Farming, farming and more farming....
By
Arctic_Princess,
Posted on: 2009-04-14 07:23 in Mission Architect
One of the main reasons I HATED Inventions when it all started was because it finally turned this game too into a grind. What made me join this game was the easy entrance. There was insps, trainers, DOs and SOs and that was basically it. Seeing all the worthless piece of you-know-what in Anarchy etc had me thinking MMOs wasn't my cup o' tea.
Sure, by now I like my purpled up alts etc and I don't mind a little grinding every now and then, but grinding = work within a few minutes. That's not fun and I'd be dangleidodled if I where to pay to work. But you also have to realize that an 8 man team slaughtering away on relentless can be incredibly mind-numbingly fun and a lot of us are glad that the MA finally gave us the chance to make some truly hard stuff. Just because it's a grind doesn't necessarily mean it has to be boring.
I myself have been happily duo'ing my way to the new stupid badges and have enjoyed most if it. Now that the team ticket problem is fixed I'll enjoy the 8 man grind a lot. That doesn't mean you have to do it, but that's the point, you can't force players to play the way you want to, that'll kill any game. The low amount of players is a problem, but I still rarely have any problems getting people to do fun stuff, even if it's a lot of ITFs.
So stop whining, and start with some proper MOANING instead. It's much smurfier! 
I don't mind people farming. Why the heck should I. But I sympatise with the OP in that it's nigh on impossible to get teams these days, though I think that may have changed after todays patch, where they fixed the bug where teams got less ticketst than solo players.
If I want to farm some (which I do occationally, because I think it's dead fun with my level 50 fire/fire tanker,) I just make a farming mission, publish, complete the mission then delete it again. Makes for variation even though its really just farmin'.
One question though. What's the difference between a mission using city-map 1 with freaks in it, and a farming mission using city-map 1 with freaks in it?
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My friends and i are smart though and don't leave them published, simple way to stop them getting noticed and deleted.
We don't want people noticing our 1-50 in 6 hours farm now would we.
[/ QUOTE ]Are you honestly this daft? Whether they're unpublished or not makes zero difference, the devs are obviously going to keep an eye out for both fast levelling characters and missions that have been unpublished and republished several times. Any features that allow gaining XP faster than they determine acceptable are going to get changed quite quickly.
What's really sad is that it's blindingly obvious how to do it. Just make a custom group with just Lieuts in it. For some reason the Devs in their infinite wisdom made it so that if there's no minions available it just populates with the next available tier without downgrading the total number of mobs in it.
Which is bizarre because there are some normal missions ingame populated with just Freakshow Tanks, but they do reduce the total number of mobs correctly (so you get just a few tanks when you're on a team rather than a full X man spawn made up of bosses).
Really they've no-one else but themselves to blame on that one.
Re-activated your main account - that due to I14? Welcome back either way.
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Whether they're unpublished or not makes zero difference, the devs are obviously going to keep an eye out for both fast levelling characters and missions that have been unpublished and republished several times.
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Whilst I agree on the rest, I doubt that they look for missions used this way and if they do then I'd doubt it's very sophisticated.
Unpublishing possibly leaves a copy of the mission on the arc servers (in case there are serious complaints due to content - just like chat logs are kept) but publishing an arc a second time does not link it to any copies that were previously published.
I doubt very much that the system compares newly published arcs to existing and past arcs, if it did then I'd hope that they'd automatically stop duplicate arcs being published by over-eagre button pressing and not knowing how to edit/republish. It probably doesn't even store some form of hash of a mission to detect duplicates and ones that are removed and later published again.
And if they do do that then minor changes to the arc or publishing under an alternate account would probably avoid detection.
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Unpublishing possibly leaves a copy of the mission on the arc servers (in case there are serious complaints due to content - just like chat logs are kept) but publishing an arc a second time does not link it to any copies that were previously published.
[/ QUOTE ]However, any account publishing a large number of arcs is going to raise suspicion, especially after the initial rush dies down.
I don't have a problem with OTHER PEOPLE farming, I just wish it could be more obvious that arc:nnnnn was a farming arc, so I could avoid it.
Ideally by a search option "farms yes/no" and a tag you put on a farming mission when you create it.
Can anyone tell me how to challenge a arc being banned? Bear with me as it does come under the subject of farming. I, perhaps naively, made a mission about farming. The contact is Farmer Giles and you have to rescue his livestock from the evil Old McDonald. All the enemies in the missions are custom mobs with imaginative monikers like Ram Beau, Cow Belle and Hugh Heifer.
My problem is this arc as been banned as a Farming arc. I thought Farming in the context that would result in a ban referred to missions that provided an unintended statistical advantage. But it seems it refers to missions that have a theme of agriculture too. It only needed the person responsible to read the missions description to realise it was the latter. The truth is the mobs are pretty tough and would, Im sure, frustrate a farmer (an in game farmer rather than a gent who makes his living raising livestock or produce).
