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Only Devs choice and Hall of Fame missions should give full XP. The rest should give 50% XP and 50% Inf.
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Respectfully, why change it at all?
If they nerf mission rewards in the AE, even just non dev choice/HOF content(ok so almost all of it.), then it isn't an "alternate way to level to 50" so much as a "slower, dumber way to level to 50. Now with less running around."
People are looking at this backwards. AE is not the problem, AE is the solution.
I love the AE the way it is now :
It's really perfect to my opinion. Leveling my toons running story content in the AE, discovering new arcs everyday (and there are plenty of great stories that are not dev choice !)... it's just the way I want it to be.
Nerf the xp or reduce it to 50%... and make this new main feature, the devs have been working on for maybe a year (?), almost useless. Wouldnt be a clever move :/
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I love the AE the way it is now :
It's really perfect to my opinion. Leveling my toons running story content in the AE, discovering new arcs everyday (and there are plenty of great stories that are not dev choice !)... it's just the way I want it to be.
Nerf the xp or reduce it to 50%... and make this new main feature, the devs have been working on for maybe a year (?), almost useless. Wouldnt be a clever move :/
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QFT.
Keep in mind that although the primary purpose for the AE is creating stories, I'm very sure that this doesn't appeal to everyone and only to a specific niche of the playerbase who do enjoy creating their own content. Alot of us like to jump into the action of things and hence its why we pay our monthly sub. It's not the lack of creativity nor laziness that players don't try creating their own arcs, it's not something that we look forward to in the game.
And since it has been stated by the devs that the AE is an alternative way to get from lvl 1 to 50, you can more or less drop this suggestion.
The devs should set AE experience rewards to a level where the very best AE PL farms reward about the same xp as running normal story arcs. This will of course leave non-farm AE missions granting somwhere around 1/4 of standard mission xp (perhaps less), and I'm fine with that. There are other ways to curb AE PLing but I have yet to see one which doesn't restrict creative freedom, which was originally the whole point of the MA system.
The reason this is neccesary is NOT that the devs or I or anybody else is jealous of PLers and want to destroy their fun. It's because the current situation is bad for the long-term health of the game, and a healthy game is required for me to have a place to play next year and for the devs to keep their jobs. If this were a single-player game I would fully support adding a 'make me level 50' button to the character creation screen, but it is not.
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The devs should set AE experience rewards to a level where the very best AE PL farms reward about the same xp as running normal story arcs. This will of course leave non-farm AE missions granting somwhere around 1/4 of standard mission xp (perhaps less), and I'm fine with that. There are other ways to curb AE PLing but I have yet to see one which doesn't restrict creative freedom, which was originally the whole point of the MA system.
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The idea that you could do this and expect any meaningful percentage of the player base to actually experience the home-grown content in the AE is ludicrous.
What's the point of story crafting if only a few hundred people are playing any of it?
It boggles my mind that anyone could ever think this is a good idea.
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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This will of course leave non-farm AE missions granting somwhere around 1/4 of standard mission xp (perhaps less), and I'm fine with that.
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And then everyone will stop playing the AE. Victory!
Stop trying to nerf the AE. the AE is the new COX. It's like the old one, except without all the serious design flaws that weren't so bad 5 years ago, but are kind of glaring now.
AE is the new COX. I'm having a great time, and I don't even farm.
Let's all go play COX.
Let's consider the ticket reward system.
I think it takes very little time for someone to find out that tickets are very profitable. So here comes the mindset when a player considers playing an AE arc not for the quality of the storytelling (if its a story arc) but whether that player can get the best tickets payoff possible just by playing it.
Since this game revolves around rewards, it's only logical to expect players to go for what gives a bigger reward. Hence farm arcs get most of the attention as opposed to story-driven arcs, not to mention they give better exp too.
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Stop trying to nerf the AE. the AE is the new COX. It's like the old one, except without all the serious design flaws that weren't so bad 5 years ago, but are kind of glaring now.
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Sorry, I hadn't noticed these glaring design flaws.
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AE is the new COX. Let's all go play COX.
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The last time I tried to do AE missions in a PuG it was a PL farm and I wasn't informed of this ahead of time. When I politely bowed out I had two players send me tells which were vulgar in the extreme. An anecdote to be sure, but that crowd is part of the "new COX" you're so proud of.
