Make AE Rewards zone-appropriate
By
American_Angel,
Posted on: 2009-07-23 17:24 in Suggestions and Ideas
No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
If you're having trouble getting onto a team, why not lead one yourself?
use the damn /search command and send tells to people your lv who aren't greyed out. i know it will be a new concept for you, but it works. try it you may like it.
oh and this may require you to actually make a new tab for just tells on your chat window which can be done by right clicking on the window, selecting add new tab, naming it tells, put only private tells into it and click ok. then your tells wont get drowned out by broadcast.
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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If you're having trouble getting onto a team, why not lead one yourself?
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use the damn /search command and send tells to people your lv who aren't greyed out. I know it will be a new concept for you, but it works. try it you may like it.
[/ QUOTE ]Who said I don't do that? I've been leading teams quite a bit lately and I use the search quite a bit.
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oh and this may require you to actually make a new tab for just tells on your chat window which can be done by right clicking on the window, selecting add new tab, naming it tells, put only private tells into it and click ok. then your tells wont get drowned out by broadcast.
[/ QUOTE ]This would be a great idea, if every lowbie you might send a tell to did the same thing. And why shouldn't lowbies be able to use Broadcast to find or organize teams too? Working only in tells is a viable work-around if the people you are sending tells too have them in a separate tab, but broadcasting "Lvl 18ish mission team lfm" would get results a lot faster if it weren't drowned out by the spam of "level 54 AE boss farm LFM lvl 40+, need kin".
If people actually used the AE channels then spam wouldn't be a problem. But you need to actually set up tabs for those, and there is nothing to mouse over which makes the existence of those channels apparent the way the buttons on the chat box do. It's hypocritical that your solution for lower levels is to set up a different sort of chat when the AE spammers won't bother with the channel they were given.
Alternately if there were a way to just avoid the heavy farming zone there wouldn't be so much of a problem. But on the red side you can't. Anyone you might try to talk to who is not in a mission is stuck in the AE spam.
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I'm really not against AE. Overall it's been a good thing for the game, especially for lower population servers where finding teams was a challenge. I don't want to throw out the baby, but the bath-water needs to go. Frankly I don't care if people were farming mitos or whatever -- that effects them, not me. I don't care if there are AE missions with the objective "Farm, farm, farm" and custom enemies named "Kill ME". I genuinely like the story arcs that people have put together.
But the game was not designed for level 40+ characters to spend most of their time in Cap Au Diable. The *only* reason for leaving Cap between level 1 and level 50 is to do your patron missions, but you can safely skip the patron powers if you wanted to.
The other thing that could help might be to redesign some of the higher level zones to be more convenient. All the things you need are in Cap and it is connected directly to every zone except the Pocket D, so there is no reason that a level 40 might be elsewhere unless they are already on a mission.
At any rate, my suggestion just makes the AE stores conform to the standards of other stores in the game. It's something we all dealt with before AE, and it wasn't a big enough problem to stop us from teaming with other levels, it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level.
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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... which your suggestion would *dis*courage. Besides, you say that's how it was "before AE." It hasn't changed with AE. And exemping down, I get immediate rewards in the drops - as opposed to having to go to a "level appropriate" zone to cash in tickets.
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it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level.
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Best take off those rose-colored glasses before looking at the past. If anything, having lowbies *staying* in lower level zones (because, after all, a higher level may be running a mission there) means they're more likely to be picked up by a level-appropriate team - instead of finding their way to PI or Grandville to be PL'd.
Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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... which your suggestion would *dis*courage.
[/ QUOTE ]Only if you never group with people outside your level range. And never use the bank, auction, or university.
There is plenty of incentive for being in zones outside your level range, but little incentive to go to level-appropriate zones.
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Besides, you say that's how it was "before AE." It hasn't changed with AE. And exemping down, I get immediate rewards in the drops - as opposed to having to go to a "level appropriate" zone to cash in tickets.
[/ QUOTE ]BS.
If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level.
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Best take off those rose-colored glasses before looking at the past. If anything, having lowbies *staying* in lower level zones (because, after all, a higher level may be running a mission there) means they're more likely to be picked up by a level-appropriate team - instead of finding their way to PI or Grandville to be PL'd.
[/ QUOTE ]I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever. Most of the time they are polite, but a couple of times I've had people tell me I should level up more before joining an AE team. Maybe if they don't want to get tells from level 18s, they shouldn't be recruiting in level 18 zones?
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Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
[/ QUOTE ]You're trying to build a strawman by implying that I don't want higher levels to ever go into lower level zones. I didn't say that, I just think that there ought to be incentive for them to spend some time in higher level zones.
On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there.
Two suggestions:
1) Set AE to auto adjust players running AE missions to be zone-level-appropriate. If you're above the level of the zone, you auto-mal... if you're lower, you auto-sk.
That way, if you want to AE with friends higher or lower than you, it acts just like any other mission, except it's automatic. You simply all move to the zone appropriate to the level of missions you're shooting for and the auto-mal or -sk happens however it needs to so that all of you can play at the same level.
Farming for XPs (aka PLing Farms) might be a little more effort because it would require to lower levels to move to a higher level zone, but the higher level players can certainly help with that, just like we used to do in the old days. No one would be penalized beyond having to move around the zones a bit.
This would clear out a lot of the clutter from broadcasts as well as end a lot of frustration for people trying to find level-appropriate teams (both AE and Non-AE) in any given zone.
And don't misunderstand... no one's saying that a high level toon shouldn't go to a low level zone. They're are plenty of reasons to go back and forth. But face it guys... clustering in starter zones, then demanding 30+ level toons is just lazy... move on to Founders or St. Martial where you'll find what you're looking for.
2) The other suggestion: Make AE it's own entity (A shard taken over by Doc Aeon?), like Pocket D, the PvP zones, and the RWZ. Then put doors in most zones leading to it, give it a huge lobby/bar and several smaller AE rooms (the size of the typical AE room now), and add some arenas as well.
Oh... and give it it's own trainers.
This way, no changes have to be made to anything with the exception of how you access AE. Anyone who wants to use AE can, from anywhere, Hero, Villian, Co-Op, High, Low, Farm... whatever. And, again, it clears out some of the issues people seem to have from the Zones.
It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets
... Hit it ...
... Hit it ...
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So if want to spread players between the zones a bit you need to give them some reason to leave Cap. Having to go to another zone to buy things with their AE tickets seems like a good reason.
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since you say you play red side, you do know that this would screw over a lv 41-50 right? there is no AE building in Grandville. which means alot of people 41-50 running around with 9999 tickets and no place to spend them. unless the want to take the trip to RWZ which is way out of the way.
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use the damn /search command and send tells to people your lv who aren't greyed out. i know it will be a new concept for you, but it works. try it you may like it.
oh and this may require you to actually make a new tab for just tells on your chat window which can be done by right clicking on the window, selecting add new tab, naming it tells, put only private tells into it and click ok. then your tells wont get drowned out by broadcast.
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Why is it that the replies in this section are so harsh? There's really no need for that.
What? You think you know so much about this game that you find it offensive that people make suggestions? Grow up man...or go back to elementary in August.
for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
many of us are getting sick and tired of these threads popping up for no reason other then the OP's of all these threads refussing to follow the rules and search first before making a new post.
as for your little comment at the end, i'll let it go since apparently you haven't been paying attention to the forums.
I like your first idea but there is a problem with it in regards to the villain side.
Grandville the only Villain 40+ zone does not have an AE building(which makes sense for story reasons)
So how would St Martial be handled?
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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... which your suggestion would *dis*courage.
[/ QUOTE ]Only if you never group with people outside your level range. And never use the bank, auction, or university.
There is plenty of incentive for being in zones outside your level range, but little incentive to go to level-appropriate zones.
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Besides level-appropriate arcs and such, I assume you mean. Some of us *do* run non-AE content.
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Besides, you say that's how it was "before AE." It hasn't changed with AE. And exemping down, I get immediate rewards in the drops - as opposed to having to go to a "level appropriate" zone to cash in tickets.
[/ QUOTE ]BS.
If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
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You talk about strawmen - and bring up "that was for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed," like that's an issue remotely related to "level appropriate zones." Outside of TOs, that's an issue for *everyone* (and I use "issue" very loosely in this case.)
Plus, you still get IO recipe drops and salvage drops - in fact, teaming with lowbies often helps in those cases (at least with salvage, and it certainly doesn't hurt someone like me to get the low level IO recipes. Saves me money as I don't have to buy as many to craft them for the "lowbie bin."
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If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
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Or, if you didn't want the recipe (standard IO or not-particularly wanted set,) you could sell them at any store, and as for crafting - I have yet to run across a base without the nice, cheap invention table, accessible in any zone with a portal.
You don't "have" to go to an auction house. Even if you feel you have to, that has nothing to do with level-appropriateness, as they're scattered all over.
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Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
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... what? I'm assuming you mean "store/auction house" for "useful." And again - stores are in every zone, base portals in every zone, auction houses spread throughout the levels - both above and below you.
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If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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"Pretty frequently?" Please. Yes, I run mixed level teams. No, they don't have to leave "pretty frequently."
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it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level.
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Best take off those rose-colored glasses before looking at the past. If anything, having lowbies *staying* in lower level zones (because, after all, a higher level may be running a mission there) means they're more likely to be picked up by a level-appropriate team - instead of finding their way to PI or Grandville to be PL'd.
[/ QUOTE ]I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
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... you're kidding. Funny, Cap seems to be the place FOR PLing redside. And of course, nobody has to do so in any case. I see far fewer lowbies in the high level zones - post AE, it was almost spooky to go into PI and not see farm/PL spam. Then I realized how *nice* it was.
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I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever.
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... so make your own team? I don't see the problem.
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Most of the time they are polite, but a couple of times I've had people tell me I should level up more before joining an AE team. Maybe if they don't want to get tells from level 18s, they shouldn't be recruiting in level 18 zones?
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Or perhaps they're just happening to like being in a "crossroads" zone - Cap is the only zone wth ferries going to both lower (Oakes, black helicopter line to Mercy) and higher level zones. Not to mention the RWZ, Cimerora (which needs another exit, IMHO) and the university, portal, Bloody Bay, and auction house - all right together. It's pretty much "downtown" for redside.
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Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
[/ QUOTE ]You're trying to build a strawman by implying that I don't want higher levels to ever go into lower level zones. I didn't say that, I just think that there ought to be incentive for them to spend some time in higher level zones.
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Again, there already is - level appropriate missions. If people are tired of those, *shrug* let them team with whoever they want, where they want, without being penalized. No reason to try to affect peoples AE missions and teaming just because you dont' like what you're perceiving.
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On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there.
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"Need" to? Other than it being the only entrance to Cimerora, no, you don't "need" to go back frequently. The only things I can do in Cap that I can't do elsewhere are:
- Go to bloody bay
- Go to cimerora
- Tailor missions (2 of the 3.)
- One strike force.
/unsigned for reasons mentioned by others.
Jet_Boy:
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1) Set AE to auto adjust players running AE missions to be zone-level-appropriate. If you're above the level of the zone, you auto-mal... if you're lower, you auto-sk. (snip)
[/ QUOTE ]I think this would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It doesn't matter if people are using AE to PL or farm as long as they don't cause problems for people that aren't using it that way.
The auto-SK feature is great on lower pop servers or off-peak hours because it means you don't need to find 4 people of the same level before you can SK/LK the rest. It would be nice if AE story arcs would do it as reliably as the farms do, but I still wouldn't mess with it too much.
It's also a lot harder on lowbies to move up to more dangerous zones than on high-levels to move down. It's easier to hop in an Ouroboros portal for half the trip and make the rest with travel powers through safe zones than it is to hoof it the whole way while avoiding aggro and possibly without decent travel powers.
The fact that travel is so trivial on my higher level toons is a big part of why I didn't really expect people to be so upset about leaving the AE building 
IMO AE has been a good thing for the game overall, which is why changes to correct the problem should be relatively small and easy to predict. We know what happens when people doing missions in a zone outside their level have to go to a different zone for enhancements, to buy, to sell, or to invent. We all dealt with it, and it wasn't game-breaking.
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And don't misunderstand... no one's saying that a high level toon shouldn't go to a low level zone. They're are plenty of reasons to go back and forth. But face it guys... clustering in starter zones, then demanding 30+ level toons is just lazy... move on to Founders or St. Martial where you'll find what you're looking for.
[/ QUOTE ]This I agree with.
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2) The other suggestion: Make AE it's own entity (A shard taken over by Doc Aeon?), like Pocket D, the PvP zones, and the RWZ. (snip)
[/ QUOTE ]This is a pretty good idea. The only issue I'd see is that it hurst the "up for anything" players, but then again they weren't paying attention to what was going on in the zones their level if they were camping out in lowbie zones.
I think better would be to give AE it's own chat channel, with a button on the chat box so people don't ignore it like they do now, then link all the various AE buildings together. Make it so you can enter the same mission with your team from any zone. Since AE missions are supposed to be virtual, being able to enter them from different places makes sense story-wise. I just don't know if it's practical to program that way.
Either way you're getting into a lot of work for the devs.
DMystic:
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I like your first idea but there is a problem with it in regards to the villain side.
Grandville the only Villain 40+ zone does not have an AE building(which makes sense for story reasons)
So how would St Martial be handled?
[/ QUOTE ]I actually hadn't thought about Grandville because my higher villains spend so little time there. Part of why I don't is that I'm used to it not having the basic things you need to "live" in a zone, so once I hit 50 through the missions there I don't bother checking back. My newer characters haven't even been doing 40-50 there.
I could see one of two solutions: either put an AE building in Grandville or just let the St. Martial one sell up to level 50 items.
Frankly, I don't know the story for Grandville very well at all, so I'm unsure why an AE building in Grandville wouldn't make sense (my 50s are on a low pop server so that whole level range was too dead to really get into the story). Or why it would make less sense than the one in RWZ at any rate
I think making the AE in St. Martial cater to toons up to level 50 would still solve some problems. Most importantly, level 49s or 50s can still work reasonably well with level 30+ as long as the lower levels are SKed or LKed. By 30 power sets and enhancements are complete enough that sidekicking is possible without just giving those toons a free ride. So anything going out on Broadcast would at least be limited to players that might be interested, and who might be allowed on the team.
The zones prior to St. Martial would still have a bit more normal population distribution, and putting levels 30 to 50 all in one zone isn't nearly as bad as putting 15-50 in the same zone. Also Nerva overlaps with St. Martial a great deal, so if a player wanted to go to a less trafficked zone there is at least an option. My problem with Cap is that you can't avoid going there; you can skip St. Martial if you want to.
Making the St. Martial AE "end-game" for the red side seems like it would work well-enough if putting one in Grandville is out of the question.
Another effect of spreading out the level range a bit is that it would make AE story arc teams more viable. Right now if a player is not in the zone with the AE, it's a pretty safe bet that they want nothing to do with AE, but in the AE zone it's hard to get past all the farmer spam. AE missions are like regular missions in that they normally don't auto-SK, so being able to use the zone chat to recruit people of similar levels might be a help.
Sharker_Quint:
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for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
[/ QUOTE ]Or maybe when you see "AE" you go into troll mode so fast that you don't bother reading?
I did not address 2 different things in my OP; I made one suggestion and separated it into a single paragraph. If it were a TLDR issue you would have read and understood the single suggestion. Jet_Boy made 2 suggestions, and your post is tagged as a response to him, but you made references to Cap and "since you play red side" both of which were things I mentioned but Jet_Boy didn't.
So either you failed to comprehend my post, or you failed to comprehend Jet_Boy's. And in either case you didn't let your ignorance make you more careful about what you say. And in both cases you let your emotions cloud what you believe about someone else.
Are you really able to say that "there are 1000s of threads just like this" when you are unable to read and understand two posts in the same short thread? You just see "AE" and come out with canned responses without bothering to read.
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many of us are getting sick and tired of these threads popping up for no reason other then the OP's of all these threads refussing to follow the rules and search first before making a new post.
[/ QUOTE ]You are assuming I didn't use the search on the forums the same way you assumed I didn't use search in the game -- you were wrong on both counts.
Search on the forums and on Google didn't reveal any suggestion about limiting what you could purchase with AE tickets to what you could normally purchase in the zone. What I did find was a whole ton of plain hate threads, or "suggestions" like: "AE should be removed from the game", "AE should only be available to level 50s", "AE shouldn't yield XP", or "AE shouldn't yield tickets". The most constructive discussion I can find is about removing the auto-SK, but that's still a whole different thing than just changing which zones the rewards are available in.
I've actually been thinking about this for several days, and have done quite a few searches to see if there is an appropriate place. Maybe their is and I'm just missing it.
Look, if you want to argue my idea, then go ahead and argue it. But drop the false assumptions and the bad manners.
The whole reason I'm leveling a bunch of new characters through the AE spam zone now is that I wasn't happy with the activity level red-side on a low-pop server, so I searched different level ranges on other servers and found one that was active enough for my tastes. I think that spreading the AE rewards between zones a bit might help with general lack of activity outside of lowbie zones, but I can't say for sure because I specifically picked a server that was active enough for me.
Something to bear in mind is that the lowbie zones still have a *lot* of players that are: new to the game, coming back after a break of "X" years, trying their first villain after 4 years playing heroes, or just trying CoX for something to do while waiting for CO. When you run level 2-15 teams you meet a *lot* of people like that, and it's really unreasonable to ask them to set up some sort of alternate chat for working their way through a zone when the level 40+ players spamming for AE can't be bothered to actually use the AE channel.
That's why something needs to be done to make the lowbie zones lowbie friendly. Cap is a particular problem because there is no alternative zone to go to, and you need to go there to catch the ferry elsewhere.
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use the damn /search command and send tells to people your lv who aren't greyed out. i know it will be a new concept for you, but it works. try it you may like it.
oh and this may require you to actually make a new tab for just tells on your chat window which can be done by right clicking on the window, selecting add new tab, naming it tells, put only private tells into it and click ok. then your tells wont get drowned out by broadcast.
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Why is it that the replies in this section are so harsh? There's really no need for that.
What? You think you know so much about this game that you find it offensive that people make suggestions? Grow up man...or go back to elementary in August.
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It is because something similar has been suggested over and over and people are tired of showing people that there are ways to solve their problems without using dev time.
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Why is it that the replies in this section are so harsh? There's really no need for that.
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this was what american angel said. if you bothered to look my reply was to her question.
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Sharker_Quint:
for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
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Or maybe when you see "AE" you go into troll mode so fast that you don't bother reading?
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what you did there was a personal attack as i wasn't refering to you in specific.
as for the rest of your response, i read perfectly and understand perfectly. what you are doing is trying to play both sides of the fence though. you say you don't want higher lv people in a certain zone in the AE then you say in another post that you are guilty of the same thing yourself and you don't mind it.
and i really don't believe with how many of the "AE blah blah blah" posts there are that you couldn't just stick this idea in one of them.
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That's why something needs to be done to make the lowbie zones lowbie friendly. Cap is a particular problem because there is no alternative zone to go to, and you need to go there to catch the ferry elsewhere.
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so what are you saying here? that the only reason you go to cap is to catch a ferry to another zone and you hate seeing broadcast flying by? and it is by no means the only zone to go to to go to somewhere else. read memphis-bills post up a few posts and you will see this.
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...when the level 40+ players spamming for AE can't be bothered to actually use the AE channel.
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have you actually bothered to tell people about this channel? most of them don't even know it's there. but then again it would be unreasonable to ask them to set up a different tab just like you claim it to be unreasonable to ask you to do the same.
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"AE shouldn't yield XP", or "AE shouldn't yield tickets".
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your idea could have gone in any number of these threads seeing as how it deals with rewards.
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Besides level-appropriate arcs and such, I assume you mean. Some of us *do* run non-AE content.
[/ QUOTE ]Not saying you don't. The whole reason the AE spam is bugging me so much right now is that I'm in the process of leveling characters on a more active server (red-side on a low-pop server there are times when the search really doesn't show anyone in your level range).
I don't think that higher level toons should never go into lower level zones. But the lower level zones need to be made better for lowbies.
Honestly if everyone congregated at the AE in Nerva, St. Martial, or Sharkhead then I wouldn't be so bothered, because those zones overlap enough that you could skip one if the spam really annoys you. But for about 5 levels you're too high to get missions in Port Oakes and too low to get them in Sharkhead, so Cap is the only option.
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If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
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You talk about strawmen - and bring up "that was for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed," like that's an issue remotely related to "level appropriate zones." Outside of TOs, that's an issue for *everyone* (and I use "issue" very loosely in this case.)
Plus, you still get IO recipe drops and salvage drops - in fact, teaming with lowbies often helps in those cases (at least with salvage, and it certainly doesn't hurt someone like me to get the low level IO recipes. Saves me money as I don't have to buy as many to craft them for the "lowbie bin."
[/ QUOTE ]Which doesn't change the fact that you couldn't use your rewards instantly like you claimed.
Whether you have to go to a different zone to use the ticket vendor or the store to get something useful, you're still traveling. Inventions and salvage both require a trip somewhere else to be useful either way.
The thing is that as things are now, the ticket vendor is a *lot* more convenient for people that are leveling. You get your DOs or SOs right next to where you are doing your missions, don't have to pay an arm and a leg for them, only get the ones you need, and can mostly stay up-to-date on them while still saving up infamy/influence.
If you're doing regular missions, you while often need to go to whole different zones for enhancements, and you can't stay up to date on all of them without either trading inf from another toon or playing the market a lot.
My suggestion would just make either method equally convenient/inconvenient.
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If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
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Or, if you didn't want the recipe (standard IO or not-particularly wanted set,) you could sell them at any store, and as for crafting - I have yet to run across a base without the nice, cheap invention table, accessible in any zone with a portal.
