Why are there still a MASSIVE amount of "farms"?
By
300_below,
Posted on: 2009-06-05 06:22 in Mission Architect
Some of the farming missions tend to disappear after a while.
Now, if Posi's warning is actaully being carried out, that means that the missions were reported, the GM's looked at the mission and locked it out.
And if so, then one of that player's three mission slots has been locked out as well.
If there is a finite number of farmers, then this will clear up, particularly if a player with two to three locked out mission slots is actually banned from playing arcs as well, but I no idea if this is the case.
Farming, in one form or another, has been going on since Issue 1 from what I understand.. I wasn't around at that point but there have certainly been enough "Farming" thread to confirm that before they nerfed taunt Tanks used to round up hundreds of enemies and pack them into a nice tight spot so the team could blast away at them for easy XP. That said did you, or anyone, really think that one nerf would do the trick? All the "farmers" did was switch the enemy group they are using and it was back to business as usual.
Heck I don't have any desire to create one but let's face it it's easy enough for them to even escape detection. Create your own farm mission and publish when you are ready to farm. When you are done for the day unpublish and let it sit in your files until you are ready to use it again. It would be all but impossible, at that point, for NC Soft to catch the writer since the mission wouldn't be up long enough to be detected unless someone reported it while he or she was still on line using it.
I'm not even sure if the nerf slowed things down but it did set the standard so IF a farmer gets caught and has his story banned or account discontinued they can't say they had NO IDEA. There is no easy fix and many of the Farmers simply went back to farming in PI using standard contact missions. There is no magic wand some one can wave and simply make it go away but at least now no one can say they didn't think it was wrong.
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when will people learn that it is not farming itself that is bad it was the exploit that went unchecked that was bad. all farming is not bad, it actually helps in most cases. if it weasn't for people who take part in this you wouldn't have half the stuf in the market to purchase.
again, the only farming that was wrong was the farming using the exploits that were removed. and ata this point, since a mission can't be removed if it was an exploit alot of the bad missions are still on the MA. you also have to take into account that peoples ideas of farms are completely different.
case in point: i am working on a story arc that will have 3 missions to it. right now i have 1 mission complete and have it published to get feedback on it so i can make appropriate changes to it before i go any further with the other 2 missions i want to add. is it possible that my first mission could be seen as a farm? sure, if the self righteous against farming person does it because it is on an outside map or whatever reson they want to use that fits their idea of a farm. was it made as a farm? absolutely not. it has all lt's but not easy ones as the "gang" and an eb/av in it that isn't very easy to defeat.
the second mission will have 2 eb/av's in it probably with the same lt group and the third mission will have 3 eb/av's with the same lt group. both will be inside missions as the first mission the baddies haven't made it to their base yet, the second mission will be a sub base and the third will be their true base.
anyways just to reiterate on why there are still so many farm missions showing in the MA, it is because the creator of the missions can't take them down. if they can't be taken down they can't be removed from the system. that is my understanding of how it is at this point.
and the fact that if they tried to actually ban all the farmers for general farming there would be so many people to leave the game would fail. they are trying to zero in on abusive arcs and remedy those abuses as they find them. without commiting mmo suicide by making a good sized percentage of the player base upset
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Farming, in one form or another, has been going on since Issue 1 from what I understand.. I wasn't around at that point but there have certainly been enough "Farming" thread to confirm that before they nerfed taunt Tanks used to round up hundreds of enemies and pack them into a nice tight spot so the team could blast away at them for easy XP. .
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I was, and my PB was a god at wasting things rounded up into dumpsters by a stone tank.
I also remember when smoke grenades stacked 
Short answer:
Because the farmers haven't gone away.
The simple answer: "Some people get their endorphin rush out of a good story, others get it from simply facemelting the opposition yet others get it from the knowledge that their ways of doing something are the most efficient."
In other words, it's Human Nature to farm. That's why the farmers haven't gone away and never will.
