pull it down until I can fix it, but the way the system works, there's no way to do that without killing the accumulated plays and ratings.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
I've been away from the game for a couple months. What about the MA was being exploited? What happened and what change was made?
[ QUOTE ]
MA is so dead that I have 51 plays on my arc so far.
Golly, I didn't realize.
/sarcasmoff
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, you have 51 rated plays... there's no way to determine, at this time, how many different people have played without rating your arc (between badges).
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
[ QUOTE ]
I've been away from the game for a couple months. What about the MA was being exploited? What happened and what change was made?
[/ QUOTE ]
People were farming rikti comm officers, which are worth significant amounts of xp and are virtually no challenge when made into their own group with no other rikti (only one comm officer summons a portal per spawn). People were leveling from 1 to 50 in hours off of them.
Between that and some less exploitable farms that have been cropping up the devs did a couple things:
- Reduce Rikti Comm Officer XP
- Locked access to characters that excessively abused them as an exploit (Although I have yet to meet anyone who had this happen)
- Capped the amount of tickets gainable in a single mission to 1500, personally I have yet to hit this cap despite doing a lot of AE, but apparently some people are more bothered by it.
Infatum on Virtueverse
[ QUOTE ]
I think the gripe about having broken missions clogging the search results is valid.
My own mission is broken, and will remain listed but unplayable until I have a chance to to do a significant rewrite (as it used not just one but both of the maps that got yanked last patch). I'd prefer to pull it down until I can fix it, but the way the system works, there's no way to do that without killing the accumulated plays and ratings.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, someone got the point, and didn't lapse into any strawman diatribes about farming. I have a reading comprehension award somewhere to give this person...
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
[ QUOTE ]
So after the big hammer descending on the MA with the last patch I haven't really used it. I just decided to go back and check it out on a whim. Not only is it empty, but half the arcs I choose do not even start. I'm guessing that they were invalidated when the patch hit and the players just decided it wasn't worth fixing them.
So great work on wrecking the entire thing. I doubt I'll bother with it any more, either. I get the feeling it's not worth it, much as the mission creators must have.
[/ QUOTE ]
I posted something similar elsewhere, but I'll say it here too....
I noticed a big drop in the amount of people in MA. I'd go to the one in Talos, and where it used to be full, there were just a few people in it. Atlas Park though was a different story. The place is still packed. On Freedom, Atlas Park almost perpetually has multiple instances because it's so full.
I don't think that many people gave up on it, as much as they just gravitated to a single zone. Naturally, some people do spend less time in it. When something is new and shiny, it's always popular for a while. Then it wears off within a few weeks and gameplay goes back to a norm. MA seems to be about on schedule.
Really, the only people who complain about MA are the ones who miss the Rikti Comm farms. The average player still gets a lot of enjoyment out of them. I took my level 11 tank to it, picked out a mission that turned out to be a farm, and got quite a bit of tickets from it. I rolled for about 15 recipes, several trays full of salvage, and got half of my powers slotted. Normally, most of the recipes I'd get would be for common IOs. Here, I was able to frankenslot several of my powers.
I know you're unhappy they "killed" it for you, but the changes were actually pretty minor. Two mobs were either removed or had their experience lowered, and a (still-generous) cap was placed on tickets. The changes seem reasonable to me and seem normal for the types of changes you'd expect for a brand new game mechanic.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
The MA isn't dead, I mean, I've been constantly invited to farming teams in it. Also, the farm nerf didn't remove farms, as 100% of the arcs I get invited to are farms or bomb exploits.
I've got my stalker Artimis Setelana. She has 317 badges last I checked. Yay!
Also 2 servers worth of alts, 3 of which aren't catgirls. Mew.
[ QUOTE ]
The MA isn't dead, I mean, I've been constantly invited to farming teams in it. Also, the farm nerf didn't remove farms, as 100% of the arcs I get invited to are farms or bomb exploits.
[/ QUOTE ]
In the last couple days, I found two missions out of the three or four that I played where you had allies helping you. In both cases, I had almost a dozen force field defenders following me around with dispersion bubble. One even threw in a handful of sonic defenders so that the 5% of attacks that did hit you had their damage reduced almost to half. As if that didn't make it boring enough, there was only one type of enemy.
If anyone's killing the MA, it's the players who make that garbage.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
Everyone can't be an expert designer whose mission will appeal to everyone who plays it on their first attempt.
I made a mission just to be silly and cute. The next day, I read so many posts about what people expect to 5-star and 1-star due to mission content that I almost pulled my arc off right then and there. I'm glad I didn't because my reviews have been more positive than negative.
Then again, my title was outlandish enough that the snooty types would turn up their noses and pass it by. I'm told that allies diminish the overall rewards in a mission. Perhaps, the designer of those defender filled arcs either didn't realize this or he or she just thought it would be fun for "someone" to have AI helpers?
[ QUOTE ]
So after the big hammer descending on the MA with the last patch I haven't really used it. I just decided to go back and check it out on a whim. Not only is it empty, but half the arcs I choose do not even start. I'm guessing that they were invalidated when the patch hit and the players just decided it wasn't worth fixing them.
So great work on wrecking the entire thing. I doubt I'll bother with it any more, either. I get the feeling it's not worth it, much as the mission creators must have.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have no direct way to measure the number of players playing individual arcs, but I do have a way to observe and analyze the statistics of mission arc creation. As near as I can determine, the controversy surrounding the 5/5 patch and discussions have not altered arc creation in a statistically significant fashion. Except for a glitch upward followed by a correction downward during and immediately following reactivation week, the arc generation curve is remarkably steady.
