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One year before the Winter Event was started I had won a costume contest with my level 1 Xmas Ork, so I ran him back and forth to Peregine Island and used the winnings to buy SO's and gave them away to new alts zoning in at the spawn point in front of Ms. Liberty.
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Is there a contact for SOs in PI that doesn't make you do a mish first?
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
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So I've been reading this thread for the past few days
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I know it's not a permanent fix but every bit helps to get them to notice the rest of the game.
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You, sir, deserve a "Mentor" badge.
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Amazingly none of my toons have any mentoring badge, I should probably work on that.
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For instance if I put out a call for an ITF, and someone asks "what's an ITF?" or what's "the Midnighter's Club" in VU2009 for instance, I sure as HELL am NOT going to invite someone like that on my ITF.
Doesn't take a way from your overall points though.
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It's a good thing Smurphy invited me, then. 
Not knowing what abbreviations mean doesn't mean you haven't played the game. Some of us just happen to be very bad at keeping track of what abbrevations are being used. Especially since most other TFs are called by name. 
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One year before the Winter Event was started I had won a costume contest with my level 1 Xmas Ork, so I ran him back and forth to Peregine Island and used the winnings to buy SO's and gave them away to new alts zoning in at the spawn point in front of Ms. Liberty.
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Is there a contact for SOs in PI that doesn't make you do a mish first?
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I asked whomever was around at the time to buy them, and traded the inf to them for the purchases. A couple even kicked in some of their own inf to help when I explained what I was doing.
This was before the influence beggars that have shown up over the past couple years and put a damper on Random acts of Kindness. Peoples generosity wanes when they start getting constant demands for free stuff from lazy players with entitlement delusions.
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Sure it is, in a level appropriate zone. I would hope no one would be advocating someone learn this where mobs are +4 to them?
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Someplace like the "old" Hollows maybe? Now that was a learning experience! Come on, you remember.
Whoops.... killed again, damn back to atlas.... sprint back to the far side of the map through lvl 12,13,14's and your just a lvl 6.
BC 
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Yeah that zone was soooo much fun back then.
Err no. Thanks to newspaper missions in kings row, after my second toon ever (ice/kin) I have never been back to the Hallows. Ever.
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Great thread. Anyway, never really understood the Hollows Hate. I guess I am alone in actually ENJOYING the missions and environment there? I always try to run all my characters through it, AFTER getting the jet and jump pack though
(looks around, sees no one, goes back in his lurker hole).
Old Gray Soldier-Level 50 MA/SR Scrapper-Virtue
Hunter Omega Prime-Level 50 WS
Dead Lord-Level 50 Necro/FF MM-Liberty
Grand Glory-Level 39 Arachnos Bane-Freedom
So maybe Icon should be across the street from the southern tram in Steel. Or, perhaps ... like many of us, folks should just run around and get used to how aggro ranges work, why they should and shouldn't take certain travel powers for their characters, who not to mess with, and how the city itself is laid out.
I know many of us have made it by the skin of our teeth through steel canyon up to Icon.
I also know plenty of people (myself included) who goes to the one in Independance Port instead, since it's a quicker run - though you have to get to Kings Row first.
I really am more and more convinced that there shouldn't be an AE building in the low level zones.
At this point of course, it'd be impossible to *remove all the characters* from them, in order to do so. Very drastic measures would surely have to be taken to ensure that characters left there for badging were moved to an *appropriate* spot, somehow, or compensated, without having their data damaged. Don't know how that would work.
I'll admit that last night, I was tempted by an AE farm in Cap. I hate playing villains, I suck at playing them. I finally managed to ding another level on my corrupter and there was a group running AE farms the whole time I was missioning. I've got no idea how far they got, or what flavor of farming they were doing, but they were pretty polite about their broadcasts. However, now that I've managed to IO that toon out a little he actually seems like he's going to be way more playable and fun. So... the window of that opportunity has closed, in my mind. No need, no desire.
But I'd never, ever, choose to AE over missioning when I haven't played the powersets before. If I were to duplicate the SAME character I've had before, maybe on a new server, sure - I might stomach a farm or two for a while, but I can't stand THAT much mindless repetition - to me it's just not fun enough.
So I find it difficult to believe that there are SO many people who LIKE just being in one instance over and over, *for the duration of their character's life*. It makes no sense to me.
Ah well.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
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Sure it is, in a level appropriate zone. I would hope no one would be advocating someone learn this where mobs are +4 to them?
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Someplace like the "old" Hollows maybe? Now that was a learning experience! Come on, you remember.
Whoops.... killed again, damn back to atlas.... sprint back to the far side of the map through lvl 12,13,14's and your just a lvl 6.
BC
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Yeah that zone was soooo much fun back then.
Err no. Thanks to newspaper missions in kings row, after my second toon ever (ice/kin) I have never been back to the Hallows. Ever.
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Great thread. Anyway, never really understood the Hollows Hate. I guess I am alone in actually ENJOYING the missions and environment there? I always try to run all my characters through it, AFTER getting the jet and jump pack though
(looks around, sees no one, goes back in his lurker hole).
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We didn't have those temp powers back then. Best we had was Sprint modified with Swift and/or Hurdle, or Hover.
Using Sprint you had to run around the edges of the zone. Hover gave you a straight path but took forever.
Of course if you were lucky there'd be a Taxibot on duty.
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Go and read up on some developer comments about the AE. The devs have been stating it IS completely viable to level from 1-50 in the AE. Read up on what has been going on before you post.
They also said it in closed beta that they want AE to be a viable 1-50 path.
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Ah, right, you're using an absurdly thinly stretched definition of "touting"...
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Because learning to navigate thru a zone without getting killed by mobs is a valuable skill.
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Sure it is, in a level appropriate zone. I would hope no one would be advocating someone learn this where mobs are +4 to them?
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...there are large portions of AP that are level 5-6. And level 1 missions that send you to the back end of those areas.
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DOOOOOOOM!!!
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And interestingly enough I could have sworn navigation issues were one of the reasons that the devs revamped the Hallows.
I don't think frustration is a good teacher. But that's just me.
I distinctly remember many breathing a sigh of relief that they no longer had to do the hallows when kings row became even more viable due to newspaper missions.
I don't think you encourage folks to visit other zones via (potential0 frustration, which is what the whole point of moving it out of Atlas is supposed to accomplish.
But as I said before having the level contact appear at lvl 5 is a great idea. Moving it directly across the street from the tram is also good.
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Aura, I'd just like to point out that it is very unlikely new players are going to get frustrated and quit because they have to leave Atlas, Galaxy, or Mercy in order to use the AE.
Or have you forgotten that prior to I14 new players had no trouble getting their level 1 characters to Peregrine Island and Grandville and spamming the chat channels there with Farm/PL requests.
Requiring them to go to Kings Row, Steel, Port Oakes, or Cap is not the big deal some would make it out to be.
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My personal idea, is to cap the amount of xp earned in ANY one mission (AE, TF, radio, whatever) to one level's worth. You still get inf, prestige and what not once you hit the xp cap. That way you have to play at least 50 missions in order to ding 50. This cuts into PL'ing across the board but doesn't stop it.
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This would be an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face. I'd rather see solutions that don't f*** over everyone else too.
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I admit to being ignorant on this, but are there any ways to get more than one level in a single mission without exploiting the system in one way or another?
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Recently (before I15), I had a character who leveled twice on a Skyway City Mayhem mission. It was set at Level 5 and we had a full team of 8. With all the Longbow ambushes and clearing the map, it was possible to do so. Of course, it helped that I was close to leveling before we entered the mission.
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Or have you forgotten that prior to I14 new players had no trouble getting their level 1 characters to Peregrine Island and Grandville and spamming the chat channels there with Farm/PL requests.
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You raise a -VERY- excellent point right here and I feel silly for not having thought of it myself. Yeah, if PL n00bs could get to PI and GV before, then getting through the level 5 or even 10 zones shouldn't be much of an issue.
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Just my two cents.
A new player getting to PI or even knowing where PI is was not that common, most lowbies spamming PI either had friends that introduced them to PI or alts.
Usually the spammers did the Broadcasts caught alot of grief and either left the Zone in shame or got everyone's Global Ignore.
The Farm mechanics were different, there were SK rules to follow and just being on the team was not a factor as it is in AE. Most lowbies were just exploited as fillers. Stay in your zone and hunt or grouped just to spawn the map.
I'm not going to say that AE is Doom for the game, cause what it did do was provide a Central Hub (Atlas Park) for toons of all levels to join missions and not worry about lack of SKs which on the low pop servers comes in handy.
Personally I still think it's a business decision. AE spawned a lot of 50s in a short time and now people are trying other ATs faster since there isn't that chore of grinding/leveling.
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Personally I still think it's a business decision. AE spawned a lot of 50s in a short time and now people are trying other ATs faster since there isn't that chore of grinding/leveling.