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I'm actually in favor of not even trying to eliminate farms. Instead, make it easy to filter them out (or filter on them), so that people not interested in farms never have to see them. With the tagging system in i15 this is possible.
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Easy answer. Good and fun is subjective. What you consider to be a "fun" and "interesting" story arc can be a yawn fest for others. I've played some story driven MArcs, even the developer's choice ones and frankly, I'm not that impressed. Granted, some of them have their moments but is it worth the 1 to 2 hours I spent on them? The answer to that question can vary from person to person but for me, it wasn't. In terms of storyline and plot, I can get a much better return for my time by turning off the computer to watch a movie or read a book.
Nextly, storyline driven MArcs are a total crapshoot. The chance that you'll get sucked into a mediocre/below average arc is far higher than running into a good one. Frankly, the flawed rating system does not help to mitigate this risk since again, it is completely subjective. Why would I play that kind of odds? It's like going into a casino not knowing how you'll come out except that the odds are stacked so heavily against you. At least with farms, you know what you're going to get.
Lastly, I disagree with the statement that farming is "borderline exploit". That is not a factual statement. No MMO I've played (and I've played a lot) has said such things. They may discourage it but they can not prevent players from repeating a particular mission or raid over and over again. It is perfectly within the ToS agreement for players to repeat missions/instances as many times as they please as long as they're not exploiting a bug or game mechanic. There is no such thing as "borderline exploit" as defined by the ToS of MMOs, not any I've read at least.
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when will people learn that it is not farming itself that is bad it was the exploit that went unchecked that was bad. all farming is not bad, it actually helps in most cases. if it weasn't for people who take part in this you wouldn't have half the stuf in the market to purchase.
again, the only farming that was wrong was the farming using the exploits that were removed. and ata this point, since a mission can't be removed if it was an exploit alot of the bad missions are still on the MA. you also have to take into account that peoples ideas of farms are completely different.
case in point: i am working on a story arc that will have 3 missions to it. right now i have 1 mission complete and have it published to get feedback on it so i can make appropriate changes to it before i go any further with the other 2 missions i want to add. is it possible that my first mission could be seen as a farm? sure, if the self righteous against farming person does it because it is on an outside map or whatever reson they want to use that fits their idea of a farm. was it made as a farm? absolutely not. it has all lt's but not easy ones as the "gang" and an eb/av in it that isn't very easy to defeat.
the second mission will have 2 eb/av's in it probably with the same lt group and the third mission will have 3 eb/av's with the same lt group. both will be inside missions as the first mission the baddies haven't made it to their base yet, the second mission will be a sub base and the third will be their true base.
anyways just to reiterate on why there are still so many farm missions showing in the MA, it is because the creator of the missions can't take them down. if they can't be taken down they can't be removed from the system. that is my understanding of how it is at this point.
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Your example does not appear to support your claim.
Also, if you are making a farm that does not employ some sort of exploit that increases your reward to risk factor, then you are a piss poor farmer who will probably not get much attention (or ratings) on your map. This is why the farmer/exploiter argument is ridiculous.
my example makes perfect sense. infact when i loged in today to see if anyone had left any comments on things that could be fixed i found a new little button called complaint and low and behold someone reported it as a farm even though it wasn't. so i unpublished and added the second mish for now. i also changed the eb/av for the first mish back to extreme. there seems to be an aweful lot of self righteous anti-farming people going around marking missions as farms that aren't and not leaving any feedback as to why. this type of behavior is suppossed to be as bad as the people who exploited and i hope that the gm's ban them for it.
if someone's idea of a farm mission is an outdoor mission then they don't need to be playing a video game.
and i would like to know where i said that my mission was a farm. i never said it was. and if i feel that it is exploitable i make the appropriate changes so that it is not.
"they" didnt removed my farms.
My farms are indicared as "farms" in the description (actually : warning, its a farm, if u dont like it...')