As a cross-check, I also track the maximum ID number, which is a proxy measure for the amount of work being done in the MA. For every arc that ends up contributing to the total, about six ID numbers are burned through. That number has also remained fairly constant in the short term and only slowly varying over time in the long term, and also shows no signs of a sudden drop in activity.
My only proxy for arc running is the unrated curve, which measures the number and percentage of arcs that are unrated. That curve is also very smooth and shows no signs of a sudden change. Which means that while there is no doubt a reduction in participation, that reduction has not filtered to the percentage of the player population playing lots of different arcs rather than the same ones.
The issue with invalid arcs not dropping out of search is a problem, as is the larger problem of arcs being invalidated by patches in the first place; a fact I've mentioned to a red name or five. But while I cannot make any direct statements about player population participation percentages, player authorship activity seems to be largely unaffected materially, at least in terms of generating new arcs. I am concerned about "patch-exhaustion" however, causing authors of existing arcs to decide not to continually update their arcs in response to patches. I'm not entirely immune to the problem myself, actually.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
[ QUOTE ]
Everyone can't be an expert designer whose mission will appeal to everyone who plays it on their first attempt.
I made a mission just to be silly and cute. The next day, I read so many posts about what people expect to 5-star and 1-star due to mission content that I almost pulled my arc off right then and there. I'm glad I didn't because my reviews have been more positive than negative.
Then again, my title was outlandish enough that the snooty types would turn up their noses and pass it by. I'm told that allies dimish the overall rewards in a mission. Perhaps, the designer of those defender filled arcs either didn't realize this or he or she just thought it would be fun for "someone"?
[/ QUOTE ]
There were a LOT of defender allies in the mission, and I still got two levels from that one mission. I think, like what happens with confused enemies, you don't get full experience when an allie helps you inflict damage. But these guys didn't have attacks. They just followed you around, so all the damage was from me. Maybe I was getting lower exp, but it sure didn't seem it. I can't imagine how much I would've gotten if I didn't have to share it with TWELVE other NPCs. 
The mission had an almost non-existent story, and it only had a single type of mob to fight, so it was pretty boring. It had a few 5-star ratings, but they must have come from friends, supergroup buddies, or secondary accounts, because it was pretty bad. I hated giving it a low rating (I really don't like giving low ratings), but I wasn't about to give it more than it deserved.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
[ QUOTE ]
There were a LOT of defender allies in the mission, and I still got two levels from that one mission. I think, like what happens with confused enemies, you don't get full experience when an allie helps you inflict damage. But these guys didn't have attacks. They just followed you around, so all the damage was from me.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's not possible to design custom critters with no attacks; that was one of the things modified early on in the MA. However, there does seem to be a loophole where you can set allies to "non-combat" and still have their PBAoE buff toggles affect you. I thought that had been considered a bug and was fixed prior to i14 live, but I encountered a mission that seemed to indicate that either the fix didn't take, or was re-introduced.
I was actually considering using such allies to help mitigate what was otherwise a too-difficult mission for some players, but I resisted because I suspect the devs will change that when they get the time to do so. I'm actually a little surprised the tactic doesn't exist in more farm missions than it does; it seems to indicate farmers do in fact want at least some challenge to go up against and not just a cakewalk. (Or they just haven't figured out the trick yet in sufficient numbers.)
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Farmers have told me that ANY ally, just by its mere existance in the mission would lower rewards. Is this true?
If I think something is really bad, I'll usually send a comment where I thought something wasn't to my liking (can't speak for anyone else) and offer an opinion of what I'd rather have seen. I don't give those any ratings. What I don't know is if my not rating something alters their rating (like giving them a zero). I had hoped it would just not count for or against them if I didn't rate it at all.
Okay! Twelve defenders is a bit much. And I can understand the dislike of Confusionists. I have a plant/psi dom and I'm pretty sure she only gets invites for her perma'dness and the Shockwavey goodness. I've even been politely asked not to use Seeds of Confusion... so yeah, I get it.
[ QUOTE ]
Farmers have told me that ANY ally, just by its mere existance in the mission would lower rewards. Is this true?
[/ QUOTE ]
No, they have to inflict damage. It works like kill-stealing in open zones works, not like XP leeching on teams works.
Honestly I think it would have been better to use team XP division for allies, since then you could create defenderbots that matched story plots without worrying about the mechanic being considered an exploit.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
[ QUOTE ]
Oh btw >,< a fix that works for some arcs that won't start -
Ie: not all of them that won't start are actually invalidated - though some certainly are -
Start an arc that does work, then drop it, then start the one you wanted. If it's invalidated it still won't go; but there seems to be a bug I run across now and then that won't start arcs that I know are working.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have noticed this bug as well. I usually switch to test one of my in development arcs, then back to the arc I want to run. It often times will work.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
|
What are you talking about? I'm having a blast!
[ QUOTE ]
It seems alive and well to me, maybe it has Revive?
[/ QUOTE ]I think Posi used mutation on it.
Champion.
Freedom.
We just coded it on a simple X-currentDate formula, so it nerfs itself automatically. -Babs on Accuracy Nerfs
Over 3 years, 1 - 50, whole lotta alt's, still having fun.