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I do PvP with most of my existing stable of 50s. Do they all get equal playtime? Heck no - I bring things out as they're needed. My team needs an Emp? Great, I've got three to choose from. They need a Blaster? Awesome, I've got plenty of those too. Villain team needs a Therm, Pain, or Stalker? Can do. And the good part about being able to PL something quickly is if a powerset gets hit with the nerfbat, I feel no sadness at stripping enhancements and deleting a character to a new one in its place. That being said, I've never deleted a 50, though I've deleted a 44 and 37 that just weren't fun.|
Originally Posted by Megajoule
I gotta ask, macskull - what good are all those 50s if you don't RP or PvP with them? Do you just put them on a shelf and admire them? Do you try to collect one of every AT and powerset?
It's not like any real effort or thinking is involved in PLing, so aside from watching numbers on your screen go up, what's the point? |
I do have a few 50s or other characters of various levels that were created before I started PvPing or that just aren't all that good under the current PvP rules. Some of them have been retrofitted or dual-built for PvP (my Earth/Storm and Emp/Dark come to mind), but many of them are there because I dig them out for specific tasks now and again, or because they have sentimental value. For example, my Kat/Regen Scrapper is my go-to character for Hami Raids, and my Night Widow is my go-to ITF/LGTF runner. My AR/Dev gets almost no playtime but he was my first character and I keep him around because he was a complete joke character when I first started that somehow managed to hit 50 (yes, through normal play, much of it solo). My Ill/Rad at level 42 is the only character I've got with the Illusionist badge farm and the Antimatter mission, both of which I need to accolade my PvP characters.
Another huge advantage to PLing, in my eyes at least, is knowing how something performs at max level without having to slog through the lower levels and give up early. If I say to myself, "hmm, how's this Grav/Storm gonna look?" I can know fairly quickly, and if I don't like it I can just delete it and try something else.
@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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Hey, anything that discourages people creating whole factions of custom critters is good in my book.
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Originally Posted by Lazarus
So you're happy that a custom critter has to have at least 5 times as many powers as your average stock critter to give the same amount of XP?
We need a straitjacket over here. |
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If the Devs didn't want us to use many Customs then there would be a hard limit in the MA editor rather than just a memory limit, which easily allows you to fit 17 customs into a 4 mission arc without sacrificing much in terms of clues and setpiece details.|
Originally Posted by Venture
According to who? You have a dev post to back that up?
How about the loading screen tip that says "use custom mobs sparingly"? |
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Originally Posted by BLACKJACK
I think if you make a good mission people will play it reguardless of exp, they just wont farm it which is what the changes are for.
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Originally Posted by Heraclea
What burns me most about this was the fact that I bought extra story arc spaces, so I didn't have to cycle through my active roster and could experiment a bit more. Now I want my money back.
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Originally Posted by Heraclea
I will take down all my published stories when this threatens to go live. They will not be replaced; they take up too much space on my hard drive already. And frankly, I would encourage every story arc author who reads the forums to unpublish their arcs. This should be a communal effort. Let the old farms be all that remains.
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For people so pompous about story, you seem awfully annoyed that a non-story thing was changed in such a way as to make stories relatively more common.
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I find this line of thought funny yet sad.|
Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
For people so pompous about story, you seem awfully annoyed that a non-story thing was changed in such a way as to make stories relatively more common.
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Do you think that the farmers are actually going to delete their farms and stop clogging up the search results? They're going to be either farming stock critters like they always have been (making this whole nerf bloody pointless) or leave AE entirely and use the new license to farm difficulty system on the usual farming mission. Story arcs don't expire, take a look at how many broken and unmaintained arcs there are in the system. Do you really think someone is going to go through the database and delete all those farms?
Then there is the issue that once people realize that custom critters give so much less XP when balanced in a remotely fair way, they'll either avoid arcs that list Custom Groups entirely or simply abandon AE. Then there are those who don't know what's going on and will simply 1-star those arcs for having poor XP. It's not just XP that is reduced by this, influence and tickets are reduced as well.
I've said it for the record before, even I don't want to play arcs if the XP is crap or non-existent. I don't care how good the story is, I only have so much time to play and I like to see my characters level up at a decent pace while doing so. People want good story AND good rewards. They're also getting tired of idiots who think that the two are mutually exclusive.
This is just plain and utter nonsense. The whole big XP penalty thing for all-boss groups is more than enough to kill most AE farming. This whole poorly conceived XP scaling is just a kick in the teeth to those who weren't farming it to begin with. Anyone who agrees with this system is friggin' naive as all hell and just as stupid as the Dev who came up with it.