They never got rid of farms b4 MA,
they never got rid of gold farmers,
they never locked PI to be lvl 40 restricted,
they implemented 'Castle' in PI courtyard for the lobies to lvl.
they did put a MA in atlas, though its known to be a lvl 1/5 area,
they never changed the devs choice,
they will remove the badges, but not the farms.
They will never remove farming.
Im a farmer.
I missed 2 good tf's because ppl couldnt play.
Though, maybe these dudes where not farmed either.
Its all about cash.
(ps: i should worry about my cash irl, i thought i d have a cool day gaming, it ended up in a loss.)
the most rewarding, finally, was me farming alone....)
Really I don't see it so much anymore, it's like some people in the thread have stated; some people simply have no desire to engage in story-driven or a more varied/challenging missions and content. However since the changes 'farming' doesn't seem to times and times faster than radio or story arc missions, and unlike before the changes people can finally find regular teams to do radio missions, story arcs and more substancial MA content with relative ease, so what's the worry? Chances are you, who likes story, conversation and challenge, don't want to group with those 'farmers' anyway. 
I know I don't...
They can take down the big farms, deny people architect slots, but beyond that there's not much to be done. We don't want to see widespread banning and people talking in code over broadcast over fear of reprisal, it just never does a game good.
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Also, if you are making a farm that does not employ some sort of exploit that increases your reward to risk factor, then you are a piss poor farmer who will probably not get much attention (or ratings) on your map. This is why the farmer/exploiter argument is ridiculous.
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I guess it would depend on your definition of exploit then.
By stacking a map with mobs that deal damage that your farmer is highly resistant to would actually lower the risk factor in comparison to the rewards. My opinion on that case, you are not exploiting things like the meow farm was. As you can more than likely find similar mobs in Dev created content that you can turn into a farm as well.
what's so wrong with farming?
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I thought that farm missions were not going to be allowed anymore? These things completely take away from not only the Mission Architect system, but the overall game as well by luring in so many players with the carrot of fast EXP gain. Weren't these supposed to be actively monitored/removed and their creators warned?. . .
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Again here, you are confusing the word [u]farming[u], with the word [u]exploit[u].
Regular farming will always happen... players will always find missions they like to repeat
to get more inf to IO out their alts, or level with.
If all mishes were nerfed down to about 500xp/hour, and a few gave 520xp/hour,
then people would farm those 520 mishes.
So yes, no matter what, and whether it is 'OK' or not, . . . 'Regular' farming will always be with us.
Exploits, on the other hand, will always be nerfed, in whatever way possible.
If people find a way to use a bug, or something in the game, to gain unintended uberXP, UberINF, or UberPLing, then it WILL be fixed, nerfed, punished, or all three.
The [u]BAD[u] farming exploits were the ones that did not take legitimate risk compared to uber rewards,
like allowing one to go from 1 to 50 in a few hours.
'Regular' farming does NOT EQUAL exploit or exploit farming.
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'Regular' farming does NOT EQUAL exploit or exploit farming.
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What I'm having a real problem with is that we don't have any clear-cut definition of what an exploit is, aside from some vague hand waving about it. The risk vs. reward argument is easy enough to understand, and it's easy to identify some exploits, in that case (the chicken tug farms, for instance), but what about beyond that? If people make a mission filled with lieutenants and bosses, is that exploiting? What about using things that give slightly more EXP, like Freakshow? Is a big map filled with all of the Archvillains okay? I'm heading into a lot of teams worried at this point on my Dominator because I have no idea what "exploit" means in this instance and the only real teams to speak of villain-side (at least on Virtue) are the ones doing AE.
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'Regular' farming does NOT EQUAL exploit or exploit farming.
