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Heck, it's such a perfect solution that it might actually make me start farming just because I won't need anyone else to do it effectively.
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I know I will because of this. I agree with the OP, this is a brilliant solution.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8.
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You are jumping to a huge conclusion there. It is just as likely that this feature will not work in AE at all.
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It seems extremely unlikely to me that the devs would want to maintain two separate difficulty setting systems. That would get confusing very fast, and I don't really see what the point would be.
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The point would be to minimize abuse. If they restrict the new difficulty settings to content they generated, they at least know there will be a reasonable mix of mobs. If they put it into the AE, they have to worry about custom critters tweaked to be very weak but still giving out full XP.
Patrol XP doesn't work with AE content currently, and I don't think it will get Double XP, either. I will be suprised if the Devs allow the I16 difficulty features in AE content.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Why do people complain about AE? It's not because the people who farm it are getting massive rewards - if these people didn't know where the rewards were coming from, or if they thought about what the rewards of AE brought to the rest of the game, they'd realize that AE farming is beneficial to everyone.
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Some of us are only "complaining" about the farmers/power-levelers that are "abusing" the AE.
The AE is a great idea. It is being abused. I am against the abusers. The DEVs have stated that they are as well, and they are the ones that define what abuse is.
I'm against the farmer/PL'rs because they are abusing the AE, helping to produce high-level characters for inept players, and are shortening the "longevity" of players that are, thus, PL'd by their abuse of the AE.
There may be some things that are cheaper due to the AE farming, but, by-and-large, the economy has gone crazy due to the AE.
My niche market is selling at double-xp weekend prices. That is to say between 5x and 8x what I would have been selling the items for pre-AE.
Why am I selling for so high?
Because players are paying that much.
Why? Because apparently they don't know any better and have so much inf throw around that they don't need to take time to learn any better.
The massive rewards are abuse and are obviously damaging to the game.
If you think that the market hasn't negatively been effected, then you have a very narrow view of the market.
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Negatively? Let's look at the effects of AE on the market.
Common salvage prices are typically still above what they used to be. Rare salvage is hovering around 700k-1m for almost every piece. Yes, these prices are high. However, who does this benefit? Farmers? No. Farmers are buying salvage to craft, but no longer producing it. The people who get to sell these are the new high prices are the people who play the regular content normally.
Purple prices are up. Who gets purple drops? Not the AE farmers. People who play ITFs and PI radio missions are getting purple drops.
Thus, influence inflow for non-farmers is rising. The stuff they're selling is going up in price, whereas the stuff the 'average' player buys is going down in price or staying the same. SOs, of course, never go up or down in price. Common IOs are still at the very affordable 500k crafted enhancement price. And Quality of Life IOs like the Steadfast/Karma KB globals and the Res/Def and Regenerative Tissue +Regen are all at all-time lows.
-Anyone- can now afford a +KB Protection with the sale of a couple of rare salvage. Someone who's run normal content 1-50 will be able to afford a +Regen global and a Res/Def in all likelihood as soon as they're ready to slot them.
Prices are -down- more than they are up - and they're mostly up on the very desirable purples and PVP IOs, which casual players never bought often anyway. I'm a dedicated farmer, and I can count the number of toons I've got a Purple set slotted on on one hand. Hell, on one finger.
Almost everything that your average player wants and needs is now more accessible at a better price, and it's easier for those casual players to get the money necessary to do it - all because of AE.
The economy has grown, and, I think, actually become more stable in the last month or two. Prices for the 10-14 bronze roll stuff have evened out to what looks like a sustainable range. Purples are still usually averaging about 50m a pop for the recipes - not that much higher than pre-AE prices. Even salvage prices are a bit down from what they were - nobody but the very impatient (read: Farmers) pay 100k for common salvage anymore.