@Romanov
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Can anyone tell me how to challenge a arc being banned? Bear with me as it does come under the subject of farming. I, perhaps naively, made a mission about farming. The contact is Farmer Giles and you have to rescue his livestock from the evil Old McDonald. All the enemies in the missions are custom mobs with imaginative monikers like Ram Beau, Cow Belle and Hugh Heifer.
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Darn another Old McDonald and Ram Beau - wish you could search mob names within arcs - bet there's loads of Old McDonalds...
Re: challenging... does the arc still exist in your 'My Published Stories'? If so, can you do an edit-republish cycle? I'm guessing that just as 2 autobans makes the next publish have to be passed by a GM if you can edit/republish it'll be seen by a person...
Failing that: send a petition in, maybe? Cite arc id and that it's wrongly been banned as a farming arc...
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
There are three methods of dealing with disturbing material published by other people:
Method1: Ignore it and hope it goes away when people grow tired of complaining about it.
Method 2: Ban it the moment a complaint is received or do a keyword search without doing any proper research yourself then wait for the author to query the ban.
Method 3: Examine the material yourself to decide if it needs to be banned or changed then take steps to sort it out with the author.
Method 1 is obviously not an option given the rod NC made for their own backs with their anti-farming mantra.
Method 2 is the one preferred by our politicians and people who are overworked. It allows them to deal with the maximum number of complaints while minimising the amount of work they have to do. It also allows them to blame someone else when it all goes wrong and gives them lots of lovely stats to show how much work they've done - look at the thousands we've banned already...
Method 3 is the methed we would all like to see adopted but with so many people publishing and so few monitoring, use of this method is little more than a pipe dream.
While I hate to see method 2 adopted so readily, with over 80,000 arcs published in just a few days, I can't really blame them for doing it. Hopefully things will settle a bit soon and the devs will be able to take a more proactive role in this sort of thing.
I don't know how you'd challenge this though, I did try to look on the support site for options but it's down again. Maybe raise a petition to ask a GM in game?
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Can anyone tell me how to challenge a arc being banned? Bear with me as it does come under the subject of farming. I, perhaps naively, made a mission about farming. The contact is Farmer Giles and you have to rescue his livestock from the evil Old McDonald. All the enemies in the missions are custom mobs with imaginative monikers like Ram Beau, Cow Belle and Hugh Heifer.
My problem is this arc as been banned as a Farming arc. I thought Farming in the context that would result in a ban referred to missions that provided an unintended statistical advantage. But it seems it refers to missions that have a theme of agriculture too. It only needed the person responsible to read the missions description to realise it was the latter. The truth is the mobs are pretty tough and would, Im sure, frustrate a farmer (an in game farmer rather than a gent who makes his living raising livestock or produce).
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I,m sorry, I know it was probably annoying and unfair for them to do this to you after your hard work.....
,,,,,,,,but I did find this funny 
Sorry
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What's really sad is that it's blindingly obvious how to do it. Just make a custom group with just Lieuts in it. For some reason the Devs in their infinite wisdom made it so that if there's no minions available it just populates with the next available tier without downgrading the total number of mobs in it.
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Actually, we use all bosses, not lieutenants. So, imo. as the dev's see it the risk vs reward is there.
It's not our fault if a good team of 8 can take on a whole boss mob is it?
Oh and Max. They might still see the arc from data mining but if it's always unpublished after usage then that's the only way to find it.
If it does get banned at some point then we change the name then do it again.... Will take a while for it to be found in the mine again.
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I,m sorry, I know it was probably annoying and unfair for them to do this to you after your hard work.....
,,,,,,,,but I did find this funny
Sorry
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Yes, I find it funny too. But I understand how it might not have appeared that way in my post.
@Romanov
Nadja Romanov, Lily Pink, Little Death - The Cadre
Estoque, Bastinado, Spidermonkey, Chic Doyle - The Militia
Miss Teen, Dead Reckoner, Dee Dee Diablo, Kaneko
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If it does get banned at some point then we change the name then do it again.... Will take a while for it to be found in the mine again.
[/ QUOTE ]They're not going to be banning individual arcs, they'll simply alter the mechanics. Hiding the arc yourself every time is simply a waste of time.
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If it does get banned at some point then we change the name then do it again.... Will take a while for it to be found in the mine again.
[/ QUOTE ]They're not going to be banning individual arcs, they'll simply alter the mechanics. Hiding the arc yourself every time is simply a waste of time.
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Fair point but i can't really see how they could stop it. Even if they made it so the mobs had to contain minions a lieutenants the map and settings we use would still provide XP on a much grander and faster scale than is possible for doing "normal" PvE missions.
CoH PvP SG = SuperUnion - Co-Leader - Union/Freedom
CoV PvP VG = Disruption - Co-Leader - Union/Freedom
Global = @Rent & @Rent.
Playgroup are all **** - Global Handle
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are these guys making this missions breaking any rules ?
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Interesting question - whilst the devs asked for any farming missions to be flagged up during beta so that they could check them, I don't think there's been a single instance of a rule stating, "Don't call your mission FARM and have it filled with Freaks".
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Hang on, does this mean that we as indivdual players can report for content (including farming)?
I'm getting a little depressed now with the pap that's in there. The enthusiastic mission creators - cool, can deal with that. it's the endless 'this is a farm but I'm not going to call it one - haha' missions that are really bothering me.
One feature which I would like on the mission searcher "filter out all arcs containing defeat all". And that would solve this issue as far as I'm concerned.
[edit]typo
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Wouldn't that invalidate any arcs which have tightly detailed stories, that require you to deal with all minions on the final mission though?
You could end up missin out on a great arc, because of that option.
Unless you meant all arcs that are 5 missions worth of defeat all Freaks?
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One feature which I would like on the mission searcher "filter out all arcs containing defeat all". And that would solve this issue as far as I'm concerned.
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Personally I don't like defeat alls but I added one to my Lucy Dreamtime arc (not yet published) because it was necessary for the story. It's on a tiny map and is something you'd do anyway as you worked your way through. I'd hate to see 5 defeat alls in an arc but one on a small map isn't much to get worked up over. I think avoiding every arc with even a single defeat all would serously cut down your options for finding decent arcs.
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Unless you meant all arcs that are 5 missions worth of defeat all Freaks?
[/ QUOTE ]If you want to farm merits, you're far better off using 4 missions that are very fast to complete and tack the farming mish as the 5th, due to the way you get more tickets the further you are in the arc.
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I'm getting a little depressed now with the pap that's in there.
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Me too to be honest, I've just finished an arc based on Lucy Dreamtime (you may remember her from a police scanner mission). I put quite a lot of effort into putting some sort of story together with a coherent transfer from mission to mission. It was quite depressing to see that it was number 90148 in the list. Nobody is going to stumble across that with 90k coming before it. The number of 'test' and 'incomplete' arcs that have been published is ludicrous and completely masks anything written with any sort of attempt at a storyline.
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It was quite depressing to see that it was number 90148 in the list. Nobody is going to stumble across that with 90k coming before it. The number of 'test' and 'incomplete' arcs that have been published is ludicrous and completely masks anything written with any sort of attempt at a storyline.
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What do you mean #90148 in the list? What do you mean 90k coming before it?
If you mean it's arc id is 90148 that's one thing, but it doesn't mean that there are 90,000 before it or that it'll appear 90,000th in a list to any players.
Many. many arcs have been removed/unpublished so there are nothing like 90,000 before you. It almost seems petty to also note that arc ids start at something like 1000, so that's 1k off the count as well...
You can see approximately how many arcs there are live by going to the last page of th ebrowser and multiplying th enumber of pages by 20 (the number of arcs per page). I say approximately, as there's probably arcs being published/unpublished as you do this...
At the time of writing, there were 1258 pages of arcs, so about 1258*20 = 25160 arcs published and valid.
And the main way you'll appear at the back of the list is if people order by ascending date order.
BTW I'd say that the best ways to help people stumble upon the arc are probably:
- Join City of Guides and get it listed there - the site is still growing/starting but it's a lot better than any other MA search/review sites I've seen. A listing there should get noticed by other authors/reviewers.
- Announce the arc in the MA announcements thread here.
- See if Col Blitzkrieger is kind enough to review it - though he is honest, so be ready to take criticism!
- Pop the arc in your sig and occasionally post to the boards - so only board members will see it, but better than nothing.
- Make a post decrying how no-one will know about your arc (tick that one off!)
None of these are surefire get-a-million-plays-in-minutes methods but every player who plays and likes your arc raises it up the ratings ranks...
Oh - and if you want depressing, do a search on 'Enter Title'...
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
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Make a post decrying how no-one will know about your arc (tick that one off!)
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Every little bit helps 
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Make a post decrying how no-one will know about your arc (tick that one off!)
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Every little bit helps
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Indeed it does - so why does your signature not mention your arc?!
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
If not seen any farms get deleted tbh. My friends and i are smart though and don't leave them published, simple way to stop them getting noticed and deleted.
We don't want people noticing our 1-50 in 6 hours farm now would we.
CoH PvP SG = SuperUnion - Co-Leader - Union/Freedom
CoV PvP VG = Disruption - Co-Leader - Union/Freedom
Global = @Rent & @Rent.
Playgroup are all **** - Global Handle