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What I'm having a real problem with is that we don't have any clear-cut definition of what an exploit is, aside from some vague hand waving about it. The risk vs. reward argument is easy enough to understand, and it's easy to identify some exploits, in that case (the chicken tug farms, for instance), but what about beyond that? If people make a mission filled with lieutenants and bosses, is that exploiting? What about using things that give slightly more EXP, like Freakshow? Is a big map filled with all of the Archvillains okay? I'm heading into a lot of teams worried at this point on my Dominator because I have no idea what "exploit" means in this instance and the only real teams to speak of villain-side (at least on Virtue) are the ones doing AE.
[/ QUOTE ]Those aren't exploits. No one in authority is calling them exploits, and nothing they've said or done indicates that they should be considered exploits.
They may end up declared as Farm Missions, and may get locked, but a new player won't get in trouble for joining teams running them. Even an experienced player won't get into trouble for just running them, unless they did so to such an extent that they were judged to be "horribly abusing" the system.
If you haven't already, read Positron's posts on the restrictions and punishments they are imposing: #1 #2
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I have no idea what "exploit" means in this instance
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Apparently no one else does either, if the devs have a clear idea they aren't saying. I'd like to say if you do x,y, and z you will be fine, but I can't because the people who could say so with authority won't.
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what's so wrong with farming?
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There is nothing wrong with farming as it is not against the EULA (unless you participate in the RMT).
The problem is some people are determined to lump farmers with the exploiters. That from my view is a narrow minded perspective to take given they are not the same.
I'm personally so damn tired of hearing pple complain about farmers. Ya know what I found a mish just last night that could be considered to be a farm. I ran 3 teams through it, each team was full and made up of completely different pple. And every single one of them had a blast. One of those pple was a sg mate who is steadfast against farming, but he liked the characters present on the map... I mean who wouldn't want ot stomp ms. liberty, babbage, and recluse in the same mish LOL. All I'm saying is pple need to leave each other alone and stop trying to change pple's opinions to match their own. Some of u need to step down offa that damn high horse u keep riding around on while looking down ur nose at farmers and what not. I don't farm all the time, but I do on occassion like to blast through 30 baddies with a couple of good AoE's. If my doing that ruins ur gameplay or even ur day then in my opinion ur either way too damn sensitive or way to damn controlling and need to find a different hobby cause u obiviously just aren't cut out to be around pple and still enjoy urself. With that said.... I'll be doing that mish arc again alot for the next three days. on Freedom server.. anyone that would be interested to join just pm me.
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I have no idea what "exploit" means in this instance
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Apparently no one else does either, if the devs have a clear idea they aren't saying. I'd like to say if you do x,y, and z you will be fine, but I can't because the people who could say so with authority won't.
[/ QUOTE ]A new player needn't worry about it. It's unlikely they'll get involved in an exploit in the first place, and even more unlikely that they'd be punished for it.
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I have no idea what "exploit" means in this instance
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Apparently no one else does either, if the devs have a clear idea they aren't saying. I'd like to say if you do x,y, and z you will be fine, but I can't because the people who could say so with authority won't.
[/ QUOTE ]A new player needn't worry about it. It's unlikely they'll get involved in an exploit in the first place, and even more unlikely that they'd be punished for it.
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How do you know that ? There were many new players in comm officer farms
I thought that farm missions were not going to be allowed anymore? These things completely take away from not only the Mission Architect system, but the overall game as well by luring in so many players with the carrot of fast EXP gain. Weren't these supposed to be actively monitored/removed and their creators warned?
I know it's a large undertaking, but since it's something that wasn't recognized during testing apparently, it's the devs' responsibility to handle it now so it stops hurting the overall game experience.
It can be difficult to get players motived to do regular game missions, or even the FUN Mission Architect arcs, because they want to get more exp for their time. I can understand that, but these farm missions are nothing more than a borderline exploit. Sometimes to find a team you either have to wait an hour to cobble one together, or suck it up and go mess around with an AE team, hoping they aren't just into doing "farms".
When is this going to be more strongly addressed???