I think that when (presumably) Going Rogue merges the redside/blueside markets (we can only hope such a sane and desirable thing will be a necessity when one can transfer characters back and forth - anything else would be madness that would allow dedicated marketeers to utterly [censored] over the redside market), we'll see another bit of flux and then an even better stabilization as prices for villains become much more reasonable on some things (I see Pet sets becoming a highly unstable market for awhile then settling somewhere between redside and blueside prices, in particular) that allows villains to benefit from the heroside market numbers and redside to benefit from their increased access to magic salvage.
I don't think my view of the market is 'narrow' at all. I've dedicated quite a lot of thought to this, watched prices rise and fall. I find myself doing less of what people used to call 'ebil marketeering' now, and have resigned myself to thoroughly be on the 'supply' side of the equation. I am a convenience factory: I produce IOs that everyone needs at a sane, reasonable price - I -have- to sell low, because there's so much supply that if I don't sell low, the demand will be so low that my market inventory fills. When you get those Karma/Steadfast KBs for 1m? That's probably because I've been farming for the past 4 hours and have dropped literally 50-75 of them onto the market in that time. You're welcome, squishes who never have to take Acrobatics again.
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If you think that the market hasn't negatively been effected, then you have a very narrow view of the market.
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The effect has been a mixed bag so far, and jumbled up with other factors (holiday weekend, impending 2XXP weekend, new issue).
As I've said elsewhere, I think it's way too early to proclaim MA's long-term effect on the market negative or positive.
The Cape Radio: You're not super until you put on the Cape!
DJ Enigma's Puzzle Factory: Co* Parody Commercials
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I agree with you completely. I must make the sidenote, that AE has made it nearly impossible to find a good PUG for running door mishes. Hopefully, as you suggest, the newbs will be thrust back onto the streets, and we'll see more Vets LFT with other Vets.
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But..why? Radio missions were a horrible and painful experience. ;/
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8
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I have been asking for this since I9. Where did you hear this from?
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In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8
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I have been asking for this since I9. Where did you hear this from?
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The announcement notes for i16.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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If you think that the market hasn't negatively been effected, then you have a very narrow view of the market.
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The effect has been a mixed bag so far, and jumbled up with other factors (holiday weekend, impending 2XXP weekend, new issue).
As I've said elsewhere, I think it's way too early to proclaim MA's long-term effect on the market negative or positive.
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Right. We can proclaim MA's long-term effect on the market about a week before i16 goes live. Then spend the next five months arguing about i16's long-term effect on the market 
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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In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8
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I have been asking for this since I9. Where did you hear this from?
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The announcement notes for i16.
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Correction: It says you can set missions to spawn for a full team of 8, but it doesn't anywhere say that the MA will fall under the same rule.
As we've seen, the MA became more exploitable in the last 2 months than the entire 5 years of Dev Created content. By blocking the MA from using this feature, you have leveled the playing field. Either play the MA at normal settings or play the regular game with "enhanced" difficulty and rewards.
Perfect solution for the MA farming.
pohsyb: so of all people you must be most excited about the veats
Arachnos Commander: actually, I am
pohsyb: I mean you kinda were one already anyways ^_^
Arachnos Commander:
There is no leveling the field. There is no field. Its all on people´s mind.
The question is, the ancient cant keep pace with the changing times, so they must find an excuse for it.
They cry its not fair. They cry that its wrong.
Yet, they did it all on PI farms. Time after time. But now that more people can farm, it must not be fair.
Deal with it just like you did with the PI Farms. And stop trying to decide what is fun for others.
By the way, this is a QR. I am not targetting anyone.
** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************
Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.
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This is going to be highly useful for everything. It'll help those looking for new challenges, it will eliminate the need to pad (and thus also all the broadcasts for pads), and it will mean that nobody who can solo a map is likely to invite people to fill unless they're doing it for friends and SG mates.
I am curious whether the large-team bonus will apply to up-shifted missions of this type, or if some other reward will be given, or if the convenience of large spawns will be considered sufficient reward. I hope it's the last, as there should still be good incentives to actually team, and I do think large spawns will be their own reward.
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I don't see them giving the 'large team' XP bonus to people who use this new Difficulty Adjustment thingy, the larger spawns are great by themselves, in fact... Personally I would be more likely to my XP off, if that were the case.
