Reduced XP for Freakshow now

I also play to achieve useless things. One of those will be to write a story in the AE without any concern at all on whether folks will get good rewards from it. Come I-16, I'll be buried in inf and drops running around with my mains at +4/x8 difficulty in normal content while solo. (While fighting lots of freaks since I'll be doing paper/scanner missions.) I know that many will low-rate my arc because of difficulty/lack of XP, but I won't care. I'm not writing it for them.

This is pretty much what I ascertained as to why the devs changed the Freakshow XP.

They're simply anticipating that once the AE changes take effect with I16 on live, the path or least resistance for farmers will be towards farming Freaks again, which of course would be brought up and forumed heavily about for weeks/months to come by those unhappy with farming every freak mish.

I'm sure farmers will find other mishes and means to farm with, but with this, it won't be an obvious path for them once I16 goes live. As mentioned earlier, it seems this was overdue to be fixed this way regardless.

Kudos on dev foresight, IMO.

It's just a word. Don't read a whole philosophy into it.

They are less efficient. This entire conversation is about rewards for effort....so it's a word that belongs in the conversation.

The reward isn't what irritates me...it's that they slow down team play and I like it fast.

Well at least you admit it, and I respect you for that. That's more than I can say for most around here.

If that makes you happy, then I think that's great Bill. I'll be right there with you plowing through an 8 player sized mob day in and day out. I'll probably keep them at around level 50ish to max out on kills per minute and thereby purples per hour. That's just me though.

Now with the Architecht, if you're happy writings stories just for yourself, then I think that is great for you. See me.. I write stories that only I ever get to see all the time. I can't not do it. It just happens. I have thousands of them, everywhere you look in my home. Any time you talk to me, chances are you'll remind me of something I wrote a long time ago.

But with Architecht, I was hoping to write for someone else's enjoyment. My achievement that doesn't matter here really is writing for someone else. And that just got a bit harder.

It's liberating. We go through our lives achieving things that don't matter to us every day, usually because the person that they do matter to will pay us to make their goals a reality. We spend a third of our lives working very hard on things that don't really mean anything to us. It's unnatural, and it twists our inborn work ethic into something unhealthy, I think.

So for me, to set my own goals, even knowing full well that they don't matter, and to set about achieving them, is life afirming in a small way. Cheaper than therapy too.

I just don’t think the author should have to choose.

Last night I was running an MA arc that I enjoyed it so much that I literally laughed out loud at one point. Now, the disclaimer is that the author is a friend. However, you don’t have to know her to understand how much work she put into her custom mobs, the story, and putting a little challenge into the missions.

She has stated that her TF was created to mesh the desires of her farming/power-gaming friends with her RP/story driven friends. A look at her numbers last night seems to indicate that it is going up in popularity. I'm guessing that since she has threads looking for feedback, etc., that she is writing for more than her own enjoyment.

I’d like to see the exp reward continue to be similar to running regular missions.

Some people relax by doing a variety of difficult things. Mountain climbing comes to mind. That does not sound relaxing to me any more than re-running the same mission over and over but I figure to each their own.

The goal isn't to make them all identical... it's to make them all fit within acceptable margins.

At some point, the fact that I get X% more XP/hour chasing down carnies is offset by the sheer boredom of fighting the same foe so I start taking on a wider variety of adversaries.

I haven't gotten a chance to log onto test but I have a quick question. If maxing kills per minute and purples is what you are going after, why not run a 50 and set missions to level 47 and 8 man spawn?

Well I might do that. But I hate when the whole mob is dead before I finish my attack chain.

Hmmm maybe I shouldn't have said anything, I can see it being nerfed already

I respectfully disagree. I Will be writing my arc for those that want an enjoyable story. I'll slap the ID# into my sig once it's finally completed. Those that play it for the story, I hope, will enjoy it and tell me so.

It's the folks that gripe about whatever rewards it does or doesn't give that I'll ignore completely.

Will less people read it if I put a disclaimer on it stating "Story Not Farm?" Yes. I consider that a good thing.

