I16 Mission Architect XP Changes

Hi All,

I like ALOT of the changes and new features brought to the game with i16. However I am VERY disappointed that "standard" AE custom critters will now only be giving 75% of the normal rewards. I believe that this cut of 25% rewards will likely stop alot of people from being interested in regular AE story arcs!

Isn't the goal of Paragon Studios regarding AE, to encourage player created story arcs, which people will WANT to play???

I have an AE story that I am trying to get a dev reward for. I put hours of work into it, and I'm concerned that it will be hard to form story arc teams with the current cut to rewards. I know it's always possible to make the custom critters harder, but I see that as likely interfering with the storyline, because teams will be forced to work harder on difficult critters and lose track of the storyline.

I truely believe the AE system has incredible potential, and some of the i16 changes will help the system. Just not the 75% reward for "standard" custom critters!!

I'm thinking a reward of 80% - 90% for "standard" custom critters would be more appropriate. People would still want to play, but not be overly penalized for doing so...

Devs, I really hope you are paying attention to what people are saying here!

Sincerely,
HeroicGamer2

Arc# 306752 - "Insect Invasion: Paragon City" - 3 Mission Arc

Your game content is not fun. Its either stupid hard or stupid easy. AE was a nice way to play a different game. One where I'm not dealing with the "content" but having fun, paying you your sub, and enjoying the aspect of the game I like, power gaming my toons with friends who also like AE.

To those who are excited that AE will no longer be a hub, I hope you enjoy the game, maybe people will stay and go out and "play" with you now. But I doubt it. From what I saw, pre AE this game was dying, and AE brought people back.

Thats my thoughts.

Well, I'm not a farmer, and I make my arcs with an actual eye to balance. Unfortunately, the changes have taken literally ALL the experience out of the arcs.

The arc in my sig, for example, uses ONLY custom characters.

The minions have machine guns. It made no sense that the machine guns should be firing slugs or grenades, so I used the custom powers to remove Slug and replaced it with Full Auto. I gave them Regeneration as a secondary set, because it provided minimal actual defenses (which is in keeping with the fact that they're WW2 soldiers).

They now generate 0xp

Further, because I have to add bosses to the group, I'm using more memory for the WW2 soldier group, making it harder to fit the content in the mission. As it is, I was forced to remove the Russians from the final mission in Berlin (which is historically inaccurate) because I couldn't fit them in there with the memory restrictions.


Now, I'll still play my own arcs because I enjoy them, but I don't expect to play them much, and I don't expect anyone else to play them now.

I was behind REDUCING xp benefits on weaker foes, but this has gone too far. This won't just kill farming, it will kill the AE as a whole.

I think people will become more and more disenchanted with the changes in the game as time goes on.

While the power customization is great (I just wish you could copy colors across costumes for consistency) the changes to AE have ruined it for a very die-hard few who ran story arcs. Likewise, it seems that going back to developer content does not make up much for the changes. It's terrible when there's a drastic change in the influence and experience you get from soloing critters on the sidewalk verses working as a team.

This game should really get back to promoting team work as it's main concern. While auto-sidekicking and so forth in my opinions were steps in the right direction, it seems that there are huge changes not only in the rewards in AE but also in developer content. It also seems as if enemy range is now ridiculous in proportion and you only have to drop a pin to aggro 3 mobs at once. Adding people to the team in mission took off thousands of influence per kill.

Those are just my thoughts for today. Im sure I'll more to say later. The rewards in and out of AE seriously need to be looked at.

Doesn't help that "new dev content" since MA came consists almost entirely of two ginormous sacks of decimal shifted regen.

I better take my arcs out of my sig for a while. The XP is going to be atrocious until my ideas meet dev specifications.

I don't think I have seen this answered, so if someone could explain it to me, I would appreciate it.

What harm do the "boss farms" cause to the non-farming community? The only thing I can think of is that it throws the economic system out of whack because you have more people looking for the same IO sets. Other than that I am drawing a blank. And, if that is the case, it really isn't an argument that can be made by the people on here crying about the sanctity of canon story arcs. The most vocal people on this thread have said they do play CoX for the stories, not "collecting 50's", so how much stuff costs or how many other "uber characters" are out there shouldn't matter if all they care about is story content).

My question is this. If it doesn't affect you in some tangible way, why should you (or the devs) care if people rip through the XP at unheard of rates? If that is how they choose to enjoy the game, then so be it. I just got my 45 (or 48, I forget) month Vet badge and have tons of alts. Only 1 50. I enjoy seeing what the AT's can do. Am I some horrible monster because I was using the AE farms to see what the potential of an AT was to see if it is one I would want to run through the entire game?

Thanks, and also, try out my story arc. It is full of custom critters (not a farm. Multiple, story-driven missions), but I still think it is pretty well done.

I feel that the time and energy to certain changes that were recently made, may have better served the community if it was directed towards a more creative outlet for the players outside of A.E.

Now that i16 is out, and everyone is getting into the spirit of things,

May we please talk about some base love?

The Farms also take away players that might otherwise be teaming. It's been a real pain trying to find non-farm teams and just as hard to recruit players to teams.


The thing is, it seems to me the devs have simply undone many of the actions taken to suppress the farms.

So, first I go to allow bosses in my solo missions, and up my general difficulty to maximum.

Second, I create a mission using custom foes, all of which have all the powers (meaning full xp).

Third, I take out their ranged attacks (all will be meleeists, so they should only have 1 or 2).

Fourth, I hover over them and farm xp.


Short-sighted.

All powersets have a ranged attack on Standard. Removing any standard powers makes a critter worth 0 xp, for precisely the reason you stated.

My problem with AE farms is that everyone just has to make their own, clogging up the search with nearly identical farm missions. Also, lag in Cap. And, the farmers should be out farming regular missions and generating more purple recipes for me to buy.

Aha, this could explain why my custom soldiers are producing 0xp. So much for being able to customize power choices.

By taking out Slug and replacing it with Full Auto, I've apparently somehow neutered my soldiers, making them too weak to be worth xp?

Do these Devs actually THINK about things before they change them?

Well it appears as AE changes ran my friends away. AE may have been a farm and helped people level. Not to mention tickets volume and making money. But they did enjoy it and kept them in the game and NCSoft did make money on those that did use the AE system only. Now it appears that people became dis-interested quickly and are leaving. I will try to stick around but already the grouping power is dying out on Guardian. I loved the color\power changes but the AE changes may seriously put a hurt on NCSoft.

See you all in game. These are just my opinions.