My idea for making AE better.

Why not have a AE/MA where you finish with a contact and you can create a mission for that contact (not your original contact) and for the level range of that contact, and go zone to zone, or within that zone. Something that is more rational or allow for regular teaming. For example, you create a new toon, start with Antonio Nash, do a story or arc. After done, you are introduced to Juan Jimenez. When you finish Juan's arc, it unlocks the MA Options (MA Mission, Create MA, Exchange Tickets). When you click on The MA Missions, you can play one that exits for this contact, or this level (in this case level 5 -9). When you click Create MA, you can use custom toons/critters, and/or with the vills for that contact, in this case, Skulls and Hellions. When you click Exchange Tickets, you can exchange it for the same rewards, but limited to that's contact's level. It would reducing farming, PL, and zone congestion. Simple, rational, and easy to implement.

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Still cant figure out how farmers ruined it for anyone, but im sure when i become brain damaged i will totally understand.

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It's not the farmers who ruined AE. It's efficiency experts who build one-mission farcs* that are designed to maximize rewards while minimizing risk....
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*Farcs (n) : Farm Arcs.

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Isn't that farming? Running a mish that is low risk, easy to kill maps, max reward, hence, farming/farmers. If that is farming, then your post is a contradiction and proving the point it is farming/farmers that are creating the problem.

There's farming... for example getting those missions in the game that spawn outdoor maps full of Fire Demons or Freakshows. That doesn't ruin the game because the Devs are in control of the Risk/Reward factors in those missions.

If however I deliberately create a mission that maximizes reward and minimizes risk and then publish it so that everyone can use it to advance their characters faster than the Devs are comfortable with, that, is defined as exploiting game mechanics to farm.

Farming in and of itself isn't ruining anything. People are expected to farm to a degree if they're hoping to get some of the more coveted rewards. After all, one could argue that everything people do in MMO's from Lv1 to the level-cap is farming because essentially the game mechanics do not vary to such a degree that one could say one was accomplishing tasks very differently at the level-cap than at Lv1.

It's the employment of the exploits that turns farming into something that potentially can ruin anything.

If farming (as in the act of grinding a mission, nearly until its completion but then pulling out just to reset the mission and repeat the grind) was outlawed by the Devs, every mission would've been put on a timer from the moment the first person steps into the map, or at the very least, a repeat-limit would be put in place where you had to wait several hours before being able to repeat the same mission.

Since farming normal in-game missions was sometimes nerfed (some missions actually were put on timers), and farming Task Forces for merits, and now AE missions that are obvious exploits are all being discouraged by measure put in by the Devs, I think the lines in the sand are quite clear.

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Why not have a AE/MA where you finish with a contact and you can create a mission for that contact (not your original contact) and for the level range of that contact, and go zone to zone, or within that zone.
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Something that is more rational or allow for regular teaming. For example, you create a new toon, start with Antonio Nash, do a story or arc. After done, you are introduced to Juan Jimenez. When you finish Juan's arc, it unlocks the MA Options (MA Mission, Create MA, Exchange Tickets).
*
When you click on The MA Missions, you can play one that exits for this contact, or this level (in this case level 5 -9). When you click Create MA, you can use custom toons/critters, and/or with the vills for that contact, in this case, Skulls and Hellions. When you click Exchange Tickets, you can exchange it for the same rewards, but limited to that's contact's level.
*
It would reducing farming, PL, and zone congestion. Simple, rational, and easy to implement.

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You know, that's not a bad idea, and I personally would love it. However, I don't think it's possible to do without causing a lot of work for the Developers (believe me, being a Developer myself I know how things that look simple from the customer's POV are a nightmare both to design and implement from the Dev's POV), and of course you may eventually annoy plenty of Efficiency Experts.

What if an AE mish require that there be both minion, lt, and bosses in it to be valid. Would hinder pl but mostly leave AE as is.

I think it's more complex than just the NPC's in a mission. As long as there are rewards to be gained, especially those tickets you gain when a story-arc is being rated by players, people will attempt to find exploits in the system. That, for better and worse, is Human Nature.

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Why not have a AE/MA where you finish with a contact and you can create a mission for that contact (not your original contact) and for the level range of that contact, and go zone to zone, or within that zone.
*
Something that is more rational or allow for regular teaming. For example, you create a new toon, start with Antonio Nash, do a story or arc. After done, you are introduced to Juan Jimenez. When you finish Juan's arc, it unlocks the MA Options (MA Mission, Create MA, Exchange Tickets).
*
When you click on The MA Missions, you can play one that exits for this contact, or this level (in this case level 5 -9). When you click Create MA, you can use custom toons/critters, and/or with the vills for that contact, in this case, Skulls and Hellions. When you click Exchange Tickets, you can exchange it for the same rewards, but limited to that's contact's level.
*
It would reducing farming, PL, and zone congestion. Simple, rational, and easy to implement.

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You know, that's not a bad idea, and I personally would love it. However, I don't think it's possible to do without causing a lot of work for the Developers (believe me, being a Developer myself I know how things that look simple from the customer's POV are a nightmare both to design and implement from the Dev's POV), and of course you may eventually annoy plenty of Efficiency Experts.

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Thanks. But I've been developing for years too. The framework is already there. Just a case of changing some coding for contacts, mish start point, remove the buildings, some other minor points, and Shazam. For the most part this would be an easy and quick fix.

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Thanks. But I've been developing for years too. The framework is already there. Just a case of changing some coding for contacts, mish start point, remove the buildings, some other minor points, and Shazam. For the most part this would be an easy and quick fix.

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You're starting to sound like a Manager to me... and I've learned over the years to never trust any Manager that is trying to tell me how easy something should be without intimately knowing the code in question.

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but if they wanna publish it and play it for xp and access the rest of the features and stories in AE, they need at least one vet badge, this will prevent newbies from farming AE and getting to 50 and not knowing how to play for real, and vets who don't want to take the time to level normally will have the option of farming AE if they want. That way it is a win-win situation, so newbies are forced to learn the game, and vets who are bored with leveling normally can farm AE.

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errrrr....yikes!

1. Vet badges are not always an accurate indicator of how good a player is. Stereotyping people based on vet badges is a slippery slope.

2. If a paying customer wants to be a complete noob, that's fine. They certainly paid for that right. They'll have to deal with the consequences in game for being a noob, but this should be completely their choice.

3. Forcing other players to play the way you want is just plain.....wrong. Not everyone has the same goals or garner the same enjoyment from various aspects of the game. If a newbie doesn't enjoy "learning the game" outside of AE, then so be it.

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Give newbies limited access to AE, like they can access ranked missions like devs choice and high ranks like that, and allow them to create their own story and test it, but if they wanna publish it and play it for xp and access the rest of the features and stories in AE, they need at least one vet badge, this will prevent newbies from farming AE and getting to 50 and not knowing how to play for real, and vets who don't want to take the time to level normally will have the option of farming AE if they want. That way it is a win-win situation, so newbies are forced to learn the game, and vets who are bored with leveling normally can farm AE. I am open to suggestions on how to make this idea even better. I know the newbies will gripe if this is implemented, but it is better than taking away levels from everyone who farms AE, even the vets. The problem is with newbie 50s not the vets. This idea should get rid of newbie 50s

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Sigh.

You're trying to solve an imaginary problem. The AE works the way it's supposed to. If the devs nerf it, they'll start losing all those re-ups they got when the put the AE in.

I doubt they'll do that. They've put a lot of time and effort into this system.

You may not have noticed, but there were some serious designs flaws in the original COX. The AE fixes many of those problems, brings old players back, hides the problems from new players by providing them with a better play experience and just generally makes this game revolutionary all of a sudden.

Leave it alone. Go play some COX. It's fun. You'll like it.

And you sound like a programmer who's too lazy to fix the bug cause "the code is not the problem" Any person who has really developed and coded, knows 80% of changes are just a simple change of a sub-routine(s), then send it to QA. (But then again, most programmers I know don't make simple, and easy sub routines in their code :P)