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From what I understand, this thing most people refer to as "grinding/leveing" is also known as "playing the game the way it was meant to be played".
They didn't sit down and spend the hours, days and weeks creating and writing out back stories, intricate plots, organizations and their connections, in game history, and giving each a unique look and personality that fit said story, so people could spend the entire game moving from one door to the next getting power leveled, or worse yet, not even leaving the starting zone.
One of the great things in this game, imo, is that it is not top heavy. Sure, there is loads of content in the endgame, but the vast majority of the content they have added spans more than ten levels per. Which is more than most MMO's put out. That being said, the game is not made to be "completed", it is made to be "experienced".
Imho, anything that aids PLing should be reviewed and toned down or modified if not outright eliminated or avoided.
P.S. I think the Architect falls under the former category.
Check out Krieg Jaeger, and expand on your own character at Virtue verse!
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A new player getting to PI or even knowing where PI is was not that common, most lowbies spamming PI either had friends that introduced them to PI or alts.
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And the only difference between what they did then and now is that the new players back then learned how to travel from Atlas to PI.
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Usually the spammers did the Broadcasts caught alot of grief and either left the Zone in shame or got everyone's Global Ignore.
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No they didn't. PI was always filled with farmers and PLers on all the servers and the chart channels were inundated with farm/PL spams.
Players that wanted to run regular content were always complaining that they couldn't get teams formed because of the "spam".
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The Farm mechanics were different, there were SK rules to follow and just being on the team was not a factor as it is in AE. Most lowbies were just exploited as fillers. Stay in your zone and hunt or grouped just to spawn the map.
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You seem to be confused. If the lowbies actually stayed in the lower zones they wouldn't have been able to spam PI broadcast channels with farm/PL requests.
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I'm not going to say that AE is Doom for the game
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We aren't saying the AE is the doom of the game either. We're saying that new players will see that the game has more to offer if they actually have to leave the starter zones in order to get to the AE.
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cause what it did do was provide a Central Hub (Atlas Park) for toons of all levels to join missions and not worry about lack of SKs which on the low pop servers comes in handy.
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Translation: We now have a lot of new players that are going to be quitting the game soon out of boredom because they have no idea that there is more to do than sit in Atlas or Mercy and run AE missions.
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Personally I still think it's a business decision. AE spawned a lot of 50s in a short time and now people are trying other ATs faster since there isn't that chore of grinding/leveling.
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Sitting at the mission entrance while another player powerlevels you to level 50 isn't "trying out other AT's."
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Personally I still think it's a business decision. AE spawned a lot of 50s in a short time and now people are trying other ATs faster since there isn't that chore of grinding/leveling.
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From what I understand, this thing most people refer to as "grinding/leveing" is also known as "playing the game the way it was meant to be played".
They didn't sit down and spend the hours, days and weeks creating and writing out back stories, intricate plots, organizations and their connections, in game history, and giving each a unique look and personality that fit said story, so people could spend the entire game moving from one door to the next getting power leveled, or worse yet, not even leaving the starting zone.
One of the great things in this game, imo, is that it is not top heavy. Sure, there is loads of content in the endgame, but the vast majority of the content they have added spans more than ten levels per. Which is more than most MMO's put out. That being said, the game is not made to be "completed", it is made to be "experienced".
Imho, anything that aids PLing should be reviewed and toned down or modified if not outright eliminated or avoided.
P.S. I think the Architect falls under the former category.
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This isn't about playing the gameas it was intended. We don't care if new players prefer to farm. We just want them to be able to make an informed decision about their preferred playstyle.
Theres a huge difference between running AE farms in Atlas because you think thats all there is to the game and deciding that after you have had the chance to check out the different zones and all the content available you prefer to run AE missions.
I never implied that PI was free of Farms and Farm requests. The need for INF for those shiny IOs broke that bottle open.
I'm also not trying to defend MA and its ease of making Farms more accessible to anyone just logging in. The old Demon/Family farmers did have to keep a certain awareness of who they let into their farms due to the once its gone its gone.
I remember one time I logged into each servers PI just to see how each server's zone was and some PI's broadcast basically looked like a Auction Channel. My home server for the 5 years I was on it, never came close to the level I saw on some of the others.
My coworker bought the game off Steam recently and he's lvl 33 after maybe 6hours game time. He said he got invited to AE team after he hit lvl 4 and asked me was that normal for this MMO. He gained levels so fast he thought it was a exploit and was worried his toon would get deleted. I had to tell him that's the current state of game.
I'm not going to say MA is ruining the game or players, but you would have to deaf,dumb, and blind to not recognize that AE Custom Farms makes farming Wolves, Dead Scanner, or Kraken look like Street Sweeping.
The whole point of my bringing up how farmers used to go to PI was to demonstrate that new players did in fact go thru higher level zones in order to conduct their preferred playstyle. So I don't see them getting frustrated at having to go to KR or Port Oakes.
It was never meant to portray farming/PLing in a bad light. Some people like it, some don't.
It only takes the tiniest amount of effort to learn how to avoid mobs while travelling thru a zone and the difference level difference between Atlas/Mercy and KR/PO is very small.
The other benefit is that learning there are other zones can entice the new players into exploring them and keeping ther subs active longer, instead of getting bored with thinking the game is restricted to one tiny zone.
One thing the game needs to make a bit clearer is your initial contact.
I'd like the see a new level one contact added that essentially functions as an in game tutorial (better than the current ones.)
1. You get the normal contact popup for this person as soon as you arrive in the starting zone.
2. The first mission gives you a bit of inf and sends you to a shop where you're given a couple free TOs (if you skip the tutorial it's easy to miss the enchancement help) with a brief explanation and possibly a "dummy" fight.
3. After a small mission or 2, this contact introduces you to one of the normal contacts in the zone.
4. Once you reach the level for the next normal zone, the initial contact popups instructions about using the train/ferry/helicopter/etc. system and sends you to a contact in the next zone.
5. Possibly a group based mission (2 or 3 man team minimum) to teach players how to use the lft system (most of the new players don't know this even exists due to the broadcasts and it would help get rid of that annoyance.) The lft system seriously also needs an AE category added as well.
Not terribly hard to write, easy for vets to skip (they will only introduce contacts you can access other ways) and new players will learn the essentials. Heck, maybe even have a fairly easy mission at level 10 to introduce the sidekick system.
I was talking with one of my friends and he teamed with a couple of guys that only played in atlas on a hami farm.
He took them on AV missions and they died every 5 minutes fighting tyrant and were completely useless.
He said it reminded him of dolphins raised in captivity, and that got supprised when a shark came by and bit off thier face when they were released in wild.
Triumph
Gavalin Kingsbury LVL 50 INV/SS Tank and 26 other LVL 50 heroes and villians (all Triumph)
Heroes of Justice and Liberty/Loved or Loathed
"NCSOFT doesn't fork for anyone but they might spoon you if they like you"
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One thing the game needs to make a bit clearer is your initial contact.
I'd like the see a new level one contact added that essentially functions as an in game tutorial (better than the current ones.)
1. You get the normal contact popup for this person as soon as you arrive in the starting zone.
2. The first mission gives you a bit of inf and sends you to a shop where you're given a couple free TOs (if you skip the tutorial it's easy to miss the enchancement help) with a brief explanation and possibly a "dummy" fight.
3. After a small mission or 2, this contact introduces you to one of the normal contacts in the zone.
4. Once you reach the level for the next normal zone, the initial contact popups instructions about using the train/ferry/helicopter/etc. system and sends you to a contact in the next zone.
5. Possibly a group based mission (2 or 3 man team minimum) to teach players how to use the lft system (most of the new players don't know this even exists due to the broadcasts and it would help get rid of that annoyance.) The lft system seriously also needs an AE category added as well.
Not terribly hard to write, easy for vets to skip (they will only introduce contacts you can access other ways) and new players will learn the essentials. Heck, maybe even have a fairly easy mission at level 10 to introduce the sidekick system.
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That's why I suggested a new expanded tutorial that's mandatory for new players.
The devs could code it so the new player has to accomplish a set of tasks before they exit the tutorial. Once the new player completes the tutorial the account is flagged and they can choose to skip it when making new characters.
The tutorial could include things like using the train, selling something at the market.
They could even take those ingame trainings at the AE and the University and include them in the initial tutorial.
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I was talking with one of my friends and he teamed with a couple of guys that only played in atlas on a hami farm.
He took them on AV missions and they died every 5 minutes fighting tyrant and were completely useless.
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If the fight against Tyrant lasted more than 5 minutes, everyone had issues.
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With AE, at least he actually has to fight and contribute.
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No he doesn't. He can still door sit while bridged in a 1-54 level range map.
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So I've been reading this thread for the past few days
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I know it's not a permanent fix but every bit helps to get them to notice the rest of the game.
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You, sir, deserve a "Mentor" badge.