City of Farming is a GO!

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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The reason people 'beg' for farms is, they want a free ride. And up until this point, giving free rides to people was a benefit.

I suspect the practice of charging for spots on 'farm teams' will resume, or other variants of 'what's in it for me'... and thus you'll see less "PL MEH" because it'll be pricier.

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"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."

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I am NOT optimistic about the market rates, because there's two sides to the supply and demand equation. Just as more valuable stuff will drop and get sold, so will more inf be earned, and people with more cash will pay more for stuff they absolutely want NAO... which in turn keeps the prices higher.

[/ QUOTE ] And as prices go up it will be easier and easier to make influence/infamy.

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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The reason people 'beg' for farms is, they want a free ride. And up until this point, giving free rides to people was a benefit.

I suspect the practice of charging for spots on 'farm teams' will resume, or other variants of 'what's in it for me'... and thus you'll see less "PL MEH" because it'll be pricier.

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Now you have a point there, Soul. I can see the "charging for farms" thing starting again, and that will help.

But let's also be honest...before AE, PI was loaded down with people asking for farms, right? At least on Freedom it was.

Now...I actually didn't mind it there. My big problem is still the Atlas AE building. I personally think the Rikti should fly in and drop a big bomb on it.

Because Atlas will just become like PI after this....the broadcasts will still be there because "some" farmers will still be giving out freebies, and as long as the beggars know this, they're going to broadcast.

If they remove the AE building from Atlas, lowbies can still access AE in Galaxy, but Atlas, the most populated zone in the game, will calm down a bit.

As to this anjnouncement. I haven't decided if I like it or not.

The other day, I made a comment that I didn't envy the devs on trying to fix things, because it seemed likely that they would alienate a lot of the good plyers with nerfs.

This ISN'T a nerf...and I do suspect it's a "step" in the right direction. On the surface I was shocked.

But we've all been trying to tell them there's no way to get rid of farmers...maybe they finally realized it and are instead trying to work around them to make hte rest of us enjoy the game more?

After he shock wore off and I thought things through, with some adjustments this could well work.

I do think they need to limit the AE buildings more though.

Really.

They could totally remove them from Atlas and Skyway. Wouldn't hurt to remove the PI one either, though after this I suspect it wouldn't matter there. PI I think will become popular again.

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Suggestion:
Remove Auto SK from AE. This might also cut down on things.

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Actually it'll help teaming. I find most of the teams I'm on horribly dull, as we just steamroll everything in seconds, even on Invincible. Some of us have been wanting higher difficulty settings for years, and here it is.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

Actually I only saw a LOT of PL spam in PI when I was on Victory. I don't play on Freedom, so I can't say what PI was like, or is like, there.

Virtue, yes, it tended to get a little noisy. But, that was one zone, far removed from the lowbie zones. Lowbies had to have help GETTING there, as well (no shortcut through RWZ for you!).

With the AE, you were subjected to spam (and anti-spam kvetching) along with the usual Atlas Park noise... lag from the AE 'data download', costume contests, sewer runs, et cetera. Not to say Atlas wasn't noisy before... but people asking questions about the game was expected.

The AE spam drowned ALL of that out, there was so much.

An analogy, if you will indulge me, here. I used to live in Seattle, where there was a lot of radio stations around, and a lot of the signals kinda bled into each other. It wasn't too bad, mildly annoying but there was always something to listen to.

Then the church down the block got a broadcasting license and put up a big antenna... and suddenly you couldn't get away from their programming, you heard it on your computer speakers, your phone, your car radio when the damned thing was OFF... all because you were right underneath that big honking tower and the signal was too strong.

That's the impact AE spam had on Atlas. It was all-pervasive, and constant, and annoying... and this is from a veteran, I'd hate to think what new players thought once they zoned in for the first time.

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"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."

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Well, at least it will get people out of the AE... I doubt the expanded difficulty settings will work in there.