I take a more moderate perspective. The potential reader has already chosen to sacrifice Patrol XP rewards to experience my arc, and the chance of purple drops if he or she qualifies for those. In this light, I feel some obligation to ensure that their time spent hearing my story is as rewarding as possible. For those who like my story, I celebrate their excellent taste, but I'm not so convinced of my story telling abilities that I think people will play and show friends my arc just because they think I'm great.

If your position differs, I can respect that, but I have to say it's a concern for me. Also, when you finish your arc, slap it in your signature and I will give it a spin.

When I first learned Freaks had a 1.2 modifier, I was quite surprised. Now I'm surprised the other way.

The practical consequence for me is, when running scanners/papers, my auto response won't be to pick Freakshow missions. They'll probably be least desirable option now, at least when I'm choosing.

That's all. I won't be able to avoid them in Sister Psyche or the vill SF (forget whether it's Mantis or Renault) but I probably won't bother with the 2nd hero respec any more.

I haven't been paying much attention to the MA nerfs, but in my experience custom enemies are generally WAAAAAAAY more dangerous than 'stock' factions, to the point where I won't bother playing arcs with 'custom' foes unless I'm on one of my bulletproof characters (kat/regen scrapper, fire/dark corrupter, fire/rad controller, all 'well geared' as the saying goes).

These Draconian sounding measures will ensure very few people bother playing arcs with custom foes, in which case why have them at all?

Rewards need to be comparable between MA and 'real' content or people won't bother. Likewise they won't bother with 'custom' enemies that are much deadlier than standard foes but for some reason yeild less XP.

I personally find efficiency to be relaxing. But then I'm a hopeless nerd in real life who actually enjoys things like mathematics and problem solving. To me, everything is about numbers. It's just the way I'm wired. So yes, if my gameplay is not efficient it irritates me.

Word. I thought I16 would be the time for me to finally create my arc. Guess I'll see what develops.

--NT

I don't know.

Before it was launched, there was a lot of speculation that MA wouldn't give XP or would give XP at a diminished capacity... primarily to curtail the rampant abuse that would be inherent in any other kind of system.

While many people did say it NEEDED regular XP to be viable, many also said that they didn't care.

Personally, I'd be fine if ALL MA missions averaged about 1/2 to 3/4 of what "dev" missions did... (dev's choice missions could bump up to full XP). It'd offset some of the reward limitations of dev-created content (travel, delivery quests, etc) and remind people that there's gameplay opportunities outside those doors.

Would it mean fewer people playing MA? Yes, but the ones interested in a good story would still be there... and that's what the devs have been on record saying MA was really for.

MA - rewards = ten RP'ers hanging out shooting the breeze. They know this.

In the entire history of the game is there one example of players flocking to content that under-rewarded?

Gamers are simple creatures.
While I'm sure a handful of zealots would just LOVE for MA to be cleansed of all those grubby XP loving degenerates and restored to its pristine dream state, everyone else in the game would treat it like a horny leper and run the other way.


And some people would love for them to be totally XP free.
That doesn't change the reality of games, which is that ~99% of your players want their shiny and most of them will happily ignore anything that fails to deliver in sufficient quantities.

The dreams of some narrow player demographics aside, I doubt the devs would consider an MA used by some tiny % of the population to be a worthwhile return on their gargantuan investment of time and energy.

Then why not release it reward free, or reward gimped?

Because they want people to use it.

It's fine for players to be exclusionary purists who think everyone should play for "the right reasons", but developers have to cast a wider net if they want to keep cashing a paycheck.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most badges and accolades give ZERO reward. They're pretty similar to costume pieces except people have to take specific steps to see them.

Badges are binary content, you either have them or you don't (and care about the or not).

Given the tiny amount of energy they take to create (think up a title, attach an arbitrary number to it, slap a graphic on it) they probably deliver a wonderful return on investment for the devs, since the players who love badges tend to REALLY love badges.

I don't pay a lot of attention to accolades, but the ones I can think of give you some kind of in-game payoff (a little more end, a few more HP, whatever), which again appeals to some folks.

If there were two ways to earn a badge and one was comparatively much faster than the other, that's the one nearly everyone would choose.