BUT, for those that are "all about XP" then Teaming will still give them that Bonus XP Reward they crave so much.
And it would continue to to be an incentive to team, at least for those people that actually see Bonus Team XP as an incentive.
And I'm thinking it would get rid of some of the PL'ing that goes on (or rather, the type of PL'ing that used to go on before the MA/AE was introduced).
So people aren't farming for drops, AND getting other people to pay them for the privilege of doorsitting. (I believe that's how it worked)
As for me, after a couple unpleasant run-ins with people wanting me to join a newspaper/scanner team and either "pad" or "bridge" or whatever (and I wasn't doing it properly? IDK?) - I got sick of the stupidity and went into hide (to whatever degree of 'hide' that was available at the time), and went into near Perma-"hide from everything" when that feature went live.
You may be surprised at just how "empty" the zones actually AREN'T - once the "canu fil 4asec plz?" or "fill plz?" spam goes away, their just might be all sort of heroes and villains "coming out of the woodwork" (so to speak).
And if they put in a "Turn Off Email" option, to avoid the RMT goldspamers... Together those 2 things might bring a veritable cornucopia of people out of the shadows of perma-hide, more than you ever imagined - that are/were lurking around.
Maybe not, I actually have been mistaken a couple times.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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You have to realize, the devs know people are going to farm. They are living with it. But they will not give in and allow the MA to become a "farming machine." They know that there is WAY too much in the MA that's unbalanced, so they are doing what they can to allow people to farm to their hearts content OUTSIDE of the MA.
Yes, there is a way to "level the field." That way is by taking something intended only for creating "fan fiction" and making sure that people will want to farm less with it.
They will not remove XP because, when there is no reward and all risk, no one will play. But by not allowing extras available elsewhere in the game, it puts the MA back in the hands of the content creators.
It's like the mini-game scenario: the MA is a mini-game for storytellers. Badges are a mini-game for badge hunters. PvP is a minigame for PvP'ers. Now the farmers will have their own mini-game back with more of a reason to stay away from the other mini-games.
pohsyb: so of all people you must be most excited about the veats
Arachnos Commander: actually, I am
pohsyb: I mean you kinda were one already anyways ^_^
Arachnos Commander:
Qr - if the 'choose your own team size while soloing' thing is not in the MA, will the rewards for farming using it be greater than those from an MA farm? If not, it wont dent the MA farming signiducantly.
And does this new shiny tool mean i can start TFs when solo now?
eco
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)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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Qr - if the 'choose your own team size while soloing' thing is not in the MA, will the rewards for farming using it be greater than those from an MA farm? If not, it wont dent the MA farming signiducantly.
And does this new shiny tool mean i can start TFs when solo now?
eco
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I gotta agree with cap here. If they dont allow you to do this in the MA, all its gonna do is draw off people who prefer farming drops. XP farms will be alive and well.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
I would like to point out. That if the current drop rate of purples does not change, and with the small chance of pool C/D drops from bosses, the supply of these items will most likely increase. With the potential to "normalize" the prices on the market, so that the average player, the guy only on for an hour or two at a time, can afford to IO there toon as they see fit. Rather than have a system where there are the have and have nots.
I like that notion, and hope it comes about.
210 50s and still counting!
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I thought it was impossible, but I think the devs have stumbled upon a masterstroke in killing 90% of the complaints about AE.
Why do people complain about AE? It's not because the people who farm it are getting massive rewards - if these people didn't know where the rewards were coming from, or if they thought about what the rewards of AE brought to the rest of the game, they'd realize that AE farming is beneficial to everyone. (For example: How many people could afford a Steadfast: Res/Def before AE? How many people seriously planned on grabbing that Regenerative Tissue Unique? How long, before AE, did you have to wait for a reasonable bid on a +Knockback protection enhancement to go through?)
I, for one, had stopped reading the same old story text over and over long before AE - so the fact that AE has killed the 'story' of the game is also a rather pointless concern.