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The last time I tried to do AE missions in a PuG it was a PL farm and I wasn't informed of this ahead of time. When I politely bowed out I had two players send me tells which were vulgar in the extreme. An anecdote to be sure, but that crowd is part of the "new COX" you're so proud of.
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"Part of it" doesn't represent the entirety.
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The last time I tried to do AE missions in a PuG it was a PL farm and I wasn't informed of this ahead of time. When I politely bowed out I had two players send me tells which were vulgar in the extreme. An anecdote to be sure, but that crowd is part of the "new COX" you're so proud of.
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There have been idiots whose mouths (or fingers, in this case) don't link up properly to their brain since day 1, and there will be until they shut the servers down. This is also true of every MMO of the past, present and future.
I'm fond of referring to this as a game's "signal to noise ratio" (and I'm sure someone did the same before me, not claiming its original), and generally speaking, both today and going back as long as I've played, CoX has a pretty tolerable ratio.
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So yes, I'd rather see a ghost-town with a few honest story-telling efforts at first, and perhaps have the Devs restore rewards to MA story-arcs once the Devs have figured out how to balance the nightmare.
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In other words, you'd like another Cathedral of Pain?
Pardon me (and many others) for expecting some utility out of the addition to the game BESIDES just people attempting to tell stories.
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No Rewards for AE content is how things SHOULD have started, not how they should end.
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No, because then most of the serious exploits would not be found due to the fact that the population (and I use the term loosely) actually USING MA would have made the PVP community seem positively ubiquitous.
To steal your phrase "To be blunt and to the point" nobody wants to slog through your crap for no rewards.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Why should I have to in the first place?
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That's just it. You don't HAVE to. Nobody's FORCING you to.
Yet, if you want a solution to your problem, one was presented to you.
On the flip side, you're offering "solutions" to a non-existent problem.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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When I politely bowed out I had two players send me tells which were vulgar in the extreme. An anecdote to be sure, but that crowd is part of the "new COX" you're so proud of.
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The AE neither created nor, likely, increased the number of these people. All it did was give them something new to do while being crass and moronic, as they almost were certainly before it came along.
That something to do just happened to overlap with what you.
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
I still think it would be great if we could just filter out all the farm stuff. I never said "take it away", I'm just more or less indifferent. Obviously I know that there are people that enjoy the farming / PLing aspect and that's cool. I'm all for everyone enjoying the game in their own way, that's how it should be. But like I said, it sucks sometimes digging through the marvelous amounts of arcs I DON'T want to play (farms), just to find ones that I could enjoy. I have played a few that I thought were just great, honestly. I wouldn't mind being able to find more without having to quit one every couple tries b/c it turns out to actually be a farm.
If farms could be categorized as their own thing, it could serve two purposes:
1) Those looking for a farm can more easilly find one. And a good one, at that, with good ratings, without having to forum search or broadcast for one that people say is good.
2) Those looking specifically for STORY designated content, could more easily find THOSE, in the same convenient way that farmers could find theirs.
It's just an idea. I'm sure we could all think of dozens of other categories/designations for certain "types" of arcs, and I don't see why that couldn't work either. I guess what I"m suggesting overall is just a search engine improvement that allows a player to further filter out what they do and don't want to see.
:shrug:
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Thank you for making my point for me, all of your content below is wishful thinking to the extreme, MA farming is going to get nerfed, continually, the sooner you get over it, the better.
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Again, you mistake me for a PL'er or a farmer. Nice try, but the fact is I'm not. As I said, I have barely used MA. So, with i15, I lost a grand total of 6 badges. Most of them the low "kill X" or "do X" badges.
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Wrong, they have nerfed regular content and AT's over and over again, content that on average was an order of magnitude less reward/time then what MA allows people to do (with the notable exception of pre agro cap/aoe cap herding), they will nerf MA down to regular content levels then probably below.
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Wow. Way to miss a point. FYI, MA rewards are ALREADY below regular content. It's simply that the rewards system is more flexible than the myriad random drops.
And it's merits that are factored on reward/time. Not exp/prestige/inf/tickets.
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Do you somehow read it otherwise?
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Again, if the devs had meant for the MA to be a solely story-telling mechanism, there would be NO rewards. PERIOD.
And, unlike you, I have a strong enough command of the language to understand "not intended" is not the same as "not allowed".
And, unlike you, I don't see this as a black and white issue. I agree that, beyond a certain threshold, farming and power levelling are detrimental to the game.
And, unlike you, my threshold isn't set to "zero tolerance" and all the idiocies that sort of policy engenders.
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I gave no opinion there about what I liked or otherwise
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No. But you gave an opinion.
And the fact that you have X, Y, or Z is meaningless in lieu of what I said. I said someone is getting "more/better rewards". I didn't say they were getting purples or tons of inf. Simply that they were accumulating them faster than you because of something you refuse to do.
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If all the MA nerfs were caused because Positron got some personal opinions from some vocal players, its still all his decision, no one water boarded him or anything to force him.
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Again, I didn't say anyone FORCED him to. The word used was "influence".
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Have only read the OP. Yes the AE does need XP. Quit crying about your social gathering place and find another one.
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The original purpose of AE was for players to test out their creative skills not for the game to be strictly dedicated to leveling.
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All I needed to read. You are correct in the first half of this sentence, then the rest of it fails hard. The other purpose was to give players a alternate way to level from 1-50, this was specifically said by a red name, believe it was Positron.
Okay, lemme clarify here.
I HAVE run some MA arcs. Some good. Some bad. The good ones, I enjoy and rated well.
The bad ones I didn't enjoy (but at least was rewarded for my suffering) and rated them poorly.
However, underlying it all is a desire to advance my character. And while I occasionally enjoy a good story, this achievement mentality, and the various goals I've set for my toons and myself are more important to me than simply enjoying a story for the story's sake.
And when I say "I'm not going to slog through your crap for no reward", I mean it.
And I'm not talking about YOU, necessarily in particular. There are THOUSANDS of arcs out there. Several are good, a lot are indifferent, and a huge number of them are Just Plain Awful.
I am NOT going to take the time to try and sift through that many dog turds in hopes of finding a diamond if I'm not being rewarded in other ways.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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It would still be useful as a creative tool for players, and it would undoubtably still be used to farm salvage and recipes and whatnot.
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If it doesn't offer Influence and Infamy, I doubt it.
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I'm just against the min/maxing which leaves me with a boring combat-only mission.
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I don't look at min/maxing as farming. I look at it as an exploit of a broken rewards assignment. Fix the broken rewards assignment and you fix the exploit.
If people want to repeat content over and over and over (and over and ... well you get the picture) again, by Bob...LET THEM!
If someone wants to stuff a map chock-full of bosses/EBs/AVs and go to town, LET THEM. Just so long as the rewards for doing so are equivallent to fighting the same type of content in the rest of the game.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Exactly. So logically, if more and more people act in this fashion *SNIP!*
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This is much akin to the "If everyone jumped off a bridge" argument.
Is it POSSIBLE that everyone would jump off a bridge?
Sure!
HAS everyone jumped off a bridge?
NOPE!
Is it LIKELY that everyone going to jump off a bridge?
Survey says!
NOPE!
NOPE!
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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These changes for example could potentially cause a mission that was soloable on character X to be impossible to solo,
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Call me when this actually happens.
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Again, no.
Players are already gimped by the fact that the missions don't reward mission-end/arc-end bonuses. There are no temp powers awarded on the various arcs, no toon-improving accolades achievable.
Cutting XP/Inf in half would get just about the same reception that zero XP/inf gets.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Dear Norsedoggie and supporters,
Yes. Yes the AE does need XP. The stated intended purpose for the AE was to provide an alternate way to level to 50.
There is no problem with AE. People are playing it. They are enjoying it. They are paying $15/month to do so. I and many others came back to COX because of the AE.
I see some posts that say "The way to fix AE..."
AE is not broken. Working as intended. Not a bug. By design.
Any and all of the proposed "fixes" I have seen, would actually break the AE.
Don't bother with your anecdotal arguments about what your "real gamer" friends like or don't like about the AE. There are many different types of gamers. A large number of those gamer types like the AE just the way it is. You can tell, because that's what almost everyone is doing now.
The game has changed. It's better now.
It's time to let go.
And remember, there are still a few people who want to play the old game. They're the ones posting about how broken the AE is.
Maybe you guys should all form an SG and run TF's and other dev content. No one is going to stop you. No one is going to put any serious effort into "fixing" the part of the game you're enjoying.
Everything is fine.
This is all time you could be spending playing COX.