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Even better - I hope if a character goes into an AE mission as an eight-man team it locks that character for a week, strips them of goods, and makes them level 1.

Setting yourself up as a "larger teams" is so obviously an abuse of AE that there would be no debate or not if they player was trying to abuse it or not.

Like it.

Cut to the quick!

[/ QUOTE ]Uhm... you do realize that AE is the best source for challenge maps, and is capable of making some of the most challenging encounters in the game, right? It's pretty easy to imagine how people looking for a true challenge might want to use this system with AE...

Or are you just assuming that people only use AE for farms?

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Just check the recent posting history. There's no logic or rational thought in any of them, just vitriol, accusations of cheating - often completely made up, and a bunch of tripe and garbage.

He said that "levelling from 1-50 in the MA" isn't intended behavior and is farming in a recent post, so I'd say that he has no idea what in the world he's talking about and any comments made should be taken as the ramblings of an insane idiot - occasionally amusing in the "you said what?!" sort of way, but mostly background noise with no substance or meaning.

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I think this is really good news for the serious farmers... and good news for everyone else as well, as the spam shouild be reduced.

Which is great overall! Good thing!

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Post deleted by MunkiLord

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alt is a known troll. He's pretty much best ignored.

He's honestly the main one behind the anti-farm, veteran "elite" and I swear he does it just to rile people.

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I for one know that anyone who has ever seen this will be sorely disappointed:

Hello, I'm looking for padders/fillers/anchors. I am willing to pay 1 million inf for your time. PST if you are interested.

Yes, I pay my fillers.

I get to have my cake and eat it too!

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Honestly? Great idea on multiple levels.

I was originally opposed to it. But after the whole Rikti Farms/Bubble Farms fiasco...

A Single player finds an exploit. He knows that if he spreads word of it, the Devs will shut it down. So instead of filling teams with noobs to farm the exploit, he instead solos it on an "8-man" team.

Noone else finds out about it. It doesn't hit broadcast, and the Exploit doesn't spill out into the general populace for the super-leveling BS we'd been seeing before.

Then the Devs datamine the people that use the feature almost exclusively and solo, play through their MA missions looking for exploits, and if they find them CLICK! Locked mission and nerfed character.

Awesome.
-Rachel-

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I predict the ability to set max spawns on missions is going to cause all the same problems that AE did. Inf is going to flood the market driving up prices on key enhancements, there will be complaints that lvl 50s don't know the basics of the game because they've pl'd themselves up to max level and there will be complaints that no-one can find a team because players are all soloing multiple AV-level spawns.

Hopefully being able to further customise your difficulty doesn't count for I16's new playable content.

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* new-and-clueless players on level 50's and epics - again, with no need to pad or fill, there won't be the impetus to rope anyone who's standing around into your AE missions, and the new players will have a chance to learn more about the game's scope, lore, mechanics, et cetera. Veteran players on new characters will of course do what they know how to do to PL past levels they find boring (and I have absolutely no issue with that at all.)


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Oh I don't know, I think it just got easier to pl lowbies now that you don't need to find a bunch of fillers. And while I'm pl'ing my lowbie with my farmer I'll be getting a lot more drops than if any of the fillers remained on the team.

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* new-and-clueless players on level 50's and epics - again, with no need to pad or fill, there won't be the impetus to rope anyone who's standing around into your AE missions, and the new players will have a chance to learn more about the game's scope, lore, mechanics, et cetera. Veteran players on new characters will of course do what they know how to do to PL past levels they find boring (and I have absolutely no issue with that at all.)


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Oh I don't know, I think it just got easier to pl lowbies now that you don't need to find a bunch of fillers.

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Yeah, but it'll be lowbies who either know the PLer or from a second account, rather that newbies who just kinda stumbled in that whole scene.