There are two reasons, logically, why so many people hate AE.
1) It's visible.
2) It takes the teaming masses of 'average' players off the streets.
I'll explain in a bit more detail.
The concern with #1 is that you can no longer go through the most populated zones (Cap, Atlas) without being bombarded by AE spam. Hell, a lot of people go onto the Request or Help chans spamming for it nowadays. Clueless newbies who have never leveled themselves past 30 now have multiple 50s they have no clue what to do with because you can go to one of these zones, spam the broadcast channel, and eventually get a team.
#2 comes up from the simple fact that those clueless newbs (and more average people - the ones who may not be clueless, but 'just play' instead of IOing out) are now riding along as fillers in the farms of people like me and many others who -do- have a clue and can trick out a character to take down boss spawns in the time it takes most people to team wipe against mixed minion/lt groups. Those people aren't out there on taskforces, street sweeping, doing paper missions- and they need to be. That's how you learn the game, and it's how newbies get exposed to the true team play that will get them hoked to CoH.
The devs are about to fix both of these problems with one change, one that I don't know if they fathom the consequences of:
In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8.
Instantly, you have eliminated most of the spamming - random average joe will no longer have a place on -my- boss farms, for instance. Why would I pad out my team with pointless non-contributors and reduce my inf/prestige drops? Why would I leech XP from the toons of my friends - people who can already play, people who know the game, people who just want to skip that 1-35 grind before the characters they want to play actually become fun? People who realize the game -starts-, rather than ends, at 50?
The answer: I won't. I won't ever again make myself feel dirty for broadcasting that I'm running an AE Team LFM. I won't ever have to worry that I've just PL'd some newb who won't know what he's doing with the toon I've just taken from 1-35 in a few hours.
Imagine a world where AE slowly transforms, organically - from a loud, noisy crowd to a few silent solo farmers moving in and out of that glowing cylinder with their close friends, silent but for their Skype or Ventrilo chats. Where the random average joe who wanders into AE does so for actual story arcs because he can't boss farm - and if he can, he can do it alone, for much greater reward than spamming the channels.
Imagine those huddled masses of lowbies and newbies and AE babies forced back onto the streets and into paper missions again. Out into the game where they'll have to learn the ropes for themselves, carry themselves from 1-50 like we did before AE, because nobody needs them to get proper-sized spawns anymore.
I think this is the best move the devs have ever made. I hope that they were smart enough to realize what they were doing, that it was on purpose, but really? Even if it's an accident, I think it's the best accident to happen to the game since AE.
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This thread is too sensible. Please Devs delete this thread for being insightful. /sarcasm_off
/signed Agreed with the OP completely except for one thing:
I Have a feeling the scaling mob feature won't be for AE, rather it will be a feature implemented in regular mission archs. If this is so it would indeed be a stroke of brillaince.
I could be wrong. Whether i'm right or wrong I will be waiting with excited anticipation regardless.
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I would like to point out. That if the current drop rate of purples does not change, and with the small chance of pool C/D drops from bosses, the supply of these items will most likely increase. With the potential to "normalize" the prices on the market, so that the average player, the guy only on for an hour or two at a time, can afford to IO there toon as they see fit. Rather than have a system where there are the have and have nots.
I like that notion, and hope it comes about.
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there will always be have and have nots for the simple reason that most people are too damned lazy to work for anything.
IOs arent hard to afford if you're willing to play the market or farm money. But sitting around in atlas all day [censored] about IO prices wont get you anywhere
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
Personally, I think that it will make a significant dent to the farming in the MA, mainly because of end-mission bonuses.
It's no secret that the larger teams get larger XP bonuses. The only arcs in MA that have end mission bonuses are Dev's Choice, and from what I've seen, the choices up there aren't farm worthy. (Mainly because of their length.)
Also considering that there are caps on tickets you get in MA per map and what you can hold, non-MA farms will make a comeback, tenfold, since there are no caps.
