In Your Opinion, What is a "Farm"?

The entire inf, enhancements and salvage systems never really bothered to make the most tenuous amount of sense anyway.

I'm pretty sure the devs realised from the start that flavour text is just flavour text, and ran with it.

I started farming for newbies who are interested in the game beyond simply how fast they can get someone else to use AE to PL their character.

It's very simple really, I take my Lv50 PB into the AE building in AP and start broadcasting that I'm looking for low-level characters to join me in AE missions.

Of the 7 other lower-level characters, usually I'd find at least one player who's interested in the game mechanics, and they'd start asking questions... about my character, about their character, about why is it that their character does not seem as effective against even one Boss where-as my PB can tank the spawn for the whole team.

Of the other 6 people most would just stand around, soak the XP and do nothing. Others would actually show they want to learn, so they'd help by whichever way they can, so I watch them and learn who I've just invited into my team.

So far, out of 3 such teams, I've already found one recruit into my All Kheldian SG, and several others who truly wish to improve their gameplay and enjoy the game itself rather than overpowered characters they have no idea how to properly play... so we'll be making new characters together over the weekend! So, AE can be a wonderful way to meet new people who may share your love for the game.

I'm LordXenite and I farm for newbies.

Farming, to me....running the same maps or missions over and over for Influence, tickets, drops and so on. Whether it's mu untimed Dreck, my Demon farm, my friend's AE farm set for Shield Brutes and 7 others, it's a farm.

Heck, I'm farming away 10,000,000 points of damage on my Rad/Therm Corr because I want to be hit point capped with IOs and Accolades.
The only time farming becomes a problem is with levelling. If you level too quickly the Devs will take notice. I don't think they care much if people have billions of inf, though I do recall Synapse saying, when Merits arrived, that they were unhappy with some prices on the Market.

Basically:

Running around Striga hunting Warwolves = farming.
Resetting Dreck/Demons for drops = farming.
Resetting AE missions for tickets = farming.
Letting a Guide ding you nonstop = farming.

This game is set up for it too, what with the choice to abort missions and then rechoose the first mission, thus redeploying its spawn count.
Nothing wrong with it as long as you don't harass others about it.

I think Chase pretty much nailed it upthread in regards to farming versus hunting. Hunting is actively seeking rewards, while farming is passively seeking rewards. Running the whole Freaklympics arc once because you like fighting Freakshow isn't farming, but resetting the same Freakshow mission 20 times over because of the "good xp" is. Heck, I get frustrated if I have to restart a mission once because I didn't finish it before.

As to whether farming is "desirable" or not, I look at it this way. If I ever got around to writing a book, I wouldn't want people just rereading one page over and over just because they think that's the best bit. I want them reading the whole thing. Likewise, if I had written game content, I would prefer to see it explored rather than exploited.

I personally don't report farms because I'm too dang lazy and I mostly avoid AE (especially in the "hot zones" of Atlas and Cap), but I have no quarrel with those that do. I find the idea of farming to be repetitive, boring, and a little on the shady side. Sure, weekly TF runs with SG-mates is fun, but clearing out the same Boomtown portal map without clicking the glowie, then resetting and doing it all over again is dull dull dull. There's a reason why I sometimes jokingly refer to farming as "the f-word".

If that is the case and Hunting vs Farming is the difference between Active and Passive then EVERY single AE farm mission is actually a Hunting mission until it is used in this mysterious "Passive" way.

OH, and OP this thread delivers as troll bait.

*gets more popcorn*