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I predict the ability to set max spawns on missions is going to cause all the same problems that AE did. Inf is going to flood the market driving up prices on key enhancements

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Eh? Granted, I haven't kept up with the market much lately (too busy having fun with already built characters, heh), but last I checked the only prices that really soared were purples, and yellow salvage that occasionally spikes if you need to buy it NOW; things that you could roll for with tickets plummeted, rare salvage was normalized to a lower price than the highest had been before... There's always stuff to come along with the influence when you're clearing bigger missions, I don't think the prices in general will really go nuts just yet.

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Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!

It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...

The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013

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* new-and-clueless players on level 50's and epics - again, with no need to pad or fill, there won't be the impetus to rope anyone who's standing around into your AE missions, and the new players will have a chance to learn more about the game's scope, lore, mechanics, et cetera. Veteran players on new characters will of course do what they know how to do to PL past levels they find boring (and I have absolutely no issue with that at all.)


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Oh I don't know, I think it just got easier to pl lowbies now that you don't need to find a bunch of fillers.

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Yeah, but it'll be lowbies who either know the PLer or from a second account, rather that newbies who just kinda stumbled in that whole scene.

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meh, it will probably just go back to the paid pl services (x mill per run) that it used to be rather than all the free pl'ing that has been going on.

I'm sure most support sets will have no issues getting pl'd for free if it basically allows the pl'er to go from like a 6 setting to an 8.

It will be nice if it reduces the whole "pl culture" that has evolved out of AE though and puts people "in the know" as the ones getting pl'd rather than every single newb out there.

I think it will improve the pl plague, but as a whole pl'ing will be easier.

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I predict the ability to set max spawns on missions is going to cause all the same problems that AE did. Inf is going to flood the market driving up prices on key enhancements

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Eh? Granted, I haven't kept up with the market much lately (too busy having fun with already built characters, heh), but last I checked the only prices that really soared were purples, and yellow salvage that occasionally spikes if you need to buy it NOW; things that you could roll for with tickets plummeted, rare salvage was normalized to a lower price than the highest had been before... There's always stuff to come along with the influence when you're clearing bigger missions, I don't think the prices in general will really go nuts just yet.

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I was cleaning up with common salvage, not everyone uses tickets wisely.

I wonder if a team can use this to fight spawns meant for 16 players...

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The people "in the know" are usually the ones that are quiet about it, aren't in broadcast about it, do it with their friends instead of bugging me, and aren't clogging up the AE search with the hundred thousandth "kill stuffz" mission.

In other words, I don't care what they do.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

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Setting yourself up as a "larger teams" is so obviously an abuse of AE that there would be no debate or not if they player was trying to abuse it or not.

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Obviously the devs agree. Or they wouldn't make setting yourself up for larger teams an option.

. . .oh wait. . .

At least this proves the devs hate farming like you said.

. . .oh wait. . .

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@Rylas

Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.

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I think it will improve the pl plague, but as a whole pl'ing will be easier.

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The RMT must be beside themselves with this news...

Footnotes....

<Yes, I know this new functionality will have positive, non-farming uses - I'll certainly be using it in just such a way with a friend as we often complain that the duo spawn is too easy for us to kill - but the majority of its use will most certainly be farming>

<As has been said, this should clean up b/cast - at least this will be a positive change in-game. Hell, b/cast chat may be dead once i16 goes live>

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I actually suggested this two, maybe three years ago. I think I was punch-drunk on a Scrapper at the time, just having gone through ripping up double-boss spawns in Crey's Folly, and I can't say I see it as a stellar idea now that I've begun playing less self-sufficient character. But hey, I asked for it, and I'm getting it

I honestly don't care what this does to powerlevelling as long as it keeps genuine new players from getting sucked in like in a black hole. Let people farm all they want. They'll just buy my salvage for more.

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I honestly don't care what this does to powerlevelling as long as it keeps genuine new players from getting sucked in like in a black hole. Let people farm all they want. They'll just buy my salvage for more.

[/ QUOTE ] You know what? IMO you have the perfect attitude for this.

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