You don't "have" to go to an auction house. Even if you feel you have to, that has nothing to do with level-appropriateness, as they're scattered all over.
[/ QUOTE ]Any of which takes you outside of the AE building.
I don't find making use of rewards from normal missions to be impossible, and the time spent running around is usually about the same as a typical beer/bio break. But AE removes that travel. I think that putting AE on more level terms with the rest of the game would help balance things out a bit without breaking the rest of the system.
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Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
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... what? I'm assuming you mean "store/auction house" for "useful." And again - stores are in every zone, base portals in every zone, auction houses spread throughout the levels - both above and below you.
[/ QUOTE ]If you're leveling instead of just selling things then the stores in every zone don't help you, just the ones in the zone which is appropriate to your level. And often those stores don't sell enhancements for the lowest or highest levels that might have missions in the zone.
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If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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"Pretty frequently?" Please. Yes, I run mixed level teams. No, they don't have to leave "pretty frequently."
[/ QUOTE ]I would call you on that, but maybe blue side is different. I know there is a lot more overlap.
I know that level 20s can get missions in Sharkhead, but they can't buy anything there until they are high enough for level 25 SOs. So the lower level players and all the lackeys have to go back to Cap very frequently. And since they are lower level, everything is red or purple to them which means they need to keep their enhancements up to date to stay effective, but they level a lot faster than the rest of the team.
When you get to the other villain zones it's pretty much the same, there is almost no overlap at the stores. If you just run one mission maybe no one has to leave, but if you do a story arc or a bank then you see it a lot.
I really can't think of a regular mission team where no one had to leave the zone to buy enhancements.
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I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
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... you're kidding. Funny, Cap seems to be the place FOR PLing redside. And of course, nobody has to do so in any case. I see far fewer lowbies in the high level zones - post AE, it was almost spooky to go into PI and not see farm/PL spam. Then I realized how *nice* it was.
[/ QUOTE ]A couple of things here.
First, lowbies going to the top level zone seems to be a blue-side problem. On the red side if I pulled a level 16 into Grandville it's because *I* couldn't handle something alone but thought a squared-away lowbie was better than no help at all.
Second, whether you want to PL or not, Cap is the only place a young villain can go. The ferry and the black helicopters both only lead there. You run out of missions in Port Oakes several levels before you can pick up missions in Sharkhead. If you don't want to PL, you are stuck wading through the spam anyway. See the problem?
Third, blue-side rerolls go to Cap to spam for PL teams, the red-side teams form up in Mercy. Most of the farming is level 54 bosses, and those teams usually don't take anyone below 40 (though some make the cut at 30). I know that I don't do that on my 50 brute, but I could practically solo farms on that toon, and I'd rather notch difficulty down to match the players on the team than exclude people. It's faster just running normal missions or catching a LTs team forming in Mercy, but those just aren't as obvious because there's a lot less spam in Mercy.
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I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever.
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... so make your own team? I don't see the problem.
[/ QUOTE ]I do make teams, who doesn't?
It's pretty hard to manage in Cap because of the AE spam. You can work in tells, but if you're trying to talk to a level 15-20 player who's not already in a mission, they're stuck in the spam.
And you can't use the broadcast to set up a team, because the LFM will be off the screen before anyone can read it.
But just because I can do cheetah-flips to form teams in Cap, doesn't mean that's the way it *should* be. Especially when you consider that the AE spam wouldn't be a problem if the spammers were considerate enough to use a different channel for it.
It's frustrating when you can't use zone chat to talk to other people leveling in a zone because people that are much higher leveled won't just say "54 boss AE team LFM 40+, need kin" one time and then shut up.
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Most of the time they are polite, but a couple of times I've had people tell me I should level up more before joining an AE team. Maybe if they don't want to get tells from level 18s, they shouldn't be recruiting in level 18 zones?
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Or perhaps they're just happening to like being in a "crossroads" zone - Cap is the only zone wth ferries going to both lower (Oakes, black helicopter line to Mercy) and higher level zones. Not to mention the RWZ, Cimerora (which needs another exit, IMHO) and the university, portal, Bloody Bay, and auction house - all right together. It's pretty much "downtown" for redside.
[/ QUOTE ]The crossroads thing has a lot to do to it. Before AE it was pretty normal for mission teams to send at least one person to recruit in Cap even if the team was forming elsewhere. But that never got in the way of the lowbies leveling through the zone; not that I remember anyway.
I don't think the AE people are going there just to get in the way -- they are there because it is by far the most convenient zone to work out of on the red side. That's why my proposed solution is about making it a bit less convenient.
The thing is that for leveling, it's not a crossroads, but a choke point. Now that so many players are spending *all* their time in the zone, it's become a really annoying part of leveling.
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Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
[/ QUOTE ]You're trying to build a strawman by implying that I don't want higher levels to ever go into lower level zones. I didn't say that, I just think that there ought to be incentive for them to spend some time in higher level zones.
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Again, there already is - level appropriate missions. If people are tired of those, *shrug* let them team with whoever they want, where they want, without being penalized. No reason to try to affect peoples AE missions and teaming just because you dont' like what you're perceiving.
[/ QUOTE ]It wouldn't effect your AE teaming. Stores have been geared toward limited levels before and it didn't stop you from grouping with people of different levels. The worst "penalty" I suggested would have you work in one zone and then go to a different one at the end of the day to spend your tickets. It's no more of a "penalty" than you get for running regular missions with mixed levels.
You talk as if you would somehow be banned from ever working with lower level players. My goal would just be to make the convenience factor more similar to normal missions, and provide inventive for higher levels to occasionally go to higher level zones.
I'd be all for leaving everything alone if the AE farmers didn't get in the way, but they get in the way. They won't use separate channels for coordinating AE teams, which renders the zone-chat non-functional for people leveling in the zone.
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On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there.
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"Need" to? Other than it being the only entrance to Cimerora, no, you don't "need" to go back frequently. The only things I can do in Cap that I can't do elsewhere are:
- Go to bloody bay
- Go to cimerora
- Tailor missions (2 of the 3.)
- One strike force.
[/ QUOTE ]You're arguing against yourself here. You just talked about how Cap is a crossroads and everything is easily available there. There are many things which exist in some but not all zones, but Cap has all of them. While you wouldn't necessarily have to go to Cap in particular, you do need to go somewhere else and Cap has everything you might need to travel for.
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Why is it that the replies in this section are so harsh? There's really no need for that.
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this was what american angel said. if you bothered to look my reply was to her question.
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Sharker_Quint:
for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
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[/ QUOTE ]And american angel's post was about your harsh reply to Jet_Boy. And you're reply to her referenced the OP of the thread (me) giving 2 suggestions (Jet_Boy) . In the post to which american angel was replying, you were responding to Jet_Boy, but said he was talking about red-side and Cap, which was me.
You got confused about who you were talking to twice, and and now you're just trying to lie about it.
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Or maybe when you see "AE" you go into troll mode so fast that you don't bother reading?
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what you did there was a personal attack as i wasn't refering to you in specific.
[/ QUOTE ]When you say "in this thread the OP", that would normally be interpreted to be specific to the OP of the thread. I'm not sure what the censored part of your quote was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't nice, and was directed at me.
In your defense, I don't think you were certain who the OP was and most of your anger is probably directed at "them" in general, but you made a point of singling me out.
You're first couple of posts are unnecessarily rude and obnoxious, and directed more at insulting posters than at the content of their posts. You didn't even bother separating who you were talking to.
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as for the rest of your response, i read perfectly and understand perfectly. what you are doing is trying to play both sides of the fence though. you say you don't want higher lv people in a certain zone in the AE then you say in another post that you are guilty of the same thing yourself and you don't mind it.
[/ QUOTE ]If you read and understood perfectly, you know that I don't think higher level toons should *never* go to low level zones. You are right that I'm playing both sides of the fence, and it's because I think there is room for balance. Lately I just haven't been playing my 50s so much, and I've got to question whether my "helping" is part of what makes things bad.
The main people that would move if the devs took my suggestion would be XP farmers. If you plan to do 50 levels inside AE, you need to keep up with your enhancements along the way (unless someone is just letting you doorsit, which seems unpopular recently). It's not a big deal to the 50s to go virtually anywhere, but if your focus is on maximizing your XP per hour then taking an extra five minutes to keep your enhancements up to date would motivate you to go elsewhere.
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That's why something needs to be done to make the lowbie zones lowbie friendly. Cap is a particular problem because there is no alternative zone to go to, and you need to go there to catch the ferry elsewhere.
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so what are you saying here? that the only reason you go to cap is to catch a ferry to another zone and you hate seeing broadcast flying by? and it is by no means the only zone to go to to go to somewhere else. read memphis-bills post up a few posts and you will see this.
[/ QUOTE ]For level 15-20 villains, yes it is the only zone. You don't get quests in that range elsewhere. And you can't go around it because you can't pick up the ferry to the other islands in Port Oakes or Mercy. (Though I guess you could take the Pocket D from Port Oakes to Sharkhead, but you'd still be left with the problem of nothing to do when you get to Sharkhead.)
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...when the level 40+ players spamming for AE can't be bothered to actually use the AE channel.
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have you actually bothered to tell people about this channel? most of them don't even know it's there. but then again it would be unreasonable to ask them to set up a different tab just like you claim it to be unreasonable to ask you to do the same.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh, I fully understand the irony. But it's a lot more reasonable to ask high-level players to fiddle with their chat than to do it to lowbies, since many lowbies are likely to be completely unfamiliar with the game.
Now if the devs were able to prompt people to use that channel by making it set up by default, then that might change things. But either way the problem is one for the devs to solve, not the players.
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"AE shouldn't yield XP", or "AE shouldn't yield tickets".
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your idea could have gone in any number of these threads seeing as how it deals with rewards.
[/ QUOTE ]Have you read those threads? Most of them are aimed at doing something so drastic that people won't use AE any more.
If there were a generalized AE suggestion thread and it were kept free of flames then that would be useful. But there isn't.
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Besides level-appropriate arcs and such, I assume you mean. Some of us *do* run non-AE content.
[/ QUOTE ]Not saying you don't. The whole reason the AE spam is bugging me so much right now is that I'm in the process of leveling characters on a more active server (red-side on a low-pop server there are times when the search really doesn't show anyone in your level range).
I don't think that higher level toons should never go into lower level zones. But the lower level zones need to be made better for lowbies.
Honestly if everyone congregated at the AE in Nerva, St. Martial, or Sharkhead then I wouldn't be so bothered, because those zones overlap enough that you could skip one if the spam really annoys you. But for about 5 levels you're too high to get missions in Port Oakes and too low to get them in Sharkhead, so Cap is the only option.
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Um... yeah, and? I'm sorry, but this is really to me rather a silly point. Yes, the zones progress through levels - but you've just switched to"For five levels, you have to be in cap" from "you always have to go back to cap."
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If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
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You talk about strawmen - and bring up "that was for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed," like that's an issue remotely related to "level appropriate zones." Outside of TOs, that's an issue for *everyone* (and I use "issue" very loosely in this case.)
Plus, you still get IO recipe drops and salvage drops - in fact, teaming with lowbies often helps in those cases (at least with salvage, and it certainly doesn't hurt someone like me to get the low level IO recipes. Saves me money as I don't have to buy as many to craft them for the "lowbie bin."
[/ QUOTE ]Which doesn't change the fact that you couldn't use your rewards instantly like you claimed.
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Where did I claim anything about using rewards INSTANTLY? Are you reading "There are stores and base portals" in every zone? Obviously my Magic-based Brute can't use a Science-based Damage SO, instantly or otherwise. (as an example.) And a base portal is hardly "travel" to craft an IO, short of Nerva, perhaps.
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Whether you have to go to a different zone to use the ticket vendor or the store to get something useful, you're still traveling. Inventions and salvage both require a trip somewhere else to be useful either way.
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I don't have to do it so frequently that it's such the bother you seem to be painting. The stores in *any* zone will take what I'm selling, after all. And again, there's a base portal everywhere. It's as big a hassle as "traveling" to train.
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The thing is that as things are now, the ticket vendor is a *lot* more convenient for people that are leveling. You get your DOs or SOs right next to where you are doing your missions, don't have to pay an arm and a leg for them, only get the ones you need, and can mostly stay up-to-date on them while still saving up infamy/influence.
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Great. SO why penalize people who are teaming with friends, and happen to go (say) from St. Martial to Oakes (and pay the base rent on the way) to do so? That's what your suggestion is *doing.* Why add irritation - just because, from what I'm reading, you're not liking AE teams being about?
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If you're doing regular missions, you while often need to go to whole different zones for enhancements, and you can't stay up to date on all of them without either trading inf from another toon or playing the market a lot.
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You do realize enhancements are good for *several* levels, right? I'm not being snarky, I'm actually asking if you're aware of it (even veterans miss some "obvious" stuff sometimes.) There's no reason to "stay up to date" (I'm interpreting as plus-level) - and outside of the pre-level-10 missions, I don't level so much I'm at risk of my enhancements going red from one mission to the next.
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My suggestion would just make either method equally convenient/inconvenient.
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And there's no need to add inconvenience or a penalty.
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If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
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Or, if you didn't want the recipe (standard IO or not-particularly wanted set,) you could sell them at any store, and as for crafting - I have yet to run across a base without the nice, cheap invention table, accessible in any zone with a portal.
You don't "have" to go to an auction house. Even if you feel you have to, that has nothing to do with level-appropriateness, as they're scattered all over.
[/ QUOTE ]Any of which takes you outside of the AE building.
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Not any farther than the trainer, or wentworths/BM, which you decry as being part of the evil of AE as I'm reading it.
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I don't find making use of rewards from normal missions to be impossible, and the time spent running around is usually about the same as a typical beer/bio break. But AE removes that travel. I think that putting AE on more level terms with the rest of the game would help balance things out a bit without breaking the rest of the system.
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So, we have a system that auto SK's/exemps you. You get your rewards in the same "zone" as you were in.
Compare that with running a regular mission, where you get your rewards in the same zone you were in.
... yeah, and?
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Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
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... what? I'm assuming you mean "store/auction house" for "useful." And again - stores are in every zone, base portals in every zone, auction houses spread throughout the levels - both above and below you.
[/ QUOTE ]If you're leveling instead of just selling things then the stores in every zone don't help you, just the ones in the zone which is appropriate to your level. And often those stores don't sell enhancements for the lowest or highest levels that might have missions in the zone.
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If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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- Base teleporter (accessible to anyone, at least with my SG settings, who is teamed on a team I'm leading.
- "Assemble the team."
- Recall Friend.
- Jet/Zero-G packs
The last, of course, available to anyone who runs *a* mayhem. So, really, arguing about travel time is moot in this case. I have yet to have to really work in great allowances for travel time on any team, barring someone not knowing how to use the nav bar, and haven't since... well, years, since my early Hollows days when a death meant a run back from Atlas.
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"Pretty frequently?" Please. Yes, I run mixed level teams. No, they don't have to leave "pretty frequently."
[/ QUOTE ]I would call you on that, but maybe blue side is different. I know there is a lot more overlap.
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Don't assume. I run both sides fairly regularly.
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I know that level 20s can get missions in Sharkhead, but they can't buy anything there until they are high enough for level 25 SOs. So the lower level players and all the lackeys have to go back to Cap very frequently
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No, they don't. They really don't. And I tend to advise people NOT to go buy anything at that point until they're 22, anyway, so they can GET those 25 SOs and not waste INF.
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. And since they are lower level, everything is red or purple to them which means they need to keep their enhancements up to date to stay effective, but they level a lot faster than the rest of the team.
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Jetpack from a mayhem. Fly over all of it. Goldbricker jetpack. Zero G jetpack. And no, they don't tend to "go back frequently" in the least. Yes, even in an arc. ESPECIALLY redside, where the arcs are so short.
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I really can't think of a regular mission team where no one had to leave the zone to buy enhancements.
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I can think of many. Full nights with multiple arcs.
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I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
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... you're kidding. Funny, Cap seems to be the place FOR PLing redside. And of course, nobody has to do so in any case. I see far fewer lowbies in the high level zones - post AE, it was almost spooky to go into PI and not see farm/PL spam. Then I realized how *nice* it was.
[/ QUOTE ]A couple of things here.
First, lowbies going to the top level zone seems to be a blue-side problem.
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You've heard of the "television farm," I take it? That's redside.
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Second, whether you want to PL or not, Cap is the only place a young villain can go. The ferry and the black helicopters both only lead there. You run out of missions in Port Oakes several levels before you can pick up missions in Sharkhead. If you don't want to PL, you are stuck wading through the spam anyway. See the problem?
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So instead of hobbling people for teaming where you don't want them, how about pushing for more redside zones so there's an alternate leveling path? That's something I, and many others, have pushed for.
And no, I don't see the problem. I'm sorry, but you're seriously overstating it as a "problem."
If you don't like the spam? Remove it from your global and chat tabs. Find the worst spammers and ignore them. The power is in your hands. Or just do what I do and ignore (not /ignore) it.
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I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever.
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... so make your own team? I don't see the problem.
[/ QUOTE ]I do make teams, who doesn't?
It's pretty hard to manage in Cap because of the AE spam. You can work in tells, but if you're trying to talk to a level 15-20 player who's not already in a mission, they're stuck in the spam.
And you can't use the broadcast to set up a team, because the LFM will be off the screen before anyone can read it.
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Unless you're talking prime-time Freedom... I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Of course, "nonsense" is generally the definition of prime-time Freedom, which is why I tend not to play there.
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But just because I can do cheetah-flips to form teams in Cap, doesn't mean that's the way it *should* be. Especially when you consider that the AE spam wouldn't be a problem if the spammers were considerate enough to use a different channel for it.
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So ask them to.
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It's frustrating when you can't use zone chat to talk to other people leveling in a zone because people that are much higher leveled won't just say "54 boss AE team LFM 40+, need kin" one time and then shut up.
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Again... so ask them to.
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It wouldn't effect your AE teaming.
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Which is it - you're going to make things less convenient to penalize me for being in a "too low" zone, or it's not going to affect me?
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On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there.
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"Need" to? Other than it being the only entrance to Cimerora, no, you don't "need" to go back frequently. The only things I can do in Cap that I can't do elsewhere are:
- Go to bloody bay
- Go to cimerora
- Tailor missions (2 of the 3.)
- One strike force.
[/ QUOTE ]You're arguing against yourself here. You just talked about how Cap is a crossroads and everything is easily available there. There are many things which exist in some but not all zones, but Cap has all of them. While you wouldn't necessarily have to go to Cap in particular, you do need to go somewhere else and Cap has everything you might need to travel for.
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"Convenience" is not "need." There are strike forces in other zones. There are other PVP zones to go to. Yes, Cap is a crossroads zone - but "Need" indicates "No other choice." For instance, I need to eat to stay alive. Subway, up the street from me, is more convenient than grocery shopping. "I need to go to Subway to eat" does not logically follow.
I do not NEED to go back to Cap to use the tailor (other than getting two of three costume slot missions.) I do not NEED to go to Cap to run any and all strike forces, just one. I do not NEED to go back to Cap to use the Black Market, or a store. I do not NEED to go back to Cap to get to another zone.
Saying that it's a crossroads zone - which is why the AE farms are there - is not contradicting that I don't NEED, as you say, to continually pass through cap. If I don't like PVP (or Bloody Bay,) have already done or don't care about my costume slots, and am uninterested in Cimerora? I never have to go back to Cap again.
What it boils down to, Inktomi, is that your annoyance at Cap spam seems (to me, at least) to be making the Himalayas out of a "problem" that's really a pile of sand. And no, I don't agree with adding inconvenience. There's no reason to.
(About the only exception to that is removing AE from the initial starter zones - I do agree that new players should have to actually learn some of the game before going there. And experienced players who want to skip that can find AE all of one quick zone away.)
I understand you're frustrated at this - at least from how it sounds. I just think you're trying to make the issue bigger than it really is. Of course, for all we know, Going Rogue (which sounds like it can be a 1-50 run so far, though we have to wait to see) may just give you an alternate path where you wont' have to worry about this at all. *shrug* And if you want to push for alternate *leveling paths,* especially since it gets easy to get burned out on Villside with the lack of content (which would also contribute to the AE magnet there,) well, it would give some alternates which could get you around it, as well as potentially draw some of the people out of AE for a while.
Items that you can purchase with architect tickets ought to be in the same level range as those available from stores in the zone. This would mean a level 41 could still help lowbies with AE missions, but they would still need to go back to a higher level zone to buy enhancements and such. This would be a small incentive for higher level players to go somewhere other than Cap Au Diable or Atlas Park, without being any more inconvenient than going to stores outside of AE.
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I don't play on the blue side much, but I know that on the red side AE has turned levels 15-20 into a major headache. This is because Cap Au Diable is the hub for AE farming, but it's impossible to reach level 20 without working through that zone. There is no alternative path; you go through cap or you don't level. But the players coming to Cap for the AE are higher levels, and generally don't allow players below 30 on the team. So as a lowbie working your way through Cap, you are stuck in a zone where no one recruiting for a team will take you and if you try and put up a recruiting broadcast you'll be rapidly spammed out of existence.
Past level 20 the red-side zones are a little sparse, but you can still get teams if you are willing to lackey (or be lackeyed). It's not as easy as before AE, but it's not impossible. I can imagine that blue side has more problems with low-population-density though, since there are more zones and missions are farther apart.
I think the root problem is that except for missions, there is no reason for going into the higher level zones. Cap Au Diable connects directly to every zone except for the Pocket D. Cap also has a tailor, bank, black market, and university -- it's the only zone a villain needs to go to, and you can go directly to any other if you want to for any reason. On top of that, the trainer and fateweaver are both a couple of seconds away from the AE building.
So if want to spread players between the zones a bit you need to give them some reason to leave Cap. Having to go to another zone to buy things with their AE tickets seems like a good reason.