Spoken like a man who has not actually been kicked in the teeth.
Your arbitary threshold of 'acceptable' XP earning does not have any impact on story. Indeed, your willingness to throw story aside in favour of XP highlights and accentuates the worth of your opinion on matters of story.
To primarily care about the story in the arcs does not exclude caring about XP - people also want progression.
It is not just black or white here; there will be people all over the spectrum. For those that play MA as intended the XP is already a bit lower than regular content and team mechanics are more restricted, meaning that a casual "team up and do some of each others missions" becomes a bit more cumbersome.
Regardless of the numbers used for these proposed changes it will bring an uncertainty to players - an arc could potentially have mobs that cause XP reduction unless it is all made of standard mobs.
For people who create story focused arcs challenge or difficulty may not necessarily be their main goal; just because some include relatively "easy" mobs does not automatically make it a farm arc.
For arcs aimed at lower levels you also have to turn down the difficulty setting of custom mobs or they will become too difficult. I have an arc aimed at teen levels where one of the factions involved is a custom group. Even with the setting set to standard/standard for minions and LTs and no insane powerset combos I received comments that this faction was a bit too difficult for some people's taste.
Playing an MA arc is in a way a leap of faith; it can be crap or it can be great or somewhere in between. What I see here now is something that seems too complex without bringing incentives for those that want to use MA as intended. I think it will rather discourage people to try new arcs unless they have lots of ratings with an high average.
One of the great things with CoX is that many of the gameplay mechanics mostly play well together to encourage people to team up and play with each other.
Compare that to many other MMOs where they may want to people to team up and play together but where many of the game mechanics get in the way. Teaming is not worth the effort for short casual session and people end up soloing.
My concern here is that in an effort to curb excessive farming the developers may end up adding too many small roadblocks so that casual players simply will not find it worth the effort to play MA arcs as intended.
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Exactly, there needs to be a scaling table where standard/standard provides normal XP at low level, but you need hard/hard higher up.
| For arcs aimed at lower levels you also have to turn down the difficulty setting of custom mobs or they will become too difficult. I have an arc aimed at teen levels where one of the factions involved is a custom group. Even with the setting set to standard/standard for minions and LTs and no insane powerset combos I received comments that this faction was a bit too difficult for some people's taste. |
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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In two sentences you made a suggestion that would have actually interested me in the "Roman zone". Anyways...|
Originally Posted by Heraclea
Personally, I wonder why we got an ancient Roman zone that didn't come stocked with fauns, satyrs, furies, and harpies. But now, if I seek to supply them, anyone who plays suffers an XP penalty versus mobs that are already harder than standard.
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I have to admit I think this is overall something of a bad idea. My bias for using the AE was to make noncanon material that didn't rely on stock villains and groups. That said, my current project was a lowbie villain arc so this probably won't interfer with that too much as the only custom in it is a single boss.
After that one though, I'm not sure I feel driven to writer another arc as my current ideas are all pretty much "custom mob only"; perhaps I can adjust that.
I suppose in the long run it doesn't matter all that much as few people seem to care about nonfarm arcs anyways. Stopping players from farming AE means probably a good... hm, I'd guesstimate 75% of players will stop playing anything in AE, at least until the new version of PLing is invented. I don't mean to stir up an argument with that, that viewpoint is just based on things I've seen and how I see them.
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Now I'm not sure which is worse in the "only my opinion matters" department, you or Venture.
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Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
Your arbitary threshold of 'acceptable' XP earning does not have any impact on story. Indeed, your willingness to throw story aside in favour of XP highlights and accentuates the worth of your opinion on matters of story.
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Venture and Talen Lee have strange, arbitrary standards and are convinced that anyone who doesn't agree with them is a plebian. I wasn't all that aware of them before AE came out because I don't follow the forums that closely, but they've shown this over and over and over again. Don't feed them.
Now, as far as these changes go:
Requiring a group to have minions, LT's, and bosses doesn't really bother me much. I tend to do that anyway since I want my groups to be challenging for a team or at higher difficulties, but not overwhelm someone soloing or a group that's not well balanced. I even try to include two of each if I can just just keep things interesting.
The XP based on powerset is crazy, though. Even at standard difficulty, you can easily take a few mobs with complimentary sets and slaughter lowbies. Some electric, some knockback, some tohit debuffs, some slows and you have a recipe for disaster.
Now, you're taking a mob that's already a pain for a lowbie to handle and making them worth less XP? What?
