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Farmers use an MA mechanic to maximise their rewards with no thought for story, and said mechanic gets nerfed. Future storytellers cannot use said mechanic for storytelling purposes.
A possible solution might be to have a split at the 'creat a new arc' point in the MA.
You'd have two options.
'create new arc with rewards' - this would let you build an arc with the MA functionality we have now, and said fiuncionality would continue to be nerfed if and when required in response to farmers abuses.
'create new arc with expanded story options' - this would be the MA as at launch of I14 (updated of course by anything I15 brings) without any nerfs to ambushes, rikti comm officers allowed, etc, and with no future nerfs to MA mechanics (other than for things that make arcs unplayable such as the Crey hero map geometry bug etc), but with no rewards dropped by arcs made in this way.
The latter system I think would be used by a minority of players and authors, but would possibly produce better story-focused arcs.
And the rewards can still be gained through the 'normal' MA arcs.
Eco.
'create new arc with rewards' - this would be the MA as we have it now (or even backdated to the point it was at at I14 launch
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Would the create new arc with expanded story options still be available to become dev choice and player choice?
I would be for this, providing it won't take another issue of its own to produce.
Farmers use an MA mechanic to maximise their rewards with no thought for story, and said mechanic gets nerfed. Future storytellers cannot use said mechanic for storytelling purposes.
A possible solution might be to have a split at the 'creat a new arc' point in the MA.
You'd have two options.
'create new arc with rewards' - this would let you build an arc with the MA functionality we have now, and said fiuncionality would continue to be nerfed if and when required in response to farmers abuses.
'create new arc with expanded story options' - this would be the MA as at launch of I14 (updated of course by anything I15 brings) without any nerfs to ambushes, rikti comm officers allowed, etc, and with no future nerfs to MA mechanics (other than for things that make arcs unplayable such as the Crey hero map geometry bug etc), but with no rewards dropped by arcs made in this way.
The latter system I think would be used by a minority of players and authors, but would possibly produce better story-focused arcs.
And the rewards can still be gained through the 'normal' MA arcs.
Eco.
'create new arc with rewards' - this would be the MA as we have it now (or even backdated to the point it was at at I14 launch
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)