To much farming

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The farming and PLing thing is a separate issue really, as many players have been finding the quickest and easiest ways to get inf/XP for ages now

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Team A: Join a team with normalish xp and possibility of a level or 2

Team B: Mega xp with mega levels.

Hard choice to make !!!

Unless of course your team C which offers something different, make a team fun to make people want to team with you.

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For me, a good team is one who can keep it together when things get wildly out of control. It takes no special skill to keep things easy in CoH, but being in a team that can react to the moment enough to turn a team-wipe situation round into a victory is one of the most special things that can happen in this game. The best fights always end with everyone red-lined, IMO. That's the buzz I'm looking for and XP/inf are completely secondary.

Years ago I had a regular late night team with a guy called Judder Man. We'd put together a PuG and run stupidly over-level missions. They were kamikaze runs really and we'd usually come out of it with more debt than XP, but those two or three victories out of five or more fights made those teams some of the most fun I've ever had in this game. The shared adversity and the banter that went along with it was pure gold. Nowadays I love playing in PuGs with new players, because the fights are almost always exciting.

With a few months experience and a generic uberised build anyone can rinse and repeat. It's a completely trivial exercise, IMO.

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Whats best is the teams that fight in near dead silence...
While slaughtering ANYTHING in their path. They have no need of mere communication, they simply KNOW what to do against such and such AV, which ends in said villain face down with a broken arm and a pair of cuffs on 'em. The silence is only broken by the 'Gj' at the end of the mission, the odd 'lol' at some funny glitch, or 'lvling' between missions.
-starts playing Indestructable byt Disturbed-

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

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I find it kinda ironic that there are very few level 50s who don't farm, seein as back when it was just PvPers that did it they were villified (cit: Globey).

[/ QUOTE ]Just PvP'ers? We had farming in this game before we even had PvP.

Not much though. It started proper when people used it to pay for IOs on their PvP chars, and got proliferated majorly when everyone else started earning IOs of their own. Farming inf was pretty much pointless before IOs' release, a very select few people were PLing before then or doing a run or two to pay for SOs on their new chars.

They where farming levels before in Peregrine Isle, I don't think with IOs or PVP the request to join farming missions rose. Heck I remember joining a farming team back in 2004, it was in the sewers. Speaking of sewers, farming the hydra back in early 2005 comes to mind.

Farmings been part of CoH for as long as I've been playing (started Feb 05) and to be honest i haven't seen a massive increase in it maybe slightly but i think much of the perceived increase is because people are more vocal about it now (be they for or against it)

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Whats best is the teams that fight in near dead silence...
While slaughtering ANYTHING in their path. They have no need of mere communication, they simply KNOW what to do against such and such AV, which ends in said villain face down with a broken arm and a pair of cuffs on 'em. The silence is only broken by the 'Gj' at the end of the mission, the odd 'lol' at some funny glitch, or 'lvling' between missions.
-starts playing Indestructable byt Disturbed-

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That gets dull after a while. For me it was when I began to realise that it wasn't taking as much skill as I thought it was.

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Farmings been part of CoH for as long as I've been playing (started Feb 05) and to be honest i haven't seen a massive increase in it maybe slightly but i think much of the perceived increase is because people are more vocal about it now (be they for or against it)

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MA made farming much easier, before I14 only spefific builds were good farmers, now you can make maps with huge amounts of mobs that are no threat to you and die very fast.

Bedore I14 farming a map took much longer and the risk of getting killed was much higher.

Villainside there were TWO farm maps before I14 and those maps had the most annoying mob in the game, only very few specific builds were able to farm.

Now i can make a map in 5 min that gives more xp/inf per mob, is much faster to complete and has much easier mobs in it.

I get invites and tells to join or make farms all the time, i do know that before I14 i didnt get even half as many.

Even though i farm and i'll happily admit it, i have to say that it is just TOO easy as things are.


My friends and i wanted to see how fast a really poor team (by poor i mean using things to farm with that aren't usual) could farm. It turns out it's not much slower than a proper farm team.


We did 1-50 in just over 8 hours Piccy*


That's absolutely stupid. Lower the amount of mobs in a mission and also lower the amount of rescues you can have. Also fix the aggro cap, because herding 5 mobs is obviously a bug. Back to i3 ftl!


*I took the time behind the personal info as it would be harder to fake and thus being more trustworthy.

Just a second... isn't the 3rd icon on power tray #3 the portable workbench accolade? Those 8 hrs included the time to gather and craft all those many, many CIOs?

And what were you just about to type what when CoH crashed... I can't quite make out that word on the screeny..

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Just a second... isn't the 3rd icon on power tray #3 the portable workbench accolade? Those 8 hrs included the time to gather and craft all those many, many CIOs?

And what were you just about to type what when CoH crashed... I can't quite make out that word on the screeny..

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Its the icon for the 36 months veteran pet :-)

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Just a second... isn't the 3rd icon on power tray #3 the portable workbench accolade? Those 8 hrs included the time to gather and craft all those many, many CIOs?

And what were you just about to type what when CoH crashed... I can't quite make out that word on the screeny..

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veteran pet...

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Even though i farm and i'll happily admit it, i have to say that it is just TOO easy as things are.


My friends and i wanted to see how fast a really poor team (by poor i mean using things to farm with that aren't usual) could farm. It turns out it's not much slower than a proper farm team.


We did 1-50 in just over 8 hours Piccy*


That's absolutely stupid. Lower the amount of mobs in a mission and also lower the amount of rescues you can have. Also fix the aggro cap, because herding 5 mobs is obviously a bug. Back to i3 ftl!


*I took the time behind the personal info as it would be harder to fake and thus being more trustworthy.

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Well, if even a farmer finds thing too easy.

Last night, at 22:30 hours, I dinged 50 with Raidar. He's my 4th. I was a little shocked but very pleasantly surprised to find a wonderful team of people doing the Praetorian arc. It took me, oh, about 4 missions to get from 49.4 to 50 and I had extreme fun - especially versus Mother Mayhem and Malaise.

Now, I know I have been quite vocal about my distaste of farming and powerlevelling but *gasp* on my previous run to 50 I started to get bored of the run from about 42 to 47 - it seemed every time I went to Cimerora or RWZ people were either just finishing the TFs there or had just started. I tried gathering teams for the Praetorian arc but never managed that many. So, I ended up farming! *another gasp*.

I found it dull. Very dull. So my main objection to farming is that *I* don't like it. I have noticed from my posts this week that I have been a little overzealous on the anti-farming thing: It's been borne mainly out of frustration that the MA 'seems' to be full of farms which are scoring higher than a lot of very good arcs I've played. No, not *my* arcs but other people's.

So I would like to apologise firstly for being high and mighty.

Secondly I'm announcing that I would like to run a bit of a competition for the MA (I will post another thread accordingly on the MA section) - it will take the form of MA challenges: I am happy to fund the first one (in terms of inf etc) and there will be criteria for mission creating. It's meant as a bit of fun but I find that, like Recluse, competition breeds strength! In this case though it will hopefully be creative strength.

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Even though i farm and i'll happily admit it, i have to say that it is just TOO easy as things are.


My friends and i wanted to see how fast a really poor team (by poor i mean using things to farm with that aren't usual) could farm. It turns out it's not much slower than a proper farm team.


We did 1-50 in just over 8 hours Piccy*


That's absolutely stupid. Lower the amount of mobs in a mission and also lower the amount of rescues you can have. Also fix the aggro cap, because herding 5 mobs is obviously a bug. Back to i3 ftl!


*I took the time behind the personal info as it would be harder to fake and thus being more trustworthy.

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I don't think toons that couldn't farm before being able to farm now is a bad thing at at least puts every one on a more equal footing

I agree about the number of rescues it seems a ridiculous that you can have 40+ rescues on a single mission.

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Even though i farm and i'll happily admit it, i have to say that it is just TOO easy as things are.


My friends and i wanted to see how fast a really poor team (by poor i mean using things to farm with that aren't usual) could farm. It turns out it's not much slower than a proper farm team.


We did 1-50 in just over 8 hours Piccy*


That's absolutely stupid. Lower the amount of mobs in a mission and also lower the amount of rescues you can have. Also fix the aggro cap, because herding 5 mobs is obviously a bug. Back to i3 ftl!


*I took the time behind the personal info as it would be harder to fake and thus being more trustworthy.

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I don't think toons that couldn't farm before being able to farm now is a bad thing at at least puts every one on a more equal footing.

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I strongly disagree with this. More of something in no way makes it better. Most of the time (and certainly in this instance) it makes it far, far worse.

Quite simply if most people can exploit a system to get from 1-50 in a few hours fairly easily then that system is broken. And given how the Devs have reacted before to things like the Family Map Farm hero-side there can only be one outcome...

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Its the icon for the 36 months veteran pet :-)

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It's a bit forward calling me 'pet' - We hardly know each other!

I've still not claimed the 36 month pet yet - since I'm not particularly good at deciding which piece of eye candy to pick! Think the icon looks the same as the portable workbench accolade though - did they reuse the tray icon?

The thing i don't get is whats actually wrong with farming/power leveling and why are some forms of the 2 more acceptable than others.

it seems that OK to farm Specific mobs for special badges.

it seems Ok to farm MA missions if your doing it for the badges

it seems ok to power your way through missions to lvl faster

but its not ok to do the same mission multiple times to get XP?

I personally don't see the difference in any of these.

A lot of people don't seem to like farming and so believe it should be band/removed why? whats it doing to harm you? is it stopping you from playing how you like to play? are the farmers forcing you to play a specific way?

In short i seems to be a case of
"I do not like it, So you should not do it"

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The thing i don't get is whats actually wrong with farming/power leveling and why are some forms of the 2 more acceptable than others.

it seems that OK to farm Specific mobs for special badges.

it seems Ok to farm MA missions if your doing it for the badges

it seems ok to power your way through missions to lvl faster

but its not ok to do the same mission multiple times to get XP?

I personally don't see the difference in any of these.

A lot of people don't seem to like farming and so believe it should be band/removed why? whats it doing to harm you? is it stopping you from playing how you like to play? are the farmers forcing you to play a specific way?

In short i seems to be a case of
"I do not like it, So you should not do it"

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In my case it's not as simple as saying "All farming is bad".

However excessive farming & PLing to the point where when a new person joins the game in Atlas just to see reams and reams of "Farm farm farm" and can get from 1-20 in an hour or 2 without moving from the MA (thus missing out on the learning experience of teaming and doing normal missions) is so badly flawed that the game could be said to be plain broken.

Also at the moment the Risk/Reward trade-off is so hopeless broken towards Reward it's just not funny.

I'd love to see a valid argument as to why allowing a new person to join the game, ignore all the content the devs have crafted over the last 5 years and hit 50 in 8 hours mindlessly grinding (or more like mindless stand there while a Vet or two grind) the one mission Rikti spawnfest over and over can be seen as anyway good for the game?

Like I said if Vets / experienced people want to farm / PL then fair enough, within reason. Maps packed full of relatively harmless spawns of level 53 Rikti (my level 24 SOed Brute could withstand them for the most part, which is ridiculous for the XP they award) who are generally nothing more than bags of excessive XP/Tickets is not "within reason" IMO.

The title of this thread is "Too much farming", not "All farmers are the ebil and must be wiped out", that's my stand on it too.

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And what were you just about to type what when CoH crashed... I can't quite make out that word on the screeny..

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I don't know Dave, i've had a look too and i can't quite make it out. I can't remember what i typed either :P


And yes, it was a vet pet but not the 36 month one, it was the 48 month. I needed end so i got every bit i could lol.

So really the problem is not the farming but the excessive rewards? in that case fair anuff i agree that the rewards are excessive.

but it shouldn't be the farming that is targeted it should be the rewards being able to fill a mish from back to front with one single mob type must be a exploit, just as being able to then populate that mish with 40+ rescues to further up the number of mobs is ridiculus and more than likely not how it was intended to function.

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I'd love to see a valid argument as to why allowing a new person to join the game, ignore all the content the devs have crafted over the last 5 years and hit 50 in 8 hours mindlessly grinding (or more like mindless stand there while a Vet or two grind) the one mission Rikti spawnfest over and over can be seen as anyway good for the game?


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Well positron did say you would be able to level from 1 to 50 using the architect alone

but joking aside your right its probably not great for the game and those farmers who are inviting people to join them simply to boost there numbers should probably looks at what there doing but not every one farms like that.

I know those few /tells I've received concerning farming have all stated what there doing in the tell and its then up to me whether i join them or not.

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Well positron did say you would be able to level from 1 to 50 using the architect alone



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This is my only problem with it. I dont think you should be able to level from 1-50 using 1 very specific selection of the games much wider content - its the same reason i didnt like the possibility of paper/radio missions meaning you could ignore 90% of the games content.

If you level from 1-50 in MA, as many are now doing, you will invariably avoid many enemy types, situations and circumstances which will make you a better player and have a have a greater experience of the game. 1-50 will be faster, but more dull and less enriching in terms of both 'fun' and teaching one how to play their character.

That is simply not good for the game.

I really don't think farming is as bad as some people make it out to be. I've stood by this point since some of the early online games, that is ones with economies. You'll always have farming in a game, if there is an economy, farming wasn't as exposed as it is now, back in around Issue 7/8, just after 'City of Villain' release I can't remember it being like it is now.

That said, I may just have been lucky, and also back then inventions were in the minds of the dev's, so technically all that existed was power-levelling, but that is a different topic, this is farming.

I do the occasional farm more than the regular subscriber, most who know me know that, and respect that. The only qualm I'd have, is that:
A. There is far too much exposure nowadays to it, for example as many have said the last thing any intelligent being would want is a broadcast for a fast-track to the "end" as soon as they load the game. In addition, I love skipping the queue in a rollercoaster using the tokens,etc that give you the ability to, but just because I can doesn't mean I do it on every ride ( guaranteed you can't but besides, I don't mind taking the toll to get to the end instead) the same is to be said, if it wasn't as exposed and explicitly shown as it is, it wouldn't be detrimental.

B. Everyone here subscribes, so they have a rather particular opinion that can't be ignored, it's simply a conflict of opinions that farming brings, I know the majority of long time players will have been on farms, but it's a part of any game with an economy.

(Counter-arguments welcome)

And lastly you wouldn't be fishing in the sea if there was nothing to fish for.

Fury

I joined Wondering_Fury for a farm mission, to be honest, I just wanted to get to 27 where I could buy generic IOs and then go from there.

The first 20 levels of CoV can be incredibly boring, especially if you've done it already, there's very limited scope for arcs to do, I've done all but Dr Creed and the unlockable pirate ghost badge contact before on my level 50 MM since this was prior to the XP smoothing and I tended to run out of contacts in each level bracket. He took me a year to get (Bots/FF is safe but not exactly speedy and heroside was calling).

Now once level 27 hits, it's the good period, where I don't have to worry about upgrading SOs, can primarily worry about slotting and power choices and just meander through the game.

Most farms (normally end up joining one for the 45-48 slog) bore me to tears but this one was chatty and generally quite fun, especailly getting to see Rage + Shield Charge + Footstomp in action, it's inspired me to start levelling an SS/Shield brute once I get my Dark/Dark Corruptor to 50.

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If you level from 1-50 in MA, as many are now doing, you will invariably avoid many enemy types, situations and circumstances which will make you a better player and have a have a greater experience of the game. 1-50 will be faster, but more dull and less enriching in terms of both 'fun' and teaching one how to play their character.


[/ QUOTE ]If you level 1-50 doing actual story missions in the MA, you're probably going to get a more varied experience than you'd get by playing the game Pre-I14, and certainly far more varied than you'd get by just doing PB/Paper missions.

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In my case it's not as simple as saying "All farming is bad".

However excessive farming & PLing to the point where when a new person joins the game in Atlas just to see reams and reams of "Farm farm farm" and can get from 1-20 in an hour or 2 without moving from the MA (thus missing out on the learning experience of teaming and doing normal missions) is so badly flawed that the game could be said to be plain broken.

Also at the moment the Risk/Reward trade-off is so hopeless broken towards Reward it's just not funny.

I'd love to see a valid argument as to why allowing a new person to join the game, ignore all the content the devs have crafted over the last 5 years and hit 50 in 8 hours mindlessly grinding (or more like mindless stand there while a Vet or two grind) the one mission Rikti spawnfest over and over can be seen as anyway good for the game?

Like I said if Vets / experienced people want to farm / PL then fair enough, within reason. Maps packed full of relatively harmless spawns of level 53 Rikti (my level 24 SOed Brute could withstand them for the most part, which is ridiculous for the XP they award) who are generally nothing more than bags of excessive XP/Tickets is not "within reason" IMO.

The title of this thread is "Too much farming", not "All farmers are the ebil and must be wiped out", that's my stand on it too.


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Pretty much the way i feel about farming.
I did farm villain side before I14 , i think we all know which map.
Almost all people on those farms were players with more than 12 month vet rewrads , most of them over 30 months.
I dont mind if players with many chars and playing the game for years who did all the content, pl their others toons to 50 just because they dont want to do all the content for the 20th time.

I CANT understand and i dont think its good if new players who havent done all the content in the game ge pl to 50.

I did do some MA farms i admit and i check the badges of every person in those farms, most of the have 4 month ot 6 month vet rewards if any at all.
Hardly enough time to exlore all the content in the game.

If vet players pl a char to 50 most of them know how the char is played.
But i really annoys me when i see a growing number of relatively new players with 40-50 chars who ask "silly" questions that show they have no clue at all how even the basics of the game work.

Maybe i should blame the vet players who invite "noobs" to farms and allow them to leech their way up to 50 in one day.

If i farm i farm with people i know and played with for a long time, mostly to help them try out a new build.
If someone asks me to join i check the badges if he/she doesnt have more than 12 month vet bage i wont let him leech.
If someone just doorsits even if he could help he is kicked