Every single time I've made mobs anything but Standard (other than optional challenges I've stuck in here and there) I've gotten feedback saying that they're too hard. In fact, my own playtesting showed that while I could breeze through with something like a Brute or Scrapper, if I was on other AT's or was on a team that wasn't necessarily optimal, it was a royal pain to get through.
Thanks for posting this here. I might have missed it otherwise. I'm off to find an appropriate thread in the I16 boards. Since I'm playing around with lowbie arcs in the AE on a level 15 Dominator for exactly the reasons the devs have stated they want the AE to exist and moving slower than I would if I was doing regular content, I'm a bit baffled here.
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This sentence alone shows the silliness and lack of actual reality in game that Venture and Talen put forward.|
Originally Posted by Geek_Boy
Now, you're taking a mob that's already a pain for a lowbie to handle and making them worth less XP? What? |
AE missions (not farms, **** the farms) were ALREADY giving LESS XP than regular content.
And now the AE missions that use custom mobs will be giving less IF THIS goes through.
Thankfully SOMEONE on the dev team sees the lack of logic in daring to call such a system as equivalent to regular content missions, as they've already said they will be reviewing this at a later time.
Till that time, I'm personally going to avoid custom mob missions in the AE going forward.
Anyone who thinks a significant portion of the playerbase isn't going to do the same is so far off from reality, they need one of portal corps constructions to get back over to our side.
One of the main draws (and reasons why the freaking devs delayed AE from 13 to 14--for ****'s sake if that doesn't tell folks something about how much folks WANTED to use CUSTOM MOBS in there missions I don't know what does) of AE for many was playing and creating missions that didn't use the same old, tired, archaic cannon mobs. And newsflash, after the 5 or 6th time through the canon just isn't that exciting for many.
Again, thankfully the devs seems to get reality and are going to be reviewing those tables and taking in all the authors feedback.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
It's about time something was done about this problem. Thanks for taking care of this. Maybe now people will get out of the AE and actually play the game again.
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I know this was posted earlier in the thread, but this is a very good proposal.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
3: Being forced to have all three ranks in a custom group will penalize authors who are limited to a single rank due to file size or story limitations. I would suggest that the reward penalties should only apply to groups that contain NO MINIONS, so as to curb all-boss and all-LT farming while allowing all-minion or no-boss groups that some authors use.
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The current proposal is very unfriendly to lowbie-focused missions, as low level characters have more difficulty handling bosses than upper levels, especially in the 1-10 range. This is also the point in time when people are eager to level quickly.
This proposal still greatly discourages the all-boss and all-lieutenant farms, but leaves a greater flexibility with mission design.
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What's so fantastic about the rest of the game? And think before you respond (hint: see registration date).
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Originally Posted by Daeron
It's about time something was done about this problem. Thanks for taking care of this. Maybe now people will get out of the AE and actually play the game again.
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Azuria is getting bored of just handing out salvage to people wanting to do ITFs. She needs YOU to bring her more stuff she can lose.
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Originally Posted by Evil_Greven
What's so fantastic about the rest of the game? And think before you respond (hint: see registration date).
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
AE is dead.
Too few good stories to make wading through the ocean of crap worthwhile. Without meaningful Risk vs Reward (WHERE have we heard THAT term?...) there is no compelling reason to do AE missions except those which friends have created.
Give it a month. The AE building in Atlas will be as empty as the one in Faultline.
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Originally Posted by Aquila_NA
AE is dead.
Too few good stories to make wading through the ocean of crap worthwhile. Without meaningful Risk vs Reward (WHERE have we heard THAT term?...) there is no compelling reason to do AE missions except those which friends have created. Give it a month. The AE building in Atlas will be as empty as the one in Faultline. |
This is how I feel about this as well. I've seen this repeated so many times in this game it is unreal. The Devs come up with an idea that's great and somehow there's an exploit or a quick way to level and BOOM, then it's nerf to oblivion and no one plays it anymore. There has to be a better way of making changes without turning it into another grindfest or something not fun.
Reading through this thread I notice a lot of varied reactions. Most calmly point out "This doesn't compute," while others opt to shriek "OMG RUINED FOREVAR!!!", at least one person declared they would quit forevar, while others engaged in debate over what they thought about custom critters. And hey, nothing wrong with any of that. I may make light of them, but they're your opinions and you're entitled to them. Now here's mine: I couldn't care less what the Devs do with CC xp calculations. If they balanced them as people have pointed out, great, but it doesn't matter to me either way. Why?
I turn off experience points earning when I play MA material.