Sure, people will still do what they do in MA, but over time they will see that non-MA arcs will provided them with quite a bit more. I rarely farm for anything but badges, but seeing as what they will be offering won't have caps on drops, have the chance to snag purple recipies as a drop, get uber end mission XP, and have a shot at earning kill/inf badges since team size will be selectable...
There's going to be more than enough to do besides worry about drops.
*plots solo 8-man teams for the Visionary and Weatherman badges villainside*
>.>
pohsyb: so of all people you must be most excited about the veats
Arachnos Commander: actually, I am
pohsyb: I mean you kinda were one already anyways ^_^
Arachnos Commander:
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*plots solo 8-man teams for the Visionary and Weatherman badges villainside*
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Holy crap, I hadn't even considered that. I am so all over that.
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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Qr - if the 'choose your own team size while soloing' thing is not in the MA, will the rewards for farming using it be greater than those from an MA farm? If not, it wont dent the MA farming signiducantly.
And does this new shiny tool mean i can start TFs when solo now?
eco
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Nope.
EDIT: although thinking about this lead me to post on the Suggestions forum about a nice solution to this situation.
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
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Exactly my thought. I -am- a farmer, and I hate the spam. I hate contributing to it so much that I typically do solo (or maybe 3-4 people with my friends) rather than fill to 8-man spawns with AE spam. This would be ideal.
Also: I'm the kind of farmer you guys should love. Impatient to sell, of the opinion that I'd rather sell 50 recipes for 2m each than 2 recipes for 50m each - meaning I tend to sell low and in high volume. :P
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Repeat Offenders
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In I16, you will be able to set your AE mission to spawn as if you had a full team of 8.
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You are jumping to a huge conclusion there. It is just as likely that this feature will not work in AE at all.
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It seems extremely unlikely to me that the devs would want to maintain two separate difficulty setting systems. That would get confusing very fast, and I don't really see what the point would be.
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The point would be to minimize abuse. If they restrict the new difficulty settings to content they generated, they at least know there will be a reasonable mix of mobs. If they put it into the AE, they have to worry about custom critters tweaked to be very weak but still giving out full XP.
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All those problems exist already.
How would you even go about disallowing the MA from benefiting from the enhanced difficulty settings? The MA obeys difficulty today. Unless you are saying that MA missions would always be set to Heroic/Villainous, I don't see how this could possibly work.
My belief is that allowing the MA to benefit from the enhanced difficulty settings will allow them to correct what is, IMHO, the biggest existing balance issue it contains: auto-SK. If you change auto-SK to bring everyone up to the mission holder's level minus one, the balance problems inherent in team XP division disappear. The only reason not to do that already is that it limits the kinds of critters teams get to face - the experience of being on the lowbie end of the spectrum, fighting tough critters, more or less disappears. But the enhanced difficulty settings address that issue nicely.
Disallowing the MA from using enhanced difficulty settings doesn't allow that elegant solution.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Cavatina
I work my butt off in any number of ways. I am talking about how it seems like prices for purples is rather higher than I would like, if I was a casual gamer.
As I am an addict that plays 4-6 hours a night, I could afford them, but, having altitis to a severe degree, the total cost to me and my ideas...stinks.
Its just my hope that if more people are able to go for the random chance of drops, with better frequency, then everyone has a better chance.
Is my point.
210 50s and still counting!
The problem is that if more people are playing enough to get purple drops, they're also making more money. More money entering the economy for high priced items when you're still only playing 3 hours a week means you're still never going to be able to afford purples.
Nor should you be able to with that kind of play schedule. They're not for the casual players, they're for the hardcore.
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That's my only concern about this. It gives people much less incentive to team in general.
It's not going to help the fact that PUGs are hard to find for door missions. It could even make it worse.
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I don't see why. Teams can now bump up their difficulty to steamroll even more effectively.
I do wonder whether we will be able to spawn maps for team sizes of, say, 12 (by setting the difficulty slider to "team size +4" on an 8-person team). But even if not, teams of 4 can now take on 8-spawned maps.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines