Posi on Abusing Mission Architect
By
2wabbits,
Posted on: 2009-05-05 13:14 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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As I understand it, the biggest objections to this are as follows:
2) It's been said a million times (hyperbole intended): Nobody forced anyone to PL using MA. The devs stated at I14 release that they would come down on anyone who chose to "gain a statistical advantage" (for the record, that means that if you demonstrably have higher bonuses (from enhancements and set bonuses) for less time spent in game earning inf than "the average character", based on a set of criteria that we, the players, will never get to see). A few extra points on this matter - there is no evidence that the devs will penalise people for non-MA PLing; simply playing a farm arc a time or two will not produce the same statistical advantage as has been seen in the MA; you will have opportunity to appeal, but they have the evidence. People who played farming arcs will be scrutinised, for sure, but until or unless the devs actually do something to the characters, it's not worth getting your panties in a twist about.
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Thing is there never have been any "statistics" provided by the devs how long an "average" player needs to hit 50 or how much inf he getson "average" during a certain playtime.
How can they punish players form stepping out of some "imaginatory" statistic no dev ever showed to the players?
We all know how screwed up the devs "statistics" are, TF/Sf merits aynone ?
Speedruns have flawed the statistics so that the sf/tf gave less merits, while the average player still needs double or tripple the time to runa tf/sf.
So much for "statisctics"..............
You cant use statistics on a game with as many factors to be taken into account like in CoX like : AT, powersets, team, experience, temp powers etc etc.....
I cant tell someone to not buy buy more than a "statistical" amount of stock, while not telling that person what the "statisctical" amount is, and punish him afterwards for stepping out of a line, only i know.
If people farm the "normal" farm missions for either inf or lvls are they already violating those "statistics".
This leads to the devs telling us, you can only get so much lvls and so much inf per hour, everything beyond that is exploiting ? That would kill the game in weeks.
Some powersets and combos can get 20 times the xp or inf per hour than others, maybe remove them totally so you dont have the risk to be punished ?
In every MMORPG i played the game died pretty quickly once devs started to force players to play a certain way THEY decided to be the only way the game has to be and can be played.
NO-ONE can possibly play farm after farm and not notice - to suggest that you can just miss the tons of easy-falling mobs giving insane XP is simply insulting everyone's intelligence.
Zos
<- Please click here to find out how you can help!GLOBAL @zoser
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NO-ONE can possibly play farm after farm and not notice - to suggest that you can just miss the tons of easy-falling mobs giving insane XP is simply insulting everyone's intelligence.
Zos
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Get a lvl 46 to sk you, get a farming specced char and run the "normal" farm missions, almost the same xp but i get recipe, salavage and purple drops too.
Telling by the amount of players standing infront of "certain" missions doors villain side before I14, quite a few did that :-)
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Everyone is pointing the finger at one another farmers, anti farmers shouting at each other.
We are actually all on the same side if you think about it. The onus is with the devs. Its their game and we play it. We play the content they provided. What they have provided has led to an explosion of new content, player created, some of which people like some of which people hate.
The devs are responsible whether or not they are right or wrong. Irrespective of whether you love farming, dont care or hate it THEY have introduced a devisive update which has split the community.
At least the community which can be bothered to post about it.
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This is the post that delivers clarity to this thread.
If you skimmed it the first time - read it again. Carpenter has hit the nail on the head - yes .. pun intended 
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
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A majority of players have indeed been requesting measures to be taken against farming since Beta. Measures can now be taken.
It's taken a while to get to the bottom of this but please, does it have this poisonous on these boards?
I understand that many are conjecturing wildly after what Positron said but, had we decided to react more lightly than this, there would have been just as much ruckus.
We haven't specified the exact extent of the measures we are taking against farming and those who have benefited from it, so let's not over-react.
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imo the devs are going the wrong way to solve this problem, you should never do something to please just half the crowd
isn't it obvius that some people actually like playing the game by leveling fast? I agree you shouldn't be able to get from level 1 to level 50 in 6 hours, not even a day
but the people who are able to to that are the ones that play 24/7
why doesn't the devs try to fix it so the farmers don't bother the rest of the players?
make a farmer channel we can use, make us have to tick "this is a farm map" so other people can filter farm maps
and don't ever threten the players.. that's just horrible buisnes
work with the players, not against them, you would have alot more active accounts if you didn't force players to play it your way or it'll soon be a game where everyone have to play map #1 then map "2 and so on
and the only reason MA farming is so bad atm is they all know they can't farm soon, so they want to make the most of it, if they knew you wouldn't remove the abillity they would take it more slowly, and thus the broadcast channel wouldn't be so busy
ps. when I say "you" I mean the devs ofcourse
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Thing is there never have been any "statistics" provided by the devs how long an "average" player needs to hit 50 or how much inf he getson "average" during a certain playtime.
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Just curious - how close to your own perception of 'average' is making a level 50 from scratch in 6 hours?
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NO-ONE can possibly play farm after farm and not notice - to suggest that you can just miss the tons of easy-falling mobs giving insane XP is simply insulting everyone's intelligence.
Zos
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I don't think any one is saying the didn't notice they were doing farm missions i think what people are saying is they liked doing those missions and there was nothing that said they shouldn't be doing them.
True Cobra-Man, true...
It's funny, when you read the boards (full of player-created content) you can kind of see how a tool for in-game player-created content was always going to turn out
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Just curious - how close to your own perception of 'average' is making a level 50 from scratch in 6 hours?
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Its not average in my perception, BUT its not my perception or any players perception that matters, the devs made that clear a hundered times (powersets nerf or buffs or the lack of them despite players perception the pwersets are broken, sf/tf rewards etc etc)
... its the devs "perception" and they never cared to tell us "their" perception or statisctics.
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Just curious - how close to your own perception of 'average' is making a level 50 from scratch in 6 hours?
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Its not average in my perception, BUT its not my perception or any players perception that matters, the devs made that clear a hundered times (powersets nerf or buffs or the lack of them despite players perception the pwersets are broken, sf/tf rewards etc etc)
... its the devs "perception" and they never cared to tell us "their" perception or statisctics.
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But at least you can see that the 'super-levelling' was far from average; that's kind of what I was trying to establish.
It was obviously out of kilter with the rest of the game as soon as those missions were played.
Not beating on you specifically Mogh, just trying to understand the other point of view...
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We haven't specified the exact extent of the measures we are taking against farming and those who have benefited from it, so let's not over-react.
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I think that's the problem
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Nah, the problem is that NCSoft waited too long before taking a clear and firm stance on MA farming. They should have gone on the forums a week or two ago and basically said "We consider the MA farming to be an exploit. Don't do it. We are looking into ways to shut it down, and players who continue to abuse it might have some form of punishment imposed: we haven't decided yet."
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Yup, that would have been a good way to deal with this. But better late then never.
(Not targeted at anyone specific)
As far as perception goes I think you can probably turn around a quote Positron said in Pocket D on 5th Anniversary about if you feel a nerf is coming then it probably is.
I say, if you feel that you have abused the MA system enough that you may lose some progress or even your character, then you probably will. If you don't then you're lucky. You knew the farming was wrong when you were doing it, or you wouldn't be worried now, so you really have no recourse for complaint if you get punished.
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(Not targeted at anyone specific)
As far as perception goes I think you can probably turn around a quote Positron said in Pocket D on 5th Anniversary about if you feel a nerf is coming then it probably is.
I say, if you feel that you have abused the MA system enough that you may lose some progress or even your character, then you probably will. If you don't then you're lucky. You knew the farming was wrong when you were doing it, or you wouldn't be worried now, so you really have no recourse for complaint if you get punished.
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Point is farming was never punished before and has been around for a long long time, i doubt the devs are going to punish the ones doing normal farm missions even if they get inf/xp and even drops at almost the same rate.
Remove farming ok i am totally for that.
Punish players if they abuse it now they have been warned ok , totally agree.
Punishing players now retractively? Absolutely not.
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I say, if you feel that you have abused the MA system enough that you may lose some progress or even your character, then you probably will. If you don't then you're lucky. You knew the farming was wrong when you were doing it, or you wouldn't be worried now, so you really have no recourse for complaint if you get punished.
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That is so wrong philosophically and moralistically on so many levels that it manages to move away from the absurd and into the funny. I would hazard a guess that you've never looked in to ethics.
Shadowplay - Scrapper DM/DA SL 50
Doctor Storm- Brute SS/Elec SL 50
"speed boosts someone in the face" - Cognito
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Thing is there never have been any "statistics" provided by the devs how long an "average" player needs to hit 50 or how much inf he getson "average" during a certain playtime.
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Just curious - how close to your own perception of 'average' is making a level 50 from scratch in 6 hours?
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Is this proven, done by EVERYONE who's been farming in MA?
If 1 SG can manage STF in less then 2 hours, does it mean the avarage is now 2 hours and 10 minutes?
I only hear people yelling about the 'scrath 6 hours', but all those have read so, heard so or even assume so. Never i speak someone that actualy made 6 hours on a _avarage_ team. Not those min-maxed teams that focus 1000% on fast exp, but just a picked up group trying to get some exp.
Only devs can see the time it took the recent 50s to hit 50, i dont believe the majority of those will even be close to 6 hours. (apart, pre MA 18 hours was possible already).
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
Thank god i didn't get rid of my dreck mission, in PI. (Although i can still the the arc via ouroboros, anyway)
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Thing is there never have been any "statistics" provided by the devs how long an "average" player needs to hit 50 or how much inf he getson "average" during a certain playtime.
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Just curious - how close to your own perception of 'average' is making a level 50 from scratch in 6 hours?
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Is this proven, done by EVERYONE who's been farming in MA?
If 1 SG can manage STF in less then 2 hours, does it mean the avarage is now 2 hours and 10 minutes?
I only hear people yelling about the 'scrath 6 hours', but all those have read so, heard so or even assume so. Never i speak someone that actualy made 6 hours on a _avarage_ team. Not those min-maxed teams that focus 1000% on fast exp, but just a picked up group trying to get some exp.
Only devs can see the time it took the recent 50s to hit 50, i dont believe the majority of those will even be close to 6 hours. (apart, pre MA 18 hours was possible already).
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How is this relevant? Posi isnt going to be punishing the average user. Its a zero tollerance stance against extreme abuse.
US posts in response : 3384
EU posts in response : 468
We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.
I'm proud of us .
�How do I like my MMOs? I like them the way Paragon Studios used to make them.� - a fitting tribute from kiasa.org
EU, Union mostly.
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US posts in response : 3384
EU posts in response : 468
We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.
I'm proud of us .
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Weeell, if you weight that by the relative sizes of the communities we make up a bit of ground...
Edit: Fixed typo
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US posts in response : 3384
EU posts in response : 468
We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.
I'm proud of us .
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There's less of us, though.
If we knew and could compare our subscriber numbers to the US ones then we may actually have more whining per person this side 
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I only hear people yelling about the 'scrath 6 hours', but all those have read so, heard so or even assume so. Never i speak someone that actualy made 6 hours on a _avarage_ team. Not those min-maxed teams that focus 1000% on fast exp, but just a picked up group trying to get some exp.
Only devs can see the time it took the recent 50s to hit 50, i dont believe the majority of those will even be close to 6 hours. (apart, pre MA 18 hours was possible already).
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I didn't level anything 1-50 in the MA, but I've been on farms, have seen the XP rate, and belive me, it's not even close to anything you get anywhere else in the game, including traditional PL (at least if not done by someone VERY good at PLing). I fully believe it was enough to make 1-50 in a day, and not very busy one at that, being mostly AFK to boot.
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US posts in response : 3384
EU posts in response : 468
We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.
I'm proud of us .
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Weeell, if you weight that by the relative sizes of the communities we make up a bit of ground...
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We're outnumbered, what, 10-1? If so, then equal nerdrage 
Blueside Union: Starblayde (Blaster), Pax Imperia (Tanker), Pax Britannia (Defender)
Redside Union: Natasha Redshade (Stalker)
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We seem to be very poor at whinging in comparison.
I'm proud of us .
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Relative to our server population differances, plus the fact that we have a lot of people who avoid using the boards due to language issues, I would hazard a guess that we are pros at whinging.
Shadowplay - Scrapper DM/DA SL 50
Doctor Storm- Brute SS/Elec SL 50
"speed boosts someone in the face" - Cognito
My latest alt, a Shield/Super Strength tanker, is currently level 43. He has been played for 151 hours, and this is the fastest alt I can remember playing.
I have played a lot of the Mission Architect missions, but almost always solo, so I can read all the text and take my time .
I'm pretty sure this alt is safe, but I thought I'd put up some numbers, as I've seen "level 50 in 6 hours!" bandied about. What is the fastest that anyone has seen? Real numbers, please!
�How do I like my MMOs? I like them the way Paragon Studios used to make them.� - a fitting tribute from kiasa.org
EU, Union mostly.
Gee, I wish they showed this much concern over them Killing Off Two of my VG's, 1 on Defi which they said weeks ago they would pay for to replace and Have NOT and 1 on Uni which they said was too much trouble for them to reboot and so was completely gone 'sorry about that' = all due to Their I14/MA patch to begin with.
Brutes: Doc O'Bay (yup, was me lvl2-48) Doc O'Bay Jr., Sihing, Belphanior, Mr. Lich & Joker's Wylde MMs, Rad'Man Corr, Lockup Dom, Suicide King Stalker, Lord Florentine DB/WP Brute, Tygercide Scrapper......Scrapper?? what the heck is he doing here???