When I enter an AE building I am usually there to browse the list of published arcs and try one for the hell of it. Play through, get some tickets, and give an honest critique of the arc to its creator. It's fun, but I don't want it to make me outlevel the content in the rest of the game. Thus, I turn the XP earning off in the options. I know I'm in a possibly very tiny minority, but we do exist: People who play MA stuff for the sake of seeing what their fellow players have come up with.
So yeah, to echo previous sentiments the descrepency between standard/hard/extreme and hand-picked powered critters bears taking a second look at. And for those of you freaking out and calling for boycotts, please chill out. This bsns isn't as srs as you're making it out to be.
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Now playing at an MA near you: Dragonslayers #335375
Personally I'm going to wait and see how this shakes out. If the proposed changes are too draconian and drive storytellers off, we'd be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and the devs will have to make more adjustments. The people who just want to use AE as a soulless XP engine will always be out there, finding the easiest, fastest route to 50; the challenge is not allowing those people to ruin things for the rest of us. As each exploit is handled, the pendulum swings the other way, sometimes over-correcting, but eventually we'll have equilibrium.
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I think the fear most people have is that this will not happen. The feature will be nerfed. People will stop using the feature. Fixing the now-unpopular feature will be moved down the priority list in favor of the new shiny. Unfortunately this fear isn't entirely unjustified.|
Originally Posted by Xyzyx
Personally I'm going to wait and see how this shakes out. If the proposed changes are too draconian and drive storytellers off, we'd be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and the devs will have to make more adjustments. The people who just want to use AE as a soulless XP engine will always be out there, finding the easiest, fastest route to 50; the challenge is not allowing those people to ruin things for the rest of us. As each exploit is handled, the pendulum swings the other way, sometimes over-correcting, but eventually we'll have equilibrium.
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Bugs from i15, such as some maps having Front, Middle and Back spawn points not working properly, boss and rescue points being switched on the minimap, and captives auto-failing timed missions still haven't been fixed. Must get the new shiny out there for the ADD generation.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
I think it's [not] funny how a dev/admin/mod makes a post and must sit back and let the customers hash it out never to be heard from again. Guess it really doesn't matter to them what anyone thinks anyways so, all of this bickering, talk, and ideas back and forth are only for us read. Nothing that I have ever read in these forums about how one side likes or dislikes has ever been really acknowledged by a dev/admin/mod as being right, or changed their [devs] mind about implementing what they have posted. Basically, it's sad that all of the good, sometimes not so good, intentions of our posts seem like a waste of time and more like pitting us against each other.
The devs cannot possibly keep up with all the players, because (1) there are many of the latter, and (2) unlike them, the devs have lives.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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The irony here is, you're saying my opinion of the change doesn't matter. |
Originally Posted by Lazarus
Now I'm not sure which is worse in the "only my opinion matters" department, you or Venture.
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I don't think that custom factions are interesting, or fun. I haven't seen them handled very well; they're a little way to add spice to stories, but by and large, because of the way the game handles and expresses them and because the quality of the writers who think they should create them, the stories in which they are hosted that I have played are bad.
On the other hand, there are plenty of arcs I have played where individual custom enemies have been used well. These do not represent a large portion of the XP in the mission, so I doubt I'd even notice if they offered reduced XP.
AE is about stories. It's not about XP. I understand that you want lots of XP to go with your stories, but I don't. And you're the one calling me arrogant? You're the one threatening to quit the game over the loss of XP from custom mobs, who, again, surely can't represent the majority of the game.
There is so much in this game, so much interesting stuff, that the devs have failed to develop narratively, so much stuff that could be explored and explained, and it's not being touched by players because they're busy making lesbian hellions or clowns or whatever they think is 'interesting.'
Could this tool be used well? I suppose so, but it's not, as far as I can see, and the fact that these factions show up for five minutes then vanish again furthers the lack of depth that these custom mobs need.
So, I'm arrogant for basing my expectations of a mechanic upon what has been done with it? I'm arrogant for not thinking your opinion of story is such a big deal if you're willing to toss that aside in the name of an XP threshold? Arrogance is somehow connected to having an opinion?
Perhaps there needs to be a remedial writing course for the AE forum regulars. They can learn the definition of words like sarcasm, and arrogance, and opinion.
I gotta ask, macskull - what good are all those 50s if you don't RP or PvP with them? Do you just put them on a shelf and admire them? Do you try to collect one of every AT and powerset?
It's not like any real effort or thinking is involved in PLing, so aside from watching numbers on your screen go up, what's the